Murder in Bel-Air

by Cara Black

  Martine looked up from her laptop and grinned. “I don’t know how you do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “That thrown-together look. So effortlessly chic.”

  Aimée shrugged. Grabbed her leather biker jacket for warmth. “But you’re glowing—radiant.”

  Martine smiled. “Amour.” A pause. “Sydney needs you, you know.”

  And Aimée hadn’t needed her mother all those years?

  “I know.”

  Friday Morning

  Dried salamis hung from strings in the café across the passage from the Italian Cultural Institute. Aimée eyed the creamy white burrata and pickled capers on the counter as she headed toward the pay phone in the rear. She dialed the number she’d called the night before.

  Three rings, then a recording saying that the voice-mail box was full. Her gut knotted. She remembered the way Gérard had laughed with that DGSE agent the previous night. Who was playing whom?

  Was she caught in a setup?

  But why?

  Gérard could have had Germaine’s documents and money in his hands by then. Instead, both were zipped into the bottom lining of Aimée’s bag.

  Outside, she walked to the narrow rue de Martignac and stopped midblock across from a church. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t, her father had always said.

  She pressed the buzzer under a shiny, innocuous bronze plaque.

  “Oui?” came a voice over an intercom.

  “Aimée Leduc, to see Colonel Maximilian.”

  “You have an appointment?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Mademoiselle, you either have an appointment, or you don’t. I don’t see your name on the agenda. He’s in meetings all day.”

  And she was tired of standing on the cold street talking into an intercom while the wind whipped her scarf.

  “I’m the appointment you don’t find on the agenda, comprenez?”

  “Un moment.”

  Five chilly minutes later, the door in a gate clicked open.

  She crossed the cobbled courtyard as she had several months before, wanting to never do it again, and walked into the den of military intelligence, a seventeenth-century townhouse with the tricolor flag waving from its gabled roof.

  “A welcome surprise, mademoiselle.”

  She doubted that.

  Colonel Maximilian, known as Mad Max, wore a crisp army uniform, a silver crew cut, and a neutral expression in his granite eyes. He sat behind a directoire’s desk that bore only a single pad of paper, a pen, a telephone, and a fat leather-bound diary. The office was sparse and elegant and offered no hint of what went on there.

  “You’ve got something for me, I take it,” he said.

  She sat down, startled, on a Louis XV chair. “The other way around, I think.”

  His thick silver brows furrowed. He consulted the diary, ran his finger down a page. “Ah, quel dommage, I thought we’d recruited you. Tried, didn’t we?”

  “I’m too expensive for that.”

  He beamed. “How might I change your mind?”

  “Do me a favor before there’s any negotiating.” Fat chance. “As you may remember, Colonel, I once saved your derriere.”

  “Mademoiselle, I remember the newspaper front page that day and the paparazzi photo of you in an army uniform with your décolletage showing.”

  As if she needed reminding.

  “A trail of journalists hounded me for weeks to get that story,” she said. “Still, I kept quiet.”

  He shot back, “We also encouraged them to abandon the story, if they wanted to keep valid press credentials.” Pause. “There are rotten apples in every barrel. But the military’s a good calling, and you served the république.”

  The only acknowledgment she’d ever get.

  “I need to know about the important players in Côte d’Ivoire,” she said.

  He closed the diary. Drummed his fingers on it. “That’s not my part of the world.” He ran the Balkan operations. “You already know that, mademoiselle. Why ask me?”

  “Long story.” She sat back, crossed her legs. “Put me in touch with your counterpart in l’Afrique.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  She had to tell him part of the truth. “The DGSE made me an offer, difficult to refuse.”

  “Ah, they tend to do that.”

  “But I trust you more than I do them.”

  Something about the uniform.

  He smiled. “A wise choice.”

  Huge antagonism existed between the military and foreign intelligence.

  She continued. “Given what I did for you, I’d like a return favor.”

  “I’d like to think serving your country is a reward in itself, mademoiselle.”

  She wouldn’t let him get away with that. “There’s someone who goes by the moniker Crocodile. He thinks I have something he wants. Something others want, too.”

  His eyes lasered in on hers. “Do you?”

  “I could get my hands on it. But if I did, it would cost.”

  He tore a sheet off the pristine pad. Wrote a number on it. Folded it, then slit it in two with a paper knife emblazoned with a military symbol. He slid the half sheet across the polished mahogany desk. Frugal, this Mad Max.

  “Call this number in fifteen minutes.” He showed her to the door. “Let’s keep in touch. I’m much better at changing minds than the DGSE.”

  Friday Morning

  Aimée stood in the leaf-swept square behind the church to make the call.

  “Oui?” a voice answered.

  “I was told to call this number.”

  “Who referred you?”

  What should she say?

  “Someone from rue de Martignac.”

  “Two rue de l’Élysée. Fifteen minutes.”

  She ran and hailed a taxi at the corner of rue de Grenelle. Gave the driver the address.

  “Ah, and you want to arrive in fifteen minutes, n’est-ce pas?” the driver asked.

  Some code? Or did these people do everything by the quarter hour?

  “Exactement,” she said.

  Fifteen minutes later the taxi pulled up the side street around the corner from the Élysée presidential palace. The driver waved away the francs in her hand.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “We have an arrangement.”

  She dropped the francs on the front seat. “Consider this a tip.”

  He grinned. “Merci.”

  The side door opened at her first buzz.

  “Rue de Martignac?” asked the Garde républicaine, a distinctive red pompom topping his képi.

  Aimée nodded.

  “Entrez.”

  Beyond the glass marquise overhangs and treetops loomed the Elysée Palace roof, the flying flags indicating that le Président was staying chez lui. She stood so close she could have strolled into the garden.

  Doubted the Uzi-toting blue-uniformed gendarme on guard ahead would let her.

  “This way,” said the Garde républicaine.

  She swallowed hard, following the shined black boots to an anteroom.

  The Garde républicaine gestured for her to sit on the only chair, a gilt affair with maroon velvet cushions. Then he disappeared.

  What had she gotten into?

  One half of a carved double door opened. The Garde républicaine reappeared and beckoned her from inside. She walked into a light-filled white salon with woodwork carved as lightly as if it were swirls of meringue and a Gobelins hunting tapestry on the wall.

  The salon contained a desk and a round table surrounded by spindle back chairs. She recognized Jean-Christophe, the son of the former president, by his distinctive mustache and dark aviators, which she had seen often in the newspapers. He was we
aring a long-sleeved safari shirt. Next to him sat a smiling older man in an ill-fitting suit. Pink faced and bald, with a self-effacing manner. He pulled out a chair.

  “Join the round table, as we call it,” he said.

  She couldn’t believe Michel Delorme, the shadow man, a diplomatic power broker who’d run French Africa since de Gaulle’s time, was serving her chilled water from a carafe. “So dry in here.” Delorme indicated a portable humidifier going at full blast. “We do what we can.”

  “Merci.”

  Jean-Christophe, the former president’s son, had been a journalist, head of the French secretariat en Afrique under his father. He was known as a ladies’ man. He watched her, expressionless. Whether he was bored or eyeing her as a piece of meat would have been good to know.

  “How can I help you, mademoiselle?” Delorme asked in a gentle voice.

  Delorme was called the tonton, uncle, of African presidents and leaders because of his close relationships with each of them. He nurtured an unsurpassed web of contacts. A close confidant of de Gaulle, he had served successive presidents in the africain secretariat, run French operations on that continent for more than thirty years. As she gulped down the water, he smiled at her again, benign and warm. Underneath was a sleeping spider.

  She’d heard he’d retired. Heard wrong. Once the house was built, it may have changed owners over years, but its wiring remained the same.

  She gathered her thoughts, afraid her dry tongue would stick in her mouth. Why couldn’t she get the words out?

  Delorme broke the ice. “I had dinner with your grandfather Claude years ago. Such a gourmand. And that little dog, he fed it filet mignon from the table, spoiled it. Did he spoil his granddaughter, too? Of course, that’s what grandparents do.”

  She couldn’t help but grin. “He took me to piano lessons and read me stories, baked wonderful tarte tatin.”

  “He helped us here once,” he said. “A friend of the république, your grandfather, in many ways. I’m sure you learned much from him.”

  Grand-père? The things she didn’t know about the old rascal. She found her tongue. “Enough, monsieur, to know when to ask for help.”

  “We help each other in our world.”

  It sounded like Christmas. But she doubted things were so simple. The former president’s son sat impassive, like a lizard in the sun.

  “Who’s the Crocodile?” she asked.

  “The only crocodiles I know much about are the famous crocodiles of Yamoussoukro,” said Delorme. “The political capital of Côte d’Ivoire, as you know, birthplace of the founding fathers. The crocodiles are still regarded as sacred today.”

  Baiting her with a reference to Côte d’Ivoire? She shook her head. He hadn’t answered her question. “I mean referred to as ‘the Crocodile.’”

  “Bon, there’s Mgwanga, an Ivoirian general,” he said, “with suspected ties to Liberian death squads, but he’s called the Water Snake.”

  A guarded tip, she figured, if he’d bothered to mention this Mgwanga.

  “That’s to say you’re not in negotiations with him?” she asked.

  “The United Nations is always in negotiations,” Delorme said. “As are we.”

  Typical diplomat’s response. “Would you or the UN be in talks with Gérard Hlili?”

  “The region’s moderately stable. There are several players.”

  Evasion. There had to be a reason he’d mentioned General Mgwanga. She’d follow up on a hunch.

  “You wouldn’t know about anyone playing Hlili and, say, this Mgwanga against each other, or supporting a coup d’etat?” she asked.

  She’d put it out there.

  “We’re a neutral country, mademoiselle,” Delorme said. “We happen to have ground troops across parts of l’Afrique at the request of host countries.”

  More like on hand to support French companies.

  “However, I’ve heard you might have access to something interested parties would like,” Delorme said. “Did I hear correctly?”

  Obviously Mad Max had communicated this to him; otherwise she wouldn’t have gotten this interview. She had to give him something. “I might.”

  “I’m sure we’d be interested.”

  So Delorme wanted in on this, too.

  “It’s getting crowded with the DGSE and the Crocodile’s mercenaries,” she said.

  He gave her a knowing look. “That can be handled.”

  For him, a snap of the fingers. Her nerves jangled. “There’s a price.”

  “Bien sûr, I’m listening, mademoiselle.”

  “Sydney Leduc’s freedom.”

  He thought for a moment. Stared at the former president’s son. “Is this on your radar? Know anything about her?”

  Jean-Christophe took off his sunglasses. Polished them with his sleeve. When he looked up, his small brown eyes surveyed her from under hooded lids. His lifestyle had taken its toll. He appeared fifty going on seventy. She suddenly remembered Le Parisien’s infamous photo of him in a pink Rolls-Royce with the son of an African president.

  “I’ll talk to someone,” he said. A gravelly voice. Too many cigarettes.

  Talk to someone? How reassuring. Or did that mean more than she thought?

  She shivered in the hot, dry room. Things didn’t go any higher than this. Every part of it smelled.

  She’d have to figure this out on her own.

  She stood. “Merci for your time.”

  “We’ll be in touch,” said Delorme.

  Again that phrase—why not something more original? They’d all read the same intelligence manual.

  Friday Morning

  Out on rue de l’Élysée, Aimée sucked in the brittle air. She’d shuddered as they’d scrutinized her as if she were a butterfly specimen pinned in a frame.

  A car with diplomat’s plates pulled up, and a chocolate-skinned man in sunglasses and overcoat alighted. Without glancing left or right, he entered through the door she’d come from. Just in case, she memorized the plate number.

  She hated being a pawn in whatever political game was playing out beneath the surface. That’s how they saw her—a pawn to move around a chessboard she couldn’t see in full.

  Her hands trembled. She had to get answers. Time for an unannounced visit to the DGSE.

  She caught the Métro under the Champs-Élysées roundabout. Changed at Reuilly-Diderot and took the 8 line two stops to Daumesnil.

  On the corner, a man was roasting chestnuts. Next to him, a fruit stall with dusky persimmons that made her mouth water. She paused, opened her LeClerc compact, and pretended to check her makeup in the mirror, searching behind her for a tail. Only shoppers.

  Ten francs poorer and several persimmons richer, she turned off onto a smaller street. The quartier was still full of countrified names such as rue de la Brèche aux Loups, the name of the former thirteenth-century valley path where in winters, centuries ago, hungry wolves had passed en route to the les Halles market. Nearby, an intricate scrolled metal gate was the only remnant of a once-booming nineteenth-century cigar factory. To her right, a small cobbled impasse was dotted by geraniums on the balconies. She remembered the faded Dubonnet sign on the building she was looking for.

  She pressed the bell to the right of the wood gate. Heard a resounding echo. She pulled out the burner phone and hit the programmed number.

  A recording that the voice-mail box was full.

  She listened, quiet.

  The cul-de-sac lay deserted.

  She climbed onto the ground-floor windowsill opposite the foundry. Couldn’t see over the fence. On the building next to it, she noticed an exterior flight of stairs, like a fire escape.

  She climbed those stairs until she was high enough for a vantage point from which she could look into the foundry courtyard. It was empty of cars.

  Craning
her neck, she could just see into the old assembly-line floor. No busy hive of computers. It was as empty as the courtyard.

  How did that make sense?

  “Get off my property.”

  The voice startled her, and she jumped. Grabbed the rickety railing.

  Behind her at the door on the stair landing, a mec in black leathers brandished a crowbar. His long straggly hair was tied under a stained bandanna. He looked as if he’d just woken up.

  “Desolée.” She started down the stairs. “I was here the other day, and they invited me back, but I can’t find anyone.” A lie she hoped wasn’t too transparent. “What happened to the people who were working there?”

  “Get lost,” he said.

  Like she wasn’t already. “Where did they go?”

  He raised the crowbar threateningly. “I said leave, nosy salope.”

  She descended to the street and looked back up. He hadn’t moved. “They own the whole block, don’t they?”

  “You’re smoking something better than me.”

  “Did they pay you off?”

  He snorted. “You mean the little green men in flying saucers?” He slammed the door.

  A white-haired woman with a full shopping bag over her arm stooped, struggling with her keys at the next building, a stuccoed two-story maisonette with shutters in need of paint.

  “May I help you, madame?” Aimée asked.

  “Non, merci.”

  “When did the people in the foundry leave?”

  “Leave? It’s vacant. Has been for several years.”

  Aimée tried to think of an explanation for this. “Haven’t you heard noises, maybe seen trucks at night recently?”

  “I wear earplugs, mademoiselle. Ever since the war.” She closed her eyes and mimed sleep. “Comme un bébé.”

  That old chestnut? Too bad Chloé hadn’t gotten the memo.

  “Did they pay you to say that?” Aimée’s voice rose, and the old woman looked at her in alarm. “Are you part of the act, too? Do you even live here?”

  “I was born here.”

  The woman turned into her house, and the door slammed in Aimée’s face.

  What the hell was going on?