“Yeah. I’ve had enough.”
“Me, too, I think.”
“You talked to Grafton?”
“Not yet.”
“Better do that.”
The doctor came in and said something in French, and the nurse told Sarah she had to leave. She kissed me on the lips, then she was gone.
Life was looking up.
Jake Grafton was strolling aimlessly with his hands in his pockets when Pink Maillard drove up Rodet’s driveway in a government car with one of his men. “You going to stay here all day?” he called to the admiral.
“Just thinking.”
“Want to do it over some food?” Sure.
Maillard told his man to take the van back to the embassy, and Jake got into the passenger seat of the car. They stopped at the inn on the Marne, across the river from Rodet’s estate. The police were working on a boat at the pier; Rodet’s, no doubt. The old man had crossed the river on the boat and someone had picked him up. It was that easy.
“I screwed up the timing,” Jake said when they were seated, sipping on beer. “Arnaud must have found that item I wrote on the Intelink last night, a few minutes after we posted it. He didn’t waste any time. Got the old man and his thugs and charged right over there.”
“Why didn’t your listener, Icahn, hear anything on the bugs?”
“He was probably asleep.” Jake sighed.
“You can’t blame yourself. These were desperate people.”
“Shit!” Jake muttered.
“When I first saw him,” Pink mused, “I thought that old man might be Qasim, artificially aged a little.”
“That is a possibility,” Jake replied, “but in any event, Abu Qasim is still out there. Have you asked yourself why all these people were suddenly so interested in Rodet’s spy?”
“The Veghel conspiracy was busted six months ago.”
“Indeed. Six months pass, and suddenly all hell breaks loose.”
“Breaks loose just before the heads of government of the eight largest industrial powers on the planet have a summit meeting in Paris.”
Jake watched a couple come into the small room and seat themselves at a table beside the window so they could watch the ducks on the river. The man nodded at Grafton.
“I think he’s here, in Paris,” Jake said to the Secret Service man. “Callie went to Professor Heger, trying to learn if there was any truth to the Abu Qasim legend. When she went back the next morning, the professor had a bullet in his head. He died while she watched.”
“Rodet didn’t kill the professor,” Pink said. “Arnaud didn’t. The old man and his thugs had no reason to do so.”
“What if Qasim wasn’t just the answer to her question but also the name of the killer?”
After lunch, they went out onto the riverbank. The police had finished with the boat and taken it back across the river to Rodet’s boat-house. There was one die-hard fisherman casting into the river. It was late in the season, but he wasn’t ready to quit. Squadrons of ducks paddled furiously about, looking for food.
“When we get back to the embassy,” Pink suggested, “perhaps you and I should go see Lancaster. He’s going to get an earful from the French politicians.”
“Fine,” Jake said.
“I’m tempted to call Washington and tell my boss that I recommend against the president’s participation in the G-8 summit. We can’t guarantee his safety — and the French can’t — and it’s time to admit it.”
“The French will dispute that. Even if the president backs out, they’ll have the summit anyway with whoever comes. And, boy, will they heap the stuff on the Americans for chickening out. You know the president will come, regardless of what you tell Washington.”
“Well, they pay me for my opinion, so I’m going to tell them. They can do as they please with it.”
“And they will. So we’re stuck with an insoluble puzzle: What is Al Qaeda planning?”
“And where does Abu Qasim fit in?”
Callie drove. She explained to Sarah. “He said the code was onetime pads. What are those?”
“They are pads for encrypting messages. Each sheet in the pad is intended to be used just once, then discarded. If the pad is used that way, the messages are nearly impossible to decode since the code is based on random numbers. Even if you break one, you can’t break any of the others since the code changed from message to message.”
“He said the pad was on his desk. ‘You need to apply heat,’ he said. Is that possible?”
“Oh, yes. The pages of the pad could be printed with invisible ink, which heat makes legible.”
They rode the rest of the way in silence. Each woman had a lot on her mind.
The door to the apartment in the Place des Vosges was locked. Callie pounded on the door. Finally the maid opened it a few inches.
“There has been an automobile accident,” Callie said in French. “Monsieur Rodet and Mademoiselle Petrou are in the hospital. He asked us to bring them some clothes.”
The maid looked at Callie, looked at Sarah, then held the door open. “Are they going to be all right?”
“I hope so. You know the doctors — they will tell us nothing.”
“Mon Dieut Where was the accident?”
“Uh, on the highway near the chateau.”
“Oh, the traffic! People drive like maniacs. No one is safe.” She shifted gears. “Someone broke into the apartment several days ago. We are still making amends.”
“Think nothing of it! We will find what they need. Do you have a suitcase?”
The maid scurried off to look. Callie and Sarah went looking for Rodet’s office.
The maids had been working on it, but only half the room was cleaned down to the floor. Callie and Sarah glanced at the desk, opened the drawers… and Sarah pulled out a curling iron, its cord wrapped around it.
“Look at this.”
They rooted through the stuff strewn about on the floor and came up with three memo pads, in three different colors.
Sarah was ready to plug in the iron to test them when they heard the maid coming along the hallway. Callie pocketed all three pads.
“Keep looking,” she murmured to Sarah. “Look for more pads.”
But they could do no more looking. The maid entered the room with a small valise, then led them to the bedroom. While the maid was bent over opening the valise, Sarah passed Callie the curling iron. She took it and the pads and went into the bathroom.
With the door locked, it took but a moment to warm the iron and pass a sheet of memo paper through it. Nothing happened with a sheet from the first pad. Nor the second. Callie was sure none of the pads was the right one when letters and numbers began to appear on the top sheet of the third.
With the valise full of toiletries and nightclothes for Rodet and Marisa, the women thanked the maid profusely and departed.
Back in the car, Callie showed the pad to Sarah.
“Hidden in plain sight,” Sarah muttered.
“Can the messages on the telephone-computer hard drive be decoded with these?” Callie asked.
“No. These were for future messages. See the gummed backing sticking out? Rodet tore off each sheet as he used it, then destroyed it. He could have burned it, flushed it down a commode, or wadded it up and eaten it. The pages are water soluble.”
Callie said a cuss word. She looked at the pad dubiously.
“Won’t hurt to have them,” Sarah continued. “If there is another message, we can read it.”
“There won’t be any more messages,” Callie said bitterly. She smacked the steering wheel with her hand. “And I thought we were getting somewhere!”
“If we had an identical pad, the entire pad, with copies of the missing sheets,” Sarah told her, “then we could
