'But that's not in my plan,' he explained calmly. 'I have to take care of all the people who've helped me over the years. Many, many friends. Connections I've nourished that need to be repaid.'
Aimee interrupted. 'Like you repaid Sarah's parents, Lili's, and all your other classmates who didn't do what you wanted.'
He shrugged. 'You know I won't let you get away with this.' He stood up slowly. 'I learned an important lesson a long time ago.' Old stone glistened wetly outside the window.
'The backup disk is in the vault.' But there was no vault and she felt sick inside.
Anger blazed briefly in his eyes. 'Have you done something silly requiring major damage control?' he said. He continued almost wearily. 'I've learned if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.'
As he turned to face her, steel glinted in his hand, illuminated by the yellow light. His arm shot out, holding a Gestapo dagger. 'Nothing can be proved. You are joining history, Mademoiselle.' he grinned.
'You've got it wrong,' she said. 'I've got the proof—the copy of your Nansen passport and the photos showing you in Paris. Soli Hecht gave me encrypted files. You're history, Cazaux. No one nominates a collaborator and murderer.'
He shrugged. 'You'd be amazed at the backgrounds of some of our deputies.'
She peered out the window, wishing the courtyard was lined with Morbier's men, not shiny black crows cawing loudly. But they were at the outskirts of Paris. It struck her that she was hopelessly on her own.
She darted towards the slightly open door, kicked it, and barreled into the next room. Skidding inside on her heels, she ducked under a conference table in time to avoid crashing into it. The room lay deserted except for framed sepia photographs of bearded men, their lapels dotted with medals. Piled newspapers blocked her way. Aimee backed out of this room into a stark unfurnished salon. Just beyond were the tall entry doors of more office suites.
She turned to see Cazaux, with a perverse smile, pointing her own gun at her. He snapped his fingers and motioned her towards an enclosed stairway.
'Let's get some air,' Cazaux said.
He swatted her head with the butt of the pistol as he marched her up the dark curved staircase. His ropy, tensile hands pinned her arms behind her. Warm blood dripped behind her ear onto her shoulder, its cloying metallic scent making her light-headed. Or maybe it was the butt of the pistol, she couldn't tell. By the next floor she was panting and he wasn't even winded. For an old man he stayed in good shape. He noticed and smiled.
'Wonder how I do it?' he said as he forced her to kneel on the top step and kicked the side of her head.
Searing pain with hot white stars shot through her brain. He held her arms so she couldn't reel to the ground.
He slapped her face sharply. 'I asked you a question—don't you wonder how I do it?'
She wanted to answer, 'By drinking the blood of your victims.' Instead, she concentrated on keeping her balance. She felt limitless fear at the cruelty of one human to another.
'Lamb embryo injections,' he said. 'Keeps me young. I can keep it up for hours, too.' He smiled suggestively.
She cringed in disgust. 'You're sick.'
Up on the slate roof of the newspaper, the peaked roofs of the Marais spread below them. Lighted windows from l'Academie d'architecture in the building below shone and music drifted up. He shoved her onto a flat-tiled space, once a balcony. Wind whipped over her and drizzle pelted her face.
'I've warned you,' he said in a long-suffering voice. 'Repeatedly. Offered to give you what you want, tried to negotiate, but I'm afraid, Mademoiselle Leduc, you haven't been receptive.'
He dragged her over to a parapetlike ledge. She dug her heels into the pipes crisscrossing the roof and tried twisting away.
'You're going to take the fall,' he said. 'For everything. I'll see to it.' Cazaux had one last parting shot. 'Your precious Lili sent them to the ovens, I didn't.' He chuckled. 'It was all her fault.'
Lili's fault! And then she wasn't afraid anymore of how he would kill her. How he lied and what he did to Lili was all that mattered. She saw the jagged swastika carved in Lili's forehead as she charged into him.
'No more LIES!' she screamed.
His Gestapo dagger slashed her leg, ripping her skin, but she kept going. They fell, tumbling, into the corner gutter over snarling gargoyles, frozen in stone. He was amazingly strong and wiry. His bony fingers gripped her neck, squeezing tightly. Choking and gasping, she pushed him away. But he banged her head against the ugly gargoyle spouts. Again and again. She was sputtering for air and blinded by her own blood. Half of her body hung over the ledge. Her fingers clawed a gargoyle's wing as she tried to hang on. Below them was the skylighted roof of l'Academie d'architecture.
'You're going with me,' she gasped.
As her grip loosened, she used her last bit of strength to pull him on top of her. She heard him shriek before his fingers let go of her neck. But it was too late.
They sailed into the cold dark air. Together, they landed on the skylight, that shattered beneath them. Shards of glass, splintered and twinkling like diamonds, pierced her skin. Her splayed legs caught on the metal skylight handle, jerked, then held as she swung upside down before managing to grip the skylight frame.
She twisted her good leg around the support bars but her other bloody leg dangled uselessly. Cazaux's long body hung suspended from the ceiling, entangled in cord and wire from electrical lines. Powdery blue dust shimmered in the moonlight while his legs twitched.
'Help me!' he choked.
He was slowly being strangled. The wire had rubbed the makeup off his neck, exposing the mottled brown birthmark. Far below them, a well-dressed gala crowd gathered open-mouthed on the glass shards.
'I wondered how you hid the birthmark,' she sputtered, gasping for breath. 'The more you move, the tighter it gets. Here.' She reached her bloodied hand towards him.
Vainly, he tried to lift his arms but they were wrapped and twisted by cord. His face was turning blue. 'Air. . .help!' he rasped.
He was beyond rescue, she couldn't even reach his fingertips. 'There's one thing I need to do, Laurent de Saux,' she said, wiping her hand in the soot.
He was gurgling and choking but hope shone in his eyes as she reached down. She was about to draw a swastika across his forehead, brand him as he had branded Lili.
She stopped. If she did that, she'd be down at his level.
'The circle is complete, Laurent, as Lili told her daughter-in-law,' she said. 'Due to Lili Stein, you won't be prime minister!'
She watched as he wiggled himself to death to the accompaniment of screams from below.
She was dizzy, her leg was slipping, and hundreds of needles stung her body. She'd finished what Lili had started; after fifty years Cazaux wouldn't do any more damage. Never forget, Lili had said. Her bloody fingers couldn't grip the skylight handle any more. Below her, shimmering glass carpeted the ground and she prayed to God it would be quick. She managed to yell, 'Get out of the way,' before her leg slipped and she couldn't hold on any longer.
An arm grabbed her from a swaying rope ladder. Her sticky hand was grasped firmly by a pair of dry ones. All of a sudden, wind whipped around her and she was suspended in the air. Blades thupped above her. She was flying. The gray slate rooftops of the Marais were far below her. Then everything went black.
THE LOUVRE'S SILHOUETTE BLOCKED all but a tiny rectangle of the silver-gray Seine. Weak November sun struggled through dirty windows into the Leduc Detective office.
'Cazaux almost made it,' Martine said. She crossed her long legs, tugged the short skirt of her red power suit, and fluffed her blond hair. She seriously inhaled her cigarette. 'Too bad, I was out of commission. That's one conversation I'll always regret hearing.'
