The bar was in Rue Delambre in Montparnasse, a little too far to walk, but he walked all the same, cutting quickly along streets, keeping an eye all the time on the cars moving around him, on the people.
He was as certain as he could be that he’d reached the bar without being followed, but he didn’t hesitate for long out on the street once he was there. It was a small place, a bar to one side with white-jacketed barmen, a couple of alcoves at the back, maybe a dozen customers in all, though it was still early. He’d never been there before.
Immediately, he saw a guy of about Patrick’s age raise his hand from the back of the room. Dan nodded in response and walked towards him. He was rougher around the edges than Patrick White, his hair with a slightly wild salt-and-pepper look to it, a jacket but with an open shirt, the look of an aging film star. He also looked like he’d been able to handle himself when he was younger, and probably still could.
“Dan Hendricks?”
“Georges Florian?”
He smiled, shaking his hand, and said, “Please, join me.” There was a bottle of red wine on the table, one glass already full. He filled a second glass as Dan sat down and they drank.
“Patrick speaks very highly of you,” said Florian. He narrowed his eyes then, calculating, and said, “Did you take Habibi?”
It seemed everyone wanted to know if he’d taken Habibi.
Dan smiled and said, “He disappeared from Paris. I assumed your people had taken him.”
“I knew it,” said Florian, ignoring the tongue-in-cheek denial. He shook his head, pleased with himself, as if he’d just solved a long-standing mystery. Then he grew somber and said, “I know you were a friend of Benoit Claudel. I didn’t know he was dead until Patrick told me.”
“You knew him?”
“I met him a few times. We didn’t serve together—he was quite a bit younger than me—but I had a drink with him once or twice. He was a good man.”
Dan nodded. He’d been a good man who’d tried to settle down and move on, and that had probably made him an easier target and helped seal his fate.
“The man who killed him is dead.” Florian looked grudgingly satisfied with that. “But I’m after the man who ordered his death.”
“The same man who also wants you dead? Bill Brabham?” Dan nodded. “So, according to Patrick, you want to talk with me about Jack Redford, and the events of fourteen years ago.”
“That’s correct. What can you tell me, Georges?”
“Nothing at all. You and I never met.” He smiled, took a long sip of his wine. “It seems there’s a foreign bank with a building across the street from the entrance to the alley where Sabine Merel was killed. It has twenty-four-hour security, and it has cameras. On the night in question, the security guard on duty was a man named Gaston Bergeron. He saw nothing at the time, but early the next morning, just before his shift ended, the body was found. Normally, they reused the tapes unless there was something of note. Well, as I said, Gaston had seen nothing unusual, but because of the body being discovered, he put the night’s tapes in the security locker and loaded new ones. He might never have checked them but, two days later, two people from the US Embassy came to the bank and asked for the security tapes from that night. They were told the tapes were reused and so there was nothing to see. Of course, Gaston became suspicious. Why would the Americans want the tapes? So that night he went through them and, we think, he saw the man walking with Sabine Merel into the alley where she died. He thought of going to the police, naturally, but the involvement of the Americans worried him. He knew his nephew’s father-in-law, Jean Sainval, was in quite a powerful position at the DGSE, so he mailed the tape to him.”
“That name’s familiar, Jean Sainval. Maybe from when I was starting out.”
“Of course, you were in SIS for a time. Yes, you probably heard about his death, but we jump ahead. Sainval watched the tape and put a call through to a friend at the Interior Ministry, who agreed to come over the following day. But it seems someone was listening. Sainval was killed in a traffic accident that night.”
“And the tape?”
Florian gave him a roguish smile and said, “So this is the crux! Did the great Jack Redford infiltrate La piscine and steal the tape, with just one day’s notice?” He nodded, impressed even by the memory of it. “The tape disappeared, and it took several days before we were positive that Redford had been in the building. But the body in the Seine—that was nothing to do with us.”
“It wasn’t Redford anyway.”
“We know that now. We didn’t for fourteen years.”
“So whether or not he saw the tape himself, he knew what was on it, and knew that Brabham would come after him for that knowledge.”
“Or maybe he handed it over and they tried to kill him. Who knows why he ran? Maybe he just felt it was time, that he’d . . . ridden his luck too long.”
“The security guard, Gaston . . .?”
“Bergeron. Gaston Bergeron.”