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

was why Falcon had wanted to talk to Cameron in Europe instead of in his own country. Second, even if the Saudis would help, it was unlikely they would do so quickly enough to prevent whatever Al-Qaeda had planned with these teams. In his gut, Jones was thinking that if he was running those groups, he would probably try to move them soon, just in case they’d been compromised. And with this bunch following the General in Paris, Al-Qaeda was at least a little concerned about that. No, Cameron and his pal would have to go to Saudi to get the names, talk to the nephew, maybe stir around the country a little. He didn’t think the DDO was going to like that much, but what choice would they have? Then he remembered the Boss’ email from yesterday. “He’ll love it,” Jones mumbled. “The Boss is a player, this guy Phoenix is a player. Come to think of it, I’m still a player.” His eyes switched focus to the glass pane that separated him from the silent, deadly world outside; there his own face stared back at him, and he searched it. He was not yet forty, he was as fit as he’d been in his twenties, thick brown hair and a rugged, square jaw above broad shoulders. The dark eyes stared back at him. He smiled at himself and looked past the smile to the darkness outside and the faint line of the woods two hundred yards away across the empty lawn. “Quiet as death.”

*****

The Pharaoh made another call at twelve o’clock, then he’d moved off westward out of view from the internet bar. Cameron had seen enough. The man was on a two hour reporting schedule, but there would be no chance of his discovering Fahd here. He did not want to run foul of the big Egyptian, and in any case he had things to do. Leaving the Pharaoh to the empty Hotel Agora, he walked south to the Metro station at Maubert

It took twenty minutes and two changes to arrive at the Filles du Calvaire station in the Marais District. Up on the street he turned north toward the tall pillar and statue in the Place de la Republique, but at the first café he encountered he turned in and took a table near the windows to watch the traffic for a bit.

The destination for the moment was the Hotel du Vieux Saule and General Fahd, but he would not go straight there, both for safety and because he needed to think. He was also hungry. He ordered a steak with green peppercorn sauce and a side order of fried potatoes. Sipping on a coke, he watched intently out the window.

Foot traffic was heavy, motor traffic heavier. Cameron slipped quietly into his state of un-focus and began a sweep of all that he could see. On this side of the street the view was pretty restricted. There was a news seller on the sidewalk next door, but he seemed very comfortable with his business, and at least one buyer appeared to know him and call him by name. A regular customer; this guy is OK. On the other side of the wide boulevard people flowed steadily in both directions, very few even pausing to look in the shop windows, nobody loitering. He looked up the facades of the buildings, finding mostly curtained windows. He scanned the roofline for a half block north and south. Nothing.

The phone on his hip vibrated once, then twice, shocking him out of his near trance. He popped it from the cradle and answered, “Hello?”

“Hello,” said a voice in American English, he thought. Cosmopolitan, though, no definite accent, perhaps just a hint of the mid-West. “What is the title of T.E Lawrence’s book about his time with the Arab revolt?”

Cameron nearly inhaled the mouthful of Coke, managed to clear his nose, coughed hard a couple of times. The voice on the end of the line was silent. Finally he gave the reply “Seven Pillars of Freedom.”

“Excellent Mr. Cameron. My name is Patrick Ripley, Mr. Smith gave me this number. The other you will already have recognized. I believe you wanted to meet?”

“Yes,” Cameron replied, trying to get his brain working. He hadn’t thought much about this, although he knew it was coming. He was very surprised it’d come so quickly.

“Will you pick the place, or shall I, Mr. Cameron?”

“I’ll pick the place, Mr. Ripley,” Cameron said. He paused a moment, and decided it was as good as anything else he was likely to come up with. “OK, listen. On the Boulevarde Du Strasbourg, number thirty-nine, about two blocks west of the Gare de L’Est, there is an Aikido dojo. It’s a martial arts thing, Ripley. There is a class at four o’clock today. We’ll meet there. Do you have a baseball cap?”

“Sure,” came Ripley’s reply. “Boston Red Sox. The dojo on Strasbourg, four o’clock, then. See you there, Mr. Cameron. Here’s my number in case you need to get hold of me before then.” He read off the number and Cameron wrote it down, then they rang off.

The food came as he continued to think. He’d found the dojo while at the internet bar this morning. Practicing on the road had become something of a hobby for him, and usually when he was on business he’d try to find a club where he could get at least one workout. It helped him stay in shape, otherwise the restaurant food would turn him into a marshmallow man. There were numerous internet sites that could search for Aikido dojo’s worldwide, so finding one in Paris had been easy, and he’d even been lucky to find one of his own style. The dojo would be a nice, public place to meet this Ripley, and the members of the club would be on “his” side, just in case. Aikido people were like that, in his experience. It would be a good place to meet.

Now he was munching on the fries and sorting through the next few days. There were three problems that wanted solving. First, this group in Paris. It would be nice to deal with them somehow, and he was counting on Ripley, or acquaintances of his, to come up with something on that front. Then, there was the problem for Fahd back in Saudi Arabia. Last, there was the problem of these teams of young Saudis. Those two problems could clearly not be solved in Paris, and no matter how else he tried to think of it, he always came back to the same place. He and Fahd would have to go to Saudi Arabia.

There was just no way around it. The best connection they had to help them find the network was Fahd’s nephew Saad, who was now, if the plan had been followed, holed up in the family compound in al-Ha’il. Saad was the link to the teams, the teams the link to the network, the network the key to a return to something like normal life for Fahd and family. The two problems were really pieces of one problem, Saad the key to both. There was no way around it. But, how to get there without being seen? How to work once they got there? These things he would have to ask Fahd, and perhaps Ripley. Alone, Cameron felt he was at the end of what he could do. It was time to play a team game.

Across the street, Rene LaPlante rounded the corner and turned south, then paused abruptly, his mind working at full speed. Something was not right, something had seized his attention, a half-remembered face, something out of place. He collected himself and began walking again nonchalantly, until he came to the first shop window and peered in to collect himself. “What is it?” he asked himself? “A face? But what did I see, and where?” It was part of the curse of his photographic memory: his eyes might see something, his brain recognize it at a subconscious level, and he was left with the eerie, almost frightened feeling that he was forgetting something important. Now he had that same feeling, but he was conscious that he was exposed here on the street, he’d made an obvious movement that would have been seen by anyone the least bit experienced. He could afford only a few more moments at this window, so he focused on its surface, using it as a mirror.

Behind him was empty sidewalk, the same on the opposite side of the street. He began a mental replay of his movements, trying to sort out when the warning signal in his head had fired. He shifted a step or two to his left, to get an angle in the glass that would let him look back up the street from where he’d come. He spotted the windows of the restaurant, the news seller on the street in front, no customers now. He could see nothing unusual in the restaurant windows, the angle was wrong for most of them, the sun glinting off them now made them as much mirror from here as was the glass a foot in front of his face. He considered retracing his steps, but thought better of it: too obvious. Instead, he chose to simply stow the eerie feeling as he very often had to do; there was no way to deal with it today in any other way. However, he made a mental note to be more observant when he passed this way again tomorrow, as he did every day, and to look into that restaurant for a cup of coffee in the morning to see if there might be anything helpful there. Nothing more could be done here, so he slumped his shoulders and shrugged the collar of his coat up higher on his neck against the gathering chill in the shade of the buildings, and turned along his way south toward home.

In the restaurant Cameron peered cautiously from behind the menu and saw LaPlante retreating down the sidewalk. Time to move, right now. He signaled for the bill, finishing his Coke, collecting coat and briefcase. He didn’t know the man’s name, of course, and he scolded himself that if there hadn’t been the abrupt movement, he would not have noticed him at all. But there was no doubt it had been the watcher from the airport . . .”was that just yesterday?” he wondered, confused by the jet lag and a little groggy from the heavy meal. It was nearly two o’clock, he wondered that he’d been here so long. “Lots to think about, I need sleep and tonight’s not going to be great for that, and that is one scary guy if it was me that made him start so,” he observed. In a few moments he was on the street, walking with a feigned but noticeable limp and a little stooped, but briskly north to put distance between himself and the watcher, in case the latter might have doubled back.

He turned right at the first corner, looking for a metro station, preferably one with two lines and an interchange, but this wasn’t his part of Paris, so he would not be choosy. Nothing here. A block East and he turned North again, looking back West to clear his tail, which looked OK. He fell back into his own fluid walk. From the Metro system map in his pocket he chose the Republique station, two blocks away. It was perfect, six lines there. He stopped abruptly and moved between two parked cars, checking traffic both directions, but again clearing his tail. He crossed. Two minutes later he descended the steps to the station, wound through the maze standing on first one, then another platform, a third, and finally boarding the gold number three line for Arts et Metiers.

On the way he resolved to be more attentive despite the fatigue, and emerging onto the street once again he half-feigned confusion