by Cara Black
The man sat on the floor, Beretta pointed at the table. She saw bright streaks of blood on Caplan’s shoulder.
Now! She had to do it now. She crouched and rammed the table with her shoulder, toppling Caplan against the man. Struggling to raise the heavy sword with her shaking hands, she stood and swung it with all her might at the man’s shin. His mouth opened in dumb surprise, and he screamed in pain.
She pulled the sword back. As he reached for his leg, he dropped the Beretta. His hand was covered with blood.
Before he could recover and pick up the gun from the linoleum where it had fallen, she kicked it away.
“What kind of hit man goes after old men and babies?”
“These days, everyone specializes,” he said. Then he bar-reled into her, knocking her against the wall. His fists hammered at her chest. She yelped with pain. He grabbed her by the neck, yanking her closer. She twisted her body, tasted blood, felt a searing pain in her ribs and fell to the floor.
Her hip landed on the Beretta’s grip. By the time she’d gotten her fingers around the trigger, he’d pulled her up by her hair, slamming her head against the wall. Through the waves of pain she heard Stella’s cries. The light was fading. Sparks danced in the corners of her eyes.
“Amateur,” he hissed.
You used what you had.
He didn’t let go until she’d fired the Beretta three times at point-blank range into his chest. She could hear the hiss of air as it left his lungs in a burst of blood.
Lights danced before her eyes. Whirling spirals and flashes, Stella’s cries . . . she had to reach Stella. The light faded and then she knew no more.
SHE WALKED ON a broad band of moonlight, Stella holding her hand. Stella was a toddler now, yet with the same baby face. Someone else was there. An old woman all in white. Then Stella was skipping away from her and she was reaching out for her, calling over and over, “Come back, Stella.”
Pain throbbed in her chest; cold linoleum numbed her cheek. The smell of blood and dust filled her nostrils. She heard moaning and blinked. Her eyes opened.
Where was Stella?
The baby had to be here. Panicked, she staggered upright. The man lay slumped, dead on the floor, in a dark pool of blood among the blood-spattered daffodils. She’d passed out. Whoever this man had been waiting for must have taken Stella.
She’d failed. Someone had kidnapped Stella.
She found her cell phone. She had to call the flics.
“Untie my hands,” Caplan said.
“Who took the baby?”
He shrugged. She took up the sword again and sawed away at the thick rope, strand by stubborn strand. She flinched as the rope broke and he cried out in pain. She sawed away faster to free his other hand, its thumb swollen and purple.
“Who took her?” she repeated.
“Hélène.”
The crazy homeless woman?
“No flics, please. Hélène’s helping . . . you.” His voice cracked.
“Where did she take the baby? Why didn’t she untie you?”
“She was too frightened. It would have taken her too long. I told her to take the baby before . . . there’s another one coming.”
She found a bottle of wine on the floor, uncorked it, and held it to his split lips. Blood still seeped from a dark red hole in his shoulder.
“He shot you,” she said.
“Never mind that now,” Caplan said. “Go into the shop and look in my chair. She told me it’s there.”
Aimée staggered into the shop to the chair where he kept his valuables. An envelope was wedged under the cushion. She picked it up. It bore quivering writing in violet ink that she recognized. Inside, there was a half-torn page from a magazine displaying a crossword puzzle. In the margin she could make out the words “Ask Jules Pont Louis Philippe . . . H.”
H must stand for Hélène, the clochard. The handwriting was identical to that on the note Aimée had received asking her to keep Stella. Hélène had written Nelie’s message.
She remembered Jules’s evasive answer when she’d asked him about Hélène . . . somewhere down by the bend, he’d said. Near the end of the sewer cavern lay Pont Louis Philippe and another drain sluice. Hélène might have taken Stella there.
She’d been close to Nelie last night. Vavin, her uncle, had been at the antique store nearby. Of course! Had Nelie had been here the whole time, hiding under the bridge? Right under her nose?
How long had Caplan known? Had this whole thing been a ploy, had they been using her? A sour taste filled her mouth.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” But his head had fallen forward; now he’d passed out.
She found his shop phone and dialed 17 for SAMU.
“Fourteen, rue des Deux Ponts. There’s a man bleeding to death, another dead of gunshot wounds to the chest.”
“Who’s calling?”
“Hurry!”
She hung up. She’d killed a professional, one of Halkyut’s hired guns, in self-protection. But she doubted the flics would see it that way. And she didn’t have time for explanations or hours to spend in the Commissariat.
She stood holding onto the wall as a flash of dizziness hit her, then found her bag under the bloodstained tapestry by the Jacadi baby clothes bag. She realized that she hadn’t found the saboteur, just one Halkyut thug. Was the saboteur Stella’s father? That could make sense even though she’d relegated the idea to the back of her mind after talking with Krzysztof.
Dumb. Consider all angles, her father always said.
She searched for the Doliprane in her purse. Popped the dry chalky aspirin and chewed it so it would work faster. Her cell phone trilled.
“Allô?”
“You want the good news? Aimée, we found the real pollution reports in Alstrom’s files,” René said. “The bad news, we’ve deciphered only half of them. And none of it will make us money. But that’s beside the point.”
“Is what you have deciphered enough to nail them?” Her hands shook.
“More than enough, in the right hands,” René said. “Sickening. A crime. Makes me never want to eat seafood again.”
She read off Daniel Ristat’s fax number. “Send it all through to that number. He’s expecting your fax.”
“One more thing,” René said. “Saj figured out what the writing on Stella was all about. It’s a file title. We opened the file and found meeting notes all right but not about Alstrom’s corporate board meetings. The notes refer to MondeFocus meetings, discussions, timetables of planned demonstrations. Alstrom knew every step MondeFocus took.”
Proof that there had been an Alstrom spy inside MondeFocus.
“Can you identify the sender?”
“Fancied himself—if it’s a he—quite the comic-strip hero. He signed himself ‘Stinger2.’”
“Like the Stinger?” The slick hit man who’d infiltrated the workers’ unions on the Marseilles docks, then sold his information to the highest bidder. The one who shut down the unions and took out the leaders.
“Nice role model.” René paused. “Shall I take over babysitting Stella now?”
Guilt stabbed her. Her fault. She had to admit it and, somehow, enlist René’s help. ”I found Jean Caplan; he’d been beaten up and shot . . .”
“Is Stella . . . hurt?”
“She’s gone. Hélène, the old woman, took her.”
“What? You let that homeless woman have her?” he said, accusation and hurt in his voice. “All you had to do was watch her. How could you put her in danger?!”
“René, I didn’t mean to but—”
“Playing Wonder Woman again!” He cut her off. “For once, I thought you’d grown up and would consider the risks and consequences, with an innocent child involved.”
What about Nelie, Stella’s mother, who’d left her in the first place, she wanted to say. Nelie had left her baby with a stranger. But he was right.
“You’re right, René,” she whispered into the phone. “I’m sick at what’s happene
d. I was supposed to meet Hélène at Caplan’s, but when I got there . . .”
“Aimée, I’m tired of wild-goose chases and your excuses.”
“If I hadn’t found him . . . But I think I know where Hélène took her.”
“Took her? Why can’t you admit that she kidnapped Stella?” he asked.
She’d never heard him so angry. “Hélène wrote that note on the crossword that was sent to me. She’s helping Nelie. But talking is taking time. Please meet me at Pont Louis Philippe. I think that Stella’s father must be the saboteur. The spy. He must have followed one of us; he’s after Stella, too. In that case, Hélène is definitely on our side.”
“Another one of your theories?”
“You have a better one? Suit yourself, René, I’m going.”
“If I do this, I want to ensure that Stella is safe. We call the child protection services. Do you agree?”
“Pont Louis Philippe. Ten minutes, René.”
She hung up. Avoiding the staring, dead eyes of the mec, she put one hand over her nose, and with the other reached under his lifeless leg for the Beretta 87. She slipped it into her pocket.
By the time Aimée reached Pont Marie, the metal lampposts illumined only the rustling branches of the trees that lined the quai and the glistening cobblestones. The nighttime quiet of the island was broken briefly as a couple emerged from Le Franc Pinot, a wine bar featuring jazz, the moan of a saxophone and the sound of cymbals following them.
She hurried beneath the wine bar’s old metal sign that jutted from the building—the artisanal emblem of a winemaker: a wrought-iron, grape-laden branch pointing toward Quai Bourbon. At the corner of rue Regrattier she paused under the statue of a headless woman in a niche above the street. It, like the king, had been decapitated in the Revolution. Under it was carved the former street name, rue de la Femme-sans-tête: street of the headless woman. Island lore said it really was Saint Nicholas. But over the centuries, no one had proved it either way.
She searched for René’s Citroën against the backdrop of lighted Pont Louis Philippe, trying to ignore the pain in her ribs. The bookstore partway down the quai was open late. She became aware of being watched. Again. The feeling of eyes, somewhere. She pulled her scarf around her and retreated into a dark doorway.
Waiting.
Show yourself, she wanted to shout. And then René’s Citroën purred as he pulled up alongside the quai. He parked on the curb and opened the door, putting out one foot shod in a hunter green Wellington boot.
“Well, are you waiting for the moon to rise or . . .” He stopped, handing her his handkerchief. “Your head’s bleeding.”
Her hand rose to touch it and came back red. “A scratch. Did you and Saj find any payroll connections between Alstrom and Halkyut?”
“Looks like they were using Tiscali,” he said. “A shell corporation.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Tiscali’s an offshore corporation registered in Guernsey. Like many others, it’s a company in name only, a front,” he said. “Alstrom remits payments to this Tiscali. And—this is the interesting part—every month Tiscali makes a payment to Halkyut. I faxed this information to the journalist, too.”
This was like unraveling knotted string. Now she had them: the real pollution reports, the copy of the notes under Stella’s arm, the record of secret payments to Halkyut. But she didn’t have Stella.
She motioned to the stone steps leading down to the bank. Took a breath and followed him, alert for any sound. At the top of the stairs, she heard footsteps and froze.
Another Halkyut thug? Or Hélène, carrying Stella?
Just then the figure of a dark-haired woman emerged, casting long shadows onto the cobblestones as she walked up the quai beneath the street lamps.
Down on the bank, Jules’s sewer sluice lay in darkness, boarded up again. She wondered if the flics had rousted him for his own safety. On the flooded bank, the water level now was up to her knees. Her leather boots would take forever to dry. If they did. How could Hélène bring a baby to this place?
Sirens wailed. An ambulance’s red lights flashed as it went speeding over Pont Marie. Her Tintin watch read 9:34 . . . not a bad response time. Jean Caplan was tough; if his luck held, he’d live.
René played his flashlight beam over the partially cemented-up arch. “You can’t mean this?”
“The second one, there,” she said, pointing to a stone arch farther down.
René shone the beam on it. Planks of wood were nailed crisscross over the opening. No access. The flics must have closed this one down, too.
Gone. She put her head in her hands. She’d felt so sure Nelie and Stella would be here. She wanted to kick herself. No Jules, no Hélène.
“Another wild-goose chase, Aimée,” René said.
“They’re here somewhere.”
René just shook his head. Khaki-colored water flooded the deserted embankment.
They climbed back up the wet stone steps to the bridge. Directly across from them, light showed under the red awning of Libraire Adélaide, a bookstore, next to the dark window of a coiffeur.
“Go ahead—say it, René,” Aimée told him. “I was all wrong. I should have turned Stella over to the authorities right away.”
A questioning look appeared on his face.
“I should have ignored my gut instinct, right?” she said. “What’s the matter, you think I can’t feel any worse than I do? I agree, I have to call the child protection services. My hope is that Hélène may already have taken her to a homeless shelter.”
He shook his head. “I think we’re being invited to the bookstore.”
“I’m not in the mood, René.”
“That gentleman seems to know you. I think he wants to talk with you,” he said.
She spun around. Jules, wearing a navy blue pea coat and a captain’s hat, beckoned them from the bookstore’s doorway. A sign in the window read JOURNEY TO THE PYRAMIDS, SLIDE SHOW AND TALK THIS EVENING. They ran across the street.
“Have you seen Hélène?” Aimée asked breathlessly.
Jules looked around and then nodded. “Quick. Follow me.”
He appeared to be steady on his feet despite the wine on his breath. Inside the dark bookstore, he walked behind the counter to the rear, gesturing for them to follow. “I know the owner. Shhhh.”
Beyond a bookcase in the next room, bodies were packed together on chairs, viewing slides of golden sand and the Pyramids basking in the sun, accompanied by a droning voice . . . “In this slide we see the smallest of the pyramids at Giza built by . . .”
“Here.” Jules opened a door behind the cashier’s counter.
Aimée hesitated.
“Hurry, she’s waiting.” Then he put his finger to his lips.
Aimée trailed René down a narrow wooden staircase, lit by a single hanging bulb. Shelves of books and cardboard cartons filled the stone-walled cavern. A funeral wreath of dried flowers hung on one wall. Suspended from it was the blue, white, and red ribbon that indicated the deceased had been a war veteran. “An old Résistance hideout,” Jules said. “A cache for arms.”
“Funny how these days every place was a Résistance hideout,” René said under his breath.
Jules took a bottle from his pocket, uncorked it, and took a swig. He passed the bottle to Aimée. “Courage, Mademoiselle.”
“Merci.” She needed it. She wiped the rim with her sleeve and took a gulp to take the taste of blood from her mouth, then handed it to René.
“Use this,” Jules said, handing her the ribbon. She replaced René’s blood-soaked handkerchief with the ribbon, wrapping it tightly to stop her bleeding, wincing.
Jules pushed a carton aside with his rubber boot. He bent, stuck his finger into a ring in the floor, and pulled up a trapdoor. “This is as far as I go. Ladies first.”
Noise from the floor above sounded like a stampede of elephants. “Jules!” someone called.
“I have to go,” Jules said. “Cl
ose the door after you.”
Prepared for the damp, Aimée climbed down metal rungs and was surprised to find herself in a sandstone tunnel that was dry and relatively warm. Not at all like the sewer. She pulled out her penlight. It flickered and she shook it. She needed new batteries. A thin beam illuminated cables, red and yellow tubes running the length of the tunnel before they disappeared in the darkness.
“Where do we go?” René shone his torchlight beam alongside hers.
“Follow the yellow tubes,” she said. She noticed footprints on the loose grains of the sandstone floor.
“Is this part of the old quarries?” René asked.
Who knew what lay ahead? The mushroom cultivation industry had thrived underground in tunnels like this one until the end of the nineteenth century, a fact she remembered from science class. Even today, mushrooms were cultivated on a smaller scale under Montrouge.
“I’d guess this leads to the quarries.” It was hard to believe they were almost under the Seine. They walked for a few minutes. Along the way she noted regular gouges in the sandstone, evidence of pickaxes. They turned a corner and a light bobbed in front of them.
“Ça va?” said a man wearing a jumpsuit and a utility belt. He was dressed in knee-high rubber boots and a miner’s hat with a light on his head. She’d heard of these cataphiles, underground aficionados, who explored the quarries and sewers, held parties in them, and even camped out in them on the weekends.
“Have you seen Hélène, an older woman . . .”
“Not me,” he said. He took a sip from a bottle of water and grinned as if he’d run into them on the street. “Try the next cavern. Bonsoir.”
They rounded more corners in the winding tunnel and finally came to an open space. The shuffle of footsteps sounded from deep inside the dark cavern.
“Hélène?” Aimée’s voice echoed.
“Jean?” a woman’s voice quavered in reply.
