Unacceptable Risk

Chapter 18

It was a bone-chilling, misty November evening and it felt like snow. At the bottom of Central Park, just off Fifth Avenue, there was a duck pond, and at its northern corner Michael stood in the dark waiting. After he and Grady said their good-byes, he had finally collected all his journals and sneaked away to California, taking only a couple of days to find a piece of property that was to his liking. There he waited with Sam's men, hoping to lay his hands on Gaudet and anyone else who had the tenacity to chase him to his hideaway. He had returned to Manhattan just for this meet ing. It was 6:55 p.m. Time did not pass easily when the adren aline flowed. The place was mostly quiet, except for seekers of solitude and lovers walking hand in hand, or the occasional homeless person. Michael had learned to recognize these wretched souls who slept in bushes, and fled the foot police.

His nerves kept him alert, but he wished for a stash of coca leaves to chew, here in the urban equivalent of the jun gle.

From quite a distance he saw a man and a woman coming from the Fifth Avenue side of the park. The man wore a beret and had on a long coat. According to his verbal description, that would be Georges Raval and the woman on his arm was as mentioned in the e-mail.

As the couple approached, he looked warily about, determined that if he saw others he would flee, but he saw no one this time. The man wore a bulky coat and he wondered if he too was wrapped in body armor. The woman wore a hat that looked to be of fur, or a look-alike material, and a heavy, stylish, long dress coat.

"Georges?" he said quietly as the man drew close. This was the man he had met briefly in the apartment building.

"Hello, good to see you again."

The man's features were hard to make out in the dark; he still had the mustache and was a little under six feet, give or take. Even in the low light the woman seemed beautiful.

"Shall we walk?" Michael said.

"Yes. As you can see, I brought a friend, but you can trust her. Let me introduce you to Benoit, the love of my life."

"I am very pleased to meet you both."

"Benoit knows everything I am about to tell you."

"Are you married?"

"No. She is a prisoner in France, let out to find me. How's that for a shocker?"

"That's a shocker."

"We should do this quickly. You know about the work of Grace Technologies, yes? Altering brain cells to achieve per sonality changes."

"Yes, I know generally."

"You have heard of Chaperone?"

"Yes. You created this miracle?"

"I believe I'm the only person alive who understands it. Although the knowledge is incomplete. The molecule has not yet been fully mapped and therefore it isn't ready to be synthesized, although it can be used if a supply could be obtained."

They were walking in the park and Michael led them into a darkened area and into some heavy brush and out the other side to an old bench in a small clearing on another path. "Let's sit here."

"Are you sure it's safe?" Raval asked.

"I'm sure," Benoit said, taking a very large pistol from her handbag.

"God," Raval said, "I hate guns."

"Let's continue," Benoit said.

"My only regret," Raval said, "is that I don't know you better."

Michael interpreted that as a need to trust him before di vulging more. "I understand." He had a book bag, from which he removed three sandwiches. "Would you like some thing to eat? When you've been in the jungle as long as I have, it's hard not to carry food around with you."

"I don't need much." Georges broke his sandwich in two and gave half to Benoit. He thanked Michael, then spoke of science generally. He seemed interested in the Amazon and all that it spawned. In moments they were eating and laugh ing like friends, and they hadn't mentioned Grace Technologies again or vectors or the like.

When the food was gone, Michael turned the conversation serious once more. "You've been through hell. Perhaps afraid for your life. As for your friend, she seems to have an iron constitution. Perhaps she fears nothing."

"All of the above," he said.

"I fear French jails," the woman said.

"Why don't you come with me. I've moved to the mountains of California, where it is lonely and beautiful. I have bodyguards you can trust."

"Bodyguards?" Georges said.

"You saw them in the Village, when we were attacked on the street. They are good men, and I'll be able to work there."

David Dun

Unacceptable Risk

"First we must be about other business," Benoit said.

"What is that?" Georges seemed puzzled.

"You are good scientists. But the rest of life escapes you both. It's part of your charm. There is a man, Sam. You both know him?"

"Yes. He's the one with the bodyguards."

"Well, Mr. Sam?" Benoit spoke loudly all of a sudden.

There was only silence.

"No one knows we are here," Georges said.

"One of the reasons I love you is that you do not understand what we are dealing with. We probably could have a UN convention with the people in these woods."

"Right here," a voice said. Michael recognized it as Sam's.

"So, at last we meet." Benoit said. "I would enjoy seeing the man who put me in jail-or at least this man's current disguise," Benoit said.

The bushes moved. "Yep. That'd be me."

"This better be good," Agent Ernie Dunkin said. "I have half the French Embassy and various mercenaries or emis saries or diplomats or spooks or whatever handcuffed to trees in Central Park. I can hardly wait to hear the screaming in the morning."

"I promise you that this will be interesting." The group was in several cars headed to FBI headquarters. Ernie and Sam shared a backseat. A young man was driving. Normally, Ernie drove his own car, but Sam didn't ask about the un usual arrangement.

"Let's not go to the FBI. I have a meeting room at the Park Plaza."

"A meeting room?"

"Bear with me, Ernie. None of this is going to be orthodox. None of it."

"I don't like this."

"Look, I really needed you to help get us out of Central Park without a gunfight. But we have to be free of you to solve this case and then to put it back in your lap."

"You're telling me that you just needed a babysitter in Central Park and now I get nothing?"

"Ernie, you're going to get everything on your doorstep. Without the CIA."

"Without the CIA? Then it's overseas too."

Sam nodded.

"I never really liked your shit. I prefer to solve my own crimes. But for some reason I put up with it."

"You like getting all the glory. It's no mystery."

"Yeah, well, there better be glory. This is post 9/11 and we don't screw around like we used to."

"Come on. You stretch the rules even more and you have much looser rules. You're just a hell of a lot more tight-assed about appearances."

Ernie fell silent and Sam knew he was vacillating be tween rage and intrigue.

"This could be the biggest one of the career?" Ernie fi nally asked.

"That's right."

"Delivered right in my lap?"

"Have I ever failed you, Ernie?"

"Don't give me that crap."

They lapsed into silence again.

"Take us to the Park Plaza. Drop these gentlemen off. Take me home." Then Ernie got on the radio and had the guys in Central Park released so they could go make their protestations of outrage. He chuckled, which at times like this was uncharacteristic.

"Let me in on the joke," Sam said.

Ernie got back on the radio.

"Listen up all you loyal agents of la-la land. You be sure and let it slip that you are the New York City Police Department."

"We already said FBI," a voice came back.

"So, be creative about contradicting yourself."

"Ooh," Sam said with a smile. "You're good."

The room in the Park Plaza seated ten. Benoit, Georges, Sam, and Michael sat inside along with the attorney that Benoit had requested. His name was Stan Beckworth and he spe cialized in immigration. Outside waited a dozen of Sam's hired help, spread up and down the hallway.

Benoit spoke up immediately when they sat down.

"I need to speak with Sam and the attorney alone."

"Why?" Georges asked.

Benoit turned to him. "I have told you that this is the one thing on which I will not compromise."

It was clear to Sam that the woman meant it.

"All right." Georges sighed.

"Why am I here?" Michael asked.

"You were the source of the original material that went into Chaperone," said Benoit. "What we need from you now is a counterfeit version of your 1998 journal."

"It was more work to make the phony journal than the real one, even using real journals as a template," Michael said. "The fake set includes a previously known salamander in place of the sponge. Now, what do you want all this for?"

"You'll know soon enough," Benoit said. "I will appreci ate it if you get that journal here right away. Thank you, gentlemen."

Michael and Georges left the room.

At that moment Sam's mother, Spring, Tilok Talth and psychologist, entered the conference room. Sam had fifteen hours to figure out if Benoit Moreau was for real and, if he and his mother drew a favorable conclusion in that regard, to make a plan. Or perhaps they would just be fitting into Benoit's plan.

Without preliminaries, the session began.

The meeting place could have been anywhere, but Benoit began as instructed by Gaudet at Grand Central Station, where she boarded the # 7 to Flushing, Queens. Dressed in the clothing that had been sent by Gaudet, exactly according to instructions, she wore a beige London Fog overcoat over a camel St. John knit dress, with a light brown hat that sup ported a matching net veil. On her feet she wore cream- colored flats and thigh-high white nylons with a garter belt. The undergarments were vintage Gaudet. On the tips of her curled fingers she held a tiny locator transmitter that was not part of Gaudet's proscribed accessories. She stood midtrain, midcar, and waited for events to unfold. Around her was an assortment of people, all seemingly going about ordinary business. There were no shifty-eyed men in trenchcoats. Among the many passengers was, however, a young man dressed in a conservative three-button business suit and wearing a woolen overcoat reading the Wall Street Journal. He looked exactly like a commuting lawyer or investment banker, and he never looked up until the Vernon Boulevard/ Jackson Avenue stop, the first in Queens. There he folded over his newspaper in the fashion of a delivery boy and placed a rubber band around it. Even before the train halted, he rose, walked past her, and effortlessly placed the folded Journal under her arm. She slid her hand inside the paper and felt what she determined to be a small, rectangular box. It turned out to be a tape recorder with an earpiece. She inserted the earpiece and pushed the play button.

A male voice instructed her to exit the train and she man aged to make it out of the car, just ahead of the closing doors. The next instruction was to board the next train heading back to Grand Central Station. When she arrived at the appropriate track, she stopped, caught her breath, and then smiled.

Before her stood at least twenty women dressed exactly as she, all approximately her size. It struck her as quite an accomplishment for Gaudet, given his security require ments. She couldn't imagine what the women had been told. All of them acted as though nothing untoward or unusual was happening, but the other commuters were commenting and nodding at one another with perplexed smiles as they all entered the train. The other similarly dressed women also had earpieces and a tiny cord disappearing into purses or pockets. On the train they all stood and she was instructed by the voice on the recorder to stand in the middle of the herd.

It was an eerie ride to Grand Central surrounded by look- alikes. They had standing room only and heard plenty of comments about the matching outfits, but none of the women responded. One know-it-all gentleman asserted with great confidence that the Daughters of the American Revolu tion were having a convention.

The male voice on the recording instructed Benoit to exit at Grand Central and to follow the man with the cigar. She looked around among all the brown hats and finally in the far corner of the car spotted a man with an unlit cigar in his mouth. They made eye contact. The next time she looked, the cigar was gone. His clothes-dark suit and dark, long coat-were nondescript, so she would need to watch him closely. The train came to a stop, the doors opened, and all of the women exited and seemed to explode in various direc tions. In front of Benoit was the cigar man, who once more made eye contact and then moved off at a brisk walk. Benoit followed and others of the women were moving along with her. They rounded a corner and headed down a wide hall to what Benoit knew to be the great hall of Grand Central Station. Not twenty feet away, three of the other brown hats hurried off to various destinations of Gaudet's choosing. There were shops along either side and the man veered into a jewelry shop and then stepped through a door that was opened barely a foot, allowing entry into the side of a boarded- up storefront. About twenty feet before reaching the door, Benoit brushed a display and purposely dropped the transmitter. Sam had warned her that at the first enclosure they would probably check her for transmitters.

After Benoit had entered, and before the man closed the door, a woman dressed exactly as Benoit slid past her and then backed out through the same door Benoit had just entered, yelling, "Je dois juste aller pisser." Benoit was amazed at the resemblance.

It would look to an observer exactly as if Benoit had stepped into a closed-to-the-public area and then backed out.

They stopped and a man with a wand went over her body checking every beep. They took the gun from her purse. Cigar man led her back through a construction site that was at the moment without any workers and through a back door into a narrow hall that ran behind all of the shops. They walked down the hall about two hundred feet and came out in the back of a store in a tiny office area. There the man left her, but not until he had shown her into a small bathroom. There were fashion magazines here that Gaudet enjoyed. Unlike some men, he liked looking at women in clothes, un less he had his knife and was able to cut them off personally. She was grateful that they had chosen a bathroom as the waiting area. She began to flip through a magazine, but the tension in her broke her concentration; her mind always went back to Gaudet and her upcoming encounter and the words that she would use, and the way she would use her body. After an hour had passed, a woman came and opened the door.

"I'm sorry, but I need to search you for transmitters."

Benoit was used to being searched and even the rubber gloves and the body cavity search did not irritate her. But it worried her because she wouldn't have anything in a body cavity unless she had done it intentionally, and that was a strong indication that Gaudet no longer had complete trust in her.

"I need to search the handbag," the woman said. Benoit pulled out the lipstick and other cosmetics, credit cards and cash.

She wondered if the woman had any inkling about Gaudet. Maybe she had met Trotsky, but probably she dealt with a contractor who had never met or even spoken to Gaudet. The woman left and Benoit returned to the bathroom and waited another hour. At the next knock on the bathroom door, she found a small, slender man in a rumpled sport jacket, with shaggy brown hair that hadn't been trimmed in a good while.

"For the next part of your little excursion, you will need to get in this," he said, pointing to a large crate mounted on a dolly. He seemed grim; she decided he would make a good undertaker.

There was a ladder and she assumed correctly that she would need to enter the crate from the top. Fortunately, there was another ladder down the inside and a chair, and she found that she could sit inside the crate with about the legroom of an economy-class airline seat. There was even a light to read by and another array of magazines.

The man closed up the crate while she flipped nervously through these fashion magazines. For about ten minutes there was complete silence and then the crate began to move. Then it stopped. She surmised that they were making a final check for any sign of a tail.

The stress was a pressure inside her that felt like it could explode. Trying to undo evil, it turned out, was much harder than doing it. There was a suspense in reaching for the light that did not exist when wallowing in the darkness. Sam had warned her about that. Always she had relied on her own strength plus nothing and rejected any spiritual dimension to life as the invention of the crackpots who wanted to exploit the weak. It was one of the few things about which she and Karl Marx could have agreed. The opiate of the masses was a perfect description. But since her time in prison, new pos sibilities had begun to occur to her. Spring had hit a body blow to her mind and spirit.

She had never been to the Tiloks' Universe Rock, and nothing in her family's Catholic past had ever melded with her soul. The Catholic tradition was barren for her, perhaps because at age twelve she had been required to attend as a means of occupying her time. But in her childhood there had been a beautiful valley down which the Loire River flowed. An old orchard grew there. It was quiet and fragrant in summer and near the castle of Villandry. Although Benoit knew the castle had been built by a sixteenth-century finance minister, she imagined that royalty would have taken picnics in the nearby orchard and perhaps fallen in love there.

Spring had asked if she could visualize it to the point that she could feel the experience of it, and she had said she could. Once she felt the peace of that valley, she was told to remember the eyes of her mother in a close moment. Even though her mother died when Benoit was nine years old, there were many such moments with her mother and she could place herself back in those times. Spring told her that if she could concentrate totally on the peace of that valley, and if she could remember the eyes of her mother and feel that love, then that was the beginning of her we pac maw. As she learned to explore it, she could take in more than her val ley and more than her mother. She could eventually take in all valleys and all mothers, and she could be at peace in the gravest adversity. Spring told her that when the threat was the greatest, she could become the center of a sphere of that energy so that she could be surrounded with her we pac maw.

This was the beginning of Tilok meditation for the sweat lodge as taught by the Spirit Walkers of the Tilok tribe and now the Talths, since Sam's grandfather had been the last Spirit Walker. Benoit wondered whether, after prison, she needed such gimmicks to survive the coming experience with Gaudet. Sam swore to her that the Spirit Walker meditation was sufficiently powerful that she might survive, even prevail over, a man like Devan Gaudet.

A year before, Benoit would have instantly dismissed this exercise as the purest form of religious bullshit. Then she had begun examining her life and its value. She had ex plained her inner pilgrimage to Sam and he seemed to understand-at least to the extent that he believed her.

Although engrossed in her meditation, she was aware that there were about twenty minutes of jostling of the crate and then about a forty-minute ride in a truck, followed by another twenty minutes of jostling before it seemed that she had arrived. She could tell by the talking and the work on the top of the crate that she was about to be let out. When she climbed out, she saw small glass panes, dark woods, and older but elegant-looking draperies. She was obviously in an upper range courtly hotel with old world styling. There was a man beside the crate who had the appearance of age.

"Is that you, Devan?"

He nodded. "You will recognize my voice, as well as my eyes."

When she climbed down from the crate, she pressed herself to him without hesitation and gently stuck her tongue in his mouth, being careful not to kiss vigorously in order to ensure that she did not disturb his makeup. She put her loins to his as she had commonly done more than a year previous. But Sam's cautions were heavy on her mind.

Don't compromise yourself. Try everything else and something will break.

Still, it was hard not to slip back into ways that would make Gaudet comfortable, put him at ease, and then fill him with desire so that she could begin to persuade him, and to loosen him up. It was hard to be a butterfly.

"God, I missed you so."

"You were never this enthusiastic," he said when she let him up for air.

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder."

"So does abstinence."

"I can't believe that you involved yourself in this cha rade."

"Occasionally I'm like one of those gamblers that can't resist a chance. Besides, I never really taught you disguise well enough that I could be sure that you would do it to my satisfaction. We have to work fast."

Gaudet went to work laying out a silver gray wig, makeup, glasses, and a change of clothes.

"Where are we going?"

"To what they call upstate, the forests, there is a lake… We have a little time." She could sense his eagerness for intimacy and his weird kind of sex.

"Devan, there is something I want more than anything. Temporarily I want it even more than I want you." Gaudet stopped with the hairpiece.

"What is that?"

She tried to draw herself into the peace of her we pac maw. "I want real freedom. I want a pardon from the French government."

"Trust a government?"

"I'm not like you, you know. I can't run from the law my whole life. If it means being pardoned, then, yes, I'll trust them. But not blindly."

"You can't run with me like we planned?" There was just a hint of irritation in his voice and it gave her a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She found herself losing her confidence and she wanted to be intimate with him as a means of reclaiming it. Don't compromise. Keep trying. She could feel the tension of the great inner struggle over going the old way or trying the new.

"Being with you isn't the problem. It's being hunted by France. I want to be able to walk around downtown Paris without fear and without a disguise. I can have both."

"It sounds like a fairy tale to me."

"I have to try. I can have Chaperone to you the moment after we pay for it. You can then deliver it to the French along with your technology. I can get Bowden's journal, the one that identifies the source of Chaperone-and the location. That is the whole pie. For that, the French will pay you the two hundred million, less the kickback."

"You brought the Chaperone formula with you?"

"No, but I can get it quickly. It'll take money, though. Same with Bowden's journal. This will all be done through the Swiss escrow."

Gaudet did not disguise his surprise.

"Just like that?" He snapped his fingers. "You were with Raval no more than a couple of days. Now he's yours? Did you have sex with him? And what about Bowden?"

"No to both. But I hinted there might be some in the future."

"Would you enjoy it?"

"No. Of course not. This is a job." She could not read him now. Sometimes reaching him was like trying to climb a glass wall. "Perhaps you do not need to wait long to close. How soon can you have Cordyceps ready?"

"Before, I thought you said it would take a little time to get Chaperone, to make deals with Raval and Bowden. I thought you and I would have a brief respite in the country. A couple of days, just you and me."

"I am very anxious. I admit it. I cannot relax."

"You are like my investors. Always in a hurry. Don't worry: my people are preparing Cordyceps."

"It's the tension-I find it suffocating."

"I find you enchanting." His eyes changed, grew harder. "Why don't you want to fuck me?"

"My period. It just began. Now isn't the time for making love, Devan. Let's get this deal done."

"I don't know if I believe you. I can feel you, Benoit. I don't think your body ever really craved mine. It was the scare, the thrill, the power that you liked in me. I represented a way to escape Chellis." He paused and studied her. "Now you have escaped Chellis and it is the French government you must escape. So back you come." She felt him studying her more than at any time in her life. But she had to pull it off. "Tell me, how is it that you can bet in the markets on Cordyceps and still get a pardon?"

"I have the French government involved at the highest levels. I can twist off their balls if they betray me."

"Not if they kill you."

"They won't. They fear nothing more than scandal, and they're too far in with me already. They'll hunker down and say nothing. Mark my words. I know our brethren."

"They are your brethren. I was nationalized by birth, not genetics. What is your plan?" Gaudet asked.

"When you are ready, I will give you Chaperone and you pay Georges Raval two million dollars. Bowden another two million."

"I can see Bowden. Without him nobody makes more Chaperone. For that, he's cheap. But Raval doesn't own anything. Why two for him?"

"They've met, Bowden and Raval, so now they are more or less together. Each wants what the other gets. It's human nature. And remember: Bowden doesn't own the Chaperone molecule itself. He knows the source, which is critical, but Chaperone has to be synthesized and you have to know how to use it-the process. That's Raval's piece. No one else un derstands it, even the French. They own the process but don't know how it works. You see?"

"Somehow it seems a little too simple, but I'm listening. What does Bowden guarantee? What does Raval guarantee?"

"That's a snag. Bowden guarantees nothing, because he says he doesn't know for sure which material the molecule came from. I can get his 1998 journal, Devan."

"Does he guarantee the journal?"

"No. Georges says the molecule came from a salamander. I will obtain the salamander journal page. You and I will guarantee the journal."

"The French will accept this?"

"Probably. Raval guarantees that the official Chaperone documents from Grace Technologies files will be delivered to escrow. Part of the deal with the French is for Raval-they get both unquestionable legal title and the secret to Chaperone technology; he goes to work in their laboratories at agreed terms. Part of those terms is the two million, which you are to pay to him. But it is peanuts compared to the two hundred million and the way that will be multiplied in the markets with Cordyceps. Now I still have to work out the other terms of the employment contract for Raval. I plan to finish it quickly, in the next couple of days."

"I will say this, Benoit, you seem to have all the angles figured for everybody."

She could see that he was getting restless. Something was bothering him. A lesson from Catholic school came to her: what fellowship has the darkness with the light?

"You don't want to go with me," he said. "Do you?" "Of course I do. But I have work to do. I can't go off to the country in the middle of a job that will determine my whole life-my freedom. I have many things to work out." "So you say. Your period never stopped us before." She said nothing for a moment, working on the tears she'd need for the next step in her explanation. "I did not want to tell you this, but… I was raped by a guard in jail. Thank God I'm not pregnant. My period proves that. But it's been awful. I am afraid I may have caught something. If I did, then my blood could infect you. It's a dangerous time, my period. I would not hide that from you."

Gaudet's eyes widened. His fastidious nature seemed to appreciate the threat. "What did the guard have?" "Hepatitis for certain. Hopefully, not AIDS." "I can't believe a guard raped Benoit Moreau." "Actually, it was two guards. They handcuffed me to a bed, feet and hands."

Gaudet studied her. He reached into the pocket of his slacks. It was the right pocket where he kept the knife. When he displayed the pearl-handled instrument, it did not surprise her. With a flick of his wrist he snapped it open. He walked forward and held it under her chin, the way he used to do in sex play. But his eyes were hard and unwavering. She felt weakness in her knees, remembering the stories she had heard of the disemboweled enemies of Gaudet. Most re cently it had been one of Sam's men. More than one woman had been cut in the face.

As if daring her to do something, he began to cut the buttons down the front of her dress. Quickly she reached under her dress, pulled aside the crotch of her panties, and with drew her bloody tampon. She held it in front of his face and stood very still, not wanting to trigger him into a blood letting.

A smile broke across his lips. "I was sure you were lying about your period. When will it end?"

"Four, five days."

"One can be vaccinated against hepatitis. I myself have received the vaccine because of my travels. But AIDS…"

"I know. I'm scared, Devan. And I'm sorry."

"You make it difficult. I want to see you in five days."

"Good. Me too. By which time the deal will be done. All except for Cordyceps."

"I will wait five days from the sale of Chaperone to implement Cordyceps and no more. When is the soonest you can deliver Chaperone?"

"Tomorrow, if I go back immediately. I need to be with Raval when you deliver the money."

"Why should I trust you?"

"Because I have never failed you. And because I am too smart to cross you. Raval will deposit into escrow, as will you, and as will the French. Nobody has to trust anybody."

"We all have to trust the escrow holder."

"Come, come. The Swiss are impeccable. Everything closes at once-you, Bowden, Raval, the French government. Everyone is paid directly out of escrow pursuant to identical countersigned instructions."

He watched her for maybe two minutes, saying nothing. She did not like her dress open where he had cut the buttons, but she knew better than to pull it closed until he was through with his ritual.

"Everything is too smooth."

"I have thought about it for months. That is why. I have waited to work with you. I have plotted and schemed."

"There is no one so blind as a man who wants to believe a woman, unless it is a woman who wants to believe a man. But you never had that problem because you never had a weakness for any man. Not like I have a weakness for you. You're lucky I don't pull your entrails out on the floor and watch you die. I hate that you weaken me!"

Benoit didn't move a millimeter. She knew that it would take almost nothing to drive the man to murder. He stepped close and touched the tip of his knife just beneath her sternum. She knew it was the place that he made the incision when he wanted to unravel the intestines.

"Tell me everything you and this Baptiste get out of this."

"I get to be with you. I get a pardon from the French gov ernment. And if Cordyceps goes off as planned, I get to be rich. I still have funds from Grace that are hidden and I will invest heavily on the short side just before Cordyceps. Baptiste and the admiral will get five million each in exchange for my pardon, Baptiste splits with others. The admiral says he won't take the five million for a long time, if ever. Maybe, he says, he will turn it over to the French government. You and I know that if he would consider it, he will take it."

"Admiral Larive will be involved with this?"

"He will not say that he will do it, of course. I told him the money would go into a Swiss bank in the name of a Swiss trust. We would invest. He never has to claim the money. He said nothing at all. A man like that cannot agree-it just has to be done."

"So he agrees by his silence. You amuse me."

"That is how it has to be. When he gets up in the morn ing, he tells himself he will not take the money, that it is blood money. It is how he respects himself even a little bit. And who knows, maybe he will never take any."

"Bullshit. He will take it. Maybe when he is old. How does the French government explain this to the Americans?"

"They notify the Americans on the day of Cordyceps, but, of course, they will say that they thought it wasn't to happen for weeks."

"It could affect our execution of Cordyceps if the Americans have advance warning."

"They won't." She gave the knife a deliberate glance. "I am betting my life on it."

"They cannot tell the Americans more than a few hours in advance."

"I understand. But we will have to know the date for a few days in advance in order to make our investments."

Gaudet stopped talking. She couldn't tell what he was thinking.

"Come here," Gaudet said, stepping to the bed. He touched the tip of the knife to each of his fingers as if he were counting them. His pallor was white and he seemed to have no life in his face. The lips were tight.

Fear swept through her; she consciously tried not to shake.

He cut the bra down the middle between her breasts so that she wore only her panties, shoes, her garter belt, and thigh-high stockings under the dress. He ripped it open.

"Turn around and bend over. I don't believe the diseased guard story… I want it like it used to be," but he was not acting like before. She knew their reunion was not going like his dream. It frightened her.

What fellowship has the darkness with the light? Sam did not understand. She turned and leaned forward, caressing his thigh, but she envisioned the Loire Valley, and the hope in her mother's eyes when she talked of better days to come. And she remembered Spring's insistence. She bit her lip to make herself think. What was worth dying for? After a moment she took her hand from his thigh. Slowly she straightened herself, forcing slow, deep breaths. She felt Gaudet's hand on her shoulder and the point of his knife at her spine, knowing at any moment he could paralyze her forever. Kill her.

"You deny me?" His breath was in her ear.

"I only advise you. When we have finished our business and after I have tested clean, I will give more than you have ever dreamed." Her mother's eyes. The valley. "But it must come from my heart and not the point of your knife."

His breathing was heavy and she knew he wanted her not just for the sex, but for the power. The knife bit a little deeper. She turned her head slightly and leaned back, putting her cheek next to his. "If you wait, my body will reward you. I'll give you every assurance you need."

His breathing stopped and she could feel the tension in him. She summoned all her we pac maw and tried to find her peace. She left the tension of his indecision behind.

He exhaled long and slow and dropped the knife hand to his side, but he did not put it away. "Waiting is hard."

She smiled and kissed him. "And I'm the one you said is in a hurry. Tsk. Tsk." She reached for the outfit that he had brought for her as part of his disguise and turned away while she removed the ruined dress and put on the new. His eyes followed her, but he made no move to stop her.

"Tell me about Raval. I never met him in Malaysia."

"He is a bit obsequious for a tall man. His mind never leaves the science. He knows nothing of the world. He is very naive. There is not much to tell."

"You sound like you don't think much of him, Benoit, and yet you are getting him two million."

"Even weak men can find strong friends. And he is very valuable as a scientist, if not so impressive as a man."

"You're trying too hard."

"What do you mean?"

"To make him sound like an insect. But just know that if you ever touch him, I will turn him into a eunuch-should I happen to let him live."

"I must go now and speak with him to be sure he's ready for the exchange."

"No."

She looked at him, at the phone he held in his hand. "You are not leaving. Use this and stay with me. That is the end of the discussion." Gaudet had spoken.