TWO OLD MEN LEANED UPON the railing of the bridge on which the Boulevard de la Gare crossed the Seine. Clouds had rolled in to chase the sun and a chilly afternoon breeze swept up the river, warning of coming rain. Sweaters protected their shoulders. Automobiles swarmed behind them on the roadway, and trains clattered into and out of the Gare de Lyon and the Gare d’Austerlitz stations on either side of the river. It would have been impossible for either to have been followed by someone without being seen, and the noise drowned out their soft voices.
They had been competitors, enemies, partners, allies, and opposing spies in their younger years. After retirement, both stayed in Paris and a friendship followed. It was enjoyable to pass the time talking about the good old days of the Cold War over cups of hot café, particularly since they could now laugh at the absurdity of six decades of spying for the United States and France.
Buzz Higbee had grown up in the Minnesota woods and could have returned to the U.S. of A., but found the thought of retiring to a cabin beside a lonely lake that was frozen half the year to be unattractive. He had lived most of his adult life in Paris, and his wife, children, and grandchildren were all French. Minnesota had become the foreign land. He was a healthy eighty-two years old, with white hair, weak blue eyes, high blood pressure, and a hearing aid.
Higbee had ventured out today to meet Jean-Paul Delmas, who was only eighty. Delmas walked with the help of a cane, but his intellect remained sharp and since his spy days he had devoted himself to an extensive collection of rare stamps. Buzz called him “the Kid.”
“This is rather delicate,” Delmas told Higbee.
“Merde, Jean-Paul. Where our two countries are involved, what is not rather delicate?”
“It is true. But I was quite pleased when your people in Washington changed the name of French Fries to Freedom Fries. What awful things you Americans have done to food.”
“I’m glad that we were able to please the republic in our own little way, Kid, but that was bullshit and anyway, they changed the name back. You eat them, too, but with a Frenchified name. Pommes frites”
“Entirely different.”
“Same thing. Now why are two over-the-hill spooks like us meeting clandestinely? Everybody knows who we are, what we were, and that we hang out together. My landlady calls me the ‘old American spy who lives upstairs in 2B.’”
Delmas laughed and looked down at the fast-moving dark water. “Which is why we have such excellent cover, no? No one would suspect that we had any worthwhile missions left in us.”
“They may be right. How are you doing?” Higbee knew that Delmas had undergone chemotherapy for lung cancer.
“It may be coming back.”
“Jesus. Sorry to hear that, my friend.”
Delmas shrugged. “Life. Death.” His wife had died twelve years ago, and the way he spoke those words showed that he no longer cared about living or dying, and probably would choose death if it meant a chance to reunite with his love. He turned in a circle, as if watching a passing pigeon, but checking to be sure no one was loitering nearby. “I have been asked to give you something to relay to your former masters at Langley. My people wanted to keep this affair as back-channel as possible, and nothing can possibly be any more back-channel than you and me.”
Even when governments are locked in extreme disagreements over international policy, sometimes even while at war, their intelligence services maintain unofficial contacts. Such was the case with the current strain between Paris and Washington. The French could not afford to be seen as helping the Americans in the Middle East, so passing an urgent and sensitive message was better done through very unofficial means.
Buzz put on his CIA game face for the first time in many years. It felt good. Jean-Paul had been an agent with Le Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE) back in the dirty days of Algeria, and since 1982 with its successor, the Directorate of External Security. He was retired over his protests.
A crash of thunder rolled over the city, and raindrops began to fall from the churning, slate gray sky, speckling the bridge. In unison, they raised black umbrellas.
“It is your missing general. You heard about him? This Middleton?”
“Been all over the television. Yeah. What about him?”
“As you know, we depend heavily upon human intelligence sources, where you Americans rely more on technology. We don’t have your capability in that field, but we have been growing agents in Africa and the Middle East for better than a century.”
“Tell me about it. If somebody was about to fuck a sheep in Algiers, you knew about it before the sheep did.” They both laughed. The rain fell steadily, lightly.
“Buzz, the Directorate has been contacted by one of our people, a former soldier in the Foreign Legion. He now lives in southern Syria, travels all around the area for us, and he saw your general being taken into a house in a village called Sa’ahn. The general appeared unconscious, but our man recognized that distinctive Marine uniform.”
“Whoa, partner. You have a man on the fucking scene?”
Jean-Paul reached into the pocket of his sweater and pulled out an envelope. “Oui. Here is his name, photograph, and the location of the village and the house he maintains there. I am authorized to tell you that the Directorate persuaded him to stay where he is to help guide any rescue effort, and to point out the house where the general is being held. You’ll have to pay him some money, of course. Probably a lot of money. He wants a million dollars, U.S.”
“Damn. Just a mil? He’ll have to buy a couple of new camels to carry all the gold they will give him to get Middleton back safe.” Buzz Higbee put the envelope in a deep sweater pocket. “How does Washington contact this asset if they want to do something?”
“Get a quiet message to our military attaché in Washington. Paris will pass it on through a coded microburst transmission to the asset.”
“Sounds almost too good to be true, Jean-Paul, which means it probably isn’t. What’s the catch?”
“I considered that and asked about it. There is nothing that we know of,” the Frenchman said. “Nobody wants to see still another flareup in that region. This isn’t Iraq, and Paris is more than willing to work with Washington on the problem. So I believe the only downside, as you say, is that you are now in my personal debt. I demand a lunch.”
“Anywhere you want, and make it somewhere expensive. CIA is buying.”
Jean-Paul smiled. “I was hoping you would say that. I will call you in the morning to name a place. Tell Marie that I send my love.”
They shook hands and parted, heading toward opposite ends of the bridge, hurrying to reach shelter before the storm broke.