'And yet you're here with my Bravo.'
'Friendship is as important to me as it is to you, Madame Muhlmann.'
Again she took Jenny's hand in that curiously intimate gesture. 'Camille, please.'
By this time they had reached the car park. The Parisian sky was full of slate-gray clouds, and the morning was already hot and sticky. A low ramble of thunder cut through the traffic noise.
'Now, Bravo,' Camille said, 'you must tell me what it was you couldn't tell Jordan over the phone. What happened to you in America that caused you both such violence?'
She stopped beside her car, a new dove-gray Citroe'n C5 sedan.
'You haven't rented us a car?' Bravo said.
'I'm driving you myself.' When Bravo began to protest, she held up a hand. 'These are Jordan's orders, my love. You must see the logic of it. Wherever you need to go, I can get you there faster and more securely. A rental car is identifiable by its license plates-n'est-ce pas?-and will therefore draw attention to you. It is not secure, yes?'
Bravo glanced at Jenny and, ignoring the brief negative shake of her head, said with a smile, 'Jenny and I thank you, Camille. You're most kind.'
'Bon, that's settled.' She opened the car door. 'You must be famished, and then we must get you some clothes, the two of you look positively bedraggled.' She gestured for Bravo to get in. 'While I drive you'll tell me everything.'
Bravo opened the back door.
'No, my love, I want you beside me.' She turned. 'Unless this is not acceptable to you, Jenny.'
'Of course.' Jenny put a smile on her face, though she feared it was so brittle it would crack at any moment. She hated the way Camille had put it to her, as if it would be her failing if she refused.
Camille slid her hand over Bravo's and her wide-apart eyes held his. They were standing very close. Were their hips pressed together? Jenny sensed Camille Muhlmann's smoldering sexual energy. As she looked at the older woman with the green eyes of jealousy, it seemed to her that Camille's musk swirled around Bravo like Medusa's locks.
As she clambered into the Citroe'n's back, Jenny glared at Bravo, but he had been struck by a sudden melancholy, and his gaze was lost to her. He looked around and realized that his father would never again visit him here, that the haloed lights along the Seine would never again fall on Dexter Shaw as the two of them strolled its banks amid bursts of strained and now longed-for conversation.
As Camille exited the airport, Bravo gave her a short, heavily edited version of what had happened after he had been released from the hospital. Camille made no comment as he described their escape from Jenny's house and the ensuing chase, allowing him to have center stage without interruption.
Bravo did not identify Ivo Rossi or Donatella by name. As for Jenny, he said she was a childhood friend of his from New York. 'My sister had invited her to the July fourth dinner,' he concluded. 'She was detained and arrived after the explosion. When I woke up in the hospital hers was the first face I saw.'
'How lucky for you,' Camille said as her eyes met Jenny's in the rearview mirror.
'What can I say?' Jenny smiled what she imagined was the ghastly half-frozen smile she'd had plastered on her face ever since she'd met Camille Muhlmann. 'I was born under a lucky sign.'
Camille swung the Citroe'n onto the A11, heading north to Rouen.
'But, my love, who were these people following you and why?' Camille accelerated into the far left lane. 'I must tell you that Jordan has a theory-he's convinced the Wassersturms are behind it.'
'Wassersturms?' Jenny said.
'A business deal I was working on for six months.' Bravo half turned his head toward her. 'We wanted to buy a company in Budapest. Trouble was, there was already a deal on the table with a company from Cologne owned by the Wassersturm brothers. I did some research and found out that through a labyrinth of shell companies the Wassersturms were supplying the Russian mafia with illegal arms. I went to the board of the Budapest company with the evidence and within a week we had the deal.'
'Revenge.' With an angry shriek of the Citroe'n's horn, Camille raced past a vehicle moving too slowly for her. When she returned to the left lane, she accelerated even more. 'The Wassersturms were in a rage when their deal was terminated. Jordan's worried that they're out to take their revenge on you. What's gotten him so upset is that he spent three days in Munich working on another deal with them simply to calm them down.'
Bravo frowned. 'He shouldn't have done that; there's no reason to trust them.'
Camille laughed. 'You know Jordan,' she said lightly. 'If he can get his terms, he'll make a deal with the devil.'
'Well, he's wrong about this particular theory. The brothers may scream but I seriously doubt they have it in them to authorize a violent act.'
'I take it, then, you have your own theory,' Camille said.
'I suspect these attacks have something to do with my father's death,' Bravo said after some hesitation.
Camille ventured a glance his way. 'Je ne comprends pas. What do these people want with you?'
'I have no idea,' Bravo said deliberately. 'At my father's insistence, he and I met just before going to my sister's house. The fact is, he wanted to talk to me about something he said was important, but my anger got in the way and I put him off.'
'Oh, Bravo.' Camille signaled, moving right across the lanes of the A11. 'And in this state your father was taken from you. Quel domage!'
The large gray modern office buildings of the northern outskirts of Paris had given grudging way to green fields interspersed with clusters of residential housing no less ugly, unfortunately, than their industrial brethren.
She exited and took the turn for Magny-en-Vexin. They passed between two magnificent alle'es of black- leafed hornbeam trees, a darkened bower with the sky lowered and the air heavy as seawater, arriving at length in the city proper. In the old city, they exited the car to the rumble of thunder and a livid flash of lightning somewhere in the turbulent gloom of the northern sky.
Bistro du Nord was on the rue de la Halle, a small, cozy restaurant three steps down from street level. It was long and narrow, filled with dark wood beams and the simple whitewashed walls of a mas, a French farmhouse. Framed paintings of the countryside, colorful and pleasingly primitive, were hung as if at random.
A young woman showed them to a table at the back, near the blackened mouth of a massive unlit fireplace. Bravo could not help but be reminded of the hearth in Jenny's house behind which was the vertical passageway that had saved them from Ivo Rossi's initial attack.
When Camille went to freshen up, Jenny leaned across the table and said in a hushed voice, 'What do you think you're doing?'
'What are you talking about?' Bravo said.
'We shouldn't be taking her-or anyone else-with us to St. Malo.'
'You heard her, Jenny. She had a good point. Renting a car might call attention to ourselves.'
'There are a million rental cars on the road in France at any given time,' Jenny said hotly. 'Besides, I very much doubt your father would approve of involving this woman in your hunt for the truth.'
'Why would you say that?'
'I simply mean-'
'Do you know your cheeks are flushed?'
'I simply mean,' she persevered, 'that knowing your father I think he'd feel that it's far more insecure to have her with in than for us to have rented a car, that's all.'
'You're sure that's all?'
She picked up the menu, held it in front of her face and muttered, 'Bastard.'
Bravo took hold of the top of the menu, bringing her face out of hiding. He smiled winningly, but she wasn't about to be charmed.
'Why are you so determined to make fun of me?'
'I like you,' he said.
She snorted and was about to make a nasty reply when Camille returned.
'Am I interrupting something? A lover's quarrel, perhaps?'
