Matt pushed himself up. A woman with warm brown eyes and bright red lipstick gave him her hand. “Monsieur, comment allez-vous?”
“It’s the USB key,” he said. “They…I have to…”
“Au secours!” she shouted at a man standing nearby. “Appelez l’samu!”
“No, no.” Matt was on his feet now, watching Pierre drive the taxi toward him. It had made a U-turn. They were coming back for him. He had to get away.
He grabbed the woman’s arm. “I’m in trouble. Can you help me?”
She stared at him. “Pourquoi?”
“That taxi. Right there! Those men are trying to kill me!”
She studied the taxi for a moment, and then she looked at Matt again, her coffee eyes assessing.
“Oui,” she said. “Come, please.”
Grabbing his shoulders, she pivoted him toward the crowded bistro. “Tout droit,” she urged. “Straight ahead, we go.”
The sea of onlookers parted, and Matt hobbled on his bruised hip through the clutter of café tables and chairs on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.
“Arrêtez!” someone called from behind as the woman hurried Matt into the cool darkness of the dining room, where patrons looked up from their midmorning coffee, pastries and cigarettes. He glanced over his shoulder to see Billy just ahead of the two Agrimax men, all racing toward him.
“C’mon, Billy!” Matt shouted as the woman shoved him through swinging doors into a busy kitchen.
“Pardon!” she called, giving the chef and his assistants a fluttering wave of her red fingernails.
Hurrying behind, Dr. Sloane and Pierre yelled commands in French, but no one made a move to help.
“Mattman, don’t leave me!” Billy called out.
Matt thought about pausing for his friend to catch up. How many times had Billy protected him? But he couldn’t risk losing the USB key. Besides, Agrimax had no reason to harm Billy, so his friend was better off without him.
The brown-eyed woman led Matt through the back door of the bistro and into a narrow alley. She moved with surprising speed, her sharp-heeled black shoes clattering on the cobblestones. “Come! Come, monsieur!”
Matt gritted his teeth and ran through the pain in his hip and arm. He had to get away. Had to keep the key safe. Had to find the right person to give it to. Lord, help me! he lifted up a prayer as he raced around a corner and back out onto the street.
“Mattman, wait up!” Billy’s voice carried down the alley. He sounded forlorn, like a little boy.
The woman double-timed it up a set of stone steps, shoved a key into the lock on a tall, gray door, and vanished through the opening. Matt followed, and she slammed the door behind him.
Instead of standing inside a house as he had expected, he found he had slipped into another world. Like Lucy who wriggled through a coat-filled wardrobe into the mystical land of Narnia, Matt had left the smog and traffic of Paris and stepped into the Garden of Eden. A marbled courtyard surrounded him, a large open area with a round fountain in the middle and a statue of a fat naked man spewing water from his mouth. Lanterns hung from trees, and a table with two chairs made an intimate grouping in one corner. Stunned, Matt gaped at the array of potted fruit trees, flowers, hanging baskets, trailing blooms and rows of red-and-pink roses.
A woman’s voice interrupted his reverie. “Voilà! They will pass.” His rescuer brushed a hank of thick brown hair from her eyes and blew out a breath. “Why do you run from these men, eh?”
Matt suddenly felt the pain in his hip, the sting on his arm, the loss of Billy. He lifted his arm to find a swath of reddened, torn skin that was oozing blood. Rats! He had blown it again. Big-time. He had the key, but he didn’t have Billy or Josiah Karume. And he didn’t have the slightest idea what to do next. Why did God let these things happen to him? Matt was doing the right thing, wasn’t he? He had prayed about this almost every minute. So why did nothing ever go the way it was supposed to?
“Monsieur?” The woman stepped closer. She frowned at his arm, then let out a cluck of dismay. “Genevieve! Genevieve!”
A plump older woman wearing a black uniform and a white apron bustled into the courtyard. The brown-eyed woman gave her maid a set of instructions in French, and moments later Matt was ushered into a huge room with long panes of glass, gold couches, gold chairs, deep red rugs, a chandelier with a thousand crystal droplets, and big bouquets of fresh flowers everywhere. Dazed, he stared at the furnishings until Genevieve the maid came back into the room with a tray that held a pitcher of water, a tube of medicine and a white bandage. Before he knew it, she had washed his arm thoroughly and bandaged it up.
“Better?” The thin, brown-eyed woman entered the room and waved him into a chair. Seating herself on one of the sofas, she drew out a long cigarette and lit it from a tabletop lighter. Then she inhaled deeply, tossed her head back and blew the smoke upward. Matt wondered if she was a movie star or a fashion model. She slipped off her black, pointy-toed, pointy-heeled shoes and tucked her long legs under her. The outfit she had on—a brown sweater and tight brown skirt—made her look elegant.
Matt suddenly wished he weren’t so scruffy. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for helping me. Uh…mercy.”
“Merci!” She shook her head and rolled her eyes at his attempt to speak French. “Your name, please?”
“Matthew Strong,” he answered before realizing he should have made something up.
“Enchanté, I am Clotilde Loiseau. I live here.” She swept her hand around the room, and he got the impression there were a lot more rooms in this fancy house that hid behind a plain gray door. “I take my morning café at the bistro where you fell out of the taxi.”
“Okay.” Matt knew he ought to say something polite, but he wasn’t sure what. So he just nodded.
She pursed her lips, and he could tell she wasn’t impressed with him in the least. But who ever was?
“Now please explain to me, Monsieur Strong. Why do you fall out of the taxi, and why do the men chase you? Are you a thief?”
“No.” He shrugged. “Well, sort of.”
“You come all the way from America to steal from taxi passengers? You are a pickpocket?”
He couldn’t help but smile at the image. “No…see, I have some data. My friend downloaded it onto a USB key.” He didn’t know why he trusted the brown-eyed woman, but he slipped the small apparatus from his pocket. “A company—a business—has done some wrong things, you know? And I have the evidence here.”
“Let me see.”
For some reason, he handed her the USB key. She looked it over. “For the storage of computer technologie?”
“Yes,” he said. “Oui.”
“Your friend copied the information about the bad company? And where do you take it?”
“I came to Paris to give it to Josiah Karume. He’s the chairman of I-FEED. It’s an organization that—”
“Food. Aha.” She waved her cigarette around in the air. “A big conference was here in Paris last week. But now, they go.”
“You know about I-FEED?”
“Oui, of course. My husband is…how you say?—His company is making helicopters. Not helicopters, eh? Only the…” She spun her finger around and around in a circle.
“The blades?”
“Non. The part inside. The machinery to make it turn, oui?”
“The rotor.”
“These helicopters are purchased by military, private, also I-FEED and other humanitarian organizations. You understand? I-FEED and the others, they use the helicopters for transporting food. We meet these clients sometimes. They come here, or to our home in Provence. It is business only, oui? But we hear what they are doing.”
She waggled the USB key, and Matt really wished he hadn’t let her hold it. “So tell me, Monsieur Strong, why does I-FEED need this technologie? And why do they use a young boy to transport such information?”
Matt moistened his lips, his eyes on the key. “I-FEED doesn’t know I’m t
he one who has the information. I’m doing this because…” He realized his whole explanation was going to sound lame to this elegant lady. All the same, he sucked down a breath and launched into it.
“God wants us to feed the hungry. Three big food companies control the world’s food supply—Agrimax, Progrow and Megafarm—and all they care about is making money. They make sure the rich get to eat, which leaves the poor to starve. That’s wrong.”
“Oui,” she said.
Heartened by her response, Matt continued. “Jesus said, ‘I was hungry, and you fed Me. When you did it to one of the least of these My brothers and sisters, you were doing it to Me!’ I believe the only way to really feed the world’s hungry is to get these big food companies to stop withholding supplies.”
The woman stared at him, her brow creased as she puffed on her cigarette.
“They don’t care about Jesus,” Matt went on, “and they sure don’t care about the starving children. So to get their attention, we have to threaten to expose their practices to the public. Agrimax is planning to merge with the other two companies and take over management of their resources and subsidiaries. This will give Agrimax complete control over the global food supply. And that means they’ll have tons of power to do whatever they want.”
“Oh, my.”
“The trouble is, Agrimax does just enough humanitarian work to look good. Not enough to solve the problem, but enough to get the good PR—that means public relations.”
“This I understand.”
“My friend Mr. Banyon, he knew what they were up to, because he used to work for them. So he downloaded the evidence, but they killed him before he could get it to the public. They shot him and made it look like suicide. I went to his house and…and…found him. He was dead.”
His eyes filling with the dreaded tears, Matt focused on Mrs. Loiseau. She was staring at him like he was an alien or something. As if she’d never met anyone so strange in her whole life.
She drew down a last big lungful of cigarette smoke and mashed the butt in a crystal bowl on a curvy-legged table near the gold sofa. Then she lifted the hem of her sweater, and for a second, Matt thought she was going to take out a gun and shoot him. But it was a cell phone.
Punching some numbers, she studied the USB key in her lap. Matt thought about grabbing it and taking off. That’s what he should do. He should snatch it from her lap and run.
“Who’re you calling, Mrs. Loiseau?” he asked, feeling anxious. “Don’t call the police. Please, I—”
“My husband,” she mouthed, her painted lips forming the words. When her husband answered, she began speaking in French, holding up the key as if the man on the other end could see it as she waved her red-nailed fingers around in the air. She said oui-oui about fifteen times, and it sounded like way-way. After a while, she stopped talking, lit another cigarette and drummed her nails on the table. When she spoke again, it was to say, “Merci,” and then she hung up.
“Josiah Karume,” she announced. “He is headquartered in Sudan, but he travels everywhere in Africa. My husband finds his current location.”
Before Matt could even start to think about what to say next, a butler stepped into the room and told her something, all the while glancing warily at Matt. Mrs. Loiseau let out a bark of anger.
“The men who chase you,” she informed him, “they ask about me at the bistro. And now they find the address of my house.” She pulled another cigarette from a slim gold case on the table. “They tell my valet they will inform the police. They say you are a fugitive—that you run from America because you murdered somebody.”
“I didn’t! I swear I didn’t kill Mr. Banyon—”
“Arrêtez!” She held up a hand. “I shall send them away. Stay here.”
She stood, slipped her long, elegant feet into her pointy-toed shoes and walked across the room carrying the key. Matt thought he was going to faint.
“Wait—you can’t give them that!” he said, following her out into the courtyard. “I have to take it to I-FEED. I’ve come all this way—”
“Go back into the house, Matthew Strong,” she hissed. “Do it now!”
Matt couldn’t obey. He hung near the fountain with the fat statue and watched as the valet opened the long gray door for Mrs. Loiseau. There stood Dr. Sloane and Pierre—and Billy.
“Billy!” Matt blurted.
“Mattman!” Like a demented linebacker, Billy bulldozed right through the two Agrimax men and barreled past Mrs. Loiseau. She gave a shriek, then began shouting at the men as she jabbed with the USB key. Her valet lunged forward, slammed the door and dropped an iron bar across it. He swung around and went after Billy, but Matt spread his arms to protect his friend.
“It’s okay!” he shouted. “He’s with me.”
Madame Loiseau called off her valet. The man stood back as she struck a pose, lit her cigarette and inhaled deeply. She brushed back her brown hair and tottered across the courtyard, hips swaying in her brown skirt.
“Who is this boy?” She pointed at Billy.
“He’s my friend,” Matt said. “He came with me from America.”
“Je m’appelle William Younger, madame,” Billy said. “Enchanté.”
She laughed. “What kind of French do they teach in America? C’est mauvais!” Beckoning the boys, she strode toward the house again. “The men will return. I shall take you to the home of my sister. Follow me quickly.”
Matt glanced at Billy, glad to have him back. More than glad.
“Mrs. Loiseau,” Matt said as she led them through a series of rooms, all of them furnished as if the king of France himself lived there. “Mrs. Loiseau, why are you doing this? Why are you helping me?”
She halted and stubbed out her cigarette in one of the dozens of crystal ashtrays scattered around her house. Her brown eyes clouded for a moment as she gazed at Matt. She glanced away, her lower lip trembling. Then she shrugged.
“You are a boy,” she said. “What you have told me is too…how would you say?…too much complication to be a lie.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Monsieur Strong—” she set her hands on her hips “—if God chooses to send you help, shall you ask Him why?”
Matt gawked at her, trying to see the chain-smoking, shouting Frenchwoman as a helper from God. But she was vanishing down a staircase, and he knew he’d follow her anywhere.
THIRTEEN
Jill woke to the warble of her telephone. For a moment she thought the sound was coming from her TV set. She reached for the remote control, realized she was in her bedroom and lifted the receiver.
“Miss Pruitt, this is Matt Strong,” a husky voice said. “I’m in your computer tech class. You know?”
“Of course I know.” Jill sat upright and fumbled for the switch on her lamp. “Matt, where are you?”
“Well, I’m in Paris with Billy Younger. Weird, huh? I can tell you that because Agrimax already found out. They thought they’d caught us, but we got away, thanks to a lady who—”
“Matt, where in Paris are you?”
“We’re not staying here in France, Miss Pruitt. We’re going someplace else.”
“Where?”
“I can’t tell you. But, Miss Pruitt, will you please talk to my dad and tell him not to come looking for me? I’ll be home in a few days. Tell him I’m sorry about the credit card, and I’ll get a job and pay him back. And that I feel really bad about him making that trip to Mexico—”
“Matt, your father is already on his way to Paris to find you!” Jill tried to keep a tone of hysteria from her voice. “I mean right now he’s driving to Lubbock to get on a plane and fly over there.”
“How’d he find out I was in Paris?”
“We knew you went to Mexico to look for Hector Diaz, and we learned that he’d gone to France for a conference. Then Josefina told us you came home and got your passport.”
“She told?”
“Matt, this isn’t a game. You’re in a lot of trouble, young man. Yo
ur father is flying to Paris, and you have got to stay put!”
“I can’t, Miss Pruitt. Billy and I…we just have to do this one thing, and then we can come home. And Mrs. Loiseau—I can say her name because they already know it—she’s helping us.”
“Who? Who’s helping you?” Jill rummaged in the drawer of her bedside table for paper and pen.
“Mrs. Loiseau. Clotilde Loiseau. She’s nice, even though she’s kind of…well, you’d just have to meet her. Anyhow, this is her phone, and she’s not going to make me pay for the call, but it’s long-distance, you know? Like really long-distance. So I’ve gotta go—”
“Matthew Strong, don’t you dare hang up.” Jill put on her sternest teacher voice. “I want to know this minute where you’re going!”
“Miss Pruitt, they’ve got your phone tapped. If I say anything, they’ll know. It’s not like I don’t want to tell you, but—”
“Matt—”
“Billy’s talking to me…just a sec.” He paused. “Okay, Miss Pruitt, you remember the paper trail?”
Jill reflected on the moment in Geneva Strong’s house when they had figured out paper trail referred to Matt’s term paper on hunger relief. “Yes, I remember.”
“Okay, the person we’re going to see is my third source.”
“I see.”
“So you’re good?”
“Matt, I wish you would stay in Paris. Please let your father help—”
“No, no. Don’t let him come. Do whatever you can to stop him, Miss Pruitt.”
“He loves you, Matt. He loves you so much. You know, he nearly died in Mexico.”
“Died?”
“We were in a terrible car wreck. Agrimax people drove us off the road, and your father was badly injured. This is not a lark, Matt. This is serious business. You need to stay where you are and let an adult help you.”
“Yeah, Mrs. Loiseau is—”
“You need your father, not a stranger you just met. And your dad needs you, Matt. He really does. Stay with Mrs. Loiseau until he gets there. Then the two of you can—”
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