by Cara Black
“What?”
“I overheard the chief talking,” René said. “They found several carte d’identité’s on Nadira; they know she’s Iranian.”
She recalled the little girl’s words about the Tehran mosque, the timing of prayers.
“Iranian? It’s political, but. . . .”
“And the rash of Metro bombings aren’t?”
Still it didn’t fit, they were jumping to conclusions, clutching at the most convenient terrorist explanation. “Nadira’s a trained assassin.”
“Right, a hit woman,” René said. “She murdered Yves when he got wind of her mission to assassinate Jalenka.” He looked at his feet. “I’m sorry I ever doubted you, Aimee.”
But Aimée still had doubts. Maybe Nadira hadn’t known Yves; maybe she hadn’t killed him.
“I’m not sure, René.”
“What do you mean? Jalenka’s name was in Yves’s wallet, her chador—”
And then it hit her. Aimee shook her head. “Nadira’s short.”
“What?”
“She didn’t know who Yves was—”
“You believed her?”
“How could she have gotten here so quickly from rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, changed, and tied Jalenka up? It feels wrong.”
Exasperation shone in René’s large green eyes. “The liquor’s gotten to you.”
No. For once, it had made her head clearer.
“It wasn’t her.”
“Your imagination’s run amok.”
She didn’t think so.
“They spoke with a Monsieur Delbard who’d employed Nadira as his son’s nanny,” Aimée said. “He’d dropped his son and Nadira at Canal Saint-Martin to feed the ducks a few minutes after twelve. Nadira couldn’t have killed Langois at noon in the Gare du Nord.”
It wasn’t over. She had to find the truth. She took off the ice compress; her shoulder, swollen and bruised, throbbed.
René knew pain, living with hip dysplasia. She had to convince him.
“Will you help me? Just try to do what I tell you, and it will work.”
“Let them take care of you at the hospital,” he said.
“René, if you won’t, I’ll do it myself and you’ll get to watch.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“When I say three, rotate it counter-clockwise.”
He hesitated. “The last thing I want to do is to hurt you, Aimée.”
And she saw the strangest look in his eyes. A fleeting look she couldn’t decipher.
“I’ve hurt you already by not believing you.”
“Can’t you pretend it’s a socket wrench and you’re putting the lugnuts back on your tire, nice and quick?”
“A socket wrench?”
“As my best friend, you’ll do this for me, right?”
He just stood there, linen sheets and feather pillows piled on the shelves behind him.
She steeled herself. She’d have to do it herself before the drink wore off. And then she felt René’s sure hand. She took the deepest breath she could.
“One, two, and three.” And he pulled and rotated her arm.
Pain flashed through her. And then her shoulder popped into place in its socket.
René reached for the restoratif. “I need a taste of that.”
She eased her arm into the sleeve of her denim jacket and edged off the table, wincing.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said.
“But Rouffillac wants to talk with you.”
“He’s the last person I want to see right now.”
But she was wrong.
OUTSIDE, A FLURRY of journalists stood near the ambulance. Aimée saw news crews, cameras trained on the hotel, and kept walking. “Mademoiselle, Monsieur . . . a few questions please.”
She shielded her face with her hand until a figure blocked her way. “Mademoiselle, is it true the attempted assasination of Jalenka Malat is linked to the Metro bombing incident this afternoon?”
She looked up to find a camera in her face.
“Excuse me.”
“Any comments on the rumor that Islamic terrorists are planning to strike the entire transportation system—”
“Let me pass, please.” She didn’t need her face on the télé again for the jihadists to see.
“She’s the one,” said a voice behind the camera.
“Can you confirm that you prevented Jalenka Malat’s assassination and were attacked yourself?” She pushed her way around him. Several flics provided interference; then she broke away and strode down the street.
A FEW BLOCKS away, near Gare du Nord, René took off in first gear, one hand on the hot steering wheel, the other wiping his brow with his monogrammed linen handkerchief.
She leaned back, fighting waves of dizziness. The medic’s pain medication, the ache in her shoulder, the restoratif, and the heat had gotten to her.
“You’re very pale, Aimée,” René said.
Small shooting pains ran up her arm. She held her breath and they subsided, merging into a dull ache.
“Want to hear some good news?” René asked.
She sat up.
“The Fountainbleu account’s back on track,” he said. “And it should stay that way after my mini security seminar.”
“Bravo, René.” And, not for the first time, she wondered what she’d do without him. “What’s the bad news?”
René sucked in his breath. “Morbier left you a message at the office.”
“He’s back?”
“And not too happy,” René said.
No wonder. Probably angry at her subterfuge; she’d used his name to obtain suspect information from the Brigade’s report on Yves’s death without authorization. But right now, she needed to go home, rest her shoulder, and sleep.
“He’s waiting for you.” René’s green eyes blinked. “At the Brigade Criminelle.”
Little fingers of apprehension tugged at her.
She wanted to soak her shoulder in a hot tub. She could contact him later.
René honked at a bicyclist darting into his lane. “You can’t fob him off, Aimée.”
Why not, she almost said. “I’ll call him later.”
“His message indicated that if you hadn’t shown up in two hours, he’d arrange for an escort to pick you up. His words.”
All she needed right now: an irate Morbier.
“Drop me at 36, quai des Orfevres,” she said. “I’ll talk with him.”
“You do that,” René said. “I’ll do some work back at the office.” Something like relief shone in his eyes.
AIMÉE PAU S E D I N mid-step at the pockmarked stone prefecture and flashed her ID at the police sentry box.
“Not so fast, Mademoiselle,” said the flic, catching her elbow and speaking into a walkie-talkie. “Attendez, s’il vous plait.”
Heightened security? Or did Morbier have a surprise for her? She stood, shifting her heels, wishing this meeting was over and she could go home.
The préfecture’s façade caught the light under spun-cotton white clouds floating in a cerulean blue sky. Citrus scents from the flowering linden trees carried from across the Seine. On the Pont Saint-Michel, a kaleidoscope of bicyclists, cars, and pedestrians streamed to the Left Bank. Peaceful, picture-perfect, until a blue-and-white police car screeched to a halt on the cobblestones. The flic opened the back door.
“Your chariot awaits, Mademoiselle.”
“But, I’m meeting with . . .”
“Commissaire Morbier’s waiting.”
TEN MINUTES LATER , the car halted three blocks away from the hotel she’d left less than half an hour ago. No matter what, she kept being drawn back to the tenth arrondis-sement.
The flic, guiding her by the elbow, escorted her to a resto on the corner of rue des Messageries. The maroon wooden façade, adorned by black wrought-iron grillework with finials of lances and pineapples in front of the windows, hadn’t changed since the Revolution.
Inside, at the old-sty
le elevated cashier’s desk, a woman sat, a chocolate-colored Labrador stretched out by her feet.
“Bonjour,” said Aimée.
She raised her thin black-penciled brows. “He’s in the rear salon, Mademoiselle,” she said, and waved an age-spotted hand in dismissal.
A white-haired man rushed past her with a plate of steaming skate. “This way,” he said. “If you please.”
Morbier, with a white napkin tucked in his collar, sat below a tarnished beveled mirror. From the foodstains on the napkin, she could read the menu. Pale skin around his basset-hound eyes highlighted the tan of his forehead and jowls. Sunglasses perched on his thick salt-and-pepper combed-back hair. He was relaxed, wearing a light blue suit, tanned . . . she’d never seen him like this.
“About time, Leduc!” Using his knife and fork, he deboned a fish, separating spine from flesh, with an expert flick of his wrist. Lining the walls on the faded flocked velvet wallpaper were yellowed prints of guillotinings. They didn’t seem to cramp Morbier’s appetite.
“So you wanted a command performance, Morbier?” She sat in the black-lacquered ladder-back chair, keeping her hands steady with effort as she poured some Vittel into a water glass. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“Tiens, you’re a celebrity, Leduc,” he said, spearing a morsel of succulent white fish. “Every time I see the télé, you’re on it.”
She looked down into her lap. “Since when do you go on vacation?”
As if he didn’t have the right to take some time off. She wanted to bite back those petulant-little-girl words as soon as she said them.
“Use it or lose it, they said.” He ignored her tone. “I found a great three-city package to Agadir, Marrakech, and Fez.”
“Morocco?” She stared, open-mouthed. He’d never before left France.
Morbier set a photo on the white tablecloth. It showed him with his arm around Marc, his half-Moroccan grandson, on a sand-dusted street in front of a minaret.
“Marc’s grown,” she said.
“They do that,” he said, with a sigh.
So that’s why he’d gone. Marc’s Moroccan grandparents had custody. They must have relented to let Morbier visit. “If the mountains won’t go to Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to the minaret? That it?”
“Something like that,” Morbier said. “Which reminds me.” He groped in his jacket pocket and set another photo on the tablecloth. “Seems you had a close encounter with her.”
Nadira’s almond-eyed face stared back at her. Number 4351, read the tag hanging from her neck in the mug shot.
“Closer than I wanted.” She rubbed her shoulder. “Who is she?”
“Shareen Fekret, aka Nadira Abouz. A sleeper in a jihadist network. Activated this week.”
So that’s what this was about.
“You’re saying that you didn’t know about her?”
“The DST didn’t,” Morbier said. “And you’ve stepped on some pretty big toes, Leduc.”
She didn’t need him to tell her that. So far, he hadn’t mentioned her using his name at the Brigade. With luck, he wouldn’t find out.
“What else is new, Morbier?”
“Voulez-vous desirez, Mademoiselle?” a waiter asked.
She gestured to a lavender petal-decorated crème brulée on the dessert tray.
“So you’re taking all the food groups, Leduc. Dairy, floral. . . .”
“Look, Morbier, if that’s all. . . .” She folded the napkin, about to cancel her order and stand up.
“But I’ve got a babysitting job.”
“Marc’s come back with you?”
He set down his fish knife. “You, Leduc.”
“Me?”
“For your own sake, and to guarantee that you stay out of trouble.”
She shook her head. “You mean keep out of the DST’s way.”
“Like I said, for your own sake. Seems you stepped on the jihadists’ toes too. They put a lot of effort into arranging Nadira’s cover; they had great plans for her.”
The skin prickled on the back of her neck.
“Maybe. But she didn’t kill Yves.”
His brown eyes flashed. “Since when do you use my name to try and access a police report, eh?”
“Let me explain, Morbier,” she said.
“Make it good, Leduc.”
And then she told him.
Before she could finish, he handed her a newspaper article in Turkish.
“Going to translate, Morbier?”
“Sorry, wrong one.”
Did everyone understand Turkish but her?
He pulled out a version in French. “Osman Edlick’s a famous columnist in the most widely read paper in Turkey. And in the palm of the military. Last week he wrote this column about a ‘hero.’ A Yellow Crescent hit man shot in Iran.”
He paused and forked a parsleyed, buttered slice of potato.
“Seems you’ve heard of the Yellow Crescent, Leduc?”
She nodded. His basset-hound eyes watched her.
“But this ‘hero’s’ last job in Europe, taking care of those offensive to the Turkish military, was more than a year ago.”
“So?” But that corroborated Kat’s comments about the fatwa on him; how funds for hit teams had dried up.
“But, and the article mentions this, he was a Shi’a. Interpol confirms that known Iranian jihadists appeared last week at his funeral,” Morbier said. He took a last bite and set down his fork. “Other than that, the connection remains unclear.”
“What do you mean?”
“Pick any term you like: fluid, many-headed Hydra monsters; independent sleeper terrorist cells; jihadists following their own agenda.”
“Meaning random actions with no central command?”
He shrugged. “Or maybe a united mission to destroy the West has rallied disparate groups. That’s the current idea.”
“But the DST insist that it was the Algerian GIA that bombed the Metro and the Marseilles airliner and that Nadira worked for them.”
He raised an arm. “Alphonse, une crème brulée aussi, s’il vous plait.
“That’s for public consumption, Leduc. And I never said that.”
The impact of his words hit home. She was terrified. It would be like trying to swat a swarm of killer bees who flew from different hives.
“Since when does a Commissaire like you have access to such information? Does it involve Groupe R?”
Silence except for the scrape of his spoon on the porcelain crème brulée ramekin.
“The less you know, the better.”
She didn’t get his connection with the intelligence service. “The DST’s run by the Interior Ministry. It’s a different branch. . . .”
He had never been one to give out information, so it surprised her to see him sit back and grin. “Let’s just say that during the Cold War, I proved helpful. You do remember the Cold War, Leduc?”
The Berlin Wall, espionage, Le Carré novels. The implication staggered her. A man who left half his lunch on his napkin, darned his own socks, a dyed-in-the-wool Socialist . . . a spy? Her godfather, who’d played Santa on Christmas mornings until she’d pulled his beard off.
His expression changed. “According to certain Interpol reports, Leduc, you’re on the bad side of a powerful mullah.”
Her spoon clattered onto the saucer beneath the crème brulée.
“Now I’ll have time to show you all my vacation photos.”
“I don’t get it.”
“My babysitting job? You.” He frowned and signaled for the bill.
“But she . . . they didn’t kill Yves,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Doesn’t make sense by the old rules, but we’re playing with new ones now. Ones no one understands.”
“You’re not babysitting me for my own protection; it’s so I don’t—”
“Compromise ongoing operations?” He smiled, signed the tab, and stood. “That’s what the DST termed it. Shall we go?”
&nbs
p; On the corner, bright sun shone on the wrought iron railings. Morbier raised his arm to hail the waiting police car.
“But Miles Davis. . . .”
“Your concierge loves him, doesn’t she?” Morbier ushered her into the back seat. Hot air blew in from the open window. “Have her take him for a few days.”
“But I’ve got a business to run; I can’t leave René on his own.”
“We’ve taken care of that,” he said, motioning the driver down a narrow street crowded with bicycles, delivery trucks, and women wearing chadors.
Taking over her life, her work. No way.
Ten minutes later, the police car bumped over the curb and let them off under the elevated Metro at La Chapelle. Brakes screeched and orange sparks flew on the overhead Metro lines. From below the bridge to their right came the clack of trains on the dark tangle of rail lines radiating from the Gare du Nord.
“Where are we going?”
“To the theater, Leduc. Time for your ration of culture today.”
They crossed the street and entered a wormholed wooden side door labeled ENTRÉE DES ARTISTES.
“Bonjour, Commissaire,” said a blue-uniformed flic.
“How’s the wife?”
“Bien. Another one on the way, Commissaire,” he said with a big smile.
Morbier patted him on the back and signed in on a clipboard. He walked on ahead, but the flic stopped her. “Excusez-moi, Mademoiselle,” he said, running a metal detector wand over her. A loud beeping erupted. Merde! She emptied her bag, and the Beretta landed on top of her Leclerc compact.
“Leduc, I assume that’s licensed,” Morbier said, wagging his finger.
“As if I’d carry . . . why, you gave—”
“Officer,” Morbier interrupted, “we’ll just hold on to that for her, won’t we?”
Nice save, she thought. Still, it would take her a ton of Brigade Criminelle paperwork and months to get back the Beretta Morbier had given her.
She followed him. She noticed his worn brown shoes, one sock blue, the other brown. He still got dressed in the dark.
The passageway: scuffed saffron walls lined with pipes and electrical wires led to a black wooden painted floor marked with scattered blue tape X’s. Beyond it was an expanse of darkness, like falling off the edge of the world.