He shrugged. “You know what the RG’s like. Thanks to them I wear a hearing aid,” he said. “Once I fell for their line about honor and service. But I came to my senses, and now I work for the highest bidder.”
Did he expect sympathy from her? She remembered Martine’s comments on how close Olf and the Chinese were in the bidding for oil rights. Now it made sense.
“Interpol’s infiltrated your group,” she said. “That should screw up Olf’s plan to use the jade to get an edge on the Tonkin Gulf oil rights.”
Regnier’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?” His phone beeped and he turned away to answer it.
“Pleyet’s with Interpol,” Aimee said.
Would that knock him off balance, at least for a moment? But he’d disappeared.
She looked for another door, another way out. High walls dripping with rain and the rabbit hutches hemmed them in. She was trapped in this postage-stamp-sized concrete yard. How had Regnier managed to vanish so quickly? Well, it was one less to face.
Could she take on these
She pepper-sprayed the Russian, who yelled and put his arms up to his face. Gassot, lunging with his knife, tripped against the rabbit hutches, sending them crashing to the ground. She got Blondel with her Chanel No. 5 purse-size atomizer.
She raced past them, aiming for the street. Scrambled down the corridor. She heard Gassot panting right behind her. And for a moment, she thought they’d make it.
A stinging blow from Jacky threw her into the reception booth. Hands tightened around her neck.
“Shall I take care of you now or wait until you tell me what I want to know?” Regnier said, sticking his blunt- nosed Mauser in her ribs. “You choose.”
Aimee froze.
Gassot, careening from a punch, was held spreadeagled against the wall. Frightened rabbits skittered over their feet. Gassot’s knife fell, clattering on the cracked tile.
“Outnumbered and outgunned, I’d say,” Regnier said.
“
“So let’s talk,” Aimee said, trying to think fast. “You’ve got it all wrong, there’s—”
“We will talk, and you’ll give me the jade,” Regnier said, watching her lips. “But not here.”
A plumbing van waited on the curb, a yellow sign PLOMBERIE 24/24 painted on the side panels.
“And you looked like a nice girl,” said the Russian rubbing his red eyes as he shoved Aimee and Gassot down the hall. “Nice legs, that waif-look, half-wild and free. I like.”
“You’re not my type.”
“You never know until you try,” he said, feeling her up under her sweater.
“Later, Sergei,” Blondel said, opening the back doors.
“Keep your hands off! Help!” She screamed and kicked, hoping someone on the street would hear them. But then Jacky blocked the view in the three seconds it took to bundle her and Gassot into the van.
She and Gassot were thrown onto the van floor, the door locked. The engine gunned and the van took off, throwing them against the metal racks of supplies. No side windows. Just a small back window.
Jumbled thoughts came to her. Linh’s father had known about the jade! What a world class liar Julien de Lussigny was, acting as if he’d never heard of the jade! He’d said his father would turn in his grave if he knew of its existance. Liar! When his godfather Dinard had put it up for auction, De Lussigny had probably helped him.
The van swerved and she rammed into the wall.
“Gassot, you ok?”
“Are you kidding?”
“Think!” she said.
But he shook his head, defeated.
Maybe not this time.
She scanned the dim interior of the van. The divider between the driver’s compartment and the rear of the van, where a window had been, was blocked by a metal panel now. Had Blondel used this van to kidnap Rene? She didn’t think they were going far, otherwise they’d have tied them and taped them up. A whiff of pepper spray wafted from the front so she knew the Russian was up there. Jacky? Where were Regnier and Blondel?
White plastic pipe, hoses, and plumbing equipment were scattered over the van floor.
“The pipe’s not strong enough to break the rear window safety glass,” she said, rooting through the equipment. “We need a wrench, a pair of pliers, something made of metal to shatter it.”
Nothing.
She noticed Gassot’s old-fashioned flesh colored wooden leg.
“How much does that weigh?”
“Enough.”
“If you took it off, would it be strong enough to smash the glass?”
“Then how would I run away?”
Good point.
The van careened around a corner, throwing him against her.
“You jump first, then I follow,” she said, “I will pick you up.” If neither of them broke any limbs, it might work.
He shook his head.
“Got any other ideas?”
“No wonder our plan backfired,” Gassot said, his eyes faraway. “The jade was not meant for us. It’s sacred.”
Perhaps. But she had to get him back to earth. They didn’t have much time.
“The old Cao Dai priest was right,” Gassot said. “Remember the old saying,
“Don’t go mystic on me, Gassot. That lock’s rusted,” she said. “Lean on the side and try kicking it. You need a new artificial leg anyway.”
The van slowed down. She had to galvanize him to action.
“Quick, Gassot. Brace yourself against me. Now! Kick!”
And he started kicking.
He missed the lock. Pounding came from the driver’s compartment.
“Try again.”
Gassot kicked. Again and again. Only a small bulge where the doors joined. But a thin lick of streetlight showed through.
“Keep kicking.” She grabbed several white plastic pipes from the floor and wedged them into the opening he had created.
“Harder, Gassot!”
She braced him and worked the pipes back and forth. One cracked and splintered and she shoved another in. At each corner, the van slowed, then shot ahead, to throw them off balance.
The door buckled. But the lock wouldn’t give. She felt the gears downshift, heard the brakes screech. Then a sickening crunch of metal and a crash that sent them sprawling. They’d run into another vehicle. The van shuddered to a halt.
“Get up, try again, Gassot.” Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. “Give it all you’ve got.”
He strained, hammering the lock with quick jabs of his foot. She twisted the pipes back and forth and the door burst open.
“Now,” she said, pulling Gassot up and dashing out the door.
They landed on the surprised Russian, his eyes still red and tearing, in a crosswalk on rue Legendre. Smoke billowed from the mangled van now enmeshed with a small truck. The angry red-faced truck’s driver had Jacky in an armlock on the pavement.
“Run, Gassot,” she said, kicking the Russian in the head.
No passersby. Only a shuttered violin shop and a
