Pinnacle Event

38

Tall, broad, and with a thick head of white hair that seemed to stand straight up, Marcus Stroh did not blend in well for an agent of a secret service. That was true in his native South Africa and seemed even more the case in the airport baggage claim in Dzaoudzi. Pierre Marcoux of France’s overseas intelligence service, the DGSE had no difficulty spotting him. The Frenchman, short and wearing a wicker hat and baggy shirt, could have been a pensioner looking for his daughter on the 777 from Paris that had just arrived. He was, instead, the only representative of the French intelligence service in this prefecture of over two hundred thousand people.

“Bienvenue, Monsieur Stroh, à l’Union Européenne,” Marcoux said after standing next to Stroh for half a minute scanning the crowd as Stroh was.

“Pierre?” Stroh asked, slightly surprised. “I meant to ask you when we talked yesterday how I would recognize you. So good of you to come out to the airport to get me.”

“Marcus, this is a tiny island. It was not far to come to get you. How was Nairobi?”

“I just switched flights there, never went in to the town. We really have to start direct flights here from South Africa.”

The two men began walking toward the line of taxis. “No, don’t do that. Then I would have to monitor all of the people who would come from there. Too much work,” Marcoux joked. “I don’t like work. That is why I chose to be stationed here, the farthest part of the European Union from Paris.” Marcoux directed Stroh toward a waiting Renault taxi.

“Boulevard des Crabes, s’il vous plaît, Etienne,” Marcoux told the driver.

“Lapouz Noz Brochetti?” the driver asked.

“Oui, oui.” Marcoux then explained to Stroh, “I assumed you would be famished, so I have reserved a table. I hope you like seafood.”

“I would eat giraffe at the moment, but, yes, I do.”

“It will also give me a chance to tell you what I have found out about the goings on across the way in the independent part of Comoros. We have been hard at work since you called, checking flights and shipping records over there. And asking about strange comings and goings.”

Stroh pointed at the driver and gave Marcoux a questioning look. “Oh, Etienne works for me. Has for years. One of my most loyal employees, aren’t you, mon ami?” Marcoux laughed, tapping the African driver’s shoulder. “In fact, he was one of my men who went over to the Comoros. Just got back late this afternoon. Very productive trip, eh, Etienne? Our man here found out exactly what you wanted to know.”

“Well, then, I hope I can offer you a small reward, Etienne,” Marcus said, reaching for his wallet. Marcoux placed his hand on top of Marcus Stroh’s.

“No need for that. Etienne is a contract employee of mine. Well taken care of, aren’t you?”

Marcus Stroh took a card from inside his jacket. “Well, at least we can offer our hospitality. If you are ever in South Africa, or in trouble for that matter, ring us up on that line and tell them to get in touch with me. They always answer at that number. But call me Mr. Robinson. We’ll show you a good time if you do visit us.”

Etienne was not used to being treated that nicely by white folks. Most of them saw him as a short, skinny nobody, like a piece of the taxi he drove for cover. The “taxi driver” let his fare off at the restaurant, parked a block away, and then circled back to sit as a watcher at the bar as the two white men dined. His role was to see if anyone took undue notice of the two, to intervene in extremis. But on Mayotte, there was never extremis. The only security problems on the island were related to the heroin that came by boat and ship, smugglers looking for a back door into France and the EU. The Sûreté handled the counternarcotics effort; the intelligence service, Marcoux, only assisted.

“Mainly, my concern here as DGSE is who comes and goes. We are a foreign intelligence service and these islands are domestic France, as much a part of the country as Normandy,” Marcoux said, as they settled in at their table. “But I also have a watching brief on the independent country of Comoros. After all, before they became a nation, they and Mayotte were joined together and were one French colony at one point. The wise folk here on Mayotte voted to become part of France. Smart move, for now the French taxpayers provide the funding for a very nice life here. And Comoros? Not so nice.”

“You don’t have a base in your Moroni embassy there, in Comoros?” Stroh asked.

“We do, but his main job is training the Comoros service, such as it is. So, they all know him. He can’t run sources. Our last man tried to do both jobs, training and spying, and, of course, they detected it and asked him to return to Paris. So now I run the sources from here. Do you like the Sancerre tonight?”

“I defer to you.”

“I think we get a good one tonight, since La Piscine is paying.” Marcoux used the French nickname for the DGSE headquarters, the swimming pool. “Ladoucette Sancerre Lafond,” he said to the waiter, smiling at the thought of soon tasting the expensive white. “Pas trop froid.” Then, looking back at his guest, he continued. “I am very glad to help you, of course, but why come to me. Why not go and ask the Comoros people themselves?”

“Mbali, my boss, she said go straight to you. I think she doubts the Comoros security service’s, shall we say, competence?”

Marcoux smiled. “Mbali, she is your boss? I worked with her on a case involving Afrikaner mercenary types. Yes, she doubts the Comoros’s competence, or maybe even more their honesty. A hard woman, moving fast is Mbali.”

Stroh nodded agreement. “So, you like it here, in Mayotte?” he observed. It seemed like quite a likable place, complete with relaxed establishments such as this French restaurant, where Marcoux appeared to be well known. The restaurant was a darkened room with fans turning slowly, one wall missing, open to the sea, letting in a humid, salty breeze.

“I do. I am my own man here,” Marcoux replied, lighting a cigarette. “Paris told me to move my office to Mamoudzou on the big island, since that is the capital now. I didn’t. Paris forgot.” The wine arrived and Marcoux approved the tasting. “I work here when I want, which is mainly at night. Sources don’t talk in the sun.”

Marcus Stroh knew not to rush people like the Frenchman, but he also knew that Mbali was waiting for his report. Mbali was always in a rush and did not understand people who were not. “And your sources in Comoros, they were productive you said?”

“They were,” Marcoux answered, apparently not bothered by the rudeness of getting down to the business before the main course. “Anjouan, you know it?” Marcus shook his head, no. “It’s one of the Comoros Islands, although it tried to break away, or rather one of our protégés there, a Colonel Bacar, tried to break it away. It was une pagaie, with the African Union invading to help reunite the islands. Imagine Sudanese, Senegalese, Tanzanian troops trying an amphibious landing. Très drole.”

“Oh, yes, I do recall,” Stroh offered. “Two thousand eight?”

“Oui. Well, we had to find Bacar a safe haven when it was all over. We put him up in Benin. He had been our eyes and ears on Anjouan. After he was ousted, I arrive here and start building my own network of sources. One of them, he runs a satellite dish, television and Internet installation company, he is quite good. You can imagine.”

Etienne was sipping his whiskey, but downing Perrier, into which he squeezed juice from a lemon he cut and sliced at the bar. His eyes scanned the diners in the dimly lit room, mainly whites, some with African women. He knew most of the crowd, or at least had seen them before. There were only twelve thousand people on Petite-Terre, the smaller of the two main islands that made up Mayotte.

“Around the time you mentioned, in August, he noticed an unscheduled flight into Ouani, the little airport on Anjouan, from Madagascar. Air Madagascar flies that route, but this, this was a charter. A C-130, cargo plane.” Marcoux clearly relished storytelling. “Then within a week there were three other flights by the same plane. And whites took the cargoes away.”

Etienne had rated everyone in the dining room as a known quantity, except one blond man, who was with a woman Etienne did know. He saw her with men, with tourists, from time to time. This man was younger, Etienne thought, but he wore a hearing aid.

“Then the plane came back, three months later, on a flight this time from Moroni on the other side of the Comoros,” Marcoux continued, “on the date you mentioned. Twenty-six October.”

Marcus Stroh wondered if he had told the Frenchman too much, if the French sources were just inventing stories that matched the dates Stroh had provided Marcoux on the phone. “I suppose it is too much to ask if that satellite television man got the tail number of this mystery plane?”

“Perhaps, come to think of it, you should pay for dinner, or perhaps donate that reward to my office fund,” Marcoux replied. He handed Stroh his business card, which alleged he was a professor of anthropology. On the back of the card, Marcoux had handwritten “5B-01739.” Marcoux poured them both more of the Sancerre. “5B, oddly, is the aircraft tail code for Cyprus. Never seen that aircraft around here before.”

Stroh placed the card in his shirt pocket. “If one had flown cargo into Ouani, how would you get it out of the country? Another flight, bigger plane?”

“No bigger plane could land there,” Marcoux replied. “In fact, a C-130 can only land there light, not fully loaded. We know that from the support flights l’Armée de l’Air flew in ’08, during the African Union’s invasion.”

The blond man excused himself from his dinner guest, walked through the bar, past Etienne, and went outside. Etienne saw him through the small window above the bar, talking on his mobile. Why not talk at the table, thought Etienne? Was he answering a call from his wife perhaps?

“How would you get the cargo off island, then?” Stroh asked.

“Containers. They ship from the harbor at Mutsamudu. And before you ask, they are almost always the same little freighters on runs to Durban or Karachi. At the end of October, two new ships, modern things, had maiden calls at Mutsamudu. I will have their names for you in the morning.”

Stroh pulled out his iPhone. “I hate to be rude, but I have an anxious boss. Unlike you, I am not my own man. Please forgive me for tapping out a quick note to her. When I have completed that, no more business tonight. I trust there are good cognacs here.”

“There was a bottle of Brugerolle, Vieille Reserve, last time…”

Marcoux fell forward, toward Stroh. Blood shot from the side of his head, splattering onto the wall and then gushing onto the tablecloth. Marcus Stroh dropped his iPhone and went for his gun as he looked up at the blond man walking toward him. Stroh recognized the silencer on the pistol, just before the gun erupted again. A thud, a flash, and then Stroh fell back, out of his chair, a bullet having transited through his forehead and out the back of his head.

Etienne had come off his barstool as soon as he saw the blond man walking quickly toward Marcoux’s table. He kneeled and pulled his Smith & Wesson M&P340 Scandium ankle gun from his leg. By the time he stood up, Marcoux was shot. Etienne aimed the small revolver and fired at the shooter, hitting him in the head with the .357 round just after the man fired at Stroh. The tiny revolver created a powerful sound. Women screamed. The blond man fell to his knees. There was a stampede of diners toward the door. Etienne moved closer and fired again. The blond man fell sideways onto the floor, his gun landing next to Stroh’s iPhone in the pool of fresh blood spreading on the tiles.