The Day After Tomorrow

76

WORD OF the Paris-Meaux train derailment reached Ian Noble less than an hour after it happened. First reports indicated sabotage. A second report confirmed that an explosive device had been set off directly under the engine.

That McVey and Osborn would be on the same route, at the same time, to rendezvous with Noble’s pilot at the Meaux airstrip was too coincidental. And since the pilot had landed, waited the allotted time and then taken off with no sign of them, there was every reason to believe McVey and Osborn had been on the train.

Immediately, Noble put in a call to Captain Cadoux at his residence in Lyon and informed him what had happened. It was important he know what Cadoux had found out in his investigations into the German fingerprint expert, Hugo Klass, and the death of Lebrun’s brother, Antoine. Noble was going under the assumption that McVey and Osborn had been on the train and that whatever organization Klass was working for, or Antoine might have been involved with, was responsible for the derailment. It was another demonstration of just how far their intelligence network reached. Never mind they had found Merriman, Agnes Demblon and the others, and knew who Vera Monneray was and where she lived—that they’d been able to pinpoint McVey’s clandestine meeting with Osborn at La Coupole and then discover they were on the Paris-Meaux train was nothing short of astonishing.

Cadoux was speechless, and the situation made his own frustration all the worse. The tail he’d put on Klass had so far turned up nothing more sinister than the fact that he’d gone to work as usual on Monday. A tap on his phone had given up nothing. As for Antoine, he’d come directly home Sunday night after a late dinner with his brother, and gone directly to bed. For some reason he’d gotten up and gone to his study before dawn, which was not his habit. And it was there his wife found him at 7:30. He was on the floor beside his desk with his nine-millimeter Beretta on the carpet beside him. The gun had been fired once and there was a single gunshot wound in his right temple. An autopsy-ballistics report proved the bullet had come from the same weapon. The doors leading outside were locked, but the latch in a kitchen window was open. So it was possible someone had both come in and gone out that way, though there were no signs of it.

“Or just gone out,” Noble said.

“Yes, we’d thought of that too,” Cadoux said in his heavy French accent. “That Antoine had let someone in the front door and relocked it. At that hour he would have known whoever it was or he would not have let them in. Then they killed him and went out the window. Still, there were no signs of it, and the coroner has officially ruled it a suicide.”

Noble was as baffled as he’d ever been. Everyone who knew Albert Merriman was either dead or a definitive target, and the man who had discovered him through a fingerprint seemed completely innocent.

“Cadoux. Interpol, Washington—who did Klass get there to request the Merriman file from the New York police?”

“He didn’t.”

“What?”

“Washington has no record of it.”

“That’s impossible. They were faxed there directly by New York.”

“Old codes, my friend,” Cadoux said. “In the past, top people at Interpol had private codes that gave them access to information no one else could get. That practice is no longer in effect. Still, there are those that remember them and can use them, and there is no way to trace it. The New York police may have faxed the material to Washington but it came straight to Lyon, somehow electronically by passing Washington.”

“Cadoux—” Noble hesitated. “I know McVey is against it, but I think we’re running out of time. Have Klass quietly taken into custody and interrogate him. If you want, I’ll come myself.”

“I understand, my friend. And I agree. You will let me know the moment you get word on McVey. For better or worse, eh?”

“Yes, of course. For better or worse.”

Hanging up, Noble thought a moment, then swiveled to a pipe tree behind his desk. Selecting a worn and yellowed Calabash, he filled it, then tamped the tobacco and lit it.

If McVey and Osborn had not been on the Paris-Meaux train and had simply missed connecting with his pilot at the Meaux airstrip, then they would be there when he touched down tomorrow. But twenty-four hours was too long to wait. He had told Cadoux he’d had to assume they had been on the train. And that was what he would go with now. If they were dead, that was one thing, but if they were alive, they had to be gotten out of there now, before the other side discovered the same thing.

A little after ten forty-five, almost four hours after the derailment, a tall, slim, very attractive reporter with press credentials from the newspaper Le Mond parked her car along the single-lane road with the other media vehicles, and joined the swarm of journalists already on the scene.

French Garde Nationale troops had joined Meaux police and firefighters in the rescue effort that, so far, counted thirteen dead, including the train’s driver. Thirty six more were hospitalized, twenty in serious condition, and fifteen more had been treated for minor abrasions and released. The rest were still buried in the wreckage, and grim estimates ranged from hours to days before the accounting would be complete.

“Is there a list of names and nationalities?” she said, entering a large media tent set up fifty feet back from the tracks. Pierre André, a graying medical adjutant in charge of victim identification for the Garde Nationale, glanced up from a worktable to the LeMond press pass around her neck, then looked at her and smiled, perhaps his only smile of the day. Avril Rocard was indeed a handsome piece.

“Oui, madame—” Immediately he turned to a subordinate. “Lieutenant, a casualty accounting for madame, s’il vous plaît.”

Selecting a sheet from inside one of several manila folders in front of him, the officer stood smartly and handed it to her.

“Merci,” she said.

“I must warn you, madame, that it is far from complete. Nor is it for publication until the next of kin have been informed,” Pierre André said, this time without the smile.

“Of course.”

Avril Rocard was a Parisian detective, assigned to the French government as a counterfeit specialist. But her presence here, playing a correspondent for Le Mond, was not at the request of the French government or of the Paris Prefecture of Police. She was here because of Cadoux. For a decade they had been lovers, and she was the one person in France he could trust as he could trust himself.

Walking off, she looked at the list. Most of the identified passengers had been French nationals. There were, however, two Germans, a Swiss, a South African, two Irish and an Australian. No Americans.

Leaving the scene, she went to her car, unlocked the door and got in. Picking up the cellular phone, she dialed a number in Paris and waited while it rang through to Lyon.

“Oui?” Cadoux’s voice was clear.

“So far nothing. No Americans at all on the list.”

“What’s it look like?”

“It looks like hell. What should I do?”

“Has anyone questioned your credentials?”

“No.”

“Then stay there until all the victims have been accounted for—”

Avril Rocard clicked off the phone and slowly set the receiver back in its cradle. She was thirty-three years old. By now she should have had a home and a baby. She should have at least had a husband. What the hell was she doing this for?