The dispatcher was a substitute no one knew, but he had been accepted for the night shift because of his credentials.
He had disappeared minutes after Latham's car drove off down the avenue Gabriel. A French-speaking American in Paris was part of the Nazi movement.
The hours before dawn had been taken up with endless analyses of the situation-the question of who and who not to include being a priority-as well as lengthy conversations on open scrambler between Moreau and Wesley Sorenson in Washington. The two specialists in deep-cover intelligence sounded like dual practitioners of the darkest arts, creating a scenario of deep-cover pursuits. Drew approved of what he heard. He was good, not as coldly intellectual as his brother Harry, but surely superior when it came to quick decisions and physicality. Moreau and Sorenson, however, were the masters in deception and penetration; they had survived the unpublicized slaughter of spies during the bloody depths of the Cold War. He could learn from such men, even as they programmed him.
Latham walked sleepily out of the elevator and down the hall to his flat. As he started to insert his key, his eyes were suddenly riveted on the lock. It wasn't there! Instead, there was a hollow circle. The entire lock had been surgically removed, either by a laser or a high-powered miniature hand saw. He touched the door;
it swung open, revealing the shambles within. Drew yanked his automatic out of its shoulder holster and cautiously slipped inside.
His apartment was ravaged; upholstery was knifed everywhere, cushions torn apart, their stuffings scattered; drawers were pulled out, their contents dumped on the floor. It was the same in the two bedrooms, the closets, the kitchen, the bathrooms, and especially his study, where even the rugs were sliced. His large desk had been literally hacked to pieces, the assault team looking for hidden caches where secret papers might be concealed. The destruction was overwhelming; nothing was as it had been. And in his exhaustion Latham simply did not want to think about it; he needed rest; he needed sleep. He briefly considered the waste and how illogical it was; confidential materials were kept in his office safe on the second floor of the embassy. Old jodelle's enemies-now his enemies should have guessed that.
He rummaged in one of his closets, sardonically amused to find an object that intruders would have taken or smashed had they recognized what it was. The twenty six-inch steel bar had large rubber caps at either end, each cap holding an alarm mechanism. When he traveled and stayed in hotel rooms, he invariably braced it against the door and the floor, activating the alarms by twisting the caps. If whatever door he shoved it against was opened from the outside, a series of ear-shattering whistles went off that would shock the interloper into racing away. Drew carried it to the lockless door of his flat, activated the alarms, and, anchoring it to the floor, braced it against a lower panel. He walked into his destroyed bedroom, threw a sheet over the ripped mattress, removed his shoes, and la down.
Within minutes he was asleep, and within minutes after that his telephone rang. Disoriented, Latham lurched off the unbalanced surface of the bed, grabbing the phone from the bedside table.
"Yes? .. . Hello?"
"It's Courtland, Drew. I'm sorry to call at this hour, but it's necessary."
"What happened?",
"The German ambassador-"
"He knew about tonight?"
"Nothing at all. Sorenson called him from Washington and apparently raised hell. Shortly thereafter Claude Moreau did the same."
"They're pros. What's going down?"
"Ambassador Heinrich Kreitz will be here at nine o'clock this morning. Sorenson and Moreau want you here too. Not only to corroborate the reports, but' obviously to protest vigorously the personal attack on you."
"Those two old veteran spooks are mounting a pincer assault, aren't they?"
"I haven't the vaguest idea what you're talking about."
"In the Second World War it was a German strategy. Close in on both sides, squeeze the enemy so he has to run north or south or east or west. If he chooses wrong, he's finished, which he will be because the points are covered.
"I'm not military, Drew, but I really don't think Kreitz is an enemy."
"No, he's not. In fact, he's a man with a historical conscience.
But even he doesn't know who's in his ranks here in Paris. He'll damn well stir up the waters, and that's what Sorenson and Moreau want him to do."
"Sometimes I think you people speak a different language.".
"Oh, we do, Mr. Ambassador. It's called obfuscation