Free Foreign Affairs by Stuart Woods Page A

whom?”
    â€œFor Europeans.”
    â€œOkay, spit it out.”
    Rick was now looking sheepish. “We’d like you to let us leak your location to Leo Casselli.”
    Stone winced. “I don’t think I could have heard you correctly, Rick.”
    â€œI’m afraid you did.”
    â€œLook, I’ve just fled Rome in order to get out of Casselli’s reach. How far do I have to go? London? Iceland? Home to New York?”
    â€œIt’s like this,” Rick said. “There’s a guy in Rome, Massimo Bertelli, who has just taken over the DIA, the Italian department that is trying to root out the Mafia.”
    â€œI’ve heard the name,” Stone said.
    Rick looked surprised. “Where did you hear of him?”
    â€œFrom Dino Bacchetti.”
    â€œDino Bacchetti in New York?”
    â€œRight now he’s upstairs taking a nap.”
    â€œI didn’t see him on the arrivals list,” Rick said.
    â€œArrivals list?”
    â€œEvery day the embassy circulates a list of prominent Americans who are visiting France. Dino wasn’t on it.”
    â€œIt’s a private visit,” Stone said. “He’s just here for the weekend, with his wife.”
    â€œNevertheless, we like to know who’s in town.”
    â€œNow you know. Dino has been in touch with Massimo Bertelli about Marcel duBois’s and my problem with Casselli.”
    â€œOh, good, that will save me the trouble of informing him.”
    â€œI guess so. Are you going to tell me what you—rather, what Lance—wants?”
    â€œIt’s partly to do with an expansion of my job. The Agency wants station heads to be more concerned with what happens in Europe as a whole, rather than just in our individual bailiwicks. We’re beginning to think of the European Union as more of a United States of Europe, rather than a lot of independent countries.”
    â€œWell, that’s very cosmopolitan of the Agency, Rick, but what the hell does that have to do with me?”
    â€œIt’s like this: France has some very comprehensive laws dealing with organized crime.”
    â€œDoesn’t Italy?”
    â€œYes, but it’s more difficult for the Italians to enforce them.The Mafia there has long penetrated government at every level. They’re doing the best they can to root them out, but they have a lot of hurdles to overcome.”
    â€œGo on.”
    â€œBertelli and his people have assembled intelligence indicating that Casselli wants to spread his influence to other European countries, especially France.”
    â€œWhy France?”
    â€œIt boils down to the recently discovered fact that Casselli wants a personal base here. He particularly likes Paris, but the attitude of French law enforcement toward him would make it difficult for him to live here, even for short periods of time. He would like, over time, to penetrate French society and, eventually the civil service and the legislature, with an eye to making France more hospitable to him and his friends.”
    â€œThat sounds megalomaniacal to me.”
    â€œOf course it does, but Casselli has a lot of confidence in his own ability to manipulate things.”
    â€œOnce again, how does this affect me?”
    â€œCasselli wants to co-opt people like Marcel and you, who do business here and who move from country to country easily. Casselli can’t even visit Paris or London for fear that his name would be on some watch list that would get him detained at the airport.”
    â€œWhy doesn’t he just drive?”
    â€œOf course that would be easier, if he were just visiting, say, for pleasure, but French hotels collect their guests’ passportsand send the names to the police every day, so eventually his name would cross the desk of some civil servant who is on the lookout for people like him, and he’d find himself dealing with the police and the court system.”
    â€œCome on, Rick,