“My mother?” Her insides wrenched. “When did you get this?”
“You know how your father felt.”
Papa pretended Sydney had never existed.
“She’s my mother.” Aimee bit her lip. “What does she mean, protect me?”
“It’s complicated.” Morbier looked as comfortable as a hen held under a knife.
“That’s all you can say? Diagram it for me, Morbier.” She seethed inside. “Better yet, give me her letters.”
“I destroyed them.”
She swallowed. Her mother’s letters and he destroyed them. “Because Papa …”
“You’re naive.”
“Call me what you want. I don’t hate my mother. How could I? How can you? I want to see her.” Her eyes teared. “Just once.”
“A woman hunted, persona non grata, on the World Security watch list?”
In the end, what did it matter? All she remembered were those warm arms that held her when she’d had a fever, the drawings scribbled on old envelopes to make her laugh. That smile, those carmine-red lips.
“Quit putting me off, like always. You’ve never told me the truth, Morbier. When I was little I knew when you lied.”
Morbier hadn’t answered her calls. What had changed?
“You’ve got a red face,” she said. “The tops of your big ears are pink.”
“But I’m not lying, Leduc. Not this time.”
“You think I believe you?” Aimee clutched at a hope, as always. “If
“She abandoned you.”
That hole opened up. Wide and empty. The years of not knowing.
“Maybe she had to.” The lie she told herself. “Not all women can handle raising a child,” she said. “I just want to see her, talk with her. Once. Then if she doesn’t want to know me—”
“She knows you, Leduc,” he said, his voice low. “What you do, how you live.”
Pain lanced her heart. She thought of the times she’d sensed a presence, a shadow on the quai. That hurt even more. “Why not contact me, Morbier?”
“Try to understand.” His shoulders sagged. “They’d implicate you in aiding and abetting terrorism. Arrest you.” Morbier expelled a sigh. “Children. Always so selfish.”
Part of her always felt eight years old, that little girl waiting for her mother in the empty apartment after school.
“So you appointed yourself judge and jury, eh, Morbier? Decided long ago.” A terrible thought hit her. “Or you’re hiding the truth because the truth’s too ugly. And your part in the reason she left? And Papa … you lied to him?”
“But you know what happened. The facts.”
“I had to find them out years later. Myself. You could have told me.”
“That your mother’s a convicted terrorist, served time in prison until your father worked a deal?” he said. “Deported. Banned from France. The rest she did herself. She picked the wrong horse. Had to ride it.”
Little details, pieces fit together. “What if she’s playing both sides?”
Morbier averted his eyes.
“Maybe she had to. And won’t anymore.”
“If I tell you, will you leave it alone?”
He expected a promise? But she nodded.
“She’s gone rogue.”
Aimee had expected anything but that. “Rogue?” Was he lying? “That’s what she meant in the letter?”
“She doesn’t want you in danger. Or under pressure to reveal—”
“You think I’d turn in my own mother?”
“Politicos, drug lords, arms dealers, old terrorists. Her speciality. Let’s call it her area of expertise, Aimee.”
“Why can’t she tell me in person?” He glanced at his cell phone.
“She’s going to call?”
“
“My brother … the Company, the CIA? That’s all made up?” Morbier checked his phone again. Took her hand. “Listen, it’s important. She wants you free, not making the mistake she did. A mistake she’s had to live with. The only other choice was to compromise you. And she cared too much to do that.”
Aimee’s hand trembled on the wineglass. Was that the real reason? “But you’re using the past tense, Morbier. You’re talking like she’s dead.”
He glanced at his watch. “She was supposed to call ten minutes ago. Confirm. Speak with you.”
“You mean …?”
He shrugged. Looked away. Then leaned forward, intent.
“Don’t believe the DST, DGSE, or Interpol,” he said, his voice urgent. “Just asses with tails between their legs. When you go rogue, no one’s in your corner.”
The chandelier’s crystals reflected the candlelight, the hushed service. The hypocrisy of the three-star clientele. “Doesn’t the smell of what human beings do to each other get in your nostrils, Morbier? Doesn’t it bother you?”
His shoulders sagged. For a moment he looked like the old man he was. “In my business, I never get rid of it.”
He took her hand. Held it tight. “You have to watch your back. She disowned you so they couldn’t use you to get to her.”
A tidal wave hit her, all the old hurt surfaced. She didn’t know which way was up.
A patsy. Desperate, she’d fallen for it.
“But they did, Morbier,” she said. “I took their bait.”
“Spit it out, Leduc.” Morbier shook his head. “Or do you want to be under surveillance all your life?”
No way in hell that would happen.
She grabbed Morbier’s phone. Scrolled down the last calls received. A UK country code. “She called you, didn’t she?”
The couple at the next table stared.
She punched the call return. And waited the longest minute of her life: the ringing, the slow motion of Morbier’s pained expression, the clink of cutlery, more ringing, the long-ago image of her mother’s face floating in front of her.
Ringing, ringing. A click. Her heart leapt.
“
“The number you’ve reached is no longer in directory service,” a clipped British accent informed her. “Please check the—”
She put the phone down.
“They got her, Leduc,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Who’s they?” She stifled a sob.
He turned away. “Does it matter?”
She flung her plate at him. Stood. At the couple’s table, she emptied the bottle of Vouvray over their laps, drenching their high-end satellite phones. Out of commission. For a little while.
