His cellphone rang, and he answered immediately.

“Gonzales,” he said, sounding stern and official, as though he was at his desk and not lying in bed in his underwear.

Pascal identified himself immediately and apologized for the late hour.

“No problem,” Rafe Gonzales assured him. “I have an early shift today. We’ve been busy here.”

“So have we,” Pascal Martin said.

“What do you have?” Gonzales got right to the point.

“I’m not sure if we have a problem or not, but we got an advisory on an outbound flight, about a first-class passenger. He’s a French national. I can email you what we’ve got. There are no details, just that we need additional clearance from you to let him fly. We’ve delayed the flight until we know.”

“Send me what you have and I’ll run him through our system. It could be for other circumstances of some kind, or it could be old and should have been cleared.” They both knew that would be the best-case scenario. At worst, Pascal was going to have a giant pain in his gut, an irate passenger to deal with, and angry airline officials. It was all part of the territory that went with the job. “Give me five minutes. I’ll call you right back, so you don’t have to hold the flight.”

“Thank you, I appreciate it,” Pascal said politely. Rafe hung up and called the operations officer on duty at the airport at that hour and asked him to run Pierre Geoffrey de Vaumont through their database to see what they got. Rafael stayed on the line while he waited, and Charlie, the operations officer, was back in less than three minutes.

“No arrests, no criminal record, nothing from Interpol. The advisory is a little vague. It says he’s in investments and has ‘dubious connections’ with several Russians—at least one involved with the SVR, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service—and is possibly under surveillance by them. There’s nothing here that we can keep him off a flight for. He may just be one of those slippery characters who knows all the wrong people, or has done some shady deals, but nothing we can nail him for,” Charlie explained to his boss, and Rafe nodded as he listened and made rapid notes. “There’s nothing here that says to keep him out of the U.S., just to be aware of him.” Rafe was frowning, wondering if he had enough to go on, or needed to dig further.

“Thanks, Charlie,” he said, sounding distracted. He sat quietly for a minute after the call, and then decided that he wanted to know a little more about de Vaumont before he cleared him for the flight to New York.

He knew the right man, had the number to reach him, and wanted to be sure. He called the number quickly because he knew Pascal Martin was waiting in Paris, and the heat was on him about whether to clear de Vaumont or take him off the flight. Rafe knew what a fuss that would make, particularly if the concern wasn’t justified. He didn’t sound like a dangerous character, but you never knew.