Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

She remembered the ten-year-old letters from her supposed brother, the postmarked American stamps, the faded, childish scrawl.

“But the handwriting expert said there’s no proof I have a brother,” she said. She swallowed. “Do you know something more?”

“I know nothing about a brother,” he said, giving her a quizzical look. “But I could open other doors.”

He glanced at his still-vibrating phone on the table. “Un moment, I need to take this call.”

He stood and disappeared into the back.

She sat back down. Her mind traveled back a few weeks, before Christmas, to the crowded cafe with fogged-up windows. Paul Bert, the handwriting expert, hunched across from her with an open file on the marble-top table.

She’d leaned forward, wanting him to be wrong. “Didn’t laser techniques identify the paper’s age, the ink, the handwriting?” She paused her hand on the wineglass.

“Eh voila, inconclusive results, Mademoiselle.” Bert exhibited all the charm of the wooden chair he sat on. And the warmth.

Empty-hearted, she’d stared at her untouched glass of Bordeaux, the cafe light fracturing on the rim.

These faded ten-year-old letters had led nowhere. A dead end to a supposed brother. No trail to her American mother, a seventies radical, still a fugitive on the World Security watch list.

She shook aside the memories, her brief hope gone.

“Do we have a deal?” Sacault sat down across from her.

Jolted back to the present, she noticed how he slid his phone in the pocket of his suit jacket.

“Information concerning your family in return for cooperation.”

Her mind spun with temptation. And simmering anger. For years she’d gotten nowhere. Time to test him. “A bit unusual coming to me now after all these years. Why?”

“Right place, right time.”

Intrigued now, she smiled.

“I want access to Interpol, MI6. CIA,” she said. “Show me proof. Or nothing.”

He met her gaze. Inclined his head with a slight nod.

Too easy. She should have asked for more.

“So you can reopen my mother’s files, grant me access?”

“On Sydney Leduc?” he said. “I said open channels, establish communication. But no guarantees.”

“Meaning?”

“I’m a fixer,” Sacault said. “I can make things happen. Or not. That’s the limit of my capability.”

Her pulse thudded. “That’s too vague,” she said. “Give me specifics.”

He sipped his espresso. “For example, access to a buried surveillance report, a sighting, a tracking log. Those types of things.”

Was her mother alive?

In his echelon, the shadow world, business was conducted behind closed doors, favors granted and repaid, a nod here, a career step up or down, the give and take of information. Priceless. Unavailable to outsiders like her.

“Compris?” he said. “You accept or not?”

She’d be a fool not to grab this shot, never get one like it again. But everything cost something, one way or another. To pay the devil? What the hell was she supposed to do? Foreboding hit her deep in her bones.

“Tell me what Pascal Samour worked on,” she said.

“I’m a fixer,” Sacault said again. “Furnished with limited intel. All I know is that Samour worked on a project vital to the country and he died for it.” His voice was businesslike. “Now, I received the call to assemble an operation. Recruit operatives, consultants, work the setup, get them in place. According to my instructions, you’re already in place at the museum. We agree, and I set up meets.”

“That’s it?”

“Routine.” He downed his espresso.

“Give me proof.”

“Your handler will contact you. With proof.”

He stood. The cafe had begun to fill up.

“One more thing,” he said. “You’ll have no cell phone contact on this. Remember in here.” He pointed to his head. She felt something slide into her hand. A matchbox with a red rooster on the cover. “Follow your instructions. Then destroy it.”

He’d counted on her cooperation. How transparent could she be? Ruffled, she wanted to slap it on the table.

But he’d gone.

She sipped the fizzy Badoit as everything whirled in her mind: Pascal murdered a few blocks away, his great-aunt, a fourteenth-century document, Pascal’s job recommendation for Meizi, Prevost’s role in the investigation, the strange chalk diagrams on Pascal’s walls.

Pascal Samour spawned more secrets in death than in life.

Events had ratcheted up another level. If Pascal worked on a project for the DST, that explained why they’d surveilled and recruited her.

They were after what he’d hidden.

She shuddered, fingering the matchbox in her palm. Hesitated. Most access to intelligence dossiers came after the deaths of those involved. Even then, it could still be decades, given sensitive security issues.

Her hands trembled. Could she face the truth? Did she really want to know? Deep down the little girl in her longed for her mother to walk around the corner. The hope never died. She’d never move on.

She slid open the cardboard matchbox. A slip of cigarette paper with writing on it.

Cafe des Puys 10 p.m.

Nothing else. Disappointment filled her.

Out on the slick, wet pavement, she found her scooter parked and locked by a bare-branched plane tree. She glanced at the fuel meter. Full.

She quivered inside. Any of these passersby—the woman pushing a stroller, the middle-aged couple with a Westie on a leash—could be surveilling her. Any or all of them.

If she didn’t push those thoughts down and jump back on the train, she’d get nowhere fast.

The method of Pascal’s murder troubled her. The way he’d been wrapped in plastic, his hands bound behind him on the palette. The murderer had been sending a message, but what, and to whom?

The charcoal clouds trembled and the sky opened. Frustrated, she pushed her scooter under a glass marquee and watched the rain. After a call to the commissariat for the case number, she rang the Institut Medico-Legal’s number and hit the laboratory extension. Two rings. A clearing of a throat, water running in the background. “Oui?”

“Serge, s’il vous plait.”

“Try Monday.”

“Maybe you can help me,” she said.

“We’re short-staffed.”

She needed answers. And now.

She clicked her phone. “That’s my other line. Look, this won’t take long. It’s concerning the autopsy results for a male, late twenties.” She paused, rustled her checkbook near the receiver. “A Pascal Samour.”

“Who’s this?”

Rain splashed on her boots. “I’m Prevost’s admin assistant, from the commissariat in the third,” she said. “He didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“I’ll check the paperwork, but it’s somewhere in the request,” she said. “The priority request for Samour’s autopsy results this morning.”

“Like I’ve had time to write the report?” he said. “I’m subbing for the interim assistant.”

At least he’d performed the autopsy. As interim staff, he wouldn’t know all the procedures. Or she hoped he