by Cara Black
“Monsieur Drieu—”
“Please, call me Gerard,” he interrupted. “No corroboration for our stringer’s story, big legal ramifications.” He shook his head. “Shop talk. Sorry, I’ll stop.”
But he’d set her thinking. “How many sources are required for a news story?”
“To verify?”
The waiter appeared.
“Monsieur?”
“A Vichy water, s’il vous plait.”
Drieu turned his attention back to her. She noticed the graying at his temples. Older than she’d thought, early forties maybe. “A minimum of two,” he said. “At least that’s our requirement.”
“So Yves would have needed two people to verify his exposé of the Yellow Crescent?”
“That doesn’t sound like a question,” he said with a tired smile. “But to anticipate your next question, at legal admin’s insistence, all files concerning Yves were routed to the Brigade.”
She blinked. For once, Rouffillac seemed to have been on the ball.
“His articles too?”
“That part, well, I know I said I’d look; but with the pressure I’ve been under at work, I haven’t had time to check.”
She had Yves’s draft, which Langois had given her. She hesitated to give it back. Yves had written it, touched it, spilled his coffee on it, and she couldn’t bear to part with it. Yet.
“Langois’s parents called from the morgue. . . . Terrible,” Drieu said. “Their only son.”
Aimée didn’t know what to say.
With a deft movement, the waiter flicked the metal bottle cap off and set the moisture-beaded Vichy water on the table. He poured it into a tall glass and discreetly disappeared.
“You don’t drink?”
“Not when I’ve got forest fires to put out.” He took a sip, then met her eyes. “I feel guilty.”
That he’d bought the idea that Yves had gone with a male hustler? That he hadn’t accessed Yves’s work? Or something else?
“How’s that?”
“I pride myself on listening. Actively listening, helping journalists. One referred to me as a father figure, but with Yves. . . .” He let out a small sigh. “He followed his own path. But I should have tried harder.”
“You mean in Ankara?”
“Yves worked in the field. He kept saying we needed to talk . . . but I didn’t push it, and that time never came.”
“But in that climate. . . .”
Drieu shook his head. “I was Admin chief for the Middle East bureau. Still, I should have been more on top of things.” He sat back, his eyes somewhere else. “But last month my wife had an accident.” He spoke in halting phrases, “. . . run over . . . in front of the house.”
She remembered Langois’s words. Drieu’s wife had walked out on him and then been hit by a truck.
“I’m so sorry,” Aimée said.
“I sympathize with you,” he said, sighing. “When it’s sudden, the loss is almost worse.”
He exuded a warmth she hadn’t felt before. Yes, he was a person one could talk to. And feel that he listened. But the cognac was making a mist of her thoughts.
“Did Yves ever talk about an Iranian Shi’a agenda involving the assassination of a Kurdish member of Parliament?”
He shrugged. “You asked me this before. But then, I’m in admin. Yves’s senior editor’s in Brussels covering a conference. From what I’ve heard, the Brigade’s in contact with him.”
Score another one for Rouffillac.
But Drieu must know something. She tried again. “Or did you discuss French government contracts for projects in Turkey?”
“What do you mean?”
She didn’t know what she meant; she was fishing.
“Articles he might have written concerning French contracts with the Turkish government that have not been picked up by the news wires.”
Drieu ran his finger around the glass’s edge. “I could put in a research department request. They have access to our complete database. It might take time. And that’s if he filed such stories. But why do you ask?”
For a moment she felt guilty about pressing him. After all, his job dealt with the administration side. And he was doing her a big favor to even offer to make a request to the research department.
Aimée said, “A source suggested to me that there may have been payoffs to keep these stories from appearing in the press.”
Drieu’s brows knit. “You know what you’re saying?”
“All I’m saying—” She paused, realizing she was asking a lot of Drieu, asking for information that even Georges had refused to give her.
“You want me to point a finger at a colleague or a senior staff member,” Drieu said. “And on what basis?”
He’d thought about it, she could tell. He hadn’t mentioned the Yellow Crescent threat again.
“If I had proof, I wouldn’t ask you.”
He sipped his Vichy water.
“Forgive me for insisting.” He must think she was obsessed. “But if a French firm stood to gain by relocating the Kurds and offered a bribe to suppress this information . . . ?”
His cell phone beeped, but he ignored it. “I imagine there’s a long line waiting for the Kurds to relocate: Germans, French, Swedes. You could point to any of them. There’s strong international competition for lucrative contracts. But . . .” he paused, “Yves threw himself into his work with a passion. I don’t need to tell you, but it’s just a feeling . . . hard to pinpoint, but I felt that, along the way, Yves became disenchanted.”
“Disenchanted?”
“With the Kurds, not with their cause but with their tactics.”
His cell phone kept beeping. He shrugged. “Excuse me. I have to answer this.”
Yves’s words came back to her: Nothing prepares you for . . . the red dust, baking heat, and the refugees . . . the children are the worst.
After a terse conversation, Drieu hung up.
“I’m sorry, now there’s a firestorm raging at work . . . I’ve got to go.”
He stood up and took her hand in his warm one. She wished instead that it was Yves’s comforting grip. But it never would be again.
Wednesday Night
“Desolé, Monsieur Friant,” said Boutarel, the real estate agent. He flicked his cell phone closed, then wiped a handkerchief over his brow. His seersucker jacket hung over his arm; a binder was held in his hand. “The owners received a higher offer half an hour ago.”
René’s shoulders sagged. The nineteenth-century building, its lighted windows like eyes, was out of his reach. Like everything else.
“We can raise your offer and see if it will be considered,” he said. “But there are no guarantees.”
If only he’d trusted his instinct, convinced Aimée, made a higher offer even though he didn’t have the necessary capital.
“Let’s keep in touch.” The real estate agent shook his hand and then his footsteps echoed on the cobbles.
Dejected, René headed to his car. A motorcycle whined past. Patrons left the cafés closing along the dimly lit boulevard; a waiter was stacking rattan café chairs when a young woman bumped into René.
“Pardonnez-moi,” she said. Her blond shag-cut hair was at odds with an olive complexion. She wore a lime tank top and jeans. A backpack hung from her shoulders. She stood close, a head taller than him, and her arm brushed his. “I’m looking for the New Morning.”
“The jazz club?” René asked.
“I love jazz.” She smiled. A bright smile for that time of the evening.
“Just around the corner. Look.” René pointed toward an unprepossessing metal door on rue des Petites Ecuries, the old haunt of Chet Baker and Miles Davis.
For a moment, he had the strangest feeling that she was trying to pick him up. It didn’t happen often. Flattered, he was about to show her the way when a foyer light blinked on. Two laughing couples spilled from the apartment building, crowding the pavement near them. The couples engaged in multiple cheek-kiss
ing and loud good-nights with promises to meet tomorrow, punctuated by gusts of pungent red wine. And then René realized she’d gone, turned the corner.
Disappointed for the second time that night, he reached into his linen jacket pocket for his keys. He clutched them, and then reached for the money clip in his inside jacket pocket. Gone.
She was good. He wanted to kick himself. A professional pickpocket.
He hurried to the corner, ignoring the sharp pain in his hip. The humid dampness exacerbated his hip dysplasia, the curse of dwarfism. A line coiled out the New Morning Club door. He heard the moan of a saxophone and thrum of a snare drum but saw no blond in line or on the street.
From past experience, he’d kept his carte d’identité and credit cards in a pouch inside his trousers. He took precautions even with his black belt. Late night invited thugs eager to pick on someone smaller than themselves.
Chalk it up to a pretty face and his distraction. Dumb. Weary, he pulled the Citroën in front of the ATM near his street to get cash. Only then did he realize that his business cards were gone, too.
Wednesday Night
NADIRA CLIMBED THE narrow spiral staircase. A single naked bulb cast a harsh light over the warped landing illuminating the business card she held in her hand. It read, LEDUC DETECTIVE, 18 RUE DU LOUVRE. No wonder, she thought. The woman was a detective. And now a plan formed, almost by itself, in her head. Easy.
She rapped on the third door. “Mouna?”
She heard shuffling, then the door edged open. A dark-eyed smiling woman wearing a head scarf stood in the doorway. Light behind her revealed a yellow-walled room and a galley kitchen with a beaded curtain separating the rooms.
“I knew you’d do it, Nadira.” She reached out and grasped Nadira’s cold hands, pulling her inside. “You’ve left him this time, haven’t you?” The question hovered in the rose-water-tinged air of the apartment. A photo of the bearded imam and gold verses from the Koran embroidered on maroon velvet were framed on the wall. Doors led to other rooms where Mouna’s family slept.
“This time for good, Mouna,” Nadira said. She gave a little sob and rubbed her eyes.
Mouna wanted to help. Needed to help. That formed the core of her being. She was determined to succor Nadira, to rescue her from an abusive boyfriend. A French boyfriend, an infidel. Mouna believed the tales Nadira had fed her after the Koran study meetings at the mosque.
“I have nowhere else to go, Mouna,” she said.
Helpless. Mouna needed to see her helpless. Desperate.
“I left him. But with no job. . . .”
“Sit down, Nadira.” Mouna gestured to the low cushions on the floor. Next to them lay a leather-bound Koran and a small turquoise-green Egyptian glass kohl bottle. “We’ll help you.”
“Does your brother Rachid still work at the hotel?”
“He’s been promoted. Now he’s at the front desk.” Mouna squeezed Nadira’s shoulders, a smile of pride on her round face. ”He’ll find you a position. They’re always short-staffed, especially now.”
Perfect.
“Nadira, think of this as your home. Haven’t I told you before that you could always stay here?”
Nadira brushed away her tears, careful to set down her heavy pack holding the rifle parts before Mouna could take it. “You’re so good-hearted, Mouna. I mean it this time. It’s over.”
“The Koran teaches us, Nadira. Allah’s words tell us to aid those in need. My sister will sleep with me. You can have her place.”
“Merci, Mouna.”
“You’re safe, Nadira. He won’t find you here.”
Nor will anyone else, Nadira thought.
Wednesday Midnight
AIMÉE LEANED AGAINST the Napoleon-era headboard with its bee motif. Miles Davis was snoring beside her on the bed’s folded-down duvet. Despite the algae-scented breeze rising from the moonlit Seine, the smooth cotton sheets, and a glass of chilled Volvic water, nothing alleviated her feeling of hollowness.
The effects of the brandy she’d consumed earlier that evening had worn off. She tried to clear her mind and concentrate on the night sounds: the rustling leaves of the plane trees lining the quai, the wavelets from a passing barge slapping on the stone bank. But clarity eluded her.
She stared at the amulet, the embroidered cloth with worn Ottoman coins, wondering what to do next.
Drieu said Yves had grown disenchanted with the Kurds. She suddenly remembered the envelope Kat had given her. She sat up and found it in her bag. Opening it, she saw a stapled Amnesty International report filled with pages of Kurdish refugee stories. Horrific testimonies of destroyed villages and inhabitants fleeing Turkish military forces. A photograph of a woman’s dirt-stained, ravaged face as she sat in the medical tent. What Aimée read shook her. “My eyes saw only the past. The memories of the apricot tree, the branches heavy with fruit, an entire kilo in one cluster as my grandfather would say. I was sitting on the steps of the house my grandfather had built, holding the keys to a house that no longer existed, broken stones and dirt now all that was left. Why does the world not witness this genocide?”
She tried to understand why a Shi’a Muslim group would try to kill a Sunni Muslim woman who stood for Kurdish rights. And what reason might they have had for murdering Yves?
Both the Sunnis and Shi’as were Muslim, but they were divided. What made them different? She pulled her father’s robe around her and went to the library, a high-ceilinged room she seldom used, lined by bookshelves filled with musty volumes and a complete set of Michelin guides from 1945 through 1990. The sagging chandelier emitted a dim light; all but two bulbs had burned out. Too bad she didn’t have a ladder. She found the thick leather-bound book about world religions next to a much-thumbed copy of the Civil Code 1956.
She lugged it to her bed and lay back next to a sleeping Miles Davis. Islam comprised a fat chapter. After skimming several pages, she found the basic explanation. Islam was founded by Mohammed in the seventh century and evolved into two branches, Sunnis and Shi’as.
The Sunnis believed that the first four caliphs— Mohammed’s successors—took his place and that the heirs of each of the four caliphs were legitimate religious leaders, while the Shi’as believed that only the heirs of the fourth caliph, Ali, were legitimate successors to Mohammed.
Was this at the root of their division? She read further. In theory, Sunnis believed that the leader—imam—should be selected on the basis of communal consensus as to a leader’s individual merits, while the Shi’as believed that it was the line of imams descended from Ali who had the right to interpret religious, mystical, and legal knowledge to the broader community. The most learned among these teachers were known as ayatollahs and mullahs.
Were these differences so great that each side of the schism hated the other? But then was that so different from the sects of Judaism, of Christianity, or of Buddhism?
None of this told her what the current Shi’a and Sunni conflicts were about.
The phone rang once. Stopped. Then rang three times. Apprehensive, she let her voicemail answer. She heard René’s voice being recorded.
“Aimée, if you’re still up. . . .”
As if she could sleep. She picked up the phone.
“You’re home?” René asked. “Everything okay?”
She stared at the amulet in the duvet folds. She wished it was. “Oui, René,” she told him.
“The owner took another offer, Aimée,” said René. She heard the disappointment in his voice.
She stifled her relief. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” he said.
She had rarely known him to be so disappointed.
“You’re a typical Parisian, content to rent and pay the landlord’s mortgage.”
Typical? Anything but. A misfit, like René. An outsider. She had a mother she didn’t know and had been raised by a father who’d done his best, between police stakeouts, to pick her up after school.
But she didn’t want to arg
ue. The selfish part of her felt glad he’d missed out. The other part was sorry it hadn’t worked out for him.
“Other opportunities will arise, René,” she said. “The right place and the right time will dovetail.”
He snorted. “Fine for you to say, you own—”
“Correction, inherited my grandfather’s apartment,” she said. “Along with the seventeenth-century plumbing, archaic electrical fuses, a chandelier I can’t reach to replace the bulbs, and holes in the wall that I can’t afford to pay my contractor to close.”
A siren wailed in the background. She sensed that something else underlay his anger.
“What’s wrong, René?”
“If I tell you, you’ll say it’s a good thing the offer didn’t work out, that the area’s dicey. . . .”
“What happened?”
There was a brief silence. “A pickpocket. Professional,” he finally said.
Her anger mounted. This wasn’t the first time. She hated that thieves picked on René.
“How much?”
“Not important.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“The disturbing part is that my business cards are gone,” he said. “And it was a woman. But that’s not why I called. Remember the Fontainebleu problems? I found the new receptionist who fell for the trick—”
“Why do I feel you’re really calling about something else, René?”
He drew a breath. “To safeguard the account, I could set up a proxy server, register a domain by entering a fake credit card number and address. The usual.”
“For Fontainebleu? That requires time and work.”
Light years ahead of the hacker pack, he still amazed her. She heard him clicking the keys. Then a pause.
“Regarding Fontainebleu, simple works best,” she said. “Just as you always say. Give her a lesson, security 101.”
She heard him sigh. But the idea intrigued him. He loved to crack puzzles.
“You’re magic at security, René.”
“It’s not just that. I’m worried about the security services tracking you.”