The Traitor: A Tommy Carmellini Novel

by Stephen Coonts

  Perhaps I should have asked—but perhaps not. I reminded myself that my job was to obey orders, not figure them out.

  Before he left for France, Jake Grafton took the time to visit the SCIF in the basement of the Kensington safe house to check the Intelink for the latest update on Europe.

  It was there he learned about the murder of DGSE officer Claude Bruguiere the previous evening. Intercepted police radio voice traffic had been the first reports; then, finally, the policeman examining the crime scene radioed in the information from Bruguiere’s driver’s license. The NSA computer matched the victim to a list of DGSE officers.

  Bruguiere, Grafton knew, had been the man who completed Roget’s stock transaction in Amman, Jordan.

  He was in a somber mood when he turned off the computer.

  Although it’s an ancient European city, Paris has a different feel than most European cities; it has wide boulevards and large squares and scenic vistas. The difference is urban renewal. While the Germans had extensive help with theirs in the early 1940s, the French rebuilt Paris in the 1860s. They turned the job over to an urban engineer, one Baron Haussmann, who gave the world a beautiful city; indeed, some say the loveliest on earth.

  It is also just about the world’s biggest, most expensive tourist destination. The only thing that saves the place, in my opinion, is the French. They are wonderful, impractical people with incomprehensible politics who love art, music, clothes, their city and each other. Boy, do they like each other. Lovers are everywhere, or at least they were that day I arrived at the Gare du Nord, stuffed my bag in a taxi, and went riding off through the streets as if I were a dentist from Scranton armed with four guidebooks. Holding hands and clinging tightly are part of the French social order. All things considered, it’s a wonder there aren’t more French.

  However, I had had it up to here with love. Maybe the Parisian taxi driver had, too; he was a surly rascal who seemed to take personal offense that I was riding in back while he had to sit up front and drive.

  The address Jake Grafton had given me was a building on a small side street just off the Rue Paradis, which by some miracle wasn’t too far from the train station. The building was about six stories high, stuck in the middle of a block, one of a string of them. The street was narrow. Apparently the baron didn’t do this one.

  I got my stuff out of the trunk, paid off the hackie, and spent fifteen seconds looking around. As usual, I kept my eyes moving. I didn’t see anyone paying any attention to me, which I hoped was indeed the case. If the French already had a tail on me, I might as well head back to the States right now.

  Inside the building I dusted off my French and tried it out on the concierge. Terry G. Shannon. My company arranged for an apartment? After listening to my French, she wanted to see my passport. She made a note of the number and returned it.

  The building had no elevator. Yep, I had the top apartment. I took a look at the steep, narrow staircase and left my suitcase for the second load. The concierge didn’t offer to climb up and show me the place—she simply gave me a key. Two keys, actually. One was to a mailbox in a bank of similar ones in the small lobby.

  The flat was right under the roof. The space had probably been the attic; at some time in the geologic past it had been finished out and rented. About six feet in from the door, the ceiling began slanting toward the street, except for the dormer for the one window. The place was large enough for a double bed, a chair, dresser and desk, a closet and a bathroom. No shower in the bathroom, just an ancient tub with four feet. I’m a shower man myself, but in Iraq I bathed from a bucket. I told myself that the tub was very French.

  And the window opened. I pulled back the sashes, leaned forward and looked out. The sounds of Paris assaulted me. I took a deep breath. I fancied I could smell the butter.

  Well, heck. This wasn’t bad.

  I took my time unpacking. When I had my duds stored in the ramshackle dresser and closet, I sat in the chair and played with my cell phone. I turned it on and it seemed to find a cell tower. Back in the bad old days spies had to sneak around looking for chalk marks on walls and upside-down flowerpots; now they just call you. Progress is wonderful.

  I stowed the phone in my pocket, yawned—I had had another two hours’ sleep after my pub visit—and decided to go for a run. Maybe before dinner I could get a nap.

  Paris. Any way you cut it, the place beat the hell out of Baghdad.

  Jake Grafton and Sarah Houston checked into a hotel on a side street just off the Champs-Elysées. Grafton telephoned the embassy from his room, and thirty minutes later a car picked him up in front of the hotel.

  The embassy was situated immediately beside the grandiose Hotel de Crillon, the royal palace of Louis XV, which faced the Place de la Concorde. Jake Grafton remembered some of his college history, so he looked with interest at the Egyptian obelisk in the center of the huge square. Napoleon stole it from Egypt before his North African adventures were terminated by the Royal Navy. The stone pillar had replaced the guillotine that Louis XVI lost his head upon. Twenty thousand people were executed during the most intense period of the Revolution, the Reign of Terror.

  As one commentator noted, the French married mechanization to political death to create industrial decapitation. Oh, people had been murdered in droves before, that was nothing new—whole cities-full of inhabitants hacked and stabbed and slashed, and heretics tortured and burned—but it was piecework, each killing a personal, unique work of mayhem. For the first time in European history whole classes of people were condemned and mechanically slaughtered, not because of their deeds but because of their status. Eventually Stalin and Hitler, the heirs of Robespierre, took the process a step further and bureaucratized industrial murder, thereby raising it to a whole new level. Instead of tens of thousands, millions of people were declared enemies of the state by the dictators and institutionally terminated. And it all started right here in the heart of Paris, in what is now the Place de la Concorde.

  The admiral cooled his heels in a reception room for twenty minutes before he was ushered in to see the U.S. ambassador, who had a huge office with a view of the plaza and the Paris skyline. The person who did the ushering was a woman, a career diplomat. “Mizz Agatha Hempstead,” she said, emphasizing the “Ms.” in case Grafton had forgotten.

  He hadn’t. “A few years back, in Russia, wasn’t it?”

  Her lips compressed into a thin line as she nodded her head half an inch.

  The ambassador, Owen Lancaster, wasn’t a career diplomat. He might as well have been, though. He was one of those establishment pillars who are routinely appointed to key ambassadorships by presidents of both parties. If he had a political affiliation, he never let it show. Owen Lancaster seemed the incarnation of capitalist success, but Jake doubted that he had ever dirtied his hands earning money. He had come by it the tried-and-true traditional way: He inherited it. He was tall and lean and had a head of immaculately barbered gray hair. Today he was impeccably togged out in a tailor-made wool suit and hand-painted silk tie. A red one. On his lapel was a small red flower. Jake thought the suit looked Italian, but how would one know?

  Grafton unconsciously adjusted his new suit and straightened his tie. Last week he and Callie had picked out four new suits at a department store in a Washington mall. To the relief of both, the suits had been on sale for 30 percent off.

  “Admiral Grafton,” Lancaster said with a frown. “The last time our paths crossed was in Russia.” So much for the social pleasantries.

  “I remember, sir.”

  “I was not happy to see your name again,” Lancaster said baldly. “You made a hell of a mess in Russia.”

  “Just doing my job,” Jake said mildly. He checked the shine on his new shoes. They hadn’t been on sale.

  “I confess, I was surprised when CIA brought you in as their European Operations chief. You’re a retired naval officer. Do you have any experience in intelligence?”

  “A little,” Jake replied curtly.
He had no intention of discussing his qualifications for his job, or lack thereof, with someone outside the agency. The ambassador should know better, he thought.

  When it became obvious that Grafton was not going to say more, the ambassador said sharply, “I know your reputation, sir. Russia, Hong Kong, Cuba, New York—oh, yes, I know who you are. You’ve been in the middle of some of the biggest crises of the last ten years. And if I know, don’t you think the French will?”

  “I’d be surprised if they didn’t do their homework,” Jake responded.

  “This G-8 summit in two weeks—the president has made normalization of our relationship with France his number one foreign policy objective. He’s coming to Paris to see to it personally. France is the key to Europe, and we need Europe on our side.”

  “They said much the same to me in Washington,” Jake said mildly. “We’ll try to keep the terrorists and spies out of your way.”

  “This summit had better not be torpedoed by anyone. You understand about torpedoes, don’t you, Admiral?” Lancaster was of an age and station in life that meant he didn’t have to be polite. These days he rarely bothered.

  “I do.”

  “I want a promise, sir. In Russia you charged off to tilt windmills without informing me of your activities. Fortunately it worked out, but that was just shit-house luck.”

  Jake was shocked—he didn’t know that Lancaster had that kind of language in him. Ms. Hempstead didn’t turn a hair. Lancaster steamed on. “I don’t want to be blindsided by any shenanigans this time. I’m not a babe in the woods—I’ve been in the middle of more international crises than you’ve ever read about. Talk to me before you kick over anyone’s applecart.”

  “I’ll do my best, sir.”

  “I need more assurance than that,” Lancaster snapped.

  Jake Grafton had had enough. “That’s the best I can do. Take it up with Washington.”

  On that note the interview ended. Clad in his new shoes, department-store suit and made-in-China tie, the admiral was ushered out of the ambassador’s office.

  When Agatha Hempstead returned from escort duty, Lancaster was standing at the window with his arms folded across his chest, looking out.

  “You knew CIA was going to replace their European chief,” she said. “What is so remarkable about Admiral Grafton?”

  “He isn’t a career man—he’s a shooter. With the G-8 summit just around the corner…” Lancaster sighed. “Washington is obviously worried.” He held his hands out and looked at them. “I feel as if the world I know and love is dying.” He balled up his hands into fists. “Civilization is mortally wounded, and something truly evil is being born to take its place.”

  George Goldberg, the CIA’s Paris station chief, was a large, balding man with a serious paunch who moved slowly and deliberately. He had a square jaw and heavy brows on a face that was usually expressionless. He never smiled or frowned, looked excited or disappointed. On first meeting him most people thought he was stupid. They couldn’t have been more wrong. He had attended college on a football scholarship, playing tackle, and been drafted by a pro team but refused to sign. Instead, he stayed in school to complete his PhD in economics.

  He and Jake Grafton sat in the SCIF in the basement of the American embassy chatting about their careers as they got acquainted. “Perhaps I should have gone to the NFL, just for the heck of it,” Goldberg told the admiral, “and after a couple of years returned to school. There were days in Moscow when I wished I had done it that way.”

  “Ah, the road not traveled…”

  “At the time the London School of Economics looked more interesting than the Cleveland Browns. I’d been to Cleveland, the Mistake on the Lake.” Watching the way Goldberg said that, with his dead-pan face, Jake Grafton was reminded of Buster Keaton.

  “How well do you know the folks at the DGSE?”

  “Very well. We have a liaison officer, of course, but when he goes to the Conciergerie, he talks to some guy in a tiny office. To get any cooperation I have to go over there. I get to see Arnaud any time I want. Occasionally Rodet.”

  “Tell me about Henri Rodet.”

  “He’s a smart, ambitious survivor,” Goldberg replied thoughtfully. “He’s built his career in the Middle East. I would bet he knows the Arabs better than anyone else in Europe—well, better than any other intel pro. Nobody knows more Middle Eastern scumbags than he does. He speaks fluent Arabic and Farsi, and he’s got a GI system that’s as impervious to germs as sewer pipe.”

  “So he can talk the talk and grab the goat.”

  “You got it. He spent twenty-five years listening and connecting the dots.”

  “Arnaud, Rodet’s number two?”

  “Shrewd, smart and unscrupulous. There’s another guy looking out for number one.”

  “So what was your reaction when you heard Rodet was buying stock in the Bank of Palestine?”

  Goldberg shifted his weight as he considered his answer. “My first reaction was that he had figured out another way to make money from other people’s troubles. You see, Rodet’s the son of a couple of schoolteachers. He wound up in the intelligence service and spent a lot of time in the Middle East. Then he married the daughter of a rich French merchant who sold hardware all over the Arab world. She was ten years older than he was. Maybe it was love, maybe it was money, but…when the passion cooled the father-in-law gave him a ton of money and the wife moved out. Then there’s all this smoke rising from the Oil-for-Food debacle. Some folks say some of that money wound up in Rodet’s pocket. I don’t know if it did or not. In any event, when I heard about the bank stock, I thought that story might be true.”

  “And now?”

  “Well, now I’m not so sure. It could be a slick smear.”

  “Tell me about the Veghel conspiracy.”

  “It was just another day, like any other. I was at the Conciergerie talking to Arnaud when a messenger or someone stuck his head into the room and said the director would like to see me. So I got up and trooped off behind the guy, leaving Arnaud sitting there.”

  “Did he know why Rodet wanted to see you?”

  “Didn’t act like he did, but these guys are pros. Who could say?”

  “So what happened?”

  “I went in to see Rodet and he shook hands, put me in a chair. Told me about the Veghel conspiracy, who they were, what they intended to do, when, and so on. What he didn’t tell me was how he learned about all this. So that was the question I asked. Do I call the president right now, wake him up with this hot tip, do I send it to Washington flash immediate, or do I put it on the computer and let the bureaucracy grind it up for the in baskets?

  “And Rodet looked at me innocent as a lamb and said, ‘I cannot tell you that.’ Didn’t feed me a line about secret sources or broken codes or any of that other bullshit. Just, ‘I cannot tell you that.’ Of course I decided it was gospel, and by God, that’s the way it is turning out. Those raghead bastards were going to blow up Wall Street and everyone in it, including themselves.”

  “Got any theories on how the DGSE found out about this group?”

  “I asked Arnaud that question again the next time I saw him, and he just stared at me. Didn’t say a word.” Goldberg shrugged.

  “I read your report. What I want to know is what you think. You’ve been talking to these people for years.”

  “Four years.” George Goldberg scratched his nose and eyed Jake Grafton thoughtfully. “I don’t think the DGSE came by this info. Arnaud always tells me what the organization wants me to know. Rodet is the political guy. On the other hand, this was big. Really big. Maybe Rodet thought he should do this himself for political and PR reasons.”

  “If the DGSE didn’t come up with this information, how did Rodet get it?”

  Goldberg raised his hands. “Rodet has always been well informed about Middle Eastern terrorists—the radical imams, the financiers, bankers, sympathizers, possible targets, methods…We always thought he had people here and ther
e who heard things and passed them along, the classic way to gather intelligence. French business-people roam the Arab world at will and they talk to the DGSE. On the other hand, the Veghel thing wasn’t something someone overheard down at the mosque. One suspects someone inside the conspiracy or inside Al Queda passed the information to Rodet. In any event, he isn’t saying anything to anyone about his sources.”

  “You’re saying that Henri Rodet may have a secret source inside Al Queda, one known only to him?”

  “That’s a possibility. The most probable possibility, in my opinion. The Veghel stuff was hot—really hot.” Goldberg shrugged. “You know as much as I do.”

  “If you could construct that hypothesis, other people can, too.”

  “They could,” Goldberg agreed.

  “Washington has a name. They say the spy is a guy named Abu Qasim.”

  Goldberg looked skeptical. “Where did they get that tidbit?”

  The admiral shrugged. “I wasn’t told the source.”

  “If my memory serves me correctly, Qasim is one of the aliases of a top Al Queda guy, who also goes by the name of Abdullah al-Falih.” Goldberg made a face. “Getting a name from some illiterate holy warrior doesn’t make it so.”

  “You think that’s where they got it?”

  “Probably. The Egyptians, the Pakistanis and even the Saudis torture those guys, who will say anything to stop the pain. That kind of information is worse than worthless, and the fools in Washington take it for gospel. ‘Let’s raise the security level to yellow this weekend—a guy in a Cairo prison said his pals are going to blow up Washington.’”

  Grafton sat lost in thought. Finally he sighed and spoke, on a different subject. “This DGSE agent who was killed last night, Claude Bruguiere—any whispers on who might have killed him?”