Reluctantly Guillaume produced the piano wire he had in his pocket and gave it to Jean.
"You idiot," Jean said as he tossed it out the window.
Guillaume sighed to let Jean know he was restraining himself with only the greatest of difficulty, turned away, and spent the rest of the short trip staring sullenly out the window.
Jean turned left toward the Seine and crossed the Pont Alexandre III. Soon Paris became Paris once again. Narrow winding streets littered with bottles and scraps of paper, utility poles plastered with handbills. As they passed, the lights of the Cafe du Rive Gauche winked out. A drunken shout came to them over the engine noise, and a fight spilled out into the street. Jean steered deftly around it, then took a left into an alley and stopped at the far end of it at a green doorway lit by a single, unshaded bulb.
The two of them got out, put on their soiled gloves a second time, and began shoveling the used containers, bits of paper, and garbage from the back of the truck into three large wooden boxes that stood by the door.
As they worked, the green door opened and an angular man stepped out, as thin as one could imagine a human being to be and still stand erect. On his gaunt face was a pair of large, perfectly round eyeglasses which gave him a peculiarly bug-eyed look. A thick cigarette hung in his mouth, and a narrow column of smoke wound its way along the ridges of his face as he watched the two men work.
"Trouble?" he asked.
Jean stopped shoveling. "He is the trouble," he said with a nod toward Guillaume.
Guillaume shrugged, and the thin man smiled wanly.
When they had finished filling the first of the boxes, they carried it inside and placed it on the floor next to a white screen roughly six feet square that had been laid out in the center of the room. Guillaume, who had been to this place many times but had never before been allowed to come inside, took the opportunity to look around.
The walls of the room were painted stark white with a black, acidproof countertop running around its perimeter. On the counter were various modules of electronic equipment, some with screens, some with only buttons and dials. Stacked on the floor below these were boxes, presumably with more electronic equipment. In one corner stood an enlarger for making photographic prints.
"Seen enough?" the thin man asked pointedly, coming up behind him.
Guillaume swept his eyes over the smaller man's emaciated frame. It wouldn't take much to crush him like a piece of scrap paper.
"Your job is to bring in the garbage. You're a garbage collector. Don't forget it."
Guillaume grunted and left. When he and Jean returned with the next box, the thin man had overturned the first load onto the white screen and was picking through it on his hands and knees.
After they'd gone, the thin man walked to the phone and dialed. As it was ringing, he snuffed his cigarette in the ashtray.
"Hello?" said a voice.
"Charles."
"Hello, Charles. Find something?"
"Yes. Tell the man I think I may have found what he's looking for."
"Excellent, Charles. And the men driving the truck?"
"Jean and Guillaume."
"They will be taken care of."
Charles hung up the phone and scrutinized the image on the screen of the projection microscope again. He smiled.
Three
The telephone sounded far away and indistinct, as though someone had stuffed it with cotton. Carter rolled over and picked up the receiver from the nightstand.
"Code ten," said Hawk's voice.
Carter came immediately awake. "Yes, sir," he said. He pressed the hold button and went to the closet where he began working the combination to the safe.
From the safe he pulled out what looked to be an ordinary leather briefcase and carried it back to the bed. Along the way he picked up one of his shoes from underneath the valet.
He laid the briefcase on the bed, then taking the shoe in hand, twisted the heel. It separated neatly into halves, the bottom one having embedded in it a thin plastic circuit card. He slipped out the card and inserted it into a slot in the briefcase. Its locks snapped open.
Inside the lid was a small library of cassette tapes. Carter selected the one labeled «10» and fitted it into the console that made up the lower half of the case. This consisted of a smooth deck of burnished aluminum broken only by a power switch, condenser microphone, volume control, and the usual buttons found on any cassette tape recorder — these, and one other item slightly more unusual. At the top of the set was an indented cradle such as those found on a telecopier, with two back rubber suction cups marked RECEIVER.
Carter untangled the tiny microcircuit headphones, plugged them in, put the phone receiver into the cradle, hit the play button, and took the phone off hold. Hawk said, "Can you hear me?"
"Yes, sir."
"Kobelev has lost his dacha outside of Moscow."
"Lost it, sir?"
"Had it confiscated."
"Has he been arrested?"
"Negative."
"What's the analysis?"
"Apparently, the Presidium is taking a conservative turn. The failure to kill President Manning and the risk of all-out war must have sobered them."
"Any possibility of help from that quarter?"
"I doubt it. Kobelev may not command the clout he once did, but he's still at large and extremely dangerous. That may be why the Presidium stopped short of cutting him down completely. Perhaps they're afraid of him."
"What's all this mean to us?"
"It means if Kobelev wants his daughter, he'll have to come for her himself. He doesn't have the resources any longer to delegate that kind of responsibility. Which works in our favor and which brings me to the second development."
"Which is?"
"He wants to talk."
"A defection, sir?"
"Strange you should ask. That's one of the possibilities I've been considering."
"It might also be a trap."
"That's the other possibility, especially since he asked for you, specifically. But the official message says he wants to work out a trade for Tatiana. Remember Nikolai Sachs?"
"The scientist?"
"One of the leaders of the principal dissident movement among the Moscow elite. Mikhail Zoshchenko?"
"Jewish writer. Jailed for blowing the whistle on Stalinist anti-Semitism."
"Right. And you know Maria Morgan, the CIA double they tumbled to in 68. We'd like nothing better than to get the chance to debrief her."
"Big names," said Carter. "They'd certainly look good coming over, but can Kobelev still pull it off, especially since he's fallen from grace?"
Hawk sighed. "Frankly, I don't know. I do know that Zoshchenko and Maria Morgan have been moved from Tomak to Tashkent, presumably to make them more accessible should a deal be worked out."
"You 're not seriously suggesting we talk with this man?"
"Let's get one thing straight, N3. Nothing's changed. If you go into this, you go as an assassin, not a negotiator. The man's to be killed at any cost — any cost. Those orders come from upstairs."
"Yes, sir."
"But if there's a chance we can catch him out in the open without having to expose ourselves any further, we're going to have to take it."
"Where's the meet?"
"Berlin. A safe house has been arranged just on the east side of the wall."
"That is his territory, sir."
"That's right. It's his ball game in his park. Maybe he feels safer that way. When you hit him, you're going to have to get out of there somehow. I know you've managed that before."
"If he's there, I'll take him out."
"All right, Carter. Not too confident. We want you coming back from this. In the meantime we're going ahead with the switch in Dijon. I've already arranged to feed Kobelev the fact that Tatiana will be in France. You remember Ned Cassidy?"