Kiss Me While I Sleep cs-3 Read online

  There was a pause. “What do you want?” Unlike Swain, the guy on the other end spoke in French; Swain was glad he knew enough of the language to get by.

  “Nothing much. I just want to know everything you know.”

  “One moment, please.” Swain heard the man speaking quietly to someone, a woman. Though it was difficult to tell what he was saying with the phone away from his mouth, Swain thought he caught something about “taking the call downstairs.”

  Ah. So he was at home.

  Then the man returned to the phone, saying briskly, “Yes, what may I do for you?”

  Smoke screen for the wife’s sake, Swain thought. “You can give me a name, for starters.”

  “The mole’s?” He must be out of earshot of his wife, because the guy had switched to English.

  “Definitely, but I was thinking of yours.”

  The man paused again. “It would be better if you do not know.”

  “Better for you, yes, but I’m not worried about making things better for you.”

  “But I am, monsieur.” Firmness there now; the man wasn’t a milquetoast. “I am risking my life and the lives of my family. Rodrigo Nervi is not one to take betrayal lightly.”

  “You work for him?”

  “No. Not in that sense.”

  “I’m feeling a little dense, here. Either he pays you or he doesn’t. Which is it?”

  “If I give him certain information, monsieur, he does not kill my family. Yes, he pays me; the money further incriminates me, yes?” Bitterness entered the quiet voice. “It is an insurance that I will not talk.”

  “I see.” Swain eased off on the smart-ass tough-guy act—or at least he racheted down his behavior—though, it came so naturally to him, it probably wasn’t an act. “Something puzzles me. How did Nervi even know I was here, that he would be asking about me? I assume that’s how my name came up, and how you got my phone number.”

  “He was searching for the identity of one of your contract agents. I believe it was a facial-recognition computer program that identified her. The mole accessed her file, and there was a notation that you had been dispatched to handle the problem she caused.”

  “How did he know she was a contract agent?”

  “He did not. He was exploring several different means of identifying her.”

  So that was how Rodrigo had acquired a photo of Lily without the disguise she had used when she was with Salvatore. He knew what Lily looked like, and he knew her real name. Swain asked, “Does Nervi know my name?”

  “I cannot say. I am the conduit between the CIA and Nervi, but I haven’t given your name to him. He did ask for a way to contact you.”

  “In God’s name, why?”

  “To offer you a deal, I believe. A lot of money in exchange for any information you have about the whereabouts of the woman he is seeking.”

  “What made him think I would take the deal?”

  “You are for hire, yes?”

  “No,” Swain said briefly.

  “You are not a contract agent?”

  “No.” He didn’t say more. If the CIA had sent him, and he wasn’t a contract agent, then there was only one other category for him: field officer. He suspected this guy was bright enough to figure it out.

  “Ah.” There was the sound of a sharply drawn breath. “Then I have made the correct decision.”

  “Which is?”

  “I did not give him your phone number.”

  “Even though your family is in danger?”

  “I have a cover. There is another Nervi, a younger brother, Damone, who is . . . not quite in the family mold. He is intelligent, and reasonable. When I pointed out the inherent dangers in contacting someone who worked for the CIA, that this person would realize the only way Rodrigo could have his telephone number was if someone with the CIA had given it to him—moreover, this person could be very loyal to his country—Damone saw the wisdom of what I was saying. He said he would report to Rodrigo that the CIA person—that is yourself, of course—had rented a mobile here and had not yet contacted headquarters, so there was no current number available.”

  That made sense, even though the explanation was a tad convoluted. Rodrigo likely didn’t know that field officers, when outside their own country, would use either secure international cell phones or satellite phones.

  Another piece also fit neatly into this little piece. For information to be routed from the CIA through this man to Rodrigo Nervi, then the man Swain was talking to had to be in a position to request such sensitive information—and have quite a lot to lose if anyone found out. “What are you?” he asked. “Interpol?”

  He heard a quick intake of breath and triumphantly thought, Bingo! Got it in one. Looked as if Salvatore Nervi had poked his fingers into a lot of pies that he shouldn’t have.

  “So what you’re doing,” he said, “is getting back at Nervi without endangering your family. You can’t overtly refuse to do anything he asks, can you?”

  “I have children, monsieur. Perhaps you don’t understand—”

  “I have two of my own, so, yes, I understand perfectly.”

  “He would kill them without hesitation if I don’t cooperate. In this matter with his brother, I did not refuse a request; his brother made a decision concerning it.”

  “But since you had my number anyway, you thought you’d put it to good use by making an anonymous call to warn me of the mole.”

  “Oui. An investigation prompted by an internal suspicion is far different from one instigated from outside, no?”

  “Agreed.” This guy wanted the mole caught; he wanted that contact closed off. He must be feeling guilty about the information he’d passed along over the years and was trying to somewhat atone. “How much damage have you done?”

  “To national security, very little, monsieur. When asked I must provide at least a soupçon of reliable information, but always I have removed more sensitive items.”

  Swain accepted that. After all, the guy had a conscience or he wouldn’t have called him with a warning. “Do you know the mole’s name?”

  “No, we have never used names. He does not know mine, either. By that I mean our real names. We have identifiers, of course.”

  “Then how does he get information to you? I assume he sends it through channels, so anything that is faxed or scanned would have to be sent to your attention.”

  “I set up a fictitious identity on my home computer for those things that must be sent electronically, which is most things. Only rarely is anything faxed. Such a thing could be traced, of course—assuming one knew what to look for. I can access the account from my . . . the word escapes me. The small hand-computer in which one puts one’s appointments—”

  “PDA,” Swain said.

  “Oui. The PDA.” Said with a French accent, it was pei d’ay.

  “The number you use to contact him—”

  “It is a mobile number, I believe, as I am always able to reach him on it.”

  “Have you had the number traced?”

  “We do not investigate, monsieur; we coordinate.”

  Swain was well aware that Interpol’s constitution directly prohibited the organization from conducting its own investigations. His guy had just confirmed that he was indeed Interpol, not that Swain had doubted it.

  “I am certain the mobile phone would be registered under a false name,” the Frenchman continued. “That would be easy for him to do, I think.”

  “A snap of the fingers,” Swain agreed, pinching the bridge of his nose. A fake driver’s license was easy to come by, especially for people in their line of work. Lily had used three sets of identification running from Rodrigo. For someone who worked at Langley, how hard could it be?

  He tried to think of the various means available for nabbing this guy. “How often are you in contact?”

  “Sometimes not for months. Twice in the past few days.”

  “So a third contact so soon would be unusual?”

  “Very unus