Free Direct Action by John Weisman Page B

receptionist, and walked
her out of the suite into the corridor, closing the door behind her. She stopped when they were safely out of range and gave MJ back the
file. “All I know,” she whispered, “is that Sin-Gin started making phone
calls as soon as she saw what you’d done.” She inclined her head toward
MJ’s ear and whispered, “She even called the seventh floor.” “Who?”
“Who knows. She placed the calls herself. So maybe the big boss.
Maybe the executive director. Maybe the DDI—maybe even the DDO.”
Sylvia rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t matter who, Hester. But she got a call
back. That much I know. And ever since, she’s been growling she has to get
rid of you. Move you to another division.”
“The bitch.” MJ shook her head in derision. “I’ll grieve. I’ll file a griev
ance over this, Sylvia.”
“That would really drive her crazy.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.” Sylvia took MJ’s hands in her own. “But maybe there’s a better way.”
“Such as?”
“You’re scheduled for three vacation days, right? You’re leaving tonight. Visiting Tom in Paris. You’re not coming back to work until next
Wednesday. So, you go—and I’ll see what I can do before then.” “Do?”
“If I hint you might grieve, I think I can persuade her not to try to transfer you. Look, Mrs. SJ doesn’t like flaps. She won’t like the idea of you
talking to somebody from the IG’s office about the fact that unless a picture
has a one-hundred-and-twenty-seven-point match, it can’t be sent onward.” MJ shook her head. “What’s wrong with her, Syl? What does she do,
work for al-Qa’ida?”
“Perish the thought. I think she’s just old and set in her ways.” “Makes me wonder if Tom’s right.”
“About?”
“This place. My job. Everything. How can we wage war when from the
seventh floor down, they all keep people like me from doing my job?” “Go to Paris, Hester. See your fella. Have fun. We’ll worry about Mrs.
Sin-Gin when you get back.”

IV
RUE RAYNOUARD

7
    17 OCTOBER 2003
12:10 P . M .
87 BOULEVARD DE COURCELLES, PARIS
    TOM STAFFORD PREFERRED TO SIT at the far corner table in Les Gourmets des Ternes’ back room because the restaurant was constantly so jam-packed at lunch that it was just about the only table in the whole place where he could listen to whoever sat next to him without being bombarded by six or seven simultaneous conversations. The small, perpetually crowded bistro was vintage Paris: mix-and-match tables and chairs, paintings and prints stacked erratically on the walls, well-worn leather banquettes, Art Deco light fixtures, dusty fin de siècle mirrors in ornate varnished wood frames, red awnings that covered the sidewalk tables in the spring and summer months, and a ceaseless crescendo of conversation as the two undersize dining rooms filled up after the glass-paneled front doors were unlocked promptly at noon, Mondays through Fridays.
    Tom ate lunch at Les Gourmets once a week or so. If he was doing business, he preferred the anonymity of one of Paris’s steak-and-frites or moules-and-beer chains like Hippopotamus or Leon’s, where there was less chance that DST, the French domestic security agency, had the tables wired. He brought his friends here, where the proprietor, Monsieur Francis Marie, a gray-haired bulldog of a man whom Tom greeted as “Monsieur Francis,” always had two bottles waiting on his table: the house Brouilly and a liter bottle of Evian.
    Today, Tom was lunching with another Les Gourmets regular. Shahram Shahristani was in his early sixties. As a young man, the Iranian had been an officer of the shah’s military intelligence service, rising to the rank of onestar general in the months before the Pahlavi reign came crashing down in the spring of 1979. Shahristani had been peripherally involved in the IranContra scandals of the 1980s. He’d conceived an elaborate shell game that had allowed the CIA to move TOW missiles through Portugal