certain not a drop remained. He gave a reproachful look that reminded Lang that at table, the French do not favor discussions of anything not pertaining to the food, the wine or the cheeses. Comparisons with other dishes or meals, the last time that particular vintage had been enjoyed, which establishment did the best version. Lang had actually witnessed a couple screaming threats of divorce sit down to dinner. The conversation immediately switched to a calm debate of the relative merits of Livarot versus Pont l’Eveque cheese.
“A pity,” Patrick said. “Perhaps I might interest you in a second bottle…”
Lang held up hands of surrender. “We Americans don’t function as well as you French do after a heavy meal and several bottles of wine.”
The Frenchman shook his head. “It is because you are weaned on McDonald’s and hot dogs.”
Lang grinned, shaking his head as he pushed back from the table and signaled for the check. He reached for his wallet. “We can argue American junk foods later. I appreciate your taking my suitcase home with you.”
“No need for you to carry it about when you are staying with us anyway.”
Patrick motioned the waiter to decline Lang’s money, tendering a credit card in its place. “It is a government card. Let the people of France thank you for the valuable intelligence you have brought with you. Shall I call a taxi?”
Lang shook his head. “No thanks. I need to walk this meal off before I go to sleep.”
Patrick lowered his voice. “And to make sure you are not followed. Do you have…?”
Lang put his fist to his mouth to stifle a burp and touched his back in the place he could feel the Browning in its holster. “I have.”
Forty minutes later, Lang sat in a small Left Bank bistro on the quai d’Orsay at its intersection with boulevard Saint-Germain. The sole entree seemed to be pizza for a few American tourists. Through the moisture-streaked window, he could see a fountain with a statue of Saint Michel, and behind it, follow the pewter-colored Seine to the misty ghost of Notre Dame, its gleeful Gothic spires stabbing the belly of low gray clouds.
He was not here for the postcard scenery.
He nursed the cup of coffee that would give him license to remain here as long as he liked. He was watching, making sure he had not been followed. The use of his own passport and credit card had been an unfortunate necessity, one the Chinese would discover sooner or later. Then they would come looking for him. Happily, Paris was a very large city.
He was reluctant to give up the dry warmth of the bistro, even though a lined Burberry purchased just minutes ago promised some degree of comfort against the cold drizzle that characterizes Paris’s winters. Slipping a euro beneath his cup’s saucer, he tightened the belt of his Burberry, got up and went outside to begin the uphill trek to the Sorbonne. He passed the fifteenth-century mansion of the Abbot of Cluny, built over Roman ruins and now a museum housing the world-famous unicorn tapestries. The Luxembourg Gardens, its normally lush grounds in winter drab, abutted the Luxembourg Palace. Headquarters for the German Luftwaffe in France during World War II, it was now home to the French senate. The architecture, more Italian than French, had been dictated by Marie de’ Medici, widow of Henry IV, to remind her of her native Florence.
At the top of the hill, Lang faced the Pantheon, designed originally to be a church dedicated to Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, by Louis XV in gratitude for his recovery from an illness. Unfinished by the time of the revolution and the rebellion against anything of a religious nature, the building’s facade was converted to a copy of a Roman temple and dedicated to France’s heroes.
Lang took out the professor’s card, reminding himself of the address, and began a slight descent along the left side of the building. This area had been the seat of the University of Paris since its founding as a place for sixteen poor students to study theology in the 11th century. In 1969 the university had been divided into thirteen different departments and disbursed throughout the city. Some lectures were still held in the building at 47 rue des Ecoles. From the card he held in his hand, Lang supposed history was one of them.
The street still had the slightly shabby, down-at-the-heels atmosphere common to neighborhoods where students congregate, with discount stores and bistros advertising low prices. Number 47 was a two-story brick building with little to distinguish it other than a pair of huge wooden doors. Lang entered a stone-floored foyer whose only feature was a spiral staircase. The stone steps were worn from centuries of student feet. Upstairs was a single corridor lined with doors with opaque glass above unvarnished wood.
Lang read the names in chipped black letters until he found the one marked D’TASSE. He knocked gently.
“Entrez!” came from within.
Had Lang asked a film company to create an office for an absentminded professor, they might have produced something very much like what he saw. A wooden desk was stacked high with a jumble of papers, single sheets, periodicals and notebooks. Behind it, a floor-to-ceiling bookcase sagged with the weight of dusty volumes, magazines and more papers. In the corner, an electric heater hummed in a futile effort to dispel the room’s clammy cold. At the desk was a man in a black turtleneck sweater. A sharply pointed Vandyke beard did little to minimize the chubbiness of the face. He peered at Lang though narrow slits of glasses.
“Professor D’Tasse?”
The man stood to a height that could not have greatly exceeded five feet. He extended a hand the size of a child’s. “You are Mr. Reilly, the American my good friend Patrick Louvere called me about?” he asked in accented English.
Not exactly how Patrick described the relationship.
Lang shook the hand. “Yes. He said you could help me.”
The professor sat back down. “Any friend of Patrick’s is, as you Americans say, a friend of mine.”
Lang looked over to where a straight wooden chair served as the depository for a stack of books. D’Tasse nodded and Lang moved them to the floor to take a seat after slipping out of his new coat.
“You have recently edited a diary of, I believe, Napoleon’s personal secretary?”
Behind the glasses, D’Tasse’s eyes narrowed. “What is your interest? I already have a publisher, and a number of American universities are interested. In fact, it has been previewed… is that the correct word, previewed? Yes, previewed in American University amp; College Review.” He held up a pack of printed pages. “I have had made an English-language translation to send them.”
Lang cleared his throat, giving him an added second to come up with a plausible story. He couldn’t. “Let us say I have a very practical interest in Napoleon, one I am not at liberty to divulge.”
“Ah, a secretive friend of the ever-so-secretive Patrick!” He put the papers down and leaned across the desk, resting on his elbows. “See here, Mr. Reilly, I must guard my work. It should be available to all at no cost. Protecting scholarly research from capitalistic exploitation is a duty of the academic community.”
More like academic penis envy.
D’Tasse continued. “I can tell you story after story of colleagues of mine who shared their work, only to see it for sale in some commercial publication.”
How many copies of People Magazine would the diary of Napoleon’s secretary sell?
Lang tried not to show his annoyance. Patrick knew a pompous ass when he saw one. “I can assure you, professor-”
The sentence was never finished.
The door slammed open. Lang swivelled his neck to see two men standing on the threshold, overcoat collars tuned up, caps pulled low. Lang’s first guess was that they were students, students very pissed off. Perhaps about a grade.
Then he saw the guns in their hands.
Somewhere in middle Georgia
The previous evening
The helicopter was approaching. Already Gurt could see a cone of light sweeping an adjacent field as it flew circular patterns, the standard search procedure. She guessed she had less than two minutes to do something.
She stood to reach inside the Hummer, turning off the remaining headlight. She then hurried to the rear passenger door and fumbled with the buckles on Manfred’s child seat. Whoever had designed the thing did not have a speedy exit in mind.
“Mommy, the copter’s coming,” he chortled gleefully, his fear now forgotten. “I want to see it!”
His hand in hers, she unlatched the rear compartment, letting Grumps out. He sniffed at the frozen grass,
