“As you wish. Read all you like, but these papers don’t leave this room.”
Jason was already absorbing the information before him. He acquiesced with a nod of the head. René began work at the computer.
Twenty minutes later, Jason leaned forward and placed the papers on the desk. “The official report is amazing enough. The unofficial part is right out of some sci-fi story.”
René’s bushy eyebrows lifted, small furry animals arching their backs. “Sci-fi?”
“Science fiction. You know, like Star Wars.”
“Regrettably, this didn’t happen in some galaxy far, far away.”
Jason was rubbing his leg again. “May as well have. Death ray, earthquake machines.”
René was puzzled. “I don’t understand.”
Jason zipped open his bag and handed the man a sheaf of papers. “I’ll wait while you read this.”
After a few minutes, René looked up. “Are you telling me someone has resurrected this man’s inventions, this man…”
“Tesla.”
“Tesla. You Yanks think somehow the jihadists have gotten their hands on his inventions?”
Jason told René of his trip to Croatia, finishing with, “Apparently, the man made a deal with the Croatian Fascists to furnish them his machine — or the one he was working on — to get his nephew out of military service. The Germans couldn’t perfect it, and the Moslems got hold of whatever remained and have finished what Tesla started.”
René stared into space. “The bunch who participated in the massacre, the Bosniaks, they are Sunni, I believe.”
“So?”
If you read the report I gave you carefully, you’ll note whatever impacted that aircraft came at a certain angle.”
Jason stopped rubbing his leg. “I’m not following you.”
René peered over the edge of his desk. “You might want to get that sodding wound looked at.”
Jason averted his eyes downward. A dark stain was spreading across his pants leg. The damn stiches!
René was muttering into the phone. “Help is on the way, old chappie. We have a physician on call, specializes in trauma. Every so often, one of our lads gets banged about, a trauma we had rather not be made public, you understand. He’ll fix you right up.”
“Thanks. But while we wait, you were saying something about the aircraft and an angle.”
René stared at him blankly as though trying to remember, blinked, and stood. Turning, he reached up and pulled down a map of the world, a map that, like those used in schools, unrolled like a window shade.
Using a pen, he indicated a point in mid-South Atlantic. “This is the area where Flight 447 went down.” He moved his makeshift pointer to the skull-like bulge of western Africa. “The angle of impact would place the origins of whatever hit the aircraft roughly here, in the nation of Mali.”
“I understand some sort of triangulation was used to pinpoint the source.” Ignoring the pain in his leg, Jason stood and leaned over the desk for a better view. “In the middle of the desert?”
“Our people used a number of methods to locate the source. They all agreed on this location. You’ll note there’s a city, a town, rather, in the general area. Interestingly enough, we — the Western intelligence communities — have noted a decided uptick in activity there by people we believe to be the Islamic Maghreb.”
Jason inhaled audibly. “The North African arm of Al Qaeda.”
“Not exactly, the Maghreb have allied themselves with Al Qaeda, but they are a separate entity. And they are Sunni just like your Bosniaks and just like Al Qaeda.”
“Same difference.”
“Perhaps. Sat-intel tells us the activity is centered around Timbuktu.”
Jason squinted to make out the print on the map. “Timbuktu?”
“More or less.”
Jason hobbled back to his chair. “If you guys know where the missile or whatever came from, why haven’t you sent someone to investigate? After all, it was your plane that went down.”
René let the map roll itself back up before taking a seat. “Same reasons I’m sure you’ve already heard. Why should we when your chaps are so accommodating?” Elbows on the desk, René made a steeple of his fingers. “Which raises a question of why this matter didn’t refer itself to one of your intelligence organizations, CIA, NIA, et cetera.”
Jason leaned back in the chair and tried to stretch his wounded leg out. The pain continued unabated. “Ordinarily, it would. Problem as I understand it, reason my employer was hired, was that the American intelligence folks want plausible deniability if things go in the crapper. It looks very much like this op is going to be wet and take place in a Moslem country. After the United States’ engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan, after what amounted to an invasion of Pakistan to take out Osama bin Laden… Well, the powers that be in Washington don’t want to take any action that could be construed as anti-Islamic.”
René was now leaning forward, his arms crossed on the desk top. “And if, as you so picturesquely phrase it, ‘things go in the crapper’…?”
“It’s my ass. The bad guys will know Washington’s behind it, but they won’t be able to prove it.”
“You think you could resist, ah, what is the delightfully euphemistic phrase your CIA uses?… ‘Enhanced interrogation,’ that’s it. You think you could withstand enhanced interrogation?”
Jason’s hand grew still on his leg. “I don’t think anyone expects me to resist. If I’m taken, no one expects me to be alive.”
29
Constructed in 1848, the Marseille train station is U-shaped, built around a rooftop canopy. It is perched on a plateau and reached by an outdoor grand staircase lined with African and Mideastern statuary reflecting the station’s earlier significance as a waypoint to either destination. It is also the southern terminal of the TGV bullet train’s line from Paris on which it is capable of exceeding 540 kilometers per hour.
At that speed, it is unnecessary to suffer the inconveniences of air travel.
With new sutures in his calf, Jason’s leg felt stiff. He limped slowly down the stairs. At the bottom, he chose a cab at random, a Mercedes, and began the southern ride into the city.
The driver’s skin was black, the color of an eight ball, toned, no doubt, by the French West African, Cameroonian, or Senegalese sun. Marseille had long been home to immigrants from former French colonies seeking jobs that did not exist under the new regimes of their homelands. Jason could see the man’s eyes checking him out him in the rearview mirror.
“Where to, monsieur?”
“Perhaps you know of a man called Le Couteau?”
The eyes were studying him closely. “The knife? Marseille is large, monsieur. There are many people who may have such a… a nom de guerre.”
The voice was a pleasant baritone mix of deep African melody and French accent.
Jason reached into his pocket and produced a wad of euro. Leaning forward, he dropped them on the front passenger seat. “I would appreciate you searching for one of them.”
The driver cut an eye from the road to appraise the amount. “Perhaps this ‘Knife’ does not wish to see you.”
“Perhaps,” Jason agreed amiably. “But if you tell people Jason Peters is looking for him, he might.”
They were passing l’Hôtel du Département, the local government headquarters — Big Blue, as it was known locally — bright blue structures that reminded Jason of a child’s garish toy on stilts. The French seemed to prefer a modern aesthetic in their architecture, no matter how ugly — a passion that apparently exceeded national pride; the building had been designed not by a Frenchman, but a Brit, Will Alsop.