Defection Games (Dan Gordon Intelligence Thriller) (11 page)

"There are other conditions," the realtor had told him at the time. "When Monsieur Van der Hoff comes to Paris he must
sleep at the apartment, and you must introduce him as your father if you ever meet a third person." André had obviously agreed. For all he cared, presumably, I could be a drug dealer, although I’m sure he hoped I wasn’t a serial killer. 

When I used my key and entered the apartment, André wasn’t in. I looked around, trying to figure out whether my security contamination had started here. I went through André’s things. There was nothing suspicious – all the trappings you’d expect from a senior at the Sorbonne, including philosophy books, an iPod, and a small quantity of weed wrapped in a foil paper. One thing that surprised me, though, was women’s clothing hung in the closet and makeup accessories in the bedroom. A woman was staying here, I realized, a clear violation of the agreement with André. As I sat on the living room sofa, the door opened and André walked in with a young woman. Both were dressed in black. The woman was smoking a cigarette, fouling the room with smoke.  André seemed surprised to see me.

“Bonjour
,
André, mon petit,” I said and hugged him. The woman looked at André in anticipation for an introduction.

I moved first and gave her my hand, “Hi, I’m Jaap, André’s father, he wasn’t expecting me,” I said in French with a broad smile.

“Monica,” she said and took off her dark sunglasses, revealing deep blue eyes. She had wavy, black hair, probably dyed; fair skin; a long, almost horse-y face; and multiple piercings in each ear. Even so, she was attractive enough. She appeared to be 26 or 27 years old, dressed in a tight black mini skirt and heels. So, André prefers older women, I thought; he was only 22.

“Monica is my friend,” said André, “she’s from Germany, so let’s talk in English, her French isn’t that great.”

I thanked André in my heart, because
my
French was also wobbly. 

“Sorry I didn’t call you earlier, but my plans have changed, so I decided to see how you were doing.”

“I’m fine,” he continued with the charade, but I sensed he had to make an effort. Realizing I had noticed that Monica was living in the apartment without my permission, he said, “Oh, Monica is staying here for a few days, I hope you don’t mind.”

With my earlier cursory review of the apartment, I’d already figured out that Monica had installed herself there.

“You know the rule,” I said, “Even for a few days, I must report to the landlord whoever is living here, or face eviction
from an apartment that your grandfather first rented decades ago.”

“I’m sorry,” he said realizing he was caught red handed.

“I need a copy of Monica’s passport, and her full home address,” I said. That was bull, of course, but it created an opportunity to run a background on Monica. They didn’t react.

“It’s a little early, perhaps, but please let me take you both out to dinner,” I suggested, “and we can find a place to photocopy her passport.” Monica seemed disturbed a tad. Apparently, she wasn’t aware of the reporting requirement, or maybe she felt uneasy that André had never mentioned her to me. We dined at La Table
d
u Marquis, a simple, excellent restaurant just a few steps down the street. The place served rustic French food; André and Monica split a bottle of Bordeaux. After dinner we walked to a nearby all night copy center, and I asked Monica for her passport.

She hesitated for a moment and started digging in her purse. 

“I’m afraid I don’t have it here,” she said. I don’t always know if people are telling the truth, but this one sounded like an outright lie.  

“Please look again,” I said. “I hate to say it, but you can’t stay at the apartment unless I report you to the landlord.”

She let out a sigh, “Let me see again.”

I followed her hands with my eyes, and when I saw the red cover of her German passport — she was clearly trying to cover it with her hands, doing a sloppy job. I said, pointing, “There it is.”

“Salvador-Allende Str. 1320, 12559 Berlin, Germany,” she said.

             
             
“
There are exceptions of course, but in most cases, the first gut feeling is the correct feeling,”
—
another maxim by Alex, my Mossad Academy instructor. He must have paraphrased another Moscow Rule: “
Never go against your gut; it is your operational antenna.”
Here, I knew he was
probably right. I scanned the copies of Monica’s passport and emailed them to Eric from the copy center’s computer via a European pass-through email address. “Notification to landlord of temporary guest at 1359, rue Beccaria, 7501
1
Paris, France. Monica Mann, home address: Salvador-Allende Str. 1320, 12559 Berlin, Germany.”

Eric did not expect any “temporary guest” in my Paris apartment serving only as an accommodation address. He would know to check her out.

We returned to the apartment. I went to sleep in “my” bedroom while André and Monica slept in his. I was bothered and jet-lagged, finally slipping into deep sleep until garbage truck noises woke me up at an early hour. Not sure why, but being wakened by a garbage truck in Paris was somehow preferable to being wakened by one in New York — the trucks in Paris seemed gentler, somehow; or maybe it was the city itself. Paris was daintier than New York, trimmed with cornices. Between the two cities, I always thought of New York as the man — impressive, concrete, a solid grid — and Paris as the woman, exquisite with her narrow streets, late lunches, and pink afternoon light. I left the apartment quietly; found a patisserie with croissants au chocolat fresh out of the oven; and got a copy of Le Monde. When I
returned to the apartment, André was sipping coffee from a mug and getting ready to go out.

             
             
“Where’s Monica?” I asked, “I wanted to say goodbye, I’m leaving soon,” I said nonchalantly. “Is she a student at the Sorbonne as well?”

“Oh, she just left to run some errands,” he said as he went to the door, “No, she’s an art student in Germany and travels in Europe taking photos of old buildings to prepare her thesis. We met when she arrived in Paris. She was looking for a place to stay, and I invited her to stay here. I’m sorry I didn’t ask for your permission, I thought it was necessary only for a sublet, not for occasional guests.”

“The thing is, the landlord watches me like a hawk. He’s looking for any violation to evict me, so he can charge a new tenant a much higher rent.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“At any rate, I’m leaving in a few hours.”

I was bothered, but couldn’t pinpoint why, exactly. As soon as André left, I bolted the door and went to André’s room. It was still a complete mess, as if he were my own son.
Sneakers strewn on the floor, a half-eaten croissant on
the nightstand, fallen stacks of textbooks.
I searched his closet and dresser and found nothing. Then I went through Monica’s clothing. Other than some black garters and kinky underwear, all looked innocuous. I sat on the bed and looked around. I moved the prints on the wall — two Klimt reproductions — and found nothing but dust. “
You’re a paranoid,”
said my inner little devil,
“but keep on looking, even paranoids are sometimes right.”
Under the bed I found a big suitcase, but it contained only shoes, some leather pumps, and high-heeled boots. As I pushed the suitcase back under the bed, though, it was stopped by something.  I turned the lights on and could see a floorboard slightly raised; its edge was stopping the suitcase. I pushed the bed aside. I found a screwdriver in the kitchen and used its edge to lift the board. 
Fuck
— was it?

Yes.

Sitting in a cavity under the floorboard was an
FHN Five-seven pistol.
The
Five-Seven from FN Herstal is a single action with a 5.7X28mm caliber, with a range of 2,100 feet,
nicknamed “cop killer” because it easily penetrates body armor
.
I pulled the gun out using a towel, careful not to smudge or to add any prints. The Five-Seven is made of lightweight polymer, I knew that, but I was still surprised
at how light it felt. In all my work — Mossad and CIA — I’d never held or even seen one up close before — so
what the hell would a Sorbonne student be doing with a ‘cop killer’? Or maybe the gun was Monica’s? It was so light — the perfect gun for a woman, perhaps? Underneath the gun sat a plastic bag. Inside were two passports, seven credit cards, three driver’s licenses, and a wad of Euro bills, at least €10,000 - approximately $12,000. There was a note attached: “Pension 1 for December.” I examined the passports: one German, one Swiss, and one Austrian. All passports and driver licenses had Monica’s photo, DOB June 12, 1978, in East Berlin, when it was still part of the Communist Democratic Republic of Germany. However, the names on the passports and driver’s licenses were different; Gertrud Maria Schmitz, Marita Klara Haas, and Alexandra Emma Bayer.

Ha! She is 28, not 22
, I told my inner little devil. You were right. On the other hand, maybe these dates of birth were
fake
like the documents. I took snap shots with my digital camera, but had to make a quick decision: be satisfied with the snap shots or run to the copy center, risking that Monica would return to the apartment. I opted for the latter. I quickly collected the passports, the driver’s licenses, and credit cards; put the floorboard back
in place; and ran to the door. I stopped. What if the gun is also Monica’s? I returned to the bedroom; pried up the floorboard again; recovered the gun and its magazine; and put back the board. I copied the serial number of the gun and hid the gun under my coat, then went to the copy center and quickly scanned the documents and sent them to three different email addresses, each for one passport. Since my notebook computer’s encryption facility could have been compromised, I again used the copy center’s public Internet access. For additional safety, I used the Agency’s innocuous looking email boxes in Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo. “I attach a copy of my son's new live-in girlfriend’s passport, please ask the travel agent to see if a work visa could be issued.” I sent a fourth email with the gun’s serial number without explanation. The fifth email to a different address just said, “Look what I found in my son's apartment, a serial number.”

I returned to the apartment. Thankfully it was still empty. I returned everything back the way it was; left the apartment; and called Eric’s mobile from a payphone. I hung up immediately, though, realizing that it was still night in Washington.  As I walked away, I heard the phone ring. It was Eric.

“Dan?” I heard his almost metal sounding voice.

“Sorry I woke you up.”

“You didn’t. Any developments?”

I quickly reported my findings. “This is serious,” I said, "The woman is either a criminal or a drunk," I used our pre-assigned code names for a terrorist. Under the rules, using both words meant: ‘high probability.’ “Her association with my son and my experience in the Temple," I said, using the code name for Dubai, "tend toward the latter option.”

“OK,” said Eric, “I’ll have the Office run her aliases and see if she’s on our watch list.” He hung up before I managed to say anything else.

During the few hours until the Agency responded with the background check, I decided to put a temporary watch on the apartment. I looked for a good observation post, preferably on the opposite side of the street. The best I could do was a café diagonally across from the apartment. Here in Paris, I told myself, that’s what people with time to spend do — sit in cafés. I’d blend right in, taking my time with a very long lunch and a very large bottle of mineral water.

Watching and waiting are different in different countries: here in France, of course, they would necessarily involve food. I had a seat and ordered. I had to decide whether to talk to Monica some more without arousing her suspicion. I considered my options as Paris bustled past. I could smell lamb sizzling from the kitchen. The waiter quickly brought out my meal, lamb merguez and fresh greens. That smell — I thought of the outdoor market in Dubai, the succulent lamb Shawarma. Yes, Dubai: if Monica worked for FOE and is on my tail, then she could be the one who realized I wasn’t André’s father or the electronics-trader I pretended to be. Maybe she knew I was an undercover
U.S.
government agent: that would explain how I was exposed in Dubai. If that were the case, then who was she working for? My true affiliation was confidential. If discovered, it meant that “someone” had an interest in finding out, and also that “someone” gave Monica this information for a purpose. The purpose could very well mean that I had become a target.

I felt hot all of a sudden, and loosened my tie, and touched my pocket. My gun was not there. I panicked for a moment until I remembered dumping it into a trashcan in the men’s bathroom in Dubai airport. I never thought that I’d need a gun in Paris. As I bit into a sausage, a blue Renault stopped next to the apartment building and Monica came out. I quickly wrote down the license
plate number. However, I couldn’t identify the driver. All I could see was the head of a man with black hair and dark glasses.

Time to renew an old friendship. I called Pierre Perot, an agent with
Direction Centrale des Renseignements Généraux
(Central Directorate of General Intelligence), often called RG. Sitting in a Parisian café, how could I
not
think of Pierre? I’d worked with him on two separate cases a few years back. Pierre was easy-going in that utterly French way: he loved a good bottle of French wine (not Italian); he loved a two-hour lunch with said wine; and he loved daytime sex — not necessarily with his wife — after imbibing said wine. He also had a thing for Gauloise cigarettes. I remember him saying once that the “ladies first” courtesy was created by men to give them another opportunity to appreciate the woman’s ass, then he smiled wickedly, his Gauloise smoldering off his bottom lip, his intelligent eyes slanted: there always seemed to be a Gauloise hanging off his bottom lip. Although he’d sworn to me, last time I saw
him, that
he was quitting for good.

Other than those infractions, he was a smart and efficient agent.

“Hello, Dan,” he said in his strong French accent, “
Comment allez-vous
?  How are you?”

After going through the niceties, I asked him to identify the owner of the blue Renault and gave him the plate number.

“Dan, are you at that age already?” he asked.

“What age?”

“They say that when men get older, they increase their interest in cars as their interest in sex declines.” This was vintage Pierre — of course he would ask about sex.

“Far from it,” I said, trying to figure out if he was nevertheless right. Remembering my more frequent than usual activity between the covers last month, and my complete indifference to what kinds of cars I drove (as long as they were big), assured me that I was still not at 'that age.’  Then
I thought he had a point, I
had
grown older, because now I chose my cereal for the fiber, not the toy.

“I need the information for a business purpose.”

He was professional enough not to ask any further questions. I was cutting corners here. I wasn’t supposed to get in touch with the French government other than through “appropriate” bureaucratic channels. Which could take a week, easy. But the discovery of the gun and the multiple passports was ominous, and for me that was sufficient grounds to cut to the chase.

“We must have lunch together,” he said. It would be my second lunch of the day. Anything, well, almost anything, for the mission.

An hour later I met him at Café de Flore, 172 Boulevard Saint-Germain, a 19
th
-century establishment once frequented by artists and writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre.

Pierre had aged. His brush mustache had grayed and he had gained some weight; all that wine and lunch — he had a plate of cheese and smoked sausage in front of him when I got there — had finally caught up with him. I tried not to think about my own weight. It always seemed to be moving in the upward direction, no matter what I did to contain it.

He read my mind, patting his belly.

“I know,” he said, “but hey, life is short. Forget the health food. I need all the preservatives I can get.”

“To life,” I said, raising my water glass; he raised his wine glass in turn.

“And women.”

I had to smile. It seems that as far as Pierre is concerned, growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.

Pierre smiled, “Why do Americans choose from just two people to run for President and 50 for Miss America?”
      I had to change the subject before Pierre would be too tipsy.

“How are things at RG?” I asked.

“Fine, we’re merging and our name is changing, probably next year. We’ll be the
Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur
(the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence, DCRI), tasked with counterterrorism and surveillance of targeted organizations and individuals.”