The easiest part was finding the address of Le Chasseur. Even the local milkman, delivering early on the south side of Gedre, had known of the near-legendary mountain guide Monsieur Jacques Hooks.
In short order, Andy Campese and his colleague, a twenty-eight-year-old French-born American, Guy Roland, hit the village of Heas, entered the village store and bakery at 7:30 A.M., bought takeout coffee, a fresh warm baguette, and a few slices of ham.
Almost as an afterthought, Andy reached the door and called back, “Monsieur Hooks…straight on?”
“Four houses up the street on the left. Number eight.”
Andy Campese considered he had done a very cool night’s work. And it was cool — about 34 degrees Fahrenheit. They walked up to the house, which had lights on, but then decided to go back to the car, have breakfast and keep a firm watch on number eight until 8:30.
And at that point he and Roland opened the gate and walked up the pathway to the white stone house. They’d been quick and thorough, ever since Yves Zilber had put them on the right track.
But they had been nothing like as quick as the men who worked for Gaston Savary, the men who had arrived by helicopter and evacuated Giselle Gamoudi, and her sons, Andre and Jean-Pierre, three hours previously.
When the doorbell was answered, Andy Campese and Guy Roland faced a Frenchman who was most definitely not Colonel Gamoudi. He was about thirty years old and he wore a black leather jacket over a dark blue polo-neck sweater. His hair was cut in a short military style and he looked like a combat soldier from the First Marine Parachute Infantry Regiment, which indeed he had been until six months previously.
“No,” he said in English, almost as if he knew their native language, “Monsieur Hooks is away on business.”
“And Mrs. Hooks?”
“She and the boys are visiting her mother.”
“Can you tell us where?”
“Somewhere near Pau, I think. But I have no way of contacting her.”
“And you? Can we know who you are?”
“Just a friend.”
“Any idea when they might return?”
“Sorry.”
“Do you work with him up here in the mountains?”
“Not really. He’s just a friend.”
“Just one thing more…does Monsieur Hooks own this house?”
“I believe so. But I could not be certain.”
“Okay, sorry to have disturbed you.”
“Good-bye.”
Andy Campese was a very experienced CIA operator. And he knew for absolute certain when he had encountered one of his own kind. The French Secret Service were parked in Jacques Gamoudi’s house, there was no doubt of that. And no doubt in Campese’s mind that wherever the Colonel was, it was very, very secret indeed.
He made one more stop at the village shop and inquired whether Madame Hooks had been in residence the previous day. He was told, “She was here yesterday afternoon. I saw her meet the boys off the school bus. But I noticed they did not catch the bus this morning.”
“And Jacques?” he asked.
“Oh, we have not seen him for several months. He’s supposed to be on some kind of mountain expedition…but who knows? Maybe he doesn’t come back.”
Andy called Langley on his cell phone, and at 3:45 A.M. in Washington, he dictated a short report, detailing the fact that he was 100 percent certain Colonel Gamoudi’s residence was now under the strict control of France’s DGSE. He said he believed the family had been moved out in the middle of the night, probably in response to his own call to Yves Zilber.
“And they must have moved damned fast,” he said. “We drove straight up here from Toulouse, and they were long gone. Jacques Gamoudi himself has not been seen in the village for months. For the record, he lives at number eight Rue St. Martin, Heas, near Gedre, Pyrenees. Postcode 65113.
“The phone is listed in the book under Hooks—05-62-92-50-66. I didn’t try it because it’s probably tapped, and there didn’t seem to be much point. I don’t even know if it’s connected. Giselle Hooks and the children were definitely here yesterday afternoon.”
While Andy and Guy Roland set off briskly down the mountains back to Toulouse, the French agent in number 8 was moving with equal speed. He hit the buttons from the house to the DGSE HQ on the outskirts of Paris and reported directly to Monsieur Gaston Savary.
“Sir,” he said. “They were here…at o-eight-thirty this morning. Two CIA agents inquiring about Colonel Gamoudi and his family. They were polite, not particularly persistent. If I had to guess, I’d say they were just trying to establish his residence here. They demanded no details, except who I was.”
“Which of course you did not tell them?”
“Of course not, sir.”
Gaston Savary stood up and walked around his office. There was, he knew, only one solution to a burgeoning problem. He tossed it around in his mind for a half hour and the facts never varied…and neither did the answer.
If the Americans know that Colonel Gamoudi was the assault commander in Riyadh, they probably also know a few other pointers to our involvement…that Hamas thug from Damascus is not a problem — he’s probably gone home already, with his troops, and will never be found, not in Syria.
The submarines are beyond detection, and anyway the French Navy does not answer to the Pentagon. I expect the U.S. government is aware of our activities in the oil market, but that’s mere coincidence.
It’s Gamoudi who’s our problem. He’s French. They have his address. And he’s plainly been identified, somehow, as the leader of the Saudi revolutionary forces.
If they catch him, he may very well be forced to admit everything.
Gaston Savary glanced at his watch. It was just before 9 A.M. He picked up the telephone, direct line to the Foreign Office on the Quai d’Orsay, and he spoke very briefly to Monsieur Pierre St. Martin, saying, briskly that he was coming to see him on a matter of grave urgency.
Savary was so locked into his own thoughts he ordered a driver to take him. This was most unusual. The Secret Service Chief always drove himself, but this time he sat in the backseat churning over in his mind the very few options he had.
When he finally walked into Monsieur St. Martin’s office, his mind was made up. He accepted a cup of coffee, served by the butler, and waited for the man to leave. He then faced the French Foreign Minister and said icily, “Pierre, I am afraid we must eliminate Jacques Gamoudi.”
CHAPTER TEN
THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 0500
NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY
Lt. Commander Ramshawe was on the encrypted line to Charlie Brooks in Riyadh. It was the final check required before Admiral Morris reported to the President that the NSA was 100 percent certain the Saudi Arabian mutiny had been led by a former French Special Forces officer from the Pyrenees, thus implicating France, right up to its pantalons.
And once more the wily U.S. envoy had brought home the bacon. He had spent the night in the basement of the Riyadh embassy combing through the yards of film shot by the security cameras mounted on the high walls of the embassy. The ones at the gate were too narrow in focus and did not cover the entire width of the road. But the wide-angle rotating camera, set just below the roof, covered the whole scene. Brooks had in his hand a blowup print of the convoy coming toward, then moving away. And clearly pictured was the bearded figure of Col. Jacques Gamoudi, machine gun ready, standing up in the for’ard hatch, the lead officer in the lead tank.
The embassy camera had even shot pictures of the Colonel in an unmistakable gesture of urgency, beckoning to the vehicles in the rear. Above him could be seen a lone helicopter, the one that circled before the Chinooks, the one bearing General Rashood. Unhappily for the United States, the camera could not see inside that copter.
Charlie Brooks told Ramshawe the photographs were on their way via the National Surveillance Office, and there was no question in his mind: the assault commander was the same man who had liberated the U.S. embassy in Brazzaville
— Le Chasseur.
“Hey, Charlie,” said Ramshawe, “I was just going to call you anyway. We got a name for your guy. Does Maj. Jacques Gamoudi mean anything to you?”
“Gamoudi,” said Brooks. “Give me a minute…” He tried to remember those final hours in Brazzaville, the final days when the city was almost destroyed. The scene of chaos and terror was still real to him. He could still hear in his mind the gunshots, and if he thought hard, he could still smell the burning rubber of the upturned cars in the street. He had seen the severed heads on the antennae, watched the fury of the mob from behind the embassy walls.
He tried to recall the first time he ever saw Le Chasseur, the morning the French Special Forces came bursting through the embassy gates. There was gunfire outside, but the lunatic bloodlust of the revolutionaries was no match for the steady, trained fire of the French troops who drove them off.
But then he remembered: one of the French combat soldiers, the one driving the evacuation truck, had been hit as he climbed down from the cab. Brooks could see it in his mind — the man lurching in through the gates, blood pouring from a wound in his leg. Somehow, after eleven years, he had cast that image from his subconscious. But now he remembered the French trooper going down, falling, and then getting up again. He’d been standing two yards from him. And most of all he remembered the one single bellowing cry the man gave: “JACQUES!” He mentioned this to Ramshawe.
“You got him,” said Brooks. “Le Chasseur’s name was Jacques. You can take that to the bank. And the pictures will show you he was the assault commander in the force that stormed the Saudi royal palace.”
“And now his Pyrenean home is under the special protection of the French Secret Service,” muttered Ramshawe. And then he thanked Charlie Brooks for all he had done. Lt. Commander Ramshawe had quite sufficient data to send Admiral Morris directly to the President. After, of course, a quick check with the Big Man.
He walked back along the corridor to the office of the Director, where he knew Admiral Morris had been for most of the night. He tapped lightly and walked in, carrying his dossier of information.
“Hi, Jimmy,” said George Morris. “Have we nailed it down?”
“Definitely, sir. Just spoke to Charlie Brooks in Riyadh, and he confirms he heard Colonel Gamoudi called Jacques, very loudly by one of his troops injured in the fighting. Better yet, he’s been through the film on the embassy surveillance cameras on the outside walls. A few of the frames show the convoy and clear photographs of Gamoudi leading the operation. He’s the forward commander in the lead tank. It’s him all right.
“Back in the Pyrenees, the CIA guys ran him to ground. Found his house. But the French Secret Service were already in there. No sign of Jacques, of course, but there wouldn’t be, would there? He’s in Riyadh helping King Nasir. The CIA agent reckoned it was a race between him and the French Secret Service to get to Madame Gamoudi.
“The French won, and by the time our guys reached Jacques Gamoudi’s village, at o-eight-hundred this morning, the Gamoudi family had been evacuated in the night. Now, I ask you, would the French have gone to all this trouble if Gamoudi had been an innocent mountain guide? Of course they bloody wouldn’t.”
“And this was definitely Gamoudi’s house?”
“Dead right it was, sir. The CIA guys checked in the village, and the French agent in the house said it was probably owned by Gamoudi, but he did not know for sure. He was probably telling the truth.”
“That’ll do for us,” said Admiral George Morris. “Now all we gotta do is find Colonel Gamoudi, and somehow get him right back here to the U.S.A. That way we’ll hang the French Government out to dry.”
“You want me to run this past the Big Man?”
“Yes, I think that would be a good idea. Meanwhile, I’m going in to talk to the President.”
Ramshawe drove his black Jaguar up to the door of the house in Chevy Chase at 0900. Two Secret Service agents escorted him through the front door to see Admiral Morgan, who was sitting by the fire in his study, growling at the Washington Post and the New York Times, in that order.
The Post was banging on about A FAILURE OF U.S. DIPLOMACY IN SAUDI ARABIA, and the Times was carping about U.S. FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND THE ISLAMIC MIND, both of which, according to Morgan, showed the usual sad, naive, total lack of comprehension he associated with both publications.
“Liberal assholes,” he said. “Fucking dimwits could learn more from two hours with young Ramshawe than they’ll ever know.” Then he looked up and saw his visitor. “Hi, Jimmy,” he said. “Just thinking about you. What’s hot?”
“Plenty. We just ran the ol’ Chasser to ground.”
“Chass-eur, Jimmy. Chass-eur,” replied Morgan, still sounding precisely like Jackie Gleason doing his Maurice Chevalier. But he grinned. He refrained from hurling the newspapers into the fire, which he felt like doing, and set them down on a small coffee table next to him. Then he yelled “COFFEE!” at the top of his lungs — in a bold attempt to attract the attention of the sainted Kathy, in the kitchen — and chuckled at his own appallingness. Then he settled back and said, “Right, Lt. Commander, lay it on me.”
“Well, sir, the CIA got after him in Brazzaville…”
“BRAZZAVILLE…that’s some goddamned dung heap in the middle of the Congo River. How the hell did he get down there? I thought he was in Riyadh.”
“He is, sir,” said Ramshawe, chuckling.
“And will you, for Christ’s sake, stop calling me sir? I’m retired. I’ve been a friend of your father’s for years. Call me Arnie, like everyone else.”
“Yessir,” said Ramshawe, as they each knew he would, both of them being absolute suckers for the easy punch line. “Right, Arnie. The CIA went to work on him in Brazzaville because that’s where we know he served for several months a decade ago. Remember we only had Le Chasseur, nothing else.”
Morgan nodded. “No name, right?”
“No name. But we put the local man on it, and he came up with one almost immediately: Colonel Jacques Gamoudi, a Moroccan, always known as Le Chasseur.”
“Nice accent,” said Morgan.
“Thank you,” replied Ramshawe. “Then the CIA gave the entire French staff the task of actually tracing him. And they located his family home, wife, children — the lot — in a tiny village up in the Pyrenees where he works as a mountain guide. And guess what?”
“The French Secret Service were in that house when they got there.”
“How d’you know that?”
“Put yourself in their place: They’ve handpicked this superb Special Forces officer to mastermind their friend Nasir’s takeover of the country. He’s been out there training his troops for several months. He’s probably served in the French Secret Service himself. Everyone knows him. Then, suddenly, up pops a U.S. agent, from the CIA, in the middle of France, wanting to know who and where he is. Plainly the French will deny all knowledge of him and his whereabouts. But they know Madame Chasseur is up in the Pyrenees with her children. And they know the CIA is hot on the trail of this Frenchman who is smashing up the world’s economy. What would you do, young Ramshawe?”
“I’d get up the bloody mountains real quick and get Jacques Gamoudi’s family out of there.”
“Precisely, Ramshawe. And then what would you do?”
“Dunno.”
“In my judgment, you would have little choice. You’d have to assassinate Jacques Gamoudi, and probably his wife as well. Because those two alone could tell the whole world what you had done.”
“But I imagine Gamoudi was very highly paid by the French government to do no such bloody thing?”
“Yes, I suppose so, Jimmy. And I expect the government’s secrets would be safe with him. But what if we got a hold of him?
What if we threatened him with crimes against humanity or something. What if we got him to tell us what happened?”
“Well, in that case the Frogs might want him dead.”
“Exactly. And if they so
mehow assassinated him, they’d have to assassinate his wife, too. Because wives who know their husbands have been murdered are likely to have a lot to say.”
“Christ, Arnie. You’re saying the French might right now be in pursuit of the Colonel?”
“I should think very definitely. If we want him, you’d better tell George to look sharp about it.”
Just then the radiant Kathy came in with coffee. She greeted Ramshawe warmly and asked Morgan if he’d like her to buy him a bullhorn, just in case she was ever out of range.
The Admiral stood up and put his arm around her, saying to Ramshawe, “I can’t imagine how she puts up with me, can you?”
The Lt. Commander decided this was not a question he need answer, but quipped anyway, “I’m afraid that’s the lifelong problem the lower deck has when they’re dealing with an Admiral.”
“You’ll find a lifelong problem dealing with an Admiral’s wife if you’re not careful.” Kathy laughed as she swept off the quarter deck and went back to the kitchen. “By the way, are you staying for lunch?” she called back.
“’Fraid not, Kathy. I’ve got to get back, and it’ll take me an hour in the traffic.”
The Admiral sat back in his big chair by the fire. For a few moments he said nothing, apparently lost in thought. But then he did speak. “You know, Jimmy, this is a terrible thing France has done. I guess this Nasir character has told them they’ll have the inside track on Saudi oil once it’s up and running, maybe even an exclusive agency. And they’ve always bought a lot of military hardware from the French.
“But you think about it: Can you imagine the United States doing something like that? Or Great Britain? Or the Aussies? For pure personal gain, to let the rest of the world go to hell for two years? Wiping the world’s most plentiful and best-priced oil right off the map? Bankrupting little nations? Damn near closing down Japan? Hurting just about everyone? And not caring? Jesus Christ. That takes a damn special nation.”
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