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By Root 821 0

made certain people nervous. Then he was shadowed, and had shadowed the redhead, and had found Townsend Enterprises. So much was clear, because that is what had actually happened. The rest was unclear: why would the KGB send people from New York, of all places, to Provence? In the case of Bulnakov, that might still make sense. Georg thought of Philip Habib who had been sent by the Americans on difficult missions throughout the world, and of Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski who had been sent out by the Germans. But to send Françoise on an international mission? The KGB had agents in New York. Their front is disguised as an enterprise specializing in rare woods and precious metals. Why woods and metals of all things? Enough’s enough, Georg told himself, who cares whether they deal in woods, metals, flowers, or books? Bulnakov, the chief agent, is sent on a particularly important mission to France because he is a very experienced agent. He takes Françoise, a fellow agent, with him because she is his mistress. Can one KGB agent be the lover of another? Georg sighed. Whether or not the KGB allowed its agents to climb into bed with one another, it would not have officers of the CIA, the FBI, or the New York Police Department working for it.

He ordered another cup of coffee. Regardless of how the officers became involved, they were after him now. Did they still just want to deport him? Or drag him before a court? Or deport him and make sure he ended up before a German court? I could see a lawyer, Georg thought, or, better, I could go find that reporter and then talk to a lawyer.

The newspaper was still lying in front of him. The title photo showed the aircraft carrier Tennessee entering the Gulf of Mexico, with two helicopters hovering above it. Georg’s glance rested on the two helicopters, moved away, and then returned to them.

Two helicopters, he thought, not one. He had read in the Newsweek article that in the development of a new attack helicopter for the NATO armies, a consortium of European aircraft builders was developing a new attack helicopter in competition with Gorgefield, an American company based in California. Both parties were proposing a similar helicopter with stub wings, ABC rotors, and RAM-coating. Both parties, it was rumored, had made the same technological breakthrough.

Georg couldn’t remember whether this concerned the wings, the rotors, or the coating, but he remembered clearly that it was the same breakthrough: the helicopters had the same qualities and performance capabilities.

So this is not about the Soviets and the Europeans, but about Gorgefield and Mermoz! Had Bulnakov come up with a double disguise: as an Eastern Bloc agent and the head of a translation agency? As he went through the story again Georg considered his questions—the important as well as the less important ones. Bulnakov was less important. Important was who he worked for. The CIA? Georg could imagine the worst of any secret service, but he couldn’t imagine the CIA undertaking industrial espionage, espionage at a European industrial enterprise working under contract to an American one. That the CIA might cover and help with such espionage was possible, and would explain the two agents in the MacIntyre Building. It would also explain the attitude of the French. Bulnakov would have asked the CIA to put in a word with the French secret service, which would have passed the information he wanted to disseminate about Georg to the police, the town council, the bank, and Georg’s landlord.

But if Bulnakov wasn’t working for the CIA, who was he working for? And what about Townsend Enterprises? Was it Gorgefield Aircraft’s own secret service, its department specializing in sensitive issues, dirty business? Or was Bulnakov, or Benton, as Georg was beginning to call him, an independent contractor whose company, Townsend Enterprises, could be hired to carry out shady deals ranging from espionage to murder? Had Gorgefield hired Townsend Enterprises for Operation Mermoz? They had probably given the job a more elegant name: the Mermoz Study, the Mermoz