Murder in Bel-Air

by Cara Black

  “Chemical weapons, it seems like,” she said, keeping her voice low with effort. “Sarin, or something like it. Local rebels hid it—probably in caves in the mountainous highland reserve by the Liberian border. They’re getting sick.”

  Her mother took off the glasses. Those eyes looked tired. “What else?”

  “Delorme will have heard by now. The French military’s six hours away from the site. It’s on the AFP wire, out there.”

  “You know what chemical weapons mean?” But she didn’t wait for Aimée to answer.

  “Assemble enough of them, and you’ve got a very dirty kind of bomb. You could wipe out an entire neighborhood or city.”

  “Assemble enough . . . ? Who’s doing this?”

  “That’s not important right now.” Sydney pulled out a business card. “Most important is to call this number from a pay phone in the Gare de Lyon. Let it ring once. Hang up. When someone calls back, answer. Give the name on the card and then repeat everything you’ve told me. But first, say, ‘Use Dany at Ouagadougou’—that’s important.”

  “Why?”

  “This number reaches the US military unit attached to the closest airport. That’s in Burkina Faso.”

  “Burkina Faso? That’s an entirely different country.”

  “The US maintains a hub there for airborne intelligence operations. Turboprops disguised as private planes, full of surveillance equipment. It’s only three hours from the crash site. They’ll handle it from there.”

  Now it made sense. “Look, we need to talk—”

  “Severe emphysema. Good guess. Don’t contact me. Or come here again. It’s difficult to arrange this kind of anonymity.”

  “I can hide you—”

  “We do this my way, please. It’s for your safety. And Chloé’s. That’s it. Go.”

  “That’s it?” Her mother dismissing her after putting her at risk, sending her on a hunt for days? Her knuckles clenched. “You abandon Chloé at playgroup—which she’s been kicked out of, by the way—and then justify this as part of some perverted line of duty?”

  “I left Chloé safe. You’re a good mother; I knew you’d get her. And you did.”

  Of course she did. Aimée almost started yelling, she was so angry. “Don’t you even regret—”

  “Regret’s a luxury in this work. Brutal, but true.”

  “But you jeopardized my work and my colleagues.” She caught her breath. “And you’re still not going to tell me why the DGSE grilled me, told me someone was holding you hostage, but you expect me to believe things are safe?”

  “Did the DGSE take you to that fake office on Impasse Tourneux?”

  Aimée’s jaw dropped. They shared a laugh. If they could still laugh together, then maybe everything would be okay.

  “I’ll be in touch.” Her voice rasped. She stabbed out the brittle candy cigarette. Grinned as it crinkled into white sugar shards. “Force of habit.”

  She grabbed her mother’s warm, slim fingers.

  “Not now, Amy. We’ll talk later.”

  “Not until I know why you did this.”

  “I gave my word to Germaine. It was simple, at first. She counted on me.”

  And Aimée didn’t?

  “When I take a job, I don’t let people down.” Pause. “But my lung collapsed, and the next thing I knew I was under the knife.”

  Aimée’s shoulders stiffened. “So an operation put you out of commission?”

  “It happens. I needed a chest tube.”

  Aimée noticed how Sydney leaned and favored her right side. A painful incision?

  “What’s going on now is too important, Amy. It’s bigger than us.” A squeeze. “Grab that taxi at the corner.” Sydney pulled her hand away. “For Germaine—do the right thing.”

  Friday, 8:30 p.m.

  Running, Aimée flagged down the taxi. At the Gare de Lyon, after trying three out-of-commission pay phones, she found a working one by the northern entrance off the Cour Châlon.

  She called, as her mother had instructed. Let the phone ring once. Hung up. She jumped when the pay phone chimed to life a second later.

  She picked up the greasy receiver. “Le Sports Shop,” she said, reading what was printed on the card.

  Heard several clicks. Then a voice: “Go ahead.”

  She looked around. No one watching that she could pinpoint.

  She related the information: the cargo’s contents, her guess that it was hidden in caves, the rebels’ illness, and the coordinates she’d written down.

  “You’re not our usual sports shop,” the voice said, sounding suspicious.

  She knew she should hang up soon. But first, as her mother had told her to, she said, “Use Dany at Ouagadougou.”

  “That bad?” said another voice with what sounded like a Texan drawl. A three-way call?

  “I’m just the messenger,” Aimée said.

  She hung up. Breathed in slowly. Head down, she mingled with a group headed toward a train, hikers wearing large backpacks. On the platform, she broke away from them and joined a family dragging rolling designer suitcases, blending in with them until she transitioned to another group, following the advice for losing surveillance in a public place that her grandfather had given on his tape. In this manner, she worked her way through the crowd to the front of the train. A regional train to Sens, thank God. She’d ride to the first stop, then catch a train returning.

  Twenty-seven minutes later, she alighted at Melun. Strolled up the platform, looking in the reflective kiosk glass for a follower. None.

  She crossed the platform and got into a train bound for Paris as the doors were closing.

  Her phone trilled. René. She took a seat and watched the dark patches of countryside around Melun under the night sky.

  “Where are you, Aimée?” he asked.

  “On the train. I’ll be at the Gare de Lyon in twenty-six minutes. Tell me you and Saj got lucky with the SUNSAT satellite. We need all the proof we can get.”

  “Working on it. I just read tonight’s Le Soir. Typical.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sensational headlines but scant details about what’s going on in Côte d’Ivoire. They’re trying to sell newspapers without facts.”

  So the story was out.

  “Didn’t you and Saj notice the flights to Côte d’Ivoire every month on those old Soviet planes? I don’t know who or why, but someone’s assembling a dirty bomb of chemical weapons.”

  She let out a breath. “It’s out of our hands now.”

  “And—let me guess—in the hands of Delorme, the old African spider?”

  “A stars-and-stripes spider that’s three hours away.”

  “Merde, not the CIA? Why get the Americans involved?”

  “Thank Sydney. Turns out they’ve had a dog in this fight since she agreed to help Germaine and furnish funds to GBH’s movement.”

  “You mean the Americans are playing behind the scenes, a third-party investor in GBH for the coup d’etat?”

  “Got it in one, René. But do you think a spoiled dictator’s son’s better? This Ivoirian general Mgwanga with ties to Liberian death squads. That’s who Delorme would appease now, to keep him and Côte d’Ivoire under his thumb later on.”

  The train sped past a series of lights; dimmed by fog, they blurred together into a charcoal snake.

  “See you soon,” said Aimée.

  Friday, 10 p.m.

  On arriving back at the Gare de Lyon, Aimée bought a wool cap from the Camaïeu shop downstairs in the station, took the stairs to the Métro. Got off at the next stop and walked a few short blocks, then down rue Montgallet. Black leather jacket collar up and head down, she joined the late evening crowd. Buttery smells emanated from a closed boulangerie-pâtisserie doorway framed by nineteenth-century painted panels of wheat sh
eaves and a mill. The baker in a flour dusted apron, smoked outside. Starving, she smiled offering him ten francs and took a warm pain au chocolat.

  At the shadowy corner across from Ming’s shop, she licked the dark chocolate that had oozed between her fingers. Punched in René’s number. The call rang through to voice mail. She tried Saj. Voice mail again.

  Always glued to their computer screens, those two.

  Ming’s shop shared a rear courtyard with the limestone-façaded apartments on the side passage. She went around to the back delivery entrance, hoping the code still worked.

  But the tall blue doors were open. She wondered if he’d just taken a delivery. She slipped inside the courtyard and past the cars to Ming’s back door. Unlocked.

  Something was off. She knew Ming was security conscious with his stock.

  The shop hummed with customers. Unseen, she climbed the back stairs.

  Papers everywhere. Two open laptops. Computer parts filled the shelves.

  Muffled knocking sounds came from the back of the storeroom. She kept to the walls alongside the shelves of equipment and pulled out her Swiss Army knife. René sat on the floor, ankles tied, arms flex-cuffed behind him. Her wide eyes fluttered over the computer paper stuffed in his mouth. She pulled the paper from his mouth and put her hand up in a wait sign before cutting the flexi-cuffs off him.

  “Anyone else here?” she whispered.

  René nodded rubbing his wrists. “Saj.”

  Behind cardboard boxes in the corner, she found Saj trussed to a file cabinet. Quickly, she cut him loose and hurried back over to René.

  “Who did this to you?” she asked.

  “I didn’t hear them with all the noise from the shop,” said René, spitting and rubbing his mouth.

  “Are you all right?”

  He looked sheepish. “Fine. Before I knew it, I was bound and gagged from behind.”

  “They were wearing black balaclavas,” said Saj. “Asked me where the maps were. I pointed to the laptops. Then they tied me up. Took them two minutes, tops.”

  René nodded again. “They copied the hard drives onto a memory card. Not a scratch on us. In and out. Professionals.”

  That bothered her.

  “Sounds like the DGSE,” she said. “Late to the party, as usual.”

  “Bien sûr, I’d already scrubbed the hard drives.” Saj grinned. “And thrown a virus in for good measure.”

  “Nice touch,” she said, returning his grin.

  “Alors, since you called in les cow-boys, doubt you’ll need this.”

  “Need what?”

  Saj pulled a photo from a hidden pocket in his yoga pants. It was still sticky with printer ink.

  “Courtesy of Lars at SUNSAT,” he said. “I, meaning you, owe him big-time.”

  In the satellite photo of a rocky outcrop in front of a dark cave opening, she recognized the distinctive shape of wood pallets covered by tarpaulins. The photo was time stamped earlier that day.

  “By now they’ve moved the pallets into the cave,” she said.

  He pulled out another photo. “And this one.”

  A broken line of what appeared to be trucks.

  “Who’s this?” she asked.

  “Not sure about specifics, but SUNSAT captured the view this morning. It’s on the Liberian side, about forty Ks from the border.”

  Aimée rubbed her temple. Tried to think. “Could this mean the Ivoirian general Mgwanga somehow got the crash site’s location and alerted a Liberian militia to it?”

  Saj peered closer. “Anything’s possible. Or maybe GBH’s rebel group couldn’t wait any longer and started hiding the cache for him. Or prepared to transport the pallets. Do any of them even know about the toxic contents?”

  “Good question.”

  This put a new spin on everything. But to what end?

  “The French military is six hours away from this crash site, the Americans three,” said Aimée. “Nobody’s clean. Nobody really knows what’s happened—the Liberians or the Ivorians. Let’s just hope it’s not too late.”

  On the first photo, Saj pointed to a cluster of low buildings bordering scrub and forest. “Another place to hide the cache?”

  René had stood, dusting off his trousers and jacket. “Haven’t the rebels had the cargo for several weeks?”

  She nodded. “But who knows if they could transport it across the border?”

  The truck convoy could have been Liberian freedom fighters—something she doubted. Or the female soldiers pressed into gritty and dangerous work.

  Mon Dieu. Her colleagues had been trussed up like pigs and the place sacked. And she felt more in the dark than ever. “We need to leave.”

  “True. We’re already burned, no point in staying,” said René, heading to the stairs. “I’ll drive back and pick you up. I fitted out the Renault.”

  He’d already customized the car with controls for his height? Aimée tried not to smile. “So you do like the accomplice’s car.”

  “It’s wheels for now. Nothing replaces the DS.”

  Saj winked. “Not even the classique Mercedes you swooned over in that car mag last week?”

  René made a face. “Come and help me with the equipment, Saj. I’m parked two blocks away.”

  Her phone bleeped. Morbier.

  “Okay, I’ve got to take this,” she said. “Meet you at the corner.”

  Friday, 10:30 p.m.

  In the courtyard, she looked around before she took the call. Dark shadows and parked cars, as before.

  “Leduc, you’ve cracked open a hornet’s nest.” Morbier was fuming.

  “Long time, stranger,” she said. “Apparently, I’m my mother’s daughter.”

  A brief pause. “Do you know what you’ve stepped into, Leduc?”

  “What else could I do?” Upset, she paced in the courtyard.

  “Eh? What do you mean?”

  “Try returning my calls sometime, Morbier,” she said, the cork off her pent-up anger. He’d lied to her, played on her sympathy. “You promised to help, remember?”

  “Tant pis, Leduc, Lacenaire’s team got reassigned before I could find out—”

  She couldn’t stop. “Why didn’t you tell me you could walk?” She remembered those files at his place. Was he on some mission? “I saw you standing at the bar at le Baron Rouge. What’s going on? Don’t you trust me?”

  “It’s complicated—”

  “But you said you’d retired—that you were paralyzed!” she interrupted. “All the time you’ve been lying to me?”

  Only the thupt of a match lighting, an inhale and long drag on what she imagined was an unfiltered Gauloise.

  “Smoking again, too.” She felt the sting of betrayal.

  “Ça suffit, Leduc. Don’t blow my cover.”

  Her jaw dropped. “An undercover operation? At your age?”

  “Like I said, Leduc, it’s complicated,” he said, irritated. “I’m old, but not in the grave.”

  Yet.

  She wanted to kick him.

  “Undercover for what?” she said, unable to contain her curiosity.

  Another lengthy inhale. She wished it didn’t make her long for a drag. Just one.

  Worried, she tramped over the cobblestones to the courtyard entrance, one eye on the road watching for René in the Renault. Started walking on the glistening pavement toward the corner.

  “High-up strings yanked the DGSE and Lacenaire off that case. Now I’m a peripheral part of it assisting in a sting operation, code name Crocodile.”

  She felt a sharp sting in her thigh. Grabbed her leg. Gasped and almost stumbled into the mec with an umbrella passing ahead of her.

  The boulangerie’s lights blurred, twirled. Noises blared. Her phone tumbled onto the cobbles. Her throat constricted. She panicked, sucki
ng for air. Tried to breathe. Stupid, stupid, why hadn’t she paid attention? The sensation of someone lifting her, the sliding of a truck door. Then everything went black.

  Friday, Late Evening

  Humid air. Darkness. Her head pounded.

  She gulped in air. At least she could breathe.

  Recognized the smell of wet cardboard boxes. And a sooty, dusty odor.

  The back of a warehouse? An attic?

  A strong vibration shook her. She reached out and felt only air. She was tumbling, bumping into metal; everything was vibrating. Shaking, stronger and stronger, her body slamming against something cold. Pain shot through her chest, her ribs. Her head. She cried out.

  Things went black again.

  Friday, Late Evening

  She grew aware of voices. Her throat was as dry as sandpaper. So thirsty.

  The voices were raised—an argument. But they came from somewhere else, distorted, as if coming through an air vent.

  “She’s got it. Then I’ll get rid of . . .” A blurring echo.

  Clanging. She strained to make out the words. “An Aladdin’s cave.” Booming echo. “Money for the taking . . .”

  Metallic screeching that hurt her ears.

  “Idiot. Everything’s there.” This sounded like another voice. “It’s how you read the map.”

  It’s how you read the map.

  What did it mean?

  “Lining up already. I’m taking orders . . .”

  It was like listening in a wind tunnel.

  “Do it my way.” The short, staccato phrase bounced and echoed.

  “Mine in the first place.”

  That voice. She knew that voice. Gérard Bjedje Hlili.

  But could she be sure?

  “I pay you . . . Take care of this.”

  Blasts of wind. “Liar. Where’s my money?”

  “Deal with her.” Metallic whining. “Payment on completion, as we agreed.”

  An hour, two, more . . . how long had she been out?

  Her hands scrabbled over the cold metal she was sprawled on. What felt like wire-mesh grating around her. Darkness.