“Doing her homework.” His face lit up.
“Don’t you have something for me?”
He handed her the prepaid phone card she’d given him. “
Disappointed, she wanted to kick the grate. She needed a bartering tool for Prevost. A way to protect Meizi.
“But you’re interested in this,
“Brilliant.” She slipped him a hundred francs. “Don’t forget I count on your weather predictions for my wardrobe.”
Now she had something to bargain with Prevost. Finally, the trail smelled like it went somewhere.
But she was late. At the small square, she spied a taxi, ran to catch it and jumped in, and overtipped the driver for the short six-block ride.
But the maitre d’ at the bistro shook his head. “
More than an hour away. Why hadn’t Jean-Luc called her? Then she remembered she hadn’t given him her number. Stupid.
But she had his. She got only his voice mail, left a message to call her.
“Why don’t you wait at the bar? I’m sorry, Mademoiselle, blame it on the symposium. The attendees booked the whole bistro.”
She glanced around. Suits in earnest conversations, consulting handheld calendars under the dark oak beams. Great. “Any idea where the symposium’s held?”
He shrugged.
So now she’d have to wait in the crowded bistro where she couldn’t hear herself think, or roam the dark, wet street?
She didn’t think so. She wedged a place at the bar by an engineering type, a young man with thick-framed glasses, an ill-fitting suit, and licorice-black hair.
“My friend Jean-Luc’s late to meet me from the symposium.” She smiled.
“Which symposium?” he asked, his eyes catching on her cleavage. The pianist in the corner struck up “L’Heure Bleue,” the Francoise Hardy version.
“You know … he’s with Bouygues … I forgot …”
“Do you mean fiber optics in today’s world? Or fiber optics infrastructure in the Third World?”
Fiber optics. “I’m not sure.”
“No matter, they’re both held at the old cloister, on rue des Archives. Cloitre des Billettes.”
Close by.
He smiled, revealing a set of braces that caught the light. He looked twelve. “Like a drink?”
“Next time.”
She’d crash the symposium and find Jean-Luc. Too bad she didn’t have her business suit.
Three blocks away, she only had to wait a few minutes before a group of men exited the arched doors of the cloister. She slipped inside. Quiet reigned, broken only by the drip of melting snow on worn pavers. She passed under the fifteenth-century vaulted arcade surrounding the small courtyard.
She half expected robed religious figures treading in prayer. But at the far end, a door opened to a crack of light and voices. A place to start, she thought. Inside, she found a cavernous chapel with men huddled by pillars, signs posting seminars in various rooms, and a label reading Wine Reception on the sacristy door. But the sacristy was empty. Jean-Luc could be in a meeting anywhere here, or somewhere else entirely.
But she could learn about fiber optics. She consulted a symposium schedule in the main chapel and headed to the first room on the right. The meeting had broken up. A few people lingered by a grouping of red velvet gilt- backed chairs, thick binders under their arms. Above them on the sandblasted stone wall, a canvas banner read: Information Highways—Fiber Optics in the 21st Century. Rene would eat this up. And ask for another helping.
A man in a suit was speaking. “As outlined in our presentation, clients should connect with solar companies like ours via infrastructures with up-to-date fiber optics …”
Weren’t solar and fiber optics two different things? Her eyes began to glaze until she saw his name tag:
“
He took in her leather pants, faux fur coat. “If you interns bothered to attend our presentation, the correlation would be obvious.” A sneer appeared on his long, pale face.
Intern? Thank God the concealer had masked the shadows under her eyes. She’d buy it by the kilo.
“Who do you work with, Mademoiselle?”
She thought quickly. “Jean-Luc at Bouygues,” she said. “Have you seen him?”
“The symposium’s finished for today,” he said dismissively.
His condescending air rankled, yet who better to ask about fiber optics than one in the business? “I’m assembling a marketing proposal for a fiber-optics campaign, Monsieur. I’d like to get a handle on it. Maybe you could elaborate?”
His sneer relaxed. He seemed the type who enjoyed imparting his expertise.
“Third World countries, without existing infrastructure, can put fiber optics in place immediately without expensive adaptations to outdated and often malfunctioning systems,” he said, flicking lint off his tweed jacket.
Patronizing, too.
“The goal would be to provide renewable energy coordinating with a basic delivery infrastructure,” he said. “The horse with the buggy.”
A young engineer type nodded. “Brilliant. Basket the services.”
“And corner the million-franc market,” said an older professor type next to her. “However, given the unstable politics and the issues you outlined, cost-wise that makes coordination inefficient.”
“At present, but …”
Her eye wandered to a tall man who’d entered the room and gestured to Rimmel. She could only make out part of his name tag, but he was from Solas Energie. He appeared to be in a hurry. She followed him outside to the drafty corridor.
“Monsieur?”
He turned. Tall, wide-shouldered, late twenties with a shock of reddish-brown hair parted to the side. And she deciphered his name tag illuminated in the light.
“So we meet, Monsieur de Voule,” she said, handing him her card. “I’m Aimee Leduc. We spoke on the phone concerning Pascal Samour.”
His forehead crunched in thought as he read her card. “A detective? But you said you worked at the Conservatoire …”
“True on both accounts, Monsieur.” Behind him on poster board was the list of symposium meetings. “Your firm stands to make millions in Third World countries.…”
He blinked. Swapped his briefcase from one hand to the other, glanced at his watch.
“So do many others,” he said. “Everyone here, in point of fact.”
“But you specialize in solar energy,” she said. “What do fiber optics have to do with you?”
“For example, Mademoiselle, installing a solar-energy harvester in the middle of the Sahara or Gobi Desert sounds obvious. Free sunlight, immense profits. Yet an isolated energy source does little in the grand scheme, makes no sense if you can’t connect with a delivery system down the road. My firm found out the hard way.” He gave a little shrug. “We’re trying to convince telecommunications to band this together or it’s not worth the investment development.”
“Meaning?”
“Unless dramatic developments in fiber optics make it economically feasible for China or African countries to build and maintain telecommunication systems, it’s a moot point. No one likes to hear that here.”
