by Cara Black
"Take him to the station," Morbier directed.
The sergeant saluted, hustling Hartmuth forward and up a makeshift ladder.
"Why don't you tell me about Aimee's plan?"
Rene smiled grimly. "I thought you'd never ask."
"Where is she?"
"Partying," Rene said.
Surprised, Morbier dropped his cigarette.
"We're invited," Rene said.
AIMÉE KNEW if a person had been listed as dead and wasn't, he or she needed an identity. Thousands of refugees, during and after the war had lost identity papers since buildings with records were bombed, their countries gobbled up or renamed. These people were stateless. A piece of documentation had been created, called the Nansen passport, to legitimize their existence. If she found this proof, she'd have him.
She headed for the elegant Musee Carnavalet, which was located around the corner from the catacombs and housed in the former hôtel particulier of Madame de Sevigne. The museum courtyard was open. Inside the deserted marble-ceilinged restroom she switched on her laptop but realized the battery had died. She found a socket, plugged it in, and breathed a sigh of relief when she logged on.
She hacked into the Palais de Nationalite files and found him. Laurent Cazaux had been approved for a Nansen passport in 1945. But her triumph felt hollow. She had to stop him. Quickly, she downloaded the application and approval forms.
She pressed the redial button on Herve Vitold's cell phone.
"Meet me alone, Cazaux. L'Academie d'architecture bureau, at midnight," Aimee said into the phone. "If you want to make a deal."
SEARCHLIGHTS SCANNED in pewter strokes across the sky. The sliver of a moon drooped low over the Seine, hardly a ripple on the surface. Aimee rubbed her arms in the frosty chill.
Before her, the windows of l'Academie d'architecture in Place des Vosges glowed with the light of hundreds of hand-lit tapers. A stream of dark limousines deposited guests at the entrance of the former seventeenth century Hôtel de Chaulnes. Tonight's commemorative gala was in honor of Madame de Pompadour, the true arbiter of style at the French court, who still influenced what passed for elegant today.
She, along with the rest of Paris, knew Minister Cazaux was scheduled to begin the celebration by attending the fashion show. Her rough plan, formulated in the Musee Carnavalet's restroom, several blocks away, held major obstacles. First of all, she had to surprise him at the gala before their midnight appointment and force him to reveal his guilt in public. But that seemed minor, since she had no invitation to this heavily guarded soiree. However, before that she needed to meet Martine at Le Figaro and copy the disk with her proof.
As she rounded the corner, her heart stopped. The bomb-squad truck straddled the sidewalk. Workers swept up glass blown out from the wrought-iron entrance doors of Le Figaro's brown brick facade. She wondered if Martine had been hurt.
"Any injuries?" she asked.
A stocky jumpsuited man shook his head.
"Much damage?" she said.
He shrugged. "Go figure. The next prime minister's around the corner and someone throws a bomb into our newspaper. But the upstairs offices weren't touched," he said.
She hesitated, then walked inside. The smells of cordite and burnt plastic mingled with the familiar scent of le vin rouge from the uniformed guard. He stopped her by the reception desk.
"I have an appointment with Martine Sitbon," she said, showing a fake press card.
He read it carefully. "Empty your bag."
She put her laptop on the counter and dumped the contents of her pack: wigs, tape recorder, cell phones, sunglasses, tubes of ultrablack mascara, and a battered makeup case. The Luger thumped out and shone dully in the chandelier light. "I have a permit." She smiled.
"Ah! Comme Dirty 'arry!" He fingered the piece. His tasseled loafers squeaked as he moved. "I'll hold the gun since our metal detector got damaged." He smiled back. "You'll get it on your way back. Fourth floor."
She wouldn't bother to debate, he'd pocket the Luger anyway. The blast had also ripped up part of the concrete steps, damaged the wooden atrium, and shaken off some sections of the lobby's ceiling. Dust covered the lobby furniture but the lift worked.
She had to work quickly: copy the proof she'd E-mailed and convince Martine to publish it, then confront Cazaux. He'd withdraw from the ministry and politics if he knew Le Figaro was going to expose his true identity. He couldn't deny living in Paris during the Occupation because she had Lili's class snapshot and the microfiche photo from the Jewish library showing him, Lili, and Sarah. Most of all, she had his bloody fingerprint at a fifty-year-old homicide.
Inside the lift she pressed 4, then pulled a blond hairpiece from her wig bag, clipped it on near her roots, then worked the hair into hers to look natural. She pinched her cheeks and swiped red lipstick across her mouth. As soon as she'd copied the download and briefed Martine, she'd figure some way into the gala next door and confront Cazaux.
The fourth floor held editorial offices; below, the copy room and printing press occupied the first three. As features editor, Martine occupied an office nestled in an unlocked suite of front offices.
Martine's leather jacket hung from the back of her chair. Red lipstick traces were on the cigarette burning in the ashtray next to her computer screen, which displayed the message "Download time remaining approximately three minutes."
All she had to do was find Martine and copy the disk. The computer on Martine's cluttered desk clicked faster.
"Martine."
No answer. Aimee's spine tingled. She heard a noise and turned.
The lobby guard stood at the door with the Luger aimed at her.
A deep voice came over the intercom. "Target One has been secured at the perimeter."
"The dwarf carrying computer printouts?" the guard asked.
"Affirmative," the voice said.
"What's Target Two's status, Colonel?"
"Inspector Morbier's unit is en route to demonstrations at the Fontainebleau periphery," the voice replied.
Plans of Cazaux's ambush died. Now she was on her own. They'd nabbed Rene and sent Morbier to the outskirts of Paris.
The computer whirred. "Download accomplished" flashed on the screen. The guard's shoes squeaked as he stepped to the terminal. The second lesson at Rene's dojo had been to react defensively and naturally. When he looked at the screen, she kneed him in the groin. As he bent over in pain, she jerked the mouse wire, then wrapped it tightly round and round his wrists. She glanced at the screen, hit "Copy," then tied his wrists to the armrest of Martine's chair and stuffed his mouth with pink Post-Its.
Garbled noises came from his mouth.
She eased out the Beretta from where it was taped to the small of her back and pointed it between his eyes.
"Shut up. Subtlety isn't my strong point." She straddled his leg, pulling open drawers in Martine's desk. She found postal tape in the drawer, then taped his ankles to the swivel-base chair.
"Copy completed" came up on the screen. She leaned over and hit "Eject."
The disk popped out. She yanked the mouse wire and looped it several more times around his wrists.
He struggled, his eyes bulging, and tried to spit out the Post-Its. His patent-leather shoes beat a rhythm against the desk.
"He's very proud of those shoes, Mademoiselle Leduc," a familiar voice said from the open office on the left.
Cazaux winked at her. He stood flanked by a pistol-toting bodyguard. The guard snatched the disk from her, handed it to Cazaux, and body-searched her.
The guard shimmied his hands over her body, then shook his head. "Nothing," he said after he had set her gun on Martine's desk.
"Have you grown more hair, Mademoiselle Leduc?" Cazaux said. "I remember it shorter."
Fear jolted up her spine.
The guard felt her hair, then ripped her hairpiece off. The small microphone clattered onto the floor. Cazaux nodded to the guard, who threw her laptop at the wall. He stomped it with his
boots until little fiber-optic cables spurted out, like so much techno blood.
"You won't win, Cazaux," she said.
"Why not?" He held up the disk.
"Rene sent copies to every newspaper in Paris," she said.
"Go downstairs," he told the bodyguard.
He gestured towards the other office. "Let's discuss this privately."
Once inside, he locked the door and sat down, indicating for her to do so. "You're bluffing." He smiled. "But I would, too, if I was in your situation."
"Laurent de Saux is your real name," Aimee said.
"Well, young lady," he said. He smiled indulgently, as if humoring a child. "How could you prove that assumption?"
She glanced at her watch. "You better read the Sunday edition of Le Figaro to find out, which starts printing in thirty minutes."
"That's impossible." He chuckled. "Gilles is in my pocket. And your girlfriend Martine is sleeping off a tranquilizer." He leaned forward, resting his elbows in his lap, and stared at her. "Please sit down."
She kept standing.
"You've been a good sparring partner," he said. "This game doesn't exactly match my wits, but so far it's been mentally stimulating." Cazaux smiled expansively.
"This is only a game to you, isn't it?" she said. "Not real live people. Just objects you manipulate or remove to advance your position. Soli Hecht understood your thinking pattern. It's like a giant series of moves in megalomania chess."
"And you think you've engineered a checkmate. . .but how well I know," he sighed wearily. "How the corridors of power are lined with minor annoyances."
"You informed on your parents after you killed Arlette Mazenc," she said. "You probably watched them executed below your window on rue du Plâtre."
"What do you want?" he said. His eyebrows lifted in curiosity. "I've been watching you. I'm impressed. You're good, you know. How about a nice, fat EU contract designing software frameworks for participating countries? I'll make it happen. Or would you like to head the French government's on-line security division?"
He dangled impressive carrots.
"You should step down," she said, hesitating a fraction of a second.
He sensed weakness like a shark going in for the kill. "I know how you feel. You think I did wrong." His tone became soothing. "Sometimes we have to do things for the greater good." He shrugged. His eyes burned as he went on. "But now I'm almost at the peak. I'll scale it. The culmination of my life."
"Fifty years of lying and killing and you get to be prime minister?" she said.
His eyes narrowed. The moment had gone and he knew he'd lost any chance of recruiting her.
Loud reverberations came through the floor, the rhythmic pounding of the press. Aimee realized the Sunday edition had gone to print without Cazaux's identity. She had to make him confess, then somehow get out, get help.
"What about Arlette Mazenc, the concierge?" she said.
"You keep bringing up that harelipped harpy. What an ugly mug she had!" His tone had changed. He whined like a petulant schoolboy. "That crippled cobbler liked it, though. He would. The bitch almost conned me out of some tinned salmon. My stepmother found it, tried to make me return it. And my stupid papa, bewitched by that slut who thought she could replace my mother, backed her up. Can you imagine? I had to teach them a lesson." He looked at Aimee with a wide smile. "Seems ridiculous now, doesn't it?"
He talked as if he'd spanked a naughty child, not brutally bludgeoned a fellow collaborator and informed on his parents, causing them to be shot below his apartment window. Truly evil incarnate, just as Odile Redonnet had said.
"And Lili Stein saw you, she'd hidden in the courtyard. She escaped, only to recognize you fifty years later, so soon before the election," she said. "You carved the swastika in her forehead."
"She was a self-righteous busybody who took Nazi food," he said. "Like the rest of us. When you're that hungry you don't care. But I was smart. I made money out of them. Every one of them except Lili."
"One hundred francs for anonymous denunciations. You figured the swastika would point to skinheads," she said. "But skin-heads make them differently. You drew it slanted, like Hitler and everyone else of your era did. A signature of that time."
"Signature?" he said.
"The 1943 Nazi flag flying over the Kommandantur on rue des Francs Bourgeois had exactly the same one. You passed that every day on your way to school from rue du Plâtre."
He smiled and his eyes were evil. "Lili was the smartest in class but she stopped helping me."
"Helping you?" she said. "You mean, because she didn't let you cheat on math homework, you informed on her parents."
"We all deserve what we get."
"Arlette Mazenc cheated you on black-market tinned salmon. Furious, you bludgeoned her down in the light well, where she kept her cache. But Lili was hiding in the courtyard, afraid of the Nazi officer who'd been asking Arlette questions. She saw everything. You chased her up the stairs but she ran and escaped over the rooftop. You figured she had died. The last link to your identity erased, especially since you knew of the punishment inflicted upon Sarah, the blue-eyed Jew, Odile's deportation to Berlin and your classmates shipped to the countryside. But fifty years later Lili recognizes you in a Hebrew newspaper and tells Soli Hecht. Hecht tells her to do nothing until he has more proof, then makes overtures to the Simon Wiesenthal Center. But Lili couldn't wait, she knew how you silenced opposition. She tracked you herself—that was her mistake. You found out via your government connections that Hecht obtained a piece of an encrypted photograph with you in it. Hecht hired me to figure out the encryption. He tried to tell me your name. I don't know how you found Lili. . ."
He interrupted Aimee with a wave of his hand. "But Lili was the only one who could put it all together. Of course, she was where I'd expect her to be." He gave a little smile. "Alors, still on rue de Rosiers."
"You saw Lili talking with Sarah and killed her before she could spread her allegations. Killed her like you killed Arlette Mazenc."
"She deserved it," he said.
Yellow slanted light came from the half-opened door into the next room. Aimee edged towards it.
"The deal is you withdraw tonight," she said.
"But that's not in my plan," he explained calmly. "I have to take care of all the people who've helped me over the years. Many, many friends. Connections I've nourished that need to be repaid."
Aimee interrupted. "Like you repaid Sarah's parents, Lili's, and all your other classmates who didn't do what you wanted."
He shrugged. "You know I won't let you get away with this." He stood up slowly. "I learned an important lesson a long time ago." Old stone glistened wetly outside the window.
"The backup disk is in the vault." But there was no vault and she felt sick inside.
Anger blazed briefly in his eyes. "Have you done something silly requiring major damage control?" he said. He continued almost wearily. "I've learned if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself."
As he turned to face her, steel glinted in his hand, illuminated by the yellow light. His arm shot out, holding a Gestapo dagger. "Nothing can be proved. You are joining history, Mademoiselle." he grinned.
"You've got it wrong," she said. "I've got the proof—the copy of your Nansen passport and the photos showing you in Paris. Soli Hecht gave me encrypted files. You're history, Cazaux. No one nominates a collaborator and murderer."
He shrugged. "You'd be amazed at the backgrounds of some of our deputies."
She peered out the window, wishing the courtyard was lined with Morbier's men, not shiny black crows cawing loudly. But they were at the outskirts of Paris. It struck her that she was hopelessly on her own.
She darted towards the slightly open door, kicked it, and barreled into the next room. Skidding inside on her heels, she ducked under a conference table in time to avoid crashing into it. The room lay deserted except for framed sepia photographs of bearded men, their lapels dotted with
medals. Piled newspapers blocked her way. Aimee backed out of this room into a stark unfurnished salon. Just beyond were the tall entry doors of more office suites.
She turned to see Cazaux, with a perverse smile, pointing her own gun at her. He snapped his fingers and motioned her towards an enclosed stairway.
"Let's get some air," Cazaux said.
He swatted her head with the butt of the pistol as he marched her up the dark curved staircase. His ropy, tensile hands pinned her arms behind her. Warm blood dripped behind her ear onto her shoulder, its cloying metallic scent making her light-headed. Or maybe it was the butt of the pistol, she couldn't tell. By the next floor she was panting and he wasn't even winded. For an old man he stayed in good shape. He noticed and smiled.
"Wonder how I do it?" he said as he forced her to kneel on the top step and kicked the side of her head.
Searing pain with hot white stars shot through her brain. He held her arms so she couldn't reel to the ground.
He slapped her face sharply. "I asked you a question—don't you wonder how I do it?"
She wanted to answer, "By drinking the blood of your victims." Instead, she concentrated on keeping her balance. She felt limitless fear at the cruelty of one human to another.
"Lamb embryo injections," he said. "Keeps me young. I can keep it up for hours, too." He smiled suggestively.
She cringed in disgust. "You're sick."
Up on the slate roof of the newspaper, the peaked roofs of the Marais spread below them. Lighted windows from l'Academie d'architecture in the building below shone and music drifted up. He shoved her onto a flat-tiled space, once a balcony. Wind whipped over her and drizzle pelted her face.
"I've warned you," he said in a long-suffering voice. "Repeatedly. Offered to give you what you want, tried to negotiate, but I'm afraid, Mademoiselle Leduc, you haven't been receptive."
He dragged her over to a parapetlike ledge. She dug her heels into the pipes crisscrossing the roof and tried twisting away.
"You're going to take the fall," he said. "For everything. I'll see to it." Cazaux had one last parting shot. "Your precious Lili sent them to the ovens, I didn't." He chuckled. "It was all her fault."