“But who was this woman?” Marevna patted the letter, which she now held like a precious object away from the pot of borscht. “There’s no name.”
“A Russian woman whose role faded long ago,” Aimée said. “Does it matter? She played her part in history and left. He led the Revolution, changed the world.”
“No one will believe this,” Marevna said, her eyes wide.
“I thought Russians were romantics, souls as deep as Lake Baikal, wide as the steppes,” Aimée said. “All those things from Tolstoy. He wrote in French, Marevna. We read him in school.”
“No one wants to believe this. This is dangerous, Aimée.” Marevna glanced at the babushka. “Stone deaf. She refuses hearing aid. But him.…” She jerked her thumb at the snoring old Trotskyist. “Trouble.” Her mouth pursed. “Lenin’s still an icon. Old people, tourists line up all day in snow in Red Square … hours to see his mummy. He is myth, but they still must believe in myth.”
Aimée watched Marevna. “Does it bother you knowing he’s not the Lenin you thought he was?”
“Phfft.” She handed the letter back to Aimée. Stirred the borscht with a wooden spoon. “In every school we saw big letters: ‘Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live.’ ” But Marevna’s eyes brimmed. “Okay. Inside, romantic me think it’s like Casablanca, give up great love. But Lenin was no Rick, no hero. But it would devastate my grandma.”
Thursday Evening
RENé WIPED HIS damp temples with his handkerchief and took a deep breath. Then another. He’d spent hours circumnavigating the firewall, disabling his safeguards, the alarm triggers he’d installed. But thank God for the thumb-drive containing his backup and the cloned token to override part of the system. Then recoding the disabler with Saj’s help. Tradelert’s mainframe, as designed, only allowed modification in twenty-four-hour cycles and the clock was ticking.
Now it all came down to these few seconds to stop them.
But if Tradelert had re-keyed the code, had time to install new passwords, it wouldn’t work. He prayed they hadn’t. Prayed they had kept the system up to show off and impress the investors who were due today, California time.
“I can keep the connection and the back doors open for two more minutes,” Saj said. “Ready, René?”
Now or never.
René entered the last code. Hit the keys. Nothing.
Sweat broke out on his upper lip.
“Connection’s gone, Saj!”
“Keep your sombrero on.” René heard the furious clicking of keys. “One minute thirty seconds,” Saj said. “Should reestablish connection within fifteen seconds.” When nothing happened, he muttered, “Relay’s temperamental. Weather issues cause havoc with the satellite transmission.”
Please God, René thought. He was hunched over, his eyeballs glued to the screen, his fingers poised.
“Connection. Go, René.”
René’s fingers flew over the keyboard. He hit send.
“Done.”
“We’re still up. Connected. It’s out of our hands now.”
Wednesday Evening
LENIN IN LOVE. All the more reason for the Russian oligarch to want the painting—either to legitimize his museum or hold it over the old guard and threaten exposure.
Ten minutes later, Aimée found the bar’s address behind bustling rue de la Ga?tié, studded with theaters and concert halls famous for Piaf and Georges Brassens. She’d followed rue d’Odessa past the old bains toward Place Joséphine Baker. It was indeed a leather bar. And she wasn’t dressed for it.
Her cousin Sebastien had frequented this bar before he’d gotten clean. Run-down, she remembered, haunt of dealers and stray Bretons fresh from the train at Montparnasse, mistaking the faded leftover Breton sign for a home away from home. Looking for a buckwheat crêpe and finding the underbelly of Montparnasse.
Now a simple black door. Discreet. New owners and new clientele evidenced by the calendar of soirées—a menu of domination, and S-M. Tonight: femmes et fétiches.
Great.
A woman in a leather thong and little else, pink butterfly clips holding her blonde hair up, gave her the eye. Svetla sat at the far end of the bar. Her short hair slicked back, wearing a leather biker jacket and low jeans over bony hips, revealing a flat stomach and pierced navel. Dark shadowed eyes on the prowl. Primed for a night off.
Svetla’s look played well in a lace-and-leather bar in Paris.
But Aimée needed to lure Svetla back to the H?tel Plaza Athénée and bend the diva’s ear if she wanted to learn the oligarch’s plan. And hurry out before Svetla saw her.
“Didn’t know you swung this way, Aimée.” Cécile, a friend of Michou’s, René’s transvestite neighbor, was blocking her exit. Cécile wore lace bloomers held in place by strategically placed suspenders. A big pout on her rouge-noir lips. “You never told me.”
Of all the people to run into.
“I’m meeting someone, Cécile.”
“Let’s make it a party,” Cécile said, leaning closer to her on the bar. Smoke spiraled from her cigarette into Aimée’s eyes.
“It’s not like that.” She wished she could make Cécile disappear.
“And pigs fly.”
“Alors, she’s a Russian bodyguard.”
“Ooh, like them rough do you?”
Svetla was watching them, the edges of her mouth turned down.
“My friend gets jealous.” She waved to Svetla.
“I would too, Aimée. I’m mad you never let on,” said Cécile, but Aimée had already hurried past her.
“Svetla, I can’t stay here. I know her.”
“I noticed. Your girlfriend?”
“No way, but a little complicated.” She winked. Think. Think. She needed to lure Svetla out. “But that party—if we don’t hurry, we’ll miss it.”
“Miss what party?”
“Zut! Didn’t you get my message? My friend’s soirée. Invitation only.…”
“Let’s have a drink first,” Svetla said, unconvinced.
“And miss a Parisian leather party? Models, les bobos chics.…”
“First I’ve heard.”