“Everybody knows that the enemies of freedom—including the free market—are the enemies of Paul Fenton.” The industrialist looked grave for a moment. “A lot of our operations may seem small. But we’re after bigger game now.” There was excitement in Fenton’s voice. “Now we’ve been given a truly major commission.”
“Is that so?” Ambler had to play Fenton carefully: he could not appear overly interested, but he could not be too cool, either. A studied dispassion was what he was aiming for. Let the fish swim against the drag.
“Which is why we need you.”
“What have you heard about me?” Ambler asked him, intently studying his face.
“Lots. Even heard some people think you’re a dangerous lunatic,” Fenton replied candidly.
“Then why would you want anything to do with me?”
“Maybe because the government’s idea of a dangerous lunatic isn’t necessarily mine. Or maybe because only a dangerous lunatic would take on the assignment I got for you. And only a dangerous lunatic with your skill set has a chance of completing it.” Fenton stopped. “So where do I stand with you? Can we do business? Can we help fix this rattletrap world together? What do you make of my enterprise? Be honest!”
Ariadne’s thread—where would it lead?
“Before we met,” Ambler said, fingering one of the dresses on a rack, “I had no idea what could be done with pleated voile.”
Fenton’s laughter was nasal and high-pitched, almost a cackle. Then he stared at Ambler for a long moment.
“Tarquin, I’d like you to come with me now. Would you do that? I got something to show you.”
“Glad to hear it,” Ambler said, looking around the icy chic of the brushed-steel and gray-carpeted boutique. “Because there’s nothing here in my size.”
The two men left the boutique and reentered the bustling, cavernous world of the Underground City. As they made their way down a triple-tiered bank of escalators, Ambler thought about Fenton’s curious combination of zeal, craft, and openness. Few people of his wealth walked around without a sizable entourage; Fenton seemed to pride himself on his self-reliance. It was the same odd mixture of rugged individualism and cosseted self-regard he had displayed in other ways. Maybe it was what made him a mogul in the first place.
An enormous poster for the Gap hung below the light well overhead. Everywhere one looked there were kiosks and shops and lights and shoppers. Through the throngs, Fenton and Ambler pushed through several blocks’ worth of passageways. Finally, they reached the exit for the Palais des Congrès at the Ville Marie Expressway. When they rode up a couple of flights of escalators and reached the surface, it was as if they had returned to a cold and icy planet. The Palais des Congrès convention center was itself a chilly structure, a leviathan of glass and steel and concrete.
Fenton brought Ambler to the sidewalk in front of it. Ambler could see that there were extensive security cordons around the building.
“What’s going on?”
“A meeting of the G7,” Fenton said. “G7 plus one, really. Trade ministers from all over. The United States, Canada, France, Britain, Italy, Germany, and Japan, plus special guests. A big deal. They never announce the location, to head off antiglobalization protesters. But it’s never exactly a big secret, either.”
“I don’t recall having been invited.”
“You’re with me,” Fenton said, twinkling. “Come along. It’s going to be something special to watch.”
High up in the office tower attached to the glass-sheathed Complexe Guy-Favreau, Joe Li adjusted his power binoculars. He had received an intelligence warning that his quarry might try to penetrate the international meeting. Next to him was a Chinese sniper rifle, a Type 95 7.62mm rifle. It had been carefully zeroed that very morning. At the moment, the man known as Tarquin was visible, exposed; save for the irregularly gusting wind, Joe Li had a reasonably good shot.
But who was Tarquin with? Joe Li adjusted his binoculars as he brought into focus the ruddy-faced, powerfully built man who was Tarquin’s companion.
Act or analyze? It was the ancient dilemma: one could easily perish, or allow others to perish, while analyzing the options. Yet in this case, Joe Li wondered whether further intelligence would be required before taking further action. It went against the fiber of his being, the grain of his consciousness: he had been built—selected and trained—to act. A human weapon, Comrade Chao had once called him. Yet effective action was never impetuous; timing was crucial, and so was the ability to adapt and respond to changing circumstances.
He removed his finger from within the trigger guard of the rifle and picked up a digital camera, fine-tuning its focus until the image of the ruddy-faced man was centered and sharp. He would send in the image for analysis.
Joe Li seldom experienced fear, but he did feel a faint ping of concern. Liu Ang’s enemies, it seemed reasonable to worry, might have found themselves a formidable new asset.
He glanced again at the rifle, his misgivings growing by the second.
Analyze—or act?
THIRTEEN
As Ambler followed Fenton into the conference center, the man’s entire frame seemed to be vibrating with anticipation.
The hall of the Palais was a several-story atrium of mitred glass above hexagonal granite tile, and the lobby and three balconies overhead were bathed in the dull silver glow of the winter sky. A sign—charmingly, the old-fashioned kind of building directory, white letters laboriously affixed onto the slotted black plastic—indicated which spaces had been allocated for the various meetings.
“Any moment now,” Fenton murmured, “you’re going to see proof of what our operation can do.”
From the adjoining hall Ambler heard the rustle and rumble of rejoined conversation—the sound of a meeting that was breaking up. People were standing up; chairs were moved slightly, some attendees rushing forward to introduce or reintroduce themselves to others. Some went for coffee or headed outside for a smoke.
“What time do you make it, Tarquin?”
“Eleven fifty-nine.” A beat. “Twelve noon.”
Abruptly, loud shrieks echoed through the granite-and-glass atrium. The conversational rumble ceased at once, replaced by a tattoo of terror: Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! The screams and keening swelled. Fenton stood by a carpeted staircase, an arm hooked around Ambler’s shoulders.
Black-jacketed security guards started to hustle in, paramedics a few minutes later. Somebody at the meeting had been killed.
Controlling his emotions, Ambler turned to Fenton. “What just went down?”
Fenton spoke briefly into a cell phone, then nodded. “The dead guy’s name was Kurt Sollinger,” he told Ambler in a low voice. “A Brussels-based European trade negotiator.”
“And?”
“According to our intel, he is—was—a real menace. Guy fell in with some Baader-Meinhof remnants when he was in grad school, started living a double life after that. An economist of the first water, and an incredibly engaging fellow—everybody would tell you. Meanwhile he was exploiting his EU position to set up IBCs, international business companies, around the world, laundering money from rogue nations and diverting significant sums to hand-picked terrorist cells. They called him the Paymaster. And what he paid for was bombings and, especially, assassinations.”
“But why would you—”
“Today’s a special day, did you know that?” Fenton’s eyes were hard. “An anniversary, of sorts. Do you recall when the U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary was murdered?”
Ambler nodded slowly. Several years ago, at a grand São Paulo hotel, the deputy treasury secretary—once the youngest tenured member of the Harvard economics department, and the architect behind two Latin American currency bailouts—had been gunned down before a crowd. He had been among the brightest lights in the American government. Yet the assassin had never been apprehended. Though authorities suspected the involvement of antiglobalization extremists, an extensive international investigation h
ad gone nowhere.
“It happened exactly five years ago today. At exactly twelve noon. In a hotel ballroom. In public. His killers were hirelings who prided themselves on their ability to time it with precision, and to carry out the deed brazenly. Kurt Sollinger was the Paymaster. Working through former affiliates of the Rote Armee Fraktion, he paid for the hit. We learned this not long ago. Not the kind of evidence you can use in court, you understand, but the real deal.”
“Jesus Christ,” Ambler breathed.
“Exactly five years ago today, at twelve noon. Trust me, the message won’t be lost on those bastards. We’ve just sent a signal on their radio frequency. They’ll know they’ve been rumbled, and they’ll panic—they’ll disperse and try to regroup later. Existing operations will be disrupted. Their existing network of contacts will come under suspicion. And their own paranoia will do them more damage than we’d be able to. Those shrieks, those screams—exactly the same sound track as in São Paulo. Poetic fucking justice.” Fenton lit up a cigarette.
Ambler swallowed hard. That Fenton was simply hanging around an assassination that he had orchestrated struck him as close to showing off.
Fenton anticipated his thoughts. “You’re wondering why I’m here? Because I can be.” His gaze was unwavering. “We don’t run scared at SSG. I need to impress that on you. Our work may be clandestine, but we’re not fucking outlaws. We are the law.”
No doubt that was Fenton’s way. The industrialist knew that nobody would ever trace him to the lethal incident just yards away.
“But we’ve got a much bigger fish for you.” Fenton handed him a sheet of paper, an oddly filmy sheet, like a cross between onionskin and old-style thermal fax paper. The scent told Ambler that it was highly combustible security paper, designed to be consumed by flame within a matter of seconds. “Or shark, I should really say.”
“This the guy you want me to take out?” Ambler’s stomach churned, but he fought to keep his voice even. Ariadne’s thread—find where it leads.
Fenton nodded gravely.
Ambler read the sheet quickly. The target’s name was Benoit Deschesnes. Ambler knew the name. The director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. A very big deal indeed. Other occupational and residential details were provided, along with a description of his daily habits.
“What’s the situation with this guy?” Ambler asked, struggling to sound casual.
“Deschesnes used to work on nuclear weaponry for the French government. Now he’s been taking advantage of his position as head of the IAEA to transfer nuclear expertise to countries like Iran, Syria, Libya, Algeria, even Sudan. Maybe he thinks a level playing field is only fair. Maybe he wants to make himself a fortune. Doesn’t matter. Point is, he’s dirty. He’s dangerous. And he’s got to go.” Fenton took another puff on the cigarette. “You’ve absorbed what’s on the data sheet?”
Ambler nodded.
Fenton took the sheet back and touched it with the tip of his cigarette. For a brief moment the sheet blossomed into pink-white flame—it was like a magician conjuring a rose into his palm—and then it all vanished. Ambler looked around; nobody had noticed.
“Remember, Tarquin, we’re the good guys,” Fenton said. The cold made his breath visible. “You believe me, don’t you?”
“I believe you believe you,” Ambler answered smoothly.
“Trust me, this is going to be the start of something very special. You take care of Benoit, and you’ll be the equivalent of a made man. Then we’ll talk. Then you go to the head of the class.”
Ambler closed his eyes for a moment. His predicament was exquisite. He could alert the government about Deschesnes, but what would be the point? Government officials were the ones who had “outsourced” the task to Fenton in the first place. Besides, his words would carry no credibility. His former bosses believed that Tarquin was insane, and there was no evidence that Harrison Ambler had ever lived. His enemies would not have gone to all the trouble of inducing a psychotic episode like that if they hadn’t intended to use it. The recording of Ambler’s paranoid ravings would surely have been screened to key members of the intelligence community. Then, too, if Ambler passed on the assignment, Fenton would find somebody else for it.
Suddenly a police officer strode toward them. “You, sir!” the thick-necked uniformed man barked at Fenton.
“Me?”
“You!” The policeman came over with an affronted look. “You think you’re above the law? That what you think?”
Fenton looked like a picture of innocence. “I’m sorry?”
The policeman put his face close to Fenton’s and curled his lips. “There’s no smoking in the conference center. No smoking in any municipal building, by city statute. Don’t act like you didn’t know. There are signs everywhere.”
Ambler turned to Fenton, shaking his head. “Man, you are so busted.”
A few minutes later, the two walked outside along a cleared bluestone path in front of the conference center. Snow lay heavily on the ground, frosting rows of boxy shrubs to either side of the bluestone.
“So have we got a deal?” Fenton asked.
It was madness—there was no sense, no logic, in his joining an enterprise whose basic legitimacy he rejected. Yet to refuse would be like dropping the thread—and that was one thing he could not do. Not while he remained in the labyrinth. To lose the thread was to lose himself.
“You’ll pay me in knowledge, showrunner,” Ambler heard himself say.
Fenton nodded. “It’s the usual story, isn’t it? Somebody messed with you. You want me to find out who, find out why. Like that, right?”
There’s nothing usual about this story, Ambler almost replied. “Like that,” Ambler said softly.
The skies had grown darker; it was now the sort of definitive, conclusive gray that made it impossible to think that the sky had ever been or could ever be any other hue.
“With your skill set, you should have no trouble,” Fenton said steadfastly. “And if you do—if you’re captured?—well, you’re the Man Who Wasn’t There, aren’t you? You officially don’t exist! Nobody will be the wiser.”
“Sounds like a good deal,” Ambler said leadenly. “Unless you are the Man Who Wasn’t There.”
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
Clay Caston was looking disapprovingly at the oatmeal carpeting in the ADDI’s office; there was a coffee stain a few feet from the tan leather sofa. It had been there on his last visit. He suspected it would be there on his next visit. Caleb Norris had no doubt ceased to see it. Many things were like that. One failed to see them not because they were hidden but because one was accustomed to them.
“I think I’m following you so far,” Norris was saying. “You find the patient’s intake date, and then you do a . . .”
“A variance analysis.”
“Right. A variance analysis. You’re looking at subtle patterns in expenditures. Like a fiduciary plume around the event. Good thinking.” An expectant pause. “So what did you find?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing,” Norris repeated, downcast. “Oh well.”
“Which I found pretty fascinating.”
Norris gave him an uncertain look.
“It’s like the dog that didn’t bark, Cal. A special low-level operation means a lot of paperwork for authorization, and all sorts of special requisitions, even if it’s a few dollars from petty cash. If a junior-grade staffer does anything that involves agency resources, he’s filling out requisition forms. Spoors in the forest—a trail. The higher up you go, the less there is of that. Because you’ve already got the resources at your command. What I’m trying to tell you, Cal, is that the absence of any irregularities at all suggests the presence of a high-level mover. Nobody drives up to Parrish Island and checks himself in. You’re bundled in by men in white coats. That means the redeployment of vehicles, the possibility of overtime, and on and on. But when I went looking for the reverb, I couldn’t find anything.”
“How
high, do you think?”
“At least an E17 level,” Caston said. “Someone your rank, or higher.”
“That should narrow things down.”
“Oh? Did the government suddenly shrink while I was at the men’s room?”
“Humph. Reminds me of the way you nabbed that guy from the Directorate of Operations who’d made that secret trip to Algeria. Used a fake passport and everything—covered his tracks perfectly. So far as we knew, he’d spent the week in the Adirondacks. I love the thing that tipped you off: abnormal rate of toilet-paper usage in the men’s room outside his office!”
“Please, it wasn’t exactly subtle. He was going through a full roll every day.”
“Traveler’s diarrhea, you figured. Giardiasis—an intestinal bug endemic in Algiers, you said. We got a confession two days later. God, you were on a . . . roll.” The hirsute administrator chuckled to himself. “But what about the career coverage? Learn anything more about the escape artist?”
“A thing or two,” Caston said.
“Because I’m thinking we’ve got to figure out a way to lure him in, make approaches.”
“That won’t be so easy,” Caston said. “We’re dealing with an unusual customer. I’ll tell you one detail I found suggestive. Seems that, in the field, nobody would play cards with the guy.”
“He cheated?” Caleb Norris unknotted his tie but left it in place, in the manner of a tabloid newspaper editor. Tendrils of black hair curled over his unbuttoned collar.
Caston shook his head. “You know the German word Menschenkenner?”
Norris squinted. “A person knower? Someone who knows a lot of people?”
“Not exactly. A Menschenkenner is someone with a knack for figuring people out, for taking their measure.”