THIRTY-SIX
CENTRE ADMINISTRATIF DES TOURELLES
141 BOULEVARD MOTRIER
XXE ARRONDISSEMENT, PARIS
Mid-to-late twenties, Kara decided, as the bronze Renault Grand Espace IV she rode aboard turned off the rain-splashed streets of Paris and pulled up to the complex of buildings that housed the French Directorate-General for External Security. The four heavily tinted door windows were lowered and identity documents presented and checked before the vehicle was allowed to proceed into the underground parking area.
And quite the looker, Kara added sourly as the woman approached. Her short black hair worn in an asymmetric bob-cut that brought out her pale blue-green eyes. The denim jeans tucked into knee-high wedge-heel leather boots combined with a tight blouse to exhibit her shapely figure to maximum effect.
"Michele!" she greeted in English with a rich accent that Kara could not hope to match, even after ten years living in Paris herself.
"Hello, Coraline," Michele replied, also in English. The two exchanged kisses on the cheeks in the French tradition.
"Team, this is Coraline Loveau with the DGSE's Directorate of Intelligence. Coraline, this is Clayland Stanaway and Laine Brussard with the Department of Information Security."
The three exchanged greetings.
"And this is my partner at AISE, Kara Deleroux."
"Deleroux? That's a French name…"
"Yes," Kara replied in French. "My father was French and mother Japanese. As you can see, I inherited most of her genes."
"She must be very beautiful, then," Coraline stated.
"She was," Kara said.
"Me and my big mouth. I saw the reports of the terrorist attacks in the news. I was kind of surprised when you asked to pay me a visit in person."
"The situation is much more delicate than we've made public, so we have to operate with the utmost discretion," Michele replied.
"I understand. If you will follow me, please."
Coraline led everyone through a warren of corridors to a medium-sized office with a view of the outer wall and the public swimming pool across the way.
"So how do you and Michele know each other?" Laine asked as everyone removed jackets and settled into chairs, putting voice to a question that had pin-balled inside Kara's head for the past hour.
"It was 2005, was it not?" Coraline asked.
"At the NATO Interforce Intelligence Center in Brussels," Michele concurred.
"I'd been a freshly-minted Sous-Lieutenant on the staff of Général de brigade Jean-Jacques Bart. We were the first French military members to be assigned to Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe since DeGaulle had withdrawn the French Military from NATO control in 1967 and we really felt the eyes of everyone else on us.
"English kind of served as the informal lingua franca at HQ, but my command of it was a bit…weak. Fortunately, Michele spoke excellent French so I put myself in his care," she noted with a dazzling smile.
Kara, whose sour mood curdled more by the minute, wondered if Naomi Palmer had been part of their group, but held her questions as Coraline approached a large magnetic whiteboard that dominated one of the walls. Spread across it was a scramble of pictures, printouts, marker lines and words.
"The three primary illicit drugs consumed in Europe are, in order, cannabis, cocaine and heroin. My role within the Directorate is to track drug shipments into the Fifth Republic, specifically those that come by sea. Marseille is the largest port in France and one of five main entry points for illegal drugs into the European Union," Caroline noted.
"It's impossible to keep track of all the vessels that transit through our ports, but everything is stored on computers now," Coraline noted. "The Government has been increasing our funding in technology, which has allowed us to start searching those stored records for patterns. Through this program I discovered two weeks ago a small cargo vessel that was making regular runs between Marseille and the Ukrainian port of Odessa over the past three months. When I ran the registry, I received a hit that the Italian AISI had identified the ship in Adria smuggling in weapons, possibly chartered from Alexandria. Additional crosschecking brought to my attention a report prepared by Naomi Palmer of the British SIS and delivered to one Michele Pagani of the Italian AISE."
"Kara and I were part of the group that identified her in Adria," Michele noted. "Unfortunately, they were on to our presence and led us on a merry chase and the ship snuck out under darkness."
Kara frowned, still chafing at the memory of being given the slip.
"At the time, we assumed the vessel was trans-shipping cocaine, but that didn't fit the general Black Sea smuggling model, which favored direct shipment from Northern African ports to the cities of Novorossiysk and Sevastopol. We tasked some HUMINT assets on our end and determined that the vessel was indeed shipping cocaine," Coraline noted, using the acronym for HUMan INTelligence, the diplomatically polite term for a spy. "But what we found surprising is that the vessel wasn't importing cocaine to the Ukraine, but exporting it," Caroline noted.
"Why is that surprising?" Kara asked.
"The 'Ndrangheta control much of the world's cocaine trade, thanks to significant emigration to cocaine-producing countries in South America. They were heavily involved in right-wing paramilitary groups and formed strong links to the Columbian cartels, initially as a protection force and then as actual producers and shippers," Coraline explained.
"Within Europe, the 'Ndrangheta are believed to be responsible for at least half of the cocaine imported. It doesn't make any sense for them to export it from the Ukraine, especially back to Italy, which is the primary import route into the EU via the port at Gioia Tauro."
"You think they're re-selling product?" Clayland asked. His role within I.C.E. had focused on arms and drug trafficking into the United States.
"It's possible. But if they are, they either have balls of steel or brains of rubber to operate right under the noses of the Unione Corse, who have taken up first cannabis and then cocaine to fill the gap made by the loss of the opium trade when they closed 'The French Connection' in the early 1970s," Coraline finished.
"Good movie," Laine noted. "Though I liked Ronin, more," she added, referring to the director, John Frankenheimer. Beside her, Kara nodded her agreement.
"Frankenheimer directed the sequel," Clayland stated, indicating his cyborg to shush. He turned to Michele.
"It would be interesting to know if that vessel has been anywhere else," he said.
Michele nodded. "Well we know it picked up the cruise missiles in Alexandria before it arrived in Venice."
"Cruise missiles?" Coraline asked.
"Dante imported between four and six SS-N-27 cruise missile warheads," Michele answered. "He detonated one of them in Venice and we secured another in Bologna earlier today. When the Cold War ended, a number of Soviet aircrews decided to…appropriate…their cargo aircraft in lieu of back wages and flew them off to isolated airfields in the 'Stans or the Eastern Anatolia Region of Turkey to set up shop performing transport for hire. We believe that Dante hired one of them to fly the missiles to Saharan Africa and then truck them to Alexandria where they were transferred to that ship."
"Should we tell her about the package?" Clayland asked.
Coraline's ears perked up. "Package?"
"Dante must have brought it with him on the ship," Michele observed.
"Tell me about what package?"
Michele turned and looked her straight in the eyes.
"What I am about to tell you cannot leave this room. Do you understand?"
Coraline nodded.
"Do you recall the Bujanovac Incident?" Michele asked.
"Yes, it was during the break-up of Serbia and Montenegro. A Russian fighter-bomber carrying a tactical nuclear device crashed on the outskirts of the town. The bomb detonated, killing thousands, and radioactive fallout contaminated much of the Preševo Valley, though the city of Preševo escaped the cloud. There was a huge outcry as to why a Russian aircraft with an armed nuclear weapon was in the area. Your country sent a detachment of military police there to help as part of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force."
"Evidently there was no crash," Michele informed her. "That area of Serbia is ethnically Albanian and there were concerns that the population might try to create an independent state as they did in 2001 at the end of the Kosovo War. Somehow, two ex-Soviet 'suitcase nukes' were smuggled into the area and one of them was detonated in Bujanovac, though whether that was by design or accident nobody knows. The other was evidently smuggled out of the country during the confusion by whoever Dante's benefactor is. Dante's intent was to use it to destroy the New Trino nuclear generating station, however we successfully secured it earlier today."
"Mon dieu," Coraline exclaimed.
"The Russians didn't want to admit they'd lost custody of two nuclear weapons, so they created the fake aircraft accident. American NEST teams confirmed the nuclear material was Russian, so the world bought the story," Clayland added.
"I can put in a priority request to pull all the tracking reports we have on the ship. It should be ready by morning," Coraline offered.
"Thank you. We should all get some sleep and reconvene in the morning," Michele said.