“Bereskova took a fiscal nosedive into concrete last year but somehow reinvented himself, see?” Saj said, from his cross-legged position on the tatami. “Look at page eight. Seems he made himself indispensable to major players in the past few months.”
“They call it krysha—rub my back big-time, I’ll rub yours. Any more details?” She needed more. Something smelled wrong.
Saj readjusted his neck brace. “That’s as far as I got.”
“Didn’t you work with that Russian hacker, René’s friend, for a while?”
“Rasputin,” he said. “The wild man.”
A living Internet legend, Rasputin snuck into a missile engine testing facility north of Moscow with his hacker pack. They breached military security through a hole in the fence of a factory dating back to the Soviet era—still producing engines for Russia’s space and military programs.
The Kremlin discovered Rasputin’s photos of the Cold War-era facility with giant turbines, tunnels, tubes, Soviet emblems, and a bomb shelter. And his penetration of the missile system mainframe. Rasputin claimed his aim was to increase awareness over security.
“The man knows no fear,” Saj said.
“So pick his brain,” she said.
“Good idea.” With ginger movements, he picked up his shoulder bag. “My acupuncturist squeezed me in, do you mind?”
She’d prefer to hash ideas out with him. But every time he turned, she noticed his body tighten.
“Bien s?r,” she said. “I hope it helps.”
“Before I forget, thanks for dealing with the Serb. You got my back. Desolé, I shouldn’t have doubted you.”
She’d called from the taxi and recounted what happened in the stables on the way back. “I pitied Goran—a refugee from a war-torn country, an exiled doctor reduced to shoveling horse muck. His brother’s death devastated him. The aggressors were victims once.” She stared at Saj. “But then I wasn’t so sure.”
“Talk about karma. You gave him a chance, showed compassion, Aimée.” Saj shrugged, then adjusted his neck brace yet again. “Ever thought the whole thing was a lie told by a mercenary or a war criminal?”
She thought of Goran’s anguish, so palpable it had raised the hair on her arms. “But if you’d heard him cry.…”
“Going soft, Aimée? You?”
“Soft as in not shooting his toes?” She’d wanted to.
Saj shook his head. “Alors, this circle of samsara, c’est fini,” he said. “Thank God.”
She wished she felt the same.
“But the van, Saj.…”
“You alerted the art flic, didn’t you?” he said. “Let him do his job. I’ll alarm the door on my way out.”
What more could she do right now but assuage her guilt and pull her weight? She’d review reports and ink the two new computer security contracts. A ray of light shone in the accounting: Leduc Detective was floating on a cushion this month, and would continue into the next. Made for a change.
Aimée sipped the Badoit, thumbed the printouts Maxence had left on Yuri Volodya. Apart from his Trotskyist leanings in the seventies, nothing interesting. Looked at the names on her to-do list and let them simmer.
She removed Piotr Volodya’s letters from the safe. About to scan and copy them, she remembered Marevna’s boss’s interruption and their missed appointment last night.
She needed to see the big picture. Think big. Find the pieces and how they fit together.
She dusted off the dry erase board behind René’s old desk and rustled up a working red marker. With the board propped on the velvet recamier, she wrote down the suspects, made columns—Motives, Opportunities, Victims, Stakes—to cross-reference. Like her father always did. Something she wished she’d done earlier. Now to fill them in: Stakes—money, prestige, a priceless Modigliani, a commodity to trade. Robbery suspects—Luebet, Morgane; Tatyana and Oleg’s crew; Damien; Feliks and Goran.
But someone was missing. From Luebet’s note, she knew he’d never gotten the painting. He could have had nothing to do with the team in the white van, who might have stolen the painting before Tatyana and Oleg’s hired Serbs got there. But hearing Dombasle confirm Morgane once worked for Luebet, she couldn’t shake her hunch that Luebet hired Morgane to steal the painting. So what was another explanation? Perhaps Luebet had hired Morgane, but she’d fenced the painting herself before turning it over to him. Or she never got it at all, because the painting was already gone. If Luebet’s gang and the Serb found the broom closet empty—as Yuri had—who had stolen the Modigliani?
Back to the beginning again.
Or either Oleg and Damien could have taken it, in theory; they were the only people she was sure knew where Yuri had hidden it. But which? Damien had insisted Yuri forgot things, and Oleg and Tatyana had offered her a percentage.
Or had the fixer beat everyone to it?
The door alarm shrieked and she dropped her Badoit. Flecks of mineral water sprayed over the erase board. Terror thudded through her. They’d returned.
Why had she trusted Dombasle? She took out the Beretta, checked the cartridge. Aimed.
“Merde!” she heard from the other side of the frosted glass.
But she knew that voice. She punched in the security code and opened the door.
René leaned in Leduc Detective’s doorway, his linen jacket stained, a large straw hat held in one hand and a duty-free bag in the other. Her heart jumped. She wanted to hug him.
“Forget something?” she said, finding her voice.
His brow knit in worry and pain.
“My common sense, Aimée. Mind setting your gun down? Look, I need to get the relay codes … don’t have time.…”
His words tore her heart. Apparently he wouldn’t be staying.
“So the corporate jet’s waiting at Orly, eh? Need to rush back to your millions?”
He shook his head. “I don’t like them dirty, Aimée. Look, I’ve got four hours, maybe six.…”
Her hurt bubbled to the surface. “Before you leave again?”
He limped inside and pulled out his laptop from the duty-free bag. “If I don’t stop them, I’m in a little trouble.”