“What’s that?” Slavin asked.
“Rye bread with walnuts and an apple, sliced thin.”
“Huh.” Slavin gulped his drink; his hands shook.
A drunk, or just nervous? Tanner wondered. “How long have you been stationed here?”
“Two years. Get along okay with just English, I figure.”
That told Tanner something. Either Slavin had no interest in France or no interest in his job. Tanner found the attitude mind-boggling. Slavin was living in a completely different world about which he wasn’t remotely curious.
The bartender returned with a oval-shaped loaf of rye surrounded by wafer-thin slices of apple. At that moment, the door chimed again. From the corner of his eye Tanner saw Cahil walk in. He chatted with the hostess, then followed her to a table. In his left hand he carried a copy of Le Nouvel Observateur. The signal told Tanner that Slavin hadn’t been followed. However unlikely, Briggs had half-expected Slavin to report this meeting to the embassy’s security division, if for no other reason than to cover himself. That he didn’t have an escort could mean several things, but Tanner’s gut told him Slavin wanted this encounter over as quickly as possible.
“Listen,” Slavin said, “I don’t know what I can do for you.”
“Do you know Susanna Vetsch?”
“Heard her name, that’s all.”
“In passing or in reports?”
“Both.”
“When’s the last time anyone saw her?”
“Two weeks ago, give or take.”
Give or take? Jesus. “Do the gendarmie know about her disappearance?”
“Whoa, nobody said she’d disappeared.”
“This drop-out was expected?”
Slavin shrugged.
“Did they get the dump from her phone? Interview anybody … check out her apartment?”
“I don’t know.”
Tanner felt a knot of anger tighten in his chest. Left alone, Slavin was going to give him as little help as possible. Unless someone had dropped the ball, there was no way a controller would allow two weeks to pass without a check-in from an agent — especially from someone under deep cover.
Tanner took a deep breath, then turned on his stool to face Slavin. He put his hand over Slavin’s glass and slid it away from him. “Here’s what I know, Frank: Susanna Vetsch was working deep cover for your FCI division under the alias of Susanna Coreil, probably posing as an American with links to wholesalers in the U.S. heroin market; the SDCB has been playing catch-up with organized crime since it started switching from gambling back to narcotics; ten days ago, there was a flurry of traffic between the embassy here and DEA headquarters in Washington talking about an agent code-named Tabernacle — Susanna Vetsch.”
Slavin’s mouth dropped open. “Christ almighty, how do you know that?”
“That’s not what you should be worrying about. Your worry, Frank, is me — me and a distraught father back home who’s willing to do anything to get his daughter back. Here’s how it’s going to work: If I walk out of here feeling like you haven’t done your best to help, I’m going to start making some calls. Within the hour, the State Department and the DEA are going to start getting phone calls from reporters asking about a missing agent and a DEA bureaucrat named Frank Slavin who doesn’t seem to give a damn.”
“You can’t do that. You can’t blackmail me.”
“Think of it as incentive. There’s a young woman lost somewhere out there. This is your chance to help. Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not looking for the DEA’s deep, dark secrets — just something that will help me find Susanna Vetsch.”
“I already told you, I don’t know anything.”
Tanner shrugged. “Have it your way.” He stood up, pulled some franc notes from his pocket, and dropped them on the counter. “Good luck to you.”
“Wait, wait … Okay, listen, I’ll give you what I know, but the truth is, this thing is way above my pay grade. She’s missing, I know that, and it’s got a lot of people scrambling.”
Tanner sat back down. He signaled the bartender to refill Slavin’s drink. “Let’s start at the beginning: Who first pushed the panic button, and when?”
Tanner questioned Slavin for another thirty minutes, until certain the man was holding nothing back. In fact, Slavin didn’t know much; his knowledge had come secondhand as he routed messages between FCI command and DEA headquarters in Washington. Tanner’s hunch about Susanna’s assignment involving French organized crime was correct, but Slavin had no specifics.
“Last question,” Tanner said. “The only address I have for her is a blind DEA mail drop. Can you get me her address?”
Slavin nodded. “Yeah. You planning on going there?”
“Yes.”
Slavin gulped the last of his bourbon. “Watch yourself. She lived in the armpit of Paris.”
6
Royal Oak, Maryland
An hour after leaving Washington McBride and Oliver arrived at a waterfront ranch-style house in Dames Quarter, three miles across the bay from the Root estate. Oliver pulled into the driveway and stopped behind the ERT — evidence response team — van. Standing on the porch were an elderly man and woman; beside them a chocolate lab paced back and forth, whining and sniffing the air. The man pointed his thumb up the driveway. Oliver nodded his thanks and they walked on.
At the head of the driveway they found a meadow of knee-high Broomsedge grass and wild rye; beyond that, a rickety dock surrounded by cattails. McBride caught the scent of rotting bait fish in the air. One of the ERT technicians met them at the foot of the dock while two more agents in yellow chest waders stood in the water, peering through the reeds and under the dock. The mud along the shore was as dark as coffee grounds, with a hint of red, stained by the tannin in the cypress roots. A fourth technician knelt in the mud photographing something there.
“What’ve you got, Steve?” Oliver asked.
“About an hour ago the owner called the Somerset Sheriff’s Office and reported his boat missing — a fourteen-foot Lund with a trolling motor. They called Wicomico and they called us — they figured the timing coincidence was worth a look.”
“Was it?”
The technician grinned. “There’s boot prints all over the place, Collin. Three men, I’m guessing.”
“Good enough to cast?”
“I think so. My gut reaction: They’re the same as the one’s at the Root place.”
“How about the boat?”
“Coast Guard’s looking for it, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. About a hundred yards from shore the bottom drops to a couple hundred feet.”
McBride looked around. “How about nearby roads?”
“There’s a fire road and a boat ramp about three hundred yards to the southeast. I’ve got a couple guys looking around.”
“What kind of motor did the boat have?” Oliver asked.
The technician frowned. “Uhm … electric, I think. Why?”
“They’re quiet.”
“Oh, gotchya. I’ll call you when I get the casts compared.”
“Thanks.”
Oliver and McBride walked a few feet away. Oliver plucked a cattail, brushed his index finger over the nap, tossed it away. “Smart SOBs. Odds are, they didn’t pick this boat by chance.”
McBride nodded. “Agreed. They did their homework: Steal the boat across the county line and hope the Somerset and Wicomico sheriffs aren’t big on information sharing. One thing that bothers me, though: Why scuttle the boat?”
“I was wondering the same thing.”
“They grab Amelia Root, put her in the boat, cross the bay to the fire road … Gotta figure it’s about two A.M. by then, which means they could’ve had the boat cleaned up and back here by three — long before the owner would wake up and notice anything. So whatdya think? Either they got behind schedule and had to scuttle it, or they didn’t think it through.”