Read Tommy Carmellini 02 - The Traitor for Free Online

stolen trade secrets from foreign companies and passed those secrets on to French companies. There was a scandal a few years back—Arnaud's boss at the time got canned and the DGSE was reformed under political pressure. That was window dressing, of course. They stayed in the commercial espionage business and Arnaud got promoted."
    "So counterespionage is basically the French government spying on foreign companies with offices in France?"
    "Well, they don't limit their activities to France. The primary targets are American companies, and they go after trade secrets anywhere they can find them. They are also very interested in muscling in on international deals, winning contracts with bribery or whatever."
    "They still doing it?"
    "The world is still turning," Grafton said. He made a sweeping motion with his right hand. "That is a problem for another day. We're going to have a chat with Rodet. Tell him, Sarah."
    She didn't look at me but at the admiral. "Rodet apparently came into a couple of million euros by way of the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program, which essentially went away with the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. The money came from a series of transactions between five small companies that were providing goods and services to Saddam Hussein. Rodet invested the money in the Bank of Palestine, which is a honey pot or piggy bank for Islamic radicals out to overthrow Israel—and America and Western civilization and so on."
    I had heard of the Bank of Palestine. Somehow bank money wound up being used to pay survivor's benefits to the families of terrorist suicide commandos who had gone on to their reward, whatever that might be. "He owns stock in that bank?" I asked.
    "He does, and he tipped us on the Veghel conspiracy. It doesn't compute. We're going to try to figure him out and find a way to exploit his relationships with the Bank of Palestine and the various extremist groups in the Middle East." I knew what "exploit" meant. I
    figured Sarah did, too. "Sarah, you are going to be our computer wizard. Tommy, you're going to be my tech guy and point man."
    "Tell me some more about Rodet," I said.
    "He's married to an heiress almost ten years older than he is. They're estranged. No children. He has a live-in girlfriend, a chateau upriver from Paris and a luxurious flat in town. I hear it's
    quite a place."
    "I think I met Rodet's girlfriend this past spring. Gal name of Marisa Petrou. She still his main squeeze?"
    "That's her," Grafton agreed, nodding.
    Suddenly I realized that Sarah Houston was giving me the onceover. One of her eyebrows was higher than the other. Now she turned back to Grafton.
    "I seem to recall seeing a television interview with Chirac just the other day," I said, "where he was bragging about cooperating to fight
    terrorism."
    "The French are cooperating, but we think they know more than they're passing on, a lot more, and we aren't getting it. Henri Rodet is the key. He's in the crosshairs, partly for the Veghel conspiracy, and partly because the French government has him running the security team for the G-8 summit.
    "The question is, How did Rodet learn of the Veghel conspiracy? After careful analysis, we don't think he got it from a DGSE operation, or from one of their agents. It's possible, but. . . We think it's more likely that Rodet has an agent in Al Queda, and that agent was the source of the information on the conspiracy."
    "Whoa," I said. "That's a big leap."
    "No, it isn't. Someone told him."
    I threw up my hands. "What does Rodet say?"
    "He isn't saying anything. He refused to discuss the matter with the Paris station chief."
    "Oh, boy."
    Grafton motored right along. "So that's our assumption—Rodet has a spy in Al Queda. We know a few things about this guy." He
    began ticking them off on his fingers. "One, the agent hasn't yet been caught, which means that he has never been suspected. Two, he's high up in the organization, or he would not have known about the conspiracy. Three, he's been