on the scene you'd be more of a concern than, an asset. Certainly to me."
"Do you know," said De Vries quietly, her eyes level with Drew's, "I can understand that and accept it."
"Thanks. Bes'des, our lieutenant will be of very little use and will stay way back in the boondocks. He's worse off than you; the only way he can fire a gun is if it's cemented to his hand."
"He can be on the radio with Karin, a backup relay," added the colonel.
"Coordinators, so we don't have to be in constant communication, just open earplugs."
"That sounds terribly patronizing, Stanley."
"Maybe it is,
Karin, but you never know."
The career senior deputy of the Service d'Etranger was an ambitious forty-one-year-old analyst whose good fortune was to know [email protected] the Wheelman. He had been a suitor of Franqois's wife, Yvonne, before her marriage, and although he had traveled faster and further up the government ladder than Franqois, they remained friends and Franqois knew why. The opportunistic analyst never stopped probing about the secretive Deuxieme.
"I know just the man to call," Franqois had said in answer to Latham's request.
"It's the least I can do for you, and, I imagine, for him, after all those expensive lunches and dinners where he learned nothing. He's paid very well, you know; he graduated from university and is quite intelligent. I think he'll be most enthusiastic."
They all knew that analysts were not field men, nor did they pretend to be. Even so, given a specific operation and hypothetical circumstances, they could usually provide precedents and strategies that were frequently very valuable. Directeur Adjoint Cloche, for that was his name and it fit, met with the N-2 unit at the Plaza-Ath6n6e.
"Ah, Stanley!" he exclaimed, walking into the suite with a briefcase.
"When you telephoned soon after Franqois's rather hysterical call, I was so relieved. It is all so tragic, so catastrophique, but with your sense of control, well, I was relieved."
"Thanks, Clement, it's good to see you. Let me intro-
duce you." Introductions were made, and they all sat around the circular dining room table.
"Were you able to bring what I asked you for?" continued the colonel.
"Everything, but I must tell you, I did so on the basis of fichiers confldentiels."
"What's that?" asked Drew, his tone of voice bordering on the discourteous.
"The copies were made for Monsieur Cloche in terms of confidential extrusion," explained Karin.
"What's that?"
"I believe your American agents call it 'solo,"
" clarified the senior deputy of the Etranger.
"I gave no reason for removing the ming concert with what my friend Stanley told me. Mon Dieu, neo Nazis in the most secret areas of the government! The Deuxi&me itself. Incredible! .. . I took considerable risk, but if we can find this traitor, Bergeron, my superiors can only applaud me."
"And if we don't?" asked Lieutenant Anthony, his sling across the table like a webbed claw.
"Well, I acted on behalf of a distraught subordinate of the leaderless [email protected] and our dearest allies, the Americans."
"Have you ever been in deep-cover incursion, sir?" asked Captain Dietz.
"Non, Capitaine, I am an analyst. I direct, I do not engage in such activities."
"Then you're not going with us?"
"Jamais."
"C'est bon, sir."
"All right," Witkowski interrupted, flashing a disagreeable glance at Dietz, "let's get down to business. Have you got the maps, [email protected]'
"More than simple maps. Elevations that you asked for, faxed from the zoning and assessment bureaus of the Loire." Cloche opened his briefcase, lifted out several folded pages, and spread them across the table.
"This is Le Nid de IAigle, the chAteau known as Eagle's Nest. It comprises three hundred and seventy acres, certainly not the largest but hardly the smallest of the inherited estates.
It was originally granted by royal decree to a minor duke in the sixteenth century, to the family-"
"We don't need the history, sir," interrupted Latham.
"What is it now? Forgive me, but we're in a hell of a hurry. "
"Very well, although the history is relevant in terms of its fortifications, natural and otherwise."
"What fortifications?" said Karin, standing up, her eyes on the map.
"Here, here, here, and here," said Cloche, also standing, as everyone else suddenly did, and pointing to sections on the unfolded map.
"They're deep-trenched, soft-bedded canals surrounding three-fifths of the chateau and fed be the river. They are filled with reeds and wild grass, as i crossing the waters were simple, but those ancient nobles who constantly were at war with each other knew the instruments of defense when under attack.
Any army of bowmen and cannoneers who rushed into those seemingly shallow streams sank into