Dogan ordered café au lait and surveyed Keyes. Six feet tall, perfectly built, able to kill efficiently with any weapon or his hands. What the Company’s new recruits lacked in experience was made up for in training. Or so they thought. Dogan had no patience for men like Keyes. The only way to understand the field was to give a little, but these new recruits seemed to have no give in them at all. Everything was black and white. And the desire to score points with the brass had become an overriding goal that clouded the true nature of the job. Keyes was like all the rest and Dogan despised them all.
Without Nam, it had fallen on senior field agents like Dogan to field-train under actual conditions recruits for the Company’s Division Six, the rather mundane equivalent to MI-6’s fictional double-0s. Extraordinarily few recruits were considered good enough for Division Six. Keyes was one of them. Dogan had his doubts. The kid had too many edges, from the way he wore his short-cropped black hair to the way his tautly coiled fingers flexed into fists and then opened again. Keyes’s vision was narrow. Dogan would have to break him of that.
“Do you mind if I ask you something?” Keyes asked him suddenly.
Dogan’s eyes stopped sweeping the end of the Place du Tertre where the defector would be making his approach. “Go ahead.”
“You know anything about this Russian?”
“Weapons division research chief, I heard. Bringing with him a microfilm of all sorts of drawings and schemes. I try not to listen much. Doesn’t help the job.”
“You don’t seem impressed.”
Dogan’s eyes bore into the younger agent’s. “Son, I’ve been at this a long time and seen us get hurt by defectors more than anything. We lose more than we turn. The Russians are just better at this sort of thing than we are. Use the photocopying machine over there without clearance and you lose a finger or two and end up with a one-way ticket to Siberia. Most of the defectors we get are plants.”
“This one?”
“Won’t know that until the debriefing.”
Keyes hesitated. “Can I ask you something else?”
Dogan glanced around him. “We’ve got time.”
“Your code name — Grendel — did you choose it yourself?”
“It was chosen for me.”
“Grendel was the monster who ate human flesh, right?”
“And terrorized countrysides,” Dogan elaborated. “People lived in fear of him. Nobody dared to cross him.”
“And that’s the way it is for you?” Keyes asked, mugging up to Dogan like a Little Leaguer would to Dave Winfield.
“That’s the way it’s got to be. Intimidation is everything. The opposition is afraid to send their guns after you because failure means you’ll send your guns after them, and that’s too high a price to pay. No one wants escalation, people killing each other over personal things. Above all, men like Vaslov and me, we’re professionals.”
“Vaslov,” Keyes muttered. “I’ve studied his file.”
“A fine gentlemen. My opposing and equal number for the Soviets.”
“You sound as if you like him.”
“Respect is closer to it. He’s been at this as long as I have, maybe longer. We’re both anachronisms. I’d bet he feels the same way about me.”
“Ever talk to him?”
Dogan looked Keyes over again. Big, strong, and smart. Yes, the Company was choosing well these days, but Dogan wasn’t ready to entrust the country’s safety to men like him. There was something missing in men like Keyes, a genuine regard for what they were doing and an understanding of the total picture — something like that. Dogan couldn’t put his finger on it.
Keyes’s walkie-talkie began to squawk.
“I’ll take it from here,” Dogan said, and the youth handed the box over reluctantly with an “I wanted to do it myself stare. Dogan lifted the plastic to his lips. “This is Grendel.”
“Grendel,” a voice boomed. People at neighboring tables looked over.
“Don’t talk so damn loud!” Dogan ordered in a whisper.
“Grendel,” the voice started, softer, “subject has entered Place du Tertre from Sacré-Coeur side.”
That would be the front from his vantage point, Dogan calculated. The speaker was thorough.
“Is he alone?” Dogan asked.
“Affirmative.”
“Clothing?”
“Black overcoat, unbuttoned. Tan suit.”
Damn! thought Dogan. It was eighty degrees and the Russian bastard was wearing an overcoat. Must have thought he was still in Moscow. That would make him stand out. A shield was in order.
“Detach two of your team to his rear. Understood?”
“Understood, Grendel. They’ll be in his shadow.”
“No! Not too close. If we spook him he’ll stand out even more. I don’t want him to know they’re there.”
Sweat slipped down Dogan’s back and stuck to his shirt. He felt sticky. Something was wrong about this, all wrong. His eyes swept the area around the Place du Tertre, the street bordering it across which lay a row of shops and stores. Everything looked routine.
“What’s the matter?” Keyes asked. “Do you see something?”
“Shut up!” Dogan barked. His eyes kept sweeping. Artists with paintbrushes in hand doodled across canvas as they talked nonstop to wide-eyed tourists hoping to turn them into buyers. A mailman bicycled down the street. A blind beggar stuck his cup in the faces of approaching tourists. A single car with an old woman driving crept down the neighboring street, stopped to let two men wheeling baby carriages pass, and then stalled. The woman fought to restart it. Behind her, horns honked.
“Where is he now?” Dogan asked into the walkie-talkie.
“Halfway down the street” came back the voice. “Should be in your view now.”
“Is anyone else following besides us?”
“Negative. Do you want me to move the rest of my team in?”
“Absolutely not!” Dogan ordered. “Stay where you are until you hear different from me. Keep your eyes and your men on the head of the street. We’re not home free yet.”
Dogan glanced down the place. The man in the black overcoat was shouldering his way through the crowd, the agents at his rear much too obvious in their attempt to keep up. The defector reached one of the artists’ booths and stopped.
The men with the baby carriages, dressed like butlers, had started toward the red-clothed tables.
“We move,” Dogan told Keyes.
The younger agent looked frazzled. “That wasn’t the plan.”
The baby carriages squealed closer.
“Take him!” Dogan shouted at Keyes and into the walkie-talkie at the same time, already propelling himself from the table.
The baby carriages were just behind him. The walkie-talkie squawked.
Dogan threw himself at his targets, the move perfectly timed. An instant later he had both men dressed as butlers pinned on the ground, holding them to make extracting a weapon impossible.
One of the baby carriages teetered on half its wheels, spilled over. A baby slipped out, crying more from surprise than hurt.
Dogan looked down at the butlers. Their eyes showed fear. They were babbling in French.
“Grendel, come in! Come in, Grendel! … I’m taking my team in. Repeat, I’m taking my team in!”
“NO!” Dogan screamed as if the man at the head of the street could hear him, lunging off the butlers back to his feet. Where was the damn walkie-talkie? How had he dropped it?
Dogan spotted it next to the closest red tablecloth. He jammed it to his lips, the plot suddenly clear to him.
“No! Do you hear me? Stay where you are! Repeat, stay where you are. We’ve been had. Stay where you are!”
There was no response. The man had already moved his team in.