Murder in Belleville

Monday Morning

TENSE AND WARY, AIMÉE stood on the Métro platform as the train blared its arrival. She heard the wheels clacking, smelled the burning rubber. She held her leftover newspaper over her face. Neither Dédé nor the mecs had spotted her yet. But when the platform emptied, she was afraid.

She realized what she had to do.

As she broke the red glass door on the emergency box with her miniscrewdriver, she screamed, “My baby fell on the tracks,” and yanked the switch. Every face turned toward the electric line—the train’s brakes screeched and whined, shuddering to a painful, jolting stop. Passengers were thrown against the windows.

The platform passengers looked around, asking, “Where’s the baby?” Over the loudspeaker came a recorded message, “Standard procedure allows no train to proceed without Métro personnel clearing the track.”

The anxious buzz turned into a disgruntled murmur. She wanted to melt into the crowd. Dédé and the mecs trolled the platform, bumping into people taking a good look before excusing themselves. She turned to the men standing near her, in suits, with briefcases and newspapers under their arms. She picked the one with the nicest eyes, wearing a large trenchcoat.

“Pretending you don’t remember me?” she said, sliding into the folds of the man’s coat and wrapping her arms around him. He wasn’t bad looking on closer inspection. And he smelled nice, as if he’d just showered with lavender-olive soap. She put her finger to his lips. “Shh, it’s our secret.”

“Do I know you?” the man asked, a look of happy surprise struggling with suspicion on his face.

“Don’t be coy,” she said. “I’ve never forgotten.” She pulled his head down, shielding herself from view and started kissing him. She kept her eyes open, scanning the platform. Another of Dédé’s mecs had stopped by her elbow.

“You’re even better than I remember,” she breathed into the man’s ear, pulling his arms around her, and guiding him back into the tiled Métro wall. She saw the wedding band on his finger. “Let me enjoy it once more: Your wife will never know.”

“You know, you’ve got the wrong person …,” he murmured. But he didn’t pull away.

She pulled him tighter, edging toward the exit stairs, “I’ve heard that before. Play along with me, okay?”

His eyes crinkled in amusement. “Who said anything about stopping?”

“I’m going to slip away,” she said, walking backwards up the stairs. “Merci for your help.”

“Anytime,” he grinned, digging in his pocket for a business card.

But she’d gone.

TWENTY MINUTES later Aimée slammed her office door.

Startled, René dropped the book he was reading.

“You just missed Claude,” he said, shaking his head. “That man has unsettling eyes.”

She picked René’s book up off the floor. “Reading again?” she asked, looking at the title, Life with Picasso, by Francoise Gilot.

“Picasso appeared and disappeared in her life,” René said. “A stormy relationship.”

Aimée gave a wry smile.

“Like Yves,” she nodded. “Too bad he’s not around long enough for the stormy.”

She threw off her wet clothes and kicked the radiator to life. In the armoire she found wool tights, black skirt, ankle boots, and a striped silver ski parka to wear over a black sweater.

Back in the office she opened her bag, thrust some disks into René’s hand, and pulled out her laptop. Logging on, she glanced at the clock.

“Let’s get to work,” she said. “We may not have much time.”

“Are we catching a plane?”

“Dédé’s getting a little too close for comfort,” she said. She told him about the men watching her apartment and the Métro.

René climbed into his orthopedic chair, then logged onto his terminal. Aimée’s phone started beeping.

“Let me give you a proper battery, Aimée,” he said, handing her a new one. “Try that.”

“My phone has been messed up,” she said. “My watch, too. Ever since the EDF.”

He set the battery on her desk.

“Right now,” she said, “I want to know why Sylvie dealt with Dédé.”

“Figure this. If Dédé knows everybody in Belleville,” René said, “he might be the one people use to reach the Maghrébin network.”

“Good point,” she said. “But first we’ve got some bank tunneling to do.”

By the time she’d checked the links from Sylvie’s Channel Island bank, she’d found the money transfers.

“Look René, the deposits come from the Bank of Algiers,” she said, excited. “Several million each time.”

René pulled up the Bank of Algiers account on his screen then clicked away. “I found them,” he pointed. “Here, wire trans-fers come from AINwar Enterprises.”

Aimée peered at his screen, seeing a long list of wire transfers. She sat back down; something familiar tugged at her.

“Why would AINwar Enterprises pass amounts via the Bank of Algiers to a Channel Island account in Eugénie Grandet’s name,” Aimée said. She swiveled her chair to the office terminal and logged on.

“Smells bad to me,” René said.

“Guess it’s time to find out about AINwar.”

After she dug into an Arab net server, she’d discovered the company’s charter and by-laws of incorporation, required by the French government for any contract.

Nothing illegal in that.

Then it hit her. The night of the explosion. Philippe introduced her to Kaseem Nwar. Kaseem had been with Olivier Guit-tard, both intent on Philippe’s passing some project and humanitarian mission. She remembered Philippe’s strained reaction and how he got her out of there quickly. Then she’d seen him again in the café in Belleville. Was Kaseem Nwar part of AINwar?

She accessed the company records; Downloading took time.

Aimée thought back to those photos of people with numbers pinned to them. All Algerian.

Curious, on her office computer she started accessing information about AINwar while René concentrated on Philippe de Froissart’s account. She kept digging for the company structure, list of shareholders and employees. When she found them, she stood up and whistled.

“Kaseem Nwar’s the director,” she said. “Appears he’s into nepotism.”

“Why?”

“Most of the employees and shareholders are Nwars, too.”

“What kind of firm?” René asked. “Heavy machinery or something to do with oil?”

She shook her head.

“Jewelry importer,” she said. Odd. “How does that fit with a project in connection with humanitarian aid?”

“Pearls for the masses?”

“That’s it, René,” she said, grabbing his arm excitedly. “Pearls! The Lake Biwa pearl. I keep saying you’re a genius. And you are.”

He grinned. “I’m never one to refuse a compliment, but where does that fit?”

“I don’t know yet, but I’m getting there,” she said, unable to sit down. She paced back and forth.

It was all there. Somehow. She had to piece it together. Figure out where the odd bits went. One big piece was Mustafa Hamid and the AFL; she felt they were part of it. In some way they belonged.

“AINwar sent huge sums to Sylvie,” she said. “Why? Were they bribes for Philippe so contracts went AINwar’s way?”

“But a jewelry business?” René” asked. “Unless AINwar fronts another kind of company?”

She sat back down and searched AINwar’s records. Two firms were listed as subsidiaries; NadraCo and AtraAl Inc.

But she could find nothing more.

René couldn’t break into the Banque de France. They were blocked at every turn.

He stood up and stretched.

“Aimée, if the bribes came in, they’re hidden,” René said, sucking air through his lips. “Takes time to unearth them. All my tools sit in my database at home.”

René left, promising to call her when he found anything.

Frustrated, she knew more information existed. How to find it was the problem.

Start simple. Go with what she knew.

She logged on to the Ministry of Defense. Using a secure government password, one of many René kept current, courtesy of his ever-changing connections, she found a list of ministry-funded projects. Then she refined her search to projects under funding consideration.

Hundreds.

She took a breath and narrowed her topic to those involving Algeria. The list slimmed down considerably. While the list printed out, she sat down at René’s desk.

On his terminal she accessed the National Fichier via Renéws connection, because if the government didn’t catch you when you were born, they always caught up when you checked out.

She knew that Algeria, at the time of Mustafa Hamid and his brother Sidi’s birth, was regarded by France as more than a colony. Even more than an extension of France across the Mediterranean—a department. However, this wasn’t reckoned with in actual voting terms. Unable to vote, Algerians belonged to the Republique like a member of the wedding but never the bride.

If Hamid or Sidi emigrated to France, she figured, they would probably have paid some application fee, surcharge, or tax.

In Hamid’s case she found his carte banccdre via his date of birth and Sécurité sociale. No names were listed as next of kin, only a Sidi, H., as father, and Sidi, S., for mother, both entered as deceased. She entered Djeloul Sidi’s name. His wife’s maiden name, El Hechiri, appeared.

Aimée’s eyes widened as she saw a cross reference to Kaseem Nwar. That seemed odd.

Further on, records indicated that El Hechiri had been married to Kaseem Nwar from 1968 to 1979. Aimée peered closer, then scrolled back. Sidi’s records showed he’d been married to El Hechiri during 1968-1979, the same years.

Aimée sat back and whistled. He’d changed his name, and the computer hadn’t caught it—just cross-referenced it.

She remembered him appearing in the café, telling her how he’d brought food to the sans-papiers—why hadn’t he just said, “I saw my brother.”

Come to think of it, why hadn’t he admitted he sent Sylvie millions of francs and Lake Biwa pearls? But then she hadn’t asked him, either.

She scanned the Algerian project list, running her fingers over the names, ticking them off until she found a name that struck her.

Taking the list to her wall map of Algeria, she followed the course of the Atlas Mountains and pinpointed the area south of Oran. Once a rebel fellagha stronghold against the French, the area had then become a munitions-dump wasteland, now declared off limits by the military.

Staggered, she sat down. It was hard for her to believe what she’d discovered.

She knew what she had to do.

Her charged phone signaled several voice mail messages. She tried not to hope, wondering if Yves had left her a message. But when she listened, all three were from the same person.

“Aimée,” Samia’s voice, high, shallow-breathing. “Pick up!”

Again the same message. Samia’s voice rising, sounding frantic.

The last message just a phone number, mumbled quickly. Samia. Very frightened.

Aimée listened to the number several times to make sure she’d written it correctly. Had Samia come through with the explosives connection? And should she believe her? The last time she had, Aimée had been shot.

Aimée hit the call-back function. A woman answered, saying this was a pay phone in rue des Amandiers, but if Aimée would like to buy Ecstasy she’d give her a good price.

She hung up and dialed the number Samia had left.

“Oui,” a voice answered after six rings.

“Samia gave me this number,” she said, keeping it vague.

A pause. “Who is this?”

“Aimée. Is Samia there?”

Another long pause. “I expected her by now.”

“I’d like to come over.”

“Call back.”

The phone went dead.

No one answered on her next three tries.

Had Samia given her the number to the explosives? She recognized the phone number. In her bag she checked the folder—“Youssef’ was written above the matching phone number. Her heart raced. And she remembered Denet’s words. On her minitel she searched under EuroPhoto. She found the same number with an address for a lab on rue de Menilmontant. So now she knew that they connected.

She redialed the number. The same voice answered.

“Please don’t hang up, listen to me,” she said. “I think you have something I want to see.”

“Who are you?” the voice said.

“I found your name in the ‘ST 196’folder,” she said. “Did you take the photos?”

The phone slammed down.

She stuck the Beretta in her waistband, pulled on her gloves and long wool scarf.

In the hallway she climbed down the back fire escape and made her way to the Métro.

EURO PHOTO’S GRIMY lab entrance stood in the rear of a courtyard filled with trucks and vans.

Inside Aimée leaned on the Formica counter. She smelled the acidic photographic chemicals and heard the chomp of print machines. On the office walls hung huge photos of white marble mosques and shots of sugar-sand beaches with sapphire slivers of the Mediterranean.

Through an open grime-stained window, Aimée noticed a company van pulling into the courtyard.

“Dropping an order off?” asked a smiling dark-eyed young woman, her head covered by a scarf. From behind the counter she passed an order form toward Aimée.

Aimée returned her smile.

“Actually I need to talk with Youssef about some processing,” she said. “Does he have a moment?”

She backed up, shaking her head. “There’s no Youssef here.”

“But I talked with someone—”

“Orders come in all the time,” the woman said, turning away. “You must have misunderstood.”

This woman was scared, Aimée thought, hiding something.

“Yes, of course, you’re right,” she said, thinking fast, “I’m terrible with names. A man helped me, he seemed about my age. He limped.”

Loud buzzing erupted from the back of the lab. Lights blinked green. “You’re in the wrong lab, I think,” the woman said, gesturing toward the rear. “Try the one on rue de Belleville.”

The woman headed quickly toward the back.

“But please, can’t you—”

“Excuse me,” the woman said, her mouth tight and compressed. “I’ve got a production schedule to meet.”

By the time Aimée made her way toward the back near the van, she’d come up with a plan. She jiggled the van door open, grabbed some large boxes of photographic papers, then entered the back.

Loud arguing in Arabic reached her ears. The scarf-clad woman stood by another stocky woman, pointing toward the front counter. In front of Aimée a massive printing machine spat out large-format posters, shooting them onto a spinning wheel. Aimée knew she had to move quickly. The women would throw her out before she found Youssef.

Men filled cartons as the posters came off the wheel. None of them sported spiky hair like Denet had described, so she kept going. Mounting the spiral staircase in back, leading to more of the lab, she discovered a warren of cluttered offices.

“Youssefs supposed to check this order,” she mumbled to an older man busy working an ancient adding machine.

“Let me see,” he said, pushing his glasses up his forehead.

Aimée leaned the carton on the edge of his desk, making a show of how heavy it was.

The man’s phone rang; he picked it up and immediately began punching the adding machine.

“Sorry, but I’ve got more deliveries,” she said, tapping her nails on the box.

He looked up, then motioned Aimée toward a long hallway.

“Down there. I don’t recognize the order,” he said. “Check with me on your way out.”

Aimée shot ahead before he changed his mind. She figured that this nineteenth-century building joined apartments in the back. Below her the floor vibrated from the machines.

After checking four dusty offices in the next wing, she saw a figure hunched over a photo layout, marking shots with red pen.

“Youssef?” she asked, setting down the cartons.

A young short-haired woman in her mid-twenties looked up, her eyes unsure.

“I’m Youssefa,” she said. “What do you need?”

Now it made sense. No wonder the women downstairs had told her there was no Youssef here.

Denet had mistakenly taken Youssefa for a man in Eugénie’s courtyard. Youssefa looked young, Aimée thought. Her dark skin stood out against her chalk white hair. Half-moon scars crossed from her temple to her left eye.

“Where’s Samia?”

“She left,” Youssefa said, her look guarded. “Who are you?”

“Her friend.”

Youssefa’s eyes flicked over her outfit. “You don’t seem her type,” she said.

“Samia left a message. She sounded frightened,” Aimée said.

Youseffa shrugged.

“Can you tell me about the ‘ST196’photos?”

Youssefa’s brown face passed from curiosity to terror in seconds. She dropped the pen, backed into a chair.

“I know you went to Eugénie’s apartment—did you develop those photos for her?”

Youssefa moved fast, around the corner of the table. She started running, her limp noticeable, out into the hall.

“Please, Youssefa, wait!” She shoved the carton on the floor and took off after her.

Aimée barreled into a stack of old film cans, sending them shooting across the wooden floor. She slipped and fell over the metal canisters, wincing as she landed on her aching hip.

Youssefa was gone.

Aimée got up slowly. She figured Youssefa could only have gone into the warren ahead of her, since the hall dead-ended behind her. The windows overlooking the courtyard parking area were open. She heard an unmistakable voice from below. She stopped and listened. A voice described her hair, her jacket, and how she owed his boss.

Dédé.

How could he have found her, unless he’d seen her leave from the back of her office. Or—her heart quickened. She didn’t like to think of it. Unless he’d gotten to René and threatened him. But René didn’t know where she was going—she hadn’t told him.

She heard scuffling down the dark hallway. That was the only direction Youssefa could have gone. She followed the noise.

Youssefa was pounding on a fire exit door, but it was jammed. When she saw Aimée, she reared back like a cornered animal about to attack.

“Let me help you, Youssefa,” she said. “Someone’s after me too.”

“I destroyed the negatives,” she said, her voice cracking. “Leave me alone.”

Why destroy the proof?

“I’m on your side, but as soon as we get out of here, I will,” she said. “A mec called Dédé’s after me.”

Youssefa blinked her good eye.

“Look out the window, check for yourself,” she said. “Dédé’s determined to find me, but he’s not my type either.”

She figured if they got out of here, she’d corner Youssefa and sit on her chest until she told her what the photos meant and why she’d destroyed the negatives.

She aimed several heel kicks until the exit door sagged open.

“Lead the way,” she said.

“Dédé’s a piece of shit,” Youssefa said, hesitating, then limping ahead.

“No argument there,” Aimée said, following her.

She wondered why the sign said EXIT when this web of narrow halls, roofed by skylights, clearly led to another building instead of outside.

Youssefa opened the last door at the end. They entered a hallway, yellowed and scuffed, passing a dim stairwell. She took out a key and unlocked a door.

Uneasiness washed over Aimée but she figured this had to be better than what lay behind her. They entered the back rooms of a small apartment.

Red-flocked wallpaper, old gas sconces, and small upholstered chairs gave the rooms a busy appearance. But the huge black-and-white photos of Edith Piaf on stage and candid shots, filling the walls, lent the rooms a 1940s feel. A scratchy recording of Piaf played from another room. In the corner, tacked onto a dressmaker’s dummy about shoulder height, hung an old-fashioned black dress. Bizarre.

Everything was on a smaller scale, as if made for a little person. René’ would feel right at home, she thought.

“Where are we?”

“At my friend’s,” Youssefa said.

“What is this place … a shrine to Piaf?”

“Close,” Youssefa said. “It’s the Edith Piaf Museum.” She motioned her toward the back, putting her finger on her lips.

She followed Youssefa into a small modern kitchen, all white and stainless steel.

“Go on.” Youssefa gestured toward the back window. “That leads to rue Crespin du Gast.”

She started toward the window, then turned back and pinned Youssefa’s arms behind her back, sliding her onto a wobbly kitchen stool.

“Tell me what ‘ST 196’means,” she said, leaning over her. “Or I go nowhere.”

A momentary hint of regret hit her as Youssefa’s chest heaved and she burst into frightened sobs. But Aimée couldn’t stop now.

“Youssefa, Eugénie passed something to my friend before her car exploded.” She loosened her grip on her arms. “My God, Youssefa, it happened in front of me! I have to know why,” she said. “Not only Dédé, but someone else is after me and my friend.”

“They’ll k-k-kill me,” she said, choking on her sobs.

“Why?”

“I took those photos—they made me!”

Aimée’s mouth felt dry. “Who did?”

“He’s not a general, but they call him one,” Youssefa said. “He likes people to call him that. He likes to hang around with the military.”

Had he sat in the cirque, wearing a uniform?

“What’s his name?”

“He’s known as the general, that’s all.”

“Youssefa, why did they make you take the photos?” she said. Part of her didn’t want to know why. It was too horrendous to contemplate.

“D-d-documentation.” She closed her eyes.

Aimée remembered the looks on the faces in the photos. The way the numbers were pinned to the shirts or the skin of the bare chested. Pinned to their skin. Like temporary branding.

She sank down on the stool next to Youssefa.

As a child, she’d seen cattle in the pasture next to her grandmother’s Auvergne farm. Numbers were clipped on the cows’ ears to distinguish them from herds en route to the abbatoir. She gasped.

“ST… that stands for ‘slaughter,’doesn’t it?” she said, not waiting for her answer. “And 196 would be the military division of the area, according to Algerian military maps.”

Youssefa covered her face, her body quivering with spasms.

That was answer enough for her.

“They wanted you to record it, didn’t they… or he did, the man they refer to as ‘general?’” she said. “Villagers, dissenters, and anyone they could lump together as fundamentalists, right?”

Finally Youssefa nodded. “My family owned a photo shop. We sold cameras, developed film. Then one day the military rounded everyone up in the square, called us Islamic zealots,” she muttered. “Herded us into grain trucks and took us out in the bled. Dropped us near big hangars storing wheat. Someone had told them 1 knew photography.” Youssefa rubbed her good eye. “They shoved a Minolta in my hand, put a box of film at my feet, and said, ‘Shoot.'”

Horrified, Aimée thought of all those faces.

“It took days,” Youssefa said, her voice growing curiously detached. “At the end my fingers didn’t work, and I couldn’t stand up. They did this.” She pointed to her scars and her eye. “But I lived. I owed the victims. That’s why I hid the negatives. The military didn’t care, all they wanted were prints recorded in black and white.”

Like Cambodia, Aimée thought, sickened. Wholesale mass killings of innocents by the military. Slaughtered by their own forces, which spoke to the madness of the military mind.

“How did you get out?”

“She helped me,” Youssefa said simply.

“Eugénie?”

“She’s my AFL contact’s cousin.”

Of course! Aimée remembered the AFL’s hunger-strike flyer with Youssefa’s name on it, and Sylvie’s membership, starting in the Sorbonne. Now things added up.

“Sylvie Cardet was known as Eugénie Grandet,” Aimée said.

Youssefa shrugged, “I don’t know.”

“But what was she doing with those photos?”

Youssefa looked down.

“I showed them to her, told her about the massacres,” she said. “Then Eugénie found out that everything was a sham.”

“A sham?” she asked worriedly.

“The humanitarian mission,” she said. “The fund goes to the military—they turn around and buy surplus military ware.”

Aimée shook her head. She had a hard time believing the second part.

“What do you mean?” she said. “How can that work?”

“French military surplus; I saw trucks filled with night-vision goggles,” Youssefa said. “Some idiot boasted there were thirty thousand pairs, at only two francs a pair! So cheap, he said, the General had bought the lot.”

The humanitarian mission—Philippe was involved in that. No wonder he’d wanted to keep her quiet.

“What’s it got to do with the AFL hunger strikers in the church?”

“Eugénie trusted Mustafa Hamid,” Youssefa said. “Several times she told me if I got in trouble to go to Hamid. That’s all.”

“What happened to them?”

“I gave the rest of the photos to Zdanine,” Youssefa said. “He said he’d give them to Hamid, get me time to speak with him.”

Zdanine! For a price he must have hid the photos, left them for Dédé in that abandoned house. Dédé’s mecs recovered them, but she and René had surprised them in the park.

“You didn’t destroy the negatives, did you?”

She averted her gaze. “In good hands.”

“Give me a contact sheet.”

Youssefa turned away.

“I need to have proof if you want me to stop them.”

She shook her head. “That’s what Eugénie said.”

Gently she turned Youssefa’s disfigured face toward her.

“Trust me,” she said, mustering as much bravado as she could. “Believe it or not, I do this for a living. And they’re after me as well.”

She saw agreement in Youssefa’s sad eyes.

Youssefa led her toward the room they’d first entered. The room with the Piaf photos and the black dress. Youssefa opened a wooden armoire. Musty smells laced with lavender wafted out. On the shelves Aimée saw a row of little black shoes, some T-strapped, others open-toed, all from the thirties and forties. She stared. The pairs of shoes couldn’t be bigger than her hand.

“Piaf’s?”

Youssefa nodded.

For such a tiny woman, Aimée thought, Piaf had touched the world.

Youssefa reached to the upper shelf, where rows of yellowed kid gloves lay.

In good hands, she’d said.

Youssefa pulled out an envelope, checked it, then handed it to her. “These show the piles of bodies.” She looked down. “Other than this, the proof lies in the desert, fifty kilometers outside Oran. Bones bleached by the sun.”

She thought about Gaston’s words. His experience in the same part of Algeria. History repeated itself in sad, twisted ways.

AIMÉE SLID out of the back kitchen window, climbing down the rusty fire escape to an asphalted yard. Following the yard, she exited onto rue Crespin du Gast and walked the two blocks to Samia’s apartment.

She knocked on the door. No answer.

“Samia, it’s Aimée.”

All she heard was pounding Rai music with a techno-beat.

She tried the handle. Locked.

If Samia was scared, why play the music so loud?

Aimée tramped back down to the courtyard. The rain was coming down hard. She rolled up her collar, passing the boarded-up butcher shop. Peeling posters lined the facade. She headed toward the spot overlooked by Samia’s kitchen window.

And then she saw the orange-pink phosphorescent watch on the stones. She bent down, picked it up, her heart quickening.

“Are you here?”

Water rushing from a rain gutter answered her.

She edged toward the passage, reeking of urine, that bordered the hammam. And then she saw Samia sprawled against the stone wall.

“Samia, ça va?”

But when Aimée got closer she froze.

A dark red wound blossomed on Samia’s chest, staining her peach twinset, her eyes open to the falling raindrops. Aimée gasped and knelt beside her. “You’re too young,” Aimée whispered, reaching for Samia’s hands. Cold.

Dead cold.

Guilt stabbed at her. And was supposed to protect the streetwise, childlike Samia.

She closed Samia’s eyes, saying a prayer, promising her justice.

She punched in 17 for SAMU on her cell phone, gave the location, then waited until she heard the siren scream before she slipped into the street.

Where had Samia been going? Why here? But that was for the flics to chase, she thought grimly. Dédé had been two blocks away looking for her; he’d meant business when he’d warned her others would die.

She dreaded calling Morbier, debating when to tell him. But in the end she stood on the rainswept corner a block away on rue Moret and tried him on her cell phone. She didn’t want him hearing it on the news or over the flic’s radio.

“I messed up, Morbier,” she said.

“Any good news, Leduc?”

She heard the flick of a match, and heard him inhaling.

“Bad. Samia’s gone.”

Morbier’s silence seemed to last forever. She knew this news had pierced him.

“Nom de Dieu,” he sighed. “I’m so stupid.”

“Désolée, Morbier.” The tears welled in her eyes. “My fault.”

Why hadn’t she made Samia stay in the car, baby-sat her until she’d made the plastique connection.

“You took a bullet too, didn’t you, Leduc,” Morbier said finally, his voice sad and tired. “Where are you?”

She told him.

“Get out of there, Leduc. Start walking. Now!”

She stumbled against the street sign, then ran all the way to rue de Belleville and flagged a taxi. They’d be after her now, double strength. An icy determination took over; she could play hardball too. She handed the taxi driver a hundred francs and told him he’d make another if he got to the Ministry of Defense in under thirty minutes.

TWENTY MINUTES later in the ministry reception area Ai-mee told Philippe’s secretary, in a hushed polite tone, that she needed to see le Ministre immediatement!

The secretary reluctantly acknowledged that the minister was busy. He had high-level meetings but would get back to her within the day.

Aimée continued, her tone just above a whisper, that if she couldn’t be accommodated the secretary would have the blood of innocent people staining her silk blouse. No amount of dry cleaning could take care of that.

The secretary blinked but still refused.

However, when Aimée threatened to burst into the meeting she rose up in alarm and showed her into an adjoining office.

“Oui?” Philippe said, coming in a moment later.

His haggard eyes and stooped shoulders projected an air of defeat. A new experience for Philippe. Pathetic, she thought, and pitied him. But only briefly.

“Philippe, I’ve got proof that the humanitarian mission’s bogus,” she said. “And someone’s blackmailing you.”

Alarm shone in Philippe’s eyes. He stepped back. Voices buzzed in the background, papers rustled under a glowing chandelier. He turned and shut the door.

“There’s a conference going on, officials from my department,” he said, his voice tight. “I can’t talk.”

He hadn’t denied it. And he looked pale.

“Don’t talk, Philippe,” she said. “I can help. Just listen.”

He’d changed after his threats on Canal Saint Martin. He looked almost tame and so beaten. Maybe she had a chance. She pulled a gilt upholstered Louis XV chair close to him.

“Sit down. Give me three minutes,” she said easing him toward the seat.

For a moment, she thought he’d refuse, but he sat down. That was a start.

“You didn’t know the funds went to the Algerian military, did you?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Of course not, you trusted Hamid, Kaseem, and Sylvie. Why not? They’d been your friends since the Sorbonne. When the late sixties revelations about French repression came to light, the legacy left in war-torn Algeria—you joined what became the AFL.”

She watched Philippe. He blinked and rubbed his thumbs together.

“What proof do you have?”

“Hear me out, Philippe,” she said. “Hamid followed Islam his own way. I’m sure you admired his peaceful means and how he embraced a broader humanity. You contributed discreetly to the AFL as you rose in the ministry.”

She paused: now the ugly part.

“Kaseem had returned to Algeria. Made money supplying the military, somehow. But you didn’t know that. Six years ago Syl-vie came back into your life.”

Philippe shook his head. “She wasn’t my mistress.”

“I know. She talked you into funding this humanitarian mission while sweetening your bank account. The project revitalized the 196 sector, a land ravaged and barren since the Algerian war in the sixties. Provided irrigation, remapping the area, building roads, a power station, and housing. After all, it helped those most affected, you thought. You believed in the mission, wanted it to succeed. This was for the disenfranchised tribes in the bled, not the politicians or the military. You believed Kaseem. So did Sylvie and Hamid. He was your friend. Your old friend.”

She had Philippe’s attention, she was reaching him.

“But the reality hit when the photos of ‘ST 196’appeared. No new settlements, roads, or irrigated fields. Just death-squad executions and weapons for the military. Sylvie grew a conscience quickly. You did, too, Philippe. But Dédé, one of the generals’ hired mecs, blew her up when she threatened to expose the truth.”

His shook his head.

“You stopped funding the project. That’s why you’re hiding Anaïs,” she said. “They planned to kidnap her, use her as bait to force you to fund the project. But I got in the way.”

Anger blazed in Philippe’s eyes. “You’re always in the way!”

The door opened, and the light from the hallway streamed in.

“Philippe, we’re waiting,” said Guittard, the blond man she recognized from Philippe’s kitchen. He ignored Aimée, tapping his designer loafers, and faced Philippe. “They’ve tabled the resolution. Get up, man! Unless you propose a new initiative, the mission goes down the pissoir.”

“Why shouldn’t it, Monsieur?” she said.

But she spoke to their backs.

Two women had been murdered but that didn’t seem to grease the wheels of the government. Money did. At least the mission wouldn’t be funded. But someone had to pay, Aimée told herself.