The Ambler Warning

  She must have panicked that night and activated a 918PSE, the rarely used protocol for a psychiatric emergency involving a clandestine officer. Because he had spoken of having taken precautions—implying that damaging information would be released in the event of his death—she must have concluded that the only solution was to lock him away. And then try to make him disappear.

  Ambler felt his heart hammering as he tried to make sense of how such a small incident had precipitated such a major upheaval in his existence. Yet what was she covering up? Just a personal relationship—or something more?

  He excused himself and used his cell phone to call Laurel. He gave her the names of the two principals; at the mammoth Bibliothèque nationale de France, in the Eighth Arrondissement, they agreed, she would be able to search the scholarly archives for relevant materials, materials that would not easily be accessible through other means. He felt a little calmer by the time he’d rung off, and he realized why he had really called her. He needed to hear her voice. It was as simple as that. Laurel Holland had stood between him and complete despair; she remained a beacon of sanity in a world that indeed seemed mad.

  After a while, Caston turned to him. Something was on his mind. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  Ambler nodded distantly.

  “What’s your name?”

  Nothing but the best for Paul Fenton, Undersecretary Whitfield reflected as he invited her into his rooms, the Empire Suite at the elegant hotel Georges V. The eight-floor hotel, located midway between the Arc de Triomphe and the Seine, was perhaps the most celebrated in the city, and with reason. Most rooms were elegantly appointed in a light and airy version of Louis XVI style. Not the Empire Suite, which made the others look Bauhaus-austere. At the Empire Suite, a grand entrance foyer opened onto a spacious salon and an adjoining seating and dining area. There was even a powder room off the salon for visitors—guests of the guest. The suite was densely decorated with paintings and sculptures rendering homage to Napoléon and Josephine. Aside from the walls, which were upholstered in a yellow-gold fabric, the early Empire theme was rendered in green hues and dark woods. Bronzes and flower vases cropped up everywhere, in arboreal profusion. From the window, one could see a breathtaking skyline of the City of Light, with les Invalides, Montparnasse Tower, and, of course, the Eiffel Tower clearly visible.

  Ellen Whitfield appreciated the view. The suite itself struck her as appalling. To her discriminating eye, it was terribly overdone, cluttered, garish—the worst kind of fustian. Yet Fenton’s whole career was a testament to the idea that nothing succeeded like excess.

  Fenton—ruddy, ginger-haired, bear-like—led her into the salon, where they sat on green-striped chairs across a small glass table. She ran her fingertips down the arms of the chair, which were of wood adorned with gilded bronze ornaments in some sort of Egyptian motif.

  “I don’t know whether I’ve ever fully told you how grateful I am—how grateful we all are—for everything you’ve done for us over the years.” Whitfield spoke in full-hearted tones, her eyes widening almost sensually. She leaned forward confidingly. Up close, she noticed how plumped, pink, and smooth Fenton’s skin was, as if he had spent the morning having a mud wrap. He had the overdeveloped pectorals and thickened arms of someone who spent hours pumping iron. Fenton was a man of many projects; one of them, obviously, was his own body.

  He shrugged modestly. “Would you like some coffee?”

  The undersecretary turned her head toward an ebony sideboard. “I noticed you had a tray of coffee all ready—so thoughtful. But let me get it.” She stood up and returned with the tray. There was a pot—polished silver, glass lined—of freshly brewed coffee, a small ceramic pitcher of milk, and a bowl of sugar. “I’ll be Mother,” Whitfield said, pouring coffee into two delicate Limoges cups.

  She reclined in the Empire chair and took a sip of the perfectly brewed coffee; she liked her coffee black. Fenton, she knew, preferred it heavily sweetened, and she watched him as he shoveled spoonful after spoonful of sugar into his cup, the way he always did.

  “All that sugar,” she murmured in a tone of maternal reproval. “It’ll kill you.”

  Fenton took a sip and grinned. “Exciting times, right? You know I’ve always been honored to provide whatever help I could. It’s a pleasure to work with someone who sees the world the way I do. We both understand that America deserves a safer tomorrow. We both understand one has to combat tomorrow’s threat today. Early detection, right?”

  “Early detection, early treatment,” she agreed. “And nobody does it better than your people. Without your operatives and your intelligence systems, we’d never have been able to make so many crucial advances. You’re not just a private contractor, in our view. You’re really a full partner in the mission of preserving the American ascendancy.”

  “We’re similar in a lot of ways,” Fenton said. “We both like to win. And that’s what we’ve been doing: winning. Winning one for a team that we both believe in.”

  Whitfield watched Fenton as he finished his coffee and returned the empty cup to its saucer. “It’s easier to win,” she said, “when your opponents don’t even know you’re playing the game.” Her look of gratitude was unwavering.

  Fenton nodded vaguely; he closed his eyes and opened them again, as if having a hard time keeping them focused. “But I know you didn’t want to meet me here just to congratulate me,” he said, slurring his words slightly.

  “You were going to give me a progress report on Tarquin,” she said. “He doesn’t know you’re at this hotel, I assume. You’ve taken precautions?”

  Fenton nodded sleepily. “I met him at a safe house. But he did real good.” He yawned. “Excuse me,” he said. “I guess jet lag is catching up with me.”

  She refilled his cup. “You must be exhausted, with everything that’s gone on over the past several days,” Whitfield said, her eyes alert. She noticed his mush-mouthed consonants, the way his head was starting to bow.

  Fenton yawned and sluggishly shifted on the sofa. “This is so strange,” he murmured. “I just can’t keep my eyes open.”

  “Don’t fight it,” Whitfield said. “Just let it come.” Her agents had had no difficulty in lacing the sugar with a fast-acting CNS depressant—a crystalline derivative of gamma hydroxybutyrate—that, in levels great enough to produce unconsciousness, would elude forensic detection, because its metabolites were naturally present in mammalian serum.

  Fenton’s eyes opened for a moment, perhaps responding to the arctic chill that had entered her tone. He made a sound like a sleeper’s muted groan.

  “I really am sorry.” She glanced at her watch. “It was a difficult decision for Ashton and me to make. It’s not that we doubt your loyalty. We don’t. It’s just that, well, you know who I am. You’d be able to connect the dots—and we weren’t sure you’d like the picture that results.” She glanced at Fenton, now slumped in a position that suggested unconsciousness. Was he even able to hear her words?

  What she said, however, was no more than the truth. There was a risk that Fenton would feel betrayed if he learned the true nature of the operation he had been enlisted in—and betrayal too often begot betrayal. The upcoming event was too important to allow anything to go wrong. Everyone had to play his part to perfection.

  As she stared at the motionless body before her, she reflected that Paul Fenton already had.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “I don’t have a good feeling about this,” Ambler said. The two men were walking down boulevard de Bonne Nouvelle, the auditor holding both his hands together under his overcoat for warmth. Ambler would never do that—no operative would—but then, Caston’s hands were good for very little outside of an office. Caston’s eyes were downcast, monitoring the sidewalk in front of him for dog feces; Ambler’s gaze casually swept the street, alert to any signs of surveillance.

  “You what?” The auditor gave him a withering look.

  “You heard me.”

  “Did
your horoscope say your stars were in a bad alignment? Did an entrail-reading priest find something nasty in the offal? I mean, look, if you know something I should know, let’s talk about it. If you’ve got a rationally justified belief, more power to you. But how many times do we have to go through this? We’re grown-ups. We should be responsive to facts. Not feelings. ”

  “Reality check: You don’t have the home field advantage here. We’re not in spreadsheet land. Those are real glass-and-stone buildings around you, not columns of digits. And if somebody takes a shot at one of us, it’ll be with a real bullet, not a goddamn bell curve of possible bullets. Anyway, how would somebody like you even know about an agency safe house? On the principle of need-to-know, it should be off your radar screen. Because it sure isn’t info a pencil-neck like you needs to have.”

  “You still don’t get it. Who pays the rent? Who sees the bills? Nothing that costs the agency money is off my radar screen. I’m an auditor. Nothing auditable is alien to me.”

  Ambler was silent for a moment. “How do you know the place isn’t going to be occupied?”

  “Because the lease comes up at the end of this month and we’re letting it expire. And because we’ve got a budget item for the cleanup crew that’s slated to arrive next week. Ergo, it’s empty, but it’s still equipped. I reviewed requisition items related to Paris before I left. So I can tell you that the average monthly cost of the rue Bouchardon residence for the past forty-eight months was, in adjusted dollars, twenty-eight hundred and thirty dollars. Additional variable charges include, in descending order of magnitude, telecom expenses, which, in turn, range from—”

  “OK, stop. You’ve made your point.”

  The building on rue Bouchardon looked oddly desolate, the stone facade dappled with lichen and soot, the windows grimy, and, at the doorway, the black metal grille battered and chipped. A nearby mercury street lamp sparked and buzzed.

  “How do we get in?” Ambler asked Caston.

  “Not my department.” Caston looked affronted. “What, you expect me to do everything? You’re the goddamn operative. So operate.”

  “Shit.” This wasn’t like the parking garage at the Clinique du Louvre; the site was exposed, which meant he’d have to try something that worked fast. Ambler knelt down and untied one of his shoes. When he stood up again, he was holding a thin key, flat but for five small elevations between the cuts. It was called a bump key, and getting it to work required both skill and luck; he doubted he had enough of either. “Stay here,” he told Caston.

  Ambler loped over to a Dumpster at the end of the short street and returned a few minutes later with a soiled paperback novel someone had thrown out. Still, it was thick, and the spine was hard. It would work as well as a mallet.

  A bump key was designed to hit the bottom pin in the keyway column hard enough that the top pin bounced clear of it for an instant, high enough to go past the shear line. In that same instant, before the spring pushed the top pin down again, the key would turn.

  In theory.

  The reality seldom measured up. If the pin columns did not bounce high enough, it would not work. If the button pin bounced too high, it would not work. If the key was twisted an instant too late, it would not work.

  Now he positioned the bump key right in front of the hole and banged it with the spine of the paperback, shooting it through the keyway as hard as he could and then twisting it the instant it was in.

  Ambler could not believe it. It worked—the first time! That almost never happened. The key turned, retracted the latch, and he pushed the door open. He felt a surge of pride at his handiwork and, smiling, turned to Caston.

  The auditor was stifling a yawn.

  “Finally,” Caston groused. “I can’t believe it took you so long.”

  With great effort, Ambler remained silent.

  Once they were inside the building, Ambler would be able to work on the apartment door without fear of being observed; the building seemed entirely vacant. But the CIA team that had equipped the apartment had also taken care to give it a proper mortise lock.

  Ambler scrutinized the strike plate for a few minutes before giving up. With a proper tension wrench, he might have been able to make progress, but he lacked the tools for the job.

  Caston was openly scornful. “Can’t you do anything right? You’re supposed to be the hotshot operative. Twenty years at the PSU. And now—”

  Ambler cut him off. “Caston? Put a sock in it.”

  Finally, Ambler walked to the building’s cramped courtyard. The ground floor apartment had a couple of windows that faced the desolate courtyard. It would be an inelegant mode of entry, but it would do.

  Hammering, again, with the spine of the paperback book, Ambler smashed a rectangular pane of glass and methodically removed all the remaining shards. He stood stock-still for a moment, listening. But there was nothing to be heard. No sign of any habitation. No sign that anyone had heard the broken glass.

  “You just cost the United States of America four hundred dollars,” Caston said softly. “At least. Never mind the replacement costs. The labor costs for a glazier in Paris are astronomical.”

  Ambler placed both hands on the stone ledge and, with a sudden jerk, pulled himself up and then over, through the glassless window. A sturdy-looking bookcase projected beneath it, and he was able to somersault over it gently and land on his feet.

  Walking carefully in the gloom, he made his way to the door, turned on some lights, and then retracted the deadbolt.

  At last he opened the front door, where Caston, arms folded on his chest, was standing—slouching—impatiently.

  “Plus it’s freezing outdoors,” Caston said. “And you had to break a goddamn window.”

  “Just get in.” He closed the door behind Caston and, reflexively, locked it again. A safe house would not have an alarm system; the possible arrival of the police represented a greater threat than any random burglary.

  The two men wandered through the apartment until they found a small room with a large television in it. Beneath it was what looked, on a casual glance, like a regular cable box. Ambler knew better. The roof of the building would have satellite equipment, connected to the ground floor with a noninterceptible fiber-optic cable; the box contained complex decryption equipment.

  It was not a high-security device and was not designed for the reception of sensitive information. But then, the material they would be accessing was technically unclassified, if not widely available.

  Caston pulled at drawers in the monitor stand until he found a keyboard. He smiled at it, as if he had come across a friend. Now he turned on the monitor and busied himself with the keyboard for a few minutes.

  The screen blinked to life, but it only displayed snow. “Let’s see if I can remember how this is done,” Caston said, mainly to himself, as he fidgeted with the remote. Abruptly the screen filled with digits, displaying size and times for a series of large-file downloads.

  Caston no longer looked peevish; now he looked grave.

  “I’m taking these from Open Source sector,” he explained to the operative. “Nonclassified, public-domain materials, for the most part. I just want you to see Ashton Palmer in his element. You’re the face expert, OK? I want you to see that face full-sized, in color, and at maximum resolution.” He fussed with the keyboard for another minute, adjusting various settings. Suddenly the screen was vibrant and animated with the image of Palmer speaking at a lectern.

  “This is from the mid-nineties,” Caston went on. “A speech he gave at a conference sponsored by the Center for Policy Studies. There was a reference to it in one of the journal articles that your friend found in the BnF. Palmer’s polite, but I doubt you’ll have to listen very hard to figure out what he’s really saying.”

  On the screen, Ashton Palmer looked confident, magisterial, almost serene. Dark curtains were visible behind him. He looked elegant in a navy suit, dark red tie, and pale blue shirt.

  “The traditional form of Chin
ese housing in cities was the siheyuan—literally, ‘four-side enclosed courtyards.’ They were composed of inward-facing dwellings on all sides, a tableau of complete enclosure. In other civilizations, the metropolitan centers were centers, too, of the cosmopolitan urge—the urge to look outward whether in conquest or discovery. This has never been the Chinese way. Rather, the very architecture of the siheyuan has proved an apt symbol of the national character.” Ashton Palmer looked up from the lectern, his slate-gray eyes glittering. “The Middle Kingdom was, for a millennium—and for dynasty after dynasty—a profoundly inward-looking realm. A pervasive xenophobia was perhaps the deepest and most constant element of that multifarious array of customs and habits of thought we call Chinese culture. Chinese history contains no Peter the Great, no Empress Catherine, no Napoléon, no Queen Victoria, no Kaiser Wilhelm, no Tojo. Since the collapse of the Tatar yoke, there has been nothing we can call a Chinese empire: there has only been China. Vast, yes. Powerful, without question. But ultimately a four-sided enclosure. Ultimately an enormous siheyuan. One may debate whether this ingrained xenophobia served the Chinese people well. What should be beyond debate is that it has served the rest of us well.”

  Ambler moved nearer to the fifty-six-inch high-density screen, riveted by the image of the eloquent scholar, the burning intelligence he seemed to radiate.

  “Some political scholars believed that China would change once the Communists seized control,” Palmer said, after taking a sip of water from a glass at the lectern. “Surely international Communism was just that—international in its orientation. Surely its expansionist horizons would turn China outward, open it at least to its Eastern bloc brethren. So students of politics supposed. Of course, that is not what happened. Chairman Mao maintained the tightest control over his countrymen of any leader in history; he made himself into a godhead. And for all the bellicosity of his rhetoric, he not only insulated his countrymen from the strong winds of modernity, but he was deeply conservative, indeed reactive, in his projection of military force. A few very minor skirmishes aside, there are only two instances of note. One was the conflict in the Korean peninsula in the early fifties, where—nota bene—the Chinese actually believed that the United States was planning to launch an invasion. The Korean standoff resulted from a defensive, not an offensive, posture. The fact is that Chairman Mao was truly the last emperor—one whose obsessions were inward, having to do with the purity of his followers.”