by Cara Black
He’d have to disappear. Once more. Over and over again.
Paris had more than two hundred banks listed in the phone book—triple that, if one counted the branches of the main ones. With the old hunter’s ID, Stefan had opened accounts in many of them over the years. Always in Paris. Never in the countryside—people remembered there. Paris made him nervous but at least he could stay anonymous. Each account held the minimum balance. He maintained them only to enable him to cash the bonds and send his mother money.
He’d waited years before he’d begun cashing the old bonds. Until he figured even if they were numbered and so eventually traceable by Europol, they weren’t high on any priority list. He’d cash them in every few months in a different arrondissement taking care not to follow a pattern. He supplemented this money with his poker winnings, though lately he’d been losing to Anton and others in the garage. A lot.
He picked up a stone, trying to ignore the tremor in his hand. Briefly, he thought of the room he’d lived in for the past seven years. It was sparsely furnished, utilitarian. The reference books on Mercedes engines were the only things he’d miss. He kept nothing in his apartment. He remembered how thorough the Stasi were … the Stasi didn’t exist now but the French equivalent, the DST*, did. And somewhere, so did the flic who nursed a special grudge against the members of the gang.
He thought of his Mercedes, parked a few blocks over, realizing he’d need to change the license plates. His palms, thick with encrusted grease, the curse of a mechanic, traveled over the rough bark of a plane tree.
*Direction de Surveillance du Territoire
The headstone opposite read “Alphonsine Plessis,” better known as Dumas’s La Dame aux Camélias. Dumas’s account of his doomed love affair with this courtesan was the one book Stefan remembered from the university. And here lay the courtesan, once the object of a man’s love, now only dust under dried flowers.
He thought of Ulrike’s, Marcus’s, and Ingrid’s graves: they’d been buried three times deeper than usual, for security. He’d only glimpsed the pictures from Ici Paris, the sensational tabloid weekly that had published the forbidden funeral photos, showing Ulrike’s El Fateh scarf draped over her casket.
She had remained defiant to the end.
Stefan remembered that scarf, the red-and-white one given to her by a rifle instructor in the South Yemen camp. She liked to protect her black hair from the sand and biting wind, wear her dark glasses, and pose for photos with the Uzi. It was her only vanity … had it made her feel authentic?
Stefan had liked the training camp in Yemen, put up with the military-like dormitories, daily shooting practice, and spicy Middle Eastern food. Didn’t even mind Marcus. Or his political diatribes and earnest protestations of brotherhood to the PLO and South Yemeni secret service over the campfires.
He remembered the Persian Gulf, a black spot in the distance, and how the wind howled over the desert at night. Like baying wolves. The strange, savage beauty called to him. Stefan never knew so many stars existed, studding the universe. Every night he sat back in the Jeep, staring transfixed into the navy blue night, thousands upon thousands of glimmering pinpricks webbing the sky as if with diamond dust.
Nice mecs, the PLO, he’d thought. They’d put up with his group, didn’t ogle the women too much. The real difference was their seriousness, their purpose. Struggle was reality for these desert men.
The more Stefan saw, the more he realized how they—a scruffy, spoiled bunch of Germans spouting revolution, robbing banks, and stealing BMWs—mocked their hosts’ real struggle.
Yet when he tried to talk to Ulrike about it, she waved him off. “We learn by doing, striking back in our own way. Otherwise the system wins,” she’d said.
But the system had won. Events had proved her right.
The Yemen plane tickets were courtesy of the East German Secret Police, the Stasi. The Stasi had wined and dined the Haader-Rofmein gang as a sort of twisted revenge on West Germany. But that was all before the Wall came down. The Stasi had posed the PLO, portraying them as civilized savages with guns, in the perfect photo opportunity. Everyone was being used … all of them. Stefan had realized the whole thing was to further the East Germans’ political agenda.
Right after that, the PLO had kicked them out.
Upon their return they’d been sheltered at the Stasi training camps near Berlin, Star I and Star II, where their cadres learned the use of explosives and various weapons: 9mm Heckler & Koch submachine gun, the G-3 automatic rifle, .357 Smith & Wesson, the AK-47 Kalashnikov rifle, and the Soviet RPG-7 antitank rocket weapon. Experts on explosives demonstrated bomb-triggering devices consisting of battery-fed photoelectric beams that could be employed against moving objects—interruption of the beam would detonate the bomb. A technique they used often.
The Stasi later helped the terrorists “retire” in East Germany. But Jutta had been imprisoned in France. Had ex-Stasi members still watched her? Or had she been killed by that rabid flic who’d wanted them all dead and gone long ago? Teynard, the flic who’d planted the informer.
Now Stefan had to escape. He scanned the cemetery. If someone had gotten to Jutta, they could get to him.
Anxiously, he paced under the tree, ignoring the crunch of the grave digger’s shovel. There had been only four of them who knew of this place.
Now there were three. He had to leave, get away. What if the killer was one of them?
Stefan pulled his beret low, edged among the headstones. He surveyed the cemetery. Besides the grave digger, there was only an old lady, bent and black-clad, who swept the path.
He knew who he had to see.
Monday Evening
AIMÉE WANTED to concentrate on finding the link between Figeac and her mother. Yet when she thought of Christian sitting in a Commissariat cell, she felt guilty.
At least she’d found out from Idrissa that Romain Figeac had made tapes. If she got Christian out he could help her find them.
The other address for Etienne Mabry, besides his apartment, was at the Bourse, the stock market. As she walked through the Sentier the whir of sewing machines escaped from windows above her. On the corner stood a Pakistani man. The jackets draped from his arm caught her eye. “La jaquette à la mode!” he propositioned all passersby. For a hundred francs she walked away with a linen shirt and jacket, their labels ripped out, probably designer seconds from the sweatshop above her. As a truck pulled up, the man swiftly folded the goods under his long coat and slinked around the corner.
A block away, she entered a deserted courtyard, set down her backpack, and got to work. She stood on the cobbles, reapplying her Chanel-red lipstick in a window. Looking in a tall truck’s side-view mirror, she reapplied mascara. She flattened her spiky hair with gel, then slid into the heels she carried, along with a new cryptography manual, calcium biscuits for Miles Davis, and black silk underwear crushed at the bottom of her bag.
One never knew.
Agence France-Presse loomed beyond the Bourse’s forest of columns. Good thing her Beretta rested in her office drawer, she thought, as she saw the metal sensors of the Greek temple-like Bourse, the former Hôtel Bronignart.
Nearby stood an artists’ squat, in a Haussmann-era building, the whole six floors covered with fluorescent graffiti. It was an unexpected bright spot in the middle of the financial district.
Aimée paused in the central enclosure of the Bourse. A speckled gray pigeon had flown inside. Disoriented, it pecked at the tommettes, the hexagonal red clay floor tiles. She knew how it felt, away from familiar ground and looking for crumbs.
Kind of like now.
Several men passed in formal evening attire. She wished she was wearing something more dressy than the crisp linen jacket over her jeans.
More business and efficiency exuded from the antenna-topped Agence France Presse opposite, she thought, than from the deserted wide marble corridors of the Bourse. Rounding a corner, she strode toward the trading hall.
�
��Trading has ended for the day, Mademoiselle,” said a plainclothes guard wearing a headset. His massive shoulders barred her way. “No unauthorized visitors. Do you have an appointment?”
“But of course,” she said, trying to scan the trader directory behind him for Mabry’s name. She had to make sure he was listed and where he could be found.
Before she could think of what to say next, the guard smiled broadly.
“Another convert baptized,” he said.
“Baptized?”
His massive hand pointed to the yellow-green splotch on her shoulder. Big and spreading.
“You must be special,” he winked. “Our winged friends don’t bestow this honor on everyone.”
Great. Just what I need, she thought. No way in and bird poop on my suit.
On his desk, a halogen lamp beam focused on the visitors’ log.
Too bad she hadn’t mastered reading upside down.
“Happen to have a tissue?”
He pulled a Wet Wipe from his desk.
“Try this.”
“Merci.” She spotted an Evian bottle on the floor. “Mind if I use a bit of this, too?”
“Be my guest,” he said with a gesture. Quickly, she rubbed at her linen jacket.
“He’s following me,” she said. “Look!”
As the guard turned, Aimée bent over the tenants’ register. She scanned the entries and found the name Etienne Mabry.
“Who?”
She grinned, pointing to the pigeon who’d waddled into view.
“If you don’t watch out, you’re next,” she said. “Please, tell Etienne Mabry I’m en route and I apologize for arriving late.”
SHE DIDN’T know what to expect upstairs. The oddly narrow marble staircase echoed to the click of her heels. But by the time she arrived she’d dug in her bag, looped a silk scarf around her neck, and attached chunky silver earrings.
The placard on the landing read, “Mabry—YI Burobourse reception, salle A ’2ième étage.”
The small room didn’t hold more than fifteeen people. All men. And as much ethnic variety as béchamel sauce. Fat binders and business prospectuses sat on the Directoire table. A few of the men, tanned and distinguished, could have stepped out of an Armani commercial.
“I’m looking for Monsieur Mabry,” she said to one with a flute of champagne in his hand. “Can you point him out to me?”
“Désolé, Mademoiselle,” he said.
But another man appeared at her elbow. Tanned, with graying hair, he leaned forward conspiratorially. “You and me both.”
She looked up, surprised to be at the receiving end of a major charm offensive. She didn’t mind too much. He wasn’t hard on the eyes. At all. She’d had an affair with an older man in her neighborhood who walked his dog when she did. An aristo with old money and de la before his last name. He’d offered her a life of luxe, calme, et volupte … but she’d refused. She was her own mistress. No one else’s.
“Let me know when you find him.”
“And why should I?”
“I’m his uncle,” he said. “Jean Buisson.”
“Aimée Leduc,” she said. As she turned, he clasped her elbow. “But if we don’t find him, come to the reception with me.” He nodded toward the room opposite, where tuxedoed men clustered in the doorway.
“Why should I do that?”
“The champagne’s better!”
She smiled. He had a point.
Aimée slipped past the throng of men in black suits. She questioned several, getting quizzical looks in response. Above her hung a fin de siécle chandelier, its crystal swags catching the light. Had Christian gotten word to Mabry somehow? Had he already gone to retrieve Christian from the hands of the police?
Better move on, she thought. Try the champagne, then disappear.
As she left the salon and walked down the hallway, she noticed a door to another room and peeked inside. A group of teenagers, mostly girls with a mélange of skin tones, perched by a computer terminal. A slim man in his early thirties leaned over it, pointing to items on the screen.
“Monsieur Mabry, the shares in networking and opticals indicate high risks,” said a girl. Her light chocolate skin was like Idrissa’s, Aimée thought.
“Mademoiselle Scalbert, can you support your view?” he said. “I think you’re on the right track but tell us why.”
Aimée slipped inside just as he looked up.
Mabry pulled his longish red-brown hair behind his ears. The man was a hunk, no getting around it; all six feet of him, in his pinstriped suit.
“Lost your way, Mademoiselle?” he asked, his voice dense as crème fraîche. His large, smoke-colored eyes crinkled in amusement, then his lips curled in a smile.
He had a wonderful smile.
It reminded her of Yves, her former boyfriend, a Middle East correspondent. Etienne Mabry’s lips curled the same way.
She and Yves had an on-again, off-again relationship, a disaster that had ended the year before on a corner in the old part of Cairo, sun-baked pyramids and buzzing flies for a backdrop.
“Sorry to disturb you,” she said, wishing she could fuse with a nearby pillar and just watch him. “I’ll wait until you’re finished.”
Etienne Mabry glanced at his watch and shook his head.
“We’re running into overtime again,” he said. “At our next Young Investors’ meeting, we’ll tackle Mademoiselle Scalbert’s argument as to what constitutes excessive risk and what’s smart.”
The Young Investors gathered their things. Some cast long looks at Aimée as they left. Mabry spoke to a student and then pulled on his jacket. “How can I help you?” he said, as he reached the door.
“Aimée Leduc,” she said, handing him her card. “Your uncle’s looking for you, too.”
He set down his worn brown leather briefcase. “Leduc Detective?” he asked, reading her card. “Is there some problem?”
“Christian Figeac’s been taken in for questioning,” she said. “He wants you to bail him out.”
Etienne Mabry’s brow creased with concern. “Not again.”
So this wouldn’t be the first time Mabry had rescued Christian from jail.
“I’ve been trying to reach you for some time,” she said.
He patted the breast pocket of his fine-checked blue shirt. He even wore a red tie de rigueur for a businessman. “My fault … I forgot my phone. So sorry to make you come here to find me! I sponsor the Young Investors from the local lycée, the high school where my partner and I volunteer.”
To her relief she realized he wasn’t her bad-boy type.
“What happened to Christian?” he asked.
“The flics took him to the Commissariat,” Aimée said. “Something to do with the Crédit Bank.”
Etienne Mabry looked puzzled.
“Which Commissariat?” he asked, turning to lock the door.
“Nearby, the SPQ* on rue d’Amboise,” she said. “I’m sure this isn’t news to you but he seems to have …” She paused on the stairs.
Mabry watched her intently, waiting. He didn’t help her finish her sentence. He guided her downstairs with his warm hand under her elbow, and she detected a faint smell of citrus in his cologne.
“… substance abuse problems,” she finished.
“Chronic ones,” Mabry said, his brow still furrowed, as they arrived outside. “Why are you involved, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Something in the past involving his father and my mother.”
She winced. Had she said that out loud?
“Crédit Industriel et Commercial, you said?”
She nodded.
“Odd, both Figeacs banked with Barclays.”
He pulled out a helmet and mounted the black-and-chrome Harley-Davidson parked on the cobblestones in front of them.
Maybe there was some bad boy in him after all.
AIMÉE WAS puzzled. As she walked toward her office, she tried to make sense of Mabry’s comment about Christian’s bank
account.
She wondered why Romain Figeac lived in the Sentier amid garment sweatshops, fabric wholesalers, and working girls: the rag and shag trade. It wasn’t fashionable or arty like the Left Bank, though she vaguely remembered that Balzac had set dramas in the Sentier and Zola had been born there. Had Romain Figeac been an antihero, opposed to the literary establishment?
*Service de Police du Quartier
She leaned against a column and pulled out her cell phone. She punched in the private number for Martine, her friend from the lycée and current editor at Madame Figaro, the watered-down right-wing women’s magazine.
“Allô, cheri?” breathed Martine after the first ring.
“Not even close,” said Aimée. “Should I call back?”
“Just wishful thinking, Aimée,” Martine said. “Jérôme’s taken his kid en vacances. Just because I moved in with him doesn’t mean I go on holidays en famille.”
Aimée hadn’t been too surprised when, after almost a year helming the right-wing daily Le Figaro, Martine had jumped to the women’s magazine. And she’d moved in with Jérôme, the publicity director, a divorce with a child. Joint custody was something Jérôme’s ex pursued with vigor, insisting on shared vacations. Martine walked on shards of glass until they returned. A boyfriend vacationing with his ex would bother Aimée, too.
“Mind if I pick your brain?”
“Do you ever do anything else?” said Martine, her voice husky. “Just take me to Alain Ducasse’s new restaurant, then I’ll be putty in your hands.”
That would cost next month’s rent. Martine sounded bored, and edgy.
“Madame Figaro having problems?”
“The Madame and I might soon agree to disagree,” Martine said. “Tiens, don’t get me started. What do you need?”
“A lot of things. Info on the connections between Haader-Rofmein and Action-Réaction gangs.”
“Time traveling? Blast from the past?”
“My mother. Kind of like that.”
