AL07 - Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

She pivoted on her heel. Saw the flash of a tuxedo jacket and got a brief look at the face of the man wearing it.

“The service stairs to the kitchen. Now.”

She thrust her champagne into Martine’s hand and crossed the creaking inlaid wood floor, passed the suave, smiling Deroche, opened a door in the carved paneling, and went down the steep sconce-lit winding stairs. She fished the miniscrew-driver out of her bag. Too bad the tip had broken off in Nelie’s door.

She had a bad feeling as heat rising from the kitchen enveloped her.

And then he stood on the step below her. Krzysztof.

“You lied to me,” she said.

“It’s going down.” His eyes bulged in fear.

“What’s going down?”

“Coming through,” said a waiter, passing them with a tray of toast slivers coated with foie gras.

“You have to help.”

Unease filled her. “Me? Why should I? Orla was your girlfriend but you wouldn’t even ID her body. You and Nelie planted bombs at the march and you’re wanted by the police.”

“You’re wrong!” Krzysztof interrupted. “Orla was not my girlfriend. Nelie’s hiding, but I would never expose her. I promised to keep quiet.”

“So you know where she is?”

He shook his head. His words came out in a rush. “We didn’t plant bottle bombs! We were framed. Saboteurs ruined the peace march.”

“How’d you get in here with all this security?” She saw the tuxedos hanging in a storeroom off the kitchen. “Wait . . . you came in with the caterers, didn’t you?”

He pulled at her sleeve. “Hurry,” he said, his voice tense, as he tugged her downstairs.

A distant memory bubbled up. Aimee had been in this kitchen before. She’d gone to school with the daughter of the Hotel Lambert’s head chef. Sometimes, after school, the chef, who was from Brittany, baked Quimper biscuits for a treat. They’d been forbidden to wander upstairs but she remembered the white-tiled kitchen, enameled Aga stove, and the fragrance of hot butter. Now it was overrun by a crew of red-faced white-hatted chefs intent on adding decorative touches, sauce swirls, and radish florets to platters of dainty delights.

Krzysztof pulled her toward the walk-in pantry before they could be noticed.

“There are explosives here.” He held up a piece of waxed fuse. “I found this on the floor.”

Chills ran up her spine. Her first impulse was to yell, “Bomb” and get out. She was an idiot. Why had she followed him?

Before she could stop him, he had pushed her into a walk-in freezer and shut the door. She lowered her bag to the floor, pulling out her fist with the screwdriver in it, and confronted him. “You wouldn’t talk to me before. What’s your game . . . your demands . . . are you taking hostages?”

“I checked you out.”

“So you’re having second thoughts, feeling guilty?” She kept the screwdriver in her fist poised to defend herself should he attack her. “You’ve set explosives and now you want to stop them from going off?”

“What?”

“You’ll use me as a cover—”

“Listen to me, Halkyut Security’s involved,” he interrupted, handing her a battered business card on which someone had written the initial “G.”

She knew that Halkyut, a private firm, employed former intelligence officers and ex-military as security operatives. This situation was going from bad to worse.

“‘G’ stands for this mec, Gabriel, who brought the bombs here.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s a long story, but I found out that he bought pipe bombs from a person who lives in a squat.”

A high-level security firm buying bombs in a squat?

“And I’m the prime minister,” she said in disbelief.

He waved his hand. “He saw me and he recognized me. He’s checking out the kitchen. I know the explosives are here. I’m an amateur. I thought I could defuse the charge but . . .” He kicked an aluminum tray. “Look, I’m in over my head, I screwed up. I’m for peaceful protest, exposing the oil corporations . . . but not with bombs.”

Maybe an operative employed by Halkyut had been clever enough to use unsophisticated explosives to divert suspicion.

She reached for her cell phone. She’d left it in her bag on the floor; she didn’t want to bend down to rummage through it and give him an opening to attack her. “Let me use your phone. We have to evacuate everyone.”

“They want to blame the bombs on ecoterrorists, extremists. On me. They’ll forge a demand note and attribute it to me, create chaos, and blame the destruction on me.”

“Why are you so sure?”

“They did it before, at our peace march. Now the oil agreements are ready for signature,” he said. “It will happen unless certain evidence surfaces first.”

“I don’t get it,” she said.

“What can’t you understand? They want to silence all opposition. . . .” His forehead glistened with sweat. “The oil companies use Halkyut to hire infiltrators—wild men—so anyone who protests seems to be an extremist. Once this agreement is signed, there will be more contracts and the North Sea will be polluted further by nuclear wastes and other toxins.”

“But they just announced that they’ve dismantled their North Sea oil-rig platforms.”

“They lied. Nelie has the proof. It’s in black and white. But they’ve gotten to her.”

That corresponded with the statement by Deroche’s press attache. And now she knew that Vavin was Nelie’s uncle.

“What do you mean ‘gotten to her?’”

“I think they took care of her, like they did to Orla. She and her baby have disappeared.”

Her pulse raced. “The baby . . .”

A man in a chef’s apron opened the freezer door. “What are you doing here?”

Aimee said the first thing that came to her mind. “I’m checking supplies.” She hit a side of hanging cured ham. “The maitre d’ needs more jambon hors d’oeuvres upstairs.”

“When I’m good and ready. The smoked trout’s on my mind right now, if you please! Give me some room.”

They stepped back into the kitchen. The chef rushed over to a wire shelf, grabbed a package, and hurtled out past her.

Beyond them lay a box of Beurre de Breton on a wooden chopping block. Next to it, a sous chef was using a hand-sized butane torch to caramelize turbinado sugar on fifty or more porcelain ramekins of creme brulee.

“Zut alors, Henri; hurry up with the creme brulees!” a waiter shouted.

Bending, she saw pipes and wires encased in colored plastic, taped to the underside of the chopping block. Her heart stopped.

“There . . . look.” She pointed, her hand shaking.

Krzysztof’s eyes widened in terror. “The sous chef could set off the explosives by mistake. Distract him. I’ll disconnect the fuses.”

“Wait!” She tried to think. “There has to be a timing detonator,” she said. Touching the wires or fuses could activate it. “Everyone must evacuate. I’ll alert the bomb squad.”

She felt for her bag. Where was it . . . where the hell was her cell phone? They couldn’t risk everyone’s life . . . My God, Martine was upstairs!

“Non, cut the waxed wires,” he said.

“What?”

“No detonator. Keep it away from flame and static electricity; the old woman, the anarchist, told me. I’ll snip the fuse near the base; it’s the best way to prevent—”

“Mademoiselle, out of my way.” A large man stood in front of her. “The garlic’s burning, I need butter.”