by Cara Black
“You stole it?” the man asked.
“It could have a tracer installed,” René said.
The man set his guitar down on the dirt floor. “Looks fine to me. Don’t you owe me for the hospitality?” A threat?
The mec with the cat in his lap opened his eyes. He held a knife in his hand, the blade glinting. Hawked and spit. “Clément’s right. C’est obligatoire.”
A threat all right. Had the drifter invited them into the bunker to rip them off?
Aimée stood and nudged René back toward the steps. The last thing they needed was a knife fight with winos.
“You don’t want this phone,” said Aimée. “Not very nice people could find you.”
The knife wielder shoved the cat onto the sleeping man’s lap. He sprang up and moved fast across the shelter.
“So you’re hiding? On the run, eh?” he said. “Might be worth something to somebody.”
Time to get the hell out of here.
“Bon, it’s yours.” Aimée threw it. “Good luck.”
“What’s the code?” said the knife wielder.
“Two-seven-four-two!” René yelled over his shoulder as Aimée pushed him up the cobwebbed stairs.
They ran, keeping to the tree shadows along the tracks, on the lookout for a patrol, checking behind them to see if the men were following. Wild dandelion puffs fluttered in the rushes of air from the passing trains, the seed fuzz glowing in the distant light like tossed stars. Two round water towers, empty and graffitied, loomed over their path, which would take them beyond a series of smaller warehouses on the tracks. A three-quarter moon glowed above them like a sleepy-eyed pearl.
René panted. “How far?”
“Rue de Charenton’s close. I’m calling a taxi now.” She dialed as she ran, pressing the cell phone to her ear.
As they ran, a train passed like a slow-moving snake of lights. The sound carried across the field of tracks, a thwack thwack.
“Did you hear that?” said René.
Fear vibrated down to the soles of her feet. Gunshots? Close, they were so close to rue de Charenton.
“Keep going, René.”
Climbing the stairs up to the street, she could see the taxi’s green light. Almost there.
Then a dull thunk behind them, a flash of light over the tracks. An explosion.
“Mon Dieu, do you think . . . ?” René stood frozen on the steps. “Did those winos use the phone already?”
Her stomach wrenched—had whoever followed them traced the legionnaire’s phone? “No time to find out. Move, René. Hurry.”
Feeling sick to her stomach, she collapsed inside the taxi. As she gave the driver René’s address, she furiously thought over what in the world these documents could mean.
She dropped a shaken René off first. All the way to Ile Saint-Louis, she wondered where GBH had escaped to.
No chalk marks on the quai wall.
After paying Babette and kissing a sleeping Chloé, Aimée peeled off her clothes and set the envelope on the duvet and curled up. The plumbing was now under control, but there had still been no word from Sydney.
Her legs ached; pain prickled her scalp. She reached for a Doliprane.
Tired, but she couldn’t sleep. Her mind spun—the cemetery, the house on rue de Pommard, the legionnaire, the aggressive winos.
Her phone rang. René’s number.
“Aimée, I was listening to my police scanner, and there are reports . . .”
“What reports, René?”
“Gunshots fired. Two separate incidents. Homicides.” Pause. “You know what that means?”
“The legionnaire’s cohort got to the winos and cleaned up?”
She shivered under the duvet.
“My car will stick out like a sore thumb,” he said.
“You’re going to report it stolen. Right now. Stolen three hours ago from rue du Louvre. You’re only noticing it now because you worked late, left the office, and couldn’t find your car.”
She hung up and turned on the light. Spread out the contents of the legionnaire’s pockets on her lap. Got to work.
Thursday Morning
“According to what I found in the legionnaire’s pocket, his name was Hans Volker—if we believe his South African driver’s license,” said Aimée. “He also carried a checkbook from Banque d’Abidjan in the name of Jochim Wilmsdorf. Not to mention a gym card from Johannesburg in the name of Karl Duisberg.”
Aimée wrote the names on the whiteboard using blue marker. Early-morning sunlight streamed into the Leduc Detective office from the window overlooking rue du Louvre.
“He used a pistol with a suppressor and carried a cell phone containing this number.” She wrote that down, too.
“And he was wired,” said René, from his ergonomic chair. Chloé crawled on the parquet floor, playing with her bunny.
Saj, cross-legged on his tatami mat, nodded as he typed on his laptop. He’d imprisoned his long blond dreadlocks in a bun and was wearing an aqua muslin shirt and a wristlet of prayer beads that clacked. Back from a meditation course in India, he exuded calm.
Aimée wished she could bottle it. Not that she wanted anything to do with the oils he’d brought back, insisting they were stress reducers. Or to join him in yoga and guided meditation.
“Hans also carried a diagram of this house on rue de Pommard,” she said. “Along with a small photo of this man, who we can assume is Gérard Bjedje Hlili, since his name’s written underneath.”
She taped up an enlarged copy of the photo. It showed a young cocoa-complected man in shirtsleeves addressing a group of people from the back of a truck, which was parked under palm trees by what appeared to be a village well. Even in the photo he emanated an undefinable charisma.
“I’m searching the Interpol site,” said Saj. “But since we know Hans’s identity, what are we looking for?”
“Hans wasn’t working alone.” Aimée related how he’d been wired when he’d accosted her demanding Genelle’s package. “I want to know who employed him.”
René was studying what Aimée had taped on the board. “Hans and the watcher—his accomplice, who we’re assuming followed us—wanted these documents. Waybills, flight manifests, cargo lists of farm equipment, a map of Côte d’Ivoire. They must be important. Important enough to shoot winos for the legionnaire’s phone.”
Saj nodded. “Maybe the documents indicate some kind of sensitive cargo or something headed to, for example, Liberia right next door, a country that’s restricted by a UN embargo.” He pointed to the topographical map Aimée had taped up of the shared border. “Attends.” Saj unclipped something from his man bun. A metal drawing compass. “I always keep this handy.”
At the dry-erase board, Saj put the point of the compass at a spot on the map, extended the thin arm, made a mark with a mechanical pencil, and measured the distance. He wrote down some numbers, calculated, and checked the figures against the flight path information.
“Those coordinates should match the airport destination of Bouaké.” Saj tapped the map. “However, they don’t. They appear to be in a nature reserve in the Nimba mountain range of the Guinea Highlands on the border.”
“Meaning?” she asked.
René stood. “According to the manifest, this flight originated in Belarus, had several stopovers and an end destination of Bouaké. Here.” René grabbed a ruler and pointed to a spot on the map in northern Côte d’Ivoire. “But why, as Saj points out, would it land instead between Touba and Danané, here in a nature reserve, as the coordinates indicate?” He tapped the ruler again on a western region. “That’s mountainous and without an airstrip.”
“What if it crashed?” Aimée picked up a squirming Chloé, who needed a diaper change. “And it carried more than farm equipment?” For a moment, the office was silent apart from Chloé’s gurgles
and the printer spewing Saj’s new security surveillance protocols.
Saj tugged his prayer beads. “Don’t you wonder . . . ?”
“Why a South African legionnaire employed by a shadow firm would be hunting this information?” she finished for him.
“What’s the bigger picture?” said René. “How was the homeless woman your mother knew involved in this? Who’s Gérard Hlili, and why should you get these documents to him?”
A knock on Leduc Detective’s door. Then the front door alarm sounded, startling Chloé, who was lying mid–diaper change on Aimée’s desk.
“That’s Babette,” said René. “Eight o’clock, right on time.”
Aimée shot René a look. “Babette knows the code.”
René pulled another dry-erase board showing current firewall projects over the Germaine Tillion murder board. Aimée shoved the legionnaire’s pocket contents into her desk drawer. Saj sat back down on his tatami mat.
René switched off the alarm.
Babette walked in from the reception area, her eyes large with warning. “Sorry, I forgot the new code.”
Two men followed her, one in a leather bomber jacket, one in a hoodie. “Mademoiselle Leduc,” said the bomber jacket. It wasn’t a question. The hoodie checked his phone.
Part of the legionnaire’s rat pack, sent to finish business?
Thursday Morning
“We’re appointment only,” said Aimée, fastening Chloé’s diaper. Reached for her cell phone, willing her hands not to shake.
“Good. You’ve got an appointment right now,” said the one in the bomber jacket.
“I’m booked, messieurs.”
“Monsieur Daniel Lacenaire says it’s important. We’ve got a car waiting.”
The suit who had questioned Sister Agnès at the convent. Wary after the previous night’s encounter with the legionnaire, Aimée hesitated. Could she believe these men were undercover intelligence?
And why hadn’t Morbier gotten back to her with info on Lacenaire?
Play dumb.
“That should mean something to me?” she asked.
Babette picked up Chloé, slid her feet into her onesie. “We need to hurry to make story time.”
A code, which they’d worked out back in September after a thwarted kidnapping attempt. Babette would take Chloé to Martine, Aimée’s best friend, until further notice.
“The country’s security should mean something to you, mademoiselle. Monsieur Lacenaire said to mention the name Sydney Leduc,” said bomber jacket.
Aimée felt her heart start pounding.
With a studied indifference, the man in the hoodie had turned to René, who was standing in attack stance. “Restez tranquil, monsieur. We’re the good guys.”
Thursday Morning
Riding in the unmarked late-model Peugeot, Aimée took stock. These two weren’t superspies, just everyday intelligence agents. The current breed resembled every young thirtysomething on the Métro, blending in and never drawing attention. Urban professionals.
Still, their eyes gave them away. Trained, like any flics undercover, their gazes never stopped moving. They saw things before they happened. As Melac did. As her father had when he’d been on a ‘mission,’ as he’d called them.
The passing buildings blurred, looking like a hazy old black-and-white film. A warning sign. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. Took deep breaths, per the doctor’s instructions.
Terrified after the postconcussion tests had revealed a blood clot in her brain, she’d obeyed the doctor to the letter. Couldn’t risk blindness or loss of taste, which René had repeatedly warned her a Parisian chef with her condition had suffered.
While she recovered, praying the clot would dissolve, the doctor had forbidden computer use and reading, to avoid strain and permanent damage. She’d suffered a month of blurry and double vision, balance problems, colors fading, and off-kilter depth perception.
Test after test. And damn it, her eyes hurt. So she’d listened to music and, when that bored her, old tapes of her grandfather’s lectures to the officers’ class at the police academy. Full of surveillance and interrogation techniques and the ABCs of undercover—bits he’d told her his pal in intelligence had shared with him. We’re all one family. In the police captain’s introduction to the lectures, he referred to Claude Leduc’s talks as the gold standard, their in-house undercover manual. The academy had presented him with the recorded copies as a special gift on some anniversary. She loved listening in her darkened room, huddled under the duvet, hearing her grandfather’s soothing, humor-filled voice, imagining him still with her. Claude Leduc, detective, chef, auction house frequenter, wine lover, and general bon vivant, who’d had a mistress she wasn’t supposed to know about. He had encouraged her to follow her passion and what she was good at: detective work, not medicine.
Her subconscious was on overdrive thanks to him. Maybe his insight had rubbed off and helped her better read these mecs, how they operated. So far, textbook, according to Grand-père.
The car slowed down. From the back seat, Aimée opened her eyes to see an impasse, a narrow cul-de-sac resembling many in the southeastern twelfth arrondissement. Cobbled, dotted by small industrial spaces, windows sprinkled with geraniums. A building sported a fading sign for dubonnet, the classic digestive of quinine and wine, with herbs and spices to cut the bitter flavor, once used to combat malaria. The impasse exuded old Paris. Two- and three-story buildings, some with a vendre sign in front—they’d get snapped up soon.
A worn wood gate slid open on a redbrick metalworks foundry bordered by a small warehouse. Or so it appeared from the exterior.
The hoodie parked and disappeared, and the black bomber jacket escorted her into a wheeled modular unit sprouting a forest of roof antennae—out of place in the cobbled courtyard of the foundry.
“Mind setting your jacket and shoes here and emptying your bag into the tray?” he said.
“If I did?” Of course she minded. Had a business to run. But it wasn’t really a question.
“Then I’d have to insist.” Businesslike, no smile.
Once through the metal detector and body scanner inside the wheeled unit, she collected her things, slipped into her heels and jacket. He led her up a rusted outdoor metal staircase to the upper floor of the factory.
Knowing she was out of her league, she determined to keep quiet. Play it smart for once. Let Lacenaire, Monsieur Big Shot, do the talking. She’d had a foretaste overhearing him in the convent garden. Knew he’d come up empty at the convent.
She hadn’t. Score one for her.
But he’d used Sydney to hook her. Score Lacenaire.
Now she would find out how much he actually knew.
“Mademoiselle Leduc, you look familiar.” Lacenaire was of average height, in his late thirties, with parted mouse-brown hair—little about him stood out. In his familiar suit and tie, he looked exactly as he had the other night, apart from tired eyes. “Have we met?”
Her blood went cold, but she controlled her shiver. “Moi? I don’t think so. But everyone says I’ve got a familiar-looking face.”
“Au contraire. You’re striking. Tall, big eyes—you stand out.”
Great. A sexist. She put her shaking hands in her pockets, tried to read behind his lines.
“Sit down.”
“You are . . . ?”
“Daniel Lacenaire, but you know that.”
He was testing her.
She shook her head and shrugged. Sat down.
His pale complexion matched the bland, washed-out furniture in the glass-walled office, which overlooked what had been a factory. Now the work floor had been outfitted with long shared desks along the old metal machinery tracks. Ten or so people sat at computer terminals. A busy hive—another kind of factory.
Wasn’t this pretty conspicuous for
an intelligence site? The antennae, all the people going in and out?
“We’re a secure facility,” he said, as if he’d read her thoughts. “We own the block.”
Of course they did. DGSE, the foreign intelligence agency, probably had places like this all over. She knew their HQ compound near the Périphérique was referred to as “la piscine” since it was across from the Olympic-sized public pool. Not very original. They practically culled agent cover names from the Tintin books.
The hoodie appeared bearing a tray: two demitasses of espresso and a sugar bowl.
“As you like it, non, Mademoiselle Leduc?” Hoodie said, falsely obsequious.
He made her squirm. Were the thumbscrews next?
“Or do you prefer a noisette?”
Was that a shaded reference to Genelle/Germaine, per the term the café waitress had used to refer to her? If it wasn’t, it was an odd suggestion, since, if he’d been spying on her and was familiar with her tastes, he must have known she drank only straight espresso.
“Non, merci.” Her insides tightened into a hard ball.
Hoodie sat down in one of the hard-backed chairs at the door. On guard duty. He checked his phone.
She dropped in two white sugar cubes, like a typical bourgeois, and stirred. Sipped. All the while forcing herself to breathe.
Lacenaire’s type was trained to smell fear. And to instill it.
She glanced at her Tintin watch. “Lovely coffee.” It was. “Monsieur Lacenaire, I’ve got a full day ahead of me, limited childcare—”
“Surely you’re curious why you’re here.” Lacenaire paused, looking for a reaction. He wouldn’t get one. “About Sydney Leduc. And you want me to do the talking.”
“It’s only polite, since I’m the guest, and you’re the host.”
He smiled. Threw up his hands as if in defeat. “Why did you kill Hans Volker?”
The espresso went down wrong. She stifled a choke. “Who?” There went acting cool and composed. She set down her demitasse.
