Only that he died in an accident.”
“Don’t you love it?” I said.
“It turns out that the morning the summit began, Rodet had a visitor here in the hospital. The ministry had pulled the guards since Rodet was no longer on the team, but, as I said, they didn’t tell anyone, including the guards.” Grafton gave the French Shrug. “The visitor stayed about fifteen minutes. No one could discover how he arrived or how he departed, except for the fact that Rodet apparently drove a stolen car to the Conciergerie, went up to his office for a few minutes, came down and drove off. The stolen car was found parked at a subway station a couple of stops from Versailles.”
“This visitor. Abu Qasim, you think?”
“Perhaps. It’s a possibility, anyway. The French investigators couldn’t get a description. They fingerprinted the room, but two days later, after the room had been cleaned twice. It was hopeless. No one who saw the visitor had any reason to remember what he looked like.”
“Nondescript,” I muttered.
Jake Grafton leaned back in his chair and exhaled a bushel of air. “Boy, would I like to have been a fly on the wall when those two talked. Maybe the visitor was going on to the chateau with the radio transmitters to set off the bomb. Maybe he was wearing the vest containing a bomb. Maybe Rodet insisted that he go in the other man’s place. We’ll never know.”
“So this Qasim, if he exists, is still out there.”
“Yep.” From an inside pocket Grafton produced a picture. It was actually a computer-drawn picture of a face. “Recognize him?”
The face was of a man in his forties, perhaps fifty, clean shaven, intelligent, with regular features. “Well…”
“Sarah made this from the photo you took of the old man in the park.”
“Abu Qasim,” I said.
“Perhaps,” Grafton said, and pocketed the picture.
I thought about it awhile; about terrorists and traitors and bombs. This really wasn’t a world I wanted to live in. Who the hell would? “I want out of the agency,” I said a bit later. “I’ve had enough.”
“That was our deal. We’ll keep you on the payroll until the docs say you’re well, then … What are your plans?”
“Don’t have any.”
“I’ll be back to see you in a couple of days to see how you’re doing.” The admiral held out his hand, and we shook. “Thanks, Tommy,” he said.
A couple of weeks passed before the French doctors were willing to let me leave the hospital. They took my bandages off and I got my first look at my new, pink hide. My arm healed up and so did the gash in my leg. I felt like a new man. Looked like one, too.
Since the Graftons were in Europe for another six months, the admiral said Sarah and I could use his beach house in Delaware until we got a place of our own. He even gave me a key, which I thought was a nice gesture. Shape I was in, it would have taken me an hour to pick the lock on his door.
So we flew home and landed at Dulles. Someone from the agency met us and drove us to Delaware. Grafton had called ahead, and the guys had my old red Benz coupe parked in his driveway.
The first few days were great; then Sarah got bored and started talking about going back to work. She had to have something to do, she said, and someone was going to have to support us. She lasted through the weekend, but Sunday afternoon I drove her to Maryland and dropped her off at her place. She kissed me and told me she’d see me on Friday night. I drove back to Delaware alone. I’d been alone most of my life, but this time it felt different.
I managed, though. I got out on the beach every morning, watched storms come in, walked for miles and thought about things. It was winter, so the winds were raw and it rained almost every day. Rain or shine, I walked the beach. I worked my jog up to a run and began increasing the distance every day. I worked out at a gym in town. The football wars were entertaining; I didn’t read the newspapers or watch the news on television. Life was very pleasant, especially on the weekends, when Sarah came over to the beach.
Still, the sword was hanging over my neck and I could feel it: I was going to have to figure out what to do with my life. Sarah told me that a time or two, just a reminder. Even so, I was in no hurry. The world kept turning, just as before.
The lease on my apartment in Maryland expired, so I spent three days moving out. Some of my stuff I put in storage, but most of it went to the Salvation Army. I was ready to move on. What the heck — maybe we could live at Sarah’s place.
Willie Varner drove over from Washington one Saturday evening for dinner. I grilled some steaks and Sarah made a huge tossed salad.
“What you gonna do for a living, Tommy?”
“I’m listening for your answer,” Sarah murmured. See, that’s how women work — they apply pressure until you buckle like an empty beer can.
“Watch you work our lock shop and take half the profits,” I told Willie, after a glance at my roommate, who was up to her wrists in lettuce.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out some coins. He put four quarters on the kitchen counter. “There’s your half of what was left this month after we paid my salary.”
I laughed and left the quarters there. He didn’t pick them up, though.
He wanted to talk about Paris and Henri Rodet. “Thought we were goners when you zapped ol’ Henri. I knew something was bad wrong, him being there in the kitchen, after what you and Grafton said, so I went after him with a big carvin’ knife. It was like stabbin’ a wall. He whacked me in the head with a pistol, slowin’ me down somewhat. But I knew he was wearin’ somethin’ under his coat, probably a bomb like those damn suiciders. That’s why I shouted at you when you were gettin’ ready to zap ‘im. Thought we were goin’ to get blown to kingdom come, and sure ‘nuf, damn if we didn’t. That thing popped and about cremated us.”
A little later he said, “Wasn’t much left of ol’ Henri, Grafton said, and what there was was fried. We was real lucky, Tommy. Real lucky that Henri didn’t get his ass up that ladder and pop that thing in the attic where those cylinders were. Might have set them off. Then you and me would be singin’ in the angel choir, and we’d have a lot of company.”
I nodded and turned the steaks. Luck is a fickle lady; she’s here one minute and gone the next.
After Willie left and Sarah and I were alone, I asked her, “I know it’s classified and all that, but what did the code breakers get out of those telephone computers we got from Rodet?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s what Grafton said they’d find.”
“I worked with the wizards. They used random number decryption theory and everything else they had on the stuff and got zilch. There was no code to crack, because there was no message. It was just random letters and numbers.”
I was beginning to see a glimmer. “So they didn’t communicate with the computers,” I said slowly as I thought it through. “They were red herrings. Marisa was the mailman, the go-between.”
“The computers and the codes were there to deflect attention from her,” Sarah explained. “Rodet was trying to protect her.”
“You think he loved her?”
“I think she is Qasim’s daughter, and he loved Qasim.”
Sarah said that like she believed it, but I wasn’t buying it. “Are the French sweating her?”
“She’s disappeared.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Grafton told me Abdullah al-Falih, who might be Qasim, had a daughter and a son. The Mossad assassinated the son a couple of years ago.”
“And the daughter?”
Sarah shrugged. “Marisa is about the right age.”
I still didn’t believe it. Seeing the look on my face, she added, “It’s a possibility, nothing more. Someday you’ll have to ask Abu Qasim.”
