Tommy Carmellini 02 - The Traitor by Stephen Coonts Read Free Book Online Page A

"I really can't get into it on the phone. Nothing dangerous."
    "No shooters, man. Nothin' that goes bang. No knives, neither."
    "Oh, no. Nothing like that."
    "I done my time and I done my bleedin'. Don't want to do no more of neither one."
    "I know where you're at. This will be cool."
    "Well . . ." He was seriously tempted, I could tell. "Hell, I ain't got a passport."
    "We'll get you one. Be a fellow around to the shop later today to take your picture and get your information. In a couple of days someone will bring you a passport and give you some tickets."
    "Goddamn! France! Okay, I'll come. I can always boogie if things get too iffy. I'm no spring chicken, you know." Sure.
    "More like a jackrabbit. I like to screw and I can really run."
    "The airport's open seven days a week."
    "The Folies ... I heard about that! That's what I want to see."
    "Works for me. Man will be in to see you later today." I hung up.
    Grafton was looking at me with raised eyebrows.
    "He's never been out of the country before," I explained, "so he's hot to trot. He'll cool off when he gets to thinking about it, but he'll come. I'll keep him busy and out of trouble while he's here."
    When he was seated at his desk in DGSE headquarters in the Conciergerie, Jean-Paul Arnaud could see the Eiffel Tower. From his large, padded swivel chair he could also see the stately walls of the Louvre and bridges all the way downriver to the Pont de la Concorde. If he were so inclined, he could watch the tourist barges, the bateaux, cruising up and down the river with their loads of sightseers, or cloud formations soaring across the skyline of Paris, clouds that had enchanted armies of artists. Jean-Paul Arnaud never looked. He sat at his desk day in and day out as the seasons changed and the sun and rain came and went, chain-smoking cigarettes as he worked. Occasionally he wrote orders, case summaries and the like;
    once a quarter he devoted a day to the budget battles; one afternoon a week he turned his attention to personnel matters; on Monday and Wednesday mornings he sat down with the agency head, Henri Rodet, to discuss business; and when asked, he accompanied his boss to meetings with the minister. Otherwise, Jean-Paul Arnaud sat at his desk smoking and reading reports.
    So it was at his desk, while sunlight and shadow played on the great city beyond his window, that Jean-Paul Arnaud learned that Jake Grafton, now believed to be associated with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, was temporarily attached to the American embassy as a State Department employee and would soon be arriving in Paris.
    And it was here, this morning, that he learned that Tommy Carmellini, CIA officer assigned to the SCS, was coming to Paris under a false passport that gave his name as Terry G. Shannon. The report noted that he would arrive in France tomorrow and rent an apartment on Rue Paradis, then speculated a bit on why he might be in Europe.
    Using his pen that wrote in green ink, Arnaud made a note on the margin of the report. Keep me informed.
    He tossed the form into the out basket and picked up the next one from the in basket.
    After my interview with Jake Grafton, Gator Zantz gave me a ride to a hotel, the Royal Garden. I was his only passenger. "Where's Houston?" I asked.
    "She'll be along."
    I grunted. I didn't want to be in the same country with Sarah Houston, let alone the same hotel, not after that stunt she pulled on the airplane. Oh, well.
    My hotel room was on the eighth floor. I pulled the curtains, got undressed and climbed into bed—had a devil of a time getting to sleep but eventually drifted off. Not long after that the maid began
    pounding on the door. I ran her off, watched television for a while, then finally went back to sleep.
    A nightmare woke me up at 9:00 p.m. local time, and I lay in bed tossing and turning, unable to get comfortable. I had been trying to catch a plane, and the security people kept finding something else to check as the minutes ticked