The Traitor tc-2

by Stephen Coonts

Near the top of the ladder was a catwalk. I climbed up on it. The lightbulb was in a ceramic fixture screwed to a rafter. Scanning the flash around, I could see that the rounded ceiling of the Hall of Mirrors was suspended from the rafters and joists and braces. The joint work looked superb to me. I could see by the different shades of the wood, and the texture, that the beams were of various ages. Across the space was the outside wall of the chateau; the beams and boards there butted into the masonry.

  “Bet some of these boards are as old as the building,” Grafton muttered as he joined me on the catwalk.

  I looked down the ladder. Willie was going back down to the passageway below.

  “Hey,” I called.

  “You don’t need me up there. I’m too old for this shit, anyway.”

  Grafton took the flash and went down the catwalk, looking at everything. I followed along. We went all the way to the end of the catwalk and worked back to the other end. It was a nice distance, at least a hundred feet, but the room below was huge.

  All we saw was beams and dust and spider webs and sawdust from the construction last winter and spring. Finally Grafton sat down on the catwalk. I did, too. We could hear chairs being set up in the hall below, plus some other banging and clanging.

  “Maybe we figured this wrong,” Grafton said disgustedly.

  “Maybe it won’t be a bomb. Maybe a submachine gun, a pistol, something for the evening news.”

  “Who’s going to pull the trigger?”

  “A cop? A paramilitary guy? A fake cameraman? I don’t know.” Grafton smacked his fist on his thigh.

  “If that was the plan, Rodet wouldn’t have needed a scapegoat,” I told him. “Maybe we should go over to the hospital and sweat the guy, make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

  “I know you didn’t really mean that, but don’t say those things. By three o’clock in the morning I’ll be ready to do it.” Grafton idly played the beam of his flashlight back and forth over the timbers.

  “Maybe Abu Qasim himself. Whaddaya think?”

  Grafton turned off the flash and sat silently in the gloom. “Maybe, but I doubt it. Anyone could push a button.” He flipped on the light, then flipped it off. “If it was going to be Qasim, Rodet could have told us a tale, who Qasim was, where he was, knowing that would send us off on a wild goose chase and clear the way for Qasim here. But he didn’t.”

  “He didn’t because you would have figured he was lying, and since he said it wasn’t so, it was.”

  Grafton wasn’t going to waste time chasing his tail. “Only place we haven’t looked is over there,” he said. The beam shot out across the hump of the ceiling in the hall below, pointed at the far wall. “On the other side of the apex there’s an area that can’t be seen from the catwalk.”

  I hoisted myself erect and flexed the leg with the stitches in it. “I can get over there.”

  “You fall, you’ll go through that ceiling and land down below. Make a splash, maybe even the evening news.”

  “Get famous, sign a book contract for my autobiography, get rich and retire.” I put Grafton’s flashlight in my trouser pocket, stripped to my undershirt, climbed up on the railing, then began working my way across the beams. I got some splinters in my hand and did a little quiet cussing. It was just so dark out there.

  I stopped just ten feet from the other side, eased the flashlight out without dropping it, turned it on and began looking. The beam wouldn’t reach either end of the hall, so I started right below me, in the trough where the roof met the exterior masonry.

  And by God, there it was. A small black cylinder, perhaps three feet long. It was strapped to a timber, I could see that. There was a valve on one end, and a hose leading to the ceiling of the room below. A wire led from the valve … to a black box of some type. A radio receiver!

  I tried to keep the excitement out of my voice. “I think I’ve found something. Crawl over here and look.”

  “Gimme some light here,” Grafton said as he inched himself in my direction.

  When he arrived, I ran the light over the cylinder and the box. “What do you think is in that cylinder?”

  Grafton didn’t answer immediately. He took his time, looking everything over with the flashlight. Finally he said, “High-pressure gas, highly flammable. Explosive. A push of a button and the radio control unit opens the valve, venting gas into the top of the room below. Somewhere around here there’s an igniter. After the cylinder empties — and it would only take five or six seconds, I imagine — a push of another button ignites the mixture.”

  “A radio-controlled bomb.”

  “Yep. The concussion will probably kill everyone in the room. If it doesn’t, the resulting fire will.” He scanned the flashlight right and left. Finally the light stopped moving. “There’s another one.”

  There were five cylinders and four igniters, which were also attached to radio-control units.

  When we finally got back to the catwalk, I could see the sheen of perspiration that covered Grafton’s face. He pulled a shirttail out, unbuttoned the shirt, and used the tail to wipe his face and hands.

  “What kind of gas, you think?”

  “Good Lord, I’m not a chemist. Hydrogen with an enhancer would be my guess.”

  “This stuff wasn’t installed last week.”

  “It was installed during the renovation, probably just before they closed up this area.”

  “The location for the G-8 summit wasn’t announced until a few weeks ago,” I mused.

  Grafton shook his head vigorously. “Just before we came to Europe. But Rodet knew long before that. He may even have recommended this site. Probably promised ironclad security.”

  “Think the batteries in the radio control units are still good?”

  “I expect they are, but just in case, look here.” He bent down and used the flash to illuminate the underside of the beam that he had just crawled out on.

  I looked and didn’t see anything. Then I did. There was a black cord there, taped under the beam. The end was within easy reach.

  “That cord is looped around the cylinder valve. If the radio won’t open the valve, it can be opened manually.” He went along searching under beams. Sure enough, each cylinder had a cord, and each igniter. The two different kinds were even color-coded.

  “Moving the summit to another location at this late date is out of the question,” Grafton said as he inspected the cords with his flash. “Questions will be asked that the French government won’t want to answer. The powers that be wouldn’t consider it.”

  I didn’t argue.

  “We’ll take the actuating wires off the gas valves on these cylinders,” he continued. “The easiest thing is probably to just cut the wire. Our bomber can push his button until his thumb wears out and there won’t be any gas to ignite. And, of course, we can cut the cords.”

  I thought that would work. “We need to get sweep gear up here, ensure we’ve found all the radio control units.”

  “You stay here. Don’t let anyone touch this stuff. I’ll be back after a while.”

  He left me the flashlight and disappeared down the ladder. I turned the light off to save the battery and found a place to sit.

  That turned out to be the longest night of my life. Grafton came back after a couple of hours with Inspector Papin and a few other Frenchies. One of them was a bomb squad guy, and he disconnected the radio-controlled actuators from the cylinder valves. All I did was hold a flashlight and keep it pointed at his work. He didn’t need it since he was wearing a miner’s light strapped to his forehead.

  While he worked the other technician crawled back and forth over the beams working with the sweep wand, which had an extender that lengthened it to over twelve feet. He had a heck of a time maneuvering it around the framing in there, but he verified that there were only four igniters. The bomb squad man disabled them and removed one to take back to the lab.

  Finally the frogs left, and it was just me and Grafton. We sat on the catwalk with our legs
dangling, listening to the workmen in the Hall of Mirrors below us. You could hear the sound of voices, although words were indistinguishable, and bangs and thumps from people dropping this or that or scooting things around.

  “If you’re willing, I’d like for you to spend the night here,” Grafton said as he watched my eyes. “Don’t want to take a chance that anyone might come up here and reconnect this stuff. Or crawl out on those beams and open the valves manually.”

  “Sure.”

  “We’ll get you a bucket to pee in and food and water. You can sleep in the hallway.”

  “I need to visit the facilities awhile before you leave.”

  He nodded. “Better go now,” he said.

  So I went down the ladder and on down to the kitchen in the basement and used the small restroom there. After slurping some water, I headed back to where Grafton waited. He was standing in the hallway at the bottom of the ladder.

  “You can sleep right here, if you want. We’ll bring a pillow and blanket.”

  “See you later,” I said.

  He stuck out his hand to shake and smiled at me.

  When he was gone, I was still glowing. It wore off quickly, though. I strolled the hallway, sat a while, and strolled some more. I sang silently to myself, whistled, thought about After, when this was over. I was bored silly.

  About seven that evening Willie showed up with a bucket, a box of really good grub, water, wine, a flashlight, a blanket, and a pillow. “So you guys found a bomb, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  He wanted to know all about it. When I finished talking, he whistled.

  “Did you bring a book or magazine or newspaper?”

  From the depths of his bag he whipped out a paperback. A romance. “This was all I could find in English.”

  At that point I had no shame. I took it.

  “You don’t look like yourself, Tommy,” he said, scrutinizing my face. “You get some sleep.”

  “Okay.”

  “Take care of yourself, man.”

  “I got the zapper.”

  He nodded, looked at me again, then was gone.

  After I ate I dove into the book. The heroine was a sweet young thing, innocent, who fell in love with a jerk who was trying to find himself. A rich jerk, which is the very best kind. Finally I gave up and tried to sleep.

  Several times during that long night, someone — I don’t know who — rattled the doors to the hallway, checking the locks. Each time I came wide awake and lay there with the ray gun pointed at the door. But the doors didn’t open.

  I was never so glad to see anyone in my life as I was Jake Grafton on Wednesday morning. I heard someone fussing with the lock on the door, so I popped around the corner into the hallway that led to the right wing of the building while I turned on the battery of my ray gun. When I heard footsteps, I eased an eye around, “Tommy?”

  “Here.” I stepped out and hit the ray gun’s power switch.

  “Breakfast.”

  “I need a potty break.”

  “Okay.”

  I took the bucket with me down to the kitchen and dumped it in the commode. When I got back upstairs, Grafton was pacing the hallway.

  “Long night?” he asked as he handed me several newspapers. One was in English, even.

  “You have no idea.”

  “We spent the night sweeping this building. My pension against a doughnut there aren’t any more radio-controlled devices.”

  “We’re going to be in big trouble if you’re wrong.”

  “Oh, no,” Jake Grafton said. “If I’m wrong, our troubles are over. We’re going to be dead.”

  It was a long, noisy morning in the hallway. I felt like a monk in his cell, cut off from the world, yet it was just beyond the walls, thumping and bumping. I read all three newspapers, flipped listlessly through the pages of the romance. Nibbled some on the breakfast items that I hadn’t eaten. Peed in the bucket. Walked the hallway, back and forth, back and forth. My headache was back — the concussion, I figured — and I was stiff and sore from being pounded on by gorillas and sleeping on the floor.

  I knew Abu Qasim was the guy coming to press the button and send the G-8 leaders and their entourages to wherever it is that good suicidal terrorists don’t go, someplace without virgins. Then I convinced myself that it wasn’t him, that it would be someone else, anybody. A team maybe, anxious to share in the glory.

  There was no guarantee that we had found all the bombs. For all I knew, I had slept on one. Underestimating the terrorists was an error that would prove fatal for a lot of people, me included.

  Hijack a plane and crash it into the chateau? It was certainly within the realm of possibility. As I walked, the scenes of the World Trade Center collapsing ran through my mind, over and over.

  Well, we had Jake Grafton on our side. Maybe that leveled the playing field.

  Fire and blood.

  Damn, boy, you gotta get away from this.

  I felt clammy and sweaty and started swallowing repeatedly. I should have known! Seconds later I ran for the bucket and heaved my breakfast. I felt a little better afterward, but not much.

  I was about ready for the straitjacket and funny farm when Jake Grafton came up from the kitchen at 10:03 a.m. I knew because I’d been checking my watch twice a minute since he left my breakfast.

  “Here’s a key to the door Willie picked yesterday,” he said, holding it out. “Want a break?”

  I snatched the key, grabbed the bucket and started hiking for the stairs.

  “Come back in an hour or so.”

  “You bet.” I took the stairs down two at a time, dropped a bonjour on the five or six plainclothes security folks sitting around the kitchen table, and hopped into the restroom. When I was done there I went through the kitchen to the great outdoors.

  I found myself on the back side of the chateau. I needed a walk, so I circled the building. That takes a while, but that’s how long I had. I was stunned when I rounded the north wing and saw the courtyard, which looked like the parking lot at the Super Bowl. There must have been two dozen media trucks there with satellite dishes on the tops; miles of cable ran everywhere in a hopeless tangle; here and there stood a generator truck with its diesel engine snoring loudly; and there were even a couple of private buses.

  Three reporters gripping microphones stood with their backs to the chateau in front of cameramen. A couple appeared to be on the air, chattering into their mikes.

  As I watched, a helicopter descended onto the paved area behind the main gate and a small knot of people got out. They walked past the statue of Louis XIV toward the chateau and the waiting television cameras. It looked like a Hollywood premiere — all they needed was a red carpet and a hot dolly or two draped for action.

  Trailing along at a respectful distance, I had to run a gauntlet of security types, some in uniform wearing submachine guns, some in plainclothes with bulging armpits. Every one of them scrutinized my face and the pass dangling from the chain around my neck.

  Inside the building was bedlam: television lights, cables strung willy-nilly to trip the unwary, cameras, and the technicians and on-air people to make the magic; needless to say, all these people were talking loudly to each other. Several interviews were in progress in front of large blue drapes, which allowed the producers at home to put in any background they wished any time they wished. I recognized none of the interviewers or interviewees, which is natural since I’ve led a sheltered life of quiet contemplation.

  In one of the rooms, press secretaries were briefing the working press on agreements and statements that the ministers had issued after yesterday’s meetings. More uniformed paras, police and plainclothes security guys.

  Pink Maillard was huddled with a couple of women carrying Secret Service purses. The women were hardbodies who looked as if they would enjoy shooting me or breaking my neck just for practice. I gave Pink the Hi sign and he jerked his head at me in acknowledgment.

  Of course I looked around for Arabs an
d North Africans and didn’t see a one.

  Then I did, a delegation in white robes and beards. They appeared to be Saudis, but who knows.

  The newspeople were a polyglot lot: their stories and broadcasts were going all over the globe. I leaned against a wall for a while and watched them interview government stooges and ministers and each other. They never tired of it.

  As I watched, another knot of people came in, Japanese security types surrounding their leader. Just as I was glancing at my watch, noting that my hour was almost over, the president of Russia arrived. These heads of state were shuffled off to await their summit in the north wing, where they could visit with their own ministers or each other free from press scrutiny.

  I stared at the people, scrutinizing them one by one. Which one was the guy with the radio transmitter? Which one had a gun?

  That camera — that could be a gun! I walked over, looking at the camera. The guy had a ponytail and wore jeans.

  I must have had a strange look on my face, because he said, “Who the hell are you?” in a Texas accent.

  I realized I was making a fool of myself and turned away.

  Qasim. It would be him. But which one was he?

  The key that Grafton had given me opened the door behind the curtain that we had gone through yesterday. No siren went off and no one started shooting. I pulled it shut behind me until it latched, then rattled it.

  Jake Grafton was sitting on the catwalk at the top of the ladder. I climbed up to join him. My head was thumping like a toothache and I was perspiring freely, so I held on to the rungs for dear life as I climbed.

  “We’ve done everything that can be done,” Grafton said when I was seated beside him, clinging to the rail with a death grip. “The French have searched this building from end to end, including both north and south wings. They’ve swept it for electronic devices of any sort and swept it with magnetic detectors looking for suspicious metal in the walls, and they’ve got people stationed everywhere. Antiaircraft missile launchers are on the grounds around the building, concrete barriers have been erected at every entrance to force vehicles to slow to a creep to get through, and tanks are stationed where they can take any vehicle out at can’t-miss range. Oh, and troops are out in town patrolling to minimize the chance that someone could shoot a shoulder-launched missile at the chateau.”