trips to Vienna were frequent, and he even took care to make regular appearances at the IAEA laboratories in Seibersdorf, Austria, and in Trieste, Italy. In his three years as director-general, Deschesnes had shown a gift for sidestepping unnecessary controversy while carefully husbanding the agency's prestige and credibility. A brief article in Time, reproduced in the dossier, called him "Dr. Watchdog." According to the newsmagazine, he was "no mere Brie-eating bureaucrat" but rather a "cerebral Frenchman with a heart as big as his brains," who was "bringing new brio to bear on the most important threat to global security: loose nukes."
Yet the public had no idea about the real story: that about a year ago the CIA had observed the IAEA director-general meeting secretly with a renegade Libyan nuclear scientist. The agency had captured enough of the conversation to deduce that Deschesnes' high-profile role as the world's leading anti-proliferation officer seemed to be a cover for a profitable sideline in helping non-nuclear states acquire nuclear weapons technologies. Deschesnes' anti-proliferation work was a front; the anti-American invective in his early AFDN speeches was not.
From Fenton, Ambler knew that the source of the information was someone senior in the American intelligence community. Certainly the analysis had all the hallmarks of a CIA analytical report, down to the starchy phrasings, the careful qualifications and weasel words. Evidence never "proved" that a conclusion was true. Rather, it "raised the concern that," "made plausible the supposition that," or "provided additional support for" the hypothesis advanced. None of that worried Fenton. The CIA, captive to the legalistic culture of Washington, was not defending the country, but that was where Fenton figured he came in. He could do for his country what its official defenders were too cautious to do.
Three-quarters of an hour after he had left, Ambler was back at the Deux Magots. Inside, the warm air was fragrant with coffee and cigarettes, the cafe's kitchen not yet geared up for the evening meal. Laurel was visibly relieved when she caught sight of him. She summoned a waiter and smiled at Ambler. He seated himself at her table, stood his briefcase by his chair, and took her hand in his, feeling its warmth.
He explained about the document work. Laminating her photograph into the passport would be the work of a minute. "Now that Mr. and Mrs. Mulvaney have their papers in order, we can behave like a married couple."
"In France? Doesn't that mean you have to take a lover?"
Ambler smiled. "Sometimes, even in France, your wife is your lover."
As the two walked down the block toward a taxi stand at the corner, Ambler had a distinct sense that they were being followed. Abruptly he turned around the corner and up an adjoining street; Laurel kept pace with him, unquestioning. The presence of a patrol was not itself a cause for alarm. No doubt Fenton's people wanted to make sure that he didn't disappear again. In the next five minutes, Ambler and Laurel turned down several streets, at random, only to find the same broad-shouldered man traipsing behind them, across the street, lagging by approximately a third of a block.
Increasingly, something bothered Ambler about the tail, and now he realized what it was: the man was making it too easy. He was failing to keep an appropriate distance between himself and his putative subject; moreover, he was dressed like an American, in what looked like a dark Brooks Brothers suit and a candy-striped tie, like a local assemblyman from Cos Cobb. The man wanted to be seen. That meant that he was a decoy-meant to provide spurious reassurance when he was eluded-and that Ambler had not yet identified the real tail. Doing so took several minutes longer. It was a stylish brunette in a dark mid-length coat. There was no point in losing either of them. If the tail wanted to be seen, Ambler himself wanted Fenton's people to know where he was going; he had even gone so far as to call the Hotel Debord at the SSG branch office, ostensibly confirming his reservation.
Finally, he and Laurel grabbed a taxi, collected their cases from the left-luggage office at the Gare du Nord, and checked into a room on the third floor of the Hotel Debord.
The hotel was a little dank; a slight mildewy smell emanated from the carpets. But Laurel voiced no misgivings. Ambler had to stop her before she set about unpacking.
He opened the hard-sided briefcase that the balding factotum had provided him. The