"The bullets could not penetrate, even the glass."
"Believe me, some can-like full jackets."
"Really?" Bressard's face grew pale.
"You were quite right, Henri," said Moreau, once more nodding his head, "your former wife would have been much more efficient.
Now, shall we all calm down a bit and look at what our brave hero has achieved for us? We have the vehicle, a license plate, and no doubt several dozen fingerprints which we will immediately deliver to Interpol. I salute. you Henri Bressard."
"There are bullets that can penetrate bulletproof automobiles . ?" The connection to Jodelle's suicide and the subsequent meeting at the Villier house on Pare Monceau was all too obvious.
Coupled with the attack on Latham, the situation demanded several decisions: Both Bressard and Drew would be protected around the clock by Deuxieme personnel-the Frenchman conspicuously, Latham less obviously, at his own instructions. Which was why the unmarked [email protected] car would remain across the street from Drew's building until relief -came to replace it or the American emerged in the morning, whichever happened first. Finally, under no conditions could Jean-Pierre Villier, who would also be guarded, be permitted to prowl the seamier sections of Paris in search of anyone.
"I myself will make that absolutely clear to him," said Claude Moreau, chief of the Deuxi&me Bureau.
"Villier is a treasure of France! .. . In addition, my wife would either kill me or have numerous affairs in our own bed if I permitted anything to happen to him."
The disturbing doubts about the embassy's transport pool were resolved quickly. 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,