Aimée turned into the park, following the wall away from the maison de ma?tre—the former squat she now recognized, where Yuri once held a Trotskyist banner and her mother had been arrested—to a worn path among some rosemary and lilac bushes. It ended at the back of the printing works. A scattering of metal rungs led up the crumbling masonry, rusted in places, well worn in others.
She came up with a plan while she climbed, gripping the worn rungs, testing her weight each time. At the top, she reached a ledge covered with pigeon droppings. Two stories above ground and hidden by wild lilac bushes. A perfect view of Yuri’s atelier from the lighted upper floor of the printing works.
She punched in René’s number.
“Any verdict, Aimée?”
“Nothing happens until I find the painting,” she said. “I’m at Damien’s printing factory.”
“But Rasputin.…”
The ledge by her foot gave way. Rocks tumbled and she grasped a rock higher up. Heights, she hated heights.
“Hold on.” She pulled out the phone numbers Saj had printed out. “Do you see a call to or from 06 78 90 42 30 on Marina’s call log?”
“Service was cut … but yes, that’s on the list.”
“Call that number in three minutes. Use one of the throwaways in my desk drawer. Say you’ve got the money, tell him the plans have changed, to bring the painting. You want to meet now.”
Aimée heard René swallow. “If he asks where?”
She thought quick. “Café Zèbre at Alésia.”
“You’re serious? Do you need me for backup?”
Too late for that now. Merde.
“Convince him you’re the contact, your boss wants him to deal with you. Keep him talking as long as you can. Please, René. And fake a Russian accent.”
She clicked off. Switched her phone to vibrate, stuck it in her bag, and edged her way to the lighted window. Behind the bushes lay a grilled balcony invisible from the park. She climbed onto it. Stood at the curtained French doors. Silence.
She tried the door. Locked. Merde. Just as she was about to take out her lockpick set and get to work, she noticed another set of French doors half covered by lilacs. One of the doors was open. A fat black crow perched on the balcony ledge, eyeing her with his pinpoint yellow gaze. A sweetish smell grew stronger as she slid sideways into a semi-dark room with flickering candlelight.
She heard a phone trill. Footsteps. Bravo, René.
Her eyes adjusted to the light. Votive candles on the floor silhouetted a bed with a rose satin duvet. And she froze.
Lying on it was a white-haired woman in an old-fashioned lace nightgown, centime coins on her lids to keep them closed, hands crossed in prayer with a blue-beaded rosary trailing from them.
Aimée realized the source of the sweetish stench. The old woman must have been here since Damien brought her back from the clinic. Dead and decaying for several days.
The flap of the crow’s wings came from the balcony. Aimée made herself move.
Damien stood in a high-ceilinged workroom that overlooked the silent printing presses below. Rays of late afternoon light glowed on the old wood, giving off a burnished honey hue.
To one side were piled boxes; on the other, paper-cutting blades and a sharpening stone were grouped on a long-gauged worktable partly obscured by more boxes. To her right were shelves with brass wire rolls and boxes of metal type.
Dotting one wall, like flypaper, hung lopsided yellowed cardboard signs with raised dots of Braille. Remnants from the turn of the century, when blind laborers worked the presses. The past clung to the dust-filled corners.
She peered over the boxes and caught her breath. To the left, in a recessed alcove, were stacked La Coalition posters; above them hung a detailed street map of the Montparnasse quartier dotted with Post-its marked with X’s. On the floor sat blue canisters of propane gas, the kind available at a hardware shop. Bags of fertilizer.
Aimée froze. Good God … bomb-making material. And a map of the locations. Hadn’t Solange, Saj’s Goth neighbor, said—what had it been?—La Coalition is militant organizing?
Damien was leaning over something at the worktable. The phone was stuck between his shoulder and ear as he listened. Above him, on the shelf, she saw the detonators. She stifled a gasp.
“But Bereskova called me an hour ago,” he said.
Merde. She’d been afraid of that.
“What do you mean?” he said. Pause. “I won’t go a centime lower on the painting. He agreed on the price.”
He had it. She remembered Yuri’s message: “I know who stole the painting.” She’d thought he meant her mother. But Yuri had counted on reasoning with Damien to return the painting.
But reasoning with someone crazed by grief who kept his moldering aunt next door? A fanatic obsessed with his political cause, bomb-making … Why hadn’t she realized it sooner?
What if Yuri had confronted Damien about the painting, things had heated up, and.…
Had Damien killed Yuri? Her mind went back to the demonstration blocking rue d’Alésia—how easy for Damien to slip into the crowd and blend in. She remembered the La Coalition armband on his desk.…
But torture his mentor and friend?
“Change the plan, why?” Damien said.
She had to move fast. Wanted to kick herself for leaving her Beretta in her office drawer. Now she had to find a way to defend herself, a different way out. The stairs down to the printing presses were blocked by boxes. Ducking low, she moved over the slanting wood floor toward rolls of brass wire, careful to avoid the metal drums of ink, the shelves with boxes of metal type.
“We worked this out,” Damien was saying. “Now … you’re sure?”
Damien carefully slipped something in a cardboard tube, the kind used for posters. Her heart thudded. The phone still to his ear, he headed for the door—right where she stood. Stepping back, she tried to slip into a recess. Her bag fell off her shoulder and she made a vain attempt to catch it. Too late.
“You?” White-faced, rings under his eyes, he looked more haggard than before. He was still wearing the same clothes, wrinkled as if he’d slept in them.
Before Aimée could bend down for her bag, he’d kicked it into the corner. Her phone was in it. No chance of reaching the flics now.