by Cara Black
Back and forth she sawed, her neck aching from holding up the mattress. Not a tear or a rip. Damn Hermès scarf held up under duress.
She tried to uncoil the spring, use the sharp edge to pick at the double knot. But the wire stuck in a tight coil behind her. No luck.
The clanging of metal, a low voice, came through the floorboards from downstairs.
That was when she saw the rusted loose nail poking out of a warped floorboard where it met the window.
She’d had a tetanus shot, hadn’t she? Or was that Chloé?
Wincing, she leaned, made her aching legs push her toward the window. With the chair on its side, her tied wrists caught on the rusted nail. She yanked and pulled, up and down, back and forth, until the cashmere caught. Layer by layer, she fought her way through the thick double knot that bit into her skin.
She hated ruining vintage Hermès.
Strand by strand, it ripped. Breaking free, she shook her numb hands and rubbed them to get the circulation going. She undid the window latch. Pushed up.
The window was bolted shut.
Now what?
She went to the next window, a grimy fantasy in violet and blue glass, unlatched it. Not a budge.
Nothing for it if she wanted to get out of there.
She took off her jacket, wrapped it and her tattered scarf around her fist, and punched. Colored shards and lead-framing pieces fell tinkling to the ground.
Steps pounded on the stairs.
Again she punched the glass. And again, until she had a big enough hole to crawl out. Got one leg out. Then she remembered her bag.
Merde.
The steps were outside the door.
She shoved the metal bed frame as hard as she could, jamming it under the door handle at an angle diagonal to the ground. Someone pounded on the other side of the door until it shuddered. She snatched her bag off the door hook, put the handles between her teeth, and squeezed through the window, grabbing at the creeping vines on the pavilion’s stone façade. Prayed they held her. The vines moaned, tearing away from the wall under her weight. She swayed a flight above the stone walkway. Then a loud crash as she landed on her derriere in a bush, her arms tangling in the brown and yellow branches.
She heard a crack in her back pocket. The phone. Merde!
Somehow she extracted herself, got to her feet, strapped the bag across her chest, and ran. As she pressed the buzzer on the gate and ran out into the street, she grappled with the phone, hoping it would work despite the cracked screen. The car sat parked where she’d left it.
She crouched down behind it and punched in the office number on her phone.
“Saj, is René there?”
“He’s at the door, saying he forgot the code.” Saj was whispering. “Like René would forget.”
René wouldn’t have been able to drive without accommodations for his height. Baptiste must have insisted they take a taxi.
“Never,” she said. “Do what I say, Saj.”
“What’s wrong, Aimée?”
“Just listen. Take everything down from the whiteboard and put it back in the envelope. Now. When you let René in, grab the old man with him, and tie him up. He’s tough.”
She hung up. From behind the car, she peered up through the darkness at the pavilion. The lit window.
She hit the number programmed in the DGSE phone.
“Oui?” a voice answered.
“One-oh-three rue de Reuilly. You better hurry.”
“We’re here.”
“Already?”
“You turned on the phone.”
They’d been tracking her with GPS.
“Now your part of the deal,” she said. “Where’s Sydney?”
A car had pulled up. Doors slammed. “We’ll be in touch.”
She hunched, shaking, behind the car, hoping she’d done the right thing.
What was “the right thing”? Her father had always told her the right thing made your gut clench so tight it gave you cramps.
Gérard had made her gut clench—in the wrong way.
Any minute, she expected the DGSE to haul him off. Could she trust them to protect her mother? So far, she’d accomplished little besides playing into their hands.
She rang Babette. “Heard from Sydney?” Aimée asked.
“No news, like they say, can mean good news.”
So her mother wasn’t free. She would’ve called right away.
“How’s Chloé?” Aimée asked.
“Loved her aubergines. Just fell asleep. Martine says hi.”
Relief filled her. She missed her little Chloé. Those rose-pink cheeks, those pearly toes.
“Martine’s got a new door code.”
Aimée heard footsteps approaching. Voices. “Leave it on my voice mail, okay?”
She hung up and peered over the hood. Laughter erupted as Gérard gave a playful punch to the man walking next to him—the DGSE agent still in the same hoodie he’d been wearing when he’d given Aimée the burner phone earlier. With another laugh, Gérard got in the passenger seat.
Furious, she wanted to throw something. She watched the red taillights get smaller until they turned the corner.
Thursday Evening
“Under control, Aimée,” said Saj over the phone. “Package secured. René declared code four. You okay?”
“Fine. I’ll grab a taxi.”
“We’ll meet you out back. Un moment.” She heard Saj put his hand over the phone. “René says take the car. Spare keys are behind the back driver’s-side wheel.”
Her gaze caught metal glinting in the streetlight. “So he does like this car.”
She popped the hood and checked for a tracer, which she should have done before. Found it under the grille. Merde.
She looked around. No one watching. No one she could see, at least. She dropped the tracer into the gutter.
She got in, switched on the ignition, and shifted into first, looking for a tail. She didn’t have to wait long. In the rearview mirror, a brown camionette pulled out and followed at a set distance down rue de Reuilly.
She turned right onto the first street she came to, accelerating past the Diaconesses hospital; shot onto rue Jaucourt; and joined the outer ring of Place de la Nation’s roundabout. Ran a yellow light and swung into the next street. By the time she made it to the inner roundabout, she didn’t see her tail.
She circled twice more, changing lanes, and at the last minute shot onto Boulevard Diderot.
She’d lost him. She kept to narrow streets, weaving through Bastille and into the Marais, her eye on the rearview mirror. Drove up rue de Rivoli, then took a right before the Louvre. By the time she turned onto the street behind their office, her damp palms were slipping on the steering wheel.
She flicked the headlights at the corner. René stepped out of the doorway of the boulangerie, Saj behind him, supporting the dead weight of caretaker, Baptiste.
“Code four, René?” she asked once they all were in the car, Saj in the back seat with the caretaker, René in front with her.
“Laptops, burner phones, in my bag, per our procedure.”
“What procedure?”
“You’d know if you’d read Saj’s new manual. I wired up the office alarm for remote check-ins.” René eased his briefcase and satchel to the car floor.
She turned. Scanned behind her. No one. Took off down rue du Louvre.
“What happened to Baptiste, Saj?” she asked.
“I’ve applied arnica to prevent bruising. I wanted to administer melatonin to calm him, but he’d passed out.”
“Before or after you tied him up?”
“Hard to say.”
“I need him to talk.”
Aimée pulled into a parking spot by the vacant Bourse de Commerce, Marie de Médicis’s astrological c
olumn silhouetted behind it. Kept the engine running.
Saj pulled a rose-colored bottle from his madras cloth bag. Unstoppered it and wafted the bottle under the caretaker’s nose. Baptiste stirred, and his heavy-lidded eyes opened. Closed. Opened again, and he mumbled something.
“What’s that, Baptiste?” Aimée turned and lifted his chin. “The Crocodile? That what you said?”
“Non, that’s not . . . Where am I?”
“But the Crocodile is what I want to hear about, Baptiste,” she said.
“Let me out.”
“Who is he? Why’s he after Gérard?”
“That’s . . . He’s . . .” His eyes closed.
After a nod from Aimée, Saj again passed the bottle under his nose.
“The Crocodile’s after Gérard,” she said. “Why?”
He blinked. “Gérard needs the cargo.”
“Why’s this cargo important? What is it?”
“Only way for the country . . .” His voice trailed off.
Condensation from their breath fogged the car’s windows.
“You’re saying the Crocodile wants the cargo, too, Baptiste?” she asked.
No response.
Saj again passed the bottle under his nose.
His eyes opened, half-lidded.
“Why are you involved with Gérard, Baptiste?” she asked.
“Knew his father . . . Côte d’Ivoire . . . a good boy, like a son.”
Talk about the odd couple.
She turned up the defroster, which gave off hardly a whiff of air. Light-headed, she rolled down the window. “Who’s the Crocodile?”
“Gérard’s afraid . . .” he said.
“Afraid of the Crocodile?”
“Afraid . . . a big shot, I don’t know.”
After five minutes, that was the most she’d gotten out of him. She didn’t think he knew any more than he’d told her.
“Let’s get rid of this old coot,” said René.
“Dump a religious old veteran who has dedicated his life to caretaking?” she said.
“I know the perfect place.”
René had Aimée make a stop at a corner shop blaring Arab music. A minute later he emerged with a bag. “Avenue Frochot, Minou’s place,” he said.
In front of the transvestite club in Pigalle, Saj lifted Baptiste out of the car. He propped the caretaker in the doorway, and René sprinkled cheap brandy all over him.
Minou, in platforms and with a boa over his broad shoulders, appeared and lit a cigarette.
“I know you don’t care for garbage at your door, Minou,” said René.
Minou waved to Aimée and clucked at Baptiste. “A disgrace.”
René handed Minou the hundred-franc note Aimée had slipped him. “Drunk and disorderly, too. Better call it in.”
“Civic duty, c’est moi,” Minou said, flouncing with his boa back into the boîte de nuit.
Exhausted, Aimée pulled the blanket over Chloé in the makeshift crib in Martine’s apartment. Felt Chloé’s cheeks—cool, no fever. Aimée always worried about fevers. Worried she didn’t pay close enough attention to the admonitions of Dr. Dolto, the pediatric-psychologist guru.
A grin erupted on Chloé’s sleeping face. Thank God her little one had sweet dreams.
She couldn’t deal with filling the ancient claw-footed bathtub and instead gave herself a sponge bath with Martine’s Florentine lemon-verbena soap. She slipped on a soft linen teddy, climbed under the duvet with Martine, her best friend since lycée.
“You’ve got cold feet,” said Martine.
But Aimée had passed out.
Friday Morning
Aimée held Chloé on her hip in the morning, sunshine streaming through the tall window overlooking the Italian Cultural Institute’s garden. Chloé squealed in glee at a hummingbird, a colorful helicopter of wings, at the outside feeder. Situated in Talleyrand’s former hôtel particulier, where Napoleon had visited him, the Italian Cultural Institute’s grounds occupied a back lane of the chic seventh arrondissement, a world away from everything that had happened the previous night.
Putting her espresso down, Aimée leaned over and powered on her laptop.
“You sure it’s okay if I work here this morning?” she asked.
“As long as I can babysit my goddaughter,” Martine said. “Gianni’s in Rome until tomorrow.”
Martine, who was at the stove cooking up something fragrant with apricots, positively glowed. She wore her blonde hair clipped up in a tousled knot, Gianni’s silk pajamas, and a smile as she stirred. A seasoned journalist, she’d taken the Italian kitchen-mama thing to heart and was determined to master culinary skills. Blame Gianni, the Italian cultural liaison Aimée wanted to distrust. She’d never seen Martine so happy. A giant rock on her left ring finger sparkled in the sunlight.
“I’m worried,” said Aimée.
“About what?”
“That any minute you’ll break out into an Italian aria and insist I cook with you.”
“That’s next. First, read the email attachments I sent you.”
Aimée clicked open her email. “‘Ripe for coup d’etat in Côte d’Ivoire.’ That one?”
“For a start. Remember you asked me about the ongoing situation this morning?”
“I did?” She remembered mumbling to Martine at dawn when Chloé woke up the first time.
Martine set a bowl of warm apricots garnished with mint and out-of-season raspberries on the table. Opened her arms to Chloé. “Come to your marraine, gorgeous.”
Martine took her godmother duties seriously.
Chloé wriggled and kicked her strong legs.
“Voilà, ma puce,” said Aimée, setting her in Martine’s lap. She opened the attachments. “So these news releases explain what’s going on in Côte d’Ivoire?”
“It’s a start,” said Martine, spooning apricot into Chloé’s open mouth. “You need more espresso.”
“Tell me about it.” Aimée wanted to sleep for a week.
By the time Babette arrived with Gabrielle and bundled up Chloé for the playground in Jardin du Luxembourg, Aimée had read the releases and had a grasp of the ongoing situation. The predictions of an imminent coup and power struggle mirrored what the DGSE told her. But what did it mean in relation to Gérard Hlili and the documents Germaine had been murdered for? Aimée heaved an exhausted sigh.
Martine looked up from the stove. “What’s this to you?”
“Sydney’s disappeared.”
“Quoi? She promised me an interview. Exclusive.”
“Vraiment?”
“My editor will shoot me if she doesn’t show up.”
“But she’s back in the shadow world.”
Maybe she’d never left it.
“That makes Sydney a real scoop,” Martine said. “And me with an inside story. I like it.”
“No, you don’t. It’s twisted.”
Aimée poured another espresso and told Martine everything. As she had since lycée.
“So. Sydney ditches Chloé at playgroup,” said Martine, lighting a cigarette and then resuming stirring a bubbling tomato sauce. “A woman’s murdered in the convent after hiding documents at a mausoleum in the Picpus Cemetery; a legionnaire threatens you; then a rebel Ivoirian escapes from the DGSE’s safe house; the legionnaire accidentally bites a bullet after shooting at you; his cohort blows up René’s car and shoots a bunch of winos for a cell phone; you track down the rebel Ivoirian, who believes you’re CIA; and you get held hostage until you escape and fall out a window. Oh, and you think the Crocodile’s still after you.” Martine exhaled a plume of smoke. “Did I forget anything?”
“Sydney needs to redo her CT scan.”
The spoon Martine was using to stir paused. “Redo? Then there’s a problem.”
Aimée nodded. Sipped her espresso. “I can’t believe I trusted the DGSE just because they said they’d protect her.”
“Those clowns?”
The second time she’d heard that.
“But it’s not like I had a choice, Martine.”
“Le militaire, that’s who you need to talk to. Whatever happens in l’Afrique, the military’s behind it. Not saying in a good way, but they run the show. Too bad you don’t have any contacts.”
Hadn’t Syndey said she trusted only Aimée?
Martine sprinkled in basil leaves.
“Let me talk to your uncle, Martine.”
“Oncle Robert? He’s from the colonial era. You know, cocoa plantations, floral tea dresses, everyone sleeping with everyone else. He’s out to lunch mentally with his cronies at the rest home.”
Wait. Aimée had her own military connection. Stupid. Why hadn’t she thought of him?
Faulty memory?
“I do know someone. Colonel Max.” While investigating a fugitive Serbian war criminal, an assassin hired by a renegade high-ranking military officer, she’d rooted out the betrayal, saved face for the army. And let them take credit.
“You saved his prosciutto, Aimée. He owes you big-time.”
True. Though calling in an owed favor from a man like him could come with an obligation, one she’d vowed never to incur.
But his office was only a few blocks away.
She’d switched off the burner phone the night before to avoid the DGSE tracking her down. Now she needed to check in. Why not make a call from a pay phone en route?
“Got that Lacroix I can borrow?” she called on her way to the shower.
“So last season. My sister has le smoking from YSL—now that’s timeless.”
Coordinated with black stovepipe trousers and one of Gianni’s white shirts, le smoking was parfait, she thought.
She toweled off, dabbed Chanel No. 5 on her pulse points, and ran her fingers through her red-streaked shag. Tousled it dry. She stroked mascara through her lashes, smudged her lids with kohl, and swiftly applied Chanel red to her lips.
Thank God she and Martine wore the same size shoe. Martine’s low-heeled Louboutin ankle boots with red leather soles called out to her.
