Twice a Spy_ A Novel - Keith Thomson [15]
Before he could open the cupboard, Stanley heard a pair of staccato knocks at the front door.
“Qui est là?” he asked with a mix of wariness and grumble befitting the late hour.
“Thierry?” came a man’s voice.
“Qu’est-ce que tu veux?”
“On est là avec ton copain.”
“Ah, bon.” Stanley opened the door, admitting two DCRI men who prodded in their captive, his hands bound at the wrists behind his back.
Abdullah looked younger than the forty-five years he was believed to be, due perhaps to his plumpness and the sort of golden tan indigenous to yachting. Walking appeared to strain him, probably due to “accidental” run-ins with elbows and fists belonging to members of the Secret Army of Paris—kidney shots, because they didn’t leave a mark. Or maybe it was just the pain of his defeat. The Frenchmen dumped him onto the sofa and hurried back downstairs.
The plastic cuffs prevented the arms dealer from sitting up. Regarding them, he said in English, “Please take them off?”
Deciding to save this as a carrot, Stanley lowered himself into a creaky armchair directly across from the sofa and said tersely, “Ali, je veux simplement un ‘oui’ ou un ‘non’—”
“Do us both a favor and skip the high school French,” Abdullah said. The fire had returned to his eyes. And the rapid English was spoken with a distinctly Midwestern accent.
Stanley hid his astonishment. “I guess your high school taught you to speak English pretty well.”
“Didn’t have to, ’cause it was in Cleveland. Knowing that, does the name Charboneau have any significance to you now, apart from my use of it as an alias?”
“Is that the name of your high school?”
“No, Marshfield. I went to Marshfield High. While I was there, Joltin’ Joe Charboneau went from being a bare-knuckle boxer down at the local railyard to starting right fielder for the Cleveland Indians. Sonofabitch not only could knock the cover off the ball; he could open a bottle of beer with his eye socket and drink it through his nose, and he did his own dental work with a pair of pliers. We would have fucking loved it if they renamed the school after him.”
“I remember him, American League Rookie of the Year in 1979, right?” Stanley said. By it he meant, “What in the name of God is going on here?”
“1980, actually. Listen, there’s a little matter I need your help with.” Abdullah hauled himself up, bringing his eyes even with Stanley’s. “I just got wind of the fact that an old colleague of ours, Drummond Clark, is about to sell a low-yield nuke to a Muslim separatist group.”
“What time is the meet-up?” Drummond asked for the third time since they had found the BMW in the Hauptstrasse parking lot.
“One.” Charlie pulled the car into a space among the smattering of vehicles in the Zweisimmen airfield’s small lot. “Two minutes from now.”
“Thirteen hundred, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“I want you to get in the practice of using military time.” Alzheimer’s sufferers often labored to maintain the perception that they were on top of their game. Drummond in this fuzzy state was a 5 on Charlie’s lucidity scale of 1 to 10—1 being a zombie, 10 being laser-sharp, or his old self.
In Alice fashion, Charlie reversed in favor of another spot—one more attempt at detecting surveillance.
Nobody, at least as far as he could tell.
The sleepy Zweisimmen airfield consisted of a few planes and a tiny air traffic control tower atop a proportionate general aviation building constructed of logs and painted mustard yellow; it looked more like a ski lodge.
Drummond’s eyes darted about. In the throes of dementia, Alzheimer’s sufferers retained the ability to bake a cake or drive a car, even create a Web site. After four decades of clandestine operations, Drummond’s faculty for circumventing danger was hardwired.
“Everything okay?” Charlie asked.
“I’m fine, thank you.”
Unfortunately, taking advantage of Drummond’s intuition was often like straining to hear a radio with patchy reception. “I mean, are we safe here?”
“What about our escape route?” Drummond