Direct Action (32 page)

10:23. He drove slowly past the garages on rue Joffre, then turned east and cruised the residential neighborhoods. Like many of Paris’s bedroom suburbs, the center of Cormeilles-en-Parisis had block after block of cookie-cutter apartment buildings. As you approached the outskirts, there were single-family dwellings that, except for their architectural style and their lack of SUVs in the driveways, could have been bedroom communities in Reston, or Yonkers, or Evanston.

10:30. He turned down rue Marceau, checking the map as he banked left. Margolis’s apartment house would be on rue General de Gaulle, which would be a left turn from rue Marceau about a hundred and fifty meters down the block. Tom eased up on the throttle and pulled to the curb to allow a delivery van to pass him.

That was strange. It was Saturday. In union-run France, deliveries were customarily done Monday through Friday, between eight and four. Tom sat at the curb and watched.

Just past rue Charles de Gaulle, the van U-turned and set up so that its back window faced the intersection. As it did, Tom gunned the BMW and drove past, noting and memorizing the license-plate number—another anomaly because the département d’immatriculation numeral on the plate was 64—which meant the van was registered in the Pyrenees, on the Spanish border. Strange for a delivery van with a Parisian address stenciled on its side. So Tom didn’t turn onto rue General de Gaulle. He went to the next block and turned right. Then he drove two blocks, turned right again, drove four blocks, and turned right again on a residential street named rue Baudin and continued on until he crossed rue Marceau.

Two blocks past rue Marceau, at Place Marie, he turned right again, veering onto avenue Parmentier, which ran more or less north–south from the edge of town to the railroad station. He pulled to the curb. Something was just not right. Tom reached for his cell phone. Then he shoved it back in his black leather jacket. Too easy to intercept calls. He’d handle this by himself.

He checked his six, then merged into the light traffic and steered the Beemer down avenue Parmentier. The street actually had some character. There were mature oaks and poplars lining the broad sidewalks. There were a couple of decent-looking restaurants, some nice cafés—and not a Starbucks or McDonald’s in sight, which is more than the Champs-Élysées could claim.

10:42. Tom drove until he came to rue General de Gaulle, turned right, drove half a block, found six feet of empty curb between cars, and pulled over. Motor idling, he reached into the right-hand saddlebag and withdrew a small pair of range-finding binoculars, which he trained down the street.

Two blocks ahead on the right-hand side stood Margolis’s apartment house—a four-story redbrick shoe box of a place. From the look of it, it had probably been built in the early seventies. If he stretched, Tom could just make out the van on rue Marceau. Now he refocused the binocs, panning them back and forth on rue General de Gaulle.

God damn. There were two surveillance teams on the street. Eight guys, evenly divided in a pair of black Citroën sedans with Paris-issued private plates parked on opposite sides of the street. The cars were facing each other so the men could chase down either end of rue General de Gaulle.

There was a second van, too. It was gray, and despite the Paris address on its side, the van had a license plate ending in 23, which meant it had been issued in Creuse. Van Two sat at the near intersection on...Tom checked his map... rue Roosevelt. It was a trap. And frigging Adam Margolis was the bait.

Tom ran his field glasses over the setup. How obvious could you get? They’d prepositioned for a by-the-numbers traffic stop. The vans would seal the street off, the sedans would block the car, and the bad guy would be toast. At least that’s the way it looked on paper. In real life, however, it was the eight dumbshits in the two Citroëns who’d be toast. Because they’d made a very basic error in their operational planning.

From the way the trap was set, it was obvious to Tom they’d assumed he’d be driving a car. Why? Because Henry J. NOTKINS and his boss, Harry Z. INCHBALD, were idiots.

In fact, Tom could make out INCHBALD in the front seat of the Citroën facing him. It was Liam McWhirter, all right, even though he was wearing a Harpo Marx wig, fake eyeglasses, and a light disguise prosthetic: still the same red-faced, porcine drunk. Tom adjusted the binoculars. Jeezus, McWhirter was even wearing his trademark wrinkled blue buttondown Brooks Brothers shirt under the tan Nautica golf jacket.

Tom panned the other seven, but found no familiar faces. He went back to McWhirter, who was holding his radio upside down, speaking into the mike out of the side of his mouth. Nothing like being obvious. What the hell were these guys trying to do?

Tom had told Margolis he’d be driving. He hadn’t said what he’d be driving. But Margolis assumed it would be a car—and that, no doubt, is what he’d told Harry Z.

Too bad. Tom shut the engine off, raised his visor, and adjusted the prosthetic. Then he pulled a detailed road map of Paris et environs out of his saddlebag. He sat sideways on the BMW’s saddle, arms crossed, studying the map, and worked out two alternate evasion and escape plans, just in case he’d need them.

10:55. Adam Margolis, CIA bait boy, appeared on the front steps of the apartment house. He was carrying a legal-size brown envelope. Tom adjusted the focus on his binoculars and looked into the windshield of the Citroën facing him. Harry Z. INCHBALD pointed at Margolis, smacked the driver’s arm, and spoke into the radio. The driver reached down and forward with his right hand. Turning the ignition key, no doubt. Tom watched the big sedan vibrate slightly as the driver gunned the engine. He focused on the other Citroën, and the two vans. All the drivers were revving engines. They were good to go.

So was Tom. But he didn’t go anywhere near Henry J. NOTKINS or Harry Z. INCHBALD. That move would have been pure Hollywood bull puckey. Sure, if Tom were being played by Brad Pitt in a Jerry Bruckheimer movie directed by Michael Ritchie, he’d gun the bike, roar down the street, veering at the last minute onto the sidewalk, where he’d knock a couple of fruit stands into next week, slalom past terrified knots of pedestrians, snatch the envelope out of Margolis’s hand, and thread the needle at the end of the blocked-off street (missing the blocking van by microns). Then, after using a parked car as a ski jump for the motorcycle, he’d skedaddle. The two Citroëns and two vans would careen after him, and there’d be a wild, six-minute wham-bam-slam jump-cut chase against oncoming traffic that would end with all the bad guys’ vehicles wrecked, Tom in the clear, and moviegoers on the edge of their seats.

So much for fantasy. Tom, who had once rear-ended his Agency vehicle and spent thirteen hours on the damn postaction paperwork justifying the expense, backed the bike around the corner, shut the motor off, then wrestled the Beemer onto its stand. Then he went back and surreptitiously observed McWhirter’s wannabe trap for another half minute. He made brief mental notes.

Then he pulled one of the two untraceable 4627 prepaid cell phones he was carrying out of his leather jacket, dialed 17, which is the two-digit tollfree number for the Paris region Gendarmerie Nationale, and, using a Marseillaise accent, told the police operator there was a kidnapping of an American diplomat in progress on rue General de Gaulle in Cormeilles-enParisis and that four vehicles were involved. Tom recited the license-plate numbers, described the positions of the Citroëns and the vans on the street, and hung up. Quickly, he pulled the battery out of the cell phone and stomped it with his boot heel. Without a battery, the phone’s position could not be tracked—even by DST.

He strolled back to the BMW, straddled the bike, rolled it off the stand, and turned the ignition key.
11:03. From six blocks away, Tom heard the approaching hee-haw of police cars before the four cars of Americans did. When he saw the two black SWAT vans heading toward rue General de Gaulle, he knew the gendarmes weren’t taking any chances. Before Harry Z. INCHBALD’s team knew what was happening, they’d be swarmed by submachine-gun–toting cops in black fatigues, pulled out of the vehicles, and proned on the ground.
11:04. Tom raised the visor of his helmet, removed the prosthetic, peeled all the remaining cement off his skin, and dropped everything into a plastic baggie, which got stored in one of the saddlebags. Then he backed up the bike, turned it around, and rode to avenue Parmentier. There, he found a café, parked, pulled off his helmet, secured it to the saddle, went to the bar, and ordered a double café crème and a pain au chocolat.

11:58
A
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. Tom paid for the food, returned to the bike, and drove at a leisurely pace back to rue General de Gaulle. He circled the area so he could observe the street from both ends. There was no sign of the Americans—or the police. He drove a couple of blocks farther east, then pulled to the curb and dialed the cell-phone number Adam Margolis had given him.

It was answered after three rings. “This is Adam.”
“Hi, Adam. Guess who.”
There was a pause. “You son of a bitch.”
“What in heaven’s name are you talking about?” Tom played the inno-

Too bad. The kid obviously had no sense of humor. Well, the problem was endemic at Langley these days. They’d all forgotten how to laugh at themselves.

Tom kicked the bike into gear and headed back to St. Denis. At least one thing was clear from the morning’s exercise: 4627 was now officially persona non grata at Paris station.

10 NOVEMBER 2003
2:45
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223 RUE DU FAUBOURG ST. HONORÉ

TOM FLIPPED HIS CELL PHONE CLOSED. “Two containers addressed to Yahia Hamzi’s Boissons Maghreb cleared customs at Orly this morning. He sent his truck to the zone de fret. Our guy at Orly says the bill of lading lists wine and olives. The containers came via Air France cargo. Five pallets.”

“Good.” Reuven Ayalon drummed his fingers on the desk. “Now we wait to see what Hamzi does.” He punched a number into his cell phone. “Let’s see where he is now.” Reuven waited, then spoke in rapid Arabic. He listened, then flipped the phone shut. “He’s still at lunch—he drove to Rimal and he’s eating alone. But he just took a phone call.”

Antony Wyman looked over at Tom. “We’re set, right?” Tom tapped his cell phone. “Ready and waiting.” Reuven had engineered a false-flag op. He’d decided that the Corsicans would stick out in Pantin. And so, as Reuven explained it to Tom and Tony Wyman, he’d had Milo’s Corsican Mafia contacts recruit a couple of gangbangers from an Algerian drug gang to do the snatch. It was a straight cash deal. The Algerians were told Hamzi was behind in his vig payments and the Corsicans wanted him. Payment was two thousand euros in used banknotes: a grand in advance and the rest on the safe delivery of Hamzi and his Mercedes to a prearranged location in Malakoff, a southern suburb of Paris convenient to the périphérique.

From there, the Corsicans would drive Hamzi to a location in Bagnolet, where Reuven and Tom would meet them. Reuven would set the hook— tell Hamzi he was being flown to Israel for interrogation—then administer a dose of ketamine potent enough to knock the Moroccan out for a couple of hours. The rest would be up to Salah.

Who didn’t have a lot of time to break the Moroccan. If the explosives were indeed in the Orly shipment, then Ben Said was almost certainly in Paris. And he’d want to get his hands on the goods so he could finish rigging the bombs. The interrogation process had to be completed in a matter of hours.

2:52. Tony Wyman paced the research room like a caged animal. He was uncharacteristically nervous. He’d spent the weekend working to unravel the Adam Margolis fiasco—and he didn’t like what he’d discovered. The order to lure Tom Stafford into a compromising situation had come straight from the seventh floor. That actually made sense in a perverted sort of way. If the seventh floor could prove Tom had acted improperly, it could arbitrarily yank his clearance. That would, in turn, put 4627’s entire CIA contract in jeopardy—a loss of more than $30 million over the next twenty months.

But why jettison 4627? It was one of the few sources of accurate and actionable intelligence product coming to Langley these days. Tony debriefed Tom, of course—but without concrete results. They’d even done a chronology and created a time line, starting when Shahram said he’d taken the surveillance pictures of Imad Mugniyah and Tariq Ben Said on rue Lambert and ending with the Iranian’s murder. But nothing made sense.

Oh, they were being gamed. Instinctively, Wyman understood that. But he had no real idea what the game was, or why it was being played. He marched over to the long walnut table and looked down at the chronology again. There was something missing from this puzzle. But what?

Tom had set up an operations center in the 4627 research room over the weekend. They’d had secure phone terminals, three computers, video equipment, and a color laser printer brought in from upstairs. The room itself was pretty secure. There were no windows, the outer walls were well insulated and had white sound running through conduits, and 4627’s technicians swept the place twice a day. He looked across the room to where MJ was Googling something or other on one of the computers.

She’d insisted on accompanying Tony Wyman to the office. “I’m going crazy in that damn hotel room,” is how she’d put it. Wyman agreed readily. She’d already proven herself to be an asset. When she and Tom married, Wyman had already decided, they’d become 4627’s first tandem.

Wyman looked over at her. “MJ?”
She swiveled her chair to face him. “Tony?”
“Do me a favor, will you?” He tapped the folder containing the

chronology. “Take a look at this and tell me what’s missing.” “No problem.”
She logged off the computer, went to the sideboard, and made herself a

mug of hot chocolate, which she carried to the side table sitting next to one of the leather club chairs. Then she retrieved the two-page chronology, took a yellow legal pad and a pencil from the long walnut table, dropped into the chair, pulled her reading glasses out of her hair, and stuck them on the end of her nose.