by Jenn Stark
I eyed Nigel now. “Who knows the most about the Swords’ stake? You? Jiao Peng?”
“Neither,” he said. “I’m hired help, and Jiao Peng was family. Further, Soo deployed her generals for protection, not market management. We suspect she managed the technoceutical operation herself, which would mean her personal computers would have the details you need.” He met my gaze. “The laptops in question have state-of-the-art protection. In lieu of passwords, they require fingerprint identification. A new fingerprint matrix was added in the days before Soo’s death.”
“Mine,” I said, because why else would he be telling me this.
“We assume so. There are other protocols we can try, put in place in the event that the computer files become corrupted, but getting the equipment to you is the easiest place to start. We’re moving everything to Las Vegas now.”
“And so in the meantime we’re going to cool our heels in a Paris museum to—what? Draw out my emailing admirer? It could be Gamon.” The darkest of dark practitioners, Gamon was a Connected who also dabbled in the technoceutical market…when she could spare the time from her latest campaign of terror against her own people. Human trafficking, the sex trade, experimentation on Connecteds to develop yet newer drugs—Gamon did it all. We’d clashed a few times already before she’d most recently gone to ground, and I hadn’t been able to find her since.
“It’s not Gamon.” Nigel shook his head. “Too open, too obvious, too simple. Gamon will show her cards eventually, but not here. This is a new player.”
I considered that. “One of the other Houses? Cups or Wands?”
“Unlikely,” he said. “Those Houses keep their cards close to the vest. They wouldn’t approach you so directly. Further, I don’t know the new Aces in the employ of either House—if such Aces exist. Since Alaina and Mobo died, neither House has reached out to Luc or myself.”
“And I’m supposed to trust you when you say that?” I asked. “You’re an Ace yourself. The whole point is for you to be a mercenary.”
“I’m an Ace.” He nodded. “But I’ve worked with you long enough not to want to see you dead, Sara. I would not ally myself against you.”
Sincerity rang in Nigel’s quiet voice, but I’d found myself on the opposite side of a business transaction involving the man too many times to fully trust him. I turned and stared out the window. Paris was gloomy today, the clouds of a recent storm still hugging the ground. When we breached the city proper, it only got worse. The rain-soaked buildings crowded in too close, and I couldn’t help feeling like I was driving into an ambush.
“So who among the French have an issue with me?” I finally asked.
“We’ve given that some consideration,” Nigel said. “We consider another House unlikely because of the location of the summons, here in Paris. Mercault makes his home in the Loire Valley. The House of Pents has been in Mercault’s family for centuries, and as such is probably known to the other Houses, though the reverse is not the case. Another House choosing to make France its headquarters would be highly unlikely.”
“SANCTUS?” I asked, naming the quasi-religious, quasi-military group dedicated to the annihilation of all things magic. Needless to say, we weren’t fans of each other, not to mention I’d done my level best recently to take them out of commission. “Is Cardinal Ventre even still alive?”
“From what we’ve been able to gather, yes,” Nigel replied. “Leadership of the organization is in flux, however. Further, Gamon is with them. Which creates the same issue. A direct summons is too obvious and provided us too much time for preparation.”
“Someone in the French government?”
“That’s the most likely option, yes.” He executed a few more turns as I digested this chunk of unfortunate news.
For all my years dancing in and out of foreign countries on my artifact retrieval missions, I’d generally managed to dodge government notice. More importantly, I’d pointedly avoided the endless line of law enforcement agencies that monitored international trade.
If the French government was summoning me under false pretenses, however, something recent had put me on their list. But what? I was pretty sure it wasn’t a horde of screaming ghosts at an abandoned Montana silver mine.
Nigel spoke again after a long moment, as if he was puzzling through the same issue. “Then again, Father Jerome is a respected priest at Saint-Germain-des-Prés. If he had done something to garner official attention, there are other channels they would follow that don’t involve pulling you from the States.”
“So we actually have no idea who might have sent this email.” I sagged back against the expensive leather seat, staring at the fog through the limo’s sunroof.
“None whatsoever.” Nigel chuckled. “However, we suspect they are French, and if they are French, we suspect they are not going to damage anything in a museum filled with French treasures. Accordingly, that is where we go to draw them out.”
He pulled up to a curb, and a valet parking attendant bustled up to my door. When I stepped foot on the rain-slicked pavement, I looked up at the beautiful art deco museum in front of me. “Backup?” I asked as Nigel took my arm.
“In every room of the museum,” he said. “We’ll start in the store, I think. Cameras everywhere there. You’ll be spotted immediately.”
“Fair enough.” I shook my head sharply, trying to throw off the demands of sleep. This immortality thing was really starting to frost my flakes.
We walked inside, and I was struck by the museum’s ornate beauty. Though originally built as a train station at the turn of the nineteenth century, it had opened its doors as a repository of fine art in 1986, mostly French and impressionistic paintings. Accordingly, its store had every possible permutation of Monet’s haystacks and water lilies, and I found myself eyeing patrons over racks of pastel postcards and imprinted iPhone cases. Nigel lurked behind a stand of tote bags, apparently admiring the Degas dog bowl collection. I scanned the magazine rack, my gaze drifting over French headlines I couldn’t read: Victoires Manchester United, Station de métro pour fermer, Où est le Pendu?
After about ten minutes of browsing, Nigel gave me the high sign to move along. We strolled like old friends down the hallway to where a cute tourist-friendly coffee shop rested. His quick scan netted me a shake of his head.
“Well, this is stupid,” I huffed. “I’m here in Paris, bigger than life. If they’re not going to make themselves known, we should go somewhere else. We certainly can score a better breakfast than whatever they have here.”
If I was going to make it through this—or any—impromptu meeting, I needed coffee. Lots of coffee. Museum cafeteria demitasses—even in Paris—weren’t going to get it done.
“A few moments,” Nigel murmured. From the renewed tightness of his voice, I suspected we’d found our pigeon. Or, maybe we were the pigeons. I was never good at bird analogies.
“Who is it?” I asked instead. “Anyone good?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” he said, his words impossibly refined as he took me by the elbow and escorted me across the room. “Technically, we’d considered this possibility, but it was far down the list. Nevertheless, we should say hello.”
“Who are they?” It was all I could do not to twist around. “Do you know them?”
“Only by reputation.” Nigel smiled fondly down at me, though his eyes were diamond sharp. “It appears you’ve caught the attention of Interpol.”
Chapter Three
Nigel strolled forward with me on his arm. I focused on the couple sitting at the café table, and understood why he’d picked them out. They were dressed too formally for the Parisian museum on a high tourist day, their shoulders too square, their hair too sleek.
Then there were the gendarme police officers standing not ten feet away from them in a jovial little group, as if they’d all met by chance for espresso and a croissant.
“And you know them, you say?” I asked under my breath as my heart rate jacked.
He hesitated. “The woman, yes. Not the man.”
“You’re the worst,” I muttered. The woman was a stunner, and her gaze rested on Nigel with a little more interest than was absolutely necessary. Clearly, she recognized him too. “First chance I get, I’m getting an Ace who’s not such an international skeev.”
Nigel didn’t have a chance to respond to that as we arrived at the table. The woman stood first, followed more languidly by the man.
“Marguerite Dupree,” she said, with only a mild French accent. I placed her in her early thirties, primarily because of the precision of her makeup. At some point it had stopped being ornamentation and started becoming part of her uniform. “Organisation Internationale de Police Criminelle.”
“Interpol, I got it.” I shook her proffered hand. “Sara Wilde.”
Marguerite nodded at Nigel as he spoke her name drily, then we both turned to the man. Unlike his partner, he was decidedly more disheveled, his hair a little too long now that I studied him, his pants frayed at the bottom. He held out his hand with a disarming smile.
“Roland Fiat,” he said, cheerfully enough. “Nice of you to make this easy on us. Shall we sit? Coffee?”
“Two.” Nigel held up the requisite fingers as we took our seats.
Roland signaled a waitress, while Marguerite studied me with her dark-whiskey eyes. She was average height and rounded at the bust and hips, and her face had a tinge of exoticism to it, hinted at by her lush lips and long lashes. No wonder Nigel was taken with her.
“You contacted me. I’m here,” I said, my words maybe a touch more brusque than necessary, but I hadn’t had coffee in this time zone yet. I was overdue. “You didn’t need to involve Father Jerome.”
“We wanted you to come, yes? An official query would have delayed that.” Marguerite sat back as our coffees were delivered in tiny little cups. Clearly, the French had a sense of humor. “We have no concerns with the Church. The good Father was merely an accessible avenue.”
Her casual dismissal of Father Jerome’s privacy rankled. Then again, we were in Paris. Perhaps they did things differently here.
“But since you are here, we can commence our conversation,” Marguerite continued. “We shall go someplace a bit more private?”
“This is fine,” Nigel said, with enough certainty that Marguerite slid her glance to him. Whatever she saw in his eyes, she didn’t like, and I was strangely cheered by that. “What do you need us for?” he asked. “Interpol doesn’t conduct its own interviews, that’s the job of local law enforcement. You’re simply an information bank.”
“Desperate times, I’m afraid.” Roland’s gaze jittered back and forth. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Ordinarily, he’d be my kind of people. “What do you know about Interpol?”
“What anyone could get from a Dan Brown novel.” I shrugged, reaching for my drink. I didn’t like the government. Any government. And now that I was technically the head of a whopper of a law-breaking syndicate, I particularly didn’t like them sniffing around. “International agency dedicated to helping the police agencies of member countries to catch international criminals. Specialize in transnational crime, terrorism, trafficking of various stripes, that sort of thing.” I slanted a glance at the police officers. “Those guys bring you in?”
“Not this time,” Marguerite said. “We are technically agents of Le Bureau Central National of Interpol, so we have a bit more interaction with the public. In any case, we’re purely gathering information now.” She waited a beat, then fixed me with a steadier look. “You have recently taken a position within the operation of Annika Soo. We had…a relationship with Madame Soo. A close one. We were very sorry to hear about her death.”
“You’ve been misinformed about me,” I said evenly. If they’d gotten chummy with Soo, that was news to me. I wasn’t about to take up where she’d left off. “What kind of relationship?”
Marguerite tilted her head, studying me as Roland leaned forward.
“Mademoiselle Wilde, we appreciate your concern. It is understandable, of course,” he said, glancing at the gendarmes. “As Monsieur Friedman mentioned, however, we are in the business of information. Madame Soo provided data about her organization’s historical involvement in the international drug market,” he said. “An involvement which purportedly ended several years ago.”
It was all I could do not to shoot Nigel a look of confusion. Instead, I stayed as cool as I could. There was no question Soo had played a strange game here. She’d been up to her ears in the technoceutical market as recently as a month ago—not ten years.
“She told you all this? Why?” I asked, acutely aware that I really should have figured out Soo’s position on everything a little earlier than now. I’d spent the last several days holed up in the Palazzo, but I hadn’t been sleeping the whole time. Would it have killed me to crack open a file?
Roland snorted. “Ostensibly, it was to assist us. We long suspected it was more to keep ahead of any investigation we might conduct on her own operation.”
Okay, that sounded a little more like Soo.
“Madame Soo’s involvement in the drug market was long rumored,” Roland continued, offering me a soft smile. “To her credit, however, we could find no definitive proof of any deals conducted more recently than approximately fifteen years ago.”
Fifteen years ago, Annika had assumed the leadership of the House of Swords, so Interpol’s convenient lack of evidence made sense. Annika’s predecessor was dead, which made throwing him under the bus all the easier.
“Madame Soo gave us to understand that she had gone clean, and the data we’d been able to gather supported that.” Roland thumped his fingers against the table’s edge, causing the coffee cups to rattle. “But there was something more to the picture, yes? Her untimely death allowed us to officially confirm what we’d unofficially surmised.”
I lifted a skeptical brow. “Which was what?”
Marguerite picked up the thread. “Soo was still trafficking, just not in traditional pharmaceuticals or standard drugs.” She watched me closely, and I gave her my best blank look.
“I didn’t know she’d been involved in trafficking of any sort,” I said, as guilelessly as I could manage.
“Please, Mademoiselle Wilde, if we could drop this pretense?” Marguerite replied crisply. “You have taken official control of both security and administrative elements of Madame Soo’s organization. Operatives as far as Asia and Africa have confirmed that her people have accepted your assumption as leader. All inquiries are deferred to you. Inquiries which we have not—and are not—officially making, if you cooperate.”
Suddenly, I got it. The fake text, the French location for our meet and greet, the local gendarmes. They had nothing on me, and from Roland’s nervous fluttering, they knew it.
“More likely, you can’t make an official inquiry, because those inquiries need to go through local channels,” I said. “With Madame Soo as your informant, you had some latitude, but with her gone, you have to rebuild your case, request resources, and wait on the slow processes of protocol. Local channels haven’t given you the green light to pursue this. They have no reason to open an investigation into me.”
Her smile was thin. “Not yet. That could change.”
“But a lot of precious time will have been wasted while you wait for approvals. The burden of bureaucracy and all that…” I sipped my coffee, a woman with all the time in the world. When Marguerite didn’t say anything more for a moment, I threw her a bone. “Perhaps if you explained to me what it is you’re looking for, I can help you out. I sort of have a knack for finding things.”
The agent stared at me a long moment. “Very well.” She nodded to Roland, who leaned over to retrieve a file from his briefcase. “We would like to enter into the same arrangement with you that we did with Ms. Soo, but with perhaps a bit more transparency.”
I lifted my brows as Roland handed me the file. A quick glance revealed a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo
that reeked of gotchas and loopholes.
“Miss Wilde signs nothing without the review of her legal team,” Nigel interjected mildly, his tone carrying a lilt of British chastisement. “You know that, Marguerite.”
I took the hint and slid the papers over to Nigel for his perusal. He might only be an Ace, but he had to know more than he was letting on about Soo’s operation. He was thorough like that.
“What do you know about technoceuticals?” Marguerite asked abruptly.
If she’d thought she’d catch me off guard, she hadn’t been paying enough attention to my own file, never mind Soo’s. I gave her a confused look.
“Techno…ceuticals. Like drugs? But with a technology bent?” I wrinkled my nose. “How does that work?”
The irritation that flashed across her face was gone almost before it arrived, but I didn’t miss it. Fortunately, Roland kept rolling.
“There are multiple kinds of drugs on the market today,” he said. “Organic drugs, like opium, marijuana, cocaine… Those are grown. Synthetic drugs, like methamphetamines, Ecstasy, and LSD, are created with man-made ingredients—essentially, they’re cooked in a lab. There are also designer drugs, which combine elements of the first two groups to create a third group, which generally take a while to be classified as an illegal substance.”
“There’s that time issue again,” I said sympathetically. Marguerite narrowed her eyes at me. “Always makes things difficult.”
“We estimate over six hundred new designer drugs have flooded into Europe in the past ten years, probably a lot more.” Roland shrugged. “Most of them originating in China, but there appear to be suppliers all over the world. Some of these designer drugs contain chemicals that have still not been completely identified, and whose effects on the human body and mind are unknown.”
“And these are technoceuticals?” I asked, still playing dumb. I was exceptional at it, and I didn’t see any point in letting my talents go to waste.
