After hanging up, he worked off the backup he’d put on Saj’s thumb-drive. It was smaller and more efficient than floppies or CDs. He hadn’t tested Tradelert’s hardware security—not a priority with the meeting looming tomorrow—but he’d noticed plastic pillars like the ones they have at department stores to stop theft. Saj’s thumb-drive hadn’t set off the alarm.
First rule, as always, he’d backed up all his work. He examined the firewall hole he’d patched—necessary security for the investors Rob stressed would join in the next round of financing, and for the product launch, even a possible IPO.
Secure. Then he examined the back door he’d engineered. Tested the code. All good. He clicked into the safety net backup. And then his fingers froze on the keyboard.
Tuesday Afternoon, Paris
AIMéE GRASPED THE truck door handle and spit at Florent. A sharp slap stung her face.
“You know you want it,” Florent grunted.
“Not what you’ve got.” She twisted her body, wriggled, trying to push him off her. His dirty fingernails clawed her thighs. Raked her skin. Her heart pounded in her ears.
With all her might she shoved him against the window. Kneed him in the groin as hard as she could.
Florent fell back with a loud groan. She scrambled out the driver’s door. Slammed it. Ran.
Two blocks away, beyond Alésia, she stepped into a corner café. Shaking and berating herself, she hurried down the dark wooden stairs to the WC. In front of the soap-splattered mirror, she ran hot water—washed her legs, arms, and face with shaking hands, intent on scrubbing off Florent’s smell, his filth clinging to her skin. She put her head down, took deep breaths until she stopped trembling.
Feeling cleaner, she brushed mascara through her eyelashes. A swipe of Chanel Red over her lips and a spritz of Chanel No. 5 from her bag to complete the repairs. Next time she wouldn’t be so stupid.
Not far from the Montsouris reservoir she found rue Marie Rose, a short-sloped block of six-story stone apartment buildings across from the red-brick church. Quiet after the bustling roundabout of Alésia. But even if she knew what to look for—a cellar where a Modigliani had been hidden—the idea of entering each building and questioning dwellers was daunting.
Scouting midblock, she found a plaque at Number 34 attesting that Lenin had lived there, and that his apartment was now a museum. From Piotr’s letter she knew Lenin had lived upstairs from him. She’d struck gold.
This route to the painting led her backward, but in some cases, she remembered her father saying, going to the beginning helps you find the end. Feeling more hopeful that she was close to finding another piece of this jigsaw, she entered the light-filled foyer.
Scents of pine cleaner lingered on the brown encaustic-tile walls and the staircase banister’s burnished mahogany. Clean, utilitarian, no frills. The working-class aura remained. For a moment she imagined the Russian émigrés here at the turn of the century.
No answer to her knock on the concierge’s door or any of the ground-floor apartments. Voices came from above. She hoped for better luck there.
At the Lenin-apartment-museum entrance, several people listened to a serious-faced young woman. She wore her brown hair in a bun and wore no makeup. “The father of the Revolution lived here from 1909 to 1912 with Comrade Krupskaya, his wife, and her mother,” the guide explained. “As you will see, every effort’s been made to document his life here and provide as many furnishings of that period as possible. Austere, by our standards today. The Revolution’s architect lived simply, focusing on formulating Revolutionary theory.”
Before Aimée could duck out, she felt a pamphlet pressed in her hand. An image of Lenin shrouded in a greatcoat, saluting Revolutionaries from a train. A heroic man-of-the-people pose.
“Welcome, Comrade, the tour’s just beginning.”
What planet did this woman live on? The Wall came down in 1989, almost ten years ago. “Sorry, but I didn’t reserve for the tour,” Aimée said. “I wouldn’t want to take another’s place.”
That sounded weak.
“Join us, s’il vous pla?t.”
Reluctant, Aimée smiled. The guide was no doubt a red-diaper baby from one of the few surviving red suburbs. Once, Paris had been enclosed by the “red belt” hotbed of unions and Communists.
“The new socialist Russia,” she said in a reverential tone, “and the movement that changed the world, were born here.”
A hush descended.
So out of touch, this young comrade. And passé. But the possibility of hearing more about Lenin—the man who’d bounced Piotr on his knee—held Aimée’s interest.
“Comrade Krupskaya wrote in her journals of their life in these two rooms. They held meetings and discussions right here, forging the doctrine.”
The guide gestured to notebooks piled along the burnished orange walls under portraits of Marx and Lenin’s mother. Her voice droned on. Aimée stared at the French translation above Krupskaya’s journal.
To get the gas connected I had to go up to town three times before I received the necessary written order. The amount of red tape in France is unbelievable. To get books from the lending library you must have a householder to stand surety for you, and our landlord, seeing our miserable furniture, hesitated to do so.
AIMéE IDENTIFIED WITH Krupskaya’s frustration at French bureaucracy—some things never changed. She scanned more of the translations. Krupskaya wrote about Lenin’s daily routine of bicycling to the Archives to do research. How on the weekends they joined other émigrés at Parc Montsouris—”a little Russia,” she wrote, her tone wistful. How she and Lenin kept their bicycles in the cellar, her struggles with the steep cellar steps and the keys.
An article published in 1960 detailed Khrushchev’s visit to Lenin’s museum, or “shrine.” A local seventy-three-year-old resident interviewed for the piece spoke of his childhood:
Lenin? Mais oui, I knew him. His cleaner, Louise, was my neighbor. I saw him cut his hand two or three times on his bike lock, he always seemed preoccupied. The police watched him and his friends, les émigrés, constantly. On Sundays when I rode my bicyclette I’d see him on his. Ah, but in those days I was young.