Page 40 of Shadow of Doubt

“No. If we saw each other, it was normally over drinks,” he replied.

“Whose idea was it to meet for breakfast?”

“It was Jean-Jacques’s. He was at his cottage in Brittany over the weekend and reached out. He said he needed to talk about something and asked if I could be available first thing this morning. I told him he didn’t have to wait, that we could talk over the phone if he wanted, but he turned me down. He said that it had to be in person.”

“And you didn’t find that a little unusual?”

“Maybe,” said Powell. “But that was Jean-Jacques. He was old-school.”

“How so?”

“He was a spy’s spy. Moscow Rules and all that. Don’t call when you can write and don’t write when you can meet in person. That was one of his favorite maxims.”

“Then you believe he wanted to meet with you in order to discuss something intelligence-related?”

“I don’t know what he wanted,” Powell replied.

“Whatever it was,” Gibert interjected, “it was obviously important because he wanted to see you first thing. Was he having romantic problems? Money problems?”

“We didn’t discuss those things.”

“I thought you said you were friends.”

“We were friends,” the station chief responded. “But those weren’t the kinds of things we talked about. Jean-Jacques was a confirmed bachelor. I never heard him discuss women, or men. He didn’t talk about money either. With an apartment in the Marais and a cottage in Brittany, I figured he was doing fine.”

“So what did you talk about?” Brunelle inquired. “As friends.”

Powell thought for a moment. “He talked a lot about climbing. He enjoyed sports. History was also another favorite subject. And movies. He loved American movies.”

“Did you ever discuss business?”

“Definebusiness.”

“Your work as intelligence operatives.”

“On occasion. As appropriate.”

“Did you first meet each other here in Paris?” she asked, testing his truthfulness.

The station chief shook his head. “No. In Beirut. We were both stationed there at the same time.”

“From what I understand, Jadot was recalled. He didn’t finish out his time in Beirut.”

“Correct.”

“Do you know why?”

Powell swirled the bourbon in his glass. “Jean-Jacques discovered that the French ambassador had been turned by the Russians.”

Brunelle looked at him. “He was absolutely certain of that?”

“One hundred percent. But when he transmitted the information back to Paris, there was quite a bit of foot-dragging. The ambassador was extremely well-connected. If he was outed, it was going to cause a lot of headaches and a lot of embarrassment for the Élysée Palace.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, while he waited for an answer, Jean-Jacques kept sending updates to headquarters, along with ideas on how they might take advantage of the ambassador having been compromised. His ultimate desire was to double the ambassador back against the Russians. But failing that, he wanted to limit the classified material the man was receiving and possibly even start feeding him bogus intel in the hopes that it would be passed along to Moscow.”

“And was he successful?”

---