by Fiona Brand
She needed to disappear. Now.
She had almost reached that conclusion anyway, but the moment she had realized that she had a photo that could help identify Helene Reichmann, the necessity had become real.
The photographs and the warehouse manifest were hard evidence against Reichmann and the cabal. The fact that she had been the one to recover them made her a witness for the prosecution. Whether she was being actively hunted now or not, the moment her name became linked with the case, she would become a target. She would need ongoing protection.
A tap at the door jerked her head up.
Hicks opened the door. Bayard strolled into the room his gaze pinning her. He was obviously dressed for work in a dark suit, a light shirt—no tie. If she didn’t miss her guess, he was wearing a shoulder-holstered gun.
She became burningly aware of her rumpled jeans, pink sweater and the shadowy hint of cleavage. Normally, she was toned down and controlled, her hair neatly pinned, and with a strategy in place to avoid Bayard.
After a brief conversation, Hicks departed. Crombie had gone earlier, as soon as they had gotten back from the bank.
Bayard closed the door and put the chain back on. “Okay. What’s going on?”
She moved into the cramped kitchenette, deliberately putting space between them as she briefly chronicled the events of the last few days, omitting the information she had gotten through the dreams.
Bayard’s questions about the progress of the police investigation were clipped. She watched as he began examining the contents of the knapsack. Rousseau and Thorpe hadn’t believed her. Bayard was reserving judgment, but he had the advantage of an intimate view of the Chavez Cartel, the cabal and the details behind Todd’s death. What sounded crazy and wild to most people was real to him.
The fact that he hadn’t dismissed the idea that she had been targeted made her feel oddly shaky. She hadn’t realized how much she had needed someone to believe in her.
While Bayard handled the objects in the knapsack, she ran water, filled the coffeemaker and added ground coffee.
A few minutes later, he joined her in the kitchen, leaning on the counter while she poured coffee. She placed a cup beside him on the counter. “No milk or sugar. Sorry.”
“I don’t take either.”
That figured. Sharp and strong and absolutely no frills. She reached for her own cup.
Instead of drinking, he took her cup and set it down beside his. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.”
He pulled her close. “Liar.”
Her breasts brushed his chest. His clean, masculine scent filled her nostrils, along with the hint of some citrusy cologne. The awareness that had been hovering at the edge of her consciousness sharpened. She stiffened, her fingers sinking into the taught muscle at his waist, off balance and at a definite disadvantage. He had hugged her at Uncle Todd’s memorial service, then again at her father’s funeral. This shouldn’t have been any different. A split second later the unmistakable bulge of his erection brushed her hip.
Bayard released her, seemingly unconcerned by the fact that he was semiaroused, or that she knew it. He drank the coffee, then asked to see the photos and the warehouse manifest she’d retrieved. While he studied the items, Sara leaned against the kitchen counter and sipped her coffee, glad for the respite. He made several calls on his cell phone, his voice laid-back but incisive. When he was finished, he slipped the phone back in his pocket. “That’s it. We’re out of here.”
She eyed him warily. There was something different about Bayard. She just couldn’t put her finger on it. “Where are we going?”
“For tonight, my mother’s house.”
House was an understatement. Mariel Bayard lived in a Grecian Revival mansion just minutes from the Fischer homestead. The house was more like a museum than a home, which was one of the reasons Bayard had spent so much time in Fischer territory.
He unlocked the front door, dropped the cartons of Chinese takeout he’d bought before they’d left town on a side table, and showed her into the sitting room. “Mom’s in Florida, but Amalie’s here during the day. It’s after six, so I’ll have to make up a bed.”
He disappeared down a hallway, reappeared with an armful of linen and jerked his head at the stairs. Reluctantly, she followed him. Whenever she visited the Bayard mansion, she always felt as though she was on the movie set of Gone With The Wind. The room Bayard showed her to ran true to form. It was massive and airy, with a bank of tall windows draped in muslin, dark polished floors and a king-size bed dwarfed by the proportions of the room.
When the bed was made, Bayard disappeared, then returned with towels, a length of what looked like pink silk and a shirt. He deposited the pile on the end of the bed. “The nightgown belongs to Mom, the shirt’s mine. You can use either to sleep in until we get your clothes from your apartment. I’m just next door if you need anything.”
“Thanks, but I won’t.” Ever since she’d been seven, she was aware that Bayard was dangerous. It had been a well-documented fact that he had gone through girlfriends like a hot knife through butter. It hadn’t been a hard choice to decide she was never going to join that particular queue.
But, like it or hate it, he still attracted her.
When he was gone, Sara examined the nightgown. When she’d shopped for clothing, she hadn’t thought to buy nightwear, a fact she had admitted to Bayard when he had questioned her on the drive out of town.
She folded the nightgown and placed it on top of a dresser. There was no way she was wearing one of Julia’s outrageous confections. The soft white shirt was more her style, although the fact that it was Bayard’s made her hesitate. In the end she decided that, cliché or not, she was too tired to give a damn. She had slept in her clothes last night and she could do it again, but the thought wasn’t appealing, and the soft shirt was large enough that she wouldn’t need to wear jeans to preserve her modesty.
After eating reheated Chinese in the large, airy kitchen while Bayard conducted a number of curt conversations on his cell, she made her excuses and escaped upstairs. Walking through to the ensuite bathroom, she showered, changed into the shirt and brushed her teeth. Next door, she could hear Bayard’s shower running. Half an hour later, after reading a novel she found in one of the top drawers of the bedside table, she tied her wrist to the bedpost using a thin cotton belt that had come with the turquoise pants she had bought and switched off the light. Immobilizing her arm wouldn’t make for a comfortable night’s sleep, but if she did sleepwalk, this time she wouldn’t get very far.
Vassigny’s predawn darkness was close to impenetrable, the temperature, as Sara lit a candle, icy. After stoking the wood range in the kitchen to warm the house and boil water for coffee, she dressed carefully for work, wearing a crisp blouse, a shapeless but warm jacket and an unfashionably long woolen skirt that reached almost to her ankles. With her hair clipped back in a neat French braid and her spectacles in place, the effect was low-key but businesslike. She wished to emphasize the fact that she was efficient and utterly devoid of personality, a tactic that, so far, had worked. Reichmann knew she held a doctorate in mathematics from Oxford and that she had lectured at the Sorbonne, and yet her credentials had barely registered.
Her German citizenship had been her passport to this job. Reichmann acknowledged her background and her education, but he had made it clear that he considered her inferior on two counts: she was female, and she had married a Frenchman.
The cold of the Château bit deep as she sat down behind her desk just before eight. Reichmann called her into his office and introduced her to Gerhardt, a slender, bespectacled man in a neat, dark suit. Stein was also present.
The reason she was required to work on a Sunday, Reichmann explained, was that Gerhardt, a Gestapo officer from Lyon, was conducting an audit of their systems, and she was to show them a full set of accounts and their filing system.
Gerhardt wasn’t in uniform, but that wasn’t surprising. The Gestapo
weren’t required to wear a uniform, and, like Stein, usually wore the uniform of whatever unit they were stationed with. When Stein deferred to Gerhardt, indicating that he outranked him, she stiffened.
Stein had been in residence at the Château for approximately a month. The Gestapo, now a part of the SS, was the Reich’s secret police. The death’s head units ran the concentration camps. They had carte blanche to investigate anyone they considered to be a threat to the regime, including German civilians and the military. Their powers were wide-ranging, with a license for murder.
For a small posting like Vassigny, a resident Gestapo officer was overkill. The arrival of a second officer signaled that they were more than ordinarily interested in Vassigny. Sara was almost certain they were here to investigate the code leak.
By lunchtime Gerhardt had finished going through the accounts with a fine-tooth comb and, assisted by Stein, was immersed in correspondence files.
Gerhardt stopped by her desk. For most of the morning he had ignored her, but his sharp, colorless gaze was a reminder that she couldn’t allow herself to relax.
“You know shorthand, madame.”
Alarm feathered through her. Shorthand had originally been secret writing. It was commonly used nowadays, but nonetheless was one of the many branches of cryptography. The only conceivable reason Gerhardt could have for mentioning it was to test her in some way.
She met Gerhardt’s gaze briefly.
Always make brief eye contact. Not for long, just long enough that they’re convinced you’re not avoiding their gazes. Not too long in case you betray yourself.
“I learned the Pitman’s system at Oxford. It has been useful. It certainly made note taking easier.”
She opened a drawer and extracted a flimsy sheet of carbon.
“Oberst Reichmann tells me you have a doctorate in mathematics.”
And she had spent eighteen months using her natural flair for puzzles and patterns to design codes and ciphers, before her parents had been executed and she had decided that designing encryption systems was no longer enough.
“That’s correct, yes.”
“And yet you don’t teach.”
“I’m married to a Frenchman, Herr Gerhardt. Armand requires my presence in his home.”
“You could teach in the village.”
“Perhaps. I tutor some of the students in my spare time, although not often. There isn’t much call for calculus in Vassigny.”
Movement flickered at the window.
Shock held her immobile for a split second. Cavanaugh was in the grounds, just meters away, with a scythe in his hand. He was dressed in thick, dark clothing which he must have borrowed from Armand, a hat pulled low on his head. A woolen scarf was wound around his neck, concealing the lower part of his face, but to her he was instantly recognizable.
A second movement, this one farther out. Armand and two of his men were in the adjacent field.
Cavanaugh briefly met her gaze, his message clear. Emotion swelled in her chest. They wouldn’t leave until she did. If anything happened, they would act. Armand would have stored weapons nearby. The risk was unconscionable. With SS troops barracked at the rear of the Château, engaging in a firefight was tantamount to suicide.
“Is everything all right, madame?”
Keep calm. Breathe. Sara transferred her gaze to Stein, who had entered the room and was watching her closely. Her cheeks felt as cold as marble. “Yes, thank you. I was just surprised to see Armand and his work crew at the Château today.”
“You didn’t expect your husband to be working here?”
She kept her smile brief and austere. Stein was aware that she didn’t like him; he would be suspicious if her manner was warm and relaxed. “Armand doesn’t always have time to share his schedule with me, and last night we had guests.”
Stein stared out the window. “The Oberst mentioned that you had a dinner party.”
Sara placed a backing sheet on her desk, carefully layered copy and carbon paper, and finished off with a sheet of good quality bond on top. “We have little, but we share what we have.”
Stein didn’t answer. His gaze was fixed on Cavanaugh as he scythed the frost-burned border of grass and weeds.
She rolled the paper onto the platen of the typewriter and loosened the tension to align the sheet of carbon, which had slipped slightly.
Gerhardt’s gaze lingered on her hands. “That is a very pretty diamond you’re wearing, Madame de Thierry. Your husband is to be congratulated on finding such a flawless stone.”
Sara froze for a split second.
Not just the code leak, then. De Vernay and the diamonds.
Maybe it was too much of a leap. The ledger had recorded money, not diamonds. But if Reichmann had taken one, why not the other?
Now she understood why Stein was based at the Château. Not because the accommodation was better than at Clairvaux, he was here to investigate Reichmann. Somehow he had become suspicious about Reichmann’s activities. The reason was undoubtedly de Vernay. Reichmann had bitten off more than he could chew when he had added de Vernay to his list of victims. The loose end of de Vernay’s extreme wealth had been left dangling. If Reichmann was found out, Gerhardt and Stein could have him tortured and executed without trial.
The code leak was a separate issue, but that, combined with Reichmann’s crimes, meant that Stein, and now Gerhardt, had Vassigny under a microscope.
She held out her hand so the diamond would catch the light. “You sound like you have an expert eye, Herr Gerhardt.”
He smiled without warmth. “Before the war I was a jeweler. Did you choose the ring yourself?”
She was abruptly certain that he was looking for the de Vernay diamonds. “My husband bought it in Paris,” she said steadily. She mentioned a well-known jeweler.
Gerhardt’s gaze narrowed. “I recognize the fine workmanship.”
With a curt nod, he returned to Reichmann’s office. Stein remained in the doorway for long seconds before swinging on his heel, striding out of the office and down the hall in the direction of the front door.
Alarm jerked through her. She kept a discreet watch out the window, but Stein didn’t walk around to where Cavanaugh and Armand were working. Seconds later, she heard the sound of a car engine.
Shortly afterward, Reichmann saw Gerhardt off the premises.
Sara glanced out the window, her stomach doing a nervous somersault when she saw Cavanaugh and Armand still in place. What they were doing was crazy.
She jerked her thumb in the direction of their house, indicating to Armand that they should leave. He lifted a hand in reply. To her relief, they finally went.
Reichmann left almost immediately after Gerhardt, driving in the direction of Clairvaux.
Adrenaline humming through her veins, Sara pulled the letter she had just typed out of the typewriter, attached it to a clipboard and walked through to Reichmann’s office. Seconds later she was in the strong room and searching through the safe. The codebook was there, but Reichmann’s ledger was gone.
Of course. She should have thought of that. With Gerhardt going through his office with a fine-tooth comb, he wouldn’t have risked leaving the book in the safe. In any case, yesterday was the first time she had ever seen it, which meant he normally kept it in a place where Stein wouldn’t stumble over it. He had probably slipped it in the safe as a stopgap measure.
The only other place Reichmann would store the book was in the privacy of his rooms. She was going to have to risk searching his suite.
She locked the safe and the strong room, remembered to grab the clipboard, which she’d left on Reichmann’s desk, and walked sedately back to her office. Shoving the clipboard in a drawer, she shrugged into her coat, slipped her spectacles in their case and grabbed her scarf and purse.
The need to leave immediately and forget about the book was so strong she almost broke into a run. Taking a steadying breath, she slipped her spectacle case into her purse, wound the scarf around he
r neck and walked to the door to listen. The corridor was empty. Distantly, she could hear the clash of pans in the kitchen. With more than forty mouths to feed at the Château alone, the kitchen was a hive of activity from two in the afternoon onward.
The corridor was empty. She wasn’t certain if Stein was still away or not. He could have returned while she was in the strong room and she wouldn’t have heard his vehicle. She checked her watch. It was after four. Most mornings and evenings he drove to Clairvaux to check with his prison staff, but not always. Stein didn’t keep to a regular schedule. He enjoyed surprising people, keeping them off balance—particularly Reichmann.
She waited a moment longer, then slipped her shoes off her feet. Holding them in one hand, her purse in the other, she glided across the foyer and up the stairs.
Reichmann occupied the master suite, a massive grouping of rooms stuffed with heavy, ornate furniture. A fire was laid in the hearth but hadn’t yet been lit. She would have to be careful. Dengler, one of Reichmann’s junior officers, usually acted as driver and valet. He was presently out on patrol, dismissed while Reichmann was dealing with Stein and Gerhardt, but the instant he returned he would walk upstairs to light the fire.
Pulse pounding, she searched drawers and cupboards, praying that he had hidden the book here and not taken it with him.
She checked the small sitting room, the balcony, and made a quick tour of the neighboring rooms, both belonging to officers.
No. Reichmann would keep the book close. It was his ticket to a new life, and unimaginable wealth.
She checked the time. She had less than five minutes. She studied the floor and walls. Feverishly, she began checking behind paintings, and hit gold.
Not a wall safe but an alcove, probably designed to hold a religious artifact or icon, and the perfect size for storing the book.
Grabbing the ledger, she stuffed it into her purse. The feel of the damp brown leather was repellent. It stuck out, but she couldn’t help that. Outside, the roar of vehicles filled the silence.