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

up, and I think once the Brits are done with him the arm will be the least of his worries if he has any at all. At any rate, you hit the jackpot again. This dirtbag is Selim Khan, Pakistani. He’s on a “list,” you don’t need to know which one. Nobody knew he was in the UK, which is kinda embarrassing for both us and MI5. Good news is that MI5 are very happy we happened to pick him up, the arm notwithstanding. According to Johnson, the guy’s cell phone was crammed with numbers, Brits are running them now, if you watch the news tonight in London you’ll probably get to see the results of your handiwork. Night of the long knives for Al-Qaeda in Britain I’ll bet. Bad news, of course, is that you’re very anonymously a one-man train wreck for those bastards. You want to make sure you travel as Michael Callan the rest of this trip, Colonel, and someone besides yourself if you ever work for us again. You don’t ever, ever, want to become un-anonymous to that crowd. You got that, sir?”

“Got it, Ripley, and I’ll certainly do exactly that.” The train was pulling into the station at Knightsbridge, where he needed to get off. “Anything else, I have to navigate the London tubes and I can’t do that with this phone in my ear?”

“Yeah. We got a match on the photo Jones and Allen took out of the apartment in North Paris night before last. Guy name of Ibrahim Sultan al-Otaibi, Syrian we think, but maybe Saudi, spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, very nasty piece of work. From the stuff we found laying around over in Afghanistan at one time or another he seems to be something of a protégé. Pretty big cheese, shame that we didn’t get him. However, we’re going to keep a watch on Kisani’s phone, you know, the little guy that got beat up? If the French don’t reel him in first, we might get lucky and Ibrahim will call his old pal from a new line and we’ll have a new track on him. That’s it for now.”

“OK, thanks. Let me know what you can about my theory at Langley. Cameron out.” He shut the phone, now standing on the platform to look at the system map. Then he walked quickly to the escalator and rode up to the street. Harrods was just less than a block away, and he needed clothes and shoes for the desert. XVIII. Virginia

Bobbie swept into the room at her usual high velocity, leaving a perceptible breeze in her wake. Anderson could swear that the pages of the magazine on the nearby coffee table lifted and ruffled as she passed enroute to his desk, but the surface of the coffee in the cup she carried was as tranquil as a millpond in winter, even when she deposited it without ceremony on the desk in front of him.

“What are you gaping at, you look like a beached fish with your mouth hanging open like that, boss,” she said.

Anderson’s mouth closed with a “plop” and he reddened noticeably. Recovering, he said simply, “thanks for the cup of Joe, Bobbie, you’re the best. Decaf?” he said, hoping for the real thing.

“Decaf,” she said, a scolding frown on her face. “We’re at war, Mr. Anderson, and we must all put service above self. In your case, I’ve decided that your service is more important to the United States of America than the caffeine that might otherwise kill you. I have your doctors’ orders to back me up. Now, you would not want me, a humble secretary, to be found guilty of single-handedly losing the war on account of dereliction of my clear duty. Would you? Can you just see the history books?”

“No, of course not, but a man can hope once in a while.” He considered, then, with his best imitation of what he thought an eight year old boy would look like in the same situation, he asked, “any chance there’s a donut around, or maybe a chocolate biscotti?” He cringed a little in anticipation of the blast.

It didn’t come. “I knew you’d want one today. There’s a steward bringing down a small selection from the dining room in a few minutes. I’ll send him right in after I search him for contraband coffee, so don’t get any ideas.”

At this he brightened up, and it seemed like the sun shone stronger outside despite the broken cloud cover over Langley. He smiled and picked up the cup, took a sip. “Old son,” he thought, “it’s decaf, but damned if it doesn’t taste as good as the real thing, and real cream and sugar, perfect cup of coffee.” To Bobbie he raised the cup in salute. “Awesome, Bobbie, Thanks.”

“No problem, Boss,” she said, and before he could say anything else he felt the breeze as she moved again, headed out the door. “Don’t get too involved in anything, you have a guy from NRO at ten past eight, and the rest of the morning is full.”

“Great,” he yelled out the now empty doorway. He returned to his email and noted the time at the bottom of the screen said 0745.

Not two minutes passed, he was sipping the coffee and plodding through a report of some interesting stuff from Southeast Asia when the phone buzzed. He punched the speaker button, and heard Bobbie’s voice again.

“Boss, it’s your French alter ego calling from Paris. You have thirteen minutes, do you want to take it?”

Anderson considered. On the one hand, it was likely that Henri Broussard, his counterpart at the DGSE in Paris, was pissed as hell and assumed that the little trouble there two nights ago was a CIA operation. That might take quite a lot longer than thirteen minutes to solve, and he did not like to keep people waiting. On the other hand, he’d done a lot of work to cultivate relationships with all his counterparts around the world, and particularly the French guy, with some considerable success. Hard as this might be, being “out” just now would probably cause him bigger headaches later. After all, it was a CIA op that had trashed a Paris hotel suite and left 4 men dead or nearly so, with a trail of other questionable items cutting an even wider swath across town. This was not after all a call he hadn’t expected to come. Looking at his watch and the calendar, he congratulated himself that it had taken this long.

“Boss?” Bobbie yelled through the door.

“Yeah, sorry. I’ll take it,” he said, coming out of his reverie.

The phone line flashed, he pushed a button, and picked up the handset. He heard the chirps, beeps, and ping of the encryption devices negotiating, saw the notation on the small screen on the instrument indicate that they were “secure” and the name of the Director of DGSE clearly displayed.

“Randall, are you there? Henri Broussard calling.”

“Good morning, Henri, or good afternoon in your case. How good it is to hear from you. How is the weather in Paris?”

“Not as nice as it has been earlier this week, I might actually say it’s turning dreary, but it’ still warm by April standards. And in Washington?”

“A fine Spring day here, Henri. And how is your lovely wife?” It was always a necessity not to rush with people from the other side of the “great water,” even though it was often tedious. He thought he could sense that on this occasion Henri would have preferred to dispense with the pleasantries, but both men were too old and too experienced at the game they played to break the rules and get right down to business. So the dance continued.

“She is well, Randall, although I feel I should soon own half the boutiques of Paris. This week she is at our country house in Lorraine where I hope she can do less damage. How is your garden?”

“Thriving, Henri, thriving. I’ll have magnificent watermelons to show you the next time you come over.” The decent interval had elapsed, but he decided to wait and let Henri make the first move. An uncomfortable silence settled in for nearly ten seconds before the Frenchman cleared his throat.”

“Well, excellent Randall. Listen, we have had a rather exciting week here in Paris, and I, err, wanted to share some information with you, perhaps see if there is anything you might add to what we know. . ." He paused, and when Anderson said nothing, continued. "Three days ago there was a mugging near the Eiffel Tower, the victim was a Moroccan national who is here on a student visa but who now appears is not enrolled in any school. At first we thought this was a simple crime and the police were handling it in the usual way. Now of course our immigration people are also involved. Anyway, the following night, or more properly in the small hours of the morning of the next day, four Arab men walked into a hotel, where it appears from the ballistics they killed the night clerk, and were then killed themselves in a third-floor suite. They had no identification, but we have identified them all as wanted members of al-Qaeda, albeit small fish. They were all on “the list” we’ve been sharing—I have provided the names to your legal attaché, I’m sure your people will have it soon as well.” At this there was another brief pause. “Now, it appears to us that at least three interesting Americans also entered France in this same time period, but all of them have since vanished. Airport records show names like Smith, Jones, and Allen, which I’m hoping will ring a bell, as you would say, for you.”

Henri stopped here, and Anderson allowed another silence while he thought. It would have been very bad form to have asked directly if the operation had been done by the CIA; using the names was dangerously close to bad manners, but not quite over the line. It was well done, actually. He had not mentioned Cameron, which was good, although Anderson knew he’d traveled under his own name and the wily Frenchman certainly would know this. That meant they clearly suspected Cameron, which could be awkward for the boy someday, but not much to be done about that just now. It might be the subject of a deal later, and he put this away for future use. He decided that Henri sounded more curious than angry, perhaps interested in helping, but one could never be sure. He elected a middle ground.

“Hmm, well Henri, I’m sure there were hundreds of Americans entering Paris this week alone, maybe thousands, and God knows how common those names can be. I must congratulate you on your good fortune with the four Arabs, however. Have you any further leads to pursue? A pity everyone was killed.” Anderson had not said “no” to the veiled question of whether it had been a CIA op, but he had not said “yes” either. He could not of course confirm that it had been the CIA, but Henri would make his own conclusion. One of the things Anderson loved about this game was its complexity, it’s subtlety, but