by Cara Black
The loudspeaker announced that the Eurostar was boarding. Passengers scurried past the glass-windowed buffet, numbers and letters changed on the electronic arrival/departure board, and she remembered Langois’s pale face, the blood pooling by his camera case that bore a Marriot-Sarajevo sticker.
She knew in her bones that Yves’s and Langois’s killer was out there. Gunning for her. Morbier was trying to protect her. The DST had a killer, but the wrong one. No one could help her. She had to do this herself.
Thursday Night
AS HE STOOD in the shadows of rue de Paradis, Vatel fingered Mehmet’s message in his pocket. Mehmet, who’d never taken a day off since he’d left Turkey, was en vacances. Or so the sign on the concierge’s loge door read. Frightened and fleeing, more likely, Vatel thought. But Vatel recognized the small crescent etched in the windowsill dust, a signal indicating that a message was waiting behind the row of mailboxes. Mehmet owed him, and he’d delivered; now they were even. And now Vatel had information for Florand.
Vatel took a deep breath, the image of his village filling his mind. The whitewashed stone houses; the rows of apricot trees in his father’s grove; the cries of goats carrying on in the wind; cypresses, waving like tall sentinels, bordering the dirt road. The snowcapped peak of Mount Ararat framed in the indigo sky . . . a wash of color seen nowhere else.
A siren blared, bringing Vatel back to this narrow, dark street. This dense street of people packed on top of each other in old buildings. No trees or greenery, except for the poor excuse for a garden near the old chapel around the corner.
Now the apricot trees only existed in his mind. His village lay in rubble and ruins. Yet he had a chance to save other ones.
Once an informer, the Kurd saying went, always an informer.
He keyed in Florand’s number on his cell phone.
Florand answered on the first ring. “Where are you, Vatel?”
Startled, Vatel almost dropped the phone, then recovered. “I heard—”
“Not on the phone, Vatel. Your location?”
He glanced at the corner street sign. “At rue du Faubourg Poissonnière.”
“I’m nearby.”
“I noticed, it’s hard not to, the way your people cordoned off the quartier.”
The whine of sirens echoed and blue and red lights flashed on the street behind him.
“Wait for me in number 58. Back of the courtyard, in the construction area.”
“And consider this more than fair payment, Florand.”
But Florand had hung up. Vatel heard a movement in the shadows. He put his head down, kept to the shadows of the buildings, and started walking.
He had one more call to make.
Thursday Night
RENÉ NODDED IN time to the Mozart concerto on the radio. The halogen desk lamp was angled on his computer screen in the darkened office. One last scan of the Fountainbleu account statistics, and then he’d—the phone rang.
“Leduc Detective,” he said. “René Friant speaking.”
“Mademoiselle Leduc, please.”
Who would call Aimée this late at the office, he wondered.
“She’s not available. May I take a message?”
René heard sirens in the background.
“I’m her partner,” René said. “Perhaps I can help you?”
Pause.
“The phone’s not safe.”
René sat up in his specially designed chair and hit SAVE on the computer screen. “Who’s this?”
“She knows me. It’s important.”
René heard the slight rolling of syllables. A faint foreign lilt. The Kurd?
“You’re the guard, Vatel?”
“And if I am?” Another pause. “I made a mistake. Forget it.”
“Wait, don’t hang up,” René said. “Aimée told me about you. She’s at the Brigade—”
“The Brigade Criminelle?” he interrupted.
“She’s answering questions. Jalenka Malat’s assassin’s in custody.”
“Then it’s too late.”
Warning bells went off in René’s head. “What’s too late? Tell me, and I’ll pass it on.”
“Not over the phone.”
“What’s so important?”
“But she’s not safe. . . .” Vatel stopped.
“Aimée?”
Of course Aimée was safe. Hadn’t René made a deal with Morbier, turned her over for “safekeeping,” or so Morbier promised.
“We need to meet.” René stood, grabbed his keys, and reached for his linen jacket. “Tell me where.”
“Can I trust you?”
René heard him panting, then footsteps. Was he running . . . running away from someone?
“More than anyone else right now, Vatel.”
“An old townhouse . . . the sign says Hotel Titon.”
The phone buzzed.
“Allô?”
Then clicked off.
Alarmed, René hit the callback button. No answer. He wanted to throw the phone across the room. Instead, he pulled his chair to the bookcase, climbed it, his hips protesting, and stretched for the guide to buildings and monuments, a thick-bound book of 464 pages. With laborious steps, he climbed back down, then thumbed open the book’s index. Titon . . . he scanned the entries and found it listed near a neighboring hôtel particulier owned by the model for Boucher’s Odalisque, Louis XV’s mistress. After discovering that a one-time owner, a magistrate, had been guillotined in the Revolution, he found the address. He hurried, locking the office door to the last strains of the Mozart concerto.
RENÉ PARKED TWO blocks away to avoid police roadblocks. The quartier resembled a battle zone. Cracks of thunder rumbled in the eastern sky. Above, he saw the slanted rooftops and chimneypots outlined by a dull glow.
Neo-Classical seventeenth-century townhouse façades of white stone and delicate Louis XV iron-railed balconies, sloped up rue du Faubourg Poissonnière. The Hôtel Titon could use a facelift, he thought, when he faced it. And by the evidence of the cement mixers and sand piles standing in the dim semicircular courtyard, it was getting one. The rays of moonlight didn’t hide the exquisite neo-Classical busts and figures in the niches on the curved façade, nor the sculpted-stone garlands and wreaths and the vaulted, column-bracketed windows. Uneasy, he made his way over the vast cobblestone courtyard. Why meet here, René wondered. More important, where was Vatel?
Scraping sounds came from the tall rear doors. One door was open. He took a step and walked into a shovel that had been propped against the wall. The clanging noise it made as it fell on the cobblestones would alert Vatel to his presence, René thought. And then he heard footsteps, running. With his luck, he’d scared him away.
René sprinted over the sand-dusted cobbles to the rear. Even with his short legs, he’d catch him. Had to. But inside the door, he found himself in a dim sawdust-filled room, a street lamp illuminating faded murals on the gilt-edged recessed ceiling. Through the open tall glass door leading to Cité Paradis, he saw a dark figure running in the shadowed alley. The figure turned the corner. Gone.
He’d never catch him running, but in the car he stood a chance. He turned and rushed past sacks of dry cement. He put out his hands to feel his way. His fingers caught on what felt like a zipper, the seam of a pocket, then a mound sprawled over what appeared to be a table saw. Just at René’s height. Unmoving, inert.
René stood rooted to the sawdust-covered floor. He’d never felt a dead body before. He’d never attended a funeral; his relatives were long-lived; even the château staff hung on.
But now, he knew, he’d walked into one. Still warm but very still. With shaking hands, he fumbled in his jacket pocket, found a matchbox, and struck a match. The flame sputtered, illuminating a figure wearing a blue jumpsuit with Sarko Security embroidered on the pocket and a red rimmed, pinkish-gristle slash where the man’s neck had once been attached to his head.
Blood pattered onto the sawdust with a steady drip. Death wasn’t like Ren
é had imagined it. But he did recognize the distinctive curl in the slice near where the ear would have been that Aimée had described. He realized that it was too late to hear what Vatel had to say, now or ever.
Vatel’s fists were still semi-clenched. The match burned René’s fingers. He struck another. With his other hand, he unclenched Vatel’s fingers. A torn bite-size shred of paper was stuck between his middle and ring finger. René smoothed it out and deciphered the half-word Pamlu . . . the rest had been torn off. It meant something. But he didn’t know what. Or how it connected to Aimée’s danger.
The knock of a diesel engine echoed from the courtyard. René moved away from the table saw, avoiding Vatel’s half-severed head, and peered beyond the door. A blue diesel Peugeot stood bathed in the moonlight, the model favored by undercover security types, Aimée had told him once. And judging by the broad-shouldered man who got out, he figured she was right.
His conscience, non, his duty as a law-abiding citizen demanded he share his information with the mec. Give a statement at the Commissariat while the murderer walked free. Playing by the rules: where did that get you, René thought, except maybe dead like Vatel. He stuck the paper into his pocket, slid out the back door and into the alley, following in the steps of the killer.
Thursday Night
AT THE ZINC counter in the Gare du Nord buffet, Aimée punched in the Agence France-Presse number on her cell phone.
By the time she reached Georges Millac, she’d downed her espresso and ordered another.
“It’s Aimée Leduc, Georges,” she said. “Forgive me for bothering you.”
“The big-eyed wonder,” he said. “Knew I’d hear from you again.”
Hope flared in her. “Did you find something?”
“And here I thought you liked my company or wanted another brandy!”
The thought of brandy curdled her stomach. “That, too, but—”
“You have a fax number?”
Excited, she realized he had something. Her office? But she couldn’t go there. Too dangerous.
“Hold on.” She rifled through her worn Vuitton wallet for the Internet café cards she used sometimes. Found the closest one.
“Café Panique, an Internet café. Put ‘Attention Aimée.’ Ready for the number?”
There was a silence.
“Georges?”
“Something’s come up,” he said, his voice lowered.
“Take down the fax number. 01 83 79 66 50.”
Another pause.
“Georges, did you get that?”
“Oui.”
“Fax it when you can,” she said. “I’ll wait in the café.”
He hung up.
She threw some francs on the zinc counter, left her second espresso untouched, and grabbed her bag.
The CRS would patrol the Metro and re-route the bus lines. Better to take a taxi. She joined the line at the taxi rank, fanning herself in the heat. At her turn, she jumped in a taxi’s back seat. “Bourse de Travail, s’il vous plait.”
The driver ground into gear, wound through lines of buses, and entered Boulevard Magenta. On the wide boulevard, dotted by globed street lamps and shadows cast by the trees, they passed the glass canopy of Marché Saint-Quentin, the covered market, now dark. To the right, she noted armored vehicles blocking the area of Château d’Eau and a burning car, the rioters’ target of choice. The crackdown already heralded an ugly night. So far, there were no roadblocks or car checks on Boulevard Magenta. It was a straight shot to the café.
She slipped the taxi driver a twenty-franc tip for the short ride. It never hurt to earn rainy late-night taxi karma. She got out in front of the Bourse de Travail, a Corinthian-pillared palace of the workers’ unions, more Italianate than utilitarian.
The Place de la Republique lights shone through the manicured trees, glinting on the red metal airplanes of a children’s fun fair. The humidity felt so thick, she could taste it; the distinctive ozone smell signaled a storm. She crossed the pedestrian zebra’s white stripes to Café Panique’s outdoor tables under an awning, and continued inside the turn-of-the-century café with its red velvet curtains, gilt-scrolled alcoves, and blazing chandeliers. She walked to the rear, behind the leather banquettes, to the Internet access desk. A shaven-headed man, a gold hoop in one ear, looked up.
She handed him her punch card. “I’m expecting a fax.”
He breathed out and shrugged.
“You, too? The lines were down. Let me check again.”
She scanned the clientele: a young bourgeois bohème couple in stylish rumpled linen holding hands; a man in a suit with a loosened tie nursing an aperitif, who glanced up each time a woman entered the café; two old women in faded housedress-es sipping fresh-squeezed jus d’orange; all escaping the heat of their apartments. A mix, like the quartier. And she imagined sitting with Yves at a neighborhood café, like this, his arms around her, nibbling her ear, whispering. . . .
“Mademoiselle?”
She blinked.
“Partial transmission.” He handed her three curling Thermo-fax paper sheets. “We should have received more, but the lines go up and down.”
Thanks to the DST disrupting land lines to receive satellite feed. Or the storm.
“No problem; I’ll wait.”
He punched three holes in her card.
She sat by the dark wood-framed window and ordered a citron pressé from a waiter with a serpent tattoo disappearing up his arm under his wrinkled white shirt. She set her cell phone down on the white napkin and poured the sugar water into the squeezed lemon juice, added more water, and sipped. Tart and sweet.
The cover page read: From Georges, AFP to Aimée. The next was a blurred series of lines, the bottom section wavering off the page. But, squinting at the first paragraph, she got the gist of it. “Molry Chimie traitment d’eau industriel and SAHE, Sociéte Anonyme de Hydroelectricite,” a press release read, “announced today August 15 a joint venture with the Turkish government to take over the construction of the Ilisu Dam and supply hydroelectric power in Southeast Turkey.”
The next page came out more clearly. It was titled Bulletin of the Kurdish Human Rights Project KHRP and stated, “The Ilisu dam project in the predominantly Kurdish area of Turkish Southeastern Anatolia is located on the Tigris River. The largest hydroelectric power plant in Turkey, its construction has been troubled. It is estimated the dam will create a reserve with a maximum volume of 10.4 billion m3 and a surface area of 313 km2, creating a power capacity of 1,200 MW. The completion of this dam would cause flooding of the ancient archeological site of Hasankeyf, a site estimated to be more than 2,000 years old with cultural and historical significance to the Kurdish people. The KHRP believes the project is motivated by a desire to cleanse the region of Kurds as an ethnic group. Between 50 and 68 hamlets and villages will be flooded, an additional 57 villages will have their land partially flooded. Estimates run as high as 80,000 local inhabitants affected. Many villages have reportedly been evacuated at gunpoint by the Turkish military and in some cases houses have already been flooded or burned to the ground.”
Below that, running off the page, were scribbled initials. YR. Yves Robert. Her finger traced the letters. First Kat, the novelist, intimating that French contracts were at stake in Turkey, and now this, from Georges. She needed to think. More than that, she needed to see. The answer had to be here. She rubbed the worn Ottoman coin amulet.
Bribery and kickbacks were endemic to such a project. But key was Yves’s initialed copy of the Kurdish bulletin. Yves knew. If Molry Chimie and SAHE had greased palms and were allied with the Turkish military. . . . She needed another piece of the puzzle.
She punched in Sarko Security’s number.
“Vatel still working?”
“Aah, you’re the ex-girlfriend, right?” It was the voice of the guard from the other night. RadioEurope with 80’s pop music played in the background.
“Right . . . hope I didn’t miss him again.”
“Zut! He didn’t show up tonight.”
An uneasy feeling stayed with her after she hung up. She stirred the citron pressé. Who else could she telephone? The only other Kurd she’d met didn’t like her either.
She doubted that Ansary would be working at his office this late, but she tried it. No answer. Then she tried Andiamo, his Italian restaurant.
“Buona sera, Isabella speaking,” a woman answered. “You’d like a reservation?”
A plush place, by the woman’s manner.
“Monsieur Ansary please.”
“The owner? A moment, please.”
She thought a hand muffled the receiver as someone spoke. Then, “Monsieur Ansary’s not here. If you tell me what it’s regarding, I’ll make sure he—”
“I must speak to him, now,” she said. “Can I reach his cell phone?”
“We don’t give that number out.”
She tried to remember if he’d had photos on his desk . . . children, a dog? Non, she couldn’t recall even seeing a wedding band.
“Mademoiselle,” the woman said, “we’re full this evening. I’ve got patrons waiting. I’ll write down your message.”
“It’s an emergency.”
“What do you mean, ‘emergency’?” Suspicion laced her voice.
“A fire in the building,” Aimée said. “I saw the flames. I need to reach him.”
True, she’d seen a burning car. Who knew? A riot could be in full swing.
“You mean Monsieur Ansary’s apartment?”
A trick question?
“The office . . . what’s with the questions? The firemen have their hatchets out, about to chop down his door. What’s his cell phone number?”
“He told us never to—”
“Give it out? And let his office burn to a crisp?”
Silence except for the clink of cutlery and hum of conversation. “Fine, Isabella. I’m sure he’ll thank you when . . .”
“06 21 94 33 65.”
“Merci.”
“One thing,” she said. “Forget my name.”
Ansary’s phone rang five times, then his voice mail requested that she leave a message or, in an emergency, try 06 30 44 22 42.