The Paris Vendetta Page 20

  Meagan pointed at Stephanie. “Is she always so pushy?”

  “Actually, she’s mellowed over the years.”

  “How about you two excusing us a minute,” Stephanie said. She grabbed Malone’s arm and led him away, asking, “What did you find in the Invalides?”

  He reached beneath his jacket and showed her the book. “Lord Ashby wasn’t happy it was gone. I watched as he read my note. But I also noticed that he avoided Caroline Dodd’s questions and blamed it all on Larocque.”

  “Which explains why Thorvaldsen doesn’t know Ashby is working for us. He’s kept his spying close. I didn’t think Henrik could have the man followed twenty-four hours a day, or listen to every communication.”

  Malone knew intense surveillance, no matter how professionally done, was eventually noticed. Better to be selective and careful.

  “Our handlers have done a poor job riding herd over Ashby,” she said. “He’s had a free rein, calling all the shots.”

  He watched Sam and Meagan Morrison as they stood a hundred feet away. “Is he doing all right?”

  “He wants to be a field agent, so I’m going to give him a chance.”

  “Is he ready?”

  “He’s all I’ve got right now, so he’s going to have to be.”

  “And her?”

  “Hothead. Cocky. The balls of an alley cat.”

  “Easy to see how you two would butt heads.”

  She smiled. “I have French intelligence working with me. They’ve been told about Peter Lyon. They want him bad. He’s linked to three bombings here a decade ago where four policemen died.”

  “They still pissed about the Cluny?”

  She chuckled. “The dírecteur générale de la sécuríté extéríeure knows all about you. He told me about the abbey at Belém and Aachen’s cathedral. But he’s reasonable. That’s how you and Ashby walked in and out of the Invalides with no problem. Believe me, they have better security than that.”

  “I need something else.” He motioned with the book. “A press story on its theft. Nothing major—just enough to make tomorrow’s paper. It would help.”

  “With Henrik?”

  He nodded. “I need to keep him at bay. He has a plan to use the theft against Ashby with Larocque. I don’t see the harm, so let’s indulge him.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Driving a wedge deeper between Eliza Larocque and Ashby. You realize, like him, I’m playing both ends against the middle.”

  “Played right, we may all get what we want.”

  He was tired, the strain from the past couple of weeks returning. He ran a hand through his hair. He also should call Gary. Christmas was tomorrow, a day when fathers should talk to their sons.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “You and I are headed to London.”

  SAM STUFFED HIS BARE HANDS INTO HIS COAT POCKETS AND stood in the crowd with Meagan. The sun shone brightly in a cloudless winter sky.

  “Why are you doing this?” he asked her.

  “Your lady friend there said I’d be arrested if I didn’t.”

  “That’s not why.”

  Her pleasant face showed no apprehension, something he’d noticed often since yesterday. No negativity in this personality, or at least not any she allowed to surface.

  “We’re finally doing it,” she said. “No more talking. We’re here, Sam, doing something.”

  He’d felt some of the same ebullience.

  “We can stop them. I knew it was real. So did you. We’re not crazy, Sam.”

  “You realize what Stephanie wants us to do is dangerous.”

  She shrugged. “How bad could it be? Any worse than at the museum yesterday? What’s wrong with being a little cavalier?”

  “What’s that word mean?” he asked Norstrum.

  “Free. Offhand. Somewhat careless.”

  He allowed his fifteen-year-old brain to absorb the definition. He’d broken another rule and risked a free climb up the rock face. Norstrum had told him to use a rope, but he hadn’t obeyed.

  “Sam, we all take chances. That’s how you succeed. But never foolish ones. Success comes from minimizing risk, not making it greater.”

  “But the rope wasn’t needed. I made it fine.”

  “And what would have happened if your grip had not held? Or your foot slipped? Or a muscle cramped?” Norstrum’s terse questions were a clear indication that he was, if not displeased, certainly unhappy. “You would have fallen. Been maimed for life, maybe killed, and what would you have gained from taking such a risk?”

  He tried to place the information into context, allowing the rebuke to float through his mind as he determined the right response. He did not like that he’d upset Norstrum. When he was younger he didn’t care, but as he’d grown older he’d come to want not to disappoint this man.

  “I’m sorry. It was foolish.”

  The older man grasped his shoulder. “Remember, Sam, foolishness will get you killed.”

  Norstrum’s warning rang clear in his brain as he considered Meagan’s three questions. Seventeen years ago, when he’d scaled the rock face with no safety rope, he’d learned that Norstrum had been right.

  Foolishness will get you killed.

  Yesterday, in the museum, he’d forgotten that lesson.

  Not today.

  Stephanie Nelle had drafted him for a job. Did it entail risks? Plenty. But they should be measured and calculated.

  Nothing cavalier.

  “I want to be careful, Meagan. You should be, too.”

  FORTY-TWO

  ENGLAND

  2:40 PM

  ASHBY GLANCED AT HIS WATCH AND NOTED THAT IT HAD TAKEN the Bentley a little over an hour to make the drive from Heathrow Airport to Salen Hall. He also noticed that his estate workers were busy maintaining the grounds, though the seahorse fountain, canal pond, and cascade were silent for winter. Except for an enlarged stable and a kitchen and servant wing, the main house had remained unchanged since the 18th century. The same clumps of forest and pasture also remained. The surrounding land all had once been ancient moors, driven back by Ashby ancestors who’d tamed the valley with grass and fence. He prided himself on both its beauty and its independence, one of the last privately owned British manors that did not depend on tourism for revenue.

  And it never would.

  The Bentley stopped at the crown of a graveled cul-de-sac. Orange brick and diamond-paned windows glistened in the bright sun. Gargoyles leered down from the roofline, their axes poised, as if to warn invaders.

  “I’m going to do a little research,” Caroline told him as they stepped inside the house.

  Good. He needed to think. He and Mr. Guildhall headed straight for his study and Ashby sat behind the desk. This day had turned disastrous.

  He’d kept quiet during the short flight back from Paris and delayed the inevitable. Now he lifted the phone and dialed Eliza Larocque’s mobile number.

  “I hope you have more good news,” she said.

  “Actually, no. The book wasn’t there. Perhaps it’s been moved during the renovation? I found the display case and the other items, but not the volume on the Merovingians.”

  “The information provided to me was quite specific.”

  “The book was not there. Can you check again?”

  “Of course.”

  “In the morning, once I return to Paris for our gathering, perhaps we can speak privately beforehand?”

  “I will be at the tower by ten thirty.”

  “Till then.”

  He hung up the phone and checked his watch.

  Four hours to go. That was when he was scheduled to meet with his American contact. He’d hoped that to be his last conversation, as he was tired of the juggling act. He wanted Napoleon’s cache and had hoped the book in the Invalides held the key. Now the bloody Americans controlled it.

  He’d have to bargain tonight.

  Tomorrow would be far too late.

  ELIZA CLICKED OFF HER PHONE A
ND THOUGHT BACK TO WHAT Henrik Thorvaldsen had predicted. If I’m right about him, he’s going to tell you that he wasn’t able to retrieve whatever it is, that it wasn’t there, or some other such excuse. And to what he’d told her again, just before they concluded their lunch and he left the restaurant. It will be for you to judge whether that be truth or a lie.

  She was safe inside her house in the Marais, not far from where the Paris Club gathered. Her family had owned the property since the mid–19th century. She’d grown up within these elegant walls and now spent the majority of her time here. Her sources within the French government had assured her that the book she sought was there, in the museum. A minor relic, of little historical significance, other than being from Napoleon’s personal library and mentioned in his will. Her sources had asked few questions, nor would they have once they learned the book was gone, since they’d learned long ago that to appreciate her generosity meant to keep their mouths shut.

  She’d debated what to do about Thorvaldsen ever since leaving Le Grand Véfour. The Danish billionaire had appeared from nowhere with information that she simply could not ignore. He clearly knew her business, and the oracle had confirmed his intentions. Now Ashby himself had corroborated what Thorvaldsen predicted. She did not intend to ignore the warnings any longer.

  She retrieved the telephone number Thorvaldsen had provided to her yesterday and dialed. When he answered, she told him, “I have decided to extend you an invitation to join our group.”

  “Most generous. I assume, then, Lord Ashby disappointed you.”

  “Let us say that he’s aroused my curiosity. Are you free tomorrow? The club is gathering for an important session.”

  “I’m a Jew. Christmas is not a holiday for me.”

  “Nor me. We meet in the morning, in La Salle Gustav Eiffel, on the first platform of the tower, at eleven. They have a lovely banquet room, and we have a lunch planned after we talk.”

  “Sounds wonderful.”

  “I shall see you then.”

  She clicked off the phone.

  Tomorrow.

  A day she’d been anticipating for a long time. She planned to fully explain to her cohorts what the parchments had taught her family. Some of which she’d related to Thorvaldsen at lunch, but she’d intentionally not mentioned a caveat. In a peace-based society, with no war, stimulating mass fear through political, sociological, ecological, scientific, or cultural threats could prove nearly impossible. No attempt, so far, had ever carried sufficient credibility or magnitude to work for long. Something like black plague, which had threatened on a global scale, came close, but a threat such as that, conceived from unknown conditions, with little or no control, was impractical.

  And any threat would have to be containable.

  After all, that was the whole idea. Scare the people into obeying—then extract profit from their fear. The better solution was the simplest. Invent the threat. Such a plan came with a multitude of advantages. Like a dimmer switch on a chandelier that could be adjusted into infinite degrees of intensity. Thankfully, in today’s world, a credible enemy existed and had already galvanized public sentiment.

  Terrorism.

  As she’d told Thorvaldsen, that precise threat had worked in America, so it should work anywhere.

  Tomorrow she’d see if the parchments were correct.

  What Napoleon had wanted to do, she would now do.

  For two hundred years her family had profited from the political misfortunes of others. Pozzo di Borgo deciphered enough from the parchments to teach his children, as they’d taught theirs, that it truly did not matter who made the laws—control the money and you possess real power.

  To do that, she needed to control events.

  Tomorrow would be an experiment.

  And if it worked?

  There’d be more.

  FORTY-THREE

  LONDON

  6:40 PM

  ASHBY SEARCHED THE DARKNESS AND THE HUNDRED OR SO faces for a green-and-gold Harrods scarf. Most of the people surrounding him were clearly tourists, their guide yelling something about the feel of gaslight and fog and August 1888 when Jack the Ripper struck terror into drink-sodden East End prostitutes.

  He grinned.

  The Ripper seemed to interest only foreigners. He wondered if those same people would pay money in their own countries to be taken on a tour of a mass murderer’s haunts.

  He was on the city’s east side, in Whitechapel, walking down a crowded sidewalk. To his left, across a busy street, rose the Tower of London, its taupe-colored stones awash in sodium vapor light. What was once an enormous moat was now a sea of emerald winter grass. A cold breeze eased inland off the nearby Thames, with the Tower Bridge lighted in the distance.

  “Good evening, Lord Ashby.”

  The woman who appeared beside him was petite with short-cut hair, late fifties, early sixties, definitely American, and wearing a green-and-gold scarf. Exactly as he’d been told.

  However.

  “You are new,” he said to her.

  “I’m the one in charge.”

  That information caught his attention.

  He’d met his regular contact with American intelligence on several of London’s walking tours. They’d taken the British Museum stroll, Shakespeare’s London, Old Mayfair, and now Jack the Ripper Haunts.

  “And who are you?” he casually asked.

  “Stephanie Nelle.”

  The group halted for the guide to spew out something about how the building just ahead was where the Ripper’s first victim had been found. She grasped his arm and, as others focused on the guide, they drifted into the crowd’s wake.

  “Fitting we should meet on this tour,” she said. “Jack the Ripper terrorized people and was never caught, either.”

  He didn’t smile at her attempt toward irony. “I could end my involvement now and leave, if you no longer require my help.”

  The group again started forward.

  “I realize the price we’re going to have to pay is your freedom. But that doesn’t mean I like it.”

  He told himself to stay calm. This woman, and who she represented, had to be stroked, at least for another twenty-four hours, and at least until he obtained the book.

  “The last I was told we were in this endeavor together,” he said.

  “You promised to deliver information today. I came to personally hear what you have to offer.”

  The group stopped at another notable site.

  “Peter Lyon will bomb the Church of the Dome, at the Invalides, tomorrow,” he said in a low voice. “Christmas Day. As a demonstration.”

  “Of what?”

  “Eliza Larocque is a fanatic. She has some ancient wisdom that her family has lived by for centuries. Quite complicated and, to me, generally irrelevant, but there is a French extremist group—isn’t there always one?—that wants to make a statement.”

  “Who is it this time?”

  “It involves immigrant discrimination under French law. North Africans, who flooded into France years ago, welcomed then as guest workers. Now they’re ten percent of the population and tired of being held down. They want to make a statement. Larocque has the means and wants no credit, so Peter Lyon brokered a partnership.”

  “I want to understand the purpose of this partnership.”

  He sighed. “Can’t you decipher it? France is in the middle of a demographic shift. Those Algerian and Moroccan immigrants are becoming a problem. They are now far more French than African, but the xenophobic right and the secularist left hate them. If birthrates continue as they are, within two decades those immigrants will outnumber the native French.”

  “And what does blowing up the Invalides have to do with that inevitability?”

  “It’s all a symbol. Those immigrants resent their second-class status. They want their mosques. Their freedom. Political expression. Influence. Power. What everyone else has. But the native French don’t want them to have those. I’m told a great many laws have
been passed trying to keep these people at a distance.” He paused. “And anti-Semitism is also on a sharp rise throughout France. Jews are becoming afraid once again.”

  “And those immigrants are to blame for that?”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps some. To me, if the truth be told, the radical French are more responsible. But the political right and the extreme left have done a good job blaming those immigrants for all the ills that befall the country.”

  “I’m still waiting for my answer.”

  The tour stopped at another point of interest, and the guide droned on.

  “Eliza is conducting a test,” he said. “A way to channel French national aggression onto something other than war. An attack by some perceived radical element against a French national monument, the grave of its beloved Napoleon—whom she despises, by the way—would, to her way of thinking, channel that collective aggression. At least that’s her way of explaining it.”

  “Why does she hate Napoleon?”

  He shrugged. “How would I know? Family tradition, I assume. One of her ancestors carried on a Corsican vendetta against Napoleon. I’ve never really understood.”

  “Does the Paris Club meet tomorrow at the Eiffel Tower?”

  He nodded his head in appreciation. “You’ve been busy. Would it not have been more prudent to ask me a direct question to see if I would be truthful?”

  “I’m in a hurry, and I don’t necessarily believe a word you say anyway.”

  He shook his head. “Impertinent. And arrogant. Why? I’ve cooperated with your people—”

  “When you wanted to. You deliberately held back this information on an attack.”

  “As you would have done, if in my place. But you now know, in plenty of time, so prepare accordingly.”

  “I don’t know anything. How is it going to be done?”

  “Good heavens, why would I be privy to that information?”

  “You’re the one who made the deal with Lyon.”

  “Believe me, that devil offers precious little in the way of details. He just wants to know when and if his money has been wired. Beyond that, he explains nothing.”

  “Is that all?”

  “The Invalides is closed for Christmas Day. At least there will be no people to worry about.”