for another day. We’re going to have a chat with Rodet. Tell him, Sarah.”
She didn’t look at me but at the admiral. “Rodet apparently came into a couple of million euros by way of the U.N.’s Oil-for-Food program, which essentially went away with the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. The money came from a series of transactions between five small companies that were providing goods and services to Saddam Hussein. Rodet invested the money in the Bank of Palestine, which is a honey pot or piggy bank for Islamic radicals out to overthrow Israel — and America and Western civilization and so on.”
I had heard of the Bank of Palestine. Somehow bank money wound up being used to pay survivor’s benefits to the families of terrorist suicide commandos who had gone on to their reward, whatever that might be. “He owns stock in that bank?” I asked.
“He does, and he tipped us on the Veghel conspiracy. It doesn’t compute. We’re going to try to figure him out and find a way to exploit his relationships with the Bank of Palestine and the various extremist groups in the Middle East.” I knew what “exploit” meant. I figured Sarah did, too. “Sarah, you are going to be our computer wizard. Tommy, you’re going to be my tech guy and point man.”
“Tell me some more about Rodet,” I said.
“He’s married to an heiress almost ten years older than he is. They’re estranged. No children. He has a live-in girlfriend, a chateau upriver from Paris and a luxurious flat in town. I hear it’s quite a place.”
“I think I met Rodet’s girlfriend this past spring. Gal name of Marisa Petrou. She still his main squeeze?”
“That’s her,” Grafton agreed, nodding.
Suddenly I realized that Sarah Houston was giving me the onceover. One of her eyebrows was higher than the other. Now she turned back to Grafton.
“I seem to recall seeing a television interview with Chirac just the other day,” I said, “where he was bragging about cooperating to fight terrorism.”
“The French are cooperating, but we think they know more than they’re passing on, a lot more, and we aren’t getting it. Henri Rodet is the key. He’s in the crosshairs, partly for the Veghel conspiracy, and partly because the French government has him running the security team for the G-8 summit.
“The question is, How did Rodet learn of the Veghel conspiracy? After careful analysis, we don’t think he got it from a DGSE operation, or from one of their agents. It’s possible, but… We think it’s more likely that Rodet has an agent in Al Qaeda, and that agent was the source of the information on the conspiracy.”
“Whoa,” I said. “That’s a big leap.”
“No, it isn’t. Someone told him.”
I threw up my hands. “What does Rodet say?”
“He isn’t saying anything. He refused to discuss the matter with the Paris station chief.”
“Oh, boy.”
Grafton motored right along. “So that’s our assumption — Rodet has a spy in Al Qaeda. We know a few things about this guy.” He began ticking them off on his fingers. “One, the agent hasn’t yet been caught, which means that he has never been suspected. Two, he’s high up in the organization, or he would not have known about the conspiracy. Three, he’s been inside a long time. Al Qaeda is a criminal conspiracy, which means it is composed of extremely paranoid people who don’t trust any outsider. Ergo, he’s not an outsider. Four, there hasn’t been a leak from inside the DGSE, which means that the agent isn’t being handled routinely, by the usual professional staff. He’s being handled from the very top, perhaps even by Rodet himself.”
“If all that’s true,” Sarah mused, “how do the agent and handler communicate?”
“That is precisely what I want to know,” Jake Grafton shot back. “I want you to help me find out.”
Grafton talked for another minute or two about logistics. Finally he said good-bye to Sarah, and she got up and left. Didn’t even glance at me. When the door closed, I was alone with Grafton.
“I take it you and Sarah aren’t getting along very well these days,” he said.
“You noticed, eh?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, you know the course of true love. There are bumps and potholes in the road.”
“She going to shoot you or start amputating parts?”
I tried to smile. “I hope not.”
“I’m going to need some serious help on this job,” he said, looking me straight in the eyes.
“I’m on the shit list after that adventure last year,” I replied. “I’ve been told to stay out of trouble or else.”
Grafton’s eyebrows knitted. “How come you’re still working for this outfit, anyway? A year ago you were talking about taking a banana boat south.”
“You know my tale of woe. They have me by the balls. The statute of limitations still has a couple of years to run.” Grafton knew I was referring to the felony theft charge that was shelved when I joined the agency. The fuzz didn’t catch me, you understand; my partner ratted on me. Same difference, I suppose, but a guy has to keep the record straight.
“In the Navy we didn’t have people quite so firmly in our grasp,” he said with a straight face.
I snorted. “Don’t give me that bullshit. Sounds as if you intend to jam Rodet’s nuts into a vise and crank until he screams. That’s his problem, not mine. Just what, precisely, do you want from me?”
Grafton picked up a pencil and twirled it between his fingers. “For starters, I want you to bug his flat in town and his house in the country. We’ll set up listening posts.”
I admitted those chores were in my area of expertise. “Then I want you to turn traitor. I want you to walk into DGSE headquarters and offer to sell them the Intelink.”
Okay, I am an idiot — I admit it. I accepted another assignment working for Jake Grafton! I could be on my way to fun in the sun in Iraq this very minute. God damn!
Grafton kept talking. “You and your girlfriend, Sarah Houston, are looking to make a fresh start, which would go a lot better if you had a couple million tax-free euros in your jeans. You’ll give them Intelink-S first, as proof of your bona fides. When the money is in your bank account, you’ll give them Intelink-C.” Intelink-S was a network, a government Internet, if you will, which contained information classified secret. Intelink-C was the top secret network whereby the United States and its closest allies, Britain, Australia, and Canada, shared intelligence. “You have got to be kidding!”
“I’m not.”
“In the first place, I don’t have an access code to any level of Intelink. I have never had an access code.”
“I do.”
“They change it every week. Rodet isn’t going to buy a week’s subscription.”
“He is going to buy the fact that Sarah helped design these networks, that she’s foolishly fallen for a swine like you, that at your insistence she installed a trapdoor, and that you will sell him the key.”
I thought about it. “NSA would never let Rodet peek. Ever.”
“That’s true, of course. We don’t even want Monsieur Rodet to know the type of information that is really on Intelink-S, so we’ve created a parallel, fake Intelink-S. It will look good enough to fool the French, we think. That’s what we’re going to give Rodet access to. He’ll never see the real Intelink-S, and we’ll have hooked and boated him long before it’s time to reveal Intelink-C.”
“He’ll never buy it.”
Grafton waved that away. “Corrupt people think everyone’s corrupt.
I felt nauseous. My forehead was covered in perspiration. I swabbed at the sweat and wiped my hand on my trousers. “They’re going to smell a rat. This could be the biggest intelligence debacle ever. What I’m trying to say, Admiral, is that if we live through this, we could go to prison. Like, forever.”
Now he smiled at me.
I tried to reason with him. “The frogs will be all over me like stink on a skunk. And through some tiny bureaucratic oversight, I don’t have diplomatic immunity.” I waved a hand at the door. “They gave all the embassy spots to those security people combing the crowds for terrorists going to the G-8 meeting.” I couldn’t believe I had the bad luck to fall into a mess like this. The head of the DGSE! God almighty! “If Rodet doesn’t buy what we have to sell, what then?”
The admiral turned his hand over. “The Veghel conspirators were going to blow up the New York Stock Exchange. A half dozen Middle Eastern fanatics living on welfare in the Netherlands don’t go charging off to America
