“I had thought it was finished, my lady, but I was wrong. I need to fix your eyes.”
“Fix them? What’s wrong with them?”
“I have not made them luminous enough.”
She laughs. “See, such a flatterer. The courtiers in Paris should take lessons from you.”
He holds up a hand. “God’s truth, my lady. I had them right, but then I doubted myself. ‘Simone, you fool,’ I told myself, ‘eyes cannot possibly be so green and also so gold.’ So I changed them, made them more ordinary. Now, I must put them back as they were. As they are. As they must be.”
“I will bring my looking glass with me, Master Simone, so I can inspect your repair work,” she says. “When may I see it?”
“Perhaps next Sunday morning? Before Mass? Or after Mass?”
“Instead of Mass,” she says. “I will be there.”
“My lady? I, too, have one request. So that I can be sure I have it right, is it possible for you to wear the green silk gown?”
She bows. “Yes, Master Simone. And the pearl choker. And the cloisonné comb.”
CHAPTER 31
Avignon
The Present
ELISABETH BROUGHT DESCARTES’S COFFEE AND MY TEA; by now, she and Jean considered the detective to be a regular fixture at breakfast—the rule rather than the exception—and I made a mental note to ask, when I settled my tab at the end of my stay, if they needed to add an item to my bill: “Descartes’s breakfasts, 40 euros.” It no longer startled me to see him tuck a croissant into his pocket; I halfway expected him to start showing up with a Thermos and a lunchbox so he could load up on coffee, fruit, cheese, and baguettes.
This morning Descartes was branching out. He loaded the grain mill with oats, bran, and sunflower seeds, pressed the button, and presto, out came fresh-ground muesli, which he topped with dried cherries and fresh yogurt. He sampled the concoction, smacked his lips, and nodded in approval. “Bon. Healthy, too.” He took a bigger bite. “So, I’ve been looking for connections between the church in Charlotte and the research place that contacted you.”
“The Institute for Biblical Science?”
“Exactement. As we thought, it’s no coincidence. The preacher, this Reverend Jonah, he’s on the board of directors of the institute. And the scientist—”
“Newman, right? Dr. Adam Newman?”
“Oui, Newman. Guess what else he is doing?”
“Uh…calculating the exact moment when the Antichrist will appear?”
“Ha! Maybe that, too. But for sure he’s working on—”
He was interrupted by a phone call—my phone, not his. I glanced at the display. Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. I felt a surge of dread. The last call I’d gotten from this number had brought word of Rocky Stone’s death in Amsterdam. “Sorry, Inspector, I need to take this.” He nodded as I answered.
“Doc? It’s Steve Morgan at the TBI. I hope I’m not waking you up.”
“Not at all. I’m just having breakfast with a French detective. But why aren’t you sleeping? Isn’t it two in the morning there?”
“Three,” he said. “I had some news I thought you’d want to hear. We swooped down tonight—us, the DEA, and the FBI—and rounded up the outfit that killed Rocky and his undercover agent. We owed it to Rocky. The guy he had the shoot-out with in Amsterdam—”
“Morales?”
“Yeah, Morales. The feds recovered his cell phone. It was a gold mine: all his contacts. We picked up one of them in Tennessee, two in Atlanta, four in Miami.”
“Is that everybody?”
“No, but good enough for now,” he said. “The top guys are in Colombia; they’re out of reach, at least for now. But we got everybody who had a direct connection to the Sevierville operation. You can quit looking over your shoulder now—at least on this account.”
I drew a deep breath and let it out. “That’s a relief. Have you told Rocky’s wife yet?”
“I’ll go see her at a decent hour. After she’s had a chance to take the kids to school. She’ll be glad we got these guys, but it’ll be tough for her to hear, too. She’s still a wreck.”
“I’m sure,” I said. “I’ll go see her and the boys when I get back from France. If you get a chance, tell everybody I said ‘good work.’ I’ll do my part at the trial.”
“Thanks, Doc. Stay safe.”
I laid the phone down and picked up my tea. The sun was bright and the day would get hot, but not for another hour or so, and the warm mug felt good cradled in my hands. I took another breath to reground myself in the garden, in Avignon, in the case at hand. “Sorry, where were we?”
“The Institute for Biblical Science. Newman, the scientist.”
“Oh, right. Can you tell if he’s an actual, for-real scientist? Not some charlatan who bought a Ph.D. online?”
Descartes shrugged. “I don’t know where he got the Ph.D., or how good it is, but he’s a molecular biologist. So he’s trying to make the perfect red cow for Israel, using DNA from the cow that was almost perfect. He—”