Polar Quest

50

Tao’s eight-hour Northwest flight from Detroit arrived at Charles De Gaulle Airport shortly before eleven in the morning. After clearing customs, she rolled her bag out to the taxi stand. A swarthy driver flicked his cigarette butt on the sidewalk and ground it out with his heel as she approached his car.

‘Deux Avenue Gabriel,’ Tao said as she handed him her suitcase.

‘The U.S. Embassy, non?’ he asked.

‘Oui, the embassy,’ she replied, pleased she wouldn’t have to push her rudimentary language skills very far this morning.

At the edge of the city, the driver peeled off the highway onto the Boulevard Périphérique, a beltway that encircled the city like a concrete necklace. The driver hugged the turns like he was racing at Le Mans, with Tao swaying slightly as she watched out the window. Five kilometers later, they exited onto Avenue de la Grande-Armée and entered the city. Rounding the L’Arc de Triomphe, they continued down the Champs-Elysées toward Embassy Row.

When the Champs-Elysées came to an end at Place de la Concorde, the driver turned into the cyclone of traffic swirling inside the square.

‘You can drop me here,’ Tao said.

The taxi pulled up along the Rue de Rivoli side of the square. Directly ahead Tao saw the imposing edifice of the American Embassy flanked by two large bald eagles in stone. The driver pulled her suitcase from the trunk, and after paying him, she crossed the street and presented her credentials at the embassy gate.

Once inside Tao was led to a small, windowless conference room and offered a cup of coffee. A tall, thin man with dark brown hair wearing a navy pinstripe suit entered the room a few minutes later.

‘Ms Tao,’ he said in a cowboy drawl, ‘I’m Udall Walker, the CIA station chief here in Paris.’ He pronounced it Pair-ee, exaggerating the vowel sounds.

‘I’ll bet that’s something you don’t often admit to publicly,’ Tao said, offering her hand.

Walker smiled. ‘No, ma’am. Officially I’m just a midlevel bureaucrat from the IRS, so folks generally try to avoid me. Our whole operation here is listed as an audit team.’

‘Did you have any luck locating the information I requested?’

‘It’s a beautiful spring day outside,’ Walker said. ‘Let’s take a walk.’

Tao left her suitcase in the conference room and accompanied Walker out onto Rue Boissey-d’Anglas. They crossed the street and began walking down Rue de Rivoli, passing the spot where the taxi driver had let her off. Hundreds of people filled the sidewalk ahead as the street ran alongside the Tuilleries toward the Louvre, bustling around restaurants and shops.

‘Do you see that obelisk over there, in the center of that traffic island?’ Walker asked.

‘Yes,’ Tao replied.

‘It came from the Temple of Luxor in Egypt, a gift from the Egyptian viceroy to the king of France.’ Walker came to a stop at the corner where Rue Royale intersected with Rue de Rivoli. ‘Right now we’re standing next to the Hôtel Crillon — expensive, but worth it. The building across the street — the one that looks just like the hotel — is Vielogic’s world headquarters. Lafitte’s office is up on the third floor, beneath the pediment. He’s probably up there right now. Both he and Martineau got in on the Concorde yesterday.’

Tao glanced up at the windows, then across the Place de la Concorde at the Seine and Rive Gauche beyond. ‘He has a nice view.’

‘For a hundred million francs he ought to. Lafitte’s purchase of that building from the French navy still has tongues wagging around here. There’s an apartment next to Lafitte’s office that he uses when he’s working late. Otherwise, he stays at his château near Verneuil-sur-Arve, a little over a hundred kilometers west of Paris. That place is over three hundred years old — a lot of land, horses, and what appears to be fairly capable security.’

‘Cerberus Sécurité?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What about Martineau?’

‘She has an apartment in town and a lab down in Evry. All the particulars you asked for are back in my office. I just thought you’d like to take a quick peek at Vielogic’s home office, seein’ as they’re our neighbors and all. I’m assuming you’ll come back later to scout it out once you’ve settled in.’

Tao nodded. ‘And my arrangements?’

‘All set,’ Walker replied. ‘We’ve got an apartment for you to work out of, a car — all under your cover name — and the equipment you requested. Per the director’s orders, we’ll provide whatever logistical support you require.’

‘Thank you,’ Tao replied, returning her gaze back to the obelisk, her mind searching for a scrap of an old memory, something she’d read years ago. ‘Place de la Révolution.’

‘Excuse me?’ Walker asked, barely catching her words above the rumble of traffic.

‘The name of this place, or at least what it was called for a brief time a couple hundred years ago. Right over there,’ Tao said, pointing at the obelisk, ‘was where the revolutionaries set up their guillotine and dispensed justice. They executed about twenty-eight hundred people; the area was so soaked with blood that cattle refused to cross it.’

‘Grizzly business.’

‘Revolutions in which one form of tyranny supplants another are never peaceful. And I can assure you, from personal experience, that sustaining a tyrannical revolutionary government requires frequent blood sacrifice. In a way, it’s ironic that Lafitte would place his headquarters here.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Vielogic is on the front lines of a scientific revolution, one completely bound in matters of life and death, and Lafitte is showing all the signs of a tyrant.’