“Mais oui, monsieur. Clever boy! How ever did you guess?”
Ten minutes later, having taken the private elevator situated behind Reception up to the third floor in the company of Monsieur Vedrine, he was seated across a lovely Directoire desk from the Sotheby’s director. Like Li himself, the man was small and exquisitely attired. Starched white Charvet shirt and matching tie, navy thee-piece suit. He had a pencil-line mustache and heavily lidded soft green eyes. Their knees were almost touching under the desk and every now and then he would feel subtle pressure against his right knee. The man was actually flirting with him, he was sure of it. Men were such animals. Vedrine had even locked the door.
He had trays of magnificent jewelry stacked by his right hand. He would carefully remove a piece and place it on a black pillow just in front of Li, the facets brilliantly illuminated by a flexible halogen light. Madame Li was examining a ruby and diamond bracelet.
“Her favorite piece,” Hubert said. “Cushion-shaped rubies and baguette diamonds. Callas had a marvellous eye.”
“And deep pockets until Jackie O came along. How much, Hubert?” He found it amusing that they were already on a first-name basis.
“This piece, I would estimate one hundred thousand U.S. dollars. More or less. But this is the gem of the collection, if you’ll excuse my humor. A pair of ruby and diamond earclips, mounted by Cartier, once owned by the duchess of Windsor and—”
“I’ll take it.” He looked at his watch.
“Which one?”
“All of them. At the pre-auction price.”
“Parfaitement, madame!”
“Will you take a check?” he asked, bending over to get to the bag at his feet.
“Certainly. A quick call to your bank, madame. To verify the funds. And then we should be delighted.”
Instead of the bag, he chose the umbrella. Still hidden behind the desk, he quickly removed a nearly invisible plastic protector from the sharpened tip. He could see Hubert from the waist down. His knees were apart and his shiny little shoes were bouncing up and down with excitement over the impending sale of the complete Maria Callas collection.
He drove the umbrella tip deep inside Hubert’s groin. The dioxin-tipped steel point found the artery. It was only a matter of seconds. The dosage was ten times that used on Ukrainian opposition leader Yevchenko in fall 2004. Yevchenko had been a failed Te-Wu experiment in collaboration with the Ukrainian secret police. He had lived. Poor little Hubert would not.
Hubert fell backward in his chair, expelling a whuff of air, and then he was around the desk and on the man, his hand clamped over his mouth. Hubert had gone instantly into shock, as expected, and his pulse was racing. Madame Li waited for the poison to take effect, watching the sweep second hand of his new watch. He’d found that if the surprise was wholly unexpected and sufficiently brutal, they seldom made much noise. The little man went slack and Madame Li got up quickly and returned to his bag.
He removed the rifle and quickly assembled it, taking great pride and pleasure in the doing. The matte black weapon was Austrian, a Steyr, 7.62mm, with a lightweight polymer stock, and most suitable for effective engagement of targets up to fifteen hundred feet or less. The Scout Tactical model also had a low-magnification scope—only 2.5X but ideal for quick target acquisition at short and medium distances. It was a lovely toy and perfect for the occasion. Chosen with care by those who do care.
Checking to ensure that Hubert had expired (he had), Madame Li moved to the window. He’d noticed the old-fashioned window sashes earlier and the book lying on the sill, obviously used to prop up the window whenever Hubert felt warm. It was a feeling he was rapidly losing now, but Madame Li would be gone long before the corpse had gone cold. The carefully planned escape route assumed a damaged elevator. The service stairway led to a door on a back alley. The confusion of a prearranged bomb would ensure he was out and window shopping before anyone made it to the fourth floor.
He lifted the window three feet off the sill. It stayed there. The private street alongside the palace was empty.
At the near end of the deserted street, just below on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, a cordon of uniformed tactical police. The far end of the street, which led in the direction of the Champs Elysees, disappeared into the trees of the palace gardens. He found it fascinating that the French president and his guests took walks along such a route. Luca Bonaparte, buying some bauble for his current mistress, had stood not long ago at this very window, and had seen Queen Elizabeth strolling her spaniels unaccompanied by security. And it had given him a very good idea.
Madame Li pulled a cell phone from his red bag and turned it on. The signal bars came right up to strength.
At half past ten, two men, one large and jovial, one hunched over and apprehensive, appeared at a side door to the palace. They paused and acknowledged the police and a small crowd of citizens who’d gathered to gawk at all the hubbub. Even without the scope, Madame Li could see the Sultan of Oman’s terrified expression. And the confident glow of the prime minister of France, Honfleur. The tall, sleek Frenchman, who towered over the sheik, then put his left hand on the Arab’s shoulder and steered him up the empty street. Half of the police on the line watched their progress intently.
The other half now turned in place to face the street, their faces swiveling side to side. Periodically, their eyes would rise to check the windows of the storefronts opposite. Madame Li stayed far enough away from the window so as to be in shadow. From his vantage point, he could see an ice cream truck, its bell chiming, rolling slowly up the street. The truck rolled to a stop in the street just below the director’s window. The driver got out and vanished into the crowd.
It was time.
He punched the number that Bonaparte had given into the phone. Star-one-seven-eight-nine. Just before he hit “send,” the significance of the number 1789 dawned on him. Of course! The year of France’s great Revolution. He smiled and thumbed the green send button.
Boom, he said softly, just before the explosion rocked the street and the nearby buildings.
The walls of Mr. Sotheby’s building shook and the windows on the ground floor exploded inward. Everyone in Reception was probably dead. Madame Li, raising his rifle, stepped to the window. On the street below, chaos. Flames erupted from the black and twisted hulk of the ice cream truck and thick black smoke smelling of burned fuel, plastic, and other less pleasant things rose upward. The small crowd and the cordon of police were down, dead or wounded in the street, but Madame Li had his right eye pressed to the rubber eyepiece of the scope and he had eyes only for Honfleur.
The prime minister was frozen in place. Through the scope you could see the fear and panic in his eyes. The sultan, surely sensing what was actually happening here, dove to the pavement.
Madame Li squeezed the Steyr’s trigger and fired. The round literally blew the Frenchman’s head off. And opened the floodgates of what some French historians would later term the Second Terror.
Chapter Twenty-five
Hampstead Heath
“GENTLEMAN FOR YOU, MR. CONGREVE,” MAY PURVIS SAID, coming out into the garden. It was the early morning following Hawke’s near-death experience and Ambrose was sitting outside in the bright sunshine. He had a good picture going. It was a study of the crabapple tree that stood outside his kitchen window. It was not in flower now, but Ambrose was dabbing on scads of pink and white blossoms anyway, clouds of them. His artistic philosophy was simple: Paint things the way they should look.
It’s not the truth, but what you believe to be the truth that is important in art. That was his opinion, anyway. Never let the truth get in the way of a good painting. Or a good story, for that matter.
Like his great hero Winston Churchill, Ambrose Congreve used the very delicate art of watercolor not only for
