Rules of Deception

71

“I have him,” Simone Noiret said quietly into her cell phone. “I’ll pick you up where we agreed.”

She hung up, then lowered the car radio’s volume. “How are you doing back there?” she called over her shoulder. “Can you hear me?”

A muffled voice and two thumps was her response. The trunk might be cramped, but there was more than enough oxygen for the short ride. After all, she was not planning on transporting Jonathan to Zurich.

For over two years, Simone Noiret had been working to infiltrate Division. It was odd to think of turning against your own country, but the world was a decidedly odd place these days. Rivalries were as fierce between organizations as between enemy nations.

Born Fatima Françoise Nasser in Queens, New York, she was the daughter of a French-Algerian mother and an Egyptian father. Her earliest memories were of money, or more precisely, arguments about the lack of it. Her father was a congenital miser. When she thought of the cunning it had taken to wrest a lousy ten dollars from his tight fist, it made her sweat. She joined the army at eighteen because her brother had done so before her. Her language skills placed her in Intelligence. Besides French, Arabic, and English, she spoke Farsi. She was trained at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and the Army Defense Language Institute in Monterrey before being stationed in Germany. She rose to E-5 before she got out. With the money she’d saved and the army helping to foot tuition, she attended Princeton University, graduating summa cum laude with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies.

Hardly a month later, she received a call asking her to come to a meeting in Manhattan with a representative of the CIA. He made his pitch straightaway. The operations directorate had been keeping an eye on her dating back to her time in the army. They offered her a slot overseas. It was spying pure and simple. Not like you saw in the movies, but the real thing. She would attend a course at the Farm, the CIA’s training facility, near Williamsburg, Virginia. If she passed, she would go on for further training as a clandestine operative. He needed an answer in twenty-four hours. Simone said yes on the spot.

That was eleven years ago.

It was Admiral Lafever, the deputy director of operations, who had asked her to join his personal crusade against Division. It was not a request one could turn down, and in any event, she was eager for a new challenge. All records of her employment with the CIA were expunged. A simple legend was created, establishing her as a peripatetic teacher, one of the flock of displaced Europeans who travel from country to country filling vacant slots at one American school after another. Her husband’s job at the World Bank provided a natural cover.

Simone arrived in Beirut a month ahead of Emma. To establish their friendship, she helped Emma secure working quarters for the Doctors Without Borders mission that served as her cover. Friendship came naturally. After all, the two had much in common. Birds of a feather, so to speak. It wasn’t long before they were talking to one another daily.

All the while, Simone watched.

One by one, she uncovered the members of Emma’s network, though not in time to prevent the hospital bombing that had taken the life of a Lebanese police inspector involved with the investigation into the former Lebanese prime minister’s assassination.

In Geneva, Simone continued her work. It was only a month earlier that she’d identified Theo Lammers as a member of Emma’s new network. She passed word to Lafever, and this time Lafever did not hesitate to take action. She’d always figured that somewhere along the line killing might come into things. In her past assignments, it usually did. Part of her wondered if he’d somehow killed Emma, too.

Simone passed through the two checkpoints without incident. At each, she stopped and showed her identification. At each, she was sure to look the inspector in the eye, though not quite respectfully. And at each, she was quickly waved on.

Instead of turning right when she hit the crossroads for the highway that led westward to Landquart, and on to Zurich, she guided the car in an easterly direction, heading deeper into the valley. There were enough twists and turns in the road to convince her that Jonathan couldn’t possibly figure out in which direction they were traveling. Even if he did, it wouldn’t matter. The trunk was locked.

He wasn’t going anywhere.

Poor lamb.