The Case Officer (29 page)

Before Mac handed him one of the
thirty-inch concrete cores, he made sure that his shirt had absorbed whatever
blood he had lost, and that he had not stained anything in Collette’s
apartment. Then Mac passed the first concrete core to Culler, who positioned it
in one of the grooves at the bottom of the hole. The process was repeated until
all the grooves at the bottom of the hole were filled with cores. Then they
tackled the concrete blocks.

They lifted the first block and
gently jockeyed it into position to fill the hole next to the safe, and then
they positioned the second one behind it so that it was flush with the rest of
the interior wall. Culler slid the remaining cores into the honeycomb holes
around its sides and top. “That’s the most of it,” he said, stepping back. “Now
I need some of that quick-drying plaster, and we’re almost done. Use that pan
there with the steel cores, and mix a batch. You can do that, can’t you, Mr.
Case Officer?”

“We’re trained to do anything you
guys can do,” Mac laughed, though he made sure to suppress the volume down from
hearty to a low chuckle. He removed the steel cores from the pan and placed
them on the drop cloth. “What do you want to do with these?” he asked.

“Take’em with us for, you know,
souvenirs…”

Mac returned from the kitchen
with the pan full of plaster and placed it in front of Culler. “There you are,
my friend, perfectly mixed; the consistency of heavy cream. What do you think
of that?”

Culler dipped a trowel into the
mixture to test it. “Not bad for a case officer.” He went about plastering the
hole while Mac continued to monitor for sounds of entry in the office on the
other side of the wall and listening for approaching footsteps or other noises
that might signal someone out in the hall and approaching the apartment.
This
would be a fine time for a neighbor to come borrow a cup of sugar
. But he
heard only silence in the hallway and nothing in the Chinese office on the
other side of the wall.

When Santos was through, the wall
was as smooth as before. He finished drying it with a hair dryer, coated it
with wallpaper glue, and re-glued the wallpaper in place. Then they cleaned up
after themselves, replaced the furniture, compared the photographs they had
taken before they started with the way things looked now, and packed up their
gear in the suitcases. They had been in the apartment for less than four hours.

Culler Santos insisted on
carrying the duffel bag back to the car. MacMurphy got the heavy suitcases this
time.

Chapter Seventy-Three

T
he voice-activated recorder in
the tiny listening post apartment remained silent throughout the weekend; no
one entered Huang’s office.

H
uang might have been enjoying a
leisurely weekend away from the office, but MacMurphy was very busy.

After leaving the apartment, he
and Culler dumped everything in the trunk of the rental car and drove out of the
area. They breathed easier once they had turned the corner and felt sure they
had been unobserved in their work. Success! Success in accomplishing their
mission without anyone any the wiser—and that included not only Huang and his
people but Berger and his, not to mention the French security detail for the
embassy.

Mac dropped off Culler and his
gear at the embassy and then drove back to his safehouse in the 17th
arrondissement
with the duffel bag. There he separated the money into three equal piles and
filled three large Samsonite suitcases. He did not want to risk being caught
with all of the money in a duffel bag. Splitting it up reduced the bulk and
increased the chances of getting at least most of the money to its destination.

He delivered one of the suitcases
to Le Belge that same afternoon and instructed him to depart immediately by
train for Bern, Switzerland. He was told to deposit the contents of the
suitcase, approximately 17 million Euros, in a numbered account (Mac wrote the
number on a slip of paper and made certain Le Belge tucked it away safely in
his billfold) in the main branch of the Credit Suisse Bank when it opened on
Monday morning. He was to ask for a Herr Merkel who would be expecting him. He
was also instructed to remain in Bern for at least ten days following the
deposit, and to tell no one, not even his wife, where he was.

But that last order was difficult
for Pol Giroud to follow. Unlike François, Pol was a devoted family man, and he
simply could not go away for almost two weeks and not tell Marie where he was
going. She would have begged. She would have cried. He could not abide her
tears. And it went against everything he believed. One isn’t supposed to
disappear on one’s wife. So he did the next best thing. He told her he was
going to Bern on secret business, gave her the name of the hotel where he
planned to stay, and then swore her to secrecy. She promised not to tell
anyone, not even the girls.

It would prove to be a fatal
error in judgment.

Chapter Seventy-Four

F
rançois returned from Trouville
with Collette and her mother late Sunday afternoon. He delivered the ladies to
their apartment and admired the fact that was no visible evidence of the
operation. He even stayed for an aperitif just to examine the wall more
closely. When
Maman
retired to her room, worn out from the trip, and
Collette went to “freshen up a bit,” François got up and hastily examined the
wall…but he could not detect a sign of intrusion.
Maybe they had to abort it,
he thought.

After leaving the women, he
killed some time in a café before his scheduled meeting with MacMurphy at
seven.

Mac picked him up on the corner
of Rue d’Assas and Rue Joseph Bara in Montparnasse. He drove aimlessly around
the neighborhood while he briefed François. “That suitcase in the back seat
contains one-third of the money in the safe, about 17 million Euros. Don’t lose
it.”

“
Mon Dieu!
You did get
it,” exclaimed François, a wide grin spread across his face. He looked with
admiration at his case officer.

“Of course we got it. What did you think we were doing in there?
Holding a church service? Now, listen, I need you to take the suitcase to Bern
and deposit the money in this account in the Credit Suisse branch office there.
Be there at exactly two o’clock tomorrow afternoon and ask for a Herr Merkel.
He’ll take care of you.”

Mac handed him a slip of paper with the account number on it. “Will you
do that for me?”

“
Mais bien sûr, mon vieux
.
May I take the Mercedes and a girlfriend?”

Mac shook his head in
frustration. “You may take the rental car, but no women. Absolutely no women. Go
alone, and don’t tell a soul where you are going. Deposit the money on Monday
afternoon at exactly two o’clock, and then get out of Bern and go someplace
other than Paris for a couple of weeks.”

“Villefranche? May I go to my
yacht in Villefranche?”

“Perfect,” said MacMurphy. “The
yacht will be perfect. Go for a cruise. Get out of the area and stay away for a
few days. Don’t come back to Paris until I give you the okay.
Ça va
?”

“
Oui
.
Ça va bien
.
As you know,
mon vieux
, I prefer not to be in Paris during the summer.
It is too warm and boring for my taste. I am here only because you asked me to
be here.
Ah oui
, one last thing….”

“What’s that?”

“May I take a girlfriend on my
yacht? It is so lonely on the water, Mac…”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less of you, François. Just keep quiet
about this Bern business.” Mac pulled over to the curb to let François out.
“I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.”

“
Au revoir
, Mac.” François
jumped out of the car and disappeared into the evening crowd with the suitcase.

Chapter Seventy-Five

T
he third suitcase was in the
trunk of Mac’s rental car beside an overnight bag. He had spent Saturday
evening with Wei-wei and had told her about his plans. Now he was packed and
ready to leave Paris for Bern until things settled down. He promised to call
her every evening to stay in touch. He wondered how long it would take Huang to
discover the theft.

T
he voice-activated recorder in
the LP apartment stuttered at the sound of a door banging open at exactly
eight-seventeen Monday morning. It began recording about two hours later when
Lim arrived. A rough transcript of the conversation read in part:

LIM: “Morning, boss.”

HUANG: “Good morning, Lim. Sit
down.”

LIM: “We have some initial
readouts of the surveillance on MacMurphy. Do you have time now or should I
come back later?”

HUANG: “Now is fine. What have
you got?”

LIM: “Very interesting. He has
been very active over the past couple days. Back and forth to the embassy many
times. Often with a heavy-set fellow. For sure another officer because he also has
access to the embassy, where he stays for hours.” (Long pause and rustling of
papers.) “Here it is. They had dinner together several times. I mean with
MacMurphy and his girlfriend. You know. I told you about her. Ryan is her name.
We have her address. MacMurphy sleeps there sometimes.”

HUANG: “Where does he go when he
does not sleep there?”

LIM: “We do not know yet. He is
very clever. Sometimes it is very difficult for the team to follow him. And you
told me to tell the team not to get too close. So it’s difficult for them. Very
difficult…”

HUANG: “I know, I know. But you
have the girl’s address. That is good. Good start. What else?”

LIM: “We had a little luck.
Remember I told you he was running around town a lot during the daytime, and
our team keeps losing him?”

HUANG: “Yes. You said it looked
like he was running surveillance detection routes.”

LIM: “Right. Probably before
meetings with his assets. Well, maybe I think we got a couple of them.”

HUANG: “Terrific.”

LIM: “Like I say, there has been
plenty of activity recently. He runs around a lot. Not as cautious as before.
You know how it is. Too many meetings, get a little sloppy....”

HUANG: “Yes, we all know how that
goes.”

LIM: “He meets one guy all the
time in the Montparnasse area on the left bank. Another guy he meets in the
Ternes area on the right bank.”

HUANG: “Great! Can you identify
them?”

LIM: “Look at these photos. The
fat one is the Ternes area guy. The skinny one is the Montparnasse area guy.

HUANG: “This is real good work,
Lim. Please congratulate the team for me.”

LIM: “That’s not all, boss. The
team was able to follow the guys home so we got names and addresses too. The
team says these guys are easy to follow. They are on them now.”

HUANG: “Wonderful. But the
question remains, what is MacMurphy up to here in Paris? Do you have any
clues?”

LIM: “Unfortunately, no. But now
we know those two guys, and the team is on them all the time, non-stop. We will
find out what he is up to for sure.”

HUANG: “Thank you Lim. You have
done excellent work. Please brief me on this case every morning at this time
from now on. We must find out what MacMurphy is up to.”

LIM: “Okay, boss. See you later.”

HUANG: “Thank you, Lim. Goodbye.”

Chapter Seventy-Six

H
uang would get his answer quicker
than he anticipated. At four-thirty that afternoon, two cleaning ladies arrived
to dust and vacuum Huang’s office. “
Eyeah
,” the skinny old Cantonese
woman running the vacuum cried out, “What is this mess?” She pointed to a pile
of white plaster dust and chips on the carpet by the safe.

Huang looked up from behind his
desk in time to see the shocked expression on the woman’s face as she peered
behind the safe. “
Eyeah, yamma coucho ahhh
,” she wailed, “The wall is
coming down! Look, look, Mr. Huang, the wall is crumbling!”

A
t that precise moment, MacMurphy stood
in front of the young receptionist at the Banque Credit Suisse in Bern. “May I
see Herr Merkel, please. He is expecting me. My name is Martin. Frederick
Martin.”

He had driven a circuitous route,
and his car had been rented in alias. He was quite certain that there was no
surveillance following him. He had driven carefully, not wanting to be stopped
for any traffic infraction such as speeding. And he had worried and wondered as
he drove…worried whether François and Le Belge had gotten their portion of the
money safely to the bank, wondered when Huang would discover the theft.

On reaching the bank, he relaxed
a little, but he still was concerned about his two associates and about Huang’s
eventual discovery of the missing Euros. He didn’t know that, even now, Huang
was in the midst of learning the money had been filched.