Foreign Affairs (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order)

by R. J. Jagger

  “Understood.”

  AFTER SABATER LEFT, Targaux called Judge Lacan who unequivocally vouched for Sabater’s presence in Madrid all weekend. In fact, the judge provided a web link to a video that showed the ceremonies Friday night, with Sabater clearly visible at several different times. Fallon and Teffinger checked out the rest of the story and found it solid. “Well, that was one great big waste of time,” Teffinger said. “Some stupid-ass lawyer gets worried about losing billable hours and the end result is that Michelle Berri’s life gets put on hold for an extra hour. I have half a mind to call the guy up and tell him what a counterproductive selfish little twit he is.”

  Fallon didn’t agree.

  “He saved us a trip out there and had everything organized upfront,” she said. “So he actually saved us time. Let’s get going on the DJ.”

  Right.

  The DJ.

  Chapter Twenty

  Day Two—July 13

  Tuesday Night

  ______________

  AFTER DARK, DEJA AND ALEXANDRA found deep shadows fifty meters away from Pascal Lambert’s house, pulled out binoculars, and tried to make out what they could through the few slits of windows that weren’t covered.

  From what they could tell, there were two men inside.

  Looters.

  Neither of them was Pascal Lambert.

  “He’s dead,” Deja said.

  “If he is, he had it coming,” Alexandra said. “And I’m not just talking about the attack on me. He’s probably the one who killed Remy.” A pause, then, “I think you’d be better off dropping out of this thing at this point. Go to London or something until it blows over.”

  Deja had already thought of that.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  Alexandra moaned.

  “The only reason I contacted you in the first place was to see if Remy gave you the map, or see if you knew where his secret hiding places were,” Alexandra said. “Now that those are dead ends, there’s no reason for you to be involved.”

  “I’m not running,” Deja said.

  “It’s not a matter of running, it’s just a matter of not having a dog in the fight anymore,” Alexandra said. “Besides, I’m not so sure I’m going to give you a choice. I don’t want your blood on my hands if things get ugly.”

  “My blood is my business,” Deja said. “And besides, I do have a dog in the fight. Remy’s dead and my apartment’s trashed, remember?”

  Alexandra frowned.

  “Are you always this stubborn?”

  “No, but remember what you said, namely that I won’t be safe until the treasure is actually found, at which point everything becomes moot, including me. So I’m going to help you find it.”

  “There’s nothing you can add, though.”

  Deja disagreed.

  “You need help,” she said. “This is too big for one person.”

  Suddenly a vehicle came up the road. It pulled into Lambert’s driveway and the headlights turned off.

  A woman got out, carrying a briefcase.

  She knocked on the door and got let in.

  DEJA AND ALEXANDRA WATCHED for a long time but nothing happened. It didn’t look like the house would be left unguarded tonight, meaning they wouldn’t be able to break in and get Remy’s stolen papers. But they had nothing else to do and the night was warm so they sat down, stretched their legs out and waited. Neither of them recognized the woman with the briefcase, but Alexandra speculated that she was someone versed in hieroglyphics and had been brought in to interpret some of the source documents from Remy’s files.

  “I’m in deep enough to have the right to know more fully what’s going on,” Deja said.

  Alexandra cocked her head, considered it and sighed.

  “Okay,” she said. “But this doesn’t go past you. You need to promise that.”

  No problem.

  Now talk.

  “Let me give you some background,” Alexandra said. “Six months ago, a tomb was discovered in the Valley of the Kings, which is in Egypt. It was the tomb of a pharaoh from the Eighteenth Dynasty, around 1375 BC, during the period of Egyptian history known as the New Kingdom. It turned out that the tomb had been robbed early on.”

  “How would anyone possibly know that?” Deja asked.

  “Easy,” Alexandra said. “A hole about a meter in diameter had been chipped into the outer doorway. Some of the chippings of the original wall were found inside on the floor. To conceal the crime, the robbers filled in the hole after they left and re-plastered the exterior. That was good enough to trick the naked eye back in that time period, but it’s easily detectible by modern technology.”

  “Okay.”

  “More importantly, though, that hole only got them into one chamber. There were five chambers total, which were separated by solid walls, or what we call blockings. Holes had also been chipped into those blockings and, of course, there had been no need to reseal or re-plaster them because they couldn’t be seen from the outside. So they were still in place when the tomb was discovered.”

  Headlights came up the road, then disappeared in the other direction.

  They didn’t stop at Lambert’s house.

  “OKAY, THAT MIGHT SHOW IT WAS ROBBED,” Deja said. “But how would you know when it was robbed? You said it was robbed early on—”

  Deja nodded.

  “Lots of tombs have been robbed over time,” Alexandra said. “In the early days, only the intrinsically valuable items such as jewelry from treasury caskets and precious metal vessels would be taken. All the other things such as lotions and fruits and senet games and writings and pottery and documents would be left behind because they were worthless. In the later days, however, everything would be taken, because it all now had a historical value. In this particular case, only the most valuable items had been taken, so we know it happened early on. Is this making sense?”

  Yes.

  Perfect.

  Keep going.

  “There’s another thing,” Alexandra said. “It was common to place jewelry and amulets and other items on the mummified body, under the wrappings. These would usually end up cemented to the body over time due to the embalming resins. Lots of mummies have been found unwrapped and then cut to pieces—literally with their arms and legs and heads detached—to get the gems off. In this particular case, however, it looked like everything had been wedged out with a knife. So we think that the robbery followed very close in time to the burial itself.”

  “That was gutsy,” Deja said.

  “Very gusty,” Alexandra said. “They had totally desecrated a member of royalty and had disrupted his travel into immortality. If they had been caught, at a minimum, they would have been beaten on the feet—known as bastinado—followed by impalement on a sharp stake.”

  “Ouch.”

  Right.

  Ouch.

  “Now here’s the important part,” Alexandra said. “Tombs usually contained inventory dockets that were scribed at the time of the funeral. This particular tomb was no exception and the list was well intact. So there is a list of everything that should have been there. Comparing the list to what was actually found tells us what was taken. The items that were stolen, to put it mildly, are staggering. Probably the most remarkable missing item is a gold mask, which according to its description, is much larger and more magnificent than the one found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun.”

  Who?

  King Tut.

  Oh.

  “Anyway,” Alexandra said, “none of the missing items have ever shown up anywhere in the world—not on the black market or in a museum or in a private collection or anywhere else. So they’re all sitting out there somewhere, just waiting to be found. That was the project your uncle was working on for the Egyptian government. He had somehow gotten to the point where he actually had a map of some sort to where the stolen items were.”

  “And now he’s dead,” Deja said.

  Right.

  Now he’s dead.


  “So you can see what’s at stake here,” Alexandra said. “And that’s why I think you should get clear while you can.”

  Deja picked up a pebble and flicked it with her thumb.

  “That’s not going to happen, so get used to it.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Day Two—July 13

  Tuesday Night

  ______________

  POP. POP. POP. Durand stayed motionless behind the door and breathed through an open mouth. When the downstairs door opened and then slammed, he quickly but quietly went to the front window and pulled the curtain back ever so slightly. A shadowy figure carrying a suitcase was disappearing up the street on foot.

  Durand exhaled.

  Yeah, baby!

  No one ever sees him.

  Ever.

  He was invisible.

  Downstairs, the boxer was sprawled on the floor, with a bloody mess where his head should have been. The office was ransacked and the laptop was gone.

  Freaky.

  Suddenly the front doorknob jiggled violently and a gruff voice came from just beyond. “Hey! Are you okay in there?” Durand froze. “Bruno, try the back!”

  Shit!

  Out.

  Out.

  Out.

  He needed to get out.

  Now.

  This second.

  He ran to the back door and got there just as a man entered. They stared at each other, for just a heartbeat, and then Durand punched him in the face as hard as he could.

  The man fell.

  Durand jumped over him and ran as fast as he could into the night.

  HE ZIGZAGGED THROUGH THE DARKNESS, made it to his car and then got the hell out of there, actually encountering two cop cars speeding to the scene in the opposite direction. He had blood on his right fist, no doubt from the man’s nose, and wiped it on his shirt as he drove.

  He was safe now.

  No problem.

  Back home, he washed his hands, put all his clothes in a plastic garbage bag—every last stitch of them, right down to his socks—and threw them in a dumpster in an alley behind a car repair shop, a good two kilometers away.

  Then he went back home and showered.

  That’s when he noticed something unexpected; his fist was bleeding, not much but a little.

  He must have cut himself on the man’s tooth when he punched him.

  That meant his blood might be at the scene.

  That wasn’t good but wasn’t worth worrying about. If it was anywhere, it would be on the man’s face. By now the guy had washed it off and it was long gone.

  HE UNCORKED A BOTTLE OF RED WINE, poured a glass over ice and then called the client as he sipped.

  “It’s late,” the client said.

  Yeah.

  Durand knew that but he had run into a problem.

  The client listened to what happened without interruption and then said, “Okay, you got a look at the guy who killed Trickett, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Find out who he is. That’s your next assignment.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s need-to-know,” the client said. “Also, email me whatever it was that you got out of Trickett’s laptop. Get a pencil, I’m going to give you the address.”

  Durand jotted it down and transmitted the files.

  Then he pulled them up on his computer to see what was there.

  Luc Trickett, who the hell are you?

  And why does anyone care?

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Day Two—July 13

  Tuesday Night

  ______________

  A CALL TO REX IN THE AFTERNOON confirmed that the caveman DJ would be playing tonight. The doors didn’t open until 10:30 p.m., meaning an hour after Teffinger’s bedtime, so he headed back to the hotel after supper with Fallon and crawled into bed for a nap. He woke when someone knocked on his door. No light seeped in the window, meaning night had come to Paris.

  He looked at his watch.

  9:30 p.m.

  He opened the door expecting to find Fallon.

  Instead it was Sophia, the curvy beauty from the front desk.

  She pushed past him, bounced on the edge of the bed and said, “You promised me a drink.”

  He grunted.

  “Your timing’s bad,” he said.

  “Don’t tell me you already have plans.”

  He nodded.

  “I do, but that’s not it,” he said. “I sort of have a thing going on with someone.”

  “Here in Paris?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve only been here two days,” she said.

  He knew that and said so.

  “I’m jealous.”

  Teffinger chuckled.

  “I got to get in the shower,” he said.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “I’ll just hang out. You want anything ironed, as long as I’m here?”

  “No, don’t bother.”

  “It’s not a bother, just go take your shower.”

  He did, slightly worried that Sophia would suddenly pull the curtain back and step inside, but she didn’t. He dried off and slipped his jeans on. When he came out, he saw something he could hardly believe, namely Sophia lying on her back on the bed, naked, with the lights off.

  Her arms were stretched up high over her head and her hands gripped the bed railing.

  She wiggled her hips and said, “Surprise.”

  Suddenly knuckles rapped on the door, the knob turned and someone walked into the room, someone wearing a short black skirt, a white blouse tied above her stomach, and black high heels.

  Fallon.

  SHE FROZE.

  So did Teffinger.

  So did Sophia.

  Fallon looked at the woman, then Teffinger, then the woman, then Teffinger. He expected her to turn and slam the door on her way out. Instead she shut the door gently and asked, “Who’s your friend?”

  Teffinger swallowed.

  “Sophia.”

  “She’s beautiful,” Fallon said.

  She walked over to the bed, sat down, and ran a finger on the woman’s stomach, around her bellybutton. Sophia closed her eyes. Fallon straddled Sophia’s hips and played with her nipples, for a long time, whipping the woman into a frenzy. Then she moved up until her thighs were on each side of the woman’s face.

  Sophia knew what to do.

  She did it well.

  Then Fallon reciprocated.

  SOPHIA WANTED TO COME TO REX with them, so they made a pit stop at her apartment. She took a five-minute shower and slipped into high heels and a short white dress with lots of cleavage. By eleven, they were inside the club, which was a high-energy pickup place jammed with a thousand beautiful people, throbbing bass and sexual tension.

  Fallon and Sophia danced with each other.

  Close.

  Flirty.

  With a lot of touching.

  There were some things Teffinger could do and some he couldn’t. Dancing was one of the things he couldn’t unless he was drunk, so he got a beer, found a place against the wall, and studied the target.

  Mister DJ.

  Unfortunately, conditions couldn’t have been worse—the cage was dark, the man moved around, hair hung over his face, and he wore sunglasses. For all Teffinger could tell, he could be the caveman or he could equally be the crazy airport cabbie with the gold tooth.

  What was that guy’s name?

  Baptiste?

  Yeah, that was it.

  Baptiste.

  Suddenly someone blew in his ear. He turned and found a woman staring at him, very close, almost touching, someone he didn’t know.

  Drop-dead gorgeous.

  Wildly drunk.

  Without saying a word, she kissed him on the lips, grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the dance floor like she owned him.

  He almost went but didn’t.

  The woman muttered something in French and disappeared.

  Fallon wandered over five minutes
later, spotted him, and handed him a fresh beer, which he downed quicker than he should. Then they danced—close and hot and intimate. She gyrated hypnotically to the beat with her stomach and hips and arms while Teffinger ran his hands over her body, every inch of it.

  Dangerously.

  Inappropriately.

  He didn’t care what anyone saw or thought.

  Neither did she.

  Suddenly the DJ stepped out of his cage and headed for the restroom.

  Teffinger grabbed Fallon’s hand and said, “This is our chance,” and they followed.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Day Three—July 14

  Wednesday Morning

  ______________

  DEJA WENT TO WORK Wednesday morning as normal, as if she hadn’t killed a man, as if she wasn’t throat deep in a weird archeological hunt, as if she spent her evenings watching TV instead of sitting in the dark with a mysterious woman and a pair of binoculars. She drank coffee as usual. She knew the motions of her job and performed them well. Not even Yves Petit detected anything.

  Yesterday’s paper was in the kitchen.

  A photograph of a murder suspect on page 5 had a slight resemblance to one of the attorneys on the thirty-first floor, a man named Paul Sabater.

  But the resemblance was slight.

  It clearly wasn’t him.

  It did, however, look like someone else she had seen somewhere.

  Where?

  She couldn’t remember.

  A bus driver?

  She didn’t care.

  She had no dog in that fight.

  MID-MORNING HER CELL PHONE RANG and Alexandra’s voice came through. The woman sounded like she was strapped into a roller coaster and free-falling down the first hill. “I’m in the house!” she said.