“What mix-up?”
“Please,” Rigaud said. “This will go so much more smoothly if you just answer my questions.”
“You mean, when he came by to make a pickup? The last time I saw him, he was—”
The back of Rigaud’s hand slapped him so hard in the mouth that Julius heard a tooth crack on his ring.
“Understand that I am reconciled to his loss,” Rigaud said, turning away and shaking his fingers.
Julius did not imagine that the loss had been very painful for him.
“All he had to do,” Rigaud continued, “was persuade that Swiss errand boy to go back to the States and get out of our way. Schillinger should know better by now than to meddle above his pay grade.”
Julius suspected that Schillinger had a hard lesson coming, too, if he hadn’t already received it. But what difference did it make? Julius had far more pressing concerns than that.
“It appears that Ahmet got distracted. Is that what happened?”
Julius was torn between coming clean and sticking with the lie he’d already begun.
“Drugs can do that to a person, wouldn’t you say?”
Julius knew that he wasn’t really expected to answer that—and he knew now that the general outline of the incident was fairly well-known to Rigaud. He’d missed his chance to take the high ground and confess.
“But now that Ahmet and his friends have disappeared,” Rigaud said, “it’s like somebody’s poked a stick in the hornet’s nest.” Waving his hands at his two helpers, he added, “You know how our Turkish associates like to stick together.”
Julius dug his handkerchief out of his pocket and held it to his lips. To his shame, he felt a trickle of warm urine running down his leg.
“And then there was that embarrassment on the night train. How could you two have bumbled such a simple task so badly?”
Julius debated keeping silent, or speaking, and when Rigaud didn’t add anything, said, “I did speak to them, in the dining car. As I’m sure you know.” At this point, he was just trying to feel his way along, admitting to nothing that might get him killed but supplying whatever information seemed safe. “And I do believe I got a good idea of who they are.”
“Yes? And who are they, exactly?”
The radiator clanked like a string of tin cans being thrown down a chute.
“A couple of idiots. Babes in the woods. They know nothing. The girl—Olivia—will be back leading tour groups, and Franco will be back at his library desk by this same time next week. I’m sure of it.” Then, dabbing at his lip, Julius told him about following them to the Louvre, throwing in as many details as he could think of, whether they were relevant or not, in a vain attempt to seem utterly transparent. He mentioned how long they had stayed there, the precise time they left—“That’s when Ernst went back to the Crillon, to see what he could find in their room”—their subsequent visit to the Natural History Museum, and their excursion at dusk to the town house in the Sixteenth Arrondissement.
“They were turned away at the door,” he said, “and went off to a nearby café.”
“What was it called?” Rigaud asked.
“The café?”
Rigaud waited, and Julius knew that he had come to the moment of truth—how much more could he divulge? And had he—despite his best efforts—been under surveillance when he went across the street to join them?
“I don’t remember the name.”
The man in the necktie went into the bathroom and turned off the faucet.
“And then what did you do?” Rigaud asked in a measured tone.
What could he say? If he went so far as to admit that he had joined them, he would have to come up with some plausible reason for having done so. But given his role in drugging their drinks on the train—a ruse that Rigaud would assume even these babes in the woods would have been bright enough to figure out by now—how could he say it had been an attempt to ferret out any more information? Even David and Olivia couldn’t be presented as that dumb. His mind was racing, but getting him nowhere.
“Well?”
On the other hand, if he suggested he was trying to feel them out—perhaps for a bribe of some kind?—he would have to explain that the offer was of course extended as a sham. The seconds were ticking away, and with each one Julius knew that he was looking more suspicious.
“What did I do then?” Julius finally said, pretending as a last resort to be taken aback by the very question. “I left them there, eating I don’t know what—should I have gone inside to see what they’d ordered?—and I came back here.” He wiped his bloody lip again in a show of false bravado. “To this reception.”
“Really?” Rigaud said. “So you haven’t had your dinner yet?”
“No,” Julius said, confused. “Not yet.”
“No chance to drop into some little café or restaurant?” he said, his eyes still riveted on Julius, whose wet pants were sticking to his leg.