by Cara Black
“I lost her taxi near Place Saint Georges.”
“At what time?”
“Say thirty minutes ago.” She slipped him the paper with the partially written taxi ID number.
“Pardonnez-moi.” He reached for a cell phone in his jacket pocket, stood, and disappeared into the kitchen. The singer’s voice rose like a lament accompanied by a shaking tambourine and thump of drums.
A minute later, he sat down again and gave her his total attention. “Please continue.”
“The bus stalled, then I ran out of gas in Place Saint Georges, but I felt somehow she was watching me. She may have recognized me from the Institut Kurd. She murdered Yves Robert, the AFP investigative journalist. He knew of her plan.”
His expression remained blank.
“I told all this to Bordereau,” she said, trying to keep her frustration under wraps.
“How do you connect the two?”
She recounted what happened so far. Romeo, the dead junkie; the chador; the sugar wrapper; Langois’s knifing in Gare du Nord. But she left out Faroum. And then she reached into her bag and set the Lego backpack on the table.
“She forgot this in the WC. She’s operating undercover, disguised as a nanny.”
He nodded. “That confirms our report. We’ve obtained her description and appreciate your information. Certain details corroborate our field reports.” He took the backpack, didn’t look inside, and pushed back his chair, which scraped on the tile floor.
She stared in surprise. “That’s it? Can’t you tell me anything?”
“It’s forbidden to compromise an ongoing investigation.”
“Compromise? I just prevented an assassination,” she said. “By myself. None of you were there!”
“I can’t reveal sensitive information; neither could Bordereau.”
But he had let a few things slip.
“Answer me this: You’re not linking it to the Algerian GIA and the Metro bombings, are you?”
“You’ll see it in tonight’s papers,” Sacault said. “We identified a fingerprint on a bomb fragment belonging to a member of the rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis mosque.”
She didn’t see the connection.
“A fingerprint from who?”
“That I can’t say.”
“But why would the assassin target a Kurdish MP? She’s a Muslim.”
He paused, weighing his words. So far he’d said very little. “That’s the link. It’s clear.”
She paused. As clear to her as the black silt layering the bottom of her cup.
“Meaning?”
“Think Iranian Shi’as against Turkish Sunnis, hardliners versus the more liberal clerics.”
That echoed what Faroum had said. But it confused her even more.
“How does that make sense?” She leaned across the table. “Yves investigated Turkish repression of the Kurds. Have you investigated the iKK Worker’s Party or the Turkish military?”
“Again, we appreciate your information.” He set ten francs on the table. “And we’ll handle it from here. Any interference from you could compromise our undercover field agents. Do you understand?”
In other words, leave it alone.
“But this assassin . . . murdered Yves.” And she’d lost her!
“No one’s attributed his murder to this suspect.”
“What?” She handed him the sugar wrapper, translated it for him.
He paused, took it. “Mademoiselle Leduc, we’ve mounted sensitive operations. National security’s at risk. All forces have gone on highest alert.”
Yet they hadn’t prevented the attempt to assassinate Jalenka, or Iqbal’s death.
He stood. “Do you need further clarification, Mademoiselle?”
She shook her head.
He paused on the way to the door. Turned and scrutinized her. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with, believe me.” And for a moment he sounded almost human.
“And you do?”
“We’ll take care of that parking ticket you’ve just been given,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
She wanted to kick him, but he’d gone.
Outside, on René’s windshield, there was a ticket. She took it and tore it into little pieces, letting them flutter, confetti-like, into the sewer.
Wednesday Early Evening
“ABORT YOUR COVER , ” the voice said in Farsi.
Nadira clutched the cell phone to her ear. Paul slept in the stroller next to her in the rear of the Place Saint Georges café. A sirop de menthe sat on the table.
“Were you seen?”
Shame filled her. “Yes.” And she’d left behind Paul’s Lego backpack. It was only a matter of time.
“Then you know what to do.” The phone clicked off.
Her mission, her jihad, ruined. A failure, and the mullah was disappointed. She must redeem herself. Follow Allah’s will. Terminate the woman.
She sipped the mint drink, willing her hands steady.
“Jacques?” she called to the waiter, who put in orders at the counter.
“Another one, Nadira?” Jacques smiled.
“Non, merci,” she said. She came here often to pick up courier messages left hidden in the downstairs cleaning closet. “You must be so strong to have been able to push that car.”
He shrugged, but she saw gratification that she’d noticed in his eyes.
“Such a beauty, a vintage DS Citroën, like mine,” he said, ringing up payment on the cash register. The cash tray rolled out with a ping.
She flashed him her best smile. “There are not many experts on classic cars like you, eh? You must know the owner, I saw you helping her.”
She’d jotted down the license plate number. But it would take time to trace it. Time she didn’t have.
“Matter of fact, we’re in the same Citroën club,” he said, rubbing his hands on his apron, then scanning the counter for his drinks order.
Nadira had to grab his attention. “I’d love to get one like that . . .”
“But the woman driving it is his partner,” Jacques interrupted. “No real owner would let a treasure like that run out of gas. Not good for the rings.”
“Think he’d sell it?”
Jacques shrugged, then his eyes narrowed. “To you?”
She smiled again. “At least I can ask if he knows of another one. What’s his name, Jacques?”
A few minutes later, she walked out of the café and past the Place Saint Georges Metro entrance, pushing the stroller. At No. 16 she pushed the digicode, and entered the Delbard’s 19th-century apartment building for the last time. Paul slept through their ascent in the wire-cage elevator and all the way into the apartment. She’d debated what to do with him. But her orders hadn’t involved him. So she urged another sleeping pill into his mouth, rubbed his gums so it would dissolve, and left him asleep in his bed.
Nadira changed into a long dress, assembled her assortment of ID’s and cash cards, and slipped them, along with another cell phone, into a money belt under her dress. She pulled out the memory chip from her other cell phone and cut it up. She took the prayer rug from the slats under her bed and discarded it and her few belongings in a garbage bag. She surveyed the now-stripped room. No trace of her remained.
Down in the chandelier-lit foyer, she took the plastic bag from the stroller and fit the rifle pieces into a backpack. It took her half an hour to wipe down all the door handles in the huge high-ceilinged flat: kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms, and front door.
She wouldn’t miss Madame Delbard.
She shouldered the backpack, gripped the garbage bag, and descended the back stairs to the topiary tree-filled courtyard. Beyond the old carriage house, she turned. In the next building’s courtyard, she dumped the bag into the green garbage containers. Just before she reached the tall doors, she pulled out the chador, draped it over her, then pressed the door release button and emerged onto crowded rue Monnier. Slants of light drifted through the plane trees lining the street. She melted into the
crowd waiting at the bus stop. She kept her eyes lowered. Anonymous, just another Arab woman in the mixed group waiting for the Number 67.
The bus sped past the church of Notre Dame de Lorette, sun splashing its soot-stained façade. Nadira hit the number for information on her new cell phone.
“Listing, please,” said the operator’s voice.
“Monsieur René Friant,” she said. “That’s F-R-I-A-N-T.”
Wednesday Evening
RENÉ SAT , FORK poised over the Indian takeout container on his office desk. “If the DST warned you off, Aimée, listen to them. And you still haven’t changed your cell-phone number.”
Aimée paced before the tall window. Shadows filled the corners of Leduc Detective’s office. The printer hummed in the background, spewing reports.
“I got the call in Gare du Nord.”
“What call?”
“She called me right in Gare du Nord after Langois’s murder.”
“I told you to change it.”
“On Yves’s phone.”
“Slow down, Aimée.”
“Langois had information,” she said. “We arranged to meet. Now I feel it’s my fault . . . !”
“Someone else killed him, not you,” René said, “and took advantage of a crowded train station. Smart. Now start from the beginning so I can understand.”
So she told him about Langois, the killer’s call, escaping in the passage beneath the station, and discovering Yves’s contact. “Faroum tried to meet Yves after he overheard rumors at the mosque.”
“If that’s true,” René began, then paused. “It’s as if the killer knows you, knows your movements.”
She’d felt the same thing. It sent a shiver up her spine. “I warned the DST about the assassination,” she said. “They ignored it, and now they’ve taken my info and shut me out.”
“Listen to the news, Aimée,” René said. “There was another bomb threat this afternoon. No wonder they didn’t respond at once. They’re maxed out dealing with the Metro bombings,” he said. “What better time to plan an assassination of a Turkish politician?”
“You’re going somewhere with this, right, René?”
“If the killer—”
“You mean this female assassin with the child,” she interrupted.
René continued without missing a beat. “If she took care of Yves and Langois, then, besides Faroum, you’re the only loose piece.” René lifted a pakora and took a bite. Curry smells filled the office. But she’d left hers untouched; she couldn’t eat.
“The DST man mentioned a network. Iranian Shi’as and Turkish Sunnis.”
René paused, his gaze faraway. “That’s a whole other ball game. I don’t know . . . just somehow this feels personal, Aimée.”
Her cell phone rang. For a moment, her fingers froze, then she punched ANSWER.
“Mademoiselle Leduc, forgive me for not calling sooner,” said Gerard Drieu. “I know I promised but there’s been a murder of another member of our AFP staff.”
Should she tell him she knew? Explain that she’d been about to meet Langois? Better if she listened and learned what he knew.
“I’m sorry.”
“And worse news, it’s the photographer who worked with Yves.”
“Meaning there’s a connection?”
“We’ve heard his murder is being attributed to a network of militant right-wing Turks. The Yellow Crescent.”
Surprised she pulled out a pen and paper and sat at her desk. “The Yellow Crescent?” She hadn’t seen that name in Yves’s article.
“Turkish militants. They send in contract killers from Turkey,” Drieu said.
“To take care of threatening investigative reporters here?” She thought for a moment. “Sounds like a stretch.”
“We found some of the background information Yves filed from Ankara.” He paused, cleared his throat. “You told me you wanted to know.”
More ominous and twisted all the time.
“Did this connect? Wait, you’re saying Yves was working on an exposé of the Yellow Crescent?”
“You got it in one,” Drieu said.
She tried to fit it together. But if Yves’s investigation of the Yellow Crescent based on Faroum’s information had gotten him killed, it still didn’t explain Jalenka’s name in his wallet. Unless militant Turkish Sunnis wanted to kill a prominent Kurd . . . could that make sense? Yet the Turks were Sunni, and Sacault spoke of Iranian Shi’as. How did religion play into this?
“Turkey’s secular. Any connection with a Sunni jihad?”
“None I know of,” Drieu said, then paused. “Turkey’s determined to join the EU. Right now, an important Customs Union Agreement between Turkey and the EU is about to be signed. It’s a huge step, preparatory to Turkey becoming a formal candidate for admission to the EU. Turkey stresses the secular nature of their republic, likening it to France. They’re proud of their separation of religion and state, unlike the rest of the Middle East.”
“But Yves knew about an assassination attempt on Jalenka Malat.”
Could these be two separate events, were there two networks? Or was the assassin acting solo and Yves had somehow gotten in her way?
“You’re well informed, Mademoiselle Leduc,” he said. “Did Yves tell you that?”
“I found her name listed as a target in his wallet.”
Drieu said, “Yves had a spiderweb of connections. He knew things the Yellow Crescent wanted kept quiet.”
“So you’re saying Yves’s knowledge of the assassination was just incidental, and these militant Turkish hit men from the Yellow Crescent flew in to silence him before he could publish his article and expose their organization?”
Drieu sighed. “They’re probably sitting in a café in Ankara right now. And we’ve lost the expertise Yves would have brought to the Paris desk.”
She still found it hard to swallow. “Why not hire a hit man here?”
“A Reuters correspondent in Vienna ended up the same way,” he said. “He’d gotten too curious about the oil-field concessions in Dirhan and the Yellow Crescent’s involvement.” He sighed again. “The Turkish military send them in, the job is done, and they’re on the next plane out.”
“But how did your photographer threaten them?”
“Out in the field, Yves would have shared info with him, non?” Drieu’s voice lowered. “I’m deeply sorry you didn’t realize how dangerous Yves’s work was.”
After hearing about the chador on the riflewoman, she didn’t buy the Yellow Crescent . . . unless they employed female assassins. Or wait. A man could use a chador as a disguise, too. Her hands clutched the phone. The security guard had seen the assassin in the chador. She needed to find him.
“We’re having a little staff memorial at Le Vaudeville later,” Drieu was saying. “Simple, just colleagues, but you’re invited. And I’d like to apologize again for, well . . . jumping to a conclusion. It’s better to say you’re sorry in person.”
It was kind of him to invite her.
“You’d make a good correspondent, Mademoiselle. Dogged, determined—”
“Like Yves,” she interrupted.
He sighed. More deeply this time. “Oui, like Yves.”
“I’ll attend the memorial, but, to tell you the truth, they sadden me.”
“Me, too.” Pause. “But I think I owe you at least a drink.”
He’d softened, seeming less businesslike. Maybe she could get more out of him, some detail that he didn’t realize he knew. “D’accord,” she agreed, and hung up.
She stared out the window at the shadows deepening on rue du Louvre. The penumbra of fading light softened the stone building edges, blurring their definition into a play of shadows. She reached inside her bag and fingered the worn Ottoman coins of the talisman. Yves’s words came back to her: “. . . for vision, to see your way . . . prevent being blinded by obstacles and false paths.”
She wished it would guide her.
She grabbed her scarf. “See
you, René.”
He frowned, putting down the take-out container. “Forgetting something?” He pointed to the bills on her desk. “We need the Microimages retainer, Aimée.”
“Right. It’s ready; I’ll pick it up.”
Doubt appeared on René’s face. “You’re sure? I realize you’re shocked by Yves’s murder . . . I’m sorry, but we’ve got a business to run.”
“Don’t worry, René,” she said. “The retainer will cover those bills.”
René grabbed his car keys. “Let me give you a lift.”
AIMÉE PICKED UP the signed Microimages consulting contract and retainer from the receptionist. On her way out of the courtyard, she stared at the spot where Yves had waited for her only two nights ago. She pictured his tanned face, his warm arms folding around her, could almost feel the tense energy in those arms.
She made her feet move, tried to repress the cascading memories of that night.
The loge of Mehmet, the Turkish concierge, was dark, the glass door padlocked. The man who boasted that he knew everyone in the quartier was gone. She headed to René’s car where he was parked down the street.
“Not bad, Aimée!” Holding the check, René whistled.
High praise from René.
“Zut! We’ve got to get to work monitoring his system tomorrow.”
Always the worrier.
A child on rollerblades skated over the cobblestones. His father ran to catch up with him.
“Aimée, the real estate agent called,” René said. “He can meet us right now.”
She looked at him as he perspired in his linen suit and had a vision of the future. A gutted floor littered by plaster, electrical wires hanging, plumbers shaking their heads. A money pit. For once, she seemed to be the practical one. Or was she running from commitment? After losing Yves, nothing felt permanent.
“Have you decided to do this, René? Do you think you can pull it off?”
“It’s an incredible opportunity. To buy in the center of Paris, put down roots and have ample space.”
“But we could expand our office,” she said. “The place next door still looks vacant.”
