Yes, tools. In this city, a nice apartment in central Paris was a tool of the trade. Because in the style-conscious City of Light, where you lived, how you dressed, and how fluent in French you were all mattered. No self-respecting functionary from the Ministry of Defense was going to take his chicly turned-out wife for cocktails chez Margolis if they had to take two or three metros from their flat in the seventh, then ride the local from Gare St. Lazare twenty-five kilometers northwest to some anonymous suburb, only to sit on a daybed, sip California jug wine, and eat microwaved rumaki bought at the embassy commissary. The French weren’t big on white Zinfandel and pizza rolls.
Worse: if the kid worked the normal embassy hours, which was nine to six, how the hell was he supposed to run a two-hour cleaning route, meet with an agent for a couple of hours, then run a second cleaning route, go back to the office and write a report,then take a cab all the way home because there were no trains to Cormeilles-en-Parisis at two in the morning?
The problem was ubiquitous. CIA spent billions willy-nilly on technical espionage but counted every penny when it came to setting up their clandestine service personnel in a manner that would allow them to operate effectively. CIA’s junior case officers, for example, were regulated by the same draconian rules on housing and expenses as their State Department colleagues. So everyone below the GS-15/FSO-1 level lived on the cheap. Housing was assigned by the number of people and grade. Young Adam Margolis, who was single-the studio apartment was Tom’s evidence-was obviously a GS-10 or perhaps an 11. Income? Seventy thousand dollars. It might sound like a lot, but it wasn’t enough to do the job in this expensive, cosmopolitan city, where each dollar bought only eighty euro cents-sometimes less.
“Got a car?”
Blink-blink.“I only wish.”
“What about a motorcycle?”
The kid looked at him with wounded eyes. “I never learned how to ride.”
Margolis was screwed. Full stop, end of story. Because the bottom line, when you crunched the numbers, was that central Paris was a financial impossibility. Therefore, Adam Margolis, American spy, would be forced to live in roughly three hundred square feet of space at a rent that could not exceed four hundred dollars a month and compelled by further economic constraints to commute by public transportation to and from his domicile. And entertainment? Tom guessed the bean counters at Langley had screamed bloody murder the first time the kid spent eighty-five euros taking a developmental to lunch.Naturellement young Adam Margolis didn’t meet anyone. And just asnaturellement, therefore, the intelligence product he produced-if he produced any intelligence product at all-was going to be second or third rate at best.
Sure, you could recruit agents on the cheap in Cairo, Dushanbe, or Kinshasa. And Tom had spent his share of time in the City of Light’s Lebanese and Algerian restaurants, steakhouse chains, and fast-food cafés. You fit the level of entertainment to the lifestyle and social comfortability of the person you were trying to seduce. But there were times when a bottle of champagne at the George V or a meal at La Butte Chaillot were a necessity-and those cost money. So did a car-or even a motorcycle. Without your own transportation, going black became a lot more complicated. By forcing the kid to exist under such incredibly stupid limitations, Langley was dooming him to failure.
Tom led Margolis back through the maze of barriers, turned the corner onto the rue Boissy-d’Anglas, and headed north. He thought about stopping in the bar of the Sofitel, but marched Margolis past the entrance. He didn’t want Margolis running into anyone he knew. Better to take him somewhere he’d never been. Someplace quiet.
3.54P.M. Tom ushered Margolis through the doorway of Le Griffonnier, walked past the neat bar to one of the small round tables close to the rear staircase, pulled out a chair, and gestured. “Please.”
Margolis dropped obediently into the chair and swiveled to take a look around as Tom slid between the marble-topped tables and sat on the tan leather banquette, his back to the wall. “Nice,” the kid said. “Nice place.”
“Quiet,” Tom said. “Private.” The proprietor, Robert Savoye, was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Rufus, the friendly wirehaired griffon who’d been retired from hunting because his nose had given out. These days, he lived in the bar and grew fat on snippets of cheese and sausage supplied by willing customers.
“So,” Tom said, “what would you like?”
“I’ve developed a taste for red wine lately,” Margolis said, almost guiltily.
“Nothing wrong with that. Had lunch?”
The youngster sighed. “Uh-huh. Commissary.”
“Gotcha.” Tom nodded. He signaled for the barman, ordered somesaucisson sec, a selection of cheeses, a plate of sliced tomato, a bowl of baguette slices with butter on the side, and a bottle of Bourgueil-a 1997 Vaumoreau from Pierre-Jacques Druet.
When the man withdrew, Tom said, “So much for red wine.” He grinned. “And what vintage are you?”
Margolis gave him a shy smile. “I was accepted into DI in ’99. Went in right after grad school.”
The light in Tom’s brain switched on. The kid was one of Langley’s analysts turned case officers. “Where?”
“GW-did my undergraduate work there, too.”
“Major?”
“Poly sci. Minor in Spanish lit.”
“Why make the choice you did?”
“The truth? Kinda because I was at loose ends. Didn’t know what to do. Had no trade, really, although I really enjoy writing analysis. Plus, there was the patriotic thing. My father spent thirty years in the Navy. Retired as an O-6-a captain. My choice made my folks proud.”
“Didn’t you want to follow in your dad’s footsteps?”
“Nope. Or go to State, either. He was an attaché in Chile for three years. I went to school there. I dealt with embassy people a lot. It wasn’t something I wanted to do. So the other thing, it just, you know, made sense.”
“How are you finding it?”
“I liked the writing part a lot. I was assigned to L.A. Division,” Margolis sighed. “Even did one tour in Guatemala. But after 9/11, they came around and sorta kinda ordered a bunch of us to volunteer for DO training at the Farm.”
“‘Sorta kinda ordered’?”
Margolis leaned across the table. “You know how it was back then. Seventh floor leaked all sorts of stories about how we were gearing up, increasing the operational side-paramilitary and case officers. So they had to have bodies-and I was one of ’em.”
“How did you feel about the change of disciplines?”
“Not especially comfortable. But they said it was fast-track.” He shrugged. “I got my pseudo-Henry J. NOTKINS-and they put us through the training in eight weeks. Then I worked the desk at L.A. for six months-felt good about that. But then they assigned me to Paris and I went through eight weeks of French-language training. Came over to the embassy”-the kid counted on his fingers-“nine months ago.”
“How’re you doing?”
“Everything’s a lot tougher than I thought. Plus, they make it hard for you to do your work.” He leaned in toward Tom conspiratorially. “Most of the time you just sit around the office and read the papers.” He sat back. “I bet it wasn’t like that when you worked here.”
The kid was exhibiting vulnerabilities. How could he? That was one of the first things they teach you in basic-do not reveal. Tom decided to practice a little empathy tradecraft. “You’d be surprised,” he snorted. “Even in my day-which wasn’t so long ago-you had to fight the system to get anything done. It is worse now, though. I left last winter. Just couldn’t deal with the hurdles.”