Paris Match (11 page)

“That is only slightly hyperbolic. I want to know everything that can be found in a few hours. I want to know about his years in grade school, in high school, his church, if he had one, his hometown newspaper, and his school annual. I want to know about his academics and his athletics. I want to know who he lost his virginity with and if he knocked her up, and if so, what he did about it. I want to know everything his friends know about him, and his teachers and coaches, too.”

“How long do I have?” Brian asked.

“What time is it there?”

“Nine twenty-one.”

“You have until nine twenty-one tomorrow. I want it all e-mailed to me, and I may call you for more. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Have a good time.” She hung up and lowered the glass partition. “Sorry about that, Monique. Where are we headed?”

“To Chanel, in the Avenue Montaigne. There are a number of other fine shops in the same street.”

“Is Ralph Lauren there?”

“No, his store is in the Boulevard Saint-Germain.”

“Let’s be sure and go there after Chanel. His stuff is gorgeous, and it fits me.”

“
D
’
accord.
”

—

CHANEL WAS A BUST
; the fabrics seemed heavy, and things hung on her body like shrouds. She was shocked to find that a simple party top was €7000! Holly was not short of money, but she wasn’t short of good sense. “On to Boulevard Saint-Germain,” she said to the front seat of the Bentley.

—

AT RALPH LAUREN
, everything fell into place. She found a green dress that went with her auburn hair and gave her very nice breasts a free rein, and she found a white double-breasted dress that you could see coming a block away and never forget. She didn’t ask the prices, and she signed the credit card
chit without looking at it. She also found some sensational fuck-me shoes, a knockout coat, and a new piece of luggage to hold all the things she was going to take back to New York. What would the folks at the New York station say if they could see her with all this stuff? They thought she was a grubby, workaholic nerd—which, of course, she was—but she harbored an inner babe that had to get out once in a while, and Paris was an awfully good place to cut her loose. She rode back to l’Arrington a happy girl.

—

STONE WASN’T THERE
when she returned. She put away her purchases and checked her e-mail. Brian, bless his heart, had been on the job. He summarized:

“Johnny Simps, as he was called, was born and raised in a small Georgia town called Delano, and he was, from all accounts, a nasty little shit from the time he could toddle. He tortured small furry animals and any kid who was smaller than he was, which was most. In high school he was strikingly handsome—see the yearbook photo—but I talked to half a dozen of his schoolmates, and nobody had a good word to say about him. He was a pretty good high school quarterback—not good enough for college—who loved to play dirty and cheat, if he could. I don’t know how you figured it out, but he did get a girl pregnant in high school: she said it was rape, he said, consensual, and he got two older girls to beat her up. A judge ordered him to join the military or go to prison.

“According to a friend of hers, the girl lost the baby but got herself together, got a scholarship to college, and was salutatorian of her class. She did a cosmetic start-up during her twenties, and sold the business for a hundred and twenty million dollars in her thirties, and she’s now running her own business software company.

“Her friend swears she hired three guys to beat the shit out of Johnny Simps, and he arrived at basic training pre-wounded. Weirdly, he found a home in the army and straightened himself out. He had leadership skills and was promoted. He was also a crack shot with all sorts of weapons, and when he applied for Special Forces he got in and did well. An Agency officer spotted him in Afghanistan and encouraged him to apply, and he was accepted quickly. We don’t have a record, of course, because that’s sequestered, but the guy who recruited him said he did well at the Farm and afterward, even though he had a cruel streak, which his superiors overlooked. Says he was smart and street-smart and could run a team. His big fault was he was bad at languages, which, along with his lack of higher education, kept him at low-level tasks. He had no compunctions about wet work.

“I could spend more time on this, but I don’t think it would be productive. Tell me what you want me to do.”

Holly wrote back: “Brian, you done good, and it’s enough. See you in a couple of weeks.” She logged on to the Agency mainframe, called up Brian’s record, and wrote a glowing addendum, resolving to promote him when she got back.

She called Rick LaRose. “You got anything new on John, no middle initial, Simpson?”

“Uh, something came up. I haven’t even started.”

“Never mind, I think I’ve got enough to tell you that he was a tough piece of work who didn’t give a shit for anybody but himself. He did low-level wet work because it was all he was suited for, and he probably kept out of his station chief’s way. I suppose he could have been freelancing for anybody who came along, but he knew how the system worked, and I don’t think he would have left Berlin for Paris, except for somebody he knew and had probably worked with or for. You know anybody in Berlin?”

“Yeah, I know a guy in that station. He was fairly senior in Paris when I first got here.”

“You trust him?”

“I know he’s not a bad guy.”

“Can he keep his mouth shut?”

“Yeah, I believe he can.”

“Then get ahold of him, and the two of you find out who Simpson was working for and what he was sent here to do. I’m forwarding you an e-mail from one of my research people in New York that will give you some early background on the guy. It’s not pretty. You and your buddy fill in the time since.”

“I’m on it,” Rick said.

  
  
24

R
on Spencer got off the C17 at Andrews Air Force Base and pulled the plugs from his ears, which were still ringing. He had reposed on web seating for the ten hours from Berlin, and his back ached almost as much as his ears. There was a car, or rather a ratty van, waiting for him. He threw his duffel into the rear seat and was driven directly to Langley.

“No time for a shave and a shower?” he asked his driver.

“My orders are straight to Langley, no stops. You’ll be met.” He made a cell call. “One hour,” he said, then hung up.

Spencer was met in the big entrance hall to headquarters, walked past the wall of stars, representing CIA officers killed
in the line of duty, and taken down to a sub-basement, to a small, bare room with a large mirror covering most of one wall. He had no doubt that this was going to be an interrogation, and that observers sat on the other side of the one-way mirror.

He was kept waiting there for a long time, no coffee, no chat, no toilet. He checked, and the door was locked. Forty minutes later a tall, gray-haired mustached man in an ill-fitting suit walked into the room, dropped a thick file—his, he assumed—on the steel table with a thump, and started talking before he was in the opposite chair.

“Who the fuck is John, no middle initial, Simpson, and why the fuck did you hire him?”

“Who are you?” Spencer demanded.

“None of your goddamned business. Answer the question.”

“What question was that?”

“Don’t annoy me, son, or you’ll spend the next week in this room.”

“I didn’t hire Simpson. He turned up on the list of station employees I was given on my third day as chief.”

“Who hired him?”

“I’ve no idea. He was assigned—I assumed from Langley.”

“
Assumed?
Is that how you ran the station?
Assuming?
”

Spencer noticed that he had spoken in the past tense. “Did you ever run a station?”

“Three of them, and I’ll ask the questions here.”

“Did you interview every man and woman on the station staff?”

“I did, and I said I’ll ask the questions. Why didn’t you interview him?”

“Because he was a handyman, and I was a station chief. It was my deputy’s job.”

“What did your deputy tell you about Simpson?”

“That he was good at doing what he was told.”

“Did you ever send Simpson to Paris for any reason?”

Spencer opened his mouth to say no, then reconsidered. “I sent a four-man team to Paris once—a handyman was among them, and it could have been Simpson.”

“Who was the team leader?”

“A Frenchman named Jean-Noël Ragot.”

“Why was a Frenchman working Berlin?”

“He was raised in the States since childhood: French father, German mother. He was trilingual and good at his work. I relied on him.”

“And he took Simpson to Paris?”

“Maybe. I didn’t ask. Why don’t you ask him? He’s still in Berlin.”

—

ON THE OTHER SIDE
of the mirror, Lance Cabot picked up a phone. “Get me the Berlin station,” he said. “I don’t care what time it is, I want to speak to an officer named Jean-Noël Ragot, wherever he is.”

—

“WHAT WAS
the purpose of sending a team to Paris?” the interrogator asked.

“I don’t know that you’re cleared to know,” Spencer replied.

“I’m cleared to know whatever you know.”

“I worked in the Paris station for fifteen months, ten years ago. While I was there I got friendly with a source in the Paris police.”

“Friendly? Did you recruit him?”

“Sort of.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“He was never on the books. I never wrote down his name, we exchanged information when it was good for both of us.”

“Did you record or make notes on your meetings with him?”

“I made notes, but without mentioning his name. He was too smart to let himself be recorded.”

“What was his rank and name?”

“He was a
capitaine
, and I promised him never to reveal his name to anyone.”

“Don’t hand me that horseshit! Don’t you know where you are and how much trouble you’re in?”

Spencer slammed a palm down on the table. “I know exactly where I am, who I am, and what I’m going to tell you, if I feel like it. What I don’t know is who you are and on what authority you’re asking me to blow a man I gave my word to.”

The man opened his mouth to speak, but a buzzer went off, and he stopped. He got up, took the file on the table, and, without another word, walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

Spencer leaned back in his chair and yelled at the mirror: “I want to see the director now, and I want some coffee, black!”

Nothing happened for five minutes, then Lance Cabot walked into the room with a coffee mug in his hand, set it on the table, and arranged himself in the chair opposite. “Good morning, Ron,” he said pleasantly. “Did you have a good flight?”

Spencer picked up the mug and sipped the coffee before he replied. “Good morning, Director. No, I did not have a good flight.”

“Let’s talk a little about your old job in Paris,” Lance said.

—

HALF AN HOUR
later Lance said, “There’s a car waiting for you downstairs that will take you to the Four Seasons Hotel, in Georgetown. Get some sleep, have something to eat, get laid, if you can. You have a business-class seat to Berlin on the ten
A.M.
Lufthansa flight from Dulles tomorrow morning. Go back to work, and tell everyone in the station I said hello.” Lance got up and left the room; a moment later, the escort took Ron Spencer downstairs and put him in the rear seat of a Lincoln Town Car.

Spencer was shaking as he got into the car. He did deep breathing exercises all the way to the hotel.

  
  
25

S
tone awoke to the sound of the shower running, then he dozed off again. When he came to, Holly was bending over him, and she was, disappointingly, dressed. “You were just what a girl needed last night,” she said.

“Always glad to be of service,” he replied. “Why are you dressed so early? Are my services no longer desired?”

“They are, but Rick LaRose called, and I’ve got to run over to the embassy for a while,” she said. “I’ll be sure and be back for dinner. Book us somewhere special.”

“Done,” he said, then went back to sleep.

—

HOLLY TOOK
a cab to the embassy and let herself in through the side door with her ID card. She identified herself to a guard in a glassed-in cage, then entered the Paris station of the Central Intelligence Agency and walked briskly to the station chief’s office. “He’s with someone,” Rick’s secretary said, then Rick opened his office door and waved her inside.

“Good morning.” he said. “Thanks for coming over. Holly Barker, meet Jean-Noël Ragot of the Berlin station.” A tall, heavily built man in his forties stood. “Hi, Holly,” he said.

“Jean-Noël is the man I told you about,” Rick said. “We served together in this station some years ago.”

“Hello, Jean-Noël,” Holly said. “What brings you to Paris?”

“I don’t know,” Ragot replied.

Rick spoke up. “Jean-Noël got a call from Lance Cabot yesterday, ordering him here.”

“He didn’t say why,” Ragot added.

“Do I detect an accent?” Holly asked.

“Probably more than one,” Ragot replied. “I have a French father and a German mother, but I was raised in the States.”

Holly didn’t know what else to ask him. “So, what are we doing here, Rick?”

“Waiting for Lance to phone from Langley,” Rick said. “We assume he will, soon.”

Rick’s intercom buzzed and he picked up the phone. “Yes? Send him in.”

Lance Cabot walked into the room and dropped a leather duffel and his briefcase on the carpet. “Morning, all.” He flopped onto the sofa. “Now that we’re all assembled, let’s get down to it.”

They waited for him to go on, but he didn’t.