by Lyn Stone
"Is there a place you can hide so they won't find you?" Jack asked.
René nodded. "The old oak out back. The biggest one. There's a place between the branches where I won't be visible from the ground."
"I'll come and get you after I've seen Solange and find out what's going on in there. If I bring you back in with me, they will never suspect where I've been."
Guards always traveled in pairs, told that if one went missing, the other would pay for it with his life. Jack wondered why Piers had not been even more upset when Edouard had deserted. Piers seemed exempt from the usual rules.
Chari would send Jack with someone, of course. He just hoped it wouldn't be Piers. Any of the others he could put out of commission temporarily with no trouble at all.
René frowned. "I'll watch for you to come down from the tower and meet you at the foot. But you will bring Dr. Micheaux out with you? You will send her somewhere safe?"
Jack shook his head. "No, René. If she is being well treated, she must stay there until I can convince your father to let her go, but I want to question her and make certain she is as well as she seemed today. We must not play our hand too soon. Many lives may depend on how we deal with this. Do you understand?"
The boy agreed, reluctantly. Jack hoped he could trust him.
For the rest of the afternoon, the off-duty guards like Jack cleaned all of the weapons, played cards or watched movies. Chari had a vast collection from which to choose. It was what they did every day, a monotonous routine.
Jack took one of the DVD players and several movies in to René to keep him occupied. And also to check whether boredom had fostered any wilder plan than the one they had hatched together for the following night.
There were no more sightings of movement in the trees as Jack stood watch that night. No more quarrels with messages attached shot onto the roof.
He tried again to send a mental message, hoping either Eric or Joe would receive it. Eyes closed, he attempted to focus his mind and project clear thoughts. Hold off. We are okay. Not enough info yet.
Before this mission, he had never really tried to communicate by thought, but this seemed the most logical and straightforward method to do it. Like a one-way phone call. Thought mail. And amazingly it seemed to have worked.
At the moment, though, he realized his mind was probably too cluttered for it to actually work. He couldn't seem to clear his head of extraneous thoughts. Like the constant imagining of predicaments Solange could be encountering.
The next morning Solange noted that Belclair seemed less driven than usual. He took his time setting everything up, even hummed a little as he plodded through his routine. As usual he ignored her unless he wanted her to save him a few steps.
He had not asked her to record yesterday's tests or the findings. At precisely ten o'clock, he excused himself and waddled out. His knocking on the door upstairs echoed down to the lab where he had left the door standing open.
This was not good, she thought. This must mean he had made some sort of breakthrough.
She crept closer to the doorway and listened until she heard the sound of voices and the door close again. He did not return, so she supposed he had gone into the study with Chari. Quickly she rushed up to his room to see if she could find the log there. But the door was securely locked.
When she started to turn away, she heard voices within. But he had gone upstairs! Who was in there? She listened more closely and realized what it was. This room was where the receivers were for the microphones placed in other parts of the chateau! Belclair was the one monitoring everyone else, not Chari himself.
When Belclair did not return, Solange remained in the lab alone. She stared at the storage room where the containers of the substance lay incubating, a womb hatching death.
Solange fiddled with the thermostat, but it seemed locked at the temperature he had set for it, and nothing she did lowered it by so much as a degree. She kept working on it, her ears tuned for Belclair's return.
He never came back.
When Piers arrived in the lab around noon, he brought no tray of food, only a summons. "You are to come with me."
"Now?" she asked.
Piers nodded. Solange gave the lab one last baleful glance and followed him out.
When she arrived upstairs, Chari was standing, obviously waiting. He said nothing until Piers had gone out and closed the door. Then he addressed her rather sharply. "Merrier assures me you can be trusted. If he is wrong, he will answer for it. So will you. Are we understood?"
Solange took a deep breath. Was he about to reveal secrets to her? She could hardly credit he would do that, given his obvious dislike of her. "I will do whatever he says I should do. You are the man who can give us what we want," she answered.
"But you do understand the ramifications if you so much as hint at my doing research of any kind here."
"Yes, I understand." Solange fought for patience. He spoke to her as if she were a simple-minded fool.
He started out the door without another word, curtly beckoning her to follow. She glanced up at the cameras stationed in the corridor as they passed them.
Where was he taking her? Jacques was nowhere to be seen. Where was he? Did he know Chari was taking her somewhere?
They climbed the main staircase and he led her to a room at the very end. When they entered, she saw it was a chamber outfitted for a woman, done in pastel blue with accents of white. It was a lovely place, though old-fashioned. The furniture covered with a fine layer of dust. Did he intend for her to stay here now? And if so, why?
She said nothing as she watched him cross the room and open another door. "Find something in here that will be suitable for an evening out."
"What?" she asked, dumbfounded.
"You are to accompany me this evening. Do you speak English?"
She nodded and shrugged, wondering whether she should risk lying. "A little."
"Well, you will not do so this evening. Is that understood? In fact, I wish you to speak as little as possible in any language to anyone. You will not be allowed to leave my side, even to relieve yourself, so take care of that before we leave. We should be away no more than two or three hours."
"Why are you taking me?" she asked.
"That is none of your business. You will come and you will follow orders. If you cannot do that, I will no longer have need of you," he stated. "Or Mercier, for that matter. You know what that means."
"Yes," she said, looking inside the room where hung a woman's wardrobe. Dresses on satin-padded hangers lined one side of the small dressing room. Shelves along the opposite wall contained shoes, purses and assorted accessories.
She went in past him and began to examine more closely what was there. Everything looked woefully dated, the styles at least a decade old. Not that she cared much for fashion, but the clothes also looked a few sizes too large for her and probably had belonged to a much older woman. "I am sorry, these will not fit me," she told him.
"There's a sewing machine in the maid's quarters, through there." He pointed at the door leading out the other side of the dressing room. "Make one fit," he ordered. "That blue silk should do," he said, pointing.
"Be ready in two hours."
"I have no makeup or even a hairbrush," she complained. "There is a comb in the room where I stayed before. May I go and get it?"
She fluffed her tousled hair to show its sad state of repair. For three days now she had been letting it dry naturally, combing and scrunching it into waves with her fingers. Maybe he would allow her to go back to the room she had shared with René and dress there, possibly giving her a chance to find Jacques and see if he knew what this was all about.
"There are those things you will need at the dressing table in the bedroom. Piers will come for you later."
As he turned to leave, Solange asked, "Whose room is this?"
"René's grandmother's," he said curtly, surprising her that he had answered at all. He left then, locking the door behind him.
>
An hour later, Solange had done the best she could with what she had. The gown looked all right, she supposed, which was fortunate since any sewing machine would have baffled her. There had been no one to teach her to sew when she was a girl and she'd had no real inclination to learn.
The cosmetics she found proved stale. She opted for a bit of the powder, a very light touch of the brow pencil to darken her eyebrows and lashes. The lipstick was too old to use, but she fashioned a gloss from the lip pencil color and a dot of the petroleum jelly that had survived the years.
She brashed her hair to a high shine and caught it up with a rhinestone clip she discovered while searching the drawers.
The full-length mirror promised she would not win any trophies for haute couture. However, she had to admit this was a nice change from the wrinkled clothing she had worn and washed repeatedly since coming here.
It appeared Chari was in need of a date for some event. But was it local? She hoped so. Given that Jacques's compatriots were living in Tournade, awaiting the information she and Jacques were here to obtain, it could be that she might see one of them. Surely they were keeping watch on the chateau to monitor who arrived and left. Wouldn't they go to any lengths to make contact with her?
But she would not dare speak to them if that happened, so how could she possibly pass on what she and Jacques had discovered so far?
She went back into the dressing room and located a small, beaded evening bag. A thrill of excitement buoyed her hopes. In the purse she found a lace-edged linen handkerchief.
With the eye pencil, she scribbled on the fabric the formula that Belclair had last entered in his log book. That might have changed yesterday, but if she found a chance to pass it on to them, at least they would have some idea of what the threat was.
She felt like Mata Hari. Would Jacques approve of her taking this chance? It could mean both their lives if Chari found the handkerchief or caught her passing it on to those people, if the opportunity arose.
What else could she tell the agents? Solange pondered for a few minutes. She wrote the word used and added a question mark. She had found no reference to any of the substance being sent anywhere, but neither was there any proof that it had not.
What more had she found out? Frustrated by the lack of her success as a spy, Solange sought desperately for something else to impart. The chemist's name might be of help. At least they would know who was doing the actual research and that he was working alone. She wrote his name and added the word only.
Hopefully they could decipher what she was giving them. If not, they would at least know that she was trying.
Ready as she was going to get for a night out with a local terrorist leader, Solange folded the handkerchief so that the writing was concealed. Then she tucked it, the eye and lip pencils and a comb inside the bag.
Chapter 10
When Piers came for her, Solange had heard him coming up and was sitting in the damask wing chair thumbing through a photo album she'd found. She put it aside immediately and picked up the little purse.
"I will take that," he said and did so, rudely snatching it out of her hand.
Solange held her breath as he snapped it open and poked two fingers inside it, feeling around, she supposed for anything sharp. After only a cursory glance at the contents, he handed it back to her. "Come with me," he ordered.
She hid her relief. So far, so good.
Solange accompanied Piers down the main staircase to the foyer. Chari and Jacques were both there. For a moment she hoped Jacques was being allowed to chauffeur, but Chari relieved her of that notion when he ordered Piers to bring the car.
"A shame that a limousine is out of the question," Chari said to no one in particular, flicking imaginary lint from the lapels of his tuxedo.
Solange fastened her gaze on Jacques who was looking rather stunned, she guessed, by her appearance. It was totally at odds with the only conditions he had seen her in thus far. She offered him a wry smile.
His eyes grew hard, erasing the brief glimpse of surprise and pleasure she had seen in them. "Are you not afraid of compromising your security by attending this little soiree?" he asked, addressing Chari. "The guests there could have friends in high places. Sophia D'Amato, inaccessible as she has been to the public, has written books with political themes. She might have connections who would be extremely interested in preventing what you are doing," he said.
"Her 'connections' are precisely what I am wanting to use." Chari smiled slyly. "The project here has nothing at all to do with my business tonight. Except for providing funds, of course. As for the security aspect, we need not worry. Not at all," Chari replied evenly. His heavy-lidded gaze fell on her.
"Why are you taking Solange?" Jacques asked, a note of jealousy tinging the question. She knew it was deliberate. A little reverse psychology, she supposed. She was no psychologist, but anyone could see that Chari was a prime subject for it.
Chari continued to study her for a moment, then shrugged. "I could hardly attend an affair such as this alone, and she is the only woman available to go with me. She knows what will happen if she talks out of turn. Don't you, Doctor?"
Solange nodded, all compliance. Jacques had mentioned the writer D'Amato, Martine Corda's assumed identity. Was the affair to be at the very place Jacques had taken her before coming here? This was better than she could have hoped. She wanted nothing to prevent her going. She had a handkerchief to drop.
Anticipation fostered a genuine smile, and she turned it on Jacques, hoping to reassure him that she was taking care of the matter. "Do not fret, Jacques," she told him. "I promise I shall be the perfect escort for Monsieur Chari tonight." She clutched the small beaded purse to her chest and gave it a small pat as she looked up at her date. "Shall we go?"
Jacques opened the front door for them, managing to look both disgruntled and resigned, drawing a chuckle from Chari as he led Solange outside. She risked a peek out the window and a small wave as they drove away. He stood in the doorway watching. He was wearing his spy face, she noted, the one that held no expression whatsoever, the one he never wore when they were together alone. She must thank him for that because it chilled her to the bone.
Solange turned her attention to Chari, who seemed restless, perhaps even nervous.
"I read one of Madame D'Amato's books several years ago," Solange said just to break the silence. "I believe it was called Dark Menace. Have you read her?"
"Not that one," Chari snapped. "You may tell her you have read it. Be effusive when you do. Say you enjoyed it," he ordered.
"Actually, I did." The real author was legend, but extremely reclusive. Solange wondered if the woman had actually agreed to tonight's impersonization. Perhaps she had and would one day use the situation in one of her novels or screenplays.
"Do something with your hair," he demanded. "You look disheveled and unkempt. Everyone will pity me, bringing someone who looks like you."
Solange shrugged and tucked a stray curl behind her ear, then brushed another back away from her face. She bit off the sharp retort that popped to mind. It was not worth making him angry. He might have Piers turn the car around, take her back and go alone. She hung her head and slumped her shoulders, an attitude he seemed to like in a woman.
His words reminded her too much of the last weeks she had spent with Jean. That beating down of her self-worth, the cruel verbal jabs at her looks and intelligence. She could hardly wait until this man got his just desserts. And she was damned glad she would have a hand in it.
She watched the passing scenery without displaying much interest. It was nearly dark, but she noted every landmark they passed, every turn, every feature of the landscape. She timed the trip on the auto's clock as Piers drove. Twenty minutes from door to door.
The small mansion appeared quite different bathed in light. Outdoor spots highlighted the ornate stonework of the facade and the heavily carved and arched double doors. Huge pots of geraniums and greenery flanked the portal and s
teps leading in. Quite a transition from intimidating to charming in a matter of days.
They were met by the same man who had greeted her and Jacques before. He was tall, well built and quite handsome in a dark red dinner jacket. One of madame's staff tonight, Solange thought with a smile. He opened the door on her side of the car and offered her a hand. She accepted his assistance and got out. Chari quickly followed, taking a firm hold on her arm. The man gave Piers instructions for parking, then ushered her and Chari inside.
Holly Amberson, striking in ecru and pearls, greeted them in heavily accented French and guided them into the huge salon. "I am Kerry, Madame D'Amato's personal assistant. You must be M'sieu Ahmed Chari! Madame was delighted to hear that you were in residence nearby and simply had to have you here." She looked questioningly at Solange.
Solange introduced herself, since Chari did not. "I am Solange. So nice to meet you."
"Just Solange?" Holly asked with an interested smile.
"Yes." With a small inclination of her head, she ended the exchange. Holly gave a neat little shrug that said she couldn't care less and turned full attention back to Chari.
He, busy scanning the room for familiar faces, assured Holly that he was quite proficient in English if she wished to switch languages so that he could understand her. He could not abide American accents.
His blatant insult did nothing to dampen Holly's enthusiasm.
She sighed with obvious relief. "Oh, that's wonderful! There are several guests present who will appreciate that. Madame will be down soon. May I introduce you to some of the others?" She snaked one arm through the crook of Chart's and fairly dragged him across the salon. Since Chad's fingers were still biting into her arm, Solange followed.
"Here is Bev Martin, who needs no introduction. Ms. Martin, meet Ahmed Chari, Tournade's most famous resident, though only the locals know he is here! And his friend, Solange, of course."
"Of course." The tall, gorgeous brunette gave Chari the once-over, her dark lashes sweeping up and down. She paused to sip the martini she held, then cleared her throat. "I do believe we met in Cannes several years ago."