“This won’t work unless you sell him. He has to believe that you’re madly in love with Tommy and want to run away with him.”
“Why Arnaud?”
“If Rodet is telling the truth, it can’t be anybody else.”
“You couldn’t convict a man of a parking violation with that kind of logic.”
Grafton frowned. “That’s true, but this isn’t a trial.”
“Is Rodet telling the truth?”
Grafton leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath while he considered. “That’s a fair question and it deserves an honest answer. Let me put it this way — he’s telling me part of the truth.” He paused, considering. “Perhaps a better way to say that would be, he’s telling me what he thinks is part of the truth.”
“What kind of truth are you looking for?”
“The kind that leads to a living man, one who knows things that can help us catch the masterminds of Al Qaeda.”
“They’re leaders in the terrorist movement,” Sarah admitted, “but if they are arrested or eliminated, others will take their place.”
“What is the alternative?”
“I don’t know.”
“We’re in a war against religious fanatics, madmen, who are trying to crack the foundations of Western civilization by murdering the innocent,” Jake Grafton said. “The conflict between the demands of secular government and religion has shaped civilization, but Islam has been fossilized, frozen in time. The good news is that history is on our side — in the long run, religious zealots always lose. The Europeans fought true believers of every stripe for centuries and finally won. Look around you at this city, this nation. France is secular civilization in full flower, and it’s worth fighting for.”
“Win or lose, the fanatics will murder a lot of people,” Sarah Houston said thoughtfully.
“Our job is to see that they don’t,” Jake Grafton said grimly. “Let’s get on with it.”
Elizabeth Conner’s door slammed in the room under mine, so I was at the window watching when she went jogging away along the sidewalk, past two bored old hookers smoking cigarettes. At least the rain had stopped, although the sky was low and slate gray.
Conner was another puzzle I hadn’t figured out. Was she really an American? Or an Israeli pretending to be an American? Did it matter?
I wondered if another search of her flat would turn up anything useful. Was there another way to learn her story?
Of course, anything she told me would be just that, a story. Still, it would be a place to start. We could check every fact she let loose of, to learn… what?
DGSE officer Claude Bruguiere could have been hit by the Mossad. In fact, Lizzie Conner might have done the shooting. For that matter, dear, sweet, innocent Marisa might have pulled the trigger.
Around noon I met Sarah Houston in the dining room of her hotel. I stood as she approached the table, and she kissed me. Her tongue grazed my lower lip in a contact lasting several heartbeats. It was a darn nice kiss, the kind that speeds up your heart ten or fifteen whacks a minute. She broke it off as my blood pressure soared, then backed away a few inches and gave me a tiny smile.
I helped her with her chair and almost tripped getting back into mine. That’s when I handed her a note that said my belt had a bug in it. She read the note, nodded and handed it back. I wadded it up and stuck it in my pocket, to be discarded into a toilet.
“I’m not looking forward to seeing that man,” she muttered as she glanced at the menu.
“We’ll get through this,” I assured her warmly, laying my hand atop one of hers. “Ibiza will be worth it. You’ll see. Just the two of us, lazy mornings, walks in the afternoon, life slow and easy.”
“You make it sound so tempting.” She turned her hand so her fingers touched my wrist.
We chatted on, about how great it would be to be modestly rich and have each other. I hoped to hell the frogs who were listening were getting all this. Actually, it was an easy conversation to do. Sarah was lovely, smart and the kind of gal a guy like me could spend his life with.
Where did that thought come from?
Come on, Tommy! This is just an act. Remember?
We didn’t have any trouble getting into the Conciergerie this time. The guard took one look at my Terry Shannon passport and motioned us on through. One of the security men accompanied us to the elevator, watched our faces as we rose two flights, then ushered us along to Arnaud’s corner suite. The receptionist took one look, then buzzed the great one, and we were shown in. The security man stood beside the closed office door.
“Hello,” Arnaud grunted unenthusiastically.
I have played my share of poker through the years and learned a thing or two about reading faces. Right then I would have bet my stack that Arnaud was on the fence: He wasn’t sure we were genuine and he wasn’t sure we weren’t. The truth be told, this was a better position than Grafton and I thought we might be in. We figured he would be pretty close to dead certain that we were conning him, so we were ahead of the game.
I attacked. “I didn’t appreciate you siccing the police on me last night,” I said aggressively. “I had to get a diplomat involved and do a lot of explaining to my boss.”
Arnaud regarded me icily from under bushy eyebrows. Now his face was expressionless, which I thought was probably his usual professional demeanor. “Two men on motorcycles tried to run you down. Why?”
“My guess would be that they were trying to get even with me for throwing their pal though the clock at the museum, but I certainly don’t know. They very nearly made me a traffic statistic. If the police in this town were any damn good they’d be trying to find out if the motorcycle dudes knew the clock diver.”
“Who blew up your car?”
“Maybe those guys, or some friends of theirs. You obviously have a lot of assholes running around this town.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?”
We weren’t getting anywhere with this, and we both knew it. I was in no hurry, however. If Arnaud wanted to spend the afternoon beating around the bush, that was fine with me. Cons only work when the mark sells himself. While he was barking questions, his natural greed was percolating. I also knew a thing or two about greed.
After two or three more questions, his eyes strayed to Sarah. That’s when I knew we had him hooked.
“Don’t look at me like that, creep,” Sarah snapped.
For a hundredth of a second, he looked startled. Then the mask dropped.
This was too easy. Maybe he was conning us.
“C’mon, Sarah,” I said, rising from my chair. “Let’s get the hell outta here.”
“Sit!” Arnaud ordered coldly.
I obeyed.
“I want to see it,” he said.
“First the money.”
“First I see it.”
“No,” Sarah said firmly.
I leaned across and got hold of a hand. “Hey, babe. This is our chance. Let’s do the deal.”
“Don’t ‘babe’ me, Terry. I don’t trust this slimy bastard. I want the money first. Ten grand.”
I got in front of her, lifted her from the chair and led her to the corner of the room farthest from Arnaud. I held her in my arms and we whispered. I told her I loved her and a bunch of other stuff, strictly part of the con. She let tears leak and swabbed at them with a fist.
Man, she was good! Looking at her red eyes, watching that lip tremble, I’d have given her my life savings to help a Nigerian prince get money into the States.
She capitulated.
Arnaud gave her his chair. She turned to his computer, which was on. She began talking, telling him about the walls around the Intelink to keep out riffraff. Talking slowly, showing him every keystroke, she led him to her rathole. At one point he got too close to her, and she recoiled like a scared cat. He backed off.
She looked up at him. “You’re recording all this, right?”
