by Thomas Swan
Idi came to the doorway of his office, where she stood patiently, wiping her hands on a blue-and-white striped apron. “Oui?” she said simply, waiting for the wracking cough to subside.
“Has LeToque come back?”
“Non, monsieur.”
“Have you turned on all the lights?”
“Like you told me,” Idi replied.
“I told him not to go off, he’ll pay for it, the bastard. Bring me a pitcher of water,” he commanded.
Weisbord went out of view for several seconds and returned to his desk holding a length of plastic tubing. He inserted the fittings into his nose, holding them in place by a strip of black elastic he slipped around his head.
Idi returned with a pitcher of fresh water, put it on his desk, and took an empty pitcher away.
Aukrust went quietly and quickly down the steps and out to his car where he took his medicine case and long, black raincoat from the back seat. He walked boldly to Weisbord’s front door. By all outward appearances he might be an old acquaintance carrying a strange-looking little suitcase. Time was important; it was a few minutes before eight.
LeToque went through the revolving doors into the Hôtel Gounod and stopped in front of the concierge’s desk beneath an ancient, ornate clock. He described Gaby to the second-shift concierge and received a “haven’t-seen-her” shrug with upraised hands; then he went into the restaurant and was about to barge into the ladies room when Gaby rushed up and threw her arms around him.
“Where’s Aukrust?”
“I don’t know,” she continued to hug him. “I was frightened. It’s his eyes and the way he talks and the knife,” she rambled on, rubbing at her tears and smudging blue eye-shadow over her cheeks. “He said that Weisbord told lies to the man at the art gallery in Geneva.”
“Aukrust’s the liar,” LeToque said angrily.
“He took your car.”
“He called the police? You heard him?”
“No,” Gaby said in her frightened little voice.
Aukrust rapped with the lion’s head knocker again. The door opened eight inches, all that the thick chain would allow. He stood in the light and greeted the housekeeper with his most disarming smile.
“Hello again. I’ve come back to pay respects to my old friend. Is Monsieur Weisbord home?”
Idi looked up at the big man, who stared back pleasantly at her. He wanted her to smile, to be unafraid. “You remember I was here—when was it? Last Tuesday, of course; you were taking the baskets out to the curb.”
There was a pause before she nodded. “I remember.”
“I’m leaving tomorrow, and this evening was free, so I’ve come again to surprise Freddy.”
The chain was strong, and the door was heavy. He could crash against it once, perhaps twice, but there was no certainty he could break the lock. He patted his leather case. “I have a bottle of his favorite wine.”
Idi looked at the medicine case, then her eyes moved slowly up to his face and stopped to inspect the bandages on his ear. He turned his head, his smile frozen.
LeToque pushed Gaby ahead of him into the hotel’s revolving doors and when they were on the street, he began to run. “Hurry,” he shouted, “he’s after the painting.”
The faintest glimmer of a smile showed on Idi’s placid face. She closed the door, slid the chain away, then let the door swing open. Aukrust tilted his head in a bow of silent appreciation then walked past Idi into the front hallway. A stairway to the right circled its way to the second floor. Behind the stairs, the hall extended to the dining room with a door on the left, which, he was certain, led to the kitchen, and a door to the right, which would lead to Weisbord’s study.
He put two fingers on his lips, inviting the housekeeper to share in the surprise, then whispered, “Show me where I can find him. I promise not to frighten him.”
Idi gestured to follow her. “He is in there.” She pointed to a door that was off a short jog in the hall.
Aukrust said, “And the kitchen is there?” He pointed to it, and she nodded. “That’s where you’ll be?” She nodded again. “I’ll come for glasses if he wants to taste the wine.”
He stopped outside the study and waited for Idi to go into the kitchen—go back to your damned television, he thought—smiling at her, waiting until she backed away. He remained by the door until he heard music and voices coming from the television then went back to the front hall and up to the second floor.
During all the hours he had kept the house under observation, Aukrust imagined the size and purpose of each room. He had guessed correctly that Weisbord’s bedroom was the center room in the front of the house. He felt along the wall for a light switch. A single bulb in a ceiling fixture illuminated a collection of heavy furniture, including a wide bed flanked by two night tables and, as Gaby had described, the portrait on the wall over the bed, suspended from the same nail that had most likely held a crucifix while Cécile was alive. He placed the painting face down on the bed, peeled back the heavy protective paper, and removed four screws that held the stretcher and canvas to the frame. He folded his raincoat around the painting, pushed the frame under the bed, turned off the light and returned to the hallway on the first floor. Everything was as he left it seven minutes before, except that the television blared even louder.
Slowly he turned the handle on the study door then leaned against it until the door was open several inches. Sounds in the room were a gentle rustling of papers and an occasional small eruption of Weisbord’s wheeze. He opened the door wider, enough to see Weisbord in profile, still bent over his work. He let himself into the room and closed the door. His back was against a row of bookshelves, and he crouched and moved toward the old lawyer. Now he could hear the gentle hiss of the oxygen as it passed through the valve on top of the cylinder.
Several more feet and he could touch the oxygen flow regulator. He put on a pair of cotton gloves, then knelt next to the cylinder. The gauge in the flow regulator was set at two in a calibration from one to eight, and he turned the regulator to eight. Weisbord was now receiving a maximum flow of oxygen, a seemingly acceptable condition; however, Aukrust knew that too much oxygen would cause a decrease in respiration and an increase in the retention of carbon dioxide. Because Weisbord had not reached a critical point with his emphysema, the rich oxygen infusion he was receiving would induce a momentary euphoria, followed by drowsiness.
Aukrust pulled his medicine case next to him and took out a green cylinder the size of a portable oxygen supply. But instead of oxygen, the unmarked cylinder contained nitrogen.
LeToque flashed his lights, then pressed hard on the accelerator, veered left, and sideswiped the oncoming car. Glass and chrome sprinkled over the street like sparkling confetti. LeToque braked and jumped from the car to find there was a hole where the left headlight had been but apparently no puncture in the radiator. The other driver stormed over to register an angry complaint, but LeToque pushed him aside, got into the car and drove away. It was 8:21.
Weisbord had slumped back in his chair, struggling to stay awake, noticing dimly that the tubes had come loose. Clumsily, he put the cannula back into his nose and looked with lazy puzzlement at the tubing that snaked across his stomach and over his legs. Then his head sagged, enough to signal that he had fallen asleep. Aukrust separated the plastic tubing from the oxygen supply and inserted it into the fitting on top of the cylinder of nitrogen.
He turned the valve, sending nitrogen into Weisbord’s badly weakened lungs. Ninety seconds of pure nitrogen, and the buildup of carbon dioxide would reach the danger level. Continued intake of the nitrogen would create cyanosis: His skin would turn blue, and he would die.
LeToque broke clear of the clogged city traffic. Weisbord’s conservative sedan lacked the power of LeToque’s Porsche, and he swore at the unexpected traffic that slowed his progress. He turned onto the Boulevard Gambetta, south of the Saint Étienne district.
“How much longer?” Gaby asked.
“
Five minutes, without these fucking cars.”
Weisbord was dead. Put plainly, he had suffocated. Aukrust picked him up as if he were no more than a child’s body and placed him in the oversize-chair, where it seemed that Frédéric Weisbord had been reduced to a final insignificance. Then Aukrust reattached the tubing to the oxygen cylinder.
He picked up the phone and asked for the police.
“I am calling from Monsieur Frédéric Weisbord’s home. He’s had a severe attack of his lung illness, and I can’t find a pulse, but I’m not a doctor. Can you send an ambulance?” He gave the address then in answer to a question said, “A friend.” Then he put down the receiver, took off his gloves, and slipped them into a pocket.
Aukrust followed the sound of the television into the kitchen, where, showing great agitation, he called Idi into the study.
“I have called the police.... It was so terrible. We were talking, he was happy to see me. Then the coughing, and he had a terrible seizure. I’m surprised you didn’t hear.”
“No, the television. But he always coughed.” Idi spoke as if it didn’t matter what she said or what the stranger who had come to surprise Monsieur Weisbord said or even that Monsieur Weisbord had suffered a fatal seizure. She pressed two fingers against the side of his neck and leaned down to listen for any sound of breathing. Then she straightened. “He’s dead,” she said with utter simplicity.
Aukrust gestured helplessly. “I was about to open the wine. I told you it was his favorite.” He wiped the bottle with his handkerchief as if to make it a more presentable gift. “It’s yours.” He placed it on the desk.
Aukrust picked up his raincoat and medicine case, looked carefully about the study, then walked past the housekeeper and let himself out the front door. He ran to his car; when he reached it the time was 8:41.
A siren sounded in the distance. Then another, the two-note hee-haw of a police siren. The sounds became louder. Lights came on in houses up and down the street. Then came flashing lights, and an ambulance pulled into the driveway, a police car immediately behind it.
Another car approached slowly. Aukrust recognized Weisbord’s car. The car went by then accelerated and sped away.
Chapter 33
It had been speculated that the meeting of security directors would be held in Blois, in the Loire valley near Amboise, but with adroit secrecy, the venue was changed to a location in the Fontainebleau area, thirty-seven miles southwest of Paris. Oxby’s reaction was mixed, for it meant returning to scenes with memories both sweet and sad. On Sunday he drove from Orly airport to the little town of Nemours on the Loing River. He checked into the same hotel where he and his wife Miriam had spent a torturously unhappy weekend after she was diagnosed with acute lymphoid leukemia.
In a room that overlooked red roofs to the river, he relived those first few minutes when he and Miriam were finally alone. She had said that she was not good at bravery. But no one Oxby ever knew showed such courage. And she showed it every day for nearly six months, until one afternoon her eyes closed for the last time. Alone in a room of memories, he felt an inner peace come back to him, a comfort made whole by his love for Miriam, and by her love for him.
On Tuesday afternoon he drove to Bois-le-Roi, a small, unremarkable town on the edge of the Fontainebleau forest, then five miles beyond to the Inn Napoléon located on the edge of the fiftythousand-acre forest. It was late afternoon when Oxby turned onto a cinder-covered driveway and stopped beside the original inn, an old half-timbered affair of several stories pockmarked with patches of broken stucco. Next to it was a low building with a row of doors and windows that repeated in the style of an old motel. Beyond was a square structure with an onion-shaped dome and a long porch, on which were stacked metal lawn chairs. A crudely lettered sign read: SALLE À CONFERENCE. Whoever had selected the meeting site had done superbly well, because the Inn Napoléon was sadly uninviting, yet magnificently obscure.
Oxby had parked his car alongside several others and taken his fat satchel from the back seat, when a man came out of the inn and walked toward him. Oxby knew Félix Lemieux, though not well. They had attended other conferences and over the years had talked on the phone or corresponded. The security director of the Louvre was small, even shorter than Oxby.
“Inspector Oxby, it is good to see you,” the little man said.
Oxby nodded, held out his hand and said in flawless French, “Comment-allez vous, Monsieur Lemieux?”
“Very well, thank you,” Lemieux replied in English, a rare courtesy. The diminutive man who would supervise security arrangements for the Cézanne retrospective continued to speak in English, a small smile on his face. “Madame LeBorgne arrived early. Have you met her?”
“We’re old friends,” Oxby said, and put down his satchel. A year earlier Mirella LeBorgne had been appointed directeur of the Réunion des Musée Nationaux. Oxby had been surprised by the appointment and thought she was better suited as a teacher of art history than as head administrator of an agency known for occasional internal bickering. “I expected she would send someone from her staff.”
Lemieux replied, “She’s insisted on coming so that she can be convinced the security will be skintight. If not, the exhibition won’t open.”
“I can’t blame her,” Oxby said.
“And I can’t promise that security will be impenetrable the way she expects. It could never be,” Lemieux said.
“With luck, whoever’s doing all the damage might slip and be captured before the exhibition opens.”
“You think that’s possible?”
“Yes. And you can help by convincing Mirella LeBorgne that you’ve come up with one hell of a security plan then giving the press enough of the details so they’ll write stories that will make the Granet out to be a bloody fortress.”
Lemieux looked puzzled. “I’m not sure I understand.”
Oxby leaned down to pick up his satchel. “You’ll hear all about it, and I promise to confer privately with you.”
A young, bearded man wearing a striped apron came out of the inn. He nodded politely and plucked the satchel out of Oxby’s hands. “I am Paul Rougeron,” the man said. “I welcome you in the name of my family, who own the inn. You are—”
“Monsieur Oxby,” Lemieux said helpfully. “The Rougeron hope to restore the inn to its old ways as a hunting lodge.”
Rougeron said ruefully, “A slow process.” He pointed to the motel- like building, “Your room is there, the first room to the left, if you wish.”
Oxby nodded. “That will be fine,” then turned to Lemieux. “I’m anxious to know who will be here.”
“There will be eleven of us.” He handed Oxby an envelope.
Oxby took out a printed list and scanned the names. Evan Tippett from London’s National Gallery was not included. “No Tippett, I see,” said Oxby.
Lemieux’s eyes turned heavenward. “Please, Inspector, I mean no offense, but there’s not enough time to listen to Tippett lecture on his most recent fetish.” Abruptly, he spun around and started for the inn. “ We’ ll have a drink.”
Oxby’s room was simply furnished and illuminated by a single bulb that hung from the ceiling. The bed sagged in the middle, and the small bureau was missing its bottom drawer. Mercifully, the bathroom had one each of the necessary fixtures, and all seemed to be in working order.
“It’s quite simple, and I apologize,” Rougeron said, “but come back in a year, when it will be very grand.” He grinned and handed Oxby a bottle of mineral water before going off in the direction of the kitchen.
Oxby unpacked his clothes and file folders. There was one chair in the room, a frail, wooden armchair with an unraveling cane seat. He placed it near the window, where there was better light and where he could prop his feet on the bed. He put the list of security council members on his lap and began the process of locking each name and title into his memory.
SECURITY COUNCIL MEETING
Participants:
Musée du Louvre, Pari
s Félix Lemieux, Director of Security and Coordinating Director of Security,
Reunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris Mirella LeBorgne, Executive Director André Lachaud, Assistant Executive Director
Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciare, Paris Henri Trama, Commissaire Divisionnaire
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City Curtis Berrien, Chief Registrar Charles Pourville, Associate Curator Edwin Llewellyn, Trustee
Muséee Granet, Aix-en-Provence Gustave Bilodeau, Managing Director Marc Daguin, Associate Curator and Security Director
Metropolitan Police, New Scotland Yard, London John L. Oxby, Detective Chief Inspector
Interpol, World Headquarters, Lyon Samuel Turner, Investigator, Police Division, General Crime
He sat motionless, eyes closed in deep concentration. Suddenly the quiet was interrupted by the noise of an automobile that pulled into the courtyard outside his window. The source of the racket was caused by the broken muffler on a dust-covered golden Oldsmobile of indeterminate vintage. Seated beside the driver was a blonde-haired woman Oxby immediately recognized as Astrid Haraldsen. Edwin Llewellyn climbed out of the back seat and stretched his legs and arms. Astrid got out of the car, as did the driver, a lean man in blue jeans and sweater who eyed the Inn Napoléon with the skeptical eye of a Guide Michelin investigator. Paul Rougeron came out to help with luggage and room assignments.
Two more cars came in rapid succession. First were Gustave Bilodeau and Marc Daguin, so Oxby deduced—their five-year-old Renault bore a Provence license plate. In the second car was Curtis Berrien, whom Oxby knew slightly. By 6:30 Oxby had put a red check next to each name on the security council roster. He had recorded Astrid Haraldsen’s name and would learn who owned the golden Oldsmobile.
