Rodet nodded.
“It is important that you understand, Henri. I may not survive. The Egyptian police may beat me to death or the fundamentalists may kill me. What happens will be God’s will. But if God wants me to survive, it will be because He wants me to destroy these people.”
Rodet drank more wine and said nothing.
“You see, I am a holy warrior at heart. Islam is the religion for warriors. A man must accept God in his heart and submit to His will. The rest is only details.”
Rodet did see. He did not understand, but he saw the iron in the man before him.
They talked and talked until the wine was gone. Mostly Qasim talked and Rodet listened. In his new life as a spy, Qasim could only survive if he said very little, and then nothing that revealed the inner man. So now he talked freely, as if saying good-bye to himself.
He left the next day for Egypt. Rodet waited for several days, then followed along behind. When the Frenchman reached Cairo, Qasim was already in jail. Rodet didn’t ask about him, but he saw the lists and found his new name.
Yes, he had to have a new name. Too many people knew Abu Qasim, philosophy student.
Months later Rodet failed to find the name on the newest list. He didn’t know if Qasim had died or been released. That was when the reaction to Qasim’s choice hit him the hardest. Abu Qasim, he realized, was the greatest human being he had ever met. In an era when most people refused to get involved, Abu Qasim was willing to give his life for what he believed in.
The waiter knocked, breaking Rodet’s chain of thought. Now the door opened and the waiter stuck his head in. “Monsieur Grafton.”
“Show him in,s’il vousplait.”
“She’s out and walking, Tommy.”
I was sitting in a taxi near the Gare de l’Est. The meter was running and my driver was leaning against the front fender, smoking and chatting with a colleague who had driven the taxi parked behind us.
The voice on the phone in my ear was tinny. “She crossed the square and is walking toward the Boulevard Beaumarchais.”
“Both of you are on her, right?”
“Yeah. I’m on one side of the street, Al’s on the other.”
“What’s she wearing?”
“Nice blue and white dress, a white fur wrap of some kind— looks like a short jacket — a designer purse hanging on a strap over one shoulder, and shoes with modest heels.”
“Don’t lose her and don’t let her burn you.”
“Comments like that are not productive, Tommy.” I tried to think of something snotty to say, couldn’t and flipped the telephone shut. When I didn’t move, the taxi driver lit another cigarette. He and the other driver were arguing politics, I think. I half turned so I didn’t have to look at them, and checked the mirrors. There was a car parked about a hundred feet behind us containing three men. They were illegally parked too close to the corner. I couldn’t make out their features, and I didn’t want to turn around to look. It was a newer car, a dark sedan.
I tried to ignore them. On the seat beside me was a newspaper, probably left there by the cabbie’s last passenger. The photo on the front cover caught my eye — a nice shot of the busted clock in the Musee d’Orsay. There was another shot of the guy who went through the clock, lying on the floor with a sheet over him. The reporter had used only two ns in Shannon. Since that wasn’t my real name, I wasn’t upset. Nor was I moved to save the article for my scrapbook.
There was also an article on the front page of the paper about the meeting next week of the G-8 leaders at the Chateau de Versailles, the Sun King’s shack in the suburbs. Poverty in Africa and global warming were the issues of the day, not Islamic Nazis or terrorism. As you might expect, rock stars, tree huggers, anarchists, fundamental Christians and other socially committed, unhappy folks were planning huge demonstrations to protest almost everything. Already they were pouring into town; the hotels were filling up fast.
Last year French president Jacques Chirac caused a rumpus on the eve of the conference in Scotland by lambasting British cuisine. This year he was tut-tutting over hamburgers and hot dogs. I was deep into Chirac’s explanation of the relationship between barbaric food and the Americans’ bad attitude when the telephone rang again. As I opened it I glanced again in the mirrors. That car was still parked there.
“She’s walking north on the Boulevard Beaumarchais, left side. There’s a subway station a few blocks ahead, but she’s dressed too nice. I think she’ll catch a taxi or go into a joint right around here. Al’s crossed the street.”
“Un-huh,” I said, trying to keep him talking.
“Oh, she’s stopped to look into a window. She’s checking for tails. She’s hot. Let me call Al.” The connection broke.
I leaned out the window and motioned to my driver. He took his time climbing in, the cigarette still dangling from his mouth, then started the engine and pulled his chariot into gear.
So she was checking for tails! That made me feel better. Running Al and Rich all over Paris was going to be difficult to explain if Marisa dropped into some boutique, bought a nightie, then went home.
As we rounded the corner I looked back. The sedan was pulling away from the curb.
My taxi sped toward the Place de la Republique. From there I thought we could go south toward the Boulevard Beaumarchais, and if Marisa Petrou didn’t jump a cab and boogie, we’d eventually arrive in her vicinity. Like all plans, this one was subject to instant revision.
We had just about reached the Place de la Republique, the sedan following faithfully, when the phone rang again.
“She’s walking west on Rue St. Gilles. I told Al to go up a block and parallel us. That way he’s out of her visual universe.”
“What the hell is this? NASA? Where’d you learn phrases like that, anyway?”
“I used to be somebody. ‘Bye.”
I looked at my map. “Boulevard du Temple,” I told the driver. Like many European cities, the French renamed their avenues every few blocks. This one was soon to turn into the Boulevard des Filles du Calvare, then the Boulevard Beaumarchais. No doubt there was a logical reason for naming streets this way, once upon a time, but whatever it was, it has been lost to history. These days the system sells a lot of maps to tourists and foreign spies and fills up taxicabs with people trying to get from here to there.
Marisa was staying close to home base. She might even return home, although I was betting she wouldn’t. She had a meet set up, and the person she was going to meet was Elizabeth Conner.
It’s nice to be certain of something you have no proof for. I suppose that’s a symptom of the human condition. Proof or not, I did have a suspicion. Conner used The Sum of All Fears as the basis for a code. Marisa’s father had had a copy of the same book. Or did he? What if it was Marisa’s book? What if Marisa was the spy and not her stuffy old man?
Well, it was a theory, anyway.
“Turn here,” I told the cabdriver, and pointed. I might as well get ahead of Marisa so I’d be in the neighborhood if she went to ground or flagged a cab.
The phone vibrated again. I was holding it in my hand. “Yeah.”
“She’s crossed the Rue de Turenne. She dawdled twice to check for tails. Don’t think she made me.”
“If she does, drop off and let Al take her.”
“I know how to do this, Tommy.”
The connection went dead. I looked behind us. Yep, we still had a tail.
Who the hell were these guys?
The cabdriver was eyeing me in his rearview mirror. “It’s alright,” I said in English. “I’m working for Rumsfeld.”
“Rums…?”
“Forget it,” I said in French. “Turn left.”
But if Marisa and Elizabeth Conner were spies, who were they spying for?
The phone again. “She’s marching up the Rue du Parc-Royal, headed straight for the Musee Picasso.”
“Stay loose. There’s bound to be cabs there.”
