conspiracy!”
“Oh, no, Tommy. You’re looking at cause and effect the wrong way round. You’re looking at a mirror image of the truth. The truth is precisely the opposite. Abu Qasim is not spying on Al Qaeda. Henri Rodet is Al Qaeda’s spy in the West. The Veghel conspiracy was sacrificed to ensure that no one suspected that Rodet was passing information to Al Qaeda. He’s a double agent.” He patted the suitcase. “This computer will tell the tale.”
All this was a bit too much for my criminal mind to process quickly. “But no one suspected that,” I objected.
“Oh, they will,” Grafton said heavily. “They will! When Al Qaeda assassinates the G-8 leaders — the president of the United States, the prime ministers of Great Britain and Japan, the president of France, the chancellor of Germany, and the others — the investigators are going to turn over every single stone. The fallout from that event will make the Warren Commission look bush league. Then Henri Rodet will have the alibi he needs. He selected Arnaud to take the fall months ago. When I arrived in Paris and began nosing around, Rodet began to worry that they didn’t have Arnaud wrapped tightly enough. So he improvised.”
“And nearly killed his girlfriend.”
“If she had died after she told her story, he wouldn’t have cared.”
“What about those thugs who tried to kill me? You think Rodet ordered them to do that?”
“No. Personal vendettas and vengeance isn’t his style. After you threw that guy through the museum clock, the jihadists declared war.”
“They tried to kill you, too.”
“I think Rodet and Qasim were afraid of me by then. They wanted you dead, too. That car bomb should have done it.”
“Elizabeth Conner?”
“You really want to know?”
“Yeah.”
“I need your word that you are not going to get personally involved.”
Uh-oh. He knew I wasn’t going to like this. So it wasn’t Rodet or Arnaud or the soldiers of Islam. “Okay.”
“Your word?”
“My word.”
“Gator Zantz.”
“That son of a bitch!”
Grafton hefted the suitcase, lifting it experimentally as if he were weighing it. “We found two more electromagnetic sweep sets after you came out here. So Rodet actually had three sets in the house. He found the bugs and put them in two bedrooms upstairs, then turned on a radio. That’s what Icahn was listening to.”
“I figured it was something like that.”
Grafton nodded. “In this business we must have good people. Icahn listened to the bugs all night and heard nothing but music. He didn’t think a thing about it. You listened for, what — ten or fifteen minutes? — and knew we were being had.”
“Lucky, I guess.”
“Lucky? Maybe lucky for Marisa Petrou. Those people weren’t doctors. That fool with the knife might have killed her. She might have bled to death.”
“Maybe she wishes she had.”
Grafton didn’t say anything to that.
I went down the ladder to the ground floor first and he handed the suitcase down to me. He climbed down carefully.
“Marisa is in love with Rodet,” I said when he was beside me. “I thought the bastard loved her.”
“Maybe he does, in his own twisted way,” Jake Grafton mused. “Yet there’s someone he loves more.” A moment later he muttered, “Qasim may have started out as Rodet’s spy. Somehow that relationship got seriously twisted.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Rue Paradis didn’t look the same. Oh, it still had its hookers and Johns, but it felt as if the air had gone out of it. The narrow stairwell of my building echoed with my footsteps. I paused at Conner’s door. The police had sealed it. I kept climbing.
My little room looked… well, little. Grubby. Old. Paris had lost its charm.
The bandage on my leg would get soaked if I sat in the tub, so I did the best I could with a washrag at the sink. Got water all over the floor.
I opened the window a couple of inches and fell into bed. Must have laid awake for two whole minutes thinking about things.-The next thing I knew my cell phone was ringing. I opened an eye. It was morning and light was streaming through the window. The room was chilly; I was really snuggled in.
“Yeah.”
“Grafton. Rise and shine. Come see me when you get here.”
“Okay.”
Another day at the war. I rolled out.
I wore my best suit — well, my only suit — and best dark red power tie. Over that I put on a windbreaker. I set forth on the Vespa.
The town was full of paramilitary police with submachine guns hanging on straps across their chests. Pairs of them were on every corner, standing around watching people and traffic and looking bored. How they stand it I’ll never know.
The motorcycle rack was nearly full, but I lucked out and found a spot and locked up my ride. I stuffed the windbreaker in the little plastic saddlebag and locked it up, too, and locked the helmet to the thing. Then I strolled over to the embassy and went right in the front door like a real person.
The place was hopping. Jake Grafton had had a stormy session with the ambassador early that morning, someone said, and was now in conference in the embassy theater, where all the big briefings were held. He wanted me there, according to one of the security guys.
Who should I find outside the door but Willie Varner, also sporting a suit, with a blue tie over a blue shirt with a white collar. I whistled. “Didn’t know you owned a suit.”
“Own one and this is it,” he said. “Bought it to be buried in.”
“You’re looking kinda poorly, too.”
“Grafton said to send you in when you got here.”
“This been going on long?”
“Just got started. Ever’ high muckety in the French gover’ment is in there listenin’ to Grafton tell them about Rodet. There was a lot of tight jaws when they went in. I hear the prez and PMs all show up tomorrow, so he’s upsettin’ their applecarts.”
The guard let me in and I found an empty seat in the back of the little auditorium. Grafton was on the stage — also decked out in a suit. I’ll bet that he had never had a more attentive audience in his life. The place was quiet as a morgue, and Grafton was Mr. Cool, as if he were making a presentation at his neighborhood homeowners’ association. Sitting in a folding chair on his left was Inspector Papin of the French police. On the right was a white- haired man of distinction. I asked the guy beside me who he was.
“Ambassador Lancaster.”
When Grafton finished his indictment of Henri Rodet, he opened the suitcase that we took from the barn at Rodet’s place and displayed the items one by one. His audience stared in silence at the pistol, at the silencer, at the policeman’s uniform, at the cop’s hat and shoes, at the remaining sheets on the onetime pad, but they were mesmerized by the computer. Every eye in the place was on it as Grafton explained what it was and how Rodet had used it.
Someone stood up. “I helped develop the security plan. There are no holes in it.”
