The Case Officer (18 page)

“
Bonjour, Pol
. I see
you’re still indulging in your favorite pastime, eating on the company tab.”

“
Pourquoi pas,
mon ami
?
One could never get rich with you fellows, might as well eat well!
Comment
ça va, mon vieux
? It has been a long time.”

“Too long, Pol. You look good. Clearly
you’ve been eating well!”

Mac ordered a double espresso
from a nearby waiter.

Pol Giroud was a red-faced,
balding, overweight, cherubic fellow in his early fifties. He blended perfectly
into the French working class. He loved people, and people naturally gravitated
to him and trusted him.

He could strike up a conversation
with anyone, rich or poor, and they would respond positively to his unthreatening
demeanor. But his real strength lay in his ability to elicit information from
people and then to manipulate them into doing whatever it was he wanted them to
do.

The French have a word for it –
he was “
malin
,” which roughly translates as “foxy.” Le Belge was indeed
a fox; disarmingly honest and open on the outside, manipulative and crafty on
the inside.

He smiled broadly at Mac,
displaying yellow-stained teeth and flashing friendly, soft gray eyes. He
patted his ample stomach and flicked croissant crumbs from his stained tie.

“Thought I would eat before you
arrive so I do not spray you.” He laughed roundly at his own humor, spewing
crumbs across the table. “Whoops,” he laughed, “
excusez moi
.”

Mac flicked the crumbs from his
jacket and shook his head at Le Belge. “You haven’t changed a bit. I recognize
the tie, too! Some of those stains date back to the days we were meeting
regularly. So, how are Marie and the girls?”

“
Pas mal
. Marie is the
same. Perhaps a little heavier. It’s the cooking, you know. My oldest,
Gabrielle, is almost 10. And
la petite
, she is six
.
” Pol said
proudly.
“Et toi
?”

“Not too bad. Getting older and
grayer.” Mac ran his fingers through his graying hair. “You know how it is; it
starts up here and works its way down. First the hair, then the eyes go, then
the teeth, and so on. At the moment it’s right about here.” He brought his hand
across his waist at the belt line, and they laughed.

“Anyway,” he continued, “I’m glad I could catch you on such short
notice. Are you free to do some work?”

“
Bien sur
. My
brother-in-law does not make me punch a time clock. But your company fired me.
I am certain you know that,
n’est-ce pas
? It seems I failed the piece of
merde
box they use. They think I am liar.
Merde alors
....” He
assumed an exaggerated pout.

“Yeah, I know. Forget about it.
As of this moment you’re back on salary for at least three months. If we do
good work, I’ll try to convince the company to bring you back on permanently.
Ça
va
?”

“
Oui, ça va
. Does this
mean I am back on expense account also?” Le Belge’s eyes twinkled.

“Just don’t overdo it. The guys
in the green eyeshades don’t take kindly to ‘womb to tomb’ support programs,
especially for guys with appetites like yours.” Mac grinned as he delivered the
rebuke.

“You are a good man, Mac. How can
I ever repay you?”

“You can help me get a bug inside the Chinese Embassy. Specifically the
COS’s office. The casings we have on file are next to worthless, nobody’s
gotten above the first floor, so we have to start from scratch. You know the
place, right

“
Bien sur
. Over on avenue
George V in the eighth, next to the Spanish Embassy by the George V Hotel. But
I’ve never been inside.”

“Don’t worry about getting
inside. You’d never get past the front door. Nobody we’re in touch with has
ever gotten past the ground floor reception area. If we had someone who did
have that kind of access to their inner sanctum, we wouldn’t need an audio op.
You know we only do audio ops when we’ve struck out – when we can’t recruit a
human source.

“So I’m thinking about a drilling
op. You know, going through one of the common walls from one of the adjacent
buildings. So let’s look at common wall possibilities first. The chancery
building sits smack between the Spanish Embassy on the left as you’re looking
at the entrance, and an apartment building on the right.”

Mac sketched the juxtaposition of
the buildings on a scrap of water soluble paper, paper he would later dissolve
in his water glass. Pol Giroud listened attentively while searching out, with
his tongue, any and all stray pastry flakes from his croissant that were
lurking between his teeth. He listened attentively to Mac, the only
interruption a discreet belch or two and a soft “
Pardonnez-moi
.”

“We need you to case the outside,
front and back. Take a few photos that’ll show us how the floor levels line up
with the adjacent buildings—so we’ll know the proper height to drill. The
street slopes down to the Seine, and we don’t want to come out in the floor or
ceiling of the target office.

“And don’t forget to check out
the light patterns of the building. Light patterns are very important. The
station chief, a tall, elegant guy named Huang Tsung-yao, is a known
workaholic, so I expect his office will be lit long after the rest of the
offices are dark. It’ll also probably be on the top floor. You know, restricted
areas are usually located on the tops of embassies, as far away as possible
from public areas. These are just educated guesses, you understand, but they’ll
give us a place to start anyway.”

“How about the adjacent
buildings—do you want me to check them out as well?”

“Stay clear of the Spanish Embassy. It would be a non-starter to try
and do an entry into one embassy to drill into another.”

“
Oui
, but what about your
liaison? You must have good liaison with the Spanish,
n’est-ce pas
?
Maybe they would let you into their building to drill into the Chinese
building.” He sopped up the last drops of egg yolk on his plate.

Mac shook his head adamantly.
“Good question, excellent question. Unfortunately the answer is…no way in hell.
This must be strictly unilateral. If the Spanish agreed to such a proposal,
which they wouldn’t, it would leak out in no time. Their service is like a
sieve, penetrated by every intel service from the Russians to the MSS. We’ll
just have to concentrate on the apartment building and hope Huang’s office
abuts it. If it doesn’t we’re screwed—we’ll have to go back to the drawing
board.”

Mac thought silently for a moment
and then, continuing his thinking out loud, added, “Actually, it would stand to
reason that the Chinese would place their most sensitive offices—commo,
station, Ambassador—on the side of the building away from the Spanish. They
would need what we call a ‘zone of control,’ in other words, an area of about
ten feet all the way around the exterior of a sensitive room where no local
employees or un-cleared people would have access.

“And they would definitely
consider the Spanish Embassy more hostile than an apartment building. They
would know full well the Spanish have the capability, and good reason, to bug
them. Placing their secrets on the other side of the wall, a mere two feet away
from them, would fall well within their ‘zone of control.’” Mac’s voice trailed
off as he pondered what he had just presumed. Then he continued in a more
declarative tone.

“They wouldn’t do that. Let’s
just concentrate on the most probable approach for the time being. Let’s
investigate the occupants of the adjacent apartment building and collect light
patterns and casings on the target building. I’ll bet we find Huang’s office on
the top floor of the embassy. Only problem is, it’ll probably be an inside room
near the center of the building. That’s where I’d put it. But we might get
lucky. It’s a narrow building....” His voice trailed off as he thought. “Maybe
if they’re cramped for space or something, they’ll have broken a few rules, and
we’ll be able to get at him from the common wall building. Let’s take a look at
that first, anyway.
Ça va
?”

Pol Giroud saluted. “
Ça va,
mon vieux
.”

Mac handed him a slip of paper.

“That’s got our next meeting time
and place on it, and our alternate. Don’t forget to....”

“
Oui, Je sais
. I can tell
by the feel of the paper. It is...how do you say it? Water dissolvable? Drop it
in water and poof! It will dissolve. I will memorize it and flush it down, do
not worry,
mon vieux
.”

Mac dunked his sketch in his
water glass, and they both watched it dissolve.

“Fine, and one more thing.”

“
Oui
?”

“Don’t forget to take care of
this.” He pushed the bill over to Pol Giroud with a grin and left.

Chapter Forty-Three

M
acMurphy took a circuitous route
back to the embassy and had a light lunch with Wei-wei in the downstairs
lounge. They discussed neither the wonderful lovemaking of the night before,
which they’d continued in the morning, nor Mac’s meeting with Le Belge, both of
which topics were nonetheless very much on Mac’s mind. Yet they found plenty to
talk about all the same.

After lunch he accompanied her
back upstairs to the station, where he met briefly with Burton B. Berger in the
COS’s office.

“I need to talk to you about that
‘penetration asset’ you have,” Mac said with little preamble, “you probably
forgot to tell me about him during our meeting, and I forgot to ask you about
him.”

He told the COS what he knew
about the Chinese waiter, SKITTISH, attributing his information to “the desk
back at Headquarters.” The COS looked quizzically at MacMurphy, clearly
searching his memory for details of the case.
Perhaps he really doesn’t know
about the case
, thought Mac.

“I’d like to use him to develop
some information regarding the layout of the building, who works where, that
sort of thing. I understand it’s a restricted case, but it probably doesn’t
have to be. The guy is an access agent, not a Chinese official. I’m sure it was
a mistake, but something that needs to be corrected.”

Realization began to creep across
Berger’s face.

MacMurphy was as tactful as he
could be, while at the same time leaving no doubt in Berger’s mind that he
considered Little Bob’s manipulative act to be one of fabrication and
unprofessional behavior, and that he would pursue the subject further when he
returned to Headquarters.

“Go ahead and ask Ms. Ryan to
give you the file,” Berger said, “but first ask her to drop it on my desk. I
want to take a look at it before you take it.”

Mac knew that Berger, adept at
playing the CYA game, would investigate the matter and take whatever corrective
action was necessary before Headquarters had a chance to weigh in. In fact,
despite his allegiance to Little Bob, he would probably do whatever was
necessary to deflect the blame away from himself. Little Bob would be in for a
very hard time. The COS would most certainly throw him under the bus, and this
pleased Mac a great deal.

SKITTISH could prove to be a
valuable access agent for MacMurphy’s operation. So after reading SKITTISH’s
operational 201 file and noting down the contact instructions for
non-scheduled, emergency and regular meetings with the asset, Mac returned to
his
pied-à-terre
on Rue Laugier to prepare himself for his meeting with
GUNSHY that evening.

He decided to put off meeting
with SKITTISH until later in the week when Bob Little had a regular scheduled
meeting with the asset. Warm introductions to assets were always preferable
when they could be arranged.

Chapter Forty-Four

A
t ten minutes past seven that
evening, MacMurphy finished his
pastis
, summoned the waiter to pay his
bill, and left the café. He had been there for approximately twenty minutes,
sipping his drink while observing the Vavin entrance to the metro, where he was
supposed to meet GUNSHY.

Since the agent had failed to
show (not a surprising eventuality for François Leverrier), he would have to
kill time until the variant meeting scheduled for one hour later, at eight
o’clock.

He strolled down the crowded
Boulevard de Montparnasse and wandered around the narrow side streets of the
Montparnasse neighborhood, once again observing the passersby and wondering
about their lives. All the while he was very conscious of potential
surveillance. But he detected none.

At five minutes to eight he was
back on Boulevard de Montparnasse, walking east with a measured stride that, by
design, looked neither hurried and urgent nor like that of a man with nowhere
to go. The Vavin
metro bouche
was in sight. He timed his steps so that
he arrived there at exactly eight o’clock.

Standing at the metro entrance,
he looked down the steps. Still no GUNSHY. He descended into the metro and went
to the bank of phones near the ticket booth. There he killed another three
minutes pretending to make a phone call. Finally he spotted GUNSHY amidst a
gaggle of people ascending from the train platform below.