Topaz - Leon Uris [65]
“He’s speaking in the Congress Tuesday,” Lowenstein said, “then Face the Press next Sunday.”
No need to spell out Brolin’s effect. The mail was becoming ponderous. New intelligence had just come in from the French on Cuba. That the Soviets had sent missiles now seemed to be a fact. The terrifying question of when they would be operational still hovered. Earlier that day, the President had met for two hours with a special Soviet emissary whose mission it was to promise peace and assure that the Soviet intentions were being misread.
“McKittrick,” the President said. “I want Cuba photographed from one end to the other at once. I want the job done within days. Pull out all stops.” Then, he got out of his rocking chair and looked to General St. James. “Bring in the contingency plans for the invasion of Cuba,” he said.
1
SÛRETÉ, THE NATIONALIZED FRENCH police, was headquartered in the Interior Ministry over the way from the Élysée Palace.
Department of Internal Protection, a division of Sûreté, functioned with much the same duties as the American FBI. The division was headed by one Léon Roux, an old-time career officer. He ran a highly skilled, professional police operation relatively free of the heavy hand of President Pierre La Croix.
Roux refused to become one of the new, fashionable American-baiters and greeted Sid Jaffe, an old friend, as an old friend.
The Frenchman’s movements were quick and jerky like a hummingbird’s, but otherwise his face was a prune of wrinkles, expressively cynical from years of police work.
There were coffee and amenities before Sid Jaffe got down to the business that had brought him to Paris.
“NATO documents,” Jaffe said, “dozens of them, have been stolen here and copies have been transmitted to Moscow.”
Léon Roux grunted, palmed and massaged his wrinkled face in terrible concern.
“We have the Russian translations of many of them turned over by a defector,” Jaffe continued. “We’ve broken it down to six common readers: three French, three non-French. The non-French are all back in their native countries. Nordstrom sent me here to seek your cooperation in putting the French suspects under surveillance.”
Roux nodded.
“We want it kept as quiet as possible,” Jaffe said, implying that both SDECE and President La Croix should be kept out of the immediate picture. Of course, Sid Jaffe knew of Roux’s continued fights with SDECE, and it played in his favor.
Roux looked up at the ceiling and thought out loud. “Let’s say Jaffe did not visit me with this information. Let’s say I received it as a tip through my own sources. Therefore I would be within my prerogative to act on my own. No one else would have to know for the time being, would they?”
Jaffe smiled. “You didn’t hear it from me.”
“Well now, what good Frenchmen are suspect?”
“Colonel Galande, Air Planning.”
Roux pouted his lips and waved his hand palm down with a comme çi comme ça ... maybe yes, maybe no ... gesture. “Possible. He was a Vichy French officer whom La Croix pardoned years ago. His wife was once a Communist; however, that is not a crime in France. Possible, possible.”
“Guillon, Chief of Staff’s office.”
“Extremely doubtful, eh, Jaffe?”
“You never know.”
“Who else?”
“Henri Jarré, NATO economist.”
Léon Roux’s silence was tip enough. He called for files on the three men and asked that Marcel Steinberger be called in.
“I’m giving this to Inspector Steinberger. You’ll meet him now. Half Jew. After Auschwitz he ended up in Dachau. The Americans liberated him. He worked in your military government for four years. He is extremely pro-American, has a tight mouth and a quick mind.”
The files of the suspects and Inspector Steinberger arrived together. The Inspector was introduced to Jaffe, who watched him closely as Roux explained the mission.
Steinberger was a smallish man who outwardly showed little of the years in two concentration camps except for a tinge of madness that sparkled from his eyes now and again. It was a hollow expression of sudden detachment, a reversion