“You said that last time, Dmitri.”
Did he mean the Modigliani?
“As usual, we’ll organize the funds to be available tomorrow at four P.M. Pending your bringing our new friends on board. Quit worrying, Hervé.” Dmitri patted the other man’s knee, almost as if reassuring himself. “Do your part.”
Aimée could see Hervé’s profile—prominent nose, graying brown hair that reached the collar of his pinstripe suit jacket. Then he stood. He looked familiar.
Before she could edge closer, the muted sounds of a flushing toilet came from a door behind her. Then a door handle turning. Dmitri’s flunky? She had to get out. Now.
“What are you doing here?” said the chauffeur, emerging from the door and blocking her escape.
Every hair on her neck tingled.
“Madame Bereskova told me the bathroom’s here.”
“Why didn’t you knock?” he said, arms firm across his barrel chest. The unmistakable bulge of his sidearm showed beneath his jacket. The heat and the cloying cigar smoke got to her.
“Desolée, I’m confused,” she said, deliberately slurring her words and trying to edge past him.
“Who’s that?” asked Dmitri. He and Hervé stood in the doorway watching her. Aimée felt like a specimen under a microscope, an insect skewered on a pin for inspection.
Her nerves jangled and the champagne rose in her throat. She hiccuped. And again. She cupped her mouth. “Too much champagne.…” She giggled, pretended to stagger. “Madame Bereskova’s so generous, I didn’t drink that much … I must help her with.…” Hiccup. “Accessories for the ELLE photo shoot.”
“This the one from this afternoon, Rodo?”
The chauffeur nodded.
“My wife’s stylist. Take care of her, will you?” Dmitri threw an embarrassed smile at the tall French man. “Women.”
Rodo took her arm in an iron grip. He opened Marina’s double doors.
“What you think?” Marina wobbled in strappy sandals, a beige strapless silk tent dress that hit her knees, and a purple hat.
“We need to work on the hat,” Aimée said and turned to Rodo. “Out. Or do you get paid to watch?”
“You don’t fool me,” he said, under his breath. “We talk later.”
Not on your life, Monsieur ex-KGB. He hadn’t bought her story for a minute. She jerked her thumb with more bravado than she felt to get him the hell out.
With a grunt he left. Aimée locked the communicating door. He’d tell his boss. And at any minute Svetla would break out.
Better work out an exit strategy.
“Where’s Pinky?” Marina’s eyes wavered, unfocused.
“Your dog?”
“Bellman take Pinky for walk, why not back?”
Aimée had to hurry before the bulging-eyed, gold-collared canine returned. She sat Marina down on the huge bed. Rubbed her shoulders. “I’ll coordinate accessories with what’s in your closet, okay?”
But Marina’s eyes closed. The next moment, she was snoring. Aimée had to act quickly.
Near the Hermès strewn on the bed, she found Marina’s high-end phone. A match to Svetla’s but sporting a chrome finish. She exchanged Svetla’s SIM card for Marina’s and put Svetla’s phone—now with Marina’s SIM card—in her bag. From Marina’s walk-in dressing room, she grabbed the first thing she saw—a black trenchcoat. She heard the connecting door’s knob turn. Svetla’s phone rang. Aimée switched it to vibrate. Her damp blouse clung to her neck.
Knocking sounded on the connecting door.
Merde.
She slipped off her ballet flats to get traction in the plush carpet, opened the door, looked both ways, then ran for her life. Panting, she avoided the elevator and found the exit sign several corridors over.
She couldn’t go out the front—not with the video surveillance, the chauffeur, and Dmitri on the lookout for her. By now one of them was surely calling the front desk to stop her.
Merde.
She had to find the service elevator or the back stairs. Thought back to the problems the hotel detective complained of on his night security patrol—how the laundry and linen services were behind the elevator banks by his break room instead of in the basement where they should have been—making security sweeps longer than usual.
Aimée was counting on that now.
On the ground floor, she kept to the wall, head down, until she found the door marked SERVICE. Inside, industrial-sized dryers hummed and steam escaped from a pressing machine. The woman running the press had her back turned. Sweat poured down Aimée’s back.
She turned to the right, kept going and made the next right. Stacked linen and staff uniforms hung in a wardrobe area.
She pulled off the trenchcoat and jeans and slipped on a white maid’s uniform, then tied an apron around her waist. She pulled on heeled boots from her bag, then stuck the bag with her clothes in a white sack at the bottom of the plastic laundry cart. Wheeled it ahead, her eyes darting for an exit sign. They must have a loading bay to receive supplies.
The woman at the pressing machine looked up. “Where you going with that?”
“I need air, it’s so hot,” Aimée said, fanning herself.
“Take a break but leave the cart down there,” the woman said. “I’ll get to it.…” The service phone lit up on the wall.
Looking for her already.
Aimée pushed the cart around the corner to her left, kept moving, not looking back and praying she’d find the exit. Thirty seconds later, she pushed the cart out the exit and bumped into a man smoking on a loading dock by the dumpsters. A waiter in a long white apron and a black vest.
“She wants you,” Aimée said, eyeing the dim lights of the alley and the street beyond.
“You must be new.” Light reflected on his shaved scalp. He gave her the up and down. “Who wants me?”
“The laundry Nazi,” she said.
“Why?”
“Your apron’s stained,” she grinned. “I don’t know. But she’s ranting.”