Without Warning Part 40

Rolland stood up and flicked on a light. He called out to one of his men stationed in the corridor, and they spoke in murmurs for a moment before he returned.

"Excuse me. I am expecting someone. Yes, I am sorry. It is the continental way of narrative. Much more elliptical than your own. Let me bottom-line it for you, to borrow from your own vernacular. Since the accommodation in Algeria, there has been a school of thought, a quiet but powerful clique within the state, that has believed that accommodation with Islam is the only way forward. At first this group was centered on the Quai d'Orsay, and they applied their doctrine within their own sphere, often in conflict with other actors in the state realm."

"Okay, so you had some surrender monkeys in the foreign ministry and they were rub-f.u.c.king the Arabs. I have to say, this isn't breaking news."

Rolland uncapped the brandy flask and took a swig for himself before offering one to Caitlin. She joined him. The pills, whatever they were, had begun to smooth her rough edges, and another drink seemed a good idea. Sitting on this magnificent old sofa, drinking fine spirits and chatting with the handsome French officer, she finally began to get some distance on the horror of the previous weeks.

"I believe similar tensions existed between your own State Department and military," Rolland countered. "It is the usual way between peacemakers and war fighters. But here in France there was a complicating factor, which grew more complicated with every year."

Caitlin nodded slowly. "Your own Muslim population."

"Quite so. Just as your country found that certain questionable policies and state activities initially carried out beyond your borders, say, in Southeast Asia, tended to return home in one form or another ..."

"We called it blowback."

"How brutally elegant. Well, we, too, have discovered that a contagion, acquired in Algiers, transmitted itself to the body politic right here."

"Rolland, this would be a fascinating discussion if we were Jean-Paul and Simone sucking down Gitanes and black coffee in a Montmartre cafe, but how about you ditch all the context and sell me your pitch?"

Rolland leaned back and blew twin streams of blue smoke out through his nostrils.

"Betrayal, Caitlin. I am talking about betrayal. The man who held you here, Lacan, did not do so on his own recognizance. Nor did he operate as part of a small, traitorous cell. I am afraid that Monsieur Lacan was part of a much larger, and very well-organized, network of state officials, the Algerian School, as we know them, who had determined that the only possible, rational option for dealing in the long term with the rise of Muslim power in the Middle East, and within France herself, was accommodation."

"Appeas.e.m.e.nt, you mean."

"No, 'appeas.e.m.e.nt' is not a strong enough word, Caitlin. To appease is simply to make morally compromised concessions in order to maintain one's own tenuous status. That is not what the School's philosophy now entertains. Adaptation' is more apt. Although in your language it sounds rather bloodless. It is not. As practiced by the Algerian School it means to slowly adapt the French secular state to the brute realities of its future as an annex to the Dar al-Islam, as a true Muslim power."

"To convert."

"Yes. To convert. And to that end they have allied themselves with the Intifada, in which your target is a leading player."

"Holy s.h.i.t," she said, impressed at last. "And the action division. How many of them were ..."

Rolland shook his head.

"Enough. Say a third. The others were quickly dealt with in the first days of fighting."

"But you've got a civil war out there. Surely you can't have whole army divisions who've gone over."

Rolland shook his head.

"No. There is fighting between many arms of the military and other organs of the state. But most of those involved see nothing beyond their gun-sights. An army regiment is ordered to put down a mutiny by the Foreign Legion and the individual soldiers do not understand that they are fighting an engagement to suit the ends of the conspiracy. To them it is just a civil war, and now it is so far advanced that all about chaos reigns. Accusations, counterclaims, propaganda. All is confusion."

He leaned forward and stubbed the b.u.t.t of his cigarette.

"But this I do know, Caitlin. You can help stop it. Your target, Baumer, he is not the key, but he leads to the key, to the masters of the Algerian School. Take them down, and the Intifada is leaderless, nothing more than a rabble-a huge rabble, yes, but not one that can match an army that is not divided against itself."

"You want me to kill your own people?" she asked, still not believing it all.

A new voice spoke up from the door behind Rolland, startling her. An American voice.

"That was always going to be your next mission. That's why you were targeted."

"Wales? G.o.dd.a.m.n, Wales!"

As sick in body and soul as she was, Caitlin pushed herself up off the couch and ran over to hug Wales Larrison, almost knocking him off his feet as she threw her arms around his neck.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n, Wales, it's been ... it's just..."

A small burning lump in her throat grew and grew, until it merged with the ache in her chest, and for the first time since she had been captured, Caitlin Monroe let herself go and poured out a torrent of tears.

Larrison, a rangy, silver-haired Nebraskan, enfolded her within a generous bear hug and made no attempt to calm her down as wretched, pitiable sobs and shudders racked her body.

"I'm s-s-sorry, Wales. I failed ... and ..."

He shushed her and stroked her head, patting down ma.s.ses of thick dark hair still wet from the shower and smelling of cheap shampoo.

"It's all right, Cait. It's all right. You've been sick. I know. They told me. You shouldn't have been out in the field, let alone trussed up in this s.h.i.t-hole ... if you'll excuse my, er, French, Captain Rolland."

"But of course. It is a s.h.i.thole."

Caitlin could feel Larrison's strong heartbeat through his suit jacket, and that strength flowed through his arms into her. She slowly regained her composure and pushed herself away.

"How did you get here?" she asked shakily, wiping her nose on a shirt cuff. "I thought they'd grabbed you, Wales. I thought they'd rolled up the whole network."

Larrison put one finger on her lip and bade her to be quiet. He led her back to the couch and eased her down, then sat himself at the other end.

"I was in London when everything happened," he said. "I had to sit on my a.s.s and watch it from there. I'm sorry, Caitlin. I tried to get an overwatch team to you, twice, but DGSE had a legitimate counterintel responsibility for shadowing us. We did spy on them, after all. They never penetrated a cell, but their intelligence division was aware of us. That's how they grabbed you the first time you were here. And they blocked both teams I sent in. Wiped out one. Grabbed up the other one."

Caitlin pulled the blanket closer around her shoulders.

"What's left of us, Wales? Of Echelon, I mean."

He puffed out his cheeks.

"Every op we had running in France was taken down. Every one. With extreme prejudice. The Brits lost their people, too. Would have caused a quiet, dirty little war if we hadn't known about the School. So now, in France, I'm afraid you're it. Our last designated hitter."

He indicated the fort with a wave of the hand. Somewhere many miles away, more bombs exploded.

"Lacan had people all over," he said. "This Algerian School, it's like Rol-land told you, they were everywhere. When we sent you after Baumer they stepped in. He was protected as part of the ... accommodation. They were always going to try to keep you off him."

Captain Rolland put one muddy boot on the coffee table, leaned forward, and retrieved his packet of pills. "Normally you would have been detained, interrogated, the usual inconveniences," he explained. "But the Disappearance, it changed everything. A ma.s.sive, world-changing shock."

"They had contingencies," said Larrison. "In the event of some foreseeable catastrophe that would cripple the U.S. Financial collapse. Nuclear strike, whatever. The Disappearance wasn't foreseeable, but it was also a h.e.l.l of a lot more than a simple catastrophe. It wiped us out."

"And the contingency?" said Caitlin.

"To finish the work of Allah," answered Rolland. "As soon as it was confirmed what had happened in America, Lacan purged the action division and sent his trusted people out, to roll up your network. It was not just you, of course. The British also maintained Echelon cadre in France, as Monsieur Larrison explained. They, too, were targeted. Even your junior partners, the Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders, all of them were smothered."

"So what, all the street fighting, the ethnic clashes, they were engineered by the School?" she asked. "That seems a bit far-fetched."

Larrison, who looked so much older than the last time they had spoken, just two months ago, shook his head sadly.

"Not all of them, Cait. A lot of violence arose naturally. Once the capstone was off, the geyser blew. But yes, some incidents were engineered to bring on a wider confrontation. An uprising. Even then it might not have worked. Conspiracies often don't, as you would know. But Israel nuking half of the Arab world, that was a deal breaker. Race war, holy war, civil war, whatever you want to call it. It was inevitable after that. Unavoidable. And people have been killing each other ever since."

She moved her head carefully to look out the windows again. The rain turned the suburbs outside into a bleary, gray netherworld, but some elements did resolve themselves. There was no traffic, vehicular or pedestrian. The only aircraft aloft were military, and of course she had already noted that they were attacking targets within the city. There seemed to be fewer fires burning than she remembered, but the rain was heavy, and on looking more closely she could see that whole districts had already been burned out.

She snuggled deeper into the sofa. It was strangely comforting.

"You said something about my next mission?"

Wales Larrison clicked his tongue.

"Yup. I did. We didn't tell you, because you didn't need to know, not at that point. But the hit on Baumer was a joint operation with the DST, the intelligence arm of Sarkozy's interior ministry. Sarkozy had decided to move against the School and had asked us to help. It was unprecedented. Echelon does not play outside of the family. But in this case, we did, because the strategic consequences could affect the family generations down the line. The Brits were particularly gung-ho. Your mission was designed to shake out Baumer's contacts. To expose Lacan and his people. They were being monitored by the DST without their knowledge."

"Or so we thought," said Rolland.

"Or so we thought," sighed Larrison.

"There was a leak?" said Caitlin.

Larrison grunted. "There was. We still don't know where from. But Lacan found out, and that's why he bet so much on grabbing you up. He needed you to start unraveling the op against him and the other School masters."

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h," muttered Caitlin.

"I'm sorry, Cait, but you know the rules."

She waved away his apology.

"I'm not p.i.s.sed at you, Wales. I know my job and I know it's not always what it seems. I'm a p.a.w.n. I can be sacrificed. It's just... I dunno. I'm sick, Wales, really sick. And it's messing with my head, the way I think and see things."

A weak breath escaped from her lips, and she deflated.

"I made a friend. An a.s.set. I shouldn't have, but I did. I'm not well. And I got her killed because I wasn't good enough to save her."

The room broke up into a jeweled kaleidoscope as more tears came. Larrison leaned over and patted her on the knee. Her dad had done the same thing a thousand times, and it only served to deepen her sadness. Larrison's voice was soft, the way her father's had once been, but still hard with it.

"You're not a p.a.w.n, Caitlin," he said. "You're a knight. And you're still in play."

Sixteenth arrondiss.e.m.e.nt, Paris

The BBC offices in Paris were an armed compound, with every window covered in steel plating. It did nothing to dull the arrhythmic tom-tom beat of heavy machine-gun fire or the dense, percussive thud of high-explosive ordnance pounding the rubble, just a few minutes' drive away. A sandbagged gun pit and razor wire guarded the main entrance, secured by a rotating team of gunned-up heavies from Sandline, a British-based "private military company." Dave, one of the operators, was American, and Melton had initially attempted to forge some kind of relationship with him, but entirely without luck. All he ever received in return for his stream of "howdys" and "hi theres" and "how ya doin' "s were grunts and the blank, dead stare of the deeply disinterested.

"He's not really a people person, is he?" said Monty, the chief of staff. "Still, better than having every man and his mad dog wandering in, eh?"

Monty was a thirty-year veteran of war reporting, having cut his teeth on the Golan Heights all the way back in 1973, during the Yom Kippur War. Like most of the bureau staff he was newly arrived, a volunteer, in his case from Kabul. Paris was considered a war posting, which was how Melton had moved from freelancer to staffer almost as soon as he'd put his foot in the door with his collection of Iraq War interviews. Very few people had the desire, experience, and unique mix of skills that he brought to the table. Even among the grizzled veterans of the Beeb's first-rank war correspondents, he stood out because of his own combat experience.

"Tea?" asked Monty, as they gathered in the second-floor conference room, a windowless box in the center of the building. Next to the production studios down in the bas.e.m.e.nt, it was one of the most secure areas in the building, but even so, every now and then a larger explosion nearby would shake flakes of plaster from the ceiling. Melton could feel the detonation through the soles of his shoes.

There was no coffee to be had, unfortunately, and Melton had noticed that the Brits really did seem to function a lot more effectively with just a cup or two of their weak, milky brew inside them. He had no idea where Barry, the office manager, sourced their supplies, but in a starving city riven by ethnic and civil warfare he somehow did keep the larder stocked and the teapots full. When Melton had complimented him on his scrounging chops Barry had grinned back and said, "If I can keep f.u.c.king Jim Muir's beer fridge full of f.u.c.kin' Boddington's in Beirut, a cup of f.u.c.king char in Paris isn't going to bovver me, is it, govnor!"

"But a decent cup of java's impossible?" Melton asked.

"All but," said Barry, in an apologetic tone. "Frogs is killing each other over moldy croissants and f.u.c.king Nescafe. So no, Mr. Melton. No f.u.c.king coffee. Learn to drink somefin' civilized, why don'tcha?"

The small team of correspondents and editors took their places around the table, most of them juggling papers and folders in one hand, and bone-china cups and saucers in the other. A packet of "biscuits," as they insisted on calling all forms of cookie life, sat in the center of the table, and Monty doled out one each to every tea drinker before carefully twisting the packet closed again and clamping it off with a wooden clothespin. The provenance of the clothespin was never explained. It was a peculiar ritual, which Melton had rather come to look forward to each day. He was offered one of the McVitie's wholemeal "bickies" to have with his gla.s.s of water, but again he turned it down.

"Couldn't get any Oreos, Barry?" he teased, only half in jest.

"Oh, I know where there's a whole warehouse of them, Mr. Melton. Just couldn't be f.u.c.ked d.i.c.kering for 'em. Why, do you want some?"

"Oh, no, don't put yourself out on my behalf." He smiled.

"Wasn't planning to, sir."

Other exchanges rolled back and forth across and around the table as everyone settled in. The morning news conference was about something more than simply a.s.signing new stories and monitoring those already in progress. It was the only time each day when the entire team was in one place, and it served as an opportunity for everyone to touch base, for the tribe to hunker down and count its blessings that their numbers had not been thinned out once again. The Beeb had had seventeen journalists killed or simply disappeared in the last month, not counting those who'd been vaporized in the Middle East or the United States. The Paris bureau, however, was charmed, having lost n.o.body since Jon Sopel was killed in the first week of fighting. The bureau had grown like Topsy since then, and had taken the buildings on either side as they were abandoned, but only seasoned warcos and freelancers like Melton worked there now. He'd been hired on a twelvemonth contract. It paid a fraction of his Army Times job, which hadn't been a great payer in the first place, but because of the hazardous posting status, he was guaranteed "room and board" at the Paris compound.

It seemed perverse, but he ate better and slept more securely than many people in England.

"Right then," Monty called out in his down-to-business voice. "What enchanting fripperies and puff pieces will we be filing from the city of light today then? Caroline, darlin', any chance of that interview with the blessed Sarko yet?"

Caroline Wyatt rolled her eyes up to the peeling paint of the high ceiling.

"His minders promised me I'd see him yesterday and I spent the whole b.l.o.o.d.y day in this wretched armored car roaring around from one bunker to the next, without ever actually managing to get anywhere near the little b.u.g.g.e.r. I'll stay on it, Monty, if you really wish, but I don't think he's going to roll over for us until he has some genuinely good news to crow about."

"Well, his armored boyos entered the old city last night. I'd have thought that was good enough."

"Yes, it is a feel-good story, isn't it, dozens of Leclerc main battle tanks crushing Arab street fighters under their treads in the Bois de Boulogne? I can't imagine why he wouldn't want to sit down and chat about that over a Pernod or two."

"Well, keep at it, sweetheart. I have faith in your charms. Bret, are you all squared away with the marines? London is super keen to see you embed with them after they cleaned out Lyons."

Melton tapped the point of his ballpoint on a Spirax writing pad.

"Soon as we're finished up here, I'm off to Suresnes. The marines- although you know, they're really more like army rangers-they laid up last night at Mont Valerien. It's an old fortress right next door. Parachuted in there when it was still full of jihadi. Pretty f.u.c.king hard-core. They'll have some good stories."

Normally, in a room full of BBC reporters, he'd have kept his mouth shut and just grunted, "Yeah, good to go." But these guys weren't normal. Even Caroline Wyatt, who still spent an hour in makeup every day, nodded appreciatively. He didn't need to s.e.x it up for them. They all knew what a G.o.dless bloodswarm the drop into Mont Valerien would have been, and what the push into the city was going to be like. The clashes between rival elements of the French military were destructive in the extreme. Whole swaths of the suburbs had been gutted by collisions between main force units siding with either Sarkozy or the so-called Loyalist Committee. The blocks bordering the Bois de Boulogne parklands now looked like Stalingrad at the end of 1944. Those buildings still standing were mostly gutted and blackened, often with the upper floors sheared off by high explosives. They stuck up out of the ruined streetscape like broken teeth.

"It's b.l.o.o.d.y confusing, isn't it?" grumbled Monty. "Rebels, renegades, mutineers, loyalists. Hard to keep them all straight some days. And if someone could do me a favor and explain why we're still calling them f.u.c.king loyalists when it seems pretty obvious they've cut some sort of deal with the Intifada crew, I'd be very grateful."

Melton, who was idly sketching a rough map of the city center, with various lines of advance and defense marked out, just as he'd been taught so long ago, shrugged. "They self-identify as loyalists, Monty. It's only good manners. After all, Sarkozy did anoint himself boss hog when Chirac got whacked. Smart move or not, it was illegal. Shades of Napoleon grabbing the crown. Gotta figure most of the guys fighting for the committee think they're the ones protecting the Republic. The soldiers, at least. Sarko calling them all traitors and sellouts to the Intifada wouldn't have helped calm the matter down either. The jihadi, they're allies of convenience. It's all f.u.c.ked up. Civil wars always are."