Pinnacle Event (28 page)

“Boulevard des Crabes,
s'il vous pla
î
t,
Etienne,” Marcoux told the driver.

“Lapouz Noz Brochetti?” the driver asked.

“Oui, oui.”
Marcoux then explained to Stroh, “I assumed you would be famished, so I have reserved a table. I hope you like seafood.”

“I would eat giraffe at the moment, but, yes, I do.”

“It will also give me a chance to tell you what I have found out about the goings on across the way in the independent part of Comoros. We have been hard at work since you called, checking flights and shipping records over there. And asking about strange comings and goings.”

Stroh pointed at the driver and gave Marcoux a questioning look. “Oh, Etienne works for me. Has for years. One of my most loyal employees, aren't you,
mon ami
?” Marcoux laughed, tapping the African driver's shoulder. “In fact, he was one of my men who went over to the Comoros. Just got back late this afternoon. Very productive trip, eh, Etienne? Our man here found out exactly what you wanted to know.”

“Well, then, I hope I can offer you a small reward, Etienne,” Marcus said, reaching for his wallet. Marcoux placed his hand on top of Marcus Stroh's.

“No need for that. Etienne is a contract employee of mine. Well taken care of, aren't you?”

Marcus Stroh took a card from inside his jacket. “Well, at least we can offer our hospitality. If you are ever in South Africa, or in trouble for that matter, ring us up on that line and tell them to get in touch with me. They always answer at that number. But call me Mr. Robinson. We'll show you a good time if you do visit us.”

Etienne was not used to being treated that nicely by white folks. Most of them saw him as a short, skinny nobody, like a piece of the taxi he drove for cover. The “taxi driver” let his fare off at the restaurant, parked a block away, and then circled back to sit as a watcher at the bar as the two white men dined. His role was to see if anyone took undue notice of the two, to intervene in extremis. But on Mayotte, there was never extremis. The only security problems on the island were related to the heroin that came by boat and ship, smugglers looking for a back door into France and the EU. The S
û
ret
é
handled the counternarcotics effort; the intelligence service, Marcoux, only assisted.

“Mainly, my concern here as DGSE is who comes and goes. We are a foreign intelligence service and these islands are domestic France, as much a part of the country as Normandy,” Marcoux said, as they settled in at their table. “But I also have a watching brief on the independent country of Comoros. After all, before they became a nation, they and Mayotte were joined together and were one French colony at one point. The wise folk here on Mayotte voted to become part of France. Smart move, for now the French taxpayers provide the funding for a very nice life here. And Comoros? Not so nice.”

“You don't have a base in your Moroni embassy there, in Comoros?” Stroh asked.

“We do, but his main job is training the Comoros service, such as it is. So, they all know him. He can't run sources. Our last man tried to do both jobs, training and spying, and, of course, they detected it and asked him to return to Paris. So now I run the sources from here. Do you like the Sancerre tonight?”

“I defer to you.”

“I think we get a good one tonight, since La Piscine is paying.” Marcoux used the French nickname for the DGSE headquarters, the swimming pool. “Ladoucette Sancerre Lafond,” he said to the waiter, smiling at the thought of soon tasting the expensive white.
“Pas trop froid.”
Then, looking back at his guest, he continued. “I am very glad to help you, of course, but why come to me. Why not go and ask the Comoros people themselves?”

“Mbali, my boss, she said go straight to you. I think she doubts the Comoros security service's, shall we say, competence?”

Marcoux smiled. “Mbali, she is your boss? I worked with her on a case involving Afrikaner mercenary types. Yes, she doubts the Comoros's competence, or maybe even more their honesty. A hard woman, moving fast is Mbali.”

Stroh nodded agreement. “So, you like it here, in Mayotte?” he observed. It seemed like quite a likable place, complete with relaxed establishments such as this French restaurant, where Marcoux appeared to be well known. The restaurant was a darkened room with fans turning slowly, one wall missing, open to the sea, letting in a humid, salty breeze.

“I do. I am my own man here,” Marcoux replied, lighting a cigarette. “Paris told me to move my office to Mamoudzou on the big island, since that is the capital now. I didn't. Paris forgot.” The wine arrived and Marcoux approved the tasting. “I work here when I want, which is mainly at night. Sources don't talk in the sun.”

Marcus Stroh knew not to rush people like the Frenchman, but he also knew that Mbali was waiting for his report. Mbali was always in a rush and did not understand people who were not. “And your sources in Comoros, they were productive you said?”

“They were,” Marcoux answered, apparently not bothered by the rudeness of getting down to the business before the main course. “Anjouan, you know it?” Marcus shook his head, no. “It's one of the Comoros Islands, although it tried to break away, or rather one of our prot
é
g
é
s there, a Colonel Bacar, tried to break it away. It was
une pagaie,
with the African Union invading to help reunite the islands. Imagine Sudanese, Senegalese, Tanzanian troops trying an amphibious landing.
Tr
è
s drole.
”

“Oh, yes, I do recall,” Stroh offered. “Two thousand eight?”

“
Oui.
Well, we had to find Bacar a safe haven when it was all over. We put him up in Benin. He had been our eyes and ears on Anjouan. After he was ousted, I arrive here and start building my own network of sources. One of them, he runs a satellite dish, television and Internet installation company, he is quite good. You can imagine.”

Etienne was sipping his whiskey, but downing Perrier, into which he squeezed juice from a lemon he cut and sliced at the bar. His eyes scanned the diners in the dimly lit room, mainly whites, some with African women. He knew most of the crowd, or at least had seen them before. There were only twelve thousand people on Petite-Terre, the smaller of the two main islands that made up Mayotte.

“Around the time you mentioned, in August, he noticed an unscheduled flight into Ouani, the little airport on Anjouan, from Madagascar. Air Madagascar flies that route, but this, this was a charter. A C-130, cargo plane.” Marcoux clearly relished storytelling. “Then within a week there were three other flights by the same plane. And whites took the cargoes away.”

Etienne had rated everyone in the dining room as a known quantity, except one blond man, who was with a woman Etienne did know. He saw her with men, with tourists, from time to time. This man was younger, Etienne thought, but he wore a hearing aid.

“Then the plane came back, three months later, on a flight this time from Moroni on the other side of the Comoros,” Marcoux continued, “on the date you mentioned. Twenty-six October.”

Marcus Stroh wondered if he had told the Frenchman too much, if the French sources were just inventing stories that matched the dates Stroh had provided Marcoux on the phone. “I suppose it is too much to ask if that satellite television man got the tail number of this mystery plane?”

“Perhaps, come to think of it, you should pay for dinner, or perhaps donate that reward to my office fund,” Marcoux replied. He handed Stroh his business card, which alleged he was a professor of anthropology. On the back of the card, Marcoux had handwritten “5B-01739.” Marcoux poured them both more of the Sancerre. “5B, oddly, is the aircraft tail code for Cyprus. Never seen that aircraft around here before.”

Stroh placed the card in his shirt pocket. “If one had flown cargo into Ouani, how would you get it out of the country? Another flight, bigger plane?”

“No bigger plane could land there,” Marcoux replied. “In fact, a C-130 can only land there light, not fully loaded. We know that from the support flights l'Arm
é
e de l'Air flew in '08, during the African Union's invasion.”

The blond man excused himself from his dinner guest, walked through the bar, past Etienne, and went outside. Etienne saw him through the small window above the bar, talking on his mobile. Why not talk at the table, thought Etienne? Was he answering a call from his wife perhaps?

“How would you get the cargo off island, then?” Stroh asked.

“Containers. They ship from the harbor at Mutsamudu. And before you ask, they are almost always the same little freighters on runs to Durban or Karachi. At the end of October, two new ships, modern things, had maiden calls at Mutsamudu. I will have their names for you in the morning.”

Stroh pulled out his iPhone. “I hate to be rude, but I have an anxious boss. Unlike you, I am not my own man. Please forgive me for tapping out a quick note to her. When I have completed that, no more business tonight. I trust there are good cognacs here.”

“There was a bottle of Brugerolle, Vieille Reserve, last time…”

Marcoux fell forward, toward Stroh. Blood shot from the side of his head, splattering onto the wall and then gushing onto the tablecloth. Marcus Stroh dropped his iPhone and went for his gun as he looked up at the blond man walking toward him. Stroh recognized the silencer on the pistol, just before the gun erupted again. A
thud,
a flash, and then Stroh fell back, out of his chair, a bullet having transited through his forehead and out the back of his head.

Etienne had come off his barstool as soon as he saw the blond man walking quickly toward Marcoux's table. He kneeled and pulled his Smith & Wesson M&P340 Scandium ankle gun from his leg. By the time he stood up, Marcoux was shot. Etienne aimed the small revolver and fired at the shooter, hitting him in the head with the .357 round just after the man fired at Stroh. The tiny revolver created a powerful sound. Women screamed. The blond man fell to his knees. There was a stampede of diners toward the door. Etienne moved closer and fired again. The blond man fell sideways onto the floor, his gun landing next to Stroh's iPhone in the pool of fresh blood spreading on the tiles.

 

39

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13

HIGH SPEED COMPUTING CENTER

LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY

LIVERMORE, CALIFORNIA

“I can tie the shooter to Olympus Security,” Dugout blurted out as Ray and Mbali entered the room. It was almost one in the morning. They had been working flat out since the word reached Mbali that Marcus had been killed in Mayotte, near the Comoros. Mbali had been on the phone to his family, helping them make the arrangements to get the body back, planning for an official funeral, making sure his dependents would get a full pension, talking with the French S
û
ret
é
about the investigation into who the shooter was.

“Cell phone?” Ray asked. “What does the shooter's phone tell us?”

“Nothing, I can't associate him with a mobile device, except the burner he had on him when he died. No, the Bulgarian passport he was carrying was a fake. No such person. Bulgaria doesn't have him or a passport by that number in their database. But the picture from that passport that we got from the French police,” Dugout said, tapping keys that put a mug shot on the large video screen, “I ran that picture against a bunch of databases and got a .97 confidence match against this picture of a guy in the Cyprus passport database. Different name. In Cyprus, he was Karl Alfson, born in Stockholm. Except there was no Karl Alfson in the Stockholm birth and death database that matches. He made up a Swedish identity in order to get a Cypriot citizenship and passport.”

“Sweden, Cyprus, Bulgaria. So where did Marcus's killer really come from?” Mbali asked. “What was his real name?”

“I don't know. I just know Cyprus granted him citizenship five years ago and that he listed his employer as Olympus Security of Polis, Cyprus.”

Mbali sat down. For the first time since he had met her weeks ago, Ray thought she looked not just tired, but dejected. Losing Marcus Stroh had hit her very hard. It had hit Bowman, too, who kept thinking about how Stroh had saved his life in Cape Town.

She looked to Ray, “I say we hit every Olympus Security office in the world, round up every one of them.”

Bowman winced. “Not yet. We get all of our friends to tail them, yes. And where we don't have cooperative local services to do it, we do it ourselves. We do surreptitious entry into their offices, we copy all of their comms, e-mails, phone calls. I don't want to spook anybody into going early. We need to know who they are working for.”

“Exxon, Alcoa, Microsoft,” Dugout read out. “They have a lot of the international Fortune 500 listed as clients somewhere in the world. They also work for NGOs like UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, the Purpose Fund, providing security. Also BBC, WNN, other television outfits that have reporters in war zones.”

“You got that client list from hacking into their headquarters in Cyprus?” Bowman asked.

“No, from their public Web site. There doesn't seem to be anything in their Cyprus office to hack into. I can't find an IP address for it. All I can find is a cloud e-mail service that they use worldwide, it's Rackspace. Their web page is hosted there, too, but connected to nothing. The employees all access the e-mail service from their own devices. Talk about BYOD, I don't think this company has any computers of its own. Nothing to hack.”

“Isn't that unusual?” Mbali asked.

“It is, but it's also brilliant,” Bowman said. “Do they have any files stored in the cloud, other than e-mail?”