by Cara Black
“Abnormality of the liver is evidenced by a tense, pounding pulse and red tipped tongue indicating post-traumatic stress,” Linh said. “For this we build the fever, let the heat burn out the infection, unlike doctors in the West.”
Aimée smelled mint. To each his own, Aimée thought. It was worth a try.
“You’re an herbalist, too?” she asked.
Linh shook her head as she applied mint oil to Aimée’s temples and brow. “Everyone in my country treats it this way. From when we’re little babies.”
So they carried herbs instead of aspirin?
“Close your eyes. Take deep breaths,” Linh said, massaging Aimée’s hands. “Let the mint oil take effect.”
Aimée felt a warmth and slight tingling on her brow. The curious warmth traveled to the top of her skull and down her neck.
“René’s been kidnapped,” she told Linh. “The kidnappers want the jade. I found no clues at the auction house. And Gassot’s proving elusive.”
“Mon Dieu!” Linh leaned forward, worrying her beads. “I will pray for him tonight.”
“Linh, an RG agent is seeking the jade, too,” Aimée said. “What do they have to do with it?”
“Who?”
“The RG’s a secret service, affiliated with the Préfecture and National Police.” And under the watchful eyes of the Ministry, she added silently.
Aimée felt a cold ruffle of wind by her knee, the musk of incense, and Linh’s hand on her shoulder.
“I’m being watched,” Linh said. “By whom, I’m not sure. One of the meditators gave me a ride here. She let me off around the block. But I may have been followed.”
Aimée opened her eyes. Linh had gone to the window. Shadows from the trees on rue du Louvre bruised the office walls. Aimée couldn’t read Linh’s expression.
“The pieces were disguised—” Linh began.
“Don’t you mean they were used to disguise twelve much older jade disks?” Aimée interrupted. “To hide them in plain sight, so to speak?”
Silence, except for the buses shuddering in diesel agony and the klaxons heralding a traffic jam below. A cobweb clotted the edge of her vision. Linh made no reply.
“And they’ve been stolen. Tell me, what do they have to do with—”
“Reste tranquille. Let the herbs work,” Linh said, soothingly. She rubbed more mint oil on Aimée’s temples.
“The Vietnamese secret police are watching me. I told you that,” Linh said. Her eyelids batted in the nervous mannerism Aimée remembered. “My mother gave me a jade bracelet when I was five. She called it a fortune teller. Good quality jade changes color after its been worn. If the jade fades, it indicates bad luck. But if it grows more vibrant, a lush green, life energy is flowing well and this predicts good luck, good health, wealth, and many offspring.”
“And your bracelet?”
There was another long pause. Now warmth ringed the crown of Aimée’s head, her palms felt moist and she noticed a tingling sensation coursing down her arms.
That’s personal,” Linh finally said. “
Was that why Linh became a nun? Now, Aimée felt a deep sadness emanating from her.
“You Westerners don’t understand. Jade means much more to us than a trinket in a jewelry store window. The only way to win our people is through our beliefs, our souls.”
“Does this have to do with PetroVietnam and oil rights?” Aimée asked bluntly.
“The only politics I’m concerned with is obtaining my brother’s release,” Linh said. “Please, you’re the only one I can trust. Find the jade, before someone else does.”
Then Aimée’s vision gave out.
AIMÉE BLINKED several times. Afraid to try to focus. Light reflected and prismed from the decanter on her office desk. Her silk sleeve smelled of mint and her head felt curiously clear. No cobwebs or blurriness. Just a curious tingling at the base of her skull. And clear vision.
The herbs? A combination of pills and herbs? Linh had left a small vial of mint oil on her keyboard.
She reached into her pocket for the jade disk. Felt the cold comforting roundness.
Her pills were finished. She picked up the phone to call Guy.
But he had had a blonde in his arms on the street.
She debated. But a minute later she punched in his number, determined to sound businesslike.
“Guy?”
“I’m in the middle of rounds right now,” he said, curtly.
“Sorry, I just ran out of pills,” she said.
“I’ll call a prescription in.”
Coward. She wished she could tell him she missed him. How it hurt her to see him with another woman. Did he hear the false bravado in her voice?
“Right away,” he said.
She heard someone say ‘Doctor, what about the intravenous line?’ and the pinging of bells in the hospital ward.
“If that’s all . . .” he said.
Silence.
“Can we talk later?”
“What’s there to talk about, Aimée?”
“I guess nothing.” The words caught in her throat and she hung up. She’d blown it again.
She forced herself to stand up, get her bag. Not to call him back and accuse him of being with another woman. What would be the point? He’d made his choice and moved on fast. Seems he’d had someone else waiting in the wings. Better to end it now.
She’d ignore the hollowness she felt. Sooner or later she’d get over it. What if she’d agreed to move to the suburbs? He’d have expected her to have his dinner waiting. She couldn’t even whip up an omelet! Forget Guy. She had to focus on finding René. Somehow the disks were the key; Linh had as good as confirmed it. Why had de Lussigny tried to enlist her to spy?
She pulled out Regnier’s card and called him. She hated to deal with the devil, but perhaps he could help find René, as Morbier insisted.
His phone rang. No answer. Great! Waiting stretched her patience. The little reserve she had, as René often told her. She had to do something.
She locked the office and pushed the button for the elevator, a temperamental, grunting wire-framed affair from the last century. She stepped inside and rode it down to the second level. The glass elevator door slid open. She came face to face with Regnier. His freshly shaven scalp gleamed in the chrome yellow light. He stepped inside the elevator car and stood a few centimeters from her.
Fear was the worst thing to show with someone like him. She was afraid he could smell it on her.
“Any reason you don’t answer your phone, Regnier?”
“Did you call with good news for me?” Regnier’s aftershave bothered her. It smelled cheap and metallic. The accordion pleated gate closed and the elevator juddered upward.
“My partner’s been kidnapped. The captor’s threatening to dismember him. Believe me, if I knew where the jade was—”
“I’d be the first to know, Mademoiselle Leduc?” he said. “I hope that’s what you were about to say.”
Had he kidnapped René? She watched his dull black eyes, saw no quiver of response.
“I’m sure you want to help me now.” He hit the out of service button. The elevator halted with a jerk. Her spine tingled. Up close she saw the threads in his overcoat.
Then he leaned closer, and whispered in her ear, “You’re under surveillance.”
First Tessier and now Regnier, but it didn’t make sense for him to warn her. He’d ransacked her apartment.
“By who?”
“We’re not all what we seem,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Was she a pawn in someone else’s power play?
He lifted her chin with his cold hands, so he could see her face.
Only then did she realize that she’d lowered her head and remembered how he’d stared at her on the quai. And that she had seen the butterscotch-colored button in his ear.
“How long have you been deaf?” Aimée asked.
His mouth twisted in a sad grin. “Long enough. Mine is only a tonal
deafness at low range decibels.”
Was this a crack in his tough-guy façade? Aimée heard a buzzing sound and his finger shot up, adjusting the clip behind his ear.
“So the RG uses you, like they used my father, Regnier,” she said. Could she play on his sympathy? “I can help you,” she said.
“If you help me find my partner.”
He stared at her. In the small elevator with him and his aftershave, she felt claustrophobic. But she knew she should play along with him.
“You have more resources than I do, Regnier,” she continued.
Then his hands circled her neck. Terrified, she stepped back, tried to loosen his thick fingers. How could she have misread him like that?
“Let go!” His grasp tightened. Nowhere to move. It was like before, when she had been attacked. All she knew were those hands squeezing her neck. Choking her. No air.
She kneed him hard in the groin. Hit the elevator service switch with her elbow, then the button. The elevator shuddered and descended, throwing him off balance. He cried out in pain, let go of her neck and knelt on the floor.
She pried the elevator door open.
“Eh bien! I’ve been waiting a long time,” said a disgruntled man, on the ground floor.
“It’s all yours.” She squeezed past him and ran into the street. She didn’t stop until she stood on the quai de la Mégisserie, several blocks away. No Regnier in sight. She leaned on the stone bridge, her shoulders shaking and her breath fanning into the air in frosted puffs. How were Regnier and Pleyet involved?
She caught her breath. Lars would know, or he could find out. She walked to the Préfecture de Police, glad she’d kept her fake police ID updated, and entered the Statistics Bureau. The wide door stood ajar, pieces of plaster sprinkled everywhere. Her footsteps crunched across the floor. A man with a mask gestured toward a penciled sign.
Due to pipe refitting, Statistics temporarily in Bâtiment B, second floor cellar.
Several stairways later she found it. And her friend Lars Sorensen, who headed the Préfecture’s statistics department. Statistics, a broad term, provided Lars interdepartmental and interministerial access.
The makeshift office, once a vaulted medieval cellar, consisted of rows of metal file cabinets and several vacant desks. The burnt odor of metal soldering pervaded the office. A green beanbag pillow sat forgotten in the corner.
Lars, wearing army fatigues, leaned back on his chair and drank Orangina. She figured he’d come from the special training he did midweek outside Paris. His prominent jaw and punched in nose made him look like a prize fighter. “Do me a favor, Lars, check what these mecs des RG, Regnier and Pleyet, are working on,” Aimée said. “Like you, they could be in reserve special ops.”
“Moi?” Lars grinned. “Let me see. Every month each commissariat turns in a report, some big patron’s idea so we classify and subclassify them. Like we’ve got nothing else to do, eh? Besides get manicures, trim the commissaire’s ear hairs, and play skat!”
Her father had put up with Lars, pointing out not many could ferret the devil out of a hole like him. But she actively liked him. Lars was half Danish. But to hear him talk you’d think he’d been born and bred in Copenhagen, not lived in the working class district of Batignolles since infancy, now with a French wife and three children.
Lars searched in his files. The whine of a sander came from the hallway.
“You didn’t see this, okay? ”
She nodded.
Lars opened a creaking file cabinet, pulled a state-of-the-art Titanium laptop from inside, and powered it up.
“How old is Pleyet?” he asked, typing in his password.
She noted the last four digits Lars entered.
“Fifties, in good shape, with deep-set gray eyes that take everything in, like a hawk.”
“But that describes a lot of them.”
She remembered something. “Keloid scars on his right wrist.”
He scanned the report. “Did he tell you he was RG?” He rolled his eyes. ”More like Surveillance Circle Line.”
“Circle Line?” she asked. “What’s that? Regnier, too?”
“Regnier’s RG,” Lars said. “But, according to this, he’s under suspension.”
Her mouth dropped.
“Suspension? For what and since when?”
“Let’s see. . . .” Lars hit some keys. “Pretty generic, misappropriation of operating funds last June. The chief discovered it in September.” He clicked more keys, “On the ball, eh, your government fonctionnaires!”
So Regnier had gone rogue, but felt bold enough to threaten her. He had sniffed the jade. But how? And that didn’t explain Pleyet.
Aimée leaned over Lars’ desk. “What does Circle Line mean, Lars? How’s Pleyet involved, eh?”
For the first time she saw hesitation in his eyes. He shifted in his chair and the springs squeaked.
“Don’t ask me, Aimée, I can’t tell you.”
“Please, Lars.” She ran her hand through her damp hair.
“I can’t tell you because I don’t know,” he said. “Just rumors.”
“Hinting at what?”
Lars didn’t meet her gaze. A plume of sawdust shot up in the hallway.
“Lars, your papa and mine were friends. Why hold back? Pleyet was on the Place Vendôme surveillance. He looked familiar but I never knew his name. Any of their names. They made sure of that. I want to know his background, at least.”
Lars looked away.
“It’s important to me, Lars.”
“Nothing in here concerns the past,” Lars said. “This comes from Special Branch. They don’t data entry old, failed missions. You know that.”
But she’d figured one thing out. “So this Special Branch Circle Line’s new?”
He nodded.
Wiretapping? But the RG had been doing that for years.
“It’s not all governmental, that’s what I heard,” Lars said.
“Meaning industrial espionage?” she asked.
Two men in suits walked in and gave Lars the eye.
“Of course, mademoiselle,” Lars said, his tone businesslike now, as he closed the folder and shut down the laptop, “when I tally the figures we’ll report the amounts to your father’s insurance agent. The Commissariat will have that information on file.”
“Merci, monsieur,” she said, playing along.
The men kept walking and passed them. She heard their footsteps echoing on the metal stairs leading to winding corridors and, eventually, to the holding pens under the Tribunal. She could imagine the sweating stone walls, and the prisoners awaiting sentencing in cells little changed since the Reign of Terror.
“Can’t you do a quick search to see if there’s a report filed on missing Asian jade?”
“You’re looking for missing oriental art?” asked Lars. “You want me to check the list, you mean?”
She nodded.
He sat up, pulled at a drawer that stuck, then slammed it hard and it opened.
“A stolen Rodin sculpture in the 14th from narrow Impasse Nansouty near Parc Montsouris.”
“Try the 17th arrondissement.”
He thumbed through the file. The crinkling paper competed with the low whine of the saw in the background.
“What about missing jade?”
“Hmmm . . . a dope racket and bordello, but that’s as close as it gets in the 17th.”
Frustrated, she pulled out her map, studied it.
“My brother-in-law delivers meat to a boucherie in the 17th,” Lars said. “He always bitches that he can’t unload. One time he had to walk with a whole side of a cow through the narrow passage and an old lady fainted right on her poodle.”
She read the map, half listening to Lars, thinking of the threadlike streets of this village within a village, still beating with a provincial life of its own.
“Sorry, that’s it,” Lars concluded.
She exhaled with disgust, leaning against Lars’s grease-stained metal
filing cabinet. If the jade was “hot,” no one would report it stolen.
“Merci, Lars,” she said, and left his office.
SHE TRIED to make sense of what she’d learned. Regnier, under suspension, had gone rogue, which made him more dangerous. Pleyet, still a cipher, worked for the “Circle Line.” All along the quai, as brown leaves rustled past her on the gravel, she thought about Lars’s change of attitude after he had spoken those two words. She pulled off her leather glove and wrote down the last four digits of Lars’s password on her palm. She’d play with the numbers later.
Time was running out for René. She tried Commissaire Ronsard on her cell phone.
“The Commissaire’s in a meeting,” said a bored voice.
She tried Léo.
“Club Radio,” Léo answered.
“It’s Aimée, any luck with René’s phone, Léo?”
“Désolée, so far the antenna’s picked up nothing.”
Aimée’s heart sank to her feet.
“They could have trashed it, or just not turned it on,” Léo said. “Keep your cell phone calls to a minimum, in case they try you.”
“Merci, I’ll check with you later.”
She was stymied. The only person she knew of connected to Thadée was Sophie. Sophie had to know a detail, a name. Even if she didn’t realize she knew it. But she was in London. Aimée had to reach her. Besides the art gallery, watched by the police, the best place to look was in Sophie’s house.
Thursday Afternoon
AIMÉE MADE HER WAY toward the address, near Clichy, she’d found for Sophie. She passed small Indian shops selling suitcases out on the pavement as well as everything from manicure sets to bootleg tapes. Nestled in between them were Vietnamese florists, and discount clothing stores with jackets on racks bearing signs that read EVERYTHING UNDER 100 FRANCS, as they whipped in the rising wind.
Mothers wearing stylish black suits, or Muslim headscarves over dark robes, hurried little children to the école primaire, and a motor scooter putt-putted on the cobblestones waiting before a café doubling as a takeout for Turkish kebab frites sandwiches. She ordered a kebab frites, paid, and ate the steaming spiced lamb sandwich as she walked down the street.
