Page 41 of Shadow of Doubt

Once more, the station chief shook his head. “The DGSE was getting ready to send a special counterintelligence team to Beirut to handle the situation. Jean-Jacques believed that they were going to quietly remove the ambassador and do any necessary damage control. When he yet again confronted headquarters about it, they accused him of insubordination and brought him home. Shortly after Jean-Jacques arrived back in Paris, the ambassador died by suicide.”

“You seem to know a great deal about the situation,” said Brunelle. “How is that?”

“Beirut is a big city, but it’s a small town when it comes to expats, especially those in our line of work. The DGSE and the CIA cooperated on several intelligence-gathering assignments. That’s how Jean-Jacques and I became friendly. At the end, when he was being recalled, he was pretty angry. He was also concerned.”

“About what?”

“He was worried that the French ambassador might not be the only one who had been compromised. The deeper he dug, the more convinced he was that he was correct. If the ambassador wasn’t removed, if he was left in his position, Jean-Jacques was concerned what kind of damage could be done going forward.”

“So he read you in?”

“Yes,” said Powell, taking a sip of his drink. “He didn’t trust anyone at the DGSE or at the embassy any longer, but he trusted me and asked me to keep an eye on things.”

“Did you or Monsieur Jadot ever confront the ambassador?”

“No, neither of us did.”

“Then what pushed him to suicide? The timing seems incredibly coincidental.”

“I agree,” the station chief replied. “According to Jean-Jacques, the ambassador had no known history of depression or suicidal ideation. His thinking was that if the Russians had indeed compromised other people working for the French government, maybe one of them had leaked Jean-Jacques’s reports back to Moscow. If the Russians learned that the DGSE was on to the ambassador, maybe they murdered him and made it look like a suicide.”

“Why not just murder Jadot instead?” Brunelle asked.

“I think by that point, considering all the reports he had sent back to headquarters, the cat was already out of the bag. It was probably just easier to murder the ambassador, make it look like a suicide, and cut their losses. But you’re not incorrect. I think part of the reason Jean-Jacques told me everything was in case he ended up dying, especially if it was under suspicious circumstances, at least someone would still be alive to pursue the truth.”

“Perhaps that’s why he wanted breakfast with you this morning,” shesaid, thinking out loud. “Maybe he needed to share something with you in case anything happened to him. Any idea what that might have been?”

“Mighthave been?” Powell replied. “Sure, I have an idea. But without additional information, without evidence, it would only be speculation.”

“Speculation,”Brunelle offered, “is just another word for hypothesis. It’s ninety percent of what we do at this stage.”

Once again, the station chief chose his words carefully. “After returning from Beirut, Jean-Jacques was preoccupied with the possibility that the Russians had turned other people in the French government, including inside the intelligence services.”

“Do you know if he ever found any proof?”

“Every time I saw him, he was pulling on a new thread, yet he never seemed to have uncovered anything. At least nothing he ever shared with me.”

“Did he have any enemies that you know of?”

“Anybody who’d been in the game as long as Jean-Jacques probably made a lot of enemies. He absolutely hated the Russians. I’m guessing it was probably mutual.” There was a pause before Powell added, “Speaking of which, can you confirm for me how he was murdered.”

“We purposefully haven’t made the information public yet.”

“We heard it was an ice axe.”

Brunelle shot Gibert a look. She had no doubt the CIA station chief had gotten that information from his own contacts within the DGSE, possibly from the very men Gibert had allowed access to the crime scene.

“That’s correct,” she conceded, “but I would ask that you please keep it confidential.”

“It’s almost too on the nose,” Powell mused.

“Excuse me?”

“If it was the Russians who killed him, it’s rather unimaginative, regardless of Jean-Jacques’s love of history. Or maybe I’m totally wrong. Maybe it was designed to send a message.”

“I’m sorry,” Brunelle replied. “I’m not following you. What are you talking about?”

“August 1940. When Stalin decided Trotsky had become too much of a threat, he sent an assassin to kill him. The weapon the assassin used was an ice axe.”

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