Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

Wednesday Night

AIMÉE TWISTED HER arms free of her jacket, and, kicking her legs in the Seine’s sediment-laden cloudy water, rose again to the surface. Gasping for air, she was carried away by a swirling eddy. River grass entangled her arms.

She kicked with all her might against the sucking wake of the boat. Then a cold water current swept her away. She spit out the brackish water, inhaled and dove again. Her arms caught in the branches of a submerged tree, her breath almost gone. She struggled until she snapped the branches and shot to the surface.

Spluttering, this time she inhaled frigid air layered with diesel exhaust. Her leg brushed something hard, mossed stone, and she grabbed on. She realized she’d travelled down current to the stone legs of Pont Louis Philippe. On the bank, a yellow glow flickered. The fires of the homeless? Or of the clochards?

Shouts mingled with the sound of rushing water that filled her ears. A figure stood, calf deep in water. Then a cresting wave from the Bateau-Mouche slapped her up against the stone bridge support.

She had to try for the bank, battle the current, and pray she’d make it. She climbed partway up the support, slipping and scraping herself on its ridges, then dove. She kicked as hard as she could. The current seized her and she battled, kicking harder. Her hands hit something. She grabbed at it and missed. Someone held out a tree branch to her. She caught it and felt herself being pulled toward the shore. Her face smacked into the embankent and then arms held hers. Limp and spent, she was dragged, knees scraping, onto the water-filled walkway. She was soaked and freezing, in a little black dress that clung to her like her skin.

“Can you walk?” Krzysztof panted.

Where had he come from?

She heard the whine of a Zodiac outboard motor. Searchlights scanned the black turgid water. The Brigade Fluviale. This would not be a good time to renew her acquaintance with Capitaine Sezeur.

“Quick . . . kk.” Her teeth chattered. She got to her feet, slipped, and grabbed Krzysztof’s arm. She made her frozen bare feet support her. Licks of firelight came from one of the half-boarded-up arches of a sewer drain. Someone had to be in there.

Krzysztof pounded with his fists on a piece of warped board half covering the sewer’s dank opening.

“What do you want?” The words were slurred. The board was scraped back. Smoke and flames haloed the face of a man with a white beard and flushed face. “Too late.” He hiccuped. “I gave at the office.”

“Hurry up and let us in.” Krzysztof didn’t wait for an answer and tugged the board away; he helped Aimée to step inside and climbed in behind her.

“You young have no manners!” the man said. “Eh, show some respect. Did I invite you?”

In the high-vaulted sewer cavern, flames came from a raised blackened-metal barbecue grill that radiated heat. Aimée waded knee deep in the cold water, then climbed an improvised staircase of wooden crates to a bunk made from an old door chained midway up the wall to iron rings. At least it was dry. A scratchy transistor radio tuned to the weather channel echoed through the tunnel.

She noticed the open can of Sabarot lentils bubbling on the grill, its odor mingling with the smoke and damp. It was like camping in flood conditions. Bottles of unlabeled wine sat on wet boxes near an old pair of rubber boots.

Her arms shook; chills ran up her legs from her numb feet. She’d lost her shoes. Good Manolos, too. And she had to get out of this dress.

The old man squinted. “Make yourself at home, why don’t you?”

Sweaters and blue work pants were piled behind her. “Sorry to interrupt your dinner, Monsieur. I’d like to buy this blanket and some clothes,” she told him.

“Everything’s for sale . . . except my vin rouge.” He grinned; his red-rimmed eyes were bloodshot. “Funny time for a swim,” he said. He jerked his head back. “She’s rising tonight. There is a lot of runoff because of the unseasonable heat. I’ve never seen her swell like this in February. The river will hit a record, for sure.”

His words suggested he knew the Seine. An old sailor who lived under the bridge now?

Money, ID . . . her bag—she’d left everything in the kitchen of the Hôtel Lambert. All gone now. Her heart sank. She had no money with which to pay him.

“Here. I picked this up,” Krzysztof said, setting her bag down. He climbed up next to her on the improvised bunk.

“Fast thinking.” She pulled the none-too-clean blanket around her, peeled the wet dress off under it, and rubbed herself dry with the coarse wool. Her fuchsia silk Agent Provocateur bra stank of the river.

“They’ll be looking for you in that,” she said, eyeing Krzysztof’s dinner jacket and handing him the sweaters. “Give me the tuxedo jacket.”

“You shouldn’t have thrown the pipe bombs in the river,” Krzysztof said angrily.

Surprised, she looked at him. “What . . . let the bombs blow up in my face?”

“All we needed to do was cut the fuse.”

“What?”

“I tried to tell you—wax fuses are waterproof. But by plunging the pipe bomb into the water you must have set the explosion off.”

“Your anarchist friend told you that?”

Krzysztof nodded.

Great. She’d never live this down, if she didn’t freeze to death. She’d blown it in both the figurative and literal sense. Now everyone, from the bomb squad to the terrorist brigade, was after her.

Dampness oozed from the sewer cavern walls. She shivered, wondering if she’d ever feel warm again. Krzysztof took her cold hands in his and rubbed them, then wrapped them in a woolen sweater.

“It’s already been fifteen minutes,” he said. “If we don’t get going, they’ll find us.”

Only fifteen minutes? It felt like hours. And if the Brigade Fluviale took them in, she couldn’t count on hot tea, a warm blanket, and congratulations. More likely they’d be sent for questioning by the terrorist brigade and make a protracted stay in jail.

“We have to get out of here.”

She handed the man a hundred francs, looking at the lentils that were cooking on his fire.

“Food and wine’s extra.”

“Non, merci.” How could he eat surrounded by the reeking sewer odor?

He sat on a box and raised his bottle, his dripping legs dangling. “Salut. Nice and intimate, eh?”

She heard squeals in the background. Rodents.

“All the comforts of home—dry, too—when she’s not rising.”

The man had to be desperate to live in an old sewer drain; the river reached a quarter of the way up the walls when it was in spate.

The blanket’s warmth and her rising internal body heat kicked her mind into gear. The man’s radio got reception; would her phone work? She had to check on Stella. She tried it. But she couldn’t get through.

“Anyone else live here, Monsieur?”

He shook his head.

A loner. And the cavern reeked of drains and mold. But as they said, any port in a storm.

“What’s your name?”

“Jules . . . first mate of the Scallawag. Dry-docked. At your service.” He made a mock bow and teetered on the door’s edge.

“Aimée Leduc,” she replied. “We appreciate your hospitality.”

“Can always tell a lady,” he said. His eyes closed and he nodded.

Engines whined from outside. Krzysztof leaned down and slid another piece of wood over the sewer opening. His eyes were anxious.

It occurred to Aimée that Jules would know the homeless people who were sheltering nearby and the local clochards.

“Jules, I’m looking for Hélène,” she told him.

He snapped awake. “Eh? I keep to myself, I keep my distance.”

Aimée nodded reassuringly. “Seen her around?”

“I don’t fraternize with that bunch down there.”

“Where?”

“Near the bend.”

If only she could find Hélène, talk with her. “So, tell me . . .”

Jules shrugged. “I know nothing. I keep myself to myself.”

“I have to get out,” Krzysztof said before she could press the old man further. Fear shone on his face as he observed the rising water. “Now! I feel trapped.”

Claustrophobic.

“I can’t swim.”

Aimée scanned the embankment walls for the opening to another drain. All these sewers crisscrossed under the island. They’d find a manhole exit eventually, but with Jules’s help it would go faster.

“Jules, can you show us a way out?”

“That’ll cost you,” he said.

Their refuge was growing more expensive every minute.

“The package deal includes a flashlight,” he said.

Several mismatched, cracked rubber boots were piled up over by the wine. ”Throw those in, Jules?” she asked.

But he’d gone ahead, shining the flashlight beam over green fungal configurations on the walls that oozed slime.

She picked out a mismatched pair of right and left boots—one red, one blue—and stuck her feet into them. She draped the blanket like a shawl over her tuxedo-clad shoulders and lowered herself down the box staircase to follow the flashlight.

Scurrying and squealing came from the darkness ahead. Now the water level was lower as it was borne away by runoff tunnels that slanted toward the Seine.

Krzysztof hesitated.

“I don’t do well with rodents,” Aimée said. “You go first.”

Compared to the rushing Seine outside, the water in the tunnel flowed slowly and steadily but it was putrid and foaming. Chill emanated from the lichen-encrusted walls. The sewer was divided; the main branch had secondary connections, all leading to a collection point. The tunnels, built partly of brick, partly of stone, formed a vast underground network.

Jules stopped, shone the flashlight beam, and pointed. Overhead were freshwater pipes, telecommunications cables, and pneumatic tubes. Rusted wire rungs led upward. All the sewer tunnels had access through manholes to the street.

“You’ll need this,” he said, holding out a sawed-off hook. “A deposit’s required.”

Without it they would have had no way to pry the metal gating open.

She thrust fifty francs into his hand. “You open it, Jules.”

He stuck the flashlight in his belt and hoisted himself up the rungs of the ladder. Krzysztof followed and Aimée heard the wrench of metal and then a clang as the manhole cover was raised.

“Can we get out here?” she called.

She heard the squeaks of rodents and splashing, then footsteps descending.

“What’s wrong?”

“Not here,” Krzysztof said, landing in a puddle beside her.

“What do you mean? It should be easy, once the cover’s off.”

“A flic car’s parked right on top of the manhole!”

She shivered as a burst of frigid water gushed over her feet.

“I don’t want to drown . . . I have to get out . . . it’s too close down here.” Krzysztof’s breath came in short gasps.

“We’ll find another exit,” she said and thought hard. Hundreds of kilometers of sewers, quarry tunnels, and abandoned Metro tracks existed but they were honeycombed with water mains, and other substructures. Without a map or guide one could stumble into a warren of passages and be lost for days.

Yet the sewers followed the layout of the streets above: wide boulevards had wide tunnels and the narrow ones and the side streets were duplicated underground. All they had to do was follow the well-marked blue signs mirroring the streets above, then find another exit.

“I figure we’re under . . .” The flashlight illuminated RUE SAINT LOUIS EN L’ISLE written in white paint on the stone. “See, we’re close; we’re just a few blocks from my place.” She took Krzysztof’s arm. “We’ll get out there. It’s just five minutes away.”

“She’s right,” Jules said. But the flics were right overhead and the only way out was a sewer full of water and rodents. Two red eyes glared and a rat the size of a cat squealed as it struck her boot. She jumped as a rush of water hit her knees. “The freshwater valves opened,” Jules said. “It will rise another meter, so hurry.”

They slogged down the tunnel in cold knee-high water laced with chlorine and feces. The flashlight’s yellow beams played across the rising water and the rivulets running down the walls. In a stone niche sat a statue of a saint, chipped and furred with moss. The saint of the sewers? With rats this big, they needed all the help they could muster.

Panicked, Krzysztof grabbed onto a set of metal rungs and started climbing.

“Come on, just one more street,” Aimée coaxed him.

He clung, unsure, his feet slipping.

“We’re almost there.” She reached for his hand and helped him down. “I promise.”

They wound to the left and she prayed they’d find the sluice gate below her building. The ground juddered overhead. A car or truck had passed by.

“Quai d’Anjou,” she said, pointing to the blue-and-white sign. “See.”

She found openings—a few were bricked over; others were covered by ancient, decayed wooden doors, bearing almost invisible coats of arms. She counted them and tried the tenth, a medieval stone arch enclosed by iron grillwork. But bits of debris and plastic bags were caught in the grillwork and there was no way to open the doors. Next to it was a waist-high chute. “Here. Give me a boost. It’s dry—feel the grit? Sandstone.”

If she’d counted right, this was the aperture she’d explored as a child, and it led to her building’s subterranean cave—the storage area in the basement.

“A marquis’s daughter hid here during the Reign of Terror while the authorities searched the house for her,” she told Krzysztof. That was building lore, anyway.

She found a wad of francs and handed it to Jules.

“I’m going in, Krzysztof. You can stay here if you like; it’s up to you.”

Cobwebs caught in her hair and webbed her eyelashes as she crawled up the chute. She blinked and wiped them away. Grit got under her fingernails. But the flowing air was warmer and dry. She heard Krzysztof crawling behind her. And then Aimée was facing a pile of copper pipe and stacked plastic tubing.

She straightened up, stretched her legs, and climbed over the pipes. She shone the flashlight around and hit a light switch on the wall. A single hanging bulb sent harsh light over the cavern, which was lined with gated compartments piled with the stored possessions of the building’s inhabitants. Her own bin lay open, a pit dug in its sandstone floor from which wires and pipes protruded.

“Nowhere’s safe.” Krzysztof’s face paled under the stark light.

“My apartment’s upstairs,” she said. “And when we get there, you can tell me where Nelie’s hiding.”

“I don’t know. No one knows.”

“You’re going to have to try harder. Make some calls, track her through your MondeFocus connections.”

He shook his head. Agitated, he picked at the cable-knit sweater he wore. “Fat chance. They think I’m spying for the right!”

She grabbed his arm and led him upward. She needed to think. And to find warm wool socks.

ON HER BLACK-AND-WHITE marble landing, she saw cardboard boxes piled up and an old-leather tooled chest leaning against her door. Cave #8 was written on it. A present from the concierge, no doubt. Just what she needed: to sort through her grandfather’s forgotten auction finds and then make room in the closets in her apartment for them.

She unlocked the door.

“Ça va, Miles?” His wet nose sniffed her boots. She bent and he licked her hand, then growled at Krzysztof.

Together she and Krzysztof slid the boxes inside the foyer. The chest’s leather bindings were crumbling, leaving a trail of brown powder on the floor. She needed to shower to get the sewer smell off her, and then to put on clean clothes. She pulled off the cracked boots, hung up the tuxedo jacket to dry, and motioned Krzysztof toward the kitchen. “I’ll join you in a minute,” she said and, barefoot, padded to her bedroom. First, she had to call Mathilde and check on Stella, then shower.

“Allô, Mathilde?”

“Oui?”

She heard irritation in Mathilde’s voice and Stella’s whimpers.

Aimée clutched the cell phone tighter. Mathilde was young, probably inexperienced. She shouldn’t have just taken Martine’s word that the girl was capable. So many complications could occur with newborns, according to the manual. She imagined Stella’s face flushed with fever, eyes rolling up in her head, her limbs twitching, all the signs of a febrile convulsion.

“Does Stella have a fever?”

“Relax, Aimée,” Mathilde said. “She woke up fussy. Now she’s refusing the bottle but I’m coaxing her to drink, little by little.”

Aimée took a slow breath and tried to remember what she’d read in the baby manual; terms like gastric distress and viral infection swirled in her head.

“Last night, too, Mathilde, she woke up every hour. I rocked her back to sleep.”

Mathilde yawned. “That’s what I’m doing. Are you coming back soon? I have an early morning class.”

“Please, Mathilde,” Aimée said. “It won’t be much longer. I’ll make it worth your while.”

“I hate to charge you for staying overnight but I’ll have to.”

“No problem,” Aimée said. “Of course, I’m giving you taxi fare and something extra for your trouble.”

“Oui . . . shhh. See you when you get here,” Mathilde said and hung up.

Aimée jumped in the shower, then toweled dry and checked her cell-phone messages. One was from René saying he and Saj were working at the office. The other, from Claude, said that he’d found more video footage, that she should see it, and that he had a bottle of Chinon waiting. She thought of the Chinon and Claude’s warm arms, but before she could go to him she needed to know what light Krzysztof could shed on MondeFocus connections and the video.

She pulled on black jeans and the nearest T-shirt. No time for makeup. She slipped on socks to warm her numb feet and black patent leather-heeled boots.

In the kitchen, she spooned the butcher’s scraps into Miles Davis’s chipped Limoges bowl, which stood on the brown mosaic–tiled floor. The kitchen, in the throes of remodeling, stood with one wall open, revealing pipes and ancient lath and plaster. Disaster lurked every time the contractor went to work.

She found Krzysztof standing at the closed kitchen window. Below, searchlights shone and Zodiac boat motors beat the water. Divers, their masks catching in the light, bobbed in the Seine.

“They’re looking for you,” Krzysztof said.

She stilled her shaking hands.

“For someone,” she said. “You took my bag; they don’t know my identity.”

She felt a cool breeze and realized she must have forgotten to shut the salon window.

“Hold on,” she said. But when she checked, she noticed the baby blanket hanging from the chair, not on the recamier where she’d left it, neatly folded. And the box of wipes was on the floor, not on the table. Papers had been moved. Yet René hadn’t been here; he didn’t even have a key.

She sensed a stranger’s presence. Someone had entered her apartment and not to sniff her underwear. Whoever it was now knew the baby had been here. It wasn’t safe here for Stella any longer. She couldn’t bring Stella back here. Aimée stuck her phone in her pocket, ran back to the kitchen, and picked up Miles Davis.

“We have to go. Now.” She grabbed Krzysztof’s arm and pulled him down the hallway.

His eyes widened. “What the hell?”

She had to appear calm. He was already a bundle of nerves; she knew if she told him any more he’d bolt.

“Claude left a message. He’s found more video footage.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re going to check Claude’s video of the march,” she said, grabbing her bag and the first jacket she found, the damp tuxedo, as she led him out the door.

“Good,” he said, his tense mouth relaxing. “You’ll see the proof that we were set up.”

On the staircase, she punched in the speed-dial button for taxi service. “Twelve rue Saint Louis en L’Isle, please.”

Downstairs, Madame Cachou stood in the doorway of the concierge’s loge, reading glasses pushed up on top of her head, chewing a pencil.

“Come to complain, have you?” she asked.

“Mais non, I want to thank you for bringing up the boxes,” Aimée said, tugging Miles Davis by his leash.

“There’s more, you know.”

“Miles Davis loved staying with you. Could I impose again?”

Miles Davis cooperated by wagging his tail and licking Madame’s outstretched hand.

Her face softened and she stuck the pencil behind her ear. “Such a good boy.”

Aimée put a hundred francs in her waiting palm. “Merci.”

IN THE TAXI speeding through the dark Left Bank streets, Krzysztof sat beside her, his fingers twisting the loose yarn on his sweater’s sleeve. She rubbed a clear spot on the fogged window so she could look back at the quiet streets. No one seemed to be behind them.

She couldn’t put Stella in more danger. Whoever had sifted through her apartment had seen the diapers and knew she’d kept the baby. She couldn’t lead them to Martine’s either. As long as Stella was safe, Aimee’s time was better spent getting Claude’s video, which might give her a lead to Nelie’s whereabouts.

With the bombs and Vavin’s murder, the stakes had shot sky-high. She drummed her fingers on the window, wishing the taxi would go faster. Her fear was that the Halkyut operatives had already found Nelie. She tried to put that thought aside.

“You must tell me everything, Krzysztof,” she said. “About Orla, the Alstrom files that Nelie found. And why Nelie’s hiding. Who is she hiding from?”

“I don’t understand your involvement,” Krzysztof said. “You work for Regnault and they work for Alstrom. How can I trust you?”

“And I want to know why, when you saw Orla’s body at the morgue, you didn’t identify her. I have to have your answer before I can trust you,” she said.

“I couldn’t take the risk. It wouldn’t have helped Orla anyway. If I had opened my mouth, the flics would have locked me up. I’m wanted. MondeFocus told the flics that I planted the bottle bombs at the demonstration. There was even an article about me in the newspaper.” He rubbed his forehead. “All lies. We were just trying to stop the oil agreement.”

“Nelie’s uncle was my boss at Regnault.”

“Is that why you had Regnault files? Did you find the reports about Alstrom’s pollution of the North Sea?”

“My partner’s working on it,” she said.

“You still wonder about me, don’t you?” Krzysztof said. “I assure you, I know we cannot achieve peace with bombs.”

She had to trust him; he’d saved her life.

“I want to know why Vavin and Orla were murdered.”

Terror painted his face. “Nelie’s uncle was murdered?”

“Like I said, I want some answers.”

He hesitated. “Nelie’s afraid.”

“You mean she’s afraid the authorities will take away her baby because she’s wanted for her part in the demonstration at La Hague?”

“If her evidence isn’t publicized, the oil agreement will go through,” Krzysztof said.

“So the person who killed Orla was trying to get to Nelie, right?”

“But if she has the reports, why hasn’t she given them to me?” Krzysztof asked.

And why had Nelie left her baby with Aimée? Vavin couldn’t have been ignorant of Stella’s existence; he was Nelie’s uncle. Why not choose Vavin? Or was Aimée supposed to have met Vavin at the antique shop and turn the baby over to him to take to Nelie? He’d been murdered nearby. Again, another person murdered in place of Nelie.

Aimée tried to piece it together. Was Vavin killed because he wouldn’t reveal Nelie’s whereabouts? All she had was suppositions.

Krzysztof stared at her. “They’re going to kill me, too.”

“Who?”

“Halkyut,” Krzysztof said. “I saw Gabriel at our march. He was standing on the sidelines, watching.”

“And he killed Orla? Is that what you mean?” She wanted to pry a straight answer from him.

“Maybe the killer was the baby’s father,” he said.

She hadn’t thought of that before. As the taxi sped along the quai, she checked again. No headlights behind them.

“Maybe the baby’s a pawn, think about that. He could threaten to obtain custody unless she shuts up about what she knows.”

Was that what this was all about? Domestic drama? Aimée didn’t think so, but who knew?

“You mean so Nelie won’t divulge what it says in the Alstrom report?”

“Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Then why do you think they want to kill you?”

“Nelie had a difficult pregnancy,” he said. “She missed a lot of classes. Orla helped her.”

What did that have to do with it, she wanted to ask. Instead, she said, “You mean Orla was protective of her?”

“Orla had to take care of the baby when it was born,” he said. “Nelie bled too much.”

She thought back to the bloodstains in the baby bag. “Is she in the hospital?”

“She refused to go back to see the surgeon after her Cesarean. He had her name and she was terrified he’d turn her in. Nelie said she broke up with the father when he found out she was pregnant.”

The rosebud mouth, mauve-pink eyelids . . . those minuscule fingers gripping hers. How could anyone not want Stella?

“That doesn’t make sense,” she said, her frustration mounting. “Would the father threaten to obtain custody if he didn’t want the baby?”

“I don’t know. Maybe, if it gave him leverage over Nelie. The last thing she said was that the father would be able to trace her if she went back to the surgeon.”

Krzysztof was clutching at straws like she was.

“Who is the baby’s father . . . can’t you guess?”

“Nelie had nothing to do with him after she got pregnant. According to her, he was out of her life. She never told me his name.”

“Don’t you have any idea?” Aimée said, her patience wearing thin. “Someone else in your class or in your crowd?” And then it clicked. “You suspect that the father’s a member of MondeFocus?”

“Who else?”

She pulled out the photo she’d taken from his room.

“You stole that.” There was outrage in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was trying to find you—and Nelie.”

“What else have you done?”

“Could any of these mecs in the photo be the father?”

“I’m getting out of this taxi. You’re going to turn me in, aren’t you?”

She put her hand on his arm. “I believe that you were set up. And we’re going to see the proof of it in Claude’s video.”

Krzysztof subsided. “You’re right.” He stared at the photo, his shoulders shaking. “We were idealists, naive. That was taken two years ago. It seems like another world. Another time.” He pointed to the men in the photo. “Non. That one’s gay; this one’s studying in Nanterre.”

Another dead end. She thought hard.

“Tell me about the La Hague group.”

“Why?”

She took a guess. “What if the father’s one of them?”

“That protest took place two weeks ago. Nelie said the whole thing was bungled. Amateurs.” He looked down. “Like me.”

Something Krzysztof had said stuck in her mind.

“Hold on . . . you said the father might seek custody if Nelie didn’t shut up. Shut up about what?”

“All I know is that Orla and Nelie were digging into reports that falsified pollution counts. They thought there had been funny business juggling the statistics,” he said.

“Was her uncle helping her?”

Krzysztof shrugged. “Nelie told a MondeFocus activist there was a doctor’s report she had to find that would sew everything up.”

“Did you get any details concerning this doctor’s report?”

He shook his head.

She thought about Stella’s father, whoever he was, infiltrating MondeFocus and sabotaging the demonstrations.

“The video will show that I’m telling the truth,” Krzysztof said, hope in his voice.

She hoped he was right.

THE TAXI LEFT them south of the Gare d’Austerlitz in a warren of small streets. An old metal streetlight illuminated peeling posters on the walls of Les Frigos, the refurbished refrigerator warehouses.

There was no answer to her knocks on Claude’s door. No light in his window. She checked the box for deliveries labeled NEDEROVIQUE PRODUCTIONS. No videotape.

One step forward and three steps back.

She heard the roar of a motorcycle, the scrape of the gates to the deserted warehouse courtyard opening. The headlights of a vintage motorcycle with a sidecar bobbed over the uneven cobblestones. The engine switched off.

Claude took off his helmet, then shook out his hair, looking more bad boy than ever in torn denims and a motorcycle jacket. Bad boys with bad toys. But the expression on his face, raw and vulnerable at the same time, made her think of his warm hands and the way he’d curled up, spoonlike, against her.

He nodded to Krzysztof, then pulled her close by the tail of her tuxedo jacket. Gave her a searching kiss. And for a moment all she knew was his stubbled cheek, his sandalwood scent. “Partying without me, Aimée?”

“Long story, I just got your message,” she said.

“Too late,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“The flics took the video, the copy, and they even ‘requisitioned’ my tapes.”

Outraged, Aimée said, “That’s illegal. That’s a violation of procedure.”

“Try telling them that,” he said. “They said I’d get them back ‘in due course.’ Or if I lodged a complaint, I could spend an evening with them explaining why I hadn’t brought them to the Commissariat in the first place.”

“But if the police watch the tapes, they’ll see the proof that I was set up,” Krzysztof said, his voice rising in excitement. “The video must show the woman slipping the backpack onto my shoulder. You were there, Claude, you saw it.”

Claude told him, “Humidity ruined a lot of the tape.”

“But you said you found something,” Aimée reminded him.

“I found Gaelle being beaten, oui,” he said. “Orla was shouting; I caught that on the video.”

“I heard her, for a moment,” Krzysztof said. “Just before Gaelle stepped into the square.”

Claude glanced at his watch. “Word has come down. The Direction Territoire de l’Interior is closing the net around all of you. It’s just a matter of time until they tighten it.” He opened a compartment in the motorcycle sidecar and pulled out a helmet. “Krzysztof, the network has arranged a safe house in the Bobigny suburbs for you. But I’m not supposed to tell you where it is.”

Aimée saw indecision on Krzysztof’s face.

“I can’t leave. If we don’t do something, the oil agreement will be signed tomorrow,” he said. “And then we’re back to square one. Nowhere.”

“If you want to be safe, you have to go deep undercover, Krzysztof. We have to leave now. You can figure something out once you’re in hiding where they can’t find you. You’ll come up with a plan.”

The indecision faded from Krzysztof’s face.

Aimée had to do something before they left. The warehouse courtyard was quiet, the only sound that of the occasional car passing outside on the street. The gleams of the sodium streetlight pooled on the cobbles. An idea formed in her head. Hadn’t Morbier said, ‘First you have to catch the wolf?’

“Krzysztof, may I see that Halkyut card?”

“Why?”

“I’ll call Gabriel, and you’ll talk to him. Say you want to meet him in thirty minutes or you’ll give his phone number to the flics. Tell him, in return, you’ll show him—non, you’ll give him—Alstrom’s disc.”

“What do you mean?” Krzysztof asked.

“You know more about this than I do. All those oil statistics . . .”

“Of course,” Krzysztof said. “The cover-ups on the Brent Spar oil platform, the falsified percentages with respect to the deep drilling.”

“Right. Tell him that, in exchange, you want Nelie too,” she said. “That will flush him out. Even if he doesn’t buy it, he’ll have to meet you if only to try to corner you.”

“Corner me?”

“He won’t. I’ll make sure of that. If he brings Nelie, you’ll tell him the disc is somewhere else.”

Claude frowned. “A disc means nothing. The originals are in the computer. They know that.”

“If Halkyut’s working for Alstrom,” she said, buttoning the jacket, “then it might work. All their techs would need to do is insert the disc in Alstrom’s system, find the matching file, and erase it. Trash it. Then phfft, it will be all gone. No record will exist any longer on their hard drive either.”

Except that René and Saj had a copy at their office. At least, she hoped they did. But there was no need to tell Halkyut about that.

Krzysztof nodded. He handed Aimée the card. “If they’re holding Nelie, it would explain why she hasn’t contacted me.”

If they had a chance of luring Gabriel into their trap, she’d call Morbier and have him waiting.

“Is it that easy to erase the information?” Claude asked.

That’s how she paid her rent. “I should know, it’s my bread and butter.”

Claude stared at her. “As a reporter?”

She had a big mouth. But it was too late.

“Actually, I do computer security, Claude,” she confessed. “I’m sorry to have lied, but I needed a cover.”

She searched his dark eyes, detecting a flutter of hurt. She didn’t want it to end with this man. She hadn’t met anyone like him before.

“I’m trying to help Nelie, but I can’t explain any more,” she said, attempting to recover. “It’s a lot to ask, but can you just trust me?”

“And if I do?” he asked.

She leaned against his leather jacket, felt the warmth from his body. “Wait and see.”

“Do you have a better idea, Claude?” Krzysztof interrupted. He didn’t wait for Claude’s answer. “Give me your phone, Aimée.”

She wrote down an address on a scrap of paper and showed it to him. “Give Gabriel this information.”

They would arrange to meet him on the corner by the boiler room of her old lycée. The safest place, just across the Seine. And she knew the door code.

She punched in Gabriel’s number, which started with 06, indicating it was a cell phone, and thrust the phone at Krzysztof. She leaned close so she could hear.

“Oui?” a deep voice answered.

“Bring Nelie to rue du Petit Musc at Quai des Celestins,” Krzysztof said, reading from the paper Aimée had given him. “Wait on the corner.”

There was a pause. They could hear loud talking and music in the background.

“Who is this?”

“The Alstrom reports make interesting reading,” Krzysztof improvised. “Especially in the right hands. I’ll exchange them for Nelie.”

“How did you get this number?”

“From la rouquine,” said Krzysztof.

“She’s a naughty girl.”

“Thirty minutes. Bring Nelie,” Krzysztof said.

“Why should I?”

But Aimée could hear curiosity in his voice.

“Otherwise I’ll give the flics your number,” said Krzysztof. “They can trace a cell phone in thirty minutes. Or less.” He hung up.

“I think we’ve got him,” Aimée said. She searched her pockets for some money. Paying Jules and the taxi had tapped her out. She turned to Claude. “Mind giving us a ride?”

He switched on the ignition and started up the bike.

“I’ll open the gate and meet you outside,” she said.

She hurried to the street, taking out her cell phone and dialing, while Claude turned the bike around.

“Morbier,” his tired voice answered at the other end of the line.

“I’m baiting the wolf, Morbier,” she said, keeping her voice low.

“The wolf responsible for blowing holes in the Seine?” He sounded more awake now. “Disrupting river traffic for hours?”

Her heart lurched. How could she confess that she’d been responsible?

“About time you found Krzysztof,” he said.

“Wrong. I’m after a mec named Gabriel,” she said. “But there’s one condition.”

“Always a condition with you.”

“Bon, if you’re not interested . . .”

“Difficult.” Morbier sighed. “The terrorist brigade is involved, so there’s not much I can do.”

“What you do is take this Gabriel in. He works for Halkyut. Question him about the bomb he placed in the Hôtel Lambert kitchen.”

“Why do I think you’re hiding something?”

“You’ve got a suspicious mind, Morbier. You have to learn to trust.”

“Every time I do. . . .” Another sigh.“ You’ve infiltrated MondeFocus, right?”

She turned to make sure she was alone. She saw Krzysztof putting on a helmet and climbing into the motorcycle sidecar.

“Halkyut’s the culprit.”

“Eh?” Morbier was silent for a few moments. “No one can touch them with a barge pole.”

“If they plant bombs, you can.”

Claude’s motorcycle engine sputtered and roared. She had to hurry.

“Afraid to take on the big guys, Morbier? You’d let them get away with this?”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m only sure of death and taxes. As for the rest, I hedge my bets.”

Even if Gabriel had Nelie, she doubted he would bring her with him. But with any luck, he’d come. He’d be curious. And if Morbier cooperated and netted him, Gabriel would provide them with the link to Halkyut itself.

“How reassuring!” Morbier said. “Now I feel better. And you want me to stick my neck out?”

“Don’t blow my cover. Bring just a few men. Say you’ve got a witness to his bomb purchase, and that this witness also places him in the Hôtel Lambert’s kitchen. Keep it intimate and question him in the back room. I’m sure you’ve done that before.”

“Do you have such a witness?”

“Only on condition that he gets immunity for his testimony.”

“Not if he’s an ax murderer.”

“He’s not.”

“Let’s get going,” Krzysztof shouted from the gate.

She kept the phone between her shoulder and her ear and leaned against a wall. “Wait a minute, there’s a rock in my boot.”

If Krzysztof knew the flics would be waiting, he’d flee. She wouldn’t even have time to tell him she’d gotten him immunity. She whispered into the cell phone crooked next to her ear, “Is Nicolas still working the cameras at France2?”

Nicolas had been on staff there since her father’s time.

“You want a camera crew, Leduc? Forget it.”

“Non, Morbier. Ask him to pore over footage of Monday night’s MondeFocus march to l’Institut du Monde Arabe. The outtakes, raw footage, the whole thing.”

Claude revved the engine; the noise echoed in the narrow street. “Aimée, you ready?” he asked.

She made a show of shaking her boot and putting it back on.

“France2 sent the tapes to the terrorist brigade,” he said. “Sounds like a motorcycle there with you. You a biker now?”

“They can’t have sent all the raw footage, Morbier,” she said. “I saw a video made by a documentary filmmaker, but it’s not enough.”

“Eh, who’s that?”

“Claude Nederovique. But it’s too blurred. Just ask Nicolas. Deal or not?”

She put her finger in her other ear to hear better, heard his chair scraping over the floor and a sound like the snapping of fingers. If she wasn’t mistaken, he’d stood, grabbed his coat, and signaled to some of his men.

“Better be worth my while, Leduc. Where?”

She’d hooked him. She took a deep breath.

“École Massillon, the corner of Quai des Celestins and rue du Petit Musc.”

HER TUXEDO TAILS flew behind her as she rode clutching Claude’s waist, her knees clamping his hips. Those wonderful hips.

Krzysztof sat hunched in the sidecar. The engine revved as they passed shadowy Place Bayre. She caught the whiff of green vegetation, of damp grass, wet from the rain. A now dark Hôtel Lambert went by on her left.

Every pot has a lid, as her grandmother had phrased it. Meaning life was about finding the right mate. The right fit. She was attracted to bad boys in leather jackets. Ones who had been hurt, who were fierce inside. The ones mothers warned their daughters against. But in her case, there’d been no warning. And for a moment, Aimée wondered what it would be like with Claude, sitting in front of her fireplace, Stella taking her first steps. Together.

Stop. She’d gone soft, just as René had accused. She had more to think of than Stella and this man who’d once been abandoned, too.

She prayed Morbier would make good on his agreement. That they’d nab Gabriel, link the bombings to Halkyut, and find Nelie.

The Brigade Fluviale’s Zodiacs were trawling below the Pont de Sully. She shivered, thinking of the silt-laden, churning water below. And of Orla’s waxen face in the morgue.

Claude slowed and turned into fourteenth-century rue du Petit Musc, the street of the strolling hookers. No working girls had lingered there for a long time but the name clung, though now only media types and the branché crowd could afford it.

Claude downshifted by École Massillon’s side entrance, the rumbling of his motorcycle engine reverberating off the walls of the blackened stone buildings. Aimée removed her helmet as Krzysztof climbed out of the sidecar.

“I’m coming, too,” Claude said, taking her arm.

A dark figure stood in one of the doorways of the narrow street. Another figure sat in a parked car. Big mistake. Morbier’s men were making their presence too obvious.

“It’s the flics,” Krzysztof said, wild eyed. “Merde! Let’s get out of here.”

“Flics?” Claude pulled her arm. “Get back on, Aimée.”

“They’re backup; it’s all right,” she said, looking for Morbier.

“I get it,” Krzysztof said. “You’re trapping me.”

“You’ll be given immunity from prosecution. I worked out a deal for you.”

But Claude gunned the motorcycle engine and Krzysztof jumped on behind him, holding tight as Claude turned the bike around.

“We can’t stay,” Claude said, his eyes narrowed. “No flics. You don’t understand.” He popped the shift into first gear. “Get on.”

She couldn’t leave. She had to see this through, alone if need be.

“It’s all right! Listen to the deal I made.”

“A deal?” Krzysztof said. “I’ll never risk a deal with the flics. You’re crazy.” Krzysztof pushed Claude’s arm. “Get us out of here. Now!”

The motorcycle sped off down the rue du Petit Musc. The red brakelights’ reflection wobbled across the stone walls of buidlings. The motorcycle turned the corner, peeling rubber. Krzysztof and Claude were gone. They had deserted her.

What had she been thinking, she wondered. She’d been fooling herself, intoxicated by playing house with the baby and sleeping with this gorgeous, sensitive man. She shook herself and called Morbier, afraid now that his men would chase away Gabriel, too, if they hadn’t already done so.

“Call off your dogs, Morbier. They’re so close I can smell them.”

“What do you mean, Leduc? We’re on rue de l’Hôtel-de-Ville crossing rue de l’Ave Maria.”

Four blocks away.

She heard a car door open, saw a man getting out of the car. Her hands trembled.

“Get prepared for a reception committee.” She clicked off before she dropped the phone. And stood there alone, with her supposed backup blocks away.

Her heart skipped. The only thing she could think of was to press 34B51 on the digicode of the next building.

The massive carved seventeenth-century door opened. She slipped inside, into former stables that were now a delivery bay for school supplies. A ramp led to the lower playground gate, which could not be glimpsed from the street. She tugged at the door and it clicked shut behind her.

A few years ago the junkies had discovered this enclave but she didn’t see any discarded needles among the tufts of overgrown grass. She followed the border of the enclosed playground to a back door where she counted on finding a key. From time immemorial, janitors had left one here for deliverymen, always in the same place. She slid her fingers over the wall, located the loose stone, and pried it out. In the dirt-encrusted space she found the janitor’s key where he’d always kept it. She and Martine had used it on occasion when they’d been late to class.

She unlocked the door and put the key back. Inside the school, she ran down a narrow low-ceilinged hall lined with bulletin boards laden with notices of class schedules and after-school club meetings. The smell of paper, the dull luster of the linoleum floor—nothing had changed since her day. No doubt the cracked ceilings upstairs still leaked puddles onto the marble floors.

This was formerly the residence of the first archbishop of Paris. Later it had been an outpost of Charles V, then Marie-Thérèse’s chancellor’s quarters. It had became a sugar refinery and then, in the last century, a high school.

Perspiration dampened Aimee’s collar. She had to figure out what to say to Gabriel when she found him.

Using the stairway, she descended into the bowels of the École Massillon, to the blackened boiler room. The fourteenth-century foundation emitted a dank chill, barely combatted by the heat radiating from huge soot-stained boilers abutting the wall. They must recently have been stoked. The boilers were firing at full blast, and charcoal dust lay everywhere. Carved out of the thick wall was the half-oval window she remembered. It was not glassed in; it was needed for ventilation. This window was level with the sidewalk and looked onto rue du Petit Musc. Quai des Celestins lay beyond it, then came the Seine, and, across the river, the Hôtel Lambert on the Ile Saint-Louis. The Hôtel Lambert, again.

She leaned against the window’s rusted bars. She could see a pair of brown walking shoes and the bottom half of khaki trousers passing by on rue du Petit Musc’s pavement. The man was so close she could have reached out and untied his shoelaces.

“Gabriel?”

The legs turned and retreated. The streetlight illuminated a mec with blond hair, a barrel chest, and close-set eyes now scanning the building.

“I don’t see Nelie,” she said.

“And I don’t see you. Why’d Krzysztof leave?”

She had to keep him talking until Morbier arrived.

He hunched over and peered down and inside.

“Don’t you have something for me?” Gabriel asked. His gravel-edged voice was the one she had heard over the phone.

The light from the boiler illuminated her coat sleeves but she didn’t think he would be able to get at her through the chipped and rusted iron bars. But her certainty was wrong.

With two swift kicks, he dislodged them.

She jumped back but thick fingers reached in and grabbed her, encircling her neck. Her face was wrenched hard against the gritty stone. She tried to bite his fingers but couldn’t turn her head so that her teeth could find a purchase. Her hands were free, though, and she scratched his and tried to get away. His pressure on her throat increased and as she struggled, her face was thrust against the wall again. Where were Morbier and his men?

“You don’t . . . have Nelie, do you?” she sputtered, her fingernails scraping against the stone as she sought something, anything, to fight back with.

Her hand caught the metal poker used to stoke the furnace that hung from the boiler door. Choking, she wrapped the tail of her tuxedo jacket around her hand, seized the hot poker, and slammed it against his thick knuckles, his hands, his arms. The air filled with the smell of singed hair and burning cloth.

“Ayyeee . . .” One hand relinquished his grip. She kept beating the other until it, too, fell away.

“You set the bomb—”

“Screw you.” The blade of his Laguiole knife sliced through the air. She heard footsteps. Men were coming. “Where’d you take the brat?” he asked.

“So it was you in my apartment.” She hooked the hot poker around his ankle. “Why do you want the baby?” He let out a piercing yell as the poker connected with bare skin. She yanked him against the building with all her might. She could smell searing flesh. “Why?”

His screams were the only reply.

And then he was surrounded by scuffling legs and the impact of punches, the sounds of thuds. She heard the wail of a siren, then shots, and still she held on, yanking harder. Now she could only smell coal fumes. Outside, a car squealed off.

“Leduc?”

She dropped the poker.

“Let go. It stinks.” Morbier’s face was above her, at the window. “Pretty messy barbecue, Leduc.”

MORBIER SAT BEHIND his desk, rubbing the gray growth on his chin. His jowls sagged and his eyes were red rimmed. He pointed at her soot-stained Che Guevara T-shirt. “Your new hero, Leduc?”

“Part of my cover,” she said.

She took another sip of espresso. Her legs felt warm; the shivering had stopped. The ice pack she held to her forehead was already partly melted and sagging.

Smoke spiraled from a burning cigarillo in the Ricard ashtray. Aimée took another from Morbier’s yellow Montecristo tin and lit it from the box of kitchen matches on his desk.

“Help yourself, Leduc, why don’t you?” he said. “Didn’t you quit?”

“I’m always quitting.” She glanced around. “New office. You’re coming up in the world, Morbier.” Wood file cabinets, a computer screen with a blinking cursor. “I didn’t think you knew how to use one of those,” she said, pointing to the computer.

“I even type like a pro now,” he said. “I’ve graduated from two-finger hunting and pecking.”

Outside his office there was a large open room with vacant cubicles and computers. Once it had been the incident room. She saw the adjoining office, the number five painted on the glass beneath the transom. Her father’s old office.

“A real nice mec, Gabriel Leclerc,” Morbier said, consulting some papers in a brown file folder. “Ex-military, low-level ops. I thought I knew him from somewhere.”

She bit back her surprise. “So, he fits Halkyut’s profile.”

“Let’s say he’s a bottom-feeder, not their usual level operative.” Morbier shook his head. “Seems like they didn’t vet him with their usual thoroughness.”

She figured Gabriel was someone Halkyut used for jobs that could go wrong.

“Any good news, Morbier?” After all, it was Gabriel who had set the bomb at the Hôtel Lambert. “Did he give you a confession?”

“The evening’s young.” Morbier smiled wryly. “But it seems that he skipped his parole appointment yesterday. So we’ve got all the time in the world.”

Missing a parole appointment meant there would be no need for lawyers or an arraignment. Gabriel had a ticket to La Santé. He’d be arrested and then it would take several weeks or even months to process his case. With luck he’d end up in a maximum-security prison like Clairvaux.

There was a knock on the frame of the open door.

Aimée looked up to see a young policewoman wearing a blue cap cocked at a jaunty angle.

“Commissaire, a package for you,” she said, with a Provençal accent wide enough to push a cart through.

“From whom?”

“France2.”

Nicolas was on the ball.

“Do me a favor, Officer,” Morbier said. “Set up the VCR for viewing a tape, s’il vous plaît.”

Aimée blinked. Morbier polite? Not only did he type now, he also said please.

She stubbed out her cigarillo. “You got a fast response from Nicolas, Morbier. Must be your good manners.”

“That, too. And Nicolas owes me at poker. Big-time.

“Nicolas says this Claude Nederovique made a splash ten years ago but hasn’t produced anything in a while,” Morbier told her. “Is he part of MondeFocus now?”

She shook her head. She didn’t want to direct suspicion toward Claude even if he’d deserted her, abandoned her to those mecs.

“He’s just helping out. He’s filming, that’s all,” she said.

She hit Play. The images flickered by, disjointed. There was more footage than what she’d viewed on Claude’s video. He and Krzysztof should have gotten to Bobigny a while ago. Yet she’d had no phone call.

Now the video showed a smiling mix of students and Socialist types, milling about on a narrow street. The cameraman talked to an assistant about lighting, angles. Krzysztof and a woman in a red-and-white Palestinian scarf passed out candles. Bottles of wine were being shared in the loose ranks of marchers who were singing “The Internationale.” The camera cut to a blonde with long hair. There was a close-up. From the remarks of the cameraman about her low-cut jeans, it seemed he was a derrière man. Then they heard his sigh as she put the strap of a backpack over Krzysztof ’s shoulder and pecked his cheek. Next they saw an unfocused blue glare. A wobbling handheld shot showed a limping woman shouting. Another woman grabbed her and ran toward the Pont de Sully. More wobbling. The first woman slumped to the ground.

Nelie. It was Nelie.

The next shot showed the woman in the red-and-white Palestinian scarf, which was now soaked with blood. Aimée didn’t recognize her but seeing the scarf turning red with her blood made Aimée queasy. The cameraman’s voice said, “Hurry . . . bomb squad’s arriving.” He zoomed in . . . then came a shot of a backpack out of which bottles and yellow rag fuses were spilling.

Watching the tape she felt relieved. The march had happened just as Krzysztof had described it. But the most important question was still unanswered.

Morbier said, “Great idea, Leduc! You’ve wasted my time. It’s after midnight. I could have been halfway home, and not had to call in a favor.”

“Wrong, Morbier.” She hit the Rewind button.

“Important, eh? All I saw was a bunch of long-haired radicals partying, and the CRS doing its job.”

Her shoulders tensed at Morbier’s dismissive tone. It was all there, in blurred color. Why didn’t he see it?

She hit Play once more, took the remote control, and stood close to the screen. “OK, see, here’s Krzysztof.” She pointed to him as he passed out candles. Then she fast-forwarded. “Here’s the blonde.”

“It’s blurred; it’s hard to see what’s happening.”

“Bear with me. You’re seeing this at sixty images a second, not frame by frame.”

“Quite the expert, eh?”

She was just parroting what she’d learned from Claude.

“Notice something else, Morbier?”

“I concur with the cameraman—nice derrière.”

“The blonde’s putting the backpack on Krzysztof’s shoulder,” she said. “She kisses him. And then she disappears. But see the blond man on the sideline?”

“Gabriel Leclerc,” Morbier said. He scratched a kitchen match on the table’s edge and lit up a cigarillo.

She fast-forwarded and hit Stop. “This woman . . . recognize her?”

Morbier exhaled a puff of blue smoke. “Orla.”

“But do you recognize who she’s reaching for? It’s Nelie Landrou.”

“So that’s what she looks like.”

In slow motion they saw Nelie limping. She had an anguished look on her face, and was almost doubled over as she ran. But there was no baby; Aimée didn’t see Stella.

“Keep going, Leduc.”

She forwarded the video in slow motion now. “Here’s the proof the blonde gave the backpack with the bottle bombs to Krzysztof. It was a setup.”

“You’d be a good avocat, Leduc,” Morbier said. “It’s easy to interpret the video the way you want, in your client’s favor.”

Aimée was frustrated. “Look at the video. The proof is right there!”

“Or it was an elaborate plan, and Krzysztof expected her to bring the bottle bombs in the backpack and to give it to him.”

Aimée rewound the video to show Krzysztof’s smiling face as the blonde was kissing him. “I think he’s just a sucker for a pretty face. Doesn’t it look like that?”

“It wouldn’t persuade the tribunal.”

She sat down, tired. “It doesn’t have to. Gabriel Leclerc’s off to La Santé anyway for a good long visit. Show him this in a tête-à-tête. Get him to spill. Tell him you’d appreciate his cooperation and you’ll reciprocate, et cetera.”

“Reciprocate?” Morbier snorted. “It’s out of my hands. Out of my realm now.” But he tapped his pencil, a sure sign he was thinking.

“Promise Gabriel a three-man cell instead of the usual one for six,” Aimée said. Her temples were throbbing. She needed more ice. “Or say you’ll try to get him assigned to the VIP wing. You know, along with the disgraced financiers and officials.”

There was silence except for the whir of the tape rewinding. Aimée could smell the bitter dregs of her espresso. She was worn out. All she wanted to do was crawl under her duvet.

“He’s pretentious enough to like that,” Morbier said. “You actually think he’ll admit that Halkyut is involved in sabotaging ecology groups and, in particular, MondeFocus?”

Smart. Why had she underestimated Morbier? He had to watch his back and he was always moaning about imminent retirement. And he didn’t like taking on the ruling powers.

“Morbier, you won’t lose your pension or anything else, and you’ll just gain in self-respect.”

“So you’ve got it all figured out, eh?”

“Figured out?” She shrugged. “It’s up to you.”

She didn’t know what else to say. She stood up, buttoned the tuxedo jacket, shouldered her bag, and walked to the door.

“Still not going to tell me, Leduc?”

She froze. “Tell you what?”

Hiding the baby? Finding Vavin’s body? There was so much she’d kept from him. She wished she could confide in him, like she had before.

“Leduc, you there?”

She turned to face him. But he sat shaking his head, in disgust or anger, she couldn’t tell. When he looked up, she saw the redness of his eyes and the pouches under them. And, for a moment, she saw him for the hard-working, aging man he was. And the one constant in her life, her father’s old partner, whose pigheadedness time hadn’t tempered. Others came and went, but Morbier was always there.

“Leduc, I covered for you . . . the hole in the Seine . . .”

She cringed. So he knew about that. Would they make her pay for the damage?

“Don’t ask me to go out on a limb. Again!”

“You’re focusing on me, Morbier. Focus on that salaud Gabriel, who set the bomb.“ She fixed her eyes on him. “It’s not MondeFocus, not Krzysztof or Nelie. It’s those who employed Gabriel. It’s Halkyut and the ones who hired them.”

“I know,” he said, a thaw in his voice. “That’s the problem.”

She felt vibrations shaking the table. Noticed Morbier’s hands clutching the edges.

“You OK, Leduc?”

Startled, she nodded. What had come over him?

“Remember the pool in Butte aux Cailles?” he said, a distant look in his eyes.

A faded image of cracked yellow tiles, spring water feeding into a pool. She hadn’t thought of that in years.

“She insisted you take swimming lessons,” he said, an unreadable look in his eyes. “She overrode your father’s objections. She took you every week, even talked me into it a few times.”

Aimée’s gut wrenched as she remembered the smile on the carmine red lips greeting her as she emerged from the swimming pool and the feel of the dry towel her mother held to wrap around her.

“Maman?”

Her American mother, the woman Morbier never mentioned.

“For once in her life she was right,” he said with a sad smile. “It’s a good thing she made you take swimming lessons.”

“Are you going to tell me something about her that I don’t know?”

“She always said you had to learn to take care of yourself. And you can. But now it’s time to stop.”

“Where did Maman go, Morbier? I . . . if you know something, tell me. I can take it.” She clenched her fists and fought back tears. “If she’s dead, just . . . can’t you just say it?”

He stared. “Now’s the time for you to step away, let us handle it. It’s too dangerous, Leduc. Will you stop?”

Bargain . . . this was the bargain. The powers that be had warned Morbier off. He’d asked for her help in nailing Monde-Focus, Krzysztof, and Nelie, but she’d tied Gabriel to the bombs and Halkyut. René and Saj would find documentation, proof, they had to. And now Morbier wanted her to back off.

“Even for you, this is low,” she said, her shoulders tensing. “Going along with them!”

“It’s for your own sake, Leduc,” he said.

Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t turn Nelie in. And she wouldn’t hand Stella over to the authorities.

“Why don’t you find a man, have babies, do what other people do?”

She averted her eyes. If only he knew. “That’s rich coming from you, Morbier.”

He’d lost custody of his grandson, Marc, to the other grandparents who lived in Morocco after his estranged daughter was killed in Belleville.

“Once and for all, will you do as I say if I tell you what you want to know, Leduc?”

She yearned to know so much it hurt. But he was trying to manipulate her. Nothing came for free from Morbier.

“Not on your terms, Morbier,” she said. “I don’t negotiate about Maman. Either you tell me because it’s the decent thing to do, or you don’t.”

“You make everything so difficult, Leduc.” Morbier sighed.

“You’re just dangling a carrot in front of me to get me to do what you want. You don’t know anything more about her, do you?”

Morbier said, “Your swimming saved you. It’s nothing to do with ‘them’ or this snake pit of an investigation.”

But he was wrong. Abandoning Stella, turning Nelie in were too much like her own mother’s case. She had to get out of this room, this Commissariat, with all the memories it held, before she broke down.

“You can’t ignore the video, Morbier. You saw it. Someone trumped up a plan to brand Orla and Nelie as terrorists for blocking some trucks in La Hague. They want all the ecological protesters stopped, or denounced as violent agitators. I won’t let it rest,” she said, reaching for the ice pack. “I’m leaving.”

He met her gaze full on. “I don’t know if your mother is alive or not.”

“That’s all?”

Morbier tented his fingers. Again he had that unreadable expression in his eyes.

“Your father took you to the Klee exhibition in the Palais Royal on your fourteenth birthday, remember?”

A Sunday afternoon, the crowds, and her father’s arm through hers, holding her tight. His nervous talk, none of his usual jokes about art. She remembered sitting in the café, looking out to the Palais Royal fountain, then blowing out the candle on a slice of chocolate gâteau ganache.

“She wanted to see you.”

Aimée stared, speechless. And the walls seemed to shift. Her lip quivered. This talk of her mother . . . was it true?

Morbier’s shoulders slumped. “She’d been deported, banned from reentry. It was dangerous for her. If she was in the crowd, he didn’t see her.”

Her mother had wanted to see her.

“That’s it.”

She found her voice, a whisper. “How did Papa know?”

“An arrangement, letters. He tore them up. End of story.”

His words cut her to the bone. She blinked, determined not to let him see her cry. Her mother had risked her freedom and had been in contact with her father . . . yet he’d never told her.

“I’ll question Gabriel,” Morbier said. “No promises.”

“Merci.”

Her throat tightened and she nodded. Morbier looked even older now.

She felt numb. She’d think about this later. She made her feet move. Now she had to protect Stella.

AIMÉE SQUARED HER shoulders and nodded to the policewoman behind the desk. She crossed the worn marble floor that smelled, as always, of industrial-strength pine-scented cleaning fluid. Each tap of her heels echoed off the limestone walls. Orla’s face in the morgue, an injured Nelie on the video, Stella’s flushed peach cheeks, and her own mother’s almost forgotten face spun in her head.

A few Commissariat casement windows were lit, and a blue-uniformed flic guarded the courtyard door at street level. She needed to clear her head, to try to fit the pieces together as she walked along the quai. The last vestiges of the night clung to the sky. Warm wind, the gravel crunching under her heels, the muted cry of a seagull.

But she couldn’t think straight. She’d been rocked to her core, set adrift, as the memories flooded her. She hunched down against a stone wall. The lone pigeon pecking on the gravel ignored her. She covered her face with her hands, tears wet her cheeks. Her mother had risked everything for a chance to see her and she hadn’t even known. Her father had never told her. Nor Morbier.

And Nelie . . . what was she risking to save her baby?

She was still overcome, her thoughts jumbled, when she heard the whoosh of a street-cleaning truck. She had no idea how long she’d sat there but her face and jacket were wet with tears. Stella, she reminded herself, she had to get back to Stella.

Aimée grew aware of the cell phone ringing in her pocket.

She answered it, wiping her nose. She heard loud buzzing.

“Where are you?” Claude’s concerned voice was breaking up into static. “I’m worried . . . looked for you . . .”

He’d deserted her, left her with those mecs. She’d thought he was different.

“I made a deal and got Krzysztof immunity; why didn’t you help me convince him to stay?” she asked. Why did you run away? she wanted to ask him, but she bit back the words.

“I couldn’t, Aimée,” Claude said. The line had cleared. ”I’m involved with the eco freedom trail. People depend on me, a whole network. I cannot get involved with the flics.”

A chain of safe houses for ecoterrorists on the lam, she realized. But then why wouldn’t Nelie have used it? Or maybe she had?

“Do you mean Nelie’s there—”

“No,” he interrupted. “She’s gone underground but no one knows where.”

The reason must have to do with Stella and the ink marks on the skin under her arm. She remembered Krzysztof’s words—Nelie had told him there was a doctor’s report

“Let me talk to Krzysztof.”

“He jumped off my bike and ran into the Métro. He said he’ll take care of it his way,” Claude told her. “I couldn’t stop him.”

He, too, had run like a scared rabbit.

The line was clearer now.

“Aimée, are you all right? What’s happened?” he asked, breathless.

“Why did this mec Gabriel demand Nelie’s baby?” she said.

In the silence she could hear the sputtering of the motorcycle engine.

“Who knows?

“France2 has news footage showing Nelie and Orla at the demonstration.”

“You saw it?”

“But there was no baby with them,” she said.

“The march erupted into chaos. But . . . ,”

Claude paused.

“He didn’t work alone, right? Now you may be in as much danger as Nelie and her baby.”

He was right.

“Gabriel didn’t believe that we would give him the disc; he wanted the baby. Otherwise why did he show up?” she said. “But at least we accomplished something: he’s headed across the river to La Santé.”

“What do you mean?” Something had changed in Claude’s voice.

“Gabriel skipped a meeting with his parole officer, so he’ll be locked up,” she said.

Her head ached, the muscles in her legs had cramped, and tiredness flooded her body.

“Claude,” she said. “I have to go.”

“You’ve gotten under my skin,” he said, his voice low and hesitant. “I’ve never met anyone like you. We’re alike, you know . . . we share so much.”

She wished she weren’t attracted to him.

“Stay at my place. At least I know you’ll be safe with me,” he said. ”I’ll make sure of that.”

She pictured his warm studio, imagined his arms around her, his musky sandalwood scent. But with René and Saj working on the incriminating files and the babysitter having to leave, her duty was clear. She had to care for Stella; she had to protect her.

“Merci, but I can’t, Claude,” she said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Promise me you’ll come to stay with me?”

How could she? With Stella?

“Aimée, you asked me to trust you. Now I’m asking you to trust me.”

“I want to.”

“Then you’ll come?” he breathed into the phone.

“I don’t know, Claude.”

Before she could change her mind, she turned off the phone. Aimée stood and made her tired legs walk. A block later she found a cruising taxi. She collapsed against the leather seat and then realized her wallet was empty.

At the Paribas cash machine, with the taxi waiting on the curb, she took out half of what Vavin had given her. She had to pay Mathilde overtime. They’d barely limp by for the rest of the month unless René worked wonders and snagged the Fontainebleau account.

Conscious of the blur of the street lamps on the quai, the almost-deserted, rain-chased streets, the hint of dawn in the faint ribbon lightening the sky, she leaned back. At least she could tip the taxi driver who’d gotten her to Martine’s in record time.

She took a deep breath, trudged up the red-carpeted stairs, and rang Martine’s bell.

Martine opened the door In a leopard-print silk robe, cigarette dangling from her mouth, relief in her eyes. “You’ve got more lives than a cat! You scared me, Aimée. I thought—”

“Next time keep your phone on, Martine,” Aimée said.

“Damn thing’s battery ran down.” Martine hugged her hard and put the cigarette between Aimée’s lips. “Want a hit? You deserve it. Believe it or not, Jadwiga Radziwill, the celebrated anarchist, provided an interesting take on your explosion.”

“I thought she was dead,” Aimée said.

“At first, with all that makeup, it was hard to tell. But Deroche broke a sweat talking to her, then summoned his minions to a hurried caucus. I love to see those CEOs . . . well, you can tell me about it.”

All Aimée wanted was to see Stella and sleep.

“In the morning I will, I promise. And I need to meet with Daniel Ristat. But right now I need—”

“To sleep, d’accord.” Martine kept her arm around Aimée as she walked her down the hall and then helped her out of her clothes. “Mathilde’s asleep. Shall I wake her?”

The last things Aimée remembered were putting francs into Mathilde’s bag and then curling up on the Babar sheets next to a sweet-smelling Stella.