CHAPTER 5 – AN UNEXPECTED MOVE
20:11 (Paris Time)
Monday, October 19, 2020
Room 508, Hôtel Balzac
Rue de Balzac, 8ème Arrondissement
Paris, France
Erik knocked on the door of Ian’s room, using a frequently changing code, and was admitted by Julie, who then quickly returned to her monitoring computer, set on top of the vanity, next to Ian’s laptop computer.
‘’Anything yet?’’
‘’Sweet nothing!’’ replied the female analyst, sounding a bit discouraged. ‘’If those two Pakistanis came to Paris on vacation, then they have a weird concept of vacation: they have done nothing but stay inside the Pakistani embassy and did not place calls or open internet links of any significance. It is as if they are sitting tight while waiting for something. What? I frankly couldn’t tell.’’
Erik unconsciously brushed his short beard with one hand, perplex.
‘’This doesn’t make sense! We have the general in charge of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, plus his chief nuclear weapons designer, sitting in Paris and doing nothing? If they are indeed waiting for something specific, like a call or a message, you would expect that such a call or message would have come rather quickly. Instead, it is as if they are being snubbed.’’
‘’Snubbed?’’ protested Julie. ‘’Who the hell would snub such important men? It would take someone with supreme arrogance to do that.’’
‘’Like our own President?’’ said Ian from his computer station, attempting some caustic humor. That made Julie’s eyes roll.
‘’Yeah! That would be like him to do that. I…’’
Julie, who had put on again her headset she used to monitor the cell phones used by Khan and Ghanef, suddenly stopped speaking, apparently concentrating on something she was hearing. Erik made a point of not breaking her attention and stayed silent. After maybe a minute or so, Julie looked up at him, her expression sober.
‘’General Khan just received a phone call in Arabic, asking him and Ghanef to go right away to the Saudi embassy. Apparently, Khan did not like the tone used by the caller but still said that he would go.’’
‘’The Saudi embassy? He and Ghanef came to Paris simply to wait for the Saudi embassy here to contact them? Why didn’t they simply go to Saudi Arabia in the first place if they have truly important business to conduct with the Saudis?’’
‘’Maybe because what their business is about needs to stay absolutely secret?’’ proposed Ian. ‘’Such important Pakistani men visiting Saudi Arabia would twitch the ears of many foreign secret services. On my part, if I would hear about those two men visiting Saudi Arabia, I would wonder at once if Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were planning to cooperate in the nuclear domain. On the other hand, any general deal about simple nuclear powerplants could have been arranged much more easily, using their customary diplomatic contacts. I can see only one reason for Khan and Ghanef to pursue such clandestine backroom contacts with Saudi Arabia: they want to discuss nuclear weapons with the Saudis.’’
Erik stiffened at once on hearing that, while Julie let out a pungent swear word.
‘’Fuck! That actually would make sense. Any such talks between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia would instantly make a lot of people very nervous, including us! We don’t want the Saudis to have nuclear weapons, as much as we don’t want the Iranians to have nuclear weapons. That would completely destabilize the whole Middle East! The Israelis would also go bonkers about that.’’
‘’And exchanging delegations, even if made discreetly, would be noticed at once by a number of secret services, what with all the electronic and satellite surveillance covering the region.’’ added Ian. ‘’By coming to Paris for a banal reason like tourism, Khan would attract much less attention, at least in theory, and would make it much more difficult to connect the Saudis to him. Unfortunately for him and Ghanef, their stratagem was somewhat sabotaged by their notoriety as leaders of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program. I wonder who apart from us and the French had their ears raised by their coming to Paris? I could easily see the Mossad getting its nose into this.’’
‘’Or the Iranians!’’ said Julie, thunderstruck by a sudden revelation. ‘’What could have pushed an Iranian agent like Farah Qalibaf into taking a room in a hotel close to the Pakistani embassy, other than to watch Khan and Ghanef? You do realize, Erik, what would be the reaction of Iran if it learned that the Saudis were trying to clandestinely acquire nuclear weapons from Pakistan?’’
‘’They would most understandably go to war in an instant, before the Saudis could have operational nuclear weapons.’’ said Erik, now grim. ‘’But would the Saudis and the Pakistanis be really crazy enough to do something this risky?’’
‘’Yes!’’ was Julie’s immediate answer. ‘’The Saudis view nuclear weapons as the ultimate deterrence against Iranian aggression, while the Pakistanis sorely could use the sort of money the Saudis would pay to acquire ready-to-use nuclear weapons. The Pakistanis could easily ask for tens of millions of dollars per nuclear weapon sold to the Saudis. The Pakistanis are also no friends of Iran, mostly for religious reasons and also because of Afghanistan, where they have often contrary interests.’’
‘’But would the Saudis risk alienate us in such a way?’’
‘’Why not? Only a few months ago, the Saudis basically spat in Putin’s face and started an oil price war just as the Covid-19 pandemic was gathering steam and making oil prices fall, all that so that they could regain control of the World oil markets. Don’t forget as well what kind of man is holding power in Saudi Arabia these days. Prince Mohammed Bin Salman may want to pass himself as a reformer, but he is in reality acting like a simple dictator, arresting or killing those who oppose him. His only serious opponent right now in the Middle East, if you discount Israel, is Iran.’’
‘’And the Israelis have been rather soft towards him lately, since he opposes the Iranians.’’ said Ian from his chair. Erik thought furiously about all this for a moment before taking a decision.
‘’Well, all this may make a lot of sense, but we simply can’t be satisfied with mere suppositions. Our bosses will expect some hard proofs of all this before they would pass this information to the White House. We will thus do our best to find out the details of this possible nuclear weapons deal between the Pakistanis and the Saudis. I will alert our street surveillance team to be ready to tail Khan and Ghanef once they leave the Pakistani embassy. On our part, we will need to get close to the Saudi embassy in order to be ready to listen to any cell phone connection coming from there. Me and Dean will thus drive and park near the Saudi embassy with a cell phone intercept and relay unit. Julie, you will need to keep listening to those two Pakistanis’ cell phones. Any new call they will get may prove crucial for us to learn what will happen next.’’
‘’Got it! I will record everything we will hear from those phones.’’
‘’Excellent! I will now need to bring with me a cell phone intercept unit and a relay unit.’’
Julie went at once to the big suitcase containing her electronic devices and took out two small box-like devices, one of which was connected to a tiny parabolic antenna, then gave them to Erik after programming a few parameters into them.
‘’Here you go, Erik. You will just need to point the antenna towards the embassy building and to connect the relay unit to your smart phone while you keep the line with me open.’’
‘’Got it! With luck, we will know a bit more about this crazy possible deal in a few hours. Stay safe and be careful about who could knock at your door.’’
‘’We will, Erik.’’ assured Julie, who then presented a shopping bag to her team leader. ‘’Here, use this, so that you don’t go around openly with these things inside the hotel.’’
‘’Thanks!’’ said Erik, taking the bag and putting his electronic devices before walking out of the hotel room.
20:39 (Paris Time)
Rental car, parked near the Saudi embassy
Rue de Courcelles, 8ème Arrondissement, Paris
Dean, having just parked their rental car, on which they had replaced the original plates with fake ones, sighed while eyeing the unbroken line of stone façades formed by the buildings lining both sides of the Rue de Courcelles, on which the Saudi embassy was established: Each building was either directly touching its neighbors or left at most a tiny crack between them, the product of a city having experienced severe urban crowding for centuries already.
‘’I hate Parisian urbanism: not a single narrow alley or dark corner to hide in. Just an unbroken line of stone walls with only windows and doors breaking it at intervals. Tailing suspects or discretely watching a house is so much easier in New York.’’
‘’I have to agree with you on that, Dean.’’ replied Erik, sitting in the front passenger seat of their car. ‘’You know what else stands out, apart from a guy standing against a wall at night, next to the street?’’
Dean snickered at that question, already guessing the answer.
‘’Two big guys sitting for hours inside a darkened car parked along a street at night. All those cop and spy TV shows should get real about that. I’ll get out of the car and go walk around a bit. If something happens, just call me by radio.’’
‘’Okay! I’ll take care of pointing our cell phone intercept antenna and our laser window snoop.’’
Dean nodded his head at that before stepping out of the car: the ‘laser window snoop’ was a device that projected a laser beam tuned to a frequency invisible to the human eye. When pointed at the window of a specific room in a building, the laser beam detected the slight vibrations in the window glass pane caused by voices or noises inside the room and then sent back those vibrations to the laser device, which then translated these vibrations back into the original noises or words. Such devices had proved priceless many times during past missions, allowing agents to listen to conversation from a safe distance.
Thankfully, a slight drizzle was falling at the time, which gave a good excuse to Dean to raise the collar of his coat and pull down his wide-brimmed hat, thus hiding nearly completely his facial features. The few other pedestrians circulating on the sidewalks either did the same, opened umbrellas or took refuge in one of the numbers of street cafés and bistros opened at this hour. Keeping a calm, steady pace, Dean eyed discretely the Saudi embassy, an old stone building to which had been added four extra stories made of concrete, as he walked along the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. As he was passing in front of the embassy, he heard a radio message from Erik, who was still inside their car.
‘’Heads up, Stryker: our ground surveillance team is signaling that the targets’ car is approaching. It also signals that at least two other cars, one from the French secret services and another one still unidentified, are also tailing the target car. We thus have to use extreme caution.’’
‘’Understood, Sparrow!’’
More on guard than ever now, Dean continued to walk towards the corner with the Boulevard de Courcelles, where a bistro terrace was visible. As he had been warned, a big Mercedes CLS 450 sedan with General Khan and Doctor Ghanef sitting inside then turned into the Rue de Courcelles, then slowed down and stopped temporarily in front of the old carriage entrance of the Saudi embassy, which gave access to the small internal courtyard of the building. There, the Saudi guard manning the small watch hut next to the entrance briefly checked the identity of the car’s occupants, then opened the tall double doors for the Mercedes and let the vehicle drive in. A few seconds later, a French-made gray Citroen Berlingo minivan also turned into the embassy’s street. Dean was able to see that three men were sitting inside when it passed by him before slowing down and parking close to the embassy. A third car then also turned on Rue de Courcelles, coming from the same direction as the two preceding ones. This time, Dean saw that two men and one woman were inside the compact Fiat 500 sedan. He had to control himself in order not to jerk his head around when he recognized the woman in the Fiat. Keying discretely his radio microphone, he called at once his partner.
‘’Stryker to Sparrow: heads up! The red Fiat 500 that just turned into the street has Farah aboard. That third car is thus carrying an Iranian team. Pass the word to our tailing team.’’
‘’Will do!’’
Dean continued walking until he got to the street corner, where he took temporary refuge under one of the large umbrellas of the bistro’s terrace. Thinking about it, he entered the bistro and went to its bar counter, where he sat on a stool and ordered a double espresso coffee. Pivoting his stool to be able to look outside, with the Saudi embassy plainly visible to him, Dean thought furiously about the implications of seeing Farah Qalibaf here tonight. It was now evident that the Iranians were in Paris to either watch or target the same two Pakistani men the CIA were interested into. As for the French, either they were also interested directly into Khan and Ghanef, or they were watching them to prevent some foreign illegal action on French territory. In view of the positions and qualifications of the two Pakistani, Dean was ready to bet that the French were also suspicious about the true reasons for their visit to France. However, that still left him and the rest of the CIA team in a delicate situation, with two opposing teams involved on the same case, plus with the Saudis now known to be active players in this game. A he thought that, the car used by the CIA tailing team, a sub-compact blue Renault Clio hatchback, parked next to the bistro, in view of the embassy and with a man and a woman inside. Those CIA agents were actually legal residents in France who had been working undercover in country for many years already. Neither Dean nor Erik wanted to see those two agents exposed or captured because of the present mission, as their long-term presence in France was quite important to the CIA’s overseas network of human assets. Thus, Dean and Erik were prepared to risk themselves to protect those two agents if something went wrong. The popular belief that some agents were ‘expendable’ was actually an utter imbecility: good clandestine agents took years to form and put in place and none could be considered ‘expendable’, except in the minds of soulless bureaucrats or of incompetent and uncaring handlers and senior officers. During the first decades of existence of the CIA, which had been formed after 1947 out of the Organization of Strategic Services, or OSS, many clandestine agents had been needlessly sacrificed or wasted because of the utter incompetence of the then senior leaders of the CIA, starting with the Director himself. One of the worst in that aspect had been Director Allen Dulles, who had initiated many operations which, apart from being costly, monumental failures, had also been completely illegal according to the mandate of the CIA given to it by the Congress. Thankfully, those days of poor, uncaring management were gone…well, mostly. The problem was now closer to the White House rather than at the CIA headquarters in Langley.
Dean suddenly noticed two suspiciously-acting cars, Peugeot 2008 four-door sedans, which had just parked temporarily on one side of the Boulevard de Courcelles, opposite the corner of the intersection where his bistro and the CIA tailing car were. Those two cars had parked close behind one another and both had four men each aboard. Furthermore, those men were all looking at the CIA tailing car. Dean thus keyed urgently his radio microphone.
‘’Stryker to Sparrow! Tell our tailing car to leave at once: I see what could be two cars full of probable French counter-intelligence agents parked nearby and staring at our team’s car. I am going to return to our own car now.’’
‘’Got it!’’
Paying quickly for his coffee, Dean then got up from his stool and walked out of the bistro to head back to his car. As he was approaching it, he spoke again in his microphone.
‘’Sparrow, step out of the car with your equipment and find a fixed observation point: I may have to assist our tailing team in the next minute or so.’’
‘’Understood! I already told our team to vamoose from here. Try to avoid killing anybody if you have to act, though. We don’t want the French to become truly mad at us.’’
‘’Got it!’’
As he was getting to a few meters from his car and was about to cross the street, Dean saw Erik step out, a sports bag containing his equipment in one hand. Erik did not speak to him or even looked at him before walking away from the car and the Saudi embassy, in search of a hidden observation spot. As Dean was opening the driver’s door, he looked briefly towards the intersection beyond the embassy and tensed up: the two suspected DGSI cars had just started pulling out of their parking spots as the CIA tailing car was speeding away in the opposite direction on Boulevard de Courcelles, towards the nearby Parc Monceau. Hurrying to sit down behind the wheel, he then started his engine and got into gears before racing out of his parking spot. He however took the time to maliciously wave up his left hand as his car sped by Farah’s parked car.
In the Iranian team’s car, Farah’s eyes were attracted to a dark blue Peugeot 508 GT sports sedan parked on the opposite side of the street: a man had just stepped out with a sports bag in one hand. That man then started to walk away from the embassy. However, his profile felt familiar to her, so she briefly raised her binoculars to her eyes to examine him. She stiffened nearly at once while swearing quietly to herself.
‘’Sparrow, here?’’
Another man walking to the Peugeot 508 then attracted her attention as well, especially because of his height and large shoulders. She also recognized him when he briefly turned his head to look towards the Boulevard de Courcelles.
‘’Stryker!’’
Conflicting emotions now filling her, she lowered her binoculars and looked at her two agents assisting her.
‘’Heads up, men! It seems that the American CIA is also interested in Khan and Ghanef, possibly to prevent them from selling nuclear weapons to the Saudis. I know that man who just got into that Peugeot 508 GT: he is a CIA agent who helped me during a mission in Spain five years ago.’’
‘’Should we kill him, Major?’’ asked her driver, Hassan Kosravi, an experienced and highly skilled agent in his own right. Farah shook her head at once.
‘’No! Those CIA agents may actually prove useful to our mission by distracting Khan and the French away from us. Again, they may be pursuing the same goals as us, so let’s avoid them as much as possible.’’
The dark blue Peugeot 508 GT then raced by their parked car, with its driver briefly waving hello to the Iranians, making Kosravi swear.
‘’That bastard knew that we were here!’’
‘’Yes, he did.’’ added Farah, who had been able to positively identify the CIA agent she knew as ‘Stryker’. ‘’Hassan, Ali, please remember that those two Americans we just saw are among the most skilled, dangerous CIA agents you could ever encounter. Never underestimate them.’’
‘’So, what do we do now, Major Qalibaf?’’ asked Ali Suleiman.
‘’We continue watching and following Khan and Ghanef, in order to find more information about this possible nuclear weapons deal. Keep in mind that we have at least one French DGSI car parked less than twenty meters from us, so make sure that your silenced pistols are ready and close at hand.’’
Feeling in his element as he turned onto the Boulevard de Courcelles in his Peugeot 508 GT sports sedan, Dean was able to spot at once both the two suspected French DGSI cars and the small Renault Clio driven by the pair of CIA clandestine local agents. The Renault Clio was going about as fast as the fairly dense evening traffic permitted but the two Peugeot 2008 running after it were driven by trained drivers who knew the streets of Paris like the bottom of their pockets. Thinking quickly about his possible courses of action, Dean then decided to use his car like a ram if that was what was needed to stop the DGSI cars from catching the Renault Clio. However, before accelerating to cut the distance between him and the trailing DGSI car, Dean quickly drew his compact backup handgun, a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson M.E. .44 Magnum revolver, and stuck it between his upper legs. With that done, he accelerated brutally and veered right, in order to approach the nearest DGSI car from the rear right. As soon as his car’s bumper was level with the rear right wheel of the Peugeot 2008, Dean turned hard his driver’s wheel to the left, making his car slam violently against the DGSI’s rear right corner and pushing it to the left, then braked hard in order to quickly break contact. Taken completely by surprise, the DGSI driver lost control of his vehicle, which started rotating wildly in the middle of the traffic before ending in the path of a delivery truck coming from the opposite direction. The poor truck driver barely had time to swear violently once before he T-boned the DGSI car, smashing its right side and dragging it over a good thirty meters before the truck and the sedan crashed together into a parked car, coming to a brutal stop.
Dean was however not finished yet and accelerated again to catch up with the lead DGSI vehicle, whose driver and passengers were still not aware of what had just happened to their comrades. Rolling down fully his driver’s window, Dean then grabbed and held his snub-nosed revolver in his left hand and rested his left elbow on top of the door ledge while still holding his gun. He then approached the DGSI car from its right rear while staying in the right lane of the boulevard. The Peugeot 2008, along with the traffic around it, was doing a good 45 kilometers per hour when Dean fired one shot, piercing its rear right tire and making it blow up. As the French counter-espionage driver was attempting to keep control of his suddenly swerving car, Dean rear-ended it and then pressed to the maximum his accelerator, thus pushing the DGSI car into the path of a city transit bus to its right. The front of the bus rolled over and crushed the hood of the sedan, hopelessly trapping it under the big public transit vehicle. As Dean expertly swerved past them, both the DGSI car and the bus ended crashing into a line of parked cars along the right side of the boulevard, leaving the French agents and a number of bus passengers seriously shaken but with only light to moderate wounds. His own car’s body work now seriously smashed up but with his vehicle still able to roll with little problems, Dean ended up stopping side by side with the Renault Clio two traffic lights later. He looked and smiled at the pretty woman in her thirties whose face still reflected tension and worry and who was sitting in the front passenger seat, shouting out in English to her and her male companion.
‘’YOUR PURSUERS ARE NOW OFF THE ROAD. GO HIDE YOUR CAR AND CHANGE YOUR PLATES. YOU HAVE THE ‘GOOD NIGHT’ FROM STRYKER.’’
‘’THANKS, STRYKER!’’ was able to reply the woman before the light turned green, with Dean then turning right and driving away into the night.
21:26 (Paris Time)
DGSI Citroen Berlingo surveillance minivan
Parked along Rue de Courcelles, near the Saudi embassy
‘’Bravo Two, this is Alpha, over.’’
The leader of the three-man DGSI surveillance team sitting inside their parked Citroen Berlingo minivan grabbed the microphone of his vehicle’s radio transceiver and answered the call while keeping his eyes on the nearby Saudi embassy.
‘’Bravo Two listening!’’
‘’Bravo Two, from Alpha: we have some bad news to pass to you. Your two backup vehicles suffered grave accidents while pursuing that suspect Renault Clio. Both vehicles were heavily damaged, while seven of our agents are now in hospital. Thankfully, their wounds are not life-threatening. This however leaves you alone to do the job for the moment, as it will take some time to get a new backup team, over.’’
The team leader exchanged shocked looks with his two agents before speaking on the radio again.
‘’Alpha, what happened to them, over?’’
‘’Apparently, a blue Peugeot 508 rammed them and caused them to lose control of their vehicles. We suspect that this Peugeot 508 was in collusion with the occupants of the Renault Clio. You should thus exercise extreme caution from now on and keep an eye for that blue Peugeot 508, over.’’
‘’Uh, Bravo Two understood! Out!’’
The French team leader, a tough-looking man in his forties, blew out air as he hooked back the radio’s microphone.
‘’Wow! Two cars demolished and seven men in hospital? Whoever we are facing tonight is playing for keeps.’’
‘’So, what do we do now, Paul?’’ asked the agent sitting on the rear bench.
‘’We continue watching the embassy and wait for Khan and Ghanef to come out, then we will continue tailing them. Also, keep a sharp eye out for a banged up blue Peugeot 508.’’
Some twelve minutes later, the French agents saw the carriage entrance doors of the Saudi embassy open up and the Mercedes CLS 450 roll out into the street, prompting the driver of the minivan to start his engine and follow the Mercedes from a respectful distance. However, the DGSI men did not notice the red Fiat 500 which also left its parking spot to then start tailing both the Mercedes and the minivan. Once the vehicles were out of sight, a dark silhouette holding a bulging sports bag came out from behind a large steel garbage bin sitting close to a wall. Acting as if everything was normal, Erik Johnson then started walking calmly towards the intersection with the Boulevard de Courcelles, where he was planning to hail a taxi and return to his hotel. Hopefully, Dean, with whom he had quickly lost radio contact with due to the distance and the surrounding high buildings, would show up there intact. Erik now knew a few interesting new things, thanks to his window laser snoop and cell phone monitoring unit, things which were making it necessary to urgently redirect the team’s efforts into a new direction.