Murder in the Marais

Saturday Morning

SOLANGE GOUTAL LOOKED UP from her work, her eyes swollen with crying. "Soli's dead…the rumor is that he was killed."

"It's more than a rumor, it's the truth," Aimee said, setting her leather bag on the granite counter below the chiseled words Never forget.

Solange averted her eyes. "Go in, the director will see you now."

Annick Sausotte, director of the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine bustled over to greet her. Extending her hand, she pumped Aimee's, then pulled her into an office.

"Ms. Leduc, it's unfortunate we meet after Soli Hecht's tragic death." Her quick darting eyes flicked over Aimee's suit and took in her leather bag. "Please sit here. I'm all yours for five minutes. Then I must run to a memorial luncheon."

"Thank you for seeing me, Ms. Sausotte. I'll get right to the point." Aimee perched on the edge of an uncomfortable tubular metal chair. "The Temple E'manuel has retained my services in the murder of Lili Stein. I believe Soli Hecht, at Lili's request, was investigating someone whom she recognized as a collaborator from the war. There's a connection and I want to know what Soli worked on the day he supposedly got run over by the bus."

"Supposedly run over by a bus you say, Ms. Leduc?" Annick Sausotte said.

Aimee looked at her sharp dark eyes. "Someone pushed him in front of the bus," she said. "But I can't substantiate that, Ms. Sausotte. Don't you wonder why he would take a bus when his rheumatoid arthritis had been so severe he needed help down the stairs and with his coat? And after he told Solange he'd take a taxi?"

"What do you want from me, Mademoiselle Leduc?" Annick said.

"Access into computer files that Soli worked on that day," Aimee said. "I came across his name in Lili's belongings. I believe she'd recognized a former collaborator and asked Soli for help to obtain proof." Aimee paused. "That's what got her killed."

Annick Sausotte leaned forward, her chin cradled in her palms, elbows mirrored on her polished desk. "Soli was the only one who could have authorized access to his files, but now…" She stopped, a look of sorrow crossing her face. "Of course, that's impossible. Only the foundation can grant such permission."

"I know he was murdered in the hospital. But I can't prove that either." Aimee stood up and leaned close into Annick's face. "There's another woman in danger, a survivor whose family perished in the Holocaust."

"Are you Jewish, Mademoiselle Leduc?"

"Is that a job requirement? Because I get the feeling that might be more important to you than someone's life." Aimee paced over to Annick, who rose. "Someone's after me, too, but they don't seem to care about my religion!"

"You're taking this personally, Ms. Leduc. Please understand…"

Aimee interrupted. "I tend to take things personally when my life is in danger. Will you help me or not?"

Annick Sausotte escorted her to the door. "I don't even handle that end of the center's operations. Let me check with those responsible and Soli's foundation. Call me in a few days."

Aime shook her head. "You don't seem to understand."

"That's the best I can do," Annick said as she put her arms into a too large overcoat that engulfed her small frame. "Please call me tomorrow or the day after."

As Annick Sausotte rushed out, loud, buzzing erupted behind the reception desk. Aimee paused at the desk, studying the visitors' log intently.

"Solange, there's a delivery in the receiving bay," Annick said. "I'll hit the door opener here if you can go down and take it."

Solange grabbed her key ring, as Annick's footsteps echoed in the marble foyer.

"I'll use the restroom then let myself out with the director," Aimee said.

Solange hesitated. A shrill voice came over the intercom. "Frexpresse delivery, I need a signature!"

Solange nodded at her, then disappeared behind the rear door. Aimee heard the click of the front doors closing and quickly scanned the security system. Security monitors showed Annick Sausotte striding to the narrow street and Solange signing a clipboard, handing it back to a uniformed driver, and then turning towards the camera. Then Aimee couldn't see her anymore.

She pulled open drawers until she found the one with plastic identification cards. Underneath were several passkeys and Aimee grabbed all of them, sticking them into her pocket. Aimee stepped inside the partially open door of Annick Sausotte's office. She figured she could stay in the office until closing time, which would be in about ten minutes. Aimee had just kicked off her achingly high heels and crumpled into the tubular chair when she heard Solange's voice.

"Annick, did you forget something?" she said.

Aimee looked over and saw a bulging briefcase on Annick's desk. She realized there was no closet and the desk offered no hiding place. The only other piece of furniture, an antique black-lacquered armoire, stood delicate and three-legged. She opened it to find it full of fragile porcelain.

Nowhere to hide.

She heard Annick's voice as a phone rang. "It's on my desk. I'll get this call."

Aimee grabbed her heels and flattened herself behind the door. As Solange walked to the desk, Aimee pulled slowly on the door, almost covering herself behind it.

Solange had picked up the case and turned to leave when Annick said, "Solange, look for that press packet on the deportation monument, will you? Second or third drawer of my desk."

She couldn't see Solange but prayed that she'd find it. Quickly. Her nose itched. Unfortunately, her hands gripped her heels and she couldn't pinch her nose shut without banging the door.

She heard Solange rooting through the desk, rustling papers. "I can't find it. Which drawer?"

She tried pushing her nose against the wooden door to stop her sneeze but that only pushed it open more. She was just about to explode when Annick called out, "I found it."

Solange strode out of the room, banging the door shut behind her. Aimee dropped her heels on the carpet at the same time, muffling her sneeze with two hands as best she could. From behind the closed door came low conversation then silence.

While she slipped her heels back on, she dialed Leah's number at the button factory

"Leah, how is Sarah?"

Leah's voice answered in a low, conspiratorial tone. "At last check, all's well."

"How long ago did you check, Leah?" Aimee asked. "Our guest rates among the nervous variety. Probably could use company."

"Looked in a few hours ago," Leah said. "I'm closing up so I'll check. There's a Gruyère souffle with a caper tapenade relish in the oven.…"

Aimee realized she hadn't eaten yet today. "Sounds wonderful. I'll be tied up a while, so please reassure her. I'll call you back."

Soli Hecht's foundation on the fifth floor resided in what had been poetically called a garret in the last century. The plaque outside his office stated in bronze that Chopin had died in here, consumptive, penniless, and behind in the rent. Now it consisted of whitewashed rooms with slanted eaves and rectangular windows. White particle board ringed the office with continuous counter and shelving space. Several computers sat near a state-of-the-art copy machine and white metal file cabinets took up the remaining space.

The general antiseptic impression was marred by the photo covering a whole wall. A small child's foot hung out of a crematorium oven next to piles of ashes with smiling uniformed Gestapo members poking it with their riding crops. Bold letters below said NEVER FORGET…

Aimee's stomach lurched, but she forced herself to stay. She sat down at the nearest flashing computer terminal. She leaned her head against the screen, but still the photo wouldn't go away. What about that little foot? The mother who'd washed it, the father who'd tickled it, the grandmother who'd knitted socks for it, the grandfather who'd hoisted it on his shoulders? Probably all gone. Generations gone. Only ghosts remained.

So Soli Hecht reminded himself of why he worked here, Aimee realized. As if he needed the motivation, being a survivor of Treblinka himself. She started punching keys, playing with possible passwords to access Soli's hard drive. She considered the possibility of the attic effect, that all data storage survives on the hard drive. A user, like Hecht, would think he'd erased information by deleting it. But nothing ever went away. All written code was routed through the computer hardware and lodged in there somewhere, something she was paid well to find in her computer forensic investigations.

She discovered the password Shoah and found the terminals in Soli's foundation linked with the center's system downstairs and rubbed her hands excitedly. Methodically, she began accessing the hard drive, checking both data banks for Lili's name.

Soli's last computer activity was dated Friday, the day of his accident, two days after Lili's murder. No files had been opened or new files added. As she read his E-mail she grew disappointed. There was only a brief message from the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Where would Soli's floppy backup disks be?

The locked file cabinets yielded to a wiggling paperclip and Aimee searched, keeping her gaze averted from the photo. Hundreds of pages of testimony from survivors about Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon" which Soli had successfully documented. Aimee kicked the nearest cabinet; nothing newer than 1987. Baffled, Aimee began a systematic search of the whitewashed rooms. She emptied the files and took the file cabinets apart, checked under the computer for anything taped to its underside, and checked the carpet seams. Three hours later she remained thwarted. Nothing. Not even one floppy disk.

Something to do with Lili had to be here, she felt it. Would Soli have taken it with him? Even if he had, he'd have a copy or backup disk. At times like this, Aimee knew it was best to walk away and come back with a fresh eye to catch something she might have overlooked. She decided to go downstairs and check the center's microfiche file for cheat sheets from the Occupation.

The third-floor library system was clear, concise, and immaculately cross-referenced. Microfiche files of Jewish newspapers and bulletins rolled before her eyes.

An hour later, she found the old grainy photo with a brief article, "Non Plus Froid":

Students at the lycee on rue du Plâtre demonstrate patriotism for our French workers in Germany. This wool drive contributes to keeping our men warm this winter.

She saw Sarah and Lili, yellow stars embroidered on their dresses, standing by piles of coats in a school yard. There, too, was the face Odile Redonnet had identified as Laurent de Saux. On his neck, peeking from his shirt collar, was a butterfly-shaped birthmark.

She copied the article, complete with photo, on a laser copier standing flush with the wood-paneled library entrance. It eliminated distortions and blurs due to yellowed unarchival newsprint so that even minor facial distinctions were clear. The quality was excellent and irrefutable. She wondered how Laurent de Saux had hidden that birthmark.

Here was proof that Laurent knew Lili and Sarah. His identity remained the question. She had to check the bloody fingerprint against the French national file. Of course, she thought. Find a Laurent de Saux and check him against the bloody print!

That was when she heard the echo of footsteps. She froze. A raspy, hacking cough came from the hallway. Security? She dove under a nearby trestle table, clutching the copy in her hand. Then she realized the copy machine's cover stood suspiciously open and the red light blinked irritatingly.

Her leather bag lay on the marble floor by the machine. She peered from under the table and saw an elderly man, probably a retired flic, in a security uniform. She'd have to overpower him to log back on to Soli's computer and finish her search.

He hawked and spit into the metal garbage can near her head. Finally he switched off the machine, closed the cover with a thump, and flicked off the lights. He left a scent of last night's onion meal in the library.

And then she realized where Soli could have hidden things. Somewhere disturbing and offensive. That had to be it. The only place she hadn't looked! Silently, she rolled the copies into her bag, slipped off her heels again, and padded back up to the fifth floor.

Inside Hecht's foundation she approached the wall. Up close to the Gestapos' leering faces in the photograph she felt around. Smooth all the way to the tips of the riding crops, then she felt an indentation and slight groove. Pressing it, she heard a click, then felt a part of the wall open to her right with a swinging whoosh. A drawer slid out on tracks holding several disks in envelopes. She found a floppy titled "L. Stein." Steadying her hands, she took a deep breath and attempted to open the disk. But it didn't work.

The floppy was a WordPerfect file that had been protected with a password. She tried Soli's birthdate, his birthplace, events and names from the Holocaust. No success. Then she tried the names of all the concentration camps. Nothing. She tried Hebrew prayers and simple configurations of biblical references. Nothing. She needed Rene's code-breaking software to pick the lock of the file on Soli's disk.

She prayed that Rene had made it to her cousin Sebastian's by now. She punched in Sebastian's number on Hecht's white phone.

Sebastian answered. "He's here."

Rene got on the line.

"Are you all right?" she said.

"Just a graze, I'll live," he said. "I've hooked up the laptop."

Thank God, Rene was a computer fiend like she was. "Download this and let's try to crack it," she said. "Let's talk it through step by step."

Rene's fingers clicked over the keys nonstop.

Aimee checked her screen.

"OK, download complete," Rene said. "What are we looking for?"

"We're searching for Soli Hecht's password. I can't open the disk."

After a few minutes, Rene mumbled something that sounded like "Azores."

"What's what?" Aimee asked.

"Beat your neighbors out of doors," he said.

"Care to elaborate?"

"The old card game," Rene said. "'Beat your neighbors out of doors'-popular during the war. Even in her eighties my grandmother could ace me every time."

"Am I missing something here?" Aimee asked. "What are you talking about?"

"Remember the Jigny case?" he said. "I used our software to pick the password lock and got the first couple of letters."

"Go on, Rene," she said.

"Well, after getting the first couple of letters I guessed that the key was in a fantasy game," he said. "The guy's kid loved Dungeons and Dragons, a real aficionado, so that made it easier. I got the password and opened the file. We bought a new computer system with our fees from that one."

She blew a noisy kiss through the phone. "Haven't I said you're a genius! I don't know if Soli played many card games in Treblinka. He'd have been fourteen or sixteen then. All I know is he was intense and methodical-that's from what I've seen of the office in his foundation."

"Let me sink my teeth into this," Rene said. "I'll call you on the cell phone."

She thought about what Rene had tried. Games. Did Soli play games in Treblinka? Survival would have taken up most of his time. What games could Soli play in a death camp…if he'd played any? Something that could only be played on the rare occasions when the guards didn't watch. Something that prisoners could make that could be hidden easily. Something that required thought, planning, and deliberate moves. Just like the way he'd finally assembled his case against Klaus Barbie.

Of course! Chess could be played in a concentration camp. CHECKMATE opened the file immediately. She pulled out a fresh disk from her bag and started copying the now open file.

While she did that she called Leah.

A perky-voiced Leah answered, "Allô?"

"Did Sarah enjoy the souffle?"

"But she's with you," Leah said, suddenly awake. "Isn't she?"

"No!" Aimee panicked.

"She said she was going to meet you, something about the salamander," Leah said.

"What?" Aime trembled. Why would Sarah have left?

"That man picked her up," Leah said. "He said they would meet up with you."

"Who?"

Leah described someone who could only be Thierry. Aimee hit "Eject," grabbed the floppy, and ran down the stairs. By the door, she deactivated the security system in just the way Solange had described. On her way out, she tiptoed past the guard, who didn't even snort himself awake.

By the time she stood at the traffic light on the corner of rue de Rivoli, she knew she was being followed. She ducked into the Metro, remembering how she and Martine used to hide from their cronies after school. Latched to the tiled walls were hinges that held the swing doors of the Metro, and enough empty space for two giggling teenagers. Now it was a harder squeeze for her. But she just fit. A big rush of hot air, the screech of brakes, and the whoosh of pounding feet as passengers disgorged up the steps past Aimee. She counted to thirty, then ran back up the Metro steps and found a taxi by the western entrance of the Louvre.

Saturday Afternoon

"WHERE IS SARAH?" AIMÉE asked into her cell phone.

"You haven't found her?" Hartmuth said.

From the second floor of her cousin Sebastian's cluttered antique poster store on rue St. Paul in the Marais, she surveyed the narrow alley wedged below her. Sarah, not realizing the danger from her son, had gone with Thierry. Or maybe he had forced her.

Aimee pushed that thought from her mind. She had to get to a computer with municipal on-line capability and find Sarah.

Sebastian, in black leather pants, jacket, and matching black bushy beard, was helping outfit Rene. She'd rescued Sebastian once, her cousin by marriage and a former junkie. As he often said, he owed her for at least one lifetime.

Rene emerged from the upstairs loft, his arm hanging in a sling, wearing a fisherman's vest customized with flashlights Velcroed in all the pockets. Sebastian gently lifted him up and down into thigh-high rubber fishing boots.

"What's the salamander?" Aimee said into the phone.

Hartmuth let out a ripple of breath. "The marble arms of Francois the First."

Loud rumbling noises from below reached her ears. Sounds of distant thunder came from the direction of Bastille.

"Skip the history lesson," she said, frustrated that she might be too late. "What does it mean?"

"The salamander is a sculpture, carved in the arch of the seventeenth century building she'd lived in, opposite the catacombs."

Below her on narrow, medieval rue St. Paul, the street slowly filled with a line of khaki light utility tanks. Sleek and streamlined Humvees rolled over the cobblestones, straddling the stone bouches d'egout that led to the sewers. Aimee hadn't seen tanks in Paris since the riots of 1968 by the Sorbonne. Parked cars stymied the tanks' progress and they emitted clouds of diesel exhaust in the chill November afternoon.

"Has there been a bombing?" Aimee said.

"Radicals versus rightists," Hartmuth said. "I'm afraid I have something to do with it."

"What do you mean?"

Hartmuth's voice sounded tired. "My failure to vote. The EU was unable to ratify the trade agreement with its exclusionary policies."

"Thierry took Sarah to the catacombs," she said. "How does he know about them?"

"I showed him the old exit," Hartmuth sighed. "Hidden in the Square Georges-Cain."

"Meet me there," Aime said. She clicked off.

"We won't get through on any surface route, Aimee," Rene said as he walked over to her. "Checkpoints all over, armed militia is sealing the Marais."

She kissed him on both cheeks. "I cracked Soli Hecht's locked file with 'Checkmate.'"

Rene smiled. "Ditto."

"Great minds think alike, eh?" she said. "That's why we're going underground."

"The catacombs don't extend this side of the rue St. Antoine," he said.

"But the sewers do, Rene."

He rolled his eyes. "You know I don't do well with…"

"Rodents, me neither, but Sebastian's got something to help us with that," she said. "Did you bring the laptop?"

"Talk about addicted to computers!" he said. "Making a wounded man just out of the hospital borrow pirated software from friends!" He growled but his eyes shone. "I love it! What is the plan?"

"Hook the laptop to the municipal system and access FRAPOL 1 incognito," she said.

"Why?" Rene winced as he slung the backpack over his good shoulder.

"So I can identify that bloody fingerprint and find out who owns the building in the Marais," she said. "I'll nail the killer in dot matrix or laser gray scale." She quickly changed behind a 1930s poster that proclaimed "Ski the Alpes Maritimes" with parka-clad figures cavorting stiffly among old-fashioned ski lifts.

"Unload here or outside?" Sebastian asked, his beard muffling his voice. He had arranged everything she asked for.

She nodded to the rear door, which opened on a rain-soaked alley. He bundled up the bulky materials, then crouched under the eaves of his shop, his black leather pants glistening with raindrops.

"Thanks." She sidled near him in her dark vinyl hooded jumpsuit.

She gripped the handle of a small gray box, while Sebastian lugged a large backpack. They trudged in the light rain along the cobbled alley to the Quai des Celestins, a block away. Rene kept up the rear.

"What about the inhabitants below?" Rene said. "The ones with long greasy tails?"

She pointed to the box. "Sonic disturbance. They hate it. At least that's what the advertisement promised."

"It's high tech all the way with you, Aimee," Rene puffed.

"You're the one who's bothered by the rats, remember? Didn't you mention the epidemic proportions of rabies among the rodent population as recently as last week?" She tried not to sound out of breath. "This is the best I can do on such short notice."

Sebastian smiled out of his beard and Rene just glared.

"The back door to my place is always open, Aimee; just jiggle the hinges and slip in the bolt," he said.

"Sounds obscene," Rene muttered.

Sebastian grinned and was gone.

Aimee slid a thin metal rod out of her sleeve and hooked it under a sewer lid. Using a quick twist and thrust, she hauled the lid up and onto the pavement with a loud scrape. As inconspicuously as possible-on a quai overlooking the Seine with a dwarf at twilight-she gestured elegantly.

"After you," she said.

She hefted the backpack, then gripped the box as she climbed down the slippery rungs. Finally, she pulled the heavy, scraping lid back on top of them and it clanged shut.

A rotten mix of vegetables, feces, and clay and the smell of the sewers wafted through the damp tunnel. Dripping concrete arches oozed shiny patterns as if a giant snail had slimed over them.

Whenever Rene moved, the flashlight beams bobbed and bounced off the subterranean sewer walls. Splashes came from down the passage, and when he turned, pairs of beady red eyes were locked into the flashlight beams. It was no time to be squeamish but hordes of squealing rats were hard to ignore. She opened the box and switched the sonic meter on. The arrow wavered, dipped to zero, then shot up to five hundred decibels. Flat buzzing was emitted from the box, echoing off the dripping sewer walls.

"It's a good thing this frequency is only audible to animal ears," she said.

Rene looked dubious. "Do they get hypnotized like deer?" he asked as the rats remained staring at them.

"I doubt it," she said and shivered. These rats were the size of rabbits.

She wedged the sonic box into a pocket in the backpack, then secured it with Velcro holding straps. She had neglected to mention that the range had been shown effective at about two meters to repel penned canines. No studies had been done in wet underground conditions with rodents.

She also pushed aside the thought that they could be rabid. Rene turned slowly, his beams illuminating clumps of glistening brown fur and hairless tails, littered down the long sewer.

She consulted her sewer map. The brown stained concrete wall had a white indicator number with an arrow painted on it. "Let's go," she said.

As they trudged along in the continuous sludgy stream, Aimee pulled her ventilation mask over her mouth and adjusted Rene's for him. The smell wasn't so bad if they did that. Their footfalls echoed with the continuous drip from the clay pipes draining from the streets above. Behind them scurried an army of rats, their tails slapping the walls, maybe two meters behind them. They covered three blocks in five minutes, but the rats were gaining on them.

"Even with you driving, Rene," she said. "We couldn't get this far so fast."

Up ahead, the wet brown walls dripped with rivulets of rusty slime from a ten-foot-diameter netted pipe.

Aimee pulled out her wire cutters from inside her jumpsuit and started cutting. Loud squealing sounded nearby.

"No way am I going to crawl in there," Rene protested. "I go through enough shit in a day as it is."

"It's not exactly what you think it is, Rene," she said, cutting through the thick wire. "It's not a toilet drain."

"Well, the smell could fool me," he said. "What is it?"

"The waste-station chute and the only way into the morgue," she said, helping him slide into the gaping hole she'd cut.

"Oddest break-in I've ever done," he muttered.

"Maybe a little blood or fluids that have been hosed down from the embalming tables might find their way down here," she said. "But it's all diluted."

"Makes me glad I haven't eaten today," Rene said, slowly climbing up the wet steel rungs, using his good arm.

Aimee pressed a button and the waste chute's hinged metal cover swung open. She pulled Rene up and realized they had climbed into a large storage closet. Mops, vacuums, and industrial cleansers took up most of the space. Several blue lab coats, worn by maintenance, were hanging from hooks along with plastic hair nets and rubber gloves. She stripped to her black leotard, donned the lab attire, and put her jumpsuit in the trash. She pulled Rene's boots off. He slipped on sneakers.

"We'll leave out the back door after I do a fingerprint match, OK?" Aimee whispered and looked at her watch. "With your help, it should take fifteen minutes."

"Why couldn't we have come in the back?" Rene said.

"Police guard," she said. "I wanted to time it for a shift change but that got complicated. We're in and out and no one knows the difference."

"Why the morgue?" he said.

"After we finish, I count on finding Sarah in the catacombs right behind the morgue wall."

Inside the morgue, only one of the fluorescent strips of light flickered in the hallway, the rest had burned out. The abattoir green tiled walls echoed with their footsteps. She pulled open a stainless-steel-handled door labeled PERSONNEL ONLY.

The vaulted room reeked of formaldehyde and was frosty cold. Gray-sheeted bodies were laid on wooden plank platforms, only their toes visible, each with a numbered yellow plastic tag. The scene reminded her of some fifteenth century medical print. The only things missing were the leeches and incisions permitting evil vapors to leave the body.

Aimee pushed open another swing door. The scales used to weigh organs hung suspended from the ceiling on metal chains. A corpse lay on a stainless-steel table, angled over the floor drain: a female, young, with long brown hair and discolored needle tracks along her hands and arms. She'd been slit from chest to pubic bone and sewed back together with black thread, harshly outlined against her chalk white skin. The top flap of her skull had been sewn back on but her hairline was too close to her temples. Sad, Aimee thought, and a pretty bad job. They usually tried for the parents. Maybe there weren't any.

She made her tone businesslike. "The medical examiner's computer should be through there." She popped Nicorette gum into her mouth and pointed down the dim hallway.

"Breaking and entering used to be more fun than this," Rene said and stopped. The hallway plunged into darkness.

"Where's the light timer?" She groped along the rough wall for the switch. Finally she found it and flipped it on. Ahead of her on the medical examiner's door was the biggest lock she'd ever seen.

Early Saturday Evening

THIERRY PUSHED SARAH PAST the bushes bordering the Square Georges-Cain into the dark hole obscured by the decaying pillar. He shoved her forward, forcing her to climb down half-rotten timbers. Inside a bone-pocked cavern, smelling of mold and decay, he motioned for her to sit down.

"Remember this?" he said. He shone the flashlight beam over the crumbling catacomb walls. Cistern water dripped down into black, oily puddles.

Her body shook. "How do you know about this place?"

Thierry held the fax he'd stolen from Aimee's office with Sarah's picture: her tar swastika, her shaved skull, and him as a baby in her arms. Sarah's face fell.

"Nom de Dieu!" she said. "Where did you find that?"

He remained silent, lit a candle, and pulled out a strip of silver duct tape.

"What's going on?" she asked uneasily. She started to get up, but he pushed her down in the wet dirt. "What do you want?"

"Your undivided attention," he said, binding her ankles with the tape. "Admit it," he said, sitting cross-legged across from her on a jagged marble slab. "Wasn't I a cute baby? Did you croon nursery rhymes to me here?" In a cloying falsetto he sang, "Frère Jacques, dormez vous?" He kicked at the dirt.

Sarah's black wig hung off her ear and the scar showed plainly in the candlelight. Damp air filled the cavern. "Why are you doing this?"

"You see, you should be proud of that." Thierry stood up and traced his finger over the raised swastika on her forehead.

Sarah trembled.

"You earned the Führer's seal, as few Jews could," Thierry said. "But you're still a kike. Tainted."

"Oui. Une Juive," she said. She stopped shaking. "But I don't live in fear because of it. Not anymore."

"But you have to pay," he said.

"Pay?" Her eyes widened. "I haven't paid already? My family taken by Gestapo, giving you up…isn't that more than enough?"

She shook her head. "As soon as I got back to Paris, I stood outside the Rambuteaus', watching you go in their door." She wiped her eyes with her dirty raincoat sleeve. "Right where I'd kissed you goodbye as a baby. You know what I did? I fell on my knees, in a puddle on the sidewalk, thanking the God I've despised for years that you were alive. Alive, walking, and breathing, a grown man." She struggled to continue. "I went to the temple, where I'd gone with my parents, and begged God's forgiveness for my hatred of him. You're healthy, you had loving parents."

Thierry snorted. "Loving parents? Nathalie Rambuteau loved the bottle."

"I'm sorry. So sorry."

"No matter how she promised," he said, "when I came home from school, she'd be drunk and passed out, stuck to the floor in her own vomit." He slammed his fist into the caked dirt wall. "That was on a good day. I thought it was because I was adopted."

"Adopted?" Sarah picked at the duct tape. "Did she tell you…?"

He interrupted, stooping down to bind her wrists with strips of duct tape, "To make my bed and clean behind my ears?" He grinned. "'Maternal' doesn't describe Nathalie."

"You survived!" she said.

He took her arm, peering at her as if she were a laboratory specimen.

"You show no pronounced Semitic features." His eyes narrowed. "Must be some ancestor raped by Aryan invaders back in the steppes and you carried the recessive genes."

"Killing me won't make you less Jewish." She raked her taped hand like a claw in the dirt. "Or change that I'm your mother."

"Proven inferiority." He pulled out a Gestapo dagger, which gleamed dully in the candlelight. "We've talked enough."

Saturday Evening

AFTER TEN MINUTE S, AIMÉE still hadn't picked the Zeitz lock on the medical examiner's office door. Her hand ached.

"This is taking too long," she said.

Rene crouched near her on the scuffed linoleum and pulled out a Glock automatic.

"Not a finesse approach," he said. "But it will save time."

She hesitated, but kept winching the tumbler. A minute later, the huge metal lock clicked, then dropped open with a metallic sigh. Aimee rubbed her wrist as Rene reached on tiptoes to remove the lock and open the door.

"After you," he said.

Settling into an alcove office desk, he quickly plugged his code breaker into a surge protector under the reception desk, then hooked it to his laptop.

Aimee knew she hadn't wasted her money as she pulled the yellow stop-smoking gum out of her mouth. Even though she'd kill for a cigarette. She stuck two wads on opposite sides of the inner door jamb, then affixed the cheap alarm sensor Sebastian had purchased at the hobby store. The medical examiner's office area, painted institutional green like the rest of the morgue, lay quiet except for the sound of Rene's fingers clicking on a keyboard.

"Spooky," Rene said, accessing Soli Hecht's disk. "I know the clientele won't bother us but I'd feel better with the door closed."

"Air needs to circulate." She nodded towards the broken air vent in the wall. "Otherwise the formaldehyde reeks. Besides, if anyone trips my alarm sensor, we'll hear."

Aimee tried to hide the doubt in her voice. She plopped into the ME's chair.

"Bingo!" Rene said.

"That's his access word?"

"Take a guess what the ME's code is." Rene rolled his eyes.

Aimee looked at the framed photo on the desk: a paunchy, middle-aged man, tufts of gray hair poking out from a beret, cocked a hunting rifle under one arm and held a limp-necked goose in the other.

"1Stud," Rene said.

"He's a legend-in-his-own-eyes type." Aimee shook her head. "After opening bodies all day, how could he want to kill any living thing?"

Working in a morgue would make her want to celebrate life-not hunt it down and shoot it. France's obsession with la chasse had always offended her. But was she doing that? Doubt nagged briefly. No, hunting down a killer and bringing a murderer to justice wasn't sport, like bagging an innocent creature.

She refocused and typed in 1Stud, which immediately accessed the system. Once inside, she tapped into EDF, Électricite de France, which connected to Greater Paris municipal branches. She navigated on-line to the 4th arrondissement.

Once inside the utility system, she pulled up the listing for the meters of number 23 rue du Plâtre, Laurent's old address. Extra energy points had been awarded to the building due to moderate use and conservation of energy. Nothing more. Another dead end. Disappointed, she logged into FRAPOL 1 and requested the bloody fingerprint found with the Luminol at rue des Rosiers.

As the fingerprint came up, she typed in "de Saux," then ran the standard search program.

"Rene, this high-speed modem is like power steering after driving a tractor!" she purred.

"Don't get ideas, Aimee," he said. "They're too expensive and you're spoiled as it is."

Ten seconds later, a single phrase popped on to the screen: Unknown, no records found.

Of course, she thought. He's too smart to have left any trace. That's why he killed Lili. She'd recognized him and he thinks Sarah will, too. Is it just because Lili identified him or is something happening now, she wondered. He must have more at stake.

All collaborators had good enough reason to hide. Especially from the families of victims whom they'd informed on and sent to the ovens. How could she trace him? Little if any information from the forties had been entered into the government database.

"I've got it! La Double Morte," Aimee said to Rene. "Someone had to pay tax on that building, either inheritance or capital gains. It always comes down to that, eh? Death and taxes, the only two sure things in life."

The screen blipped while Aimee accessed the tax records of number 23 rue du Plâtre. Records stated that the property stood free and clear of lien, was zoned for three units, and that ownership resided with Bank d'Agricole real estate division. OK, she thought to herself, let's scroll back in time. The Bank d'Agricole had paid all taxes since 1983, when they'd purchased it in lieu of payment in a bankruptcy proceeding of a Jean Rigoulot of Dijon. This Rigoulot of Dijon had faithfully paid taxes on the property since 1971. A 1945 probate tax had been billed and never paid. She skipped back to 1940 when the property tax had been paid by a Lisette de Saux. Must be Laurent's mother, she reasoned. However, the next owner, a Paul LeClerc, had paid the lien and probate tax in 1946 as part of the purchase agreement. She scrolled back into 1940 again and discovered an addendum. Lisette de Saux had changed the title into her husband's name. That's when she saw Laurent's new name and Soli Hecht's dying syllables made sense. "Lo…"

Lo…! Laurent Cazaux. She almost fell off her chair. If she didn't hurry up, the collaborator, Lili's murderer, was about to become the next prime minister.

THE FLUORESCENT lights fizzled and the warning light on the surge protector blinked. Rene frowned. "Not enough juice. Let me fiddle with the fuses, this ancient wiring can be amped up with a little work."

"We don't have time, Rene," Aimee said, joining him in the alcove.

"If the power goes, the computers crash. We lose everything," he said.

She knew it was true. He waddled past the sensor that obligingly beeped an alarm. She punched the hallway light switch for him, since he barely reached it.

"I do this all the time," he said and grinned. "Everyone loves me in my building."

She reset the alarm and phoned Martine at home. After ten rings, a sleepy voice croaked, "Âllo?"

"Martine, I'm going to send you a file at your office," Aimee said. "Download it and make copies right away."

"Aimee, I just got to sleep after being up two days with the riots," Martine said.

"What time do you go to press for the Sunday edition?"

"Er, in a few hours, but I'm off," Martine said. "Give it to CNN."

"So you've been leading me on for years?" Aimee said. "I thought you wanted to be the boss! This info has your new job description on it as first female editor of Le Figaro."

Martine sounded awake now. "I need two sources to confirm. Impeccable ones."

"You'll have the third within twenty minutes," Aimee said, glad that Martine couldn't see her cross her fingers.

"This better be good," she said. "Gilles's shift is over in half an hour. I'll meet you down there."

"Does mademoiselle le editeur have a nice sound to it?" Aimee said. "Hold on to your chair when you read this or you might fall off like I almost did."

Aimee pulled up the bloody fingerprint from rue des Rosiers, then requested a match search on FRAPOL 1 with Cazaux's name. At the corner of the screen, the progress box blinked "Searching records." She drummed her chipped red fingernails on the ME's wood desk.

The alarm bleeped and she sat up, gripping the Beretta inside her leather backpack. Her fingers found the safety and flicked it off. She'd taken the handgun from the man in the police uniform outside Soli Hecht's hospital room. The office lights blacked out; only the red light on the surge protector wavered. Stay calm, she told herself, hugging the bag close to her.

From the hallway, a shadow moved, then a flashlight shone on the walls. The citrus scent gave him away before she heard him speak.

"Maybe you'd like to tell me what you're doing," he said.

A smoldering Rothmans orange cigarette butt landed on her keyboard, briefly illuminating it.

"I've got a gun," she said. "If I get upset I'll use it."

"Don't play with me, you don't have a permit," he chuckled. "This is France."

The fluorescent lights buzzed then flickered on. She looked straight into the green-gold eyes of Herve Vitold. Behind him in the hallway, Rene hung by his suspenders to a large circuit-breaker panel, plastic gloves stuffed in his mouth.

"Ms. Leduc, we meet again," Vitold said. He slid next to her in one fluid movement, his eyes never leaving hers.

"I knew you were too good-looking to be internal security," she said.

He moved so close she could see each hair on his upper lip. Almost intimate. His chest heaved rhythmically, which was the only way she could tell he was laughing. The Luger in his hand didn't move, though; it rested coldly against her temple.

"I've been waiting for you to break into FRAPOL 1 again," he said as he scanned the screen intently. "Your technique is good, I'll use it myself next time."

"You're the tidy-up man, eh?" she said. She knew that as soon as she got a match, he'd erase it, eradicate all traces.

He looked bored. "Tell me something new."

"You want to crash the whole system," she said. "Destroy all law enforcement files and the internal network of fingerprint and DNA identification, Interpol interfaces," she said. "Just to erase his fingerprints. But it won't work."

"Pity," he said. "You've got talent. Wasted talent."

"Each system has its own safeguard network. You'll never get past them." She wanted to keep him talking. "Any break-in attempt trips the system alarms. Freezes all access," she said. "You can't do it."

"But I can," Herve Vitold said. He smiled. "I designed the alarm alert for FRAPOL 1 and the defense ministry." Expertly, he snapped the cartridge in and out of the Luger with one hand. "Disarming them will be easy."

"Cazaux is finished," she said.

"Quit playing games," he said.

"Untie my partner," she said, glancing at Rene. "I'm getting upset."

Vitold ignored her. Rene flipped uselessly like a caught fish, his feet dangling above the scuffed floor, trying to bang the metal circuit breaker with his shoulders. Vitold backed up and pointed his gun at Rene's head. Rene's eyes blinked nonstop in panic.

"Be still, little man," Vitold said. With his other hand he opened a cell phone and pressed memory. "Sir, I've begun," he said.

"Didn't you hear me?" Aimee said.

Vitold sneered as he cocked the trigger by Rene's ear.

"Now I'm upset," Aimee shot through her leather bag, drilling him three times in his crotch. Disbelief painted Vitold's face before he doubled over, thrashing wildly. He yelped, dropped his cell phone, and collapsed in a bloody sprawl on the linoleum.

"See what happens when I get upset?" she said. She straddled Herve Vitold, his still surprised eyes focused upward. But his frozen stare told her he'd checked out.

She pulled the gloves out of Rene's mouth, then gently lifted him down.

Rene spit talcum powder out of his mouth and flexed his fingers. "And I thought Vitold liked you for your looks," he said.

"They never do," she said and pointed to the screen.

"Match Verified" had come up. She typed in Martine's E-mail address at Le Figaro and hit "Send." She picked up Vitold's Luger and his cell phone and brushed off her shirt. Before she could copy everything on a backup disk, the amplified clanging buzzer alarm sounded. Startled, Rene dropped his laptop. From the hallway, red lights flashed on and off. She picked up the laptop, slipped it inside her backpack, and slung that over her shoulder.

"Hurry!" she said, and canceled the command. She grabbed her backpack. "Go, Rene."

Now the only documentation with Cazaux's photo and fingerprint identification awaited downloading on Martine's computer at Le Figaro. But would that be enough?

Right now it would have to be. She'd copy and make a backup disk at Martine's office, but would be nervous until she could download the evidence on Cazaux. Their faces alternately blood red and splashed in blackness, Aimee and Rene jumped over Vitold's lifeless figure and sprinted down the hall.

In the vestibule, she grabbed two paramedics' vests and helmets with red crosses on them that hung from hooks. She threw one to Rene.

"This will get us through the crowd and past police lines," she said.

"From sewer rat to paramedic all in one day," he said. "Who said life wasn't an adventure? Now if I could just get some stilts, we wouldn't stick out so much."

A wheelchair was parked in the vestibule. "Get in," Aimee said.

"You've got it the wrong way round," he said. "Paramedics don't ride in these, patients do."

She pushed him down. "You're wounded in the line of duty, I'll do the talking."

Late Saturday Evening

THIERRY'S DAGGER GLINTED IN the sputtering candlelight. Cold air seeped from the ruined catacomb walls.

"You're handsome," Sarah said shyly. "I used to kiss your little feet and blow on your toes. You'd laugh and laugh, such dulcet tones."

"How touching!" he said. "A madonna and child fresco! We're back in the dirt, too."

Sarah looked down at worms wiggling blindly in the earth next to them. "Those who flee the past are doomed to repeat it. Is that what you think?"

Thierry's eyes were far away. "You abandoned me," he said in a little-boy voice.

She reached tentatively for his hand. "I didn't abandon you," she said. "I let you live."

"She used to tell me I was a casualty of war, some freak accident. Then she'd smile, torturing me, refusing to say any more."

Sarah shook her head. "My milk dried up and there was no food," she said. "At sixteen years old, I'd been branded as a collaborator. You had no chance with me! Nathalie had lost a child. She had milk and she wanted you. They were of the bourgeoise class, politically conservative. I was a Jew who consorted with a Nazi!"

"So it's really true," he said. He stuck his dagger in the packed earth and sank down beside her, looking dazed.

With her bound hands, she stroked his shoulders, afraid everything would end as suddenly as it had begun. Seeing her old lover and being trapped by her lost son stirred yearnings inside her. Impossible ones. That old deep hurt had opened again.

Her few loose fingers stroked his back. "We lived around the corner from here. One day I came home from my violin lesson, the courtyard was deserted. So was the building. Our Mezuzah, ripped from the front door, lay on the apartment floor. Papa had just had it blessed by the rabbi. That's how I knew. My parents warned me and fooled the Germans. They never came back. I never forgave them for leaving, I missed them so much. So I understand how you feel; a child whose mother leaves him will always think himself abandoned. If only…" She sighed deeply. "If only I had escaped.…" Her voice trailed off.

"I can't believe I'm a Jew," he said.

"Nathalie promised me that she would tell you the truth. Not torture you with it," she said, her voice anguished. "What good comes of it? Give me the knife."

Thierry shot bolt upright, as if remembering his mission.

"Defilement of the Aryan race merits summary execution," he said hotly. "You know that."

He pulled the dagger from the packed earth, slicing his wrist lightly. Sarah's hands shook. Thin beaded blood trailed over the tattooed lightning bolts on his hand.

"Please don't kill me," she begged. "Please, we need to-" A loud crack came as Hartmuth batted Thierry's hand. The dagger clattered, hitting the half-buried limestone arch beside them.

"Oh my God," Sarah screamed.

Hartmuth reached for her and stumbled over the mound of bones.

"I couldn't hurt her," Thierry faltered.

Hartmuth gripped a rotten wood post. Shocked, he stared at Sarah. Thierry cut the duct tape from Sarah's ankle and helped her up.

"I wanted to," he wailed. "I wanted to, but I couldn't, oh God."

"So pathetic," Hartmuth said in disgust, "there are no words. How can you threaten your own mother?"

"He's confused," Sarah pleaded. "Everything has turned upside down for him. He doesn't know who he is."

Hartmuth reached in his pocket. He pulled out a small pistol and leveled it at Thierry.

"No, please," she begged.

"If she's Jew scum," Thierry said, bewilderment shining in his haggard face, "so am I."

"Sit down, Thierry," Aimee said, interrupting the strange scene. Holding Vitold's black Luger, she climbed down the bits of wood jutting out from the caked dirt in the cavern walls. Rene followed behind her.

"It's under control," Hartmuth growled. "Put your gun away."

"You first," she said.

Hartmuth hesitated. Sarah put her hand tentatively on his arm. "You don't need this," she said. Slowly, he lowered the gun.

Aimee reached the catacomb floor, where her heels sank promptly into the dirt. The last ladder rung splintered. She turned and caught Rene before he landed on a pile of rubble and bones.

"Come here, Thierry," she said.

Thierry perched on a rotten timber, his eyes twitching. "Let's play possible scenarios," he said, his voice rising in a high pitch.

"Thierry, calm down," Aimee said. "You need time to work things out."

He ignored her. "Son tries to knife long-lost mother because she's a Jew pig," he said. He stood up, his face contorted in the flicker of light. "Father shoots son because he's a two-bit Nazi wannabe. Father puts bullet in his own brain because long ago he disobeyed the Führer." He laughed manically. "I like it. Let me do the honors." He reached out to Sarah.

Aimee moved towards him but Hartmuth had leveled his gun.

"Leave her alone!" Hartmuth yelled.

Thierry stumbled.

Too late. Hartmuth shot, but not before Sarah had flung herself in front of Thierry. The shot reverberated, almost deafening Aimee as Sarah's body slammed into the earth wall. Blood spurted from her chest as she thudded to the ground, clutching at her heart.

Aimee grabbed Hartmuth's arms, while Rene quickly took the gun from him. Rumbling rose from deep in the cavern as bones and pebbles slid down the walls. The wood posts trembled above them. Dirt showered over Aimee's face.

She ran to a moaning Sarah, wanting to cover her ears and shut out this woman's agony. Instead, she knelt, attempting to staunch the blood pooling in a dirt puddle.

Hartmuth fell to his knees. "What have I done?"

"Maman," Thierry said. "You saved me." He knelt and stroked her clammy forehead.

Sarah's breathing came in shallow gasps as Aimee propped her head up.

"My baby," Sarah crooned, pulling him close. "My baby."

Aimee applied direct pressure to the hole in Sarah's chest.

"Hold on, Sarah."

"The ambulance is on its way," Rene said, putting the cell phone in his pocket. "It won't be too soon either." He looked nervously above him.

"Sarah, you can make it," Aimee said. "Just a little bit longer."

Sarah nodded. "Thierry, your Jewish name is Jacob, the healer of men." She smiled weakly. "After your grandfather."

Hartmuth remained in a heap near the bone mound, curiously immobile. Aimee realized he was in shock. His eyes focused somewhere distantly in the catacombs.

"Thierry?" Sarah wailed as her eyes clouded, gripping him tightly. "My son!"

"Bring your father, Thierry," Aimee said. She gestured towards Hartmuth. "Reunite them." She didn't need to add "before it's too late."

Hartmuth meekly knelt with Thierry. Aimee gently put Sarah's head in his lap. Wordlessly, he caressed her face as Thierry gripped his shoulders and looked away.

"I need your help, Rene." Aimee whispered instructions while she pulled him aside.

As she climbed up the ladder, her last glimpse was of a weak, smiling Sarah being held by Hartmuth and Thierry illuminated by a flashlight beam.

THE MEDICAL crew couldn't get Sarah to let go of Thierry until Morbier arrived. Finally she let go. He nodded to the attendants, who slipped her onto a stretcher they'd unfolded.

Panic sparkled in Sarah's eyes. "I gave them all the food!" she screamed, now struggling to get away from Hartmuth. "We're hungry. S'il vous plaît, my baby is hungry!"

"Take any statements?" Morbier swiveled his head, addressing the young uniformed sergeant at the scene.

The sergeant shook his head.

Morbier leaned closely over Hartmuth's outstretched palm. He sniffed. "Notice the residue oil from the bullet chamber?" He pointed at the glove. "Your theory, sergeant?"

The uniform shook his head again and cleared his throat unsteadily.

"Strong smell of gunpowder on his right hand." Morbier cocked his eye down at the sergeant, now taking notes on a pad hastily produced from his pocket.

"Sir, I…," he began.

"Gather the evidence," Morbier snarled.

"Let's get up." Morbier gently took Thierry's arm. "You can ride to the hospital."

Empty and spent, Thierry climbed out of the catacombs. "Why couldn't I believe her?"

Morbier grimaced, handcuffing Hartmuth's wrists behind him. He muttered under his breath. "This is for your own protection, Monsieur." Hartmuth remained mute, staring vacantly.

"Does he mean why couldn't he believe Aimee?" Morbier looked at Rene.

Rene nodded.

"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."

Lili's fault! And then she wasn't afraid anymore of how he would kill her. How he lied and what he did to Lili was all that mattered. She saw the jagged swastika carved in Lili's forehead as she charged into him.

"No more LIES!" she screamed.

His Gestapo dagger slashed her leg, ripping her skin, but she kept going. They fell, tumbling, into the corner gutter over snarling gargoyles, frozen in stone. He was amazingly strong and wiry. His bony fingers gripped her neck, squeezing tightly. Choking and gasping, she pushed him away. But he banged her head against the ugly gargoyle spouts. Again and again. She was sputtering for air and blinded by her own blood. Half of her body hung over the ledge. Her fingers clawed a gargoyle's wing as she tried to hang on. Below them was the skylighted roof of l'Academie d'architecture.

"You're going with me," she gasped.

As her grip loosened, she used her last bit of strength to pull him on top of her. She heard him shriek before his fingers let go of her neck. But it was too late.

They sailed into the cold dark air. Together, they landed on the skylight, that shattered beneath them. Shards of glass, splintered and twinkling like diamonds, pierced her skin. Her splayed legs caught on the metal skylight handle, jerked, then held as she swung upside down before managing to grip the skylight frame.

She twisted her good leg around the support bars but her other bloody leg dangled uselessly. Cazaux's long body hung suspended from the ceiling, entangled in cord and wire from electrical lines. Powdery blue dust shimmered in the moonlight while his legs twitched.

"Help me!" he choked.

He was slowly being strangled. The wire had rubbed the makeup off his neck, exposing the mottled brown birthmark. Far below them, a well-dressed gala crowd gathered open-mouthed on the glass shards.

"I wondered how you hid the birthmark," she sputtered, gasping for breath. "The more you move, the tighter it gets. Here." She reached her bloodied hand towards him.

Vainly, he tried to lift his arms but they were wrapped and twisted by cord. His face was turning blue. "Air…help!" he rasped.

He was beyond rescue, she couldn't even reach his fingertips. "There's one thing I need to do, Laurent de Saux," she said, wiping her hand in the soot.

He was gurgling and choking but hope shone in his eyes as she reached down. She was about to draw a swastika across his forehead, brand him as he had branded Lili.

She stopped. If she did that, she'd be down at his level.

"The circle is complete, Laurent, as Lili told her daughter-in-law," she said. "Due to Lili Stein, you won't be prime minister!"

She watched as he wiggled himself to death to the accompaniment of screams from below.

She was dizzy, her leg was slipping, and hundreds of needles stung her body. She'd finished what Lili had started; after fifty years Cazaux wouldn't do any more damage. Never forget, Lili had said. Her bloody fingers couldn't grip the skylight handle any more. Below her, shimmering glass carpeted the ground and she prayed to God it would be quick. She managed to yell, "Get out of the way," before her leg slipped and she couldn't hold on any longer.

An arm grabbed her from a swaying rope ladder. Her sticky hand was grasped firmly by a pair of dry ones. All of a sudden, wind whipped around her and she was suspended in the air. Blades thupped above her. She was flying. The gray slate rooftops of the Marais were far below her. Then everything went black.