by Cara Black
“Bien sur!” He grinned. “The service door.”
Thank God she’d gone to the ATM.
She nodded to René, and they followed him through the swinging doors into a narrow galley-style kitchen whose huge frying pans sputtered with shallots, butter, and browning filets of fish. The chef in a white hat ignored them, intent on raking the pan back and forth over the blue flame. Fragrant steam wafted up, but Aimée didn’t envy him in this narrow sauna of a kitchen.
The ponytailed man unlocked the rear metal door. It opened onto a weed-choked walled courtyard, which displayed remnants of limestone arches and dislodged stones. Sun beat down on the hot cobbles. She saw a small chipped statue of the Virgin Mary nestled in a niche of the peeling back façade among snaking pipes. They’d emerged into a remnant of the medieval cloister of Saint Lazare. From force of habit, Aimée made a small gesture, the sign of the cross.
“A lot of us do that,” he said, grinning. A gold tooth sparkled in his mouth. “The place gives a feeling. . . .” He shrugged. “The cook says he’s heard chanting at night. Swears it’s the nuns.”
What about the ghosts of the condemned female prisoners, she thought, recalling Aristide Bruant’s famous song in which a woman writes to her lover before her execution: “Je me fait un sang qu’est d’un noir à Saint Lazare.” My blood is now black with that of Saint Lazare.
Enough of the woo woo; they had to get out of here.
“Your boyfriend after you?” he asked.
“Like a hornet,” she said. She saw a rusted door in the wall.
The ponytailed man noticed her gaze and shook his head. “Locked. Go through the back courtyards, three of them, and then make a left.”
René glanced at Aimée.
“You know this escape route pretty well, don’t you?” René looked around uneasily. “Did you show this to anyone else today . . . a woman?”
The man grinned. “Only last month, Johnny Hallyday dropped in for a drink. Even at his age, the fans won’t leave him alone. He had to leave the same way.”
He led them to green garbage containers clustered around another door, rolled one away, and opened that door.
Aimée peeled off another hundred-franc bill and stuck it in his apron pocket.
“Keep this between us, eh?”
He winked. “Merci.”
She and René followed the dark cool passage between the buildings to another courtyard. Lines of laundry hung between buildings, conversations drifted from windows, open in the heat. Then the winding space led them past another sagging building, and they found themselves in a courtyard in which clay crucible forms and rusted hollow metal glass-blowing rods leaned, abandoned, against the walls.
“Now I know how an aging celebrity feels,” René said, grimacing as he stepped over a pothole.
“Over there, René.” Aimée pointed to a double door on the left labeled Cristallerie. They entered and stood in a narrow hallway. At the other end, half obscured by a drape of red velvet curtain, lay long tables set with china and crystal goblets. A well-dressed crowd was listening to a speech. An immense crystal chandelier dripped refracted pinpoints of light dominating the frescoed banquet room.
“We thank you, Cristallerie Baccarat stockholders. . . .” a man’s amplified voice droned.
Stunned, Aimée realized they’d crashed Baccarat Crystal’s stockholders’ luncheon. And she was wearing a jean jacket. She looked around, saw no other exit.
“Let’s go, keep to the walls.”
“Second nature to you, Aimée, but not my thing.”
“Got any other ideas, René?”
They were trapped, like geese in a pen.
“Act like you belong. Head to the cloakroom.” She pulled his sleeve. “And keep moving.”
Frock-coated waiters poured champagne into gleaming stemmed goblets. Aimée kept close to the ornate walls, dodged servers with platters, and kept her gaze straight ahead. A few ministerial types in pinstriped suits, blue shirts, and red ties looked up from their Limoges plates. The speaker, standing at the head of the first table, raised his goblet.
“A toast to our recent resounding success, to Baccarat’s best-ever quarterly earnings report! And to you, our shareholders.”
Nice profits, if they could afford to toast with champagne and sponsor a function for a hundred or so.
She padded over the plush Aubusson carpet to the cloakroom, which turned out to be a parlor furnished with Louis XIV chairs and what looked like Corot landscapes on the walls. “We’re almost there, René.”
She threw him a glance, then turned back. A massive mountain of a man in a black suit blocked her path.
“This way, please,” he said.
“Excuse me?” she said.
“If you make a scene, I will be forced to escort you out with force.”
Nothing for it but to comply. High level security, if the suit was anything to go by. Ex-legionnaire, by his physique.
In the vaulted foyer, the guard stood framed against floor-to-ceiling glass vitrines showcasing a collection of Baccarat crystal: acid-etched neo-classical vases, nineteenth-century fluted perfume flacons, branches of a chandelier with faceted pendant crystal drops catching the light.
She had to come up with a plan. And fast.
“You’re a Sarko Security employee, non?” she asked.
The guard’s lips were immobile in his expressionless face. But he didn’t deny it. She went with her hunch.
“You should know better, Monsieur.”
“Show me your ID,” he said, eyeing René. “I’ve called for backup experienced with gatecrashers like you.”
“Shhh,” a server said, peeking around the corner.
The guard gestured them farther away, toward a section devoted to the 1878 Exhibition with sepia photos documenting candelabra commissioned for maharajahs and delivered on elephants, and chandeliers hung in glittering Constantinople palaces, as well as a display of engraved certificates from Tsar Nicholas II.
She flashed her PI license, thought quickly, remembered the card Nohant had showed her.
“This goes into my report. Monsieur Belfont in the rue de Saintonge office will be informed.” She pulled a notebook out of her bag, flipped it open, made a checkmark in it with her eye pencil, the closest thing at hand.
He blinked.
“We entered through the rear courtyard,” she said, assuming a businesslike tone. “That shows a major lapse in security. I’ve noted that there was no guard stationed there. We’re an independent contractor hired by Sarko to investigate for lapses in security such as this.” She tapped her heel. “Given the prevalence of Metro bombings, and with several members of the ministry in attendance, this security oversight’s inexcusable.”
“But we did a thorough sweep before the banquet,” he said, his tone defensive now.
Good.
“Not enough, Monsieur, as we’ve found out.” She whipped out her cell phone. “Monsieur Belfont and your superior will see this in our report. My colleague here specializes in coun-terterrorist tactics, and your failure’s duly noted. He’ll require you to attend a security seminar, de rigueur to prevent further incidents like this.”
She nudged René, who closed his mouth and nodded. “Exactemente, Monsieur.”
“Mais . . .” His voice wavered. “It’s not only me; what about the other staff?”
She glanced at her phone. “Of course. Now if you’ll excuse us?”
“Wait . . . you can’t just go—”
But Aimée spoke into her phone, hoping he couldn’t hear the dial tone. “Monsieur, we’ve just discovered security flaws at the Cristallerie Baccarat function . . . oui, I’m en route.”
Perspiration shone on the guard’s upper lip.
“Assemble all the guards for a meeting in fifteen minutes.” she said. “Be discreet, of course. Meanwhile, post a man on the back door.”
She strode out of the building, René behind her, praying they’d get past the pillars and around the cor
ner before the guard reached his boss on the phone.
They emerged on rue de Paradis. She shuddered, realizing that they were standing not a block away from where Yves had been murdered. No time to dwell on that now. She threaded past cars on the narrow street, hailed a taxi, jumped inside and edged over, making room for René.
“Where to?” the taxi driver asked at the corner of rue d’Hauteville. She looked back; there were no police behind them. She’d already written off her bike, now riddled with bullets.
“Just keep driving,” René said, his fingers tapping the window. “Better yet, my car’s near Gare du Nord. Drop us there.”
“Rouffillac didn’t sound concerned about Jalenka, René,” she said. “What do you think he meant when he said the situation’s taken care of?”
René wiped his brow with his monogrammed handkerchief. “Why, he meant they would guard her hotel! He was sending the DST there. I overheard him.”
“You mean they weren’t there already?” she asked, alarmed.
“I don’t know.”
“Never mind. What hotel?”
“Abotel Windsor on rue Gabriel Laumain. What’s the difference?”
“But that’s two blocks away! Don’t you see?”
“See what?”
“First she’d want to take care of me and then. . . .” Aimée tapped the driver’s shoulder. “Rue Gabriel Laumain.”
“I know the hotel, Mademoiselle,” he said. “I drop clients there all the time.”
“But the big question is this,” she told him. “Do you know the service entrance?”
“And if I do?” he asked, swerving and making a U-turn. A horn blared and a driver shook his hand from a car window.
She held the hundred-franc note up to flutter in the breeze. In the rear-view mirror, she saw his thick eyebrows lower as he calculated the size of her purse.
“And if I got you into the laundry receiving station?”
“How would you do that?”
He shrugged. “Pays to have friends, doesn’t it?”
She ended up forking over more for a two-block ride than she would have paid for a trip across the Seine and back. But they were mounting the hotel’s narrow back stairs without interference five minutes later.
“Where are we going?” René asked. “We don’t know her room number. It’s crazy. The DST’s got this under control, Aimée.”
She halted on the third floor, where they were met by a reeking chemical smell. Her throat burned.
“What’s that?” René said catching his breath and coughing.
“It’s not good.” She pointed to the jumpsuited DST man sprawled on the carpet by the elevator. “Open some windows, quick.”
She covered her mouth, jimmied open the hall window, inhaled huge gulps of fresh air, then ran down the hall.
“Look, Aimée.” His handkerchief over his face, René held up one of several plastic liter containers that were lying on the carpet. He choked as he read the label. “Contains trichloroethyl-ene. Breathing in TCE fumes may cause headaches, dizziness, confusion . . . higher amounts . . . unconsciousness, death . . .” the rest was lost in his fit of coughing.
She stuck her head out the window and gulped more air. “. . . downstairs,” René said, “getting help.”
She turned to see René’s head disappearing down the stairs.
Yet she couldn’t retreat. She had to find Jalenka. But where the hell was she?
She had to be on this floor . . . and then Aimée noticed deep tracks furrowed in the wet carpet. Tracks ending at the door to Room 312. She tried the doorknob. Locked.
With no time to waste, every breath burning her lungs, she pulled out the Beretta with the silencer. She steadied her shaking hands, shot the lock, and shouldered the door open.
Inside the salon of the hotel suite, she walked into a brocaded chaise longue. Beside it, a grouping of period chairs were empty. She closed the door behind her and took a deep breath. No fumes in here. Nor noise, except for piped-in ’80s dance music from a built-in wall speaker. She kept going, tiptoeing into a smaller dim room with drawn red toile de jouy print curtains. A lamp illuminated an ormolu-trimmed desk, a pair of black heels in an open shoe box, and the large walnut-carved armoire on her right.
Ready to turn and leave as quietly as she’d come in, she heard a voice speaking in a rapid, guttural language. She advanced farther to see a young woman wearing a maid’s uniform leaning over a figure in the bed. In the small room, the maid was half hidden by the open armoire door. She was speaking into a cell phone held in the crook between her neck and shoulder. But Aimée saw the narrow-gauge rifle lying on the chair.
The assassin. Yves’s murderer.
Her gaze fell on the wires running over the floor to the armoire. Noticed the fold-down ironing board inside with a white blouse hanging from the armoire door. Underneath it, there was an open bag filled with brown-gray clay-like material; the wrappings bore Cyrillic letters. Good God, it was Russian Semtex. She trembled as she recognized the detonator, a loose wire on the carpet next to it and the coil of copper wire on top of a suitcase. The woman was assembling explosives.
Aimée raised the Beretta, aimed, and moved to the edge of the bed.
And then, as if possessed of another sense, the maid turned and stopped talking.
Almond-shaped hazel eyes stared at her, eyes that were flat and dead. Assassin’s eyes, scrutinizing her.
Young. So young, Aimée thought, amazed.
She said something and let the phone drop. Below her on the bed, Jalenka Malat, in a skirt and slip, lay across the disheveled duvet, twisted sheets binding her legs and arms, her mouth covered with duct tape. Her brown eyes were wide open and full of fear.
“Let go of the wires,” Aimée said, keeping her tone level with effort. They still had a chance; the wires weren’t connected to the Semtex yet.
The young woman reached out for the rifle.
“Nadira . . . Nadira,” Aimée heard a voice repeat over the phone.
And in that moment Aimée saw the wire running down the woman’s arm. Aimée shoved the armoire door wide open. She never saw the kick that struck her arm from below. She heard a snap, then a raging fire tore through her shoulder. Her Beretta fell onto the suitcase. Aimée winced as she reached for the gun, biting her lip as pain shot through her shoulder. She felt another piercing pain as Nadira’s fingers jabbed her neck.
“You can’t stop me,” Nadira said.
“Don’t bet on it.”
Aimée lunged, knocking Nadira into the armoire. Copper wire rained down on them. Her Beretta skidded away.
Aimée grabbed Nadira’s shoulders, struggling to pin her down. But her left arm hung useless. She felt Nadira’s body heave under her. She twisted like a snake. Nadira’s fingernails raked her neck. The Semtex and the steam iron had fallen to the floor; the iron’s controls had been knocked into the ON position. It hissed steam at Aimée’s face. She saw Nadira reaching through the jet of steam with the wire for the detonator. Panic filled her. She had to stop the woman from connecting the wire or they’d blow up.
Nadira’s knee jabbed her in her rib as she half twisted out from under Aimée. Then Nadira’s fingertips were clawing at the Semtex just out of her reach. She was pushing the wire toward the detonator caps.
“No, you don’t,” Aimée panted. “Not like you killed Yves.”
“Who?”
Yves’s death meant so little to her that she didn’t even remember his name.
Nadira, her face beet-red, strained to push the wire toward the detonator. Just a few more centimeters.
With her good hand, Aimée took the hot iron and swung sideways at Nadira’s head with all her might. A dull thud, a sputter of hot steam, and then a sizzle. Nadira’s body shuddered. Then another swing and Nadira’s fingers loosened. She crumpled, limp, onto the carpet, open-mouthed.
Aimée struggled to her knees, straddling Nadira. Panting, using her right hand, she lifted the wires away from the detonator
. Then she wrapped them around Nadira’s wrists and tied Nadira’s ankles together. She listened to the cell phone. Dead.
As she was about to climb onto the bed to untie Jalenka, loud footsteps sounded. She looked up. René, wearing a mask so he could breathe, stood with a flic, and a woman with a horrified expression on her face who was pointing at her.
“Une catastrophe! You’ve killed her!” she screamed.
Aimée, collapsed against the bed, felt Nadira’s pulse. It was weak but beating. She shook her head.
AIMÉE SAT BAREFOOT on a laundry table holding a glass of restoratif from the matron’s bottom desk drawer after undergoing fifteen minutes of perfunctory questioning. On the floor above, the bomb squad, poison control unit, and a plainclothes DST team combed the hotel suite. Jalenka Malat had been whisked off to the airport under high security, Nadira dispatched in a guarded ambulance. Aimée hadn’t managed to have a chance to speak with her.
René applied ice to her shoulder as Aimée downed her second drink. The hotel matron answered investigators’ questions next door in a tearful high-pitched voice, protesting her ignorance.
“We’ll treat your shoulder dislocation at the hospital,” the medic said, dabbing Aimée’s scratches with antiseptic. “Shot at, too.” He shook his head. “Nice bruising. Still it’s good you wore the vest.”
As if she needed him to tell her that. Her chest still throbbed.
“Rotate my shoulder counter-clockwise and it will pop back into the socket,” she said.
The medic and René exchanged looks.
“It’s happened before,” she said.
“I’ll get fired if it goes wrong.” He shook his head, applying gauze to the fingernail scratches on her neck.
“And I’m in a lot of pain,” she said, gritting her teeth.
He packed up his medic kit, snapped it shut. “I’ll bring the stretcher.”
René looked at her. “You don’t look too good, Aimée.”
She didn’t feel too good either.
“Nadira’s cell phone should lead them to—”
“It’s a throwaway.” René wiped his perspiring brow. “The woman at the Institut Kurd confirmed Nadira’s description, and finding the high-powered rifle helped. The DST’s connecting Nadira’s attempt to the Metro bombings,” René said. “There was another attempt today. Semtex. . . .”
