because.. well, because he was a nice man, and at that time in her life, that was what she thought she needed. She had been so lonely…
Growing up as the pretend daughter of Georges and Grisella Lamoureux had been horrific at times. When she was little she didn’t understand why she couldn’t live with her real father, who came to see her occasionally, once a year or so. She had asked him that question, repeatedly, and he had said that it was best that she stayed where she was. Of course, where she was was at a Swiss boarding school. On vacations she visited the Lamoureuxs in France, or wherever Monsieur Lamoureux’s diplomatic career had taken him.
Once, when she was seven or eight, her real father remarked in the way of explanation that his business was dangerous. “That is why you must tell no one, hint to no one, not even your very best friend, that you are not the daughter of the Lamoureuxs. I am just your uncle, come to visit.”
The name he was using then was Alain Thenault. He wore impeccable suits and was always perfectly barbered and smelled of a subtle, no doubt expensive, scent, the kind that was popular among wealthy French businessmen just then. At his request, she called him uncle, in case someone might overhear.
“But what of Mama?” she asked on one visit. She could still remember the moment and the place, spring, in the school’s garden, on a little bench seat as the sun and breeze caressed the early flowers. “Why can’t I live with her?”
“It is not possible,” he said curtly. “Let us not speak of her again.”
So she wondered, on those lonely nights when the lights were out and everyone else at the school was sound asleep, Why could she and her father not speak of Mama? Was she dead? Who was she?
In her imagination she could see her mother, a beautiful woman, French, of course, with a wonderful smile and a gentle touch. Someday she would meet her — she knew it and wanted it to be so — and they would have so much to talk about, and she would love her mother and her mother would love her. On those endless nights long ago that had been her favorite fantasy.
Of course it never happened.
And never would. She knew that now. She didn’t know who her mother was and never would know.
Her mother was probably dead. In fact, one suspected she killed herself when she realized what a monster she had married.
Remembering those days when she was a child, thinking these thoughts, Marisa rode silently through the streets and suburbs of Paris with Isolde Petrou, who was also lost in her own thoughts.
Henri Stehle lived in a walk-up flat in Montmartre. It was four in the morning when he rounded the corner and stood looking at the door to his building. There were no policemen in sight.
Dare he risk it? His clothes and money were in his apartment.
That fool American waiter! Chasing him. Of course he would tell the police that Stehle ran, and the police would want to know why.
Running was so stupid. He had panicked.
Fortunately he had seen his friend Alain sitting there at the curb in his car, waiting for him.
They had had such a good thing going, selling cocaine to rich tourists.
Standing in the dark doorway, Stehle tried to light a cigarette as he thought about the police and the money. He had drunk half a bottle of wine in the past hour, yet still his hands shook. He had to light three matches before he got his cigarette burning satisfactorily.
He wanted the money in the apartment. It was his! He had earned every sou. But what if the police came while he was upstairs? He waited… watching and smoking — and shivering. He had left his coat at the hotel. What a fool he was!
Henri Stehle went over the events of the evening one more time, running through every scene in his mind’s eye. That crazy American!
Mon Dieu, who would have thought something like that might happen? It had been so unexpected, he had reacted without thinking.
Shooting at the American had been foolish. Silencing him was futile — he really knew nothing — but the crazy American had chased him, ruining everything. It was so frustrating!
Even now, the thought of that athletic man behind him, running to catch him, elevated Stehle’s heart rate. He looked up and down the street again.
Think about the money! Forget the American and the police and all of that. Think about the money and the future and all the photographs you are going to take.
He puffed nervously on his cigarette. Well, the truth was that every minute he waited made it more likely the police would catch him upstairs. The sooner the better.
He screwed up his courage, tossed away his weed and walked to the entrance of the building, trying to walk normally. Through the door, up the stairs.
In front of his door he paused. Listened. Not a sound from within.
He used his key and pushed the door open. Closed it behind him. As he reached for the light he saw the man sitting in the chair. Startled, he stood motionless. In the weak light coming through the window from the streetlights he couldn’t see the man’s face.
“Who—?”
His words stopped coming when he saw the pistol. Saw the silencer. In the intermittent light from the streetlights and store signs, he saw the deadly little hole in the snout of the silencer.
He stared, frozen, as the man extended the pistol, pointed it right at him, then, mercifully, everything went black.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I was uncomfortably ensconced in a jail cell at the Prefecture de police when the door to the cell block opened and George Goldberg, the CIA station chief for Paris, came in. He was a big guy, rumpled and overweight, a former All-American tackle who was three times brighter than the average football player. He wasn’t smiling.
“When they said they had Carmellini, I didn’t believe it. But here you are.”
Obviously, we had met before. Like last year, when al-Qaeda tried to assassinate the heads of government of the G-8 nations at Versailles.
“You look a little worse for wear,” he said as he examined the bleeding goose egg on my forehead and the welt across my cheekbone. It was also cut a little. I figured the front sight of the officer’s automatic did the damage.
“It isn’t the years, it’s the mileage,” I muttered.
Goldberg spoke to the uniformed policeman with him, and the cop unlocked my cell door. He took off my cuffs as Goldberg plodded away. I followed George out of the lockup.
The cop went off somewhere, and George led me to a desk, where I had to sign some forms for two glowering cops. I didn’t read the forms, merely signed everything they pushed at me. They gave me back my belt, bow tie, shoelaces and the contents of my pockets. I counted the money in my wallet.
“Get out of here,” one of them growled in French, nodding to his left, toward the door that led to the street.
Dawn was breaking on a miserable winter day when we came out of the prefecture’s courtyard. Goldberg had a car and driver waiting. He had some stroke with someone.
When we were in the back of the car and it was rolling, he said, “Jean Petrou died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. They couldn’t revive him. And Henri Stehle, the head of food service at the hotel, can’t be found.”
“I sorta had that impression. The police learned everything I knew in fifteen minutes, then we spent three hours going over it again and again. I refused to tell them why I was working in the hotel, and that seemed to irritate them.”
“They’re very unhappy with you.”
“Anyone else take a fast hike?”
“Three of the staff seem to be missing. No one is sure just when they left. The police were hoping you would
