by Cara Black
“Go ahead, Gassot. What rumor?”
“The man I saved told me the de Lussignys had stolen the jade. I never saw him again, so I couldn’t question him further. Albert insisted Thadée knew something, but he couldn’t get it out of him.”
The door splintered and the Russian stood there. And so did Blondel.
The spillover from the broken rain gutter beat a pattern on Aimée’s boots. She wished she had René for backup. Though she’d found Gassot, she had walked into the eye of the dragon.
“Time for that talk, Mademoiselle Leduc,” Blondel said. His zipperlike mouth and dull, flat gaze bothered her, but not as much as his clenched fists.
“About your dope running in Clichy?” She had to deflect him, get out of here. But how? Keep talking. “So you pay off someone in the Commissariat. I’m not interested.”
“You weren’t nice to Jacky; he remembers that,” Blondel said, motioning to someone behind him. “But I’m on someone else’s franc.”
He worked for someone else? She glanced at Gassot.
“Thadée owed you money,” she said, “Why kill him, and Albert? Whose side are you on, Gassot?”
“My own.”
“Meaning you double-crossed these mecs, and they’re after you?”
“Something like that,” Blondel said.
“I never did business with you, Blondel!” Gassot said.
“But your comrade did. And look what happened to him.”
“Albert? He talked too much but he’d never deal with the likes of you,” Gassot said, a quiver in his voice.
“Think again,” said Regnier, stepping into the doorframe. His riveting black eyes locked onto hers.
Aimée stifled a gasp. Why hadn’t she put that together? But the truth, as Oscar Wilde had said, was rarely pure and never simple.
“You work for Olf don’t you, Regnier?” she asked. “You hired Blondel to do your dirty work.”
His eyes never left her face. A small smile painted his thin lips. “Took you awhile, didn’t it?”
“You killed Thadée, Albert, and Dinard. And kidnapped René, to force me into—”
“A little too late for those observations, isn’t it?” Regnier interrupted. “But you two make a nice couple. Now we’re going to get the jade.”
“Why? To get back at the Ministry and the RG?”
He shrugged. “You know what the RG’s like. Thanks to them I wear a hearing aid,” he said. “Once I fell for their line about honor and service. But I came to my senses, and now I work for the highest bidder.”
Did he expect sympathy from her? She remembered Martine’s comments on how close Olf and the Chinese were in the bidding for oil rights. Now it made sense.
“Interpol’s infiltrated your group,” she said. “That should screw up Olf’s plan to use the jade to get an edge on the Tonkin Gulf oil rights.”
Regnier’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?” His phone beeped and he turned away to answer it.
“Pleyet’s with Interpol,” Aimée said.
Would that knock him off balance, at least for a moment? But he’d disappeared.
She looked for another door, another way out. High walls dripping with rain and the rabbit hutches hemmed them in. She was trapped in this postage-stamp-sized concrete yard. How had Regnier managed to vanish so quickly? Well, it was one less to face.
Could she take on these mecs? Her pepper spray would disable one. Maybe. Gassot had the knife but she didn’t like the bulge in Blondel’s coat pocket. And would Gassot back her up?
She pepper-sprayed the Russian, who yelled and put his arms up to his face. Gassot, lunging with his knife, tripped against the rabbit hutches, sending them crashing to the ground. She got Blondel with her Chanel No. 5 purse-size atomizer.
She raced past them, aiming for the street. Scrambled down the corridor. She heard Gassot panting right behind her. And for a moment, she thought they’d make it.
A stinging blow from Jacky threw her into the reception booth. Hands tightened around her neck.
“Shall I take care of you now or wait until you tell me what I want to know?” Regnier said, sticking his blunt-nosed Mauser in her ribs. “You choose.”
Aimée froze.
Gassot, careening from a punch, was held spreadeagled against the wall. Frightened rabbits skittered over their feet. Gassot’s knife fell, clattering on the cracked tile.
“Outnumbered and outgunned, I’d say,” Regnier said.
“Stupide. No escape route,” Gassot said, his breath heaving. “One should always have a way out.”
“So let’s talk,” Aimée said, trying to think fast. “You’ve got it all wrong, there’s—”
“We will talk, and you’ll give me the jade,” Regnier said, watching her lips. “But not here.”
A plumbing van waited on the curb, a yellow sign PLOMBERIE 24/24 painted on the side panels.
“And you looked like a nice girl,” said the Russian rubbing his red eyes as he shoved Aimée and Gassot down the hall. “Nice legs, that waif-look, half-wild and free. I like.”
“You’re not my type.”
“You never know until you try,” he said, feeling her up under her sweater.
“Later, Sergei,” Blondel said, opening the back doors.
“Keep your hands off! Help!” She screamed and kicked, hoping someone on the street would hear them. But then Jacky blocked the view in the three seconds it took to bundle her and Gassot into the van.
She and Gassot were thrown onto the van floor, the door locked. The engine gunned and the van took off, throwing them against the metal racks of supplies. No side windows. Just a small back window.
Jumbled thoughts came to her. Linh’s father had known about the jade! What a world class liar Julien de Lussigny was, acting as if he’d never heard of the jade! He’d said his father would turn in his grave if he knew of its existance. Liar! When his godfather Dinard had put it up for auction, De Lussigny had probably helped him.
The van swerved and she rammed into the wall.
“Gassot, you ok?”
“Are you kidding?”
“Think!” she said.
But he shook his head, defeated.
Maybe not this time.
She scanned the dim interior of the van. The divider between the driver’s compartment and the rear of the van, where a window had been, was blocked by a metal panel now. Had Blondel used this van to kidnap René? She didn’t think they were going far, otherwise they’d have tied them and taped them up. A whiff of pepper spray wafted from the front so she knew the Russian was up there. Jacky? Where were Regnier and Blondel?
White plastic pipe, hoses, and plumbing equipment were scattered over the van floor.
“The pipe’s not strong enough to break the rear window safety glass,” she said, rooting through the equipment. “We need a wrench, a pair of pliers, something made of metal to shatter it.”
Nothing.
She noticed Gassot’s old-fashioned flesh colored wooden leg.
“How much does that weigh?”
“Enough.”
“If you took it off, would it be strong enough to smash the glass?”
“Then how would I run away?”
Good point.
The van careened around a corner, throwing him against her.
“You jump first, then I follow,” she said, “I will pick you up.” If neither of them broke any limbs, it might work.
He shook his head.
“Got any other ideas?”
“No wonder our plan backfired,” Gassot said, his eyes faraway. “The jade was not meant for us. It’s sacred.”
Perhaps. But she had to get him back to earth. They didn’t have much time.
“The old Cao Dai priest was right,” Gassot said. “Remember the old saying, Ngoc linh phai . . .”
“Don’t go mystic on me, Gassot. That lock’s rusted,” she said. “Lean on the side and try kicking it. You need a new artificial leg anyway.”
The
van slowed down. She had to galvanize him to action.
“Quick, Gassot. Brace yourself against me. Now! Kick!”
And he started kicking.
He missed the lock. Pounding came from the driver’s compartment.
“Try again.”
Gassot kicked. Again and again. Only a small bulge where the doors joined. But a thin lick of streetlight showed through.
“Keep kicking.” She grabbed several white plastic pipes from the floor and wedged them into the opening he had created.
“Harder, Gassot!”
She braced him and worked the pipes back and forth. One cracked and splintered and she shoved another in. At each corner, the van slowed, then shot ahead, to throw them off balance.
The door buckled. But the lock wouldn’t give. She felt the gears downshift, heard the brakes screech. Then a sickening crunch of metal and a crash that sent them sprawling. They’d run into another vehicle. The van shuddered to a halt.
“Get up, try again, Gassot.” Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. “Give it all you’ve got.”
He strained, hammering the lock with quick jabs of his foot. She twisted the pipes back and forth and the door burst open.
“Now,” she said, pulling Gassot up and dashing out the door.
They landed on the surprised Russian, his eyes still red and tearing, in a crosswalk on rue Legendre. Smoke billowed from the mangled van now enmeshed with a small truck. The angry red-faced truck’s driver had Jacky in an armlock on the pavement.
“Run, Gassot,” she said, kicking the Russian in the head.
No passersby. Only a shuttered violin shop and a boucherie. An old woman peered out from the boucherie in the dim evening dusk.
“Call the police,” she yelled.
But the old woman shut the door.
The rumble and clack of a train below reminded her that rue Legendre bridged the rail lines. A black Peugeot screeched to a halt behind them. Regnier and Blondel loomed on the pavement.
Blocked in both directions. And a prime shooting target. Gassot stood immobile, like a frightened deer in the car headlights. They had to take advantage of the confusion.
“I hope you can climb, Gassot,” she said. She grabbed him by the shoulder.
“What do you mean?”
“Hurry. Metal criss-cross beams support these railway bridges.” At least they did under the Pont Neuf outside her window. She prayed this bridge had them, too.
Chunks of concrete flew as bullets hit the ledge. She moved her hands, her toes reaching for footholds on the metal struts, trying not to look down and see the huge drop beneath them.
Gray-green criss-cross beams ran below. Dizzied, she held tight to the faded green steel span. Electric freight trains with yellow lighted windows clattered below on the dark, glistening metal tracks. A narrow gray-ribbed walkway for workmen ran parallel underneath, spanning the rail lines.
“Now, Gassot . . . here!” she said, reaching with her legs and finding solid metal.
And somehow he did it. Landed next to her on the narrow walkway.
“Keep moving, Gassot, we can make it. It’s not far.” She pointed to a ladder built into the stone side wall. At least they could climb it instead of getting picked off like flies.
Grit flaked off the steel girders as bullets peppered the steel, pinging and sparking.
Bad idea.
“Get down, Gassot.”
And then her feet slid and she tripped on metal rebar scraps. Airborne, she grabbed the rusted railing and fell against it. Rebar pieces sailed past her. She grabbed one before it fell and crouched down, pulling out her cell phone, and punched in the number.
“Allô. Pleyet! We’re under the rail bridge on rue Legendre,” she shouted, hunching down.
“Sightseeing?”
“Regnier’s men are shooting at us. Isn’t Interpol interested in the jade?”
More shots pinged on steel and Gassot fell, knocking her phone into the air. Merde!
The snub nose of a pistol edged around a metal girder. And then she saw a blue-sleeved arm. She lifted the sharp, cold rebar piece and swung with all her might. Only air. She tried again, this time hitting something solid. Heard a yell muffled by the sound of clacking train wheels. She pulled it back. Swung again.
A hand with a pistol appeared in front of her face. She banged the rebar into the knuckles. Heard a clanging and the crunch of flesh.
And then Blondel whipped past her, flapping his arms like a bird. The wind took his scream. She fell back against the girder. When she looked down, the blue of his jacket lay sprawled on the roof of a freight car rumbling into the night.
She grabbed Gassot, pulled him toward the ladder in the stone wall a few steps away. Sweat ran down between her shoulders.
“Climb, Gassot,” she said, pushing him up.
“My leg. . . .”
“You can do it.”
Gassot stopped. Shuddered.
She looked up to see Regnier straddling the ladder. And Gassot crumpled back on her, falling onto the narrow walkway.
She clutched the metal cross strut, rusted flakes covering her hands.
“We’re worth more to you alive, Regnier,” she shouted.
A stinging kick at her jaw. But she held on, grabbed at some twisted wires hanging down. Regnier had one leg on top of Gassot’s head. “So where is it?”
She clenched her fist around the flashlight in her bag. “I’ll take you there.”
“Look at me when you talk,” Regnier yelled.
She felt her collar grabbed and then her shoulders pulled. Her feet slipped and she hung suspended, her legs dangling. Her arms flailed in the cold air.
“Hurry up, or I drop you.”
She tried to look up but her coat tore with a loud rip. She saw the glistening wet tracks below her twisting boots. Her father’s face flashed in front of her, a black and white image of her mother, the little apartment with a blue table they’d once lived in.
Her hands struck a steel girder and she grabbed. Her fingers slipped, and she grabbed again. Caught the thick edged steel. Her heel struck the stone wall and slid. She swung back, hit the wall again with her foot, and pushed off.
And then Regnier let go. Pounding and yelling sounded above her. Then a scream and a sickening thud from below.
Her right leg reached the girder and she caught her heel in a hole. She grabbed higher with her other arm, finding the steel beam, and scrambling with the other leg, she pulled herself up.
“Gassot . . . Gassot?” No answer. She kept reaching and climbing. The train whistle screeched below.
And when her shaking hand couldn’t hold the metal grid columns anymore, she realized that now sirens were wailing overhead. And Gassot was singing. Something in Vietnamese.
She peered over the steel girder. Caught her breath. Regnier lay sprawled below on the train tracks. And then a train flashed by. Gassot leaned over. She was afraid he was about to jump.
“Gassot, it’s all right,” she said, rubbing his shoulder. “Help me. We’ve got to recover the jade.”
“I should never have touched it,” he said.
“YOU TOOK your time, Pleyet,” Aimée told him.
“I try to keep a low profile,” he said, shielding his face from the photographers on rue Legendre. The whirr and flashes of photographer’s lights shot off like fireworks until the flics shooed them away. Blue lights from the police cars and ambulances played kaleidoscopically over the balconied buildings overlooking the train lines. Jacky, handcuffed, spit in Aimée’s direction as he was escorted into a police van.
“Nice view,” Pleyet said, pointing to the rail line walls. One read PARIS in white letters on the blackened stone.
“There’s a better one,” she said. “In the Parc Monceau. Get us out of here.”
“I’d like to, but the flics want to question you. . . .”
“Use your clout, Pleyet,” she interrupted. “Don’t international oil rights and looted art take precedence? Call
headquarters in Lyon, make your buddies smooth this over. Or it will be too late. I know where the jade is.”
SHE HELPED Gassot into Pleyet’s blue Renault, borrowed Pleyet’s phone, and called René.
“What did you find, René?”
“Interesting stuff, Aimée,” said René. “The oil bid the French Ministry made contains a unique offer.”
“The jade figures?”
Aimée saw Gassot’s hand stiffen.
“Bingo. But here’s what’s even more interesting. The Chinese bid includes it, too.”
Whoever had the jade would claim the oil rights by virtue of patrimony. Just as Derek Lau had told her in his restaurant. The ancient jade disks, older than the animal figures, were the guarantee of legitimacy for the claimant.
“You have proof in written form?” she asked.
“It’s all printed out in the e-mails and ministry documents. The jade’s supposed to be returned by the Ministry of Interior to the Vietnamese people in a munificent gesture in consideration for oil rights. The vast untapped reserves in the Gulf of Tonkin.”
“Good job, René. So the People’s Republic of China and the Vietnamese Government both claim to be legally entitled to the oil,” she said. “No wonder Julien de Lussigny wanted me to monitor the Chinese and hired Regnier.”
And tried to seduce me, she thought.
“Martine left you a message,” René continued. “Since you didn’t answer your phone. Olf pays secret commissions from a fund that funnels back to politicians and officials.”
No wonder de Lussigny could afford the Parc Monceau mansion.
“Do me a favor, overnight everything to Interpol in Lyon. Put down Pleyet’s name as the sender.”
“All in a day’s work,” René said.
“Good job, partner.”
The windshield wipers kept time to the pounding of the rain as Pleyet drove. The gray-misted Clichy streets were haloed by red-orange traffic lights.
“Thanks, Gassot,” she said, taking in his huddled form in the back seat.
But his eyes watched the wet cobblestone streets.
“You owe me, Pleyet,” she said.
“Want a job?”
“You know what I want,” she said. Her peripheral vision fogged and she clenched the door handle. She reached for her pills, swallowed them. Took the vial of mint oil, rubbed it on her temples, and closed her eyes.