Arnaud or Rodet had been up to, nor why Rodet didn’t share what he knew about Qasim. I had a few theories of my own. I thought Arnaud killed Al and Rich so the old man and his Islamic gang could sack Rodet’s apartment in peace. But if that was true, why did the old man kill Arnaud? Did he think he double-crossed him and the cause?
A ladder led up to the loft. I climbed it and inspected the loft as carefully as I could in the poor light. There were no electric lights up here, merely daylight coming through air vents overhead. Bird droppings were splattered everywhere.
There was hay in square bales, a lot of it. Moving all those bales didn’t appeal to me. Not by myself, anyway. Some old saddles and tack, really old. Horse-drawn equipment that ought to be worth some money at an antique store. A couple of wood-burning stoves that I looked in. One of them was filled with rusty wire. I pulled it all out.
This barn reminded me of the one my uncle owned back when I was growing up. It was a cool barn; I liked it because my uncle had a stash of girlie mags in an old trunk in the loft, which he liked to study for inspiration. I know because I liked to follow and spy on him. He never found out that I was watching.
Finally I had searched everything in the loft. I stood looking up at the joists, which were also filthy with bird droppings. There was a platform way up there on one end of the barn, right under the roof, but there was no way up.
I looked around on the floor — and saw two scrapped places where the feet of a ladder might have stood.
The ladder! It was lying against one wall, wedged in behind the hay bales.
I moved four bales and worked the ladder free.
It was an extension ladder. I managed to extend it and put it up against the platform. The feet fit the scraped places perfectly.
I wasn’t feeling myself, so I went up very carefully.
There was a suitcase up there. Nothing else. It had something in it — I could tell by the weight.
I almost dropped it getting it down to the floor of the loft — had to hold it in one hand and get myself down with the other without falling.
I put it on the floor and opened it.
There was a pistol, a silencer, a box of ammo, a police uniform complete with badge, and the piece de resistance, a small computer and a onetime pad with about a dozen sheets left on it.
I was inspecting this treasure when I heard someone call, “Hey, Tommy.
“Up here.”
In a moment Grafton’s head appeared at the top of the ladder. “Got something?”
“Yeah. Come on up.”
He looked at everything. “Where was it?”
I pointed.
He glanced up, then sat down beside me and examined the computer carefully.
“Is this what you were looking for?”
“Looks like the jackpot. Did you touch that pistol?”
“Huh-uh.”
“Remember Al and Rich? Talking about the cop outside the van, just before they were shot?”
“I remember. Who wore this outfit, Arnaud or Rodet? Who was trying to frame who?”
“You can make a case either way, but it was Rodet. Qasim and his local soldiers were going to trash Rodet’s apartment, pretending to look for a computer. He didn’t want us listening.”
“So the old man was Qasim?”
“Yes. Wearing makeup.”
I couldn’t believe it. The old man was Qasim? “Rodet must have recognized him!”
“Oh, yes.”
“But… Qasim shot Rodet! Cut up Marisa!”
“Uh-huh.”
“That means Marisa’s in this up to her eyes. She let them cut her up.”
“Yep.”
“So Rodet and Qasim are both terrorists?”
“I don’t know what they are. Let’s forget labels for a moment. Marisa was the link between Qasim and Rodet. The proof is right here, in my hand.” He meant the computer. “Rodet told me that fancy telephone was the way he wrote and encrypted his messages to Qasim, and he gave us four sheets of a onetime pad that had been lying on his desk in his Paris apartment. He said NSA will eventually sort out the zeros and ones, make these two devices give up their secrets. I suspect this is the computer that was used to program the telephone computer Rodet gave us. Qasim never had one.”
“How’d you figure it out?”
“Rodet telling Callie about the pad on the desk. And in the desk the women found a curling iron to apply heat to the pages of the pad. There it was, right in the drawer. You saw that place after it had been trashed. They broke the lamps, ripped pillows apart, tore up the carpets, even broke the lightbulbs. Don’t you remember? I thought at the time that it looked as if everything in the place had been put through a blender. Rodet’s mistake was to go back and put the pad beside the desk for Callie and Sarah to find. To clue them that it was there, he left a curling iron in the desk drawer, a place where the iron wouldn’t normally ever be used for its designed purpose. He was worried that I wasn’t buying the story he wanted to tell — or the French police wouldn’t — so he tried to tidy up with one too many touches.”
“But what about that scene yesterday?”
“The whole thing was an act. Let’s go through it: Arnaud sees my short story on the Intelink and rushes right over to tell his boss, the man in charge of the security for the G-8 summit. Rodet goes to the bathroom, or a bedroom, and makes a call to Qasim, who jumps in the van, picks up his soldiers and motors right over. Marisa said the bad guys arrived immediately, but she was lying. They arrived later, much later, maybe two hours or so later. Remember, Cliff Icahn saw the van arrive, but he didn’t notice Arnaud in his car, which had passed hours earlier.
“They rolled in, shot the gardener and maid, and took Arnaud and Rodet and Marisa out to the apartment over the garage. They tied them to chairs and set the scene for us. They knew we would be along in a little while. They hoped to be gone by then. We would have found Arnaud dead, Rodet wounded, and Marisa sliced up. Rodet would have probably worked his way out of his bonds and called the police. That timetable went out the window when you showed up. They knew we would be right behind you. A quick shift in plan. The holy warriors would fight, perhaps escape, but even if they didn’t, they were going to kill some of us and go down fighting. Didn’t matter either way, because they would earn a spot in paradise.”
Grafton took a deep breath, then continued. “Arnaud had to die. He was always the fall guy, the man they were going to blame for everything to keep Rodet in the clear. Arnaud was supposed to have framed Rodet on the Bank of Palestine stock purchase. He was supposed to have shot Claude Bruguiere to permanently close his mouth. He was supposed to have shot the two Americans in the surveillance van in the Place des Vosges.”
“But why did they need a scapegoat?” I asked. “Rodet was the man in charge of renovations to Versailles in advance of the G-8 summit. Rodet was the man in charge of security. So after the assassination of the leaders, Rodet will need a villain, someone to blame for betraying the security arrangements. Arnaud is that man. It would look as if he sold out to the terrorists and attempted to implicate his boss.”
Grafton paused. “That scene yesterday wasn’t as impromptu as one might think. Rodet and Qasim probably planned to kidnap Arnaud sometime before the summit, act out this scene and kill him. His rushing over merely speeded things up.”
He laid the computer back in the valise on top of the folded police uniform.
“Shit!” I muttered.
“Marisa is in it as deep as Rodet. Maybe they injected her with a local anesthetic. Qasim could have taken the needle and drug with him when he left.”
Grafton stood. He reverently closed the suitcase and smiled at me. “Thanks,” he said.
“Jesus Christ, Admiral! I am so confused. I thought Rodet had a spy in Al Qaeda. He gave us the Veghel
