Dark Zone (17 page)

LaFoote stopped at the corner of the street, unsure exactly what to do next. Besides the French policeman at the front entrance, there were guards immediately inside the wall. He surveyed the area, then decided to approach the policeman directly for advice.

Just as he stepped to the curb something hard grabbed him from the right side and dropped him to the pavement. As he gasped for breath, the face of the blond American he’d been following loomed above him.

“What do you say you tell me why you’ve been following me,” said the American in heavily accented French. “Or one of us is going to be in a lot of trouble.”

“I think,” gasped LaFoote. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”

“Then you’d better talk quickly.”

LaFoote coughed. He’d had the wind knocked out of him and his back hurt from being thrown down, but he wasn’t having a heart attack. Despite his tough words, the American loosened LaFoote’s collar and helped him up. He took a small handheld computer out of his pocket and slid it over him.

“Is that a stethoscope?” asked LaFoote in English. He fumbled over the word
stethoscope
for a moment before guessing it was the same in English as in French.

“Nah.” The American chuckled, as if that were the funniest joke in the world. “You speak English?”

“Some.”

“Better than my French, huh?” The American laughed again. “You feel all right?”

“I think.”

“You sent Gordon Kensworth?”

“
Oui
. Yes. That was not his real name. I regret that he is dead.”

“Let’s go somewhere we can talk.”

23

Lia’s flight arrived in Baltimore at 7:00 a.m. Two NSA security types—unofficially known as “the men in black” because they habitually wore black suits—met her in the terminal and drove her to NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland. Take away the security barriers and high-tech sensors and ignore the electronic surveillance doodads scattered around the campus, and Crypto City could be the home of GE or IBM. The big black buildings at the core of the complex looked like big black boxy buildings at the core of many corporate complexes. A huge parking lot surrounded the central buildings and looked no different from the lot around a suburban mall—though here it was a very bad idea to block the handicapped parking zone without authorization. The men in black were under orders to blow up suspicious vehicles.

Lia sat in the back of the car as the two security men drove her through the main gate. She didn’t bother acknowledging when they told her they’d take her bag inside for her. She merely got out and walked into the main building, eyes pinned to the ground.

She went to the medical area, even though she’d already heard the results of the tests she’d taken in Japan. She was OK—that was how the nurse put it. OK.

Right. OK.

“Take these pills. Here’s a shot.”

“What’s the shot for? And these pills?”

“You have to take them.”

“Why do I have to do anything?”

“You want to.”

“No, I don’t want to.”

“I know it’s terrible.”

“You don’t know anything.”

Lia remembered the conversation now and felt embarrassed for getting angry. It wasn’t the woman’s fault. She was trying to be sympathetic.

So was the NSA doctor, a woman internist about Lia’s age. Lia said nothing, following directions mechanically, nodding or grunting in answer to the questions. Finally, exam and tests over, she went downstairs into the restricted area used by Deep Black, making her way to a small lounge the ops called the squad room that was used to debrief missions. A half-dozen upholstered chairs were set up in a circle. A small credenza for coffee, tea, and soft drinks sat on one side of the room; opposite it was a media center with a large flat-screen video panel on the wall. A rolling cart held laptops that interfaced with the dedicated Desk Three system as well as the rest of the NSA and government. There were also small digital video cameras for recording mission reports.

Lia took one of the laptops and sat down, deciding to check the news on the World Wide Web before starting her report. She surfed aimlessly for a few minutes, bringing up pages on the MSNBC Web site devoted to entertainment and then love and lifestyles. These were things she never looked at, and now she looked at them with an odd fascination, as if she had found an alternate universe.

“Ms. DeFrancesca, I didn’t expect you back so soon.”

Startled, Lia nearly dropped the laptop. William Rubens was standing above her.

“I’m OK,” she said.

“I’m on my way up to my office. Can we talk later?”

Lia shrugged.

“Your report can wait a few days,” he added. “You might just take some days off now. Relax.”

Rubens had established the policy of “fresh reporting” following a mission and was ordinarily a stickler for following procedure. He was trying to be nice.

“It’ll only take me a minute,” she said, getting up for one of the recorders.

It took her over an hour, though the report itself ran less than three minutes, once recorded. She described how she’d gotten into the country, her contact, the minder, the officials, the airport. She mentioned the attack and the people who had been there in the barest number of words. She had to do it twice; without hearing or seeing her first version she decided it had been too emotional and erased it.

The second version was nearly identical, in word and tone.

Report finished, she hand-delivered it to the Desk Three operations personnel director, Kevin Montblanc, an NSA lifer who acted as the Deep Black den mother. Montblanc’s walrus mustache drooped at the corners of his face as he asked if she was all right. Despite her repeated protests that she was “fine, Kev, just fine,” he told her she should—she
must
—see a counselor.

“I must, huh?” she said finally, walking out of the office.

Rubens had just gotten off the phone with Montblanc when Lia showed up in his office.

“You’ve refused counseling,” he said as she sat down. “Why?”

“Because I don’t need it.”

“It’s customary.”

“Oh really? This happens a lot?”

“Ms. DeFrancesca. Lia.”

“Don’t start that crap with me.”

Lia had always been a prickly person to deal with. She was the only woman on the team—in fact, one of only two who had ever passed the qualifying course. She’d also proven herself in the field, but Rubens sometimes wondered if she was worth the trouble.

Not today. Today he felt sympathetic. He held his chin in his hand and considered what he should say next.

Besides LaBlanc, Rubens had spoken to the medical people upstairs as well as in Japan. The preliminary tests showed that she wasn’t pregnant and hadn’t been given any sexual diseases. Her right eye was swollen, and there were bruises on her legs and arms. But the physical injuries were minor, considering.

“I could order you to get counseling,” he said finally.

“You might as well order me to get a lobotomy.”

“How much time off do you want?”

“None.”

“None?”

“I was just on vacation. I want to work.”

“You should get some rest.”

“Screw rest,” she said.

Rubens got up from his desk and began pacing around his office. She was as cranky and feisty as ever. A good sign?

“You can send me. I’m OK,” she told him. “I know there’s a mission you need a woman agent for. Marie told me.”

“That can be done by anyone.”

“All the more reason not to worry, then,” said Lia. “I’ll get better makeup for my black eye.”

Maybe that
would
be the best thing for her, Rubens thought The mission itself was indeed straightforward. And Lia—Lia was Lia. She needed to be in action, to taste it.

But this wasn’t like getting up off a horse after you fell. If she were a man, would he send her out?

“Lia, for the record, let me state that I urge you to get care. You know we have plenty of people who can help,” he added.

“Help me do what?” She put her hands on her hips, face tilted forward—she could have been a gunfighter daring him to draw.

“I would feel better if you went to counseling.”

“Do we have another mission? Because I’m bored. I’m not sitting around knitting for a month until some dope of a doctor decides my inkblot test is normal.”

It was her right to be difficult, wasn’t it? Just as it was the General’s right to name his guardian and not live where his hated cousin lived.

“I should order you to see a psychologist,” Rubens told her stubbornly.

“You need me too much. Where am I going?”

“All right,” he said finally. “All right.”

He began telling her about Morocco.

24

Karr chose a café several blocks away, a small place tucked down an alley where his CIA shadows would be able to watch his back. He found a booth and slid in.

“You are very good,” said LaFoote. “I would almost believe that you chose this place at random.”

Karr laughed and took out his PDA, activating the bug sweeper; the place was clean.

LaFoote ordered a glass of wine. Karr ordered a fresh lemon juice,
citron pressé,
an old-fashioned French drink that came with a large vaselike pitcher of water and a much smaller one of sugar syrup. He’d never had this before and fussed over it—all the while waiting for the two CIA men to check in by phone with the Art Room and report that he hadn’t been followed. Finally, they did just that.

“So tell me about computers,” Karr said to the old Frenchman. “I’m interested in servers that are hijacked by terrorists and used to pass messages. Where can I find a list of them?”

“My friend Vefoures was an important chemist,” answered the man. “And three weeks ago he disappeared.”

Karr didn’t know quite how to respond.

“Computers—how do you say that in French?” said Karr.

“He worked for the government for many years, always in secret. And then after he retired, he was called back several times. Most recently in January, by someone who said they were connected with the DST. But my friends at the DST knew nothing about it. And then, three weeks ago, he was no more.”

“No idea what he’s talking about,” said Johnson, Karr’s runner in the Art Room.
“DST
is the French abbreviation for
Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire,
one of the French intelligence groups under the Interior Ministry. Counterterrorism, industrial espionage, whole bunch of things.”

Karr already knew that; he’d brushed up against a DST agent six or seven months back out in North Africa.

Nasty encounter, that. Guy had no sense of humor.

Karr took the small cup of sugar water and poured a bit more into his tumbler of
citron pressé,
fiddling with the do-it-yourself lemonade. “Takes the edge off, huh?”

“Can you help me?” asked the Frenchman.

“I think there’s a basic misunderstanding here,” said Karr. “There was a matter of computers. Someone passed along some Web addresses to a third party, who forwarded them to my boss. There were supposed to be some more. A meeting was arranged. Things went off-track. Somebody got shot. I don’t know anything about a chemist.”

A few more drops of sugar water, and the
citron press
é would be almost drinkable, Karr decided.

“My name is Denis LaFoote. For twenty-eight years I was an agent with the foreign service and then the Interior Ministry and the DST, the Directorate of Territorial Security. It is similar to your CIA and FBI. I served many stations. You can check me out.”

“I will.”

The Frenchman’s face blanched. “Not with Ponclare. Not in Paris.”

“Why not?” said Karr.

LaFoote shook his head.

“Ponclare?” asked Karr.

- “Head of the division responsible for Paris security, and has an overlap with some technical departments,” said his runner. “Pretty high up.”

“He is an important person in the directorate,” said LaFoote. “More important than his title makes him seem. They rearranged everything some years ago, and now they play shell games with the bureaucracy. Politics—it is all politics. He is a bureaucrat, not like his father.”

“Where do these computers come in?”

“While he was working, my friend received two e-mails from odd sources. I believe the word is
domains?”

“Domains, sure,” said Karr.

Domains were a type of computer network; they were common to many people as the portion after @ on an e-mail address. They corresponded to a set of physical computers, which was how the NSA had checked them out in the first place—and why the agency was interested.

“My friend kept the e-mails,” said LaFoote. “When he disappeared, I checked them and found the addresses themselves did not exist. Then I did some more work. I had a friend with the government check and was told that they were suspicious, but he refused to give any other details.”

“Suspicious how?”

LaFoote shrugged. “I’m not a computer expert. The person who got this information for me was the son of a friend, a very good friend. The son is not quite the man the father was, but what young man is?”

“What part of the government did he work for?”

“Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciare.
It is, how would you say, the public face of the Directorate for Territorial Security? They are connected. I cannot totally trust them.”

“Why not?”

“I am not sure of them. For now, let me leave it at that. I don’t want to prejudice you—I’m interested in the truth.”

“You promised more Web sites or domains.”

“No, more information. That was what was said on the call. And that’s what I’m giving you. I have no information on computers. That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“You probably ought to tell me the entire story from the beginning,” said Karr, “because it’s not really making any sense to me.”

As patiently as he could, LaFoote told the American about his friend Vefoures. He realized that the man would not care much for the details of their friendship, how they had served together in the army immediately after World War II and how they had both nearly married the same girl; he omitted these details and many others as well, sticking to the important facts. He put himself into the younger man’s shoes and tried to anticipate what he would like and need to hear.