“Then check the bronze CTO office plate with my name, René Friant.”
After scanning the empty offices and corridors, René finally found two programmers at workstations. Doughnut crumbs trailed from the youngest one’s sparse goatee. “Like one, my man?” he asked René, offering him a cardboard box assortment.
René hesitated, eyeing the icing-laden circles of fried dough. “Thought that was flic … I mean, police food.”
“Cop food—good one, my man. Nice you appreciate fine distinctions in American cuisine,” he grinned. “I’m Brad. Night shift.” He yawned and glanced at the time. “I’m outta here in ten minutes.” Brad swiveled his chair back to the terminal screen and clicked a few keys. “I love French movies. Those shots of the Eiffel Tower and girls in berets. Accordian music.”
“Mais oui, Parisian girls, striped shirts, berets and baguettes.” We live to be stereotypes, he almost said. Then he thought again. “Brad, before you go, mind doing me a small favor?”
BEFORE THE INVESTOR meeting, René found Andy at his laptop in the bright fluorescent-lit boardroom of the converted Buick leasing office.
“All systems go, dude. Brilliant work.”
Andy’s smile blazed. Charisma, wasn’t that what they called it? He lit up a room, made you feel like the most important person in the universe. Megawatts of charm in a two-piece suit over a Hawaiian shirt and sandals.
“Afraid there’s an issue you need to know about, Andy,” René said. He gathered his courage. Tried to figure out the right words.
Andy’s brow rose. “Issue? I checked the system minutes ago, it’s all good.” He shook his sun-bleached surfer curls. “Nerves? That’s it, isn’t it? Your first presentation as CTO. Dude, I get it.”
René hated disappointing him.
“My baby … our baby’s hatching into the world,” Andy said. “Be proud, René.”
He needed to know before the investors arrived.
“Not proud of this.” René hit keys on Andy’s laptop, opening the program. A few more strokes and René pointed to algorithms popping up on the screen. “This back door allows pre-trading advantage. Like front running. Illegal, Andy. It violates every stock exchange standard.”
Andy shrugged. “It’s business, René.”
Shocked, René stumbled against the boardroom table. He didn’t understand. Didn’t want to understand.
“You knew, Andy?”
“Forget about it, René. I’ve got the term sheet.”
“Term sheet?”
“Everyone in the company wants this term sheet,” Andy said. “It’s our offer from three venture capitalists to invest thirty million. We’ll go public within two months and be worth two hundred million.” Andy squeezed René’s arm. Smiled. “Your two-dollar stock will go to eighty dollars, then twenty million.”
“Twenty million dollars?”
Andy winked. “And a lot more in francs. It’s all worth it to us if you can patch and tweak before we launch the product for stock trading. And to keep you here. Okay, dude? We’re good?”
Astounded, René felt his eyes widen. Serious, Andy was serious.
“But you can’t think this won’t be discovered,” René said. “Anyone in securities will recognize this scam.”
Andy gave a big laugh. He slapped René on the back. René felt his world caving in.
“Don’t worry, we’re talking about a stock trading advantage of a second or two to three seconds. Harder than bullets to prove. The work’s brilliant. Beautiful, dude,” Andy said. “Hell, you did it yourself.”
Andy pulled out his cell phone.
“So we’re good, right, René?”
“I’m not an employee,” René said, shaking. “I came in on a tourist visa. This has got nothing to do with me.”
“Did you forget the fax you signed and accepted for the CTO position, René?”
One step ahead of him. The whole time. A bitter taste filled his mouth and it didn’t come from faux cappuccino. Their rush employment offer, the private jet, the stock options lured him here, trapped him. Idiot.
Andy had used him. A scapegoat to take the fall if he squealed. René doubted Andy needed him anymore except to keep his mouth shut.
René’s phone trilled in his pocket. He answered automatically.
“?a va, René?” Aimée’s voice an echoey reverberation as the call pinged over the ocean. “Made your millions yet?”
Little did she know. “I like my millions clean,” René said in English.
Andy folded his arms, planting himself in front of the door.
“Not dirty, Aimée,” he added, looking Andy in the eye.
But he’d lost the connection.
Tuesday Afternoon, Paris
I like my millions? Aimée kicked the matted lime-tree blossoms littering Boulevard du Montparnasse’s zebra crosswalk. Not there forty-eight hours and René had gone Zeelakon Vallaaaay all the way. She hit dial back. No connection.
Just when she needed to talk to someone, throw ideas back and forth like they always had. She needed help reasoning out why Luebet got shoved in front of the Métro.
No doubt René had the corporate jet at his beck and call. She walled up the disappointment. No time for that now. The sky opened and she ran for shelter in a doorway.
La giboulée issued an intense pelting shower, then five wet minutes later layers of blue sky appeared. She shivered in her damp boots. Now confident no one had followed her, she hurried along the rain-spattered boulevard to Luebet’s art gallery. Shuttered and dark. He’d been lured out of a meeting and murdered.
But she couldn’t prove that. The only documented connection between Yuri’s torture and murder and Luebet’s supposed Métro accident was the painting in the photo. Yuri and Luebet were the only ones who could have verified the Modigliani’s existence except whoever took the photo. No doubt the same person who’d stolen it.
Oleg, the stepson? The dead Serb’s partner, the brother?
Or Aimée’s mother?