Tom spent a few minutes sitting in the interrogatee’s chair looking at the liver stains. They were subtle but evocative. Talk about performance art. You had to really work at the visual problem for a while before you finally comprehended what you were looking at. Which, of course, is why it was all so intimidating.
Sitting in the cut-down chair, Tom had to admit to himself that Salah’s trompe l’oeil mind game was terrifyingly effective. Painstaking attention to detail, he concluded, was everything in these circumstances.
7:15P.M. Reuven arrived to create the cell’s graffiti. Tom watched as the Israeli scratched messages, curses, and random numbers into the stucco with his fingernails, raking the walls so hard he drew blood. He was working like a man possessed. Less than twenty-four hours ago, Reuven had taken a life. And yet the effects of that violent act seemed not to show at all. Not outwardly, at least.
By 7:40, Reuven had finished and was ready for the painters. He pronounced his work satisfactory, washed his lacerated fingers with hydrogen peroxide, and headed out for de Gaulle to pick up Salah from the Air France flight.
Tom watched him slip out the door. He was an impenetrable, unreadable man, the Israeli was. He was to be sure a valuable ally. Indeed, 4627 was lucky to have found him because in the business of intelligence gathering, where personal connections and wide access were everything, Reuven had what seemed to be an endless supply of both. But once in a while over the last week and a half, Tom had found himself wondering what really drove Reuven Ayalon. What made the man tick?
The answer was, Tom Stafford had no idea. Reuven was as compartmentalized an individual as he’d ever met. There were circles within circles within circles. Which was why Tom now felt a hiccup of…unease. Being a street guy, a fisher of men, Tom had an unshakable instinct that there was something covert in play here-some hidden element to the Reuven Ayalon equation-that he didn’t yet comprehend, and perhaps never would. There was no logical rationale for this reaction. Except…whenever he started to think deeply about Reuven Ayalon-tried to get inside the man’s character and analyze his motivations-Sam Waterman’s old catchphrase “retirement is just another form of cover” always seemed to slip into Tom’s consciousness. Except…except…Reuven detested the current head of Mossad. He’d said as much-more than once. “He’s worse than Tenet,” is how the Israeli had put it. “Believe me-I didn’t have to leave my job. I wanted to. It was impossible to work anymore.”
11:30P.M. Salah came through the narrow warehouse doorway, bringing a sudden chill into the big space where Tom was pacing. He appeared smaller than Tom remembered him-but then, the last time he’d seen Salah, the man had been dressed in olive-drab coveralls. Now he wore a long black double-breasted overcoat that dwarfed his small frame. He carried a worn brown leather briefcase. Reuven followed behind with Salah’s luggage, a bright green soft-sided suitcase.
Tom’s face lit up. He waved off the Corsican security guard and jogged to the door.“Ahlan,” he said, taking Salah by the shoulders and embracing him in the Middle Eastern fashion. “Welcome.”
The little man’s eyes sparkled. “I am glad to be here. Glad to be of help,” he said in Kurdish-accented Arabic.
Salah let the briefcase fall to the floor and shrugged out of his coat, revealing a worn black wool sport jacket whose left arm was pinned to the shoulder. The Israeli dropped to one knee and opened the scarred briefcase flap, rummaged inside, and handed Tom a package wrapped in brown paper and butcher’s twine.
“For you and your fiancée,” Salah said. “From my wife, Hannah.”
Tom was genuinely touched. He unwrapped the paper. Inside was a plastic baggie holding perhaps a dozen small rectangular pieces of dark brown candy dusted with powdered sugar.
Salah said, “This is calledloozina. It is very sweet, and very good. In our part of Iraq-Kurdistan-it is supposed to bring good luck to a marriage.”
“I am honored. We are honored.”
“You are welcome.” Salah stepped back and looked around. “This is immense,” he said. “Very large. Very impressive.”
“It works for us,” Tom responded, not knowing quite what to say. He looked at the little man, who was rubbing at his mustache with the back of his right index finger. “Can I get you something? Coffee? Perhaps you would like to rest.”
Salah dropped his hand, closed the briefcase, and stood up. “Reuven has brought me up to speed,” he said. “I would like a small glass of whiskey-Scotch. J &B, if you have it, without ice or water. And then”-the Israeli pointed at the outer shell of the interrogation center-“I would like to see what you have built in there.” He looked at Tom. “We have much to prepare for.”
33
8 NOVEMBER 2003
9:38A.M.
NATIONAL ROUTE 309, FORÊT DE MONTMORENCY
TOM CHECKED FOR PURSUIT VEHICLESin his rearview mirror. He saw nothing, but even so, he downshifted and hit the BMW’s throttle, kicking the black motorcycle upward of 180 kilometers an hour through the highway’s soft curves.
He’d come out of St. Denis and headed due north, then turned northwest, then south, then north again on the A15 superhighway, driving almost all the way to Pontoise. Then he’d reversed course, wheeled the big bike around, and taken back roads, running the perimeter of the denuded trees and evergreens of the Forêt de Montmorency. At Domont, he turned south onto Route 309 and drove through the forest, to Sannois. From there, Tom headed north and east, taking the back roads to Cormeilles-en-Parisis.
10:21A.M. Tom slipped into the town from the southeast. Dressed in reinforced black leather from head to toe, a shiny black helmet with reflective visor covering his face, he looked like a character out ofStar Wars. Underneath the leather he wore jeans and a turtleneck. And in the left-hand saddlebag was a tweed sport coat.
Because he was following Waterman’s First Law of Espionage, Tom wasn’t taking any chances. Expect the unexpected was the watchword of his particular faith. So, beneath the visor, he wore a prosthetic that altered his appearance just in case Margolis had set him up to appear on candid camera. In his saddlebags were magnetized license plates that could be slapped on at a moment’s notice. And by peeling off the appliqué that covered the front fender, rear fender, and the gas tank, the BMW could meta-morphose from bright cobalt blue to black in a matter of seconds. He’d punched up a map of Cormeilles-en-Parisis on the computer, highlighted the streets he’d have to travel, and taped it to the gas tank so he wouldn’t have to hesitate or ask directions.
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 thedépartement 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.