Dark Zone (30 page)

Then he called the sister of LaFoote’s friend Vefoures, whom LaFoote had spoken to the other day in the car via cell phone.

“I’m a friend of Monsieur LaFoote,” he told her in French when she picked up. “I’m afraid I have bad news. Very bad news.”

When the woman didn’t answer, Karr told her that LaFoote had died and the police were investigating. When he finished, the woman asked what sort of friend he was.

“A new one,” said Karr, laughing—but only for a moment. “I admired Monsieur LaFoote very much. We were working together on something. I’d like to ask you some questions about it. And about your brother.”

“I don’t know much,” she said. And before Karr could say anything else she burst out crying. Her wails continued for quite a while; finally she hung the phone up without saying anything else. Karr decided the best thing to do was let her be.

Shortly before nine, Karr went over to Gare du Nord, the train station where he was supposed to meet LaFoote. He took two Marines from the embassy detail with him in plainclothes, hoping that whoever had killed the old French agent would be looking for him. But if someone was, neither Karr nor the Marines could spot the person. The Art Room grumbled about the lousy French video system, which covered only a small portion of the station, but even before the train from Aux Boix came in it was clear to Karr that the station wasn’t being watched.

The Marines liked the cloak-and-dagger stuff well enough to suggest he join them for a drink when they went off-duty. He took a rain check, heading back to the embassy to see how the French had reacted to the Desk Three briefing on the Eiffel Tower threat.

The reaction could be summed up in one word:
Impossible!

Despite the detailed brief Desk Three had prepared, despite the high-level contacts and the comprehensive information, the French simply didn’t believe that the threat was anything more than American imagination run amok. Plots against the Eiffel Tower were very popular among crack-pots and terrorist wannabes, but no serious campaign against the tower had ever been undertaken. And besides, as far as the French were concerned, Middle Eastern terrorists had no beef with them—France was a vigorous defender of Arab rights. Yes, there might be some dissension of late as the French moved to work more closely with their American allies, but why would anyone want to destroy the Eiffel Tower?

Karr couldn’t really blame the French for not taking the threat seriously. He didn’t see all of the connections himself. Johnny Bib’s team had developed a theory that a car thief named Mussa Duoar had been working on a plan to topple the Eiffel Tower with a massive bomb blast at the base of the monument. Duoar seemed an unlikely terrorist: the man made a tidy living selling stolen automobiles, a fact that everyone in France except for the police seemed to know. More than likely the police did know it but had been paid to keep quiet; in any event, Duoar had escaped prosecution even though he had been investigated several times. Perhaps it helped that many of his cars seemed to have been stolen in Germany and England and then transported to France; few Frenchmen were the actual victims of his crimes.

Even with the lightweight high-yield explosive Vefoures had been working on, the analysts calculated that it would take a medium-sized bus to carry what was needed to destroy one of the four legs of the tower. That was a
lot
of explosives.

However, some of the materials needed to make the explosive had been purchased by a dummy corporation Duoar used in his stolen-car ring.

The CIA and State Department intelligence people at the embassy were divided about how real the threat was. Karr listened to them debate and tried to remain neutral, despite their prodding. Finally he just got up and left the embassy, walking out of the grounds and down the Champs Elysées toward the Ritz. He checked in with the Art Room as he walked.

“Nothing new,” said Telach. “You’d better get to bed.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

He turned off the communications system before she could protest.

58

It was the most beautiful paint job Mussa Duoar had ever seen. The blue swept toward the front of the truck, a wave of the ocean captured on the steel. Above it, the yellow swirl brightened the dark interior of the garage; it was as if the truck glowed with an intense fire.

Appropriate,
thought Mussa.

It was all moving together now, his many strings pulled from their different directions. Four men came around to the back of his pickup truck and took the heavy cart from the back. Mussa’s heart jumped as they nearly dropped it onto the concrete—it was protected against accidental shocks and there was no way for it to detonate accidentally, but even so ...

They walked the box to the back of the van. The box was twice as heavy as the case it was dummied up to look like. But except for the wheels, which were slightly bigger (and considerably sturdier) than the wheels on the cart it was replacing, the difference would not be noticeable to anyone who didn’t try to push it.

Or open it.

“Careful, please,” Mussa said, following along behind the case. “Careful now. This has traveled a long way over many months.”

The men slid it into the specially prepared compartment at the back of the van. Mussa once again felt his heart thump as one of the carriers lost his grip. But the others held the case firmly, and it was soon in the back of the truck. Five other carts, these a bit lighter than the first but still a hundred or so pounds heavier than the carts they were to replace, were loaded in behind it. Mussa examined the vehicle as the rear door was closed and locked. The heavy-duty shocks and suspension kept it from sagging; it, too, looked like the genuine article.

Very good. Very, very good.

“Listen, all of you,” he said loudly. “Gather around—I appreciate your work.”

He set down the satchel he’d carried in, bending to unlatch it. Just as his fingers touched the clasp he stopped and straightened.

“Anyone smell gas?” he asked. “Natural gas? Is the line off?”

The workers looked around at one another. There was a gas line to the garage, but it was used exclusively for the heaters and hadn’t been turned on for the winter season yet.

“Call the boiler people to check it,” he told one of the workers. “Call now. Get them to come.”

The man looked at Mussa as if he were crazy. It was nearly midnight.

“Perhaps I am being overly cautious, but I am always concerned about your welfare,” said Mussa. “Well, make the call so you can all celebrate. Go ahead. Please. Put my nervous mind to rest.”

He waited until the man had picked up the phone to bend back to the satchel.

“I promised extra consideration,” Mussa said. “And I think you’ll find I am as good as my word. Sommes” he added, calling over the foreman. “You divide this up as you see fit.”

The satchel was filled with American twenty-dollar bills. They were counterfeit but good enough to fool these men and probably many others. Sommes took the satchel and began counting as the others gathered around.

Mussa went to the truck and started it up. He rolled down the window and called to the guards who were just outside. “Come. Get your bonuses. It’s all right. Don’t be left out. You deserve a reward as well. God bless you all.”

The two men looked at each other and then trotted inside. Mussa took his foot off the brake, easing down the slight curb from the building into the driveway. Outside, he watched for a moment in his rearview mirror, making sure that no one had left the building. When he had gone about one hundred meters, he reached into his jacket pocket and pressed the button on a small radio-controlled device, igniting the explosives he had planted beneath the floor before the project began.

59

“Does he have many good days?” asked the doctor.

“Every so often,” said Rubens. He told himself it wasn’t a lie—though it did beg the question of what a good day actually was.

The doctor nodded grimly.

“He’s a genius of a man,” Rubens said.

“Yes, I’m sure he was.”

The past tense stung Rubens, but he couldn’t really argue with it. The doctor glanced at the General’s court-appointed attorney standing nearby and then continued the examination. The man called himself a gerontologist; it sounded like one of those baloney specialties, but apparently he was a medical doctor, since his card had “MD” after his name.

In Rubens’ opinion, the examination was perfunctory at best. The doctor listened to the General’s heart, looked at his eyes, asked him to cough, examined his ears, then read his medical chart for a second time. When he was finished, he sat down on the bed next to the General and asked how he was feeling.

Not much of a question, except that the General answered by talking about General Grant’s campaign at the end of the Civil War. Even this was disjointed; the General stopped in the middle of a sentence and asked about Corey. The doctor glanced at Rubens, but Corey was a name even Rubens had never heard before.

He might have lied, but he couldn’t come up with one quickly enough.

The doctor asked a few more questions—they ranged from details of the General’s childhood to what he had just had for dinner—but the General remained silent, staring out the window. Finally, his lawyer suggested that perhaps it was time to go.

“They’re working on new drugs, aren’t they?” said Rubens as the three men walked down the hall.

“Difficult area,” said the doctor.

“Yes. But there’s hope.”

“We have to fully understand the mechanism of the disease—and the underlying structures it affects. But someday, yes.”

Rubens knew better than to ask if someday was in the General’s lifetime.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” said Rebecca, charging down the hall toward them. “Has the doctor come?” When she belatedly realized who Rubens was talking to, her face shaded red. “Doctor, I’m Rebecca Rosenberg, the General’s daughter. I’m sorry I’m late. It couldn’t be helped.”

Rubens almost snickered when she called herself by her maiden name, instead of Stein.
That
was a new development—undoubtedly related to the trial.

What did she possibly hope to gain? Didn’t she have enough money? How far did greed take a person these days?

“That’s quite all right, Ms. Rosenberg,” said the gerontologist. “Your father’s lawyer and Dr. Rubens have been showing me around.”

“Actually, it’s
Mr
. Rubens,” said Rubens, embarrassed at being mistaken.

“Billy does have two doctorates,” said Rebecca. “Including one my father urged him to get.”

“He always encouraged me,” said Rubens, unsure why she had mentioned that.

Was this all about jealousy? Maybe it wasn’t about money or making up with her father—maybe it was about getting back at Rubens for being close to her father.

“He was really an incredible man,” Rubens told the doctor. “I owe him a great deal.”

“I’m sure.”

The attorney gave Rubens another of his forced smiles, then nudged the doctor forward down the hall, asking when his report would be ready. Rubens heard him reply that it would be ready by the morning.

“I’m not going to move him,” Rebecca told Rubens. “Not to Mount Ina.”

Rubens wasn’t sure what to say.

“Mount Ina is a better facility,” he admitted. “But the General would rather die than live where his cousin lives.”

“I agree. Here.” She reached into her pocket. “I just want you to know, that if you’re concerned . . .” Her voice broke, but she continued. “We don’t get along, I know. But you and Daddy do. Always. And ... you care about him. When I started this, I wasn’t sure that was true. I thought because the agency wanted to control him—I know that they do, so you don’t have to deny it. But I don’t think you do. So I just want you to know, that when we do get the decision, you can still visit. Here. No strings.”

Rubens took the paper and began to read it. It was a letter on her lawyer’s stationery, attesting that she believed Rubens was a good friend to her father and should be allowed visiting privileges similar to those he had enjoyed as custodian. It was signed and notarized.

He suspected a trick. He looked up after reading it, but Rebecca was gone.

60

Karr took the bottle of sparkling water and stepped away from the bar, forcing his eyes away from the doorway. It was 11:30. Deidre hadn’t shown up.

The Ritz did have a bar, an expensive one called the
Bar Vendôme.

Probably a great place to get stinking drunk,
Karr thought. Too bad he couldn’t do that while he was on an operation.

Too stinking bad.

61

Mussa backed the van into the garage, nudging the gas for just a moment after slapping the vehicle into park. It was an old habit, taught by his uncle when he’d learned to drive. He’d heard a dozen times that it was bad for the car—and certainly unwise in a garage—but the habit was difficult to break.

Mussa got out of the truck. A surge of paranoia crept over him as he locked the garage, and he walked around the outside of the rented house, carefully checking to make sure that no one was lurking in the shadows. Satisfied, he let himself in, then checked each room, including the closets and under the beds, scanning for bugs. Satisfied, he sat in the living room and turned on the AOL instant messaging device he had obtained specifically for tonight. There was one message waiting:

Yes.

It meant that the brothers were ready to proceed.

Tomorrow’s itinerary was now set. Even if one element failed, the overall effect would be a masterpiece.

Mussa turned off the device and slid it into his pocket. He set three alarm clocks to wake him; one was a radio, another a CD player attached to a clock, the last a windup device that would go off even if the electricity failed. Little things could undo even the most elaborate plot, and Mussa did not intend to be undone.

Nostalgia replaced paranoia; he thought of the great difficulties he had overcome during the past few years and even the slights that would now be avenged.