by Mike Bond
I returned to my question: “So you let Yasmina be killed, with her own explosives.”
He spread his hands a few inches: “The official statement from this office will be that her death was of minor consequence. And we will determine there is no link between her and any terrorist group ... And no one to blame. That she was alone, a deranged woman ... This has nothing,” he smiled, “to do with Islam.”
He was sarcastically quoting the oft-repeated political mantra that the slaughter of hundreds of French citizens by Koran-chanting terrorists had nothing to do with Islam.
Even the present administration hadn’t changed this tune. If we’re nice to them, they kept saying, hopefully they’ll be nice back ...
“They set up Yasmina to die,” I said. “Didn’t they?”
Thierry sat back. “Who?”
“Someone higher up than you.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
I was so angry I couldn’t stop shaking. “That way there was no trail, no way to investigate links between her and the government’s Islamic friends.”
“You’re overstepping here, Pono.”
I kept seeing Yasmina in her silly Micky Mouse T-shirt and explosives vest, how close she’d been to giving in. To surviving. Had we not surrounded her. “That’s the only way to win.”
“She didn’t have the only trigger on the bomb vest ...”
“Who?”
“We think someone else in the building had the trigger. They told her she had it, but it was a dummy. The real trigger was downstairs, next door – we’re working on it, but with everything blown to bits it’s hard to tell.”
“They didn’t want her to spill,” Nisa said. “Was it Mustafa?”
Thierry sighed with fatigue, nodded. “Or somebody higher up.”
I took a slow breath. “And you’re letting it happen?”
“According to the government Mustafa doesn’t exist. People’s memories are short, we don’t need to bring him back, don’t need another homicidal Muslim taking up the front pages. Our rulers, that’s how they think.”
“So again, it was RAID who did the backup on Mustafa at Les Quatre Vents?” The elite unit of the national police – as opposed to GIGN, the anti-terror unit of the national gendarmerie – not that I gave a damn who was who. “It was them who blew our cover, spooked Mustafa?”
“We’re not sure Mustafa was even going there that night. Maybe he was in Fontainebleau, and it was somebody else?”
I walked out. There was nothing else to do. It was all so depressing, this tired old notion of politics more important than human life. I had seen this game played too many times in the military, where it had cost my friends’ lives.
The rain had worsened. I crossed Boulevard Mortier and down the tacky back streets of the 20th Arrondissement. The halal butchers and hooded women with downcast fearful eyes, their thick tent-like garments falling all the way to their feet, the cheap grocery stores of jingling music, the streaks of urine down old stone walls, the smell of fried meat and roach spray, the sharp-eyed men with long knives in their pockets watching from doorways, the old cars hunched by the curb like beaten dogs, it was all so alien, unlike France.
Never in my life, even in Afghanistan or in the horror of Mosul, have I felt so close to the truth. To what really goes on beneath the masks of life. That happiness is a temporary illusion and only pain and sorrow real. That we stand on air, on nothing. We think we’re alive but it’s illusion too, we think we’re important but that’s a farce. And death comes when it wants.
We’ve always known this, hated it, feared it, tried not to think about it. But like a friendly serpent it slithers back, poisons and enwraps us. While our hunger for happiness lures us along the tattered path of life like the mechanical bunny that dogs chase around a track.
But I’ve also learned in times of great challenge to turn the horror aside, rise above failure, the impossibility of victory. To laugh at fate, disown and refuse it.
Just because everything was going wrong that didn’t mean we couldn’t win.
We just had to think smarter. Move faster. Be more silent and deadly.
Sabotage
“THE DEAD GIRL,” Thierry spread photos across his desk of scattered coffee stains and papers, “is Rolinda Rastes, 27, a Romanian immigrant without a passport or any other ID.”
“How you know?”
“Prints. She already had a long file. Pickpocketing, grabbing money off restaurant tables, graduated last year to breaking and entering and jewelry theft, stole a Vespa and did three hours in jail. No doubt intended to sell Anne’s motorcycle ... The judges keep letting her go. One of thousands we keep sending home who come right back.”
I looked sadly at the heart-shaped stolid face, the dark brows, lashes, hair and eyes. Part of the Romanian crime mafia that has expanded throughout Europe since the EU. “And look where it got her.”
“I feel very sad for her,” Anne said. “Like she was my sister – isn’t that crazy?”
Thierry nodded. “Your death sister.”
“And the next thought I have is, they think they’ve killed me. How do we use this against them?”
“The existential question.” Thierry stood by the window watching the gray rain. “There’s several options. One, we announce this poor girl was shot by persons unknown. She was a bit player in the Romanian crime mafia, on a bike she’d stolen, we think it’s some gang rivalry, we’re asking for witnesses ...”
Anne shrugged. “Or we say I was shot and you’re working intensely on finding the killers.”
“Or you disappear,” Thierry said. “As if it was you who got shot, and we won’t admit it?”
“Or you announce I was killed but call it an accident. Killed when my bike hit a tree or a parked truck –”
“Not that,” Thierry said. “Then we’d need an inquiry ... who was the truck’s owner? We’d have to identify them.” He smiled. “We don’t have to identify a tree ...”
“Say you’re still trying to ID the victim. What you’d say if it was me.”
“I think it’s best we release no information at all. It’s the best way to protect you. I don’t want to use you as bait. Let the bastards think you’re dead.”
She shook her head. “You’re throwing away a chance to get them.”
He sighed, looked out the window. “In that case we need to disguise you, different hairstyle, different clothes, a new apartment.”
She reached unconsciously for her hair. “I like my hair like it is.”
“In any case, this will soon go away.”
“Unless,” I said, “the Romanians report her missing.”
He shook his head. “They won’t say a word.”
With my knife I tried to scrape the dead girl’s dried blood from under my thumbnail but some remained. It was brown now, nearly black. Caky and half-dry. Sticky lifeblood. In it the DNA of an alive young woman who hadn’t known she was about to die.
“The best reason for the killers to think you dead,” I said to Anne, “is they stop trying to kill you.”
“My way’s better,” she said. “We let them know I’m still alive. And set a trap for them when they come.”
It made pure tactical sense. But I didn’t want it. “We let them think it’s you. But it will be me.”
“No way.” She glared at me. “I fight my own wars.”
—
HARRIS ANSWERED on the first ring. “That was close,” he said, his voice rough. “She’s an amazing woman.”
How would you know? I started to say, a stupid question. After I’d briefed him on last night and what DGSE, Anne and I were planning, I added, “I have to report also, I have an emotional relationship with her.”
“I know.”
“But we’re swimming upstream, and the French keep fucking up.”
“Maybe they’re not.”
“Not what? Fucking up?”
“Yeah, maybe they’re right on and you just haven’t picked it up?”
This pissed me off. “I doubt that.”
“French intelligence is handcuffed by judges, media and politicians.” He cleared his throat. “They’re in a terrible position. The police are even worse off ... It’s not surprising you think they’re fucking up.”
“Where next, then?”
“We have a senior operative and his wife missing. And because the French are still our allies, we need to help them find Mustafa. The two issues may or may not be connected. And,” he added, “we need to find who tried to kill your girlfriend.”
Again I thought of our lack of street knowledge, of local assets. “How?”
“Get over here,” he harrumphed like a disagreeable uncle. “We need to talk.”
—
THE SUN WAS halfway up the east when I got there. He was his usual abrupt self, shook my hand, sat in a leather chair by the coffee table, pointed to another. “Hell of a shock, when it came in, that she was down.”
“You heard it?”
“I was on that frequency, because of Yasmina, that whole deal. Trying to figure where you were. Then came the Officer Down, and the moment it was a woman on motorcycle ...”
I didn’t answer. “Twenty minutes later,” he said, “you came on, saying she was alive.” He shook his head. “Horrible twenty minutes.” He glanced at the sideboard. “Get yourself some coffee, you want.”
I glanced at the tired drip machine on the sideboard. “Maybe.”
It felt like we were back at my trial, before I was found guilty and sentenced to twenty years. Because of him. It roiled my stomach. I beat it down. What did he remember, care about, of that time?
The coffee was rich and strong, Italian. Not like I’d expected. “It’s good,” I said.
He looked pleased I liked it, or maybe this was bullshit too. “You’ve really made a difference, since you got here.”
This surprised me. “Things have gone to Hell ...”
“Well, you gave them the first decent portrait of Mustafa. So that led to the other real-time pix they got of him, including the last one in La République.” He nodded, reflectively. “And you checked that café again, with the face photo. That was well done.”
“Yeah, and got the patron killed.”
“Could’ve been something else. We’re checking that out.”
“How?”
“Amazing what we can pick up.” He pointed at the roof.
This made me smile: the Agency’s preoccupied dependence on listening to everyone. Them and NSA.
He drank some coffee, set down the cup. “You were right about Yasmina too.”
“I was?”
“If you had brought her out alive she would’ve been a well of information. We could have taken good care of her, got her away from that mix of fanaticism, fear and repression.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
This took him back an instant. “You want me to harass Thierry because he’s not doing his job? You really think that?”
I thought about it. “He’s just so impeded. Blocked at every turn.”
“Imagine what it’s like for him. Going home at night wondering what has he accomplished? Who is getting away to kill again? He’s got a wife and four beautiful kids. What about them?”
“What about them?”
“You think they’re not at risk too?”
“So that’s why he’s fucking things up?”
“Of course not.” He leaned forward as if his back hurt. “Just keep thinking and watching your perimeters and assume Mustafa’s after you, too. And Anne.”
I got up to leave. “Shall do.”
He motioned for me to sit. “I asked Mack to bring you here because you knew Mustafa. But also because you finish what you start. You don’t miss things and you don’t complain.” He nodded. “I like that.”
“I almost bailed when I learned it was you.”
“That’s fine. You must remember, though, that I got you sentenced, back then, not because you shot the girl. Because you shot her husband.”
“I know you think that,” I said.
“But I’m glad,” he continued, “that lawyer got you out.” This was the West Point grad who’d reopened my case; she’d literally saved my life. Because no one survives twenty years in Leavenworth military prison. Not in any way worth talking about.
He was saying although I did right to put you in prison, I’m happy you got out. Nuts. Let him do the time.
He leaned forward at me across the table. “I’m glad you’ve hooked up with Anne. Isn’t that what it’s called these days, ‘hooking up’?”
I felt my neck go red. “It’s not like that.”
“Sorry, sorry. I’m a single old bear, no grace ...” He reached for a half-empty coffee cup. “She’s a remarkable agent, apparently. Been involved in some serious things.” He smiled at me like a cheery old uncle. “No one to take lightly.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Lost her husband couple years ago.”
“You know how?”
“Like her, he was working for DGSE. They’d tracked down a bunch of Chechnyans in Pau who were pushing Islam and heroin all over the Pyrenees. In the shootout one of them was killed, the rest captured. A month later Éric gets his head blown off in the Bois de Vincennes, where he’s playing with his two kids and Anne beside a little lake. He’s in the water with half his brains gone and Anne dives to the ground on top of the kids and then sprints them to cover.”
This choked me. “How do you know all this?”
“Mack told me.”
“And now he’s gone. And Gisèle too. And Bruno killed, Anne nearly killed. Who’s next?”
“You and Anne.” He leaned forward at me across the table. “You’re both at severe risk. You gotta move. We’ll put you someplace nice.”
“We’re getting our own place.”
“Not on my dime.” He sat back, palms around a crossed knee. “And we’ll have you covered before you even move in.”
This was true, I despaired. Fuck it, you just had to pretend they weren’t there.
“A Navy SEAL, your Dad,” Harris said, seemingly out of the blue. “Came to your trial every day.”
This angered me. Pa had died just three months ago and I missed him every minute. Why did Harris give a damn?
“We know things,” Harris said, “that Thierry, DGSE, all of them – don’t. I’m going to give you what you need. You use what you can.” He leaned forward again, thin black eyes on mine. “But you don’t say where you got it. Agreed? Not ever.”
“But why’re they goatfucking us?”
“DGSE?”
“Who else?”
He stood, arched his back, massaging it. “They’re fatally torn, the French. Between those who want to maintain their national identity and those who hate it. A division so deep each will do whatever it takes to destroy the other. And to Hell with France.
“This means,” he pointed a thumb at Paris out the window, “some powerful people are going to sabotage anything you, we, or your buddies in DGSE, ATS and the cops try to do.”
I sat back, nodded. “Already true.”
He sat, scratched his chin. “You got to understand, this is personal. Coming from me, not” – he gave a glance at the room, the ornate ceiling – “not here.”
I wondered what this meant. “Okay.”
He kind of growled and sat upright, reminding me of a fierce old baboon. Looked me in the eye. “What I mean, dammit, is that some of the people you think are on your side aren’t. Mustafa wants you, no doubt about that. Somebody on your side is also on his.”
That he might have any personal concern for
my safety seemed outlandish. But we were allegedly on the same team, and perhaps he feared repercussions up the line if I were to die under his stewardship. Though such repercussions were unlikely, given that some of the folks up the line would probably be delighted at my demise, my very existence unrecorded and denied.
I’d known I was in danger from Mustafa. But I’d neglected to consider that someone on my side might also be on his.
—
“NO, NO, cannot be true,” Anne huffed when I got to DGSE and told her. “Not possible!” For an instant she looked moody and difficult, almost angry, then nodded, “Yeah, yeah. Could be true.” She gave me that harrowed look of hers. “If so, we have to find out who.”
“Someone on your side who’s trying to sink this –”
“You’re the one who keeps saying we have to expect the impossible.”
I never understood what she’d meant till afterward.
When it was too late.
Confess
AN ARMORED LIMO had taken Mamie and the kids to Cousine Claudine’s farm in rural Normandy not far from Lyons-la-Forêt, to help raise chickens and goats, grow apples, and make foie gras, Calvados, and Camembert. While Mamie paced the fences, fierce and vengeful, an ancient shotgun in her hands.
On our own we took several evasive maneuvers from her place to my bugged one-bedroom at Passage Landrieu. Where we left some stuff we didn’t need, locked up, took several taxis to the 15th, where we paid cash to rent a short-term furnished apartment overlooking the new-leafed chestnut trees of the Place du Commerce. Ignoring Harris’s offer to find us a new place, as I didn’t want another safe house: when your killers came for you, it would be the first place they’d look.
To Airbnb we were just another wandering couple looking for a short-term home. For a while there’d be no way our enemies could track us down. Before DGSE and Home Office found us. Then maybe Mustafa.
—
IT DID LITTLE GOOD to try to figure who might seem to be on our side but was betraying us. Thierry was high up in DGSE but there were others well above him of whom he might not be fully aware. In the Machiavellian machinations of intelligence there are many shadowy movers and shakers so well protected by their positions and so connected to unknown sources and powers that no one even knows they’re there. I as an American could have little chance to penetrate this; even Anne, as grounded in the intelligence world as she was, would have great trouble piercing its veils.
