wide, vigorous gestures as they made their points.
Before the French Revolution, when it was still called the Place Royal, this beautiful little patch of open ground had been the site of innumer-
able duels. On every square inch where ordinary Parisians now enjoyed the autumn sun and let their pampered dogs run free, cavaliers and young aristocrats had fought and died - hacking at each other with swords or exchanging pistol shots at close range, all to prove their courage or to defend their honor. Though it was fashionable now to deride these duels as the hallmarks of a savage and bloodthirsty age, Smith wondered whether or not that was especially fair. After all, how might future historians characterize this so-called modern era - a time when some men were determined to slaughter innocents whenever and wherever the}' could?
A plain, plump, dark-haired young woman in a knee-length black coat and blue jeans passed close by his table. She noticed him watching her and flushed red. She walked hurriedly on with her head down. Jon followed her with his eyes, debating with himself. Was she the contact he had been waiting for?
"This seat? It is taken, m'sieur?" rasped a gravelly voice made hoarse by decades of smoking three or four packs of cigarettes a day.
Smith turned his head and saw the slender, ramrod-straight figure of an aged Parisian dowager glaring down at him. He had the overriding impression of a mass of immaculately coiffed gray hair, a deeply lined face, a prominent hawk-like nose, and a fierce, predator}' gaze. She raised one finely sculpted eyebrow in apparent disgust at his slowness and stupidity. "You do not speak English, m'sieur? Pardon. Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"
Before he could recover, she turned away to address her dog, a small, equally elderly poodle who seemed intent on gnawing one of the empty chairs to death. She yanked on his leash. "Heel, Pascal! Let the damned furniture fall to pieces on its own!" she snapped in idiomatic French.
Apparently satisfied that Smith was either deaf, dumb, or an imbecile, the old woman seated herself across the table from him - groaning slightly as she slowly lowered her creaking bones into the chair. He looked away, embarrassed.
"Just what the hell are you doing trespassing on my patch, Jon?" he
heard a very familiar and very irritated voice ask quietly. "And please don't try to sell me some cock-and-bull story that you're here to see the glories of Paris!"
Smith turned back toward the old woman in amazement. Somewhere behind that mass of gray hair, wrinkles, and lines were the smooth, blond good looks of CIA officer Randi Russell. He felt himself flush. Randi, the sister of his dead fiancee, was a very good friend, someone with whom he shared dinner or drinks whenever they found themselves in Washington at the same time. Despite that, and though he had known that his presence right at her team's rendezvous point would eventually draw her attention, she had still managed to slip past his guard.
To buy himself some time to recover from his surprise, he took a cautious sip of his coffee. Then he grinned back at her. "Nice disguise, Randi. Now I know what you'll look like in forty or fifty years. The little dog's a nifty touch, too. Is he yours? Or standard CIA-issue?"
"Pascal belongs to a friend, a colleague at the embassy," Randi replied briefly. Her mouth tightened. "And the poodle is almost as much of a pain in the ass as you are, Jon. Almost, but not quite. Now quit stalling and answer my question."
He shrugged. "Okay. It's pretty simple, really. I'm here following up on the reports you and your team have been sending to the States for the past twenty-four hours."
"That's what you call simple?" Randi said in disbelief. "Our reports are strictly internal CIA product."
"Not anymore they're not," Smith told her. "Langley's in a hell of a mess right now over this clandestine war against the Lazarus Movement. So is the FBI. Maybe you've heard."
The CIA officer nodded bitterly. "Yeah, I've heard. Bad news spreads fast." She frowned down at the table. "That stupid son of a bitch Burke is going to wind up giving the Agency the biggest black eye we've ever had." Her gaze sharpened. "But that still doesn't explain who you're working for
this time." She paused significantly. "Or at least who you're going to claim you're working for."
Inwardly Smith cursed the continuing need to keep Covert-One's existence a tightly held secret. Like Peter Howell's,