The Phoenix Affair - Dave Moyer (smart ebook reader TXT) 📗

The great mass of a Boeing 777 drifted out of the misty haze on final approach to runway 8L, and floated majestically toward landing. In the terminal, Rene LaPlante checked his watch, saw that it was 9:10 am, and correctly deduced that this would be Delta flight 44 from Cincinnati, but a little late. He made a mark in the small notebook he’d been poring over during his breakfast, and resumed scanning the crowd.

“Just another day at Roissy” Rene thought. Detective Sergeant Rene LaPlante belonged to an arm of the French National Police which, since September 2001, had taken up the task of covertly monitoring passenger traffic at international airports throughout France. To be completely correct, this step had not been taken immediately. Not until one Richard Reid, late of Great Britain by way of Afghanistan and an al Qaeda camp, had got on a Delta flight enroute to Boston and tried to blow himself up with his shoe, had the FNP chosen to get serious. The best counter-terrorist operatives that service could muster were placed into a special unit, and found themselves on rotating duty at De Gaulle, and Orly in Paris, and at all the other major airports of the Republic at which one could arrive or depart on an international flight.

That had been nearly 10 years ago. Rene yawned, ruffled his newspaper and his notebook a little, checked the fake boarding pass in his briefcase as though he was waiting for his own flight, and glanced around the snack bar and the two gate areas immediately outside. He intended to look like any other passenger waiting for his flight, and he succeeded His fake boarding pass was for the 12 o’clock departure for Montreal. At gate 34 he could see a few people who were very early for the Air France flight that would leave for Beirut in 3 hours. Many Middle Eastern types there, he saw, but that was no surprise. Among them some Europeans, a couple who were clearly Bengali and middle aged, and one man who looked like a Gulf Arab. He passed over this one casually, trying to look bored or interested in the movements of the great airliners beyond the glass, but then came back to him for a closer look. Late 20s, early 30s maybe; good haircut, thin, not athletic; mustache but no beard. Clothes, European. Shoes—one could tell so much from shoes—cheap, probably from his own country, flat smooth soles with heels about ¾ inch, loafers. Safe shoes, and they matched the man. The face he did not recognize, which was just as well, for if Rene had, the poor man would likely have missed his flight.

LaPlante was perfect for this job, which was why he was here, but that didn’t always make him happy about it. He was gifted, or cursed, with a photographic memory, and had a catalogue of at least a thousand faces of known terrorists in his head, all of whom had at one time or another been guests at one of bin Laden’s camps. The number grew, it seemed, each month, as new information came to the FNP from sources both French and otherwise. The world had changed, and despite some lingering differences on grand policy, the great nations of the world found they had to cooperate and share at least in this. Rene was also famous among his service for an uncanny power of observation, to judge in an instant nationality, mood, some thought even motive. He had apprehended many criminals in his 12 year career by intuition alone it seemed, including the only two terrorists seized on French soil in the aftermath 9/11.

For all that, it was usually a boring task, and often he found himself drifting away from his tradecraft, daydreaming of either his wife, children, or mistress. To do this job well, and for his intuition to serve him as he wanted it to do, required a kind of forced non-concentration on any one detail, so that he could take in the whole picture of surroundings, movement, and person. Inattention to the task at hand resulted in an unwanted focus on particular details. Such focus prevented the big picture sight that Rene needed to work his magic, which seemed opposite of what one would expect, but there it was. So, as he’d decided to daydream for now about Vivienne, his mistress, Rene lost sight of the Gulf Arab at gate 34, in his particular kind of sight that is. It was only the opening of the door of neighboring gate 33 that drew him back to the here and now, and the first passenger off what had turned out to indeed be Delta 44 from Cincinnati.

Without seeming so, Rene was instantly at work and alert, watching for anything out of the ordinary as the passengers filed by. In truth, he did not expect to see anyone remarkable on a flight coming from the US, and his job was rather more directed at detecting someone bound in the other direction. It was always interesting, though, by way of practice, for him to watch the Americans and returning Frenchmen off US flights, to catalogue them, decide who they were and what they did and why they had come to France. Tourists, mostly, and some businessmen. Here was a software executive and his colleague—you could tell by the glasses, the chic laptop case, invariably the MP3 player at the belt and earphones in the ears, on the telephone already to someone they were to meet today. Young clothes, American, those new American shoes that looked like Dutch clogs, but leather. Software guys.

Rene continued in this way and nearly passed over a man who was so ordinary he was not worthy of comment or catalogue, but something was not quite right, and he took another look. Right, he thought: ordinary guy, about 6 feet, clothes—hmm, not sure, European, maybe British. Ordinary glasses. Hair is short but not too short, medium build. Ordinary. Rene forced himself to work his magic. What is it? The walk, he realized. The man walked very erect, back straight, shoulders back—it was a military walk. Not an enlisted man, but an officer most likely. Well dressed, though, for an American officer, they are usually not so. Probably retired. He is alone, mon dieu, what are you doing here, my friend? Then, the man put his hand on the shoulder of the woman in front of him, an attractive woman about his own age, early 40s, and spoke in her ear and pointed the direction to go. She smiled, turned and looked at him, as a woman does to her husband of many years. Rene had been about to make a note in his book, but he did not. A couple on a lovers’ trip, perhaps a second honeymoon now that the children had gone. Rene looked past the retired American officer to the next group of passengers coming through the door of gate 33.

The shoes had been English, sure, the clothes were American, and he was an American officer, but he was not retired. He did not really care that the watcher at the gate had seen him, that was expected. What mattered was that the watcher did not know he himself had been detected. And he was good, the American had to admit, I nearly missed him. As it was the American was certain of what he saw, and equally certain he had not been remarked in the end by the FNP watcher. “Welcome to Paris,” he thought, and strode easily down the concourse toward immigration, baggage, customs, and the anonymity of the Metro.

The woman was not his wife; he didn’t even know her name. But he knew that there were always watchers, some on the right side and some not so, and so one took precautions. These things were best done at random. About an hour before landing, after the small breakfast had been served and was being cleared away, he had headed for the lavatory to freshen up. Along the way he picked her. Right age, right looks, also traveling alone, a kind face that would react as he required when the time came. On the way back to his seat he bumped her elbow slightly, and took the chance to stop, turn, smile, and apologize. On board still but at the gate, he took his time gathering his briefcase, time enough to let the woman come almost past from the rear of the plane and time enough for him to bump into her again, almost knocking her down into the row of seats. His own briefcase fell, and he apologized profusely again, helped her up, smiled, laughed at his own clumsiness, drew her smile again, and said “Welcome to Paris.” He fell in behind her and walked off the plane.

A man traveling alone was what watchers, well, watch for. Men and their wives are ordinary, especially in Paris. He had seen the watcher as the latter was still looking over the lead elements off flight 44, and he saw him almost pass on to the two elderly women behind him, and then come back for another look. It was easy enough to make a quiet joke just then in the woman’s ear, about not tripping where the carpet turned to stone tile, to smile again, to draw her smile, and to seem what they were not. The simplest tradecraft is the best.

The American walked now just a half step behind her, and he was in that identical full state of un-concentration that made LaPlante so good at what he did. “We do not need any mistakes here, now,” he thought, and so he watched as he walked, occasionally appearing to make a comment to the woman but not actually speaking to her. He could see a reflection in a shop window, back down the concourse, as they turned the corner for the escalator down to immigration; the watcher was not following.

Ten minutes later, with the woman gone and his rolling case in tow, he was on the Metro platform with a week-long pass purchased with American cash. No credit cards, yet. The train came, and he boarded the RER in second class. He bought a paper and coffee from the vendor who wheeled the cart through the aisle, and settled in to watch. With Rene LaPlante’s skill he surveyed his companions in the car, and seeing nothing remarkable, pretended to read in French as the countryside gave way to the shabby northern suburbs of Paris. It was a 35 minute ride into town.

It would have been, at least, if the American had gone directly to his hotel. He’d been taught long ago that the straight way was the dangerous way, a lesson never to be forgotten. At Gare du Nord he got off the RER and walked through the station to the Purple line, which he took to Gare de l’Est. There he changed again to the Pink line, West to the Opera station. Here he left the train, and went up stairs to the street. Consulting his map, he made a show of looking around to get his bearings and at the same time scanned for a watcher in the Place, but saw none. He set off to the south down rue de L’Opera, walking at a moderate pace, slumping his shoulders slightly, concentrated on dropping his weight down toward his navel; he did not want to look military. A block further on he came to the Hotel Gaillon Opera, where he had stayed a year ago on his last time in Paris. He stepped through the door and up to the reception desk and asked the maitre d’hotel for a room.

He was not surprised to learn that there were no vacancies for