A Long Night in Paris by Dov Alfon

Author:Dov Alfon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2020-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 60

In another historic Parisian hotel, He Xiangu stood up and stared at Tarzan. At first she didn’t recognize him because he was very young in the photo, but there was no mistaking those muscles. Wearing a white bathing suit he flashed his teeth at the camera.

“Why do they have a poster of Tarzan in this conference room?” she said.

“The hotel conference rooms are named after him,” the leader of Team Three said. “I mean, not after Tarzan, but after the actor who played him in the movies, Johnny Weissmuller.”

“But why?” He Xiangu persisted. From the corner of the table, one of the older men raised his hand. It was the French translator who had been brought in half an hour earlier to assist the translators from Hebrew.

“It says here that the swimming pool at Hôtel Molitor was inaugurated in 1929 by the Olympic champion Johnny Weissmuller, who later became famous as the actor who played Tarzan,” he said. “He broke a record here.”

He Xiangu’s nostrils flared with indignation. She wanted to get back into the pool to challenge the dead man’s record. Instead she said, “Tarzan would have killed the Israeli by now while you’re still standing here waiting for him to appear,” and she returned to reading the transcripts.

However, her people had done a fine job summoning a French translator to clarify obscure points from the intercepted conver-sation and cross-referencing the main database to provide the background. It was not their fault that they were still a long way away from an adequate explanation.

Speaker A: They found him. They will take him to the light at police headquarters. He was at his mother’s, in a Jewish suburb southeast of Paris.

Speaker B: You mean this Abadi?

Speaker A: I correct you, Colonel Abadi.

Speaker B: [Swearing] I knew from beginning he was up to something. What will they do to him?

Speaker A: I do not know, but they were anxious to find him. I was afraid they would want to arrest me, too, but they were only after him.

Speaker B: He still believes they intended to abduct a different Israeli?

Speaker A: I think so. He got the list from the El Al security officer without my knowledge.

Speaker B: You also didn’t know he would leave the code room in the Israeli embassy in Paris a minute after making a call.

Speaker A: It is not my job to handle these sorts of things. It is your job.

Speaker B: We are not supposed to talk about this outside the embassy.

“I don’t understand where they’re taking him,” she said. “What is ‘the light’?”

The French translator rushed to reply. “We believe the word ‘léger’ in the recording is not the French word for ‘light’, because it doesn’t add up with the rest of the sentence, and there’s no reason why the Israelis would suddenly use a regular French word in the middle of a Hebrew conversation. It’s more likely to be someone’s name. Léger.”

The team leader loaded a photo onto the screen. “Given the context,

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