The Traitor

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The Rue Paradis didn’t look the same. Oh, it still had its hookers and Johns, but it felt as if the air had gone out of it. The narrow stairwell of my building echoed with my footsteps. I paused at Conner’s door. The police had sealed it. I kept climbing.

My little room looked… well, little. Grubby. Old. Paris had lost its charm.

The bandage on my leg would get soaked if I sat in the tub, so I did the best I could with a washrag at the sink. Got water all over the floor.

I opened the window a couple of inches and fell into bed. Must have laid awake for two whole minutes thinking about things.-The next thing I knew my cell phone was ringing. I opened an eye. It was morning and light was streaming through the window. The room was chilly; I was really snuggled in.

“Yeah.”

“Grafton. Rise and shine. Come see me when you get here.”

“Okay.”

Another day at the war. I rolled out.

I wore my best suit — well, my only suit — and best dark red power tie. Over that I put on a windbreaker. I set forth on the Vespa.

The town was full of paramilitary police with submachine guns hanging on straps across their chests. Pairs of them were on every corner, standing around watching people and traffic and looking bored. How they stand it I’ll never know.

The motorcycle rack was nearly full, but I lucked out and found a spot and locked up my ride. I stuffed the windbreaker in the little plastic saddlebag and locked it up, too, and locked the helmet to the thing. Then I strolled over to the embassy and went right in the front door like a real person.

The place was hopping. Jake Grafton had had a stormy session with the ambassador early that morning, someone said, and was now in conference in the embassy theater, where all the big briefings were held. He wanted me there, according to one of the security guys.

Who should I find outside the door but Willie Varner, also sporting a suit, with a blue tie over a blue shirt with a white collar. I whistled. “Didn’t know you owned a suit.”

“Own one and this is it,” he said. “Bought it to be buried in.”

“You’re looking kinda poorly, too.”

“Grafton said to send you in when you got here.”

“This been going on long?”

“Just got started. Ever’ high muckety in the French gover’ment is in there listenin’ to Grafton tell them about Rodet. There was a lot of tight jaws when they went in. I hear the prez and PMs all show up tomorrow, so he’s upsettin’ their applecarts.”

The guard let me in and I found an empty seat in the back of the little auditorium. Grafton was on the stage — also decked out in a suit. I’ll bet that he had never had a more attentive audience in his life. The place was quiet as a morgue, and Grafton was Mr. Cool, as if he were making a presentation at his neighborhood homeowners’ association. Sitting in a folding chair on his left was Inspector Papin of the French police. On the right was a white-haired man of distinction. I asked the guy beside me who he was.

“Ambassador Lancaster.”

When Grafton finished his indictment of Henri Rodet, he opened the suitcase that we took from the barn at Rodet’s place and displayed the items one by one. His audience stared in silence at the pistol, at the silencer, at the policeman’s uniform, at the cop’s hat and shoes, at the remaining sheets on the onetime pad, but they were mesmerized by the computer. Every eye in the place was on it as Grafton explained what it was and how Rodet had used it.

Someone stood up. “I helped develop the security plan. There are no holes in it.”

Grafton responded, “I have no doubt that it’s as good as can be devised. The point is that Rodet probably passed it to Al Qaeda. We can assume that the bad guys have the summit agenda, the flow plan, the photo op plan, and the security plan.”

There were a few more questions; then the high mucketys huddled in front of the podium. I made my escape. Willie wasn’t in the lobby.

I went down to the SCIF to find Sarah Houston.

“Hey.”

“Hey yourself. You’re looking better this morning than you did yesterday.”

“What a difference a day makes, huh?” I dropped into a chair. “Did you talk to Grafton?”

She played dumb. “What about?”

“About your future?”

“Not yet. No use leaving the agency until I get a better offer.”

“I see.” Believe me, I did see. Life is for the living, and here she was — but I couldn’t pull the trigger. Maybe I should have zigged, but I zagged. “Seen Gator around?”

“Nope.”

“He owes me money. Know where he is?”

“You may have trouble collecting. I heard he quit.”

“Quit what?” The company.

I scratched my chin as I considered. I figured that Grafton turned him over to the French police, who probably had him locked up someplace, and the admiral wasn’t broadcasting the fact. I wouldn’t, either, if I were him. Too much going down, Le Monde would have a field day with Gator Zantz. Ah, me.

Good-bye, Lizzie.

The phone on the desk rang and Sarah picked it up. She grunted a few times, hung up and said, “The Secret Service honcho, Pink Maillard, wants to see you and Willie.” She concentrated on her computer screen and went back to tapping keys.

“Keep it warm, babe,” I said, and levered myself up. I was still stiff and sore — felt like I had gone a few rounds with a gorilla.

“Don’t ‘babe’ me,” she said without enthusiasm, not bothering to look up. I closed the door behind me.

Pink had already corralled Willie when I found him in Grafton’s closet office. “I don’t have much time. The security team is reconvening in a French government building in half an hour. The admiral says I can use you guys as additional spotters at the summit tomorrow and Thursday.”

“I ain’t with the gover’ment,” Willie said. “I’m just here in Paris on a consultin’ basis, checkin’ things out, lendin’ my professional expertise to the spooks. For money, of course.”

Maillard didn’t quite know what to make of Willie. “You won’t be carrying weapons. I want two more sets of eyes out there. You see anything suspicious, and I mean anything, tell one of my agents or a French officer. Okay?”

“Sure,” Willie said. “But I ain’t doin’ nothin’ dangerous, you understand? Ain’t bein’ paid enough.”

“Put us on the duty list,” I said cheerfully.

“I want you to go out to Versailles and look around. Stay out of the way — just look.”

“We get to wear those cool little radios with the lapel mikes and earpieces?” Willie asked.

“No.” Maillard started to say something cutting, then thought better of it. What he did say was, “I need eyes. The guys downstairs will give you a pass with your photo on it. Go take care of it.”

“You bet.” I took Willie by the elbow and got him out of there before he managed to convince Maillard we were a couple of ding-dongs.

We rode out to Versailles on the subway and strolled the street of the tourist trap that the area around the chateau had become. Neither of us had eaten, so we had brunch in a cafe on a corner. We were given a seat against the window where we could watch the passersby. Willie looked at the menu and launched into a monologue about the prices. I tuned him out; been doing that for years.

Two tourists — obviously Americans, wearing casual clothes and armed with digital cameras with big lenses — were seated at the next table. In answer to their questions, the waitress told them that the chateau was closed to the public. They were disappointed.

After we ordered, I watched the people on the street. The day was blustery, with small puffy clouds racing overhead and casting shadows that came and went quickly.

The only people in the Sun King’s palace today and during the summit were going to be officials, security people, and the press. Al Qaeda knew that. If Rodet passed along the security plan, they knew precisely how the whole staged event would go. I didn’t, but if I could corner Grafton or Maillard, they would give me the outline. Might even let me read the whole plan, which wouldn’t help me much.

So if I were a terrorist, how would I assassinate eight heads of state? Or seven, or six, or as many as I could get?

The problem was that I wasn’t an assassin. Nor was I suicidal. I didn’t have the mind-set for the job.

“You haven’t heard a word I said,” Willie remarked.

“Sorry.”

“Practicing up for gettin’ married, huh?”

I snorted.

“Talked to ol’ Sarah this morning. She’s got her sights on you, Tommy.”

“Yeah.”

The entrance to the palace grounds lay at the end of a broad, tree-lined avenue. A small crowd of camera clickers stood outside shooting pictures through the fence. Willie and I threaded our way through, presented our passes to the paramilitary police at the gates, and were admitted.

Without tourists, the place looked deserted. Actually, it probably looked much as it did when Louis the Whatever came riding up in his carriage with Marie Antoinette at his side. The huddled masses yearning to be free were kept outside the gates in those days, too. Versailles was, and still is, an extraordinary monument to the vast chasm that existed between the filthy rich at the top of the pecking order and the 99 percent of the populace at the bottom. No wonder the French had a revolution.

We hiked along looking the place over. The chateau, or palace, was an extraordinary, sprawling building, the second largest palace in Europe. The first? The Louvre, the king’s house in town. Today Versailles is a Paris suburb, but back then Paris was a much smaller town centered on the two islands in the Seine.

Even though they chopped off Louis’ head, the revolutionary French were proud of the palace, and today’s French still are. They love to hold state functions here to show it off. The glory and grandeur of France, and all that.

Bomb squad trucks were parked at some of the entrances. The explosives experts were searching every square inch. No doubt Abu Qasim and Henri Rodet knew they would, so I doubted if a basement full of dynamite was on their list of possibilities. I ran through every explosive possibility I could think of and rejected them one by one.

Airplanes? Mobile antiaircraft missile batteries were already in position and being checked over by troops. I saw two and knew there were more. If the bad guys planned on crashing a plane into the building, or driving a truck through the gate to blow it up alongside the building, they would make a big splash in the news media and probably not kill a single politician. If that was the plan, there was little Willie or I could do about it except get out of the way. The truth was, if they did that, they would prove how impotent they were.

They didn’t think of themselves that way. They needed a success.

Snipers? The French had snipers on the rooftops. I saw uniformed men with rifles moving around up there.

No, I decided, if an attempt was going to be made, it would be one man, or a small group, that came through the gate with passes. Politicians, cameramen, reporters, the chateau staff… or the military or police.

Rather than go inside, I led Willie away to look at soldiers. Over the next two hours we saw a bunch. We were footsore and ready for a restroom when Willie finally complained. We headed inside.

There was a stack of tourist brochures just inside the door; I picked one up. The usual tour-group guides had the week off, so we were on our own. A paramilitary cop with a submachine gun stood in every doorway. We met two groups of police with bomb-sniffing dogs working the rooms systematically, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

The G-8 finance ministers were meeting in the library, and we were turned away. The working press was herded into another room a few doors down. We looked in there. The room had been set up for press conferences, which were going to be held later this afternoon when the ministers had some agreement to spin for the folks back home.

We wandered along, looking at this, looking at that. The ceilings were way up there, like twenty-five feet above the floor, and everything was gilded in real gold, or painted to look like it. The gold was accented by white pillars and walls, although occasionally a brilliant color had been used for contrast. All in all, it was a hell of a palace, but I wouldn’t have wanted to live there back in the good old days, B.T.P. — before toilet paper. Those were chamber-pot days, long before running water. Makes me shiver just thinking about it. Maybe that’s why camping has never had much appeal to me.

“Maybe you ought to get married,” Willie said, right out of the blue, while we were contemplating a huge painting of a queen with the royal children.

The American philosopher Jerry Lee Lewis once said that too much sex drives a man insane. No joke. Willie had lost it.

“Sarah’s pretty serious, you know,” he added, quite unnecessarily.

“What would you know about marriage? I seem to recall that you are a lifelong bachelor.”

“Thought about gettin’ married. Once. Years ago.”

We strolled on, looking at paintings. I was kinda glad I didn’t have this kind of art in my apartment.

“Was datin’ a redheaded nymphomaniac who owned a liquor store,” Willie said a moment or two later. “She was easy to get serious about.”

“You’re lying.”

“Well, to tell the truth, she wasn’t really a redhead. Dyed her hair and straightened it and made it stand up. Looked pretty good, actually.”

“You never took her to the altar.”

“Never got seriously into liquor, man. Beer’s my drink. But Sarah, she’s a nice woman. Gonna make some guy a wife for life.”

“Let’s talk about something else, like global warming, the tax code, or who’s going to get to the Super Bowl.”

When we got to the Hall of Mirrors, the big hall on the back of the building, we found another crowd. Workmen were setting up a huge conference table, a microphone system, enough lights to stage a rock concert, and a bank of television cameras. This was where the presidents and prime ministers were going to meet to talk about important political stuff. Under the constant scrutiny of a squad of paramilitary police, we walked slowly along looking at everything.

“This is where it’s gonna happen, if it happens,” Willie declared. “While they’re all together. On television, even. This may be the only time they’re all together. Maximum impact.”

I looked at the cops, at the television cameras, at the statues lining the walls, at the mirrors, at the vaulted gilded ceiling way up there. This room obviously inspired several generations of railroad station architects. But if Al Qaeda intended to strike here, how were they going to do it?

If I knew the answer to that one, I’d be running the Secret Service, not wandering around with a daffy ex-con with marriage on his mind.

We strolled on to the other end of the room and past the squad of paras. A couple nodded at us after they inspected our passes, which were hanging on a little chain around our necks.

Behind them, covering the wall, hung a curtain that reached all the way to the floor. I had seen other curtains here and there throughout the building, but now the implications sank in. I felt the curtain and found the part. Easing it back a little, I saw a door. It wore a common European lock.

“Look at that,” I said to Willie.

He wasn’t impressed. “Hell, I could open that with a bobby pin,” he scoffed.

“Got one on you?”

He scrutinized my face. “Are you nuts? They’ll throw our asses outta here.”

“We got passes and we know people. Do you have a pin?”

“Yeah.” Willie removed one from his shirt pocket and straightened it out somewhat. I reflected that old habits die hard.

He slipped behind the curtain while I stood there looking at the backs of the troops. Ten seconds passed, fifteen, then half a minute.

“Got it,” he said in a barely audible voice. “Come on.”

No one was watching me. I went through the curtain and the door, which Willie was holding open. He came in behind me and pulled the door shut until it latched. Then he grinned. “Still got it, dude. Still got it.”

We were in a narrow hallway, perhaps four feet wide, lit by naked bulbs in fixtures on the wall just above head-high. The wire that ran from fixture to fixture was stapled to the wall.

“Slave hallway,” Willie said softly.

“The frogs didn’t have slaves.”

“The hell they didn’t! They were all slaves — that’s why they had a revolution. Lead off. Let’s see where she goes.”

We walked along and came to a ladder leading upward. We were inside the interior wall of the Hall of Mirrors. I consulted my tourist literature, which had a rudimentary map of the chateau’s rooms. We were between the Hall of Mirrors and the king’s bedroom. Sure enough, a few paces farther on, we came to a doorway that must lead to the king’s chamber. I said as much to Willie.

“Want to look in there?” he asked.

“No.” We walked on. The passage was endless. Doors opened into every room. Narrow stairs led up and down. We took one leading down, went down and down, and came to another passageway that led away in two directions. These servants’ passageways apparently led all over the building.

“The kings and queens didn’t want the help parading through the big rooms,” Willie said.

At the bottom of another staircase we found only a door, so we opened it. We were in a kitchen. Seated at a table were Jake Grafton and the French police inspector, Papin.

“Ah, Terry. Willie. You’ve been exploring, I see. Come sit down, have a drink of wine.”

Willie marched right over and parked his bottom. “Howdy,” he said to the Frenchman as Grafton poured him a small glass of white wine. I accepted one, too.

“How did you get into the passageways?” the Frenchman asked in good English.

I jerked a thumb at Willie. He tossed his bobby pin onto the table. I see.

This cop had obviously been around. I turned my attention to Grafton. “You think this Abu Qasim is going to try for paradise tomorrow?”

“Perhaps, but I doubt it,” the admiral said. “However, someone might. Inspector Papin has been briefing me on Muslim fanatics here in France, which seems to have its share plus a few.”

“Suiciders,” Willie said sourly, and slurped more wine. He drank it as if it were beer. The Frenchman didn’t seem offended.

“Inspector Papin was telling me about the renovation of this building that was completed this past spring,” Grafton said. “All the rooms on the main floor were extensively refurbished.”

He looked at me and I looked at him.

“Tomorrow I want you and Willie in those servant hallways,” Grafton said.

“Okay.”

He slid a ray gun across the table. It looked like the one I used at the Rancho Rodet.

“The batteries all charged up?” I murmured.

“Yep.”

I checked that the power was off, then pocketed it. Papin had his head turned and didn’t seem to notice.

“What are you guys going to do about ol’ Henri?” I asked the police inspector.

Papin shrugged. “I am just a policeman,” he said.

“Next week, after the summit, Henri Rodet will be asked to retire for medical reasons,” Grafton said.

“Next week?” That just slipped out.

“The government doesn’t want a breath of scandal now, during the summit.” I see.

“If he refuses to retire, he will be fired,” Grafton added. “He’ll retire, I think. The authorities don’t have enough evidence to prosecute him.”

“Prints on the gun? The magazine? Ammo? Suitcase? Computer?”

“None, they tell me. Wiped clean.”

“You’re joking.” I could see that he wasn’t, so I added, “Hairs on the uniform? DNA?”

Grafton shrugged. “If there is an attempt made on the lives of the G-8 leaders and somehow it can be tied to him, that decision could change, of course.”

“Gotta have evidence,” Willie declared, and slurped more wine.

I was thinking of Marisa. “Very civilized,” I said, and nodded at the inspector.