Текст книги "The Bourne Dominion (Господство Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

The moment he saw a figure pass by a second time, Etana walked briskly along the waterline, a man with an urgent purpose. The man followed. Benjamin El-Arian had set him on Etana to make sure he terminated Jalal Essai. And if by some chance Etana failed, the shadow would take over the mission.

Etana led his shadow to the far end of the beachhead, beyond the piers and harbors, out along a strip of beach whose unpleasant constitution ensured it was deserted until the middle of the night, when, he had observed, kids used it to party, drink, and have clandestine sex. Etana had found it a nauseating sight, another vivid example of the corruption of the West.

A fishing boat, turned keel-up, sat up on a block of wood. The boat was rotting, the keel line encrusted with barnacles, entwined with dried seaweed. A faint odor of decomposition floated off the impromptu structure, which, to Marlon, seemed appropriate. He chose a perch along the keel and shook out a cigarette. As he put the cigarette between his lips, he drew his pistol with its elongated barrel and, turning, shot the shadow between the eyes. There was some noise, but none at all when the body hit the sand.

Pocketing the pistol, Etana walked over to the shadow and, grabbing him by the back of his collar, dragged him the fifty or so yards to the upturned boat. With some difficulty, he jammed the corpse into the open space beneath the craft. It already smelled bad enough that a decomposing body would not arouse any attention for days, maybe a week. By then the seagulls would surely have done their work, and no one would be able to identify the corpse.

Dusting off his hands, Marlon Etana drew smoke deep into his lungs and started back the way he had come. There was no one around, no one to see him. Best of all, there was no one to report back to Benjamin El-Arian.

Now it was time, he thought, to engage with Jalal Essai.

Boris Karpov wanted to murder someone. If one of the German cops was still stalking the back alley—as they had been for the past three hours while the forensics team in the watchmaker’s shop methodically went about its business—the German would have been a dead man.

In the darkness that had descended over Munich, Boris had found his legs spasming, cramping, then, worst of all, growing weak. His head pounded with his need to urinate. He felt that if he didn’t pee soon his bladder would surely burst. And yet his mouth was as dry as a desert, his lips all but pasted together.

At last, the lights had gone out in Hermann Bolger’s shop, the flashlights of the alley cops were extinguished, and, save for a dog barking hoarsely, all fell silent. Boris made himself wait another agonizing thirty minutes. Toward the end, he’d had to bite his lip to keep from moaning.

Finally, when he judged it safe, he swung onto the downspout and shinnied down. It was tough going because his legs were all but useless. Twice he felt his hands, slippery with sweat, lose their grip and he was obliged to try to clamp the metal with his knees. This worked, but just barely.

On the ground at last, he squeezed between two garbage cans, and, crouching down, peed like a female. He let out a soft groan of relief. The pent-up water went on and on, creating a veritable lake. Getting his legs to work was a different matter. His muscles were so tight that the pain almost overwhelmed him when he stood up.

Acutely aware that he needed to put as much distance as he could between him and Bolger’s shop, he nevertheless spent the next several minutes stretching gingerly and then more vigorously. He had no choice, really; his legs wouldn’t have taken him to the end of the alley without giving out. He cursed his time as an administrator when he’d failed to keep up with his often brutal exercise routine. While he worked out, silently and without respite, he concentrated on breathing slowly and deeply.

When his legs had returned to a semblance of normalcy, he set out for the far end of the alley. He heard the soft swishing sounds of traffic and, now and again, a drunken laugh or two.

At the mouth of the alley he stopped, more cautious than ever. A slow, dull drizzle wet the streets, just like in those American spy movies. The city was filled with the throaty rumble of approaching thunder. All of a sudden the rain came down harder, bouncing off the concrete sidewalk and the asphalt street. He put up the collar of his coat and hunched his shoulders.

He looked and listened for anything anomalous. He’d been blindsided; a trap had been sprung where there should have been no trap. His security had been breached. How had it happened? There was only one person he had come into contact with since he had arrived in Munich: Wagner, the contact he had met at the Neue Pinakothek museum. And unless Karpov had been shadowed from the airport to the watchmaker’s, it was Wagner who had informed someone at the Mosque of Boris’s inquiries. Sensing a tail was more art than science, and Boris was a master at smelling a shadow—he was certain he had not been tailed.

That left Wagner, or whatever his real name was, and Karpov would be in danger until he terminated the security breach. The sensible thing to do was to call Ivan and inform his friend that Wagner was playing both sides. If anyone knew Wagner’s real name and whereabouts it would be Ivan. He pulled out his cell phone and was about to punch in the number when a sudden flash of lightning illuminated a man standing in a doorway almost directly opposite the mouth of the alley. A moment later thunder cracked and boomed.

Boris put the phone to his ear as if he were actually making a call and spoke as if in a conversation with someone. Meanwhile he forced his eyes to look left and right, down the street, ignoring the now heavily shadowed doorway dead ahead.

He pocketed the phone, then, hands deep in the pockets of his coat, emerged from the alley and headed left, hurrying through the rain. Three blocks along, he entered a biergarten. It was warm and bustling and smelled of wurst and sauerkraut and beer. An enormous skylight ran the length of the establishment, giving the illusion of being outdoors without the weather problems. Shaking off the excess wetness, he wound his way around patrons and servers and took a seat at a long table near the rear.

Abruptly famished, he ordered everything he had smelled when he came in. The beer arrived almost immediately in an enormous ceramic-and-metal stein. He took two quick gulps and set the stein down. On either side of him jolly Germans were drinking and eating, but mostly shouting, singing, and laughing, obnoxious as hyenas. It was all Karpov could do not to get up and walk out. But he was here for a reason and he wasn’t going anywhere until he ascertained whether or not the man in the doorway had followed him.

Since he had sat down almost a dozen people had entered the biergarten, none of whom had set off any alarms. Mostly they consisted of families or young couples, arm in arm. Watching them, Boris strained to remember the last time he had walked arm in arm with a woman. He doubted he was missing anything.

His food came and, just as he was tucking into his gleaming, fragrant bratwurst, a figure stepped through the front door. The hair on the backs of his hands stirred. He put the bite of wurst into his mouth and chewed meditatively.

He had expected the man from the doorway across from the alley, but this was a woman—a young one, at that. Boris watched her covertly as she shook out her umbrella, then collapsed it before taking a look around the restaurant. He was careful not to meet her gaze, concentrating on spearing a potato slippery with grease. He popped the morsel into his mouth, washed it down with some beer, and looked up. The young woman had taken a seat at the end of a table, on the side facing him. She was between him and the front door.

Karpov had had enough of this nonsense; these people were either bad at their job or amateurs. He laid his knife and fork on his plate, took the plate in one hand, his beer stein in the other, and got up.

As the hour had grown later, the biergartenhad become downright raucous, more and more of the patrons transformed into red-faced drunks. Threading his way through the crowd, he decided amateurs were the worst kind of adversary. They didn’t know the rules, which made them unpredictable.

There was a small gap between the young woman and her neighbor—a thick-necked German, stuffing his face and guzzling beer. When Boris nudged him to move over, the fat German looked up, his eyes glaring.

He was about to say something, but Karpov beat him to it. “ Sie haben Fett über ihr ganzes Gesicht.” You have grease all over your face.

Fatty grunted like a pig and, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, heaved his bulk over.

“ Danke, mein Herr,”Karpov said, climbing into the space rather clumsily so that he deliberately jostled the young woman slightly.

“ Je suis désolé, mademoiselle.”

Her head jerked around. He was gratified to see that his French had startled her. Then a door slammed shut in her eyes and she turned away, staring down at a magazine she was holding. It was in English, Boris saw, not German. Vanity Fair. She was reading a story on Lady Gaga, one of those perfectly idiotic pop stars who could exist only in America.

He returned his attention to his meal. Some time later, she lifted the magazine so a plate of Wiener schnitzel could be placed in front of her. She took a look at it, wrinkled her nose in distaste, and, pushing the plate away, resumed her reading.

Boris swallowed a chunk of bratwurst and hailed a passing server.

“ Noch ein Bier, bitte.” Another beer, please. The server nodded. Just as she was turning away, Boris added, “ Und eine für die junge Dame.”

The young woman turned to him and said more tartly than sweetly, “Thank you, no.”

“Bring it anyway,” Karpov shouted to the back of the disappearing server.

She had dark hair and a cream complexion, with that quintessentially pretty look only American women have: healthy, vibrant, with perfectly symmetrical faces. In other words, bland as Wonder Bread. Once, several years ago in New Jersey, he had actually eaten a couple of slices of Wonder Bread spread with Peter Pan peanut butter. The cloying sweetness of the sandwich had dissolved into an unpalatable paste in his mouth, and he had gagged.

He turned to the young woman and said in English, “Aren’t you going to eat your schnitzel?”

“Please.” She dragged out the word: puh-leez.

Boris eyed the breaded veal cutlet. “Yeah, that’ll put a couple of pounds on you, for sure.”

This use of American slang caused her to finally look at him. “What’s your story?”

“Gosh, Midge,” he said with a plastic malt-shop accent, “I was just about to ask you the same question.”

She laughed. “ ‘Midge’! I haven’t heard that name since I stopped reading Archiecomics.” She apparently made a decision, because she held out her hand. “Lana Lang.”

He took her hand in his. It was cool, the edges more callused than he had expected. Maybe not an amateur, he thought. “You’re joking, right?”

“Uh-uh.” Her smile could be wicked. “My dad was some huge Superman fan.”

“Hello, Lana Lang. Bryan Stonyfield.”

“I know who you are,” she said very softly.

Boris, who had not let go of her hand, tightened his grip. “How would that be? We’ve never met before.”

“I’m Wagner’s daughter.” She slipped her hand from his and put more than enough euros on the table to cover both their meals. “Now you must come with me, no questions asked.”

“Wait a minute,” Karpov said, bristling. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“But you must,” Lana said. “You’re in mortal danger. Without me, you’ll be dead before dawn.”

14

THEY MADE THE trip down the mountain without difficulty. Bourne had been correct in trusting to Vegas’s local knowledge. His shortcut bypassed all the federal military roadblocks, as well as any of Suarez’s FARC patrols looking for their commander.

Bourne reconnoitered the airport and its environs, looking for hostiles and finding none.

“You can’t go into the terminal looking like that,” Rosie said as she got out of Vegas’s jeep.

Bourne looked at himself in the rearview mirror. There were smears of blood all over him, and his clothes were ripped.

Rosie dug into her bag and came out with a handful of money. “Stay here,” she said.

Bourne was about to protest but the look in her eye stayed him. He watched her head into the terminal and counted off the minutes. At fifteen, he resolved to go in after her.

Vegas leaned against his jeep, smoking. “Don’t worry, hombre. She can take care of herself.”

As it turned out, Vegas’s trust in her was well placed. Rosie emerged from the terminal swinging a white paper shopping bag. She had bought Bourne a shirt and a pair of jeans, along with underwear and socks. As he stripped off his bloody and shredded shirt, she climbed in beside him.

“Ah, good,” she said when she eyed the bottle of disinfectant and the roll of gauze he had taken from the bathroom in Vegas’s house.

She worked expertly on his naked torso, dabbing at all the cuts, scrapes, and abrasions he had collected in his fall from the pine tree. All the while, Vegas smoked his cigarette and grinned hard at Bourne.

“ ¿Ella es una maravilla, verdad?” She’s a wonder, isn’t she? “ ¡Tú debe verla en la cama!” You should see her in bed!

“ ¡Estevan, basta!” But she was laughing, somehow pleased, just the same.

She got out of the jeep then and turned her back so Bourne could strip off the rest of his clothes and pull on the ones she had bought for him.

Two hours after their rendezvous on the road, Bourne limped over to the Perales airport check-in counter. The limp was false, as was his London accent. To his surprise, there were not one or two, but three open tickets waiting for him under the code name Mr. Zed. He was pleased to discover that Essai had paid for everything in cash; there were no credit card numbers on the ticket or voucher receipts. He asked for a wheelchair when the time came to pre-board his flight. He booked his ticket under the name of Lloyd Childress, a British national, according to one of the two remaining passports he carried. He had ditched the third before he had left Thailand because the Domna had found him under that identity.

Afterward, in a secluded part of the modest departures terminal, Bourne told the pair what he had discovered.

“Essai left tickets for all three of us to Bogotá with a connecting flight to Seville, via a stop in Madrid,” Bourne said quietly. “There’s also a rental car voucher for when we arrive in Seville. Essai says final instructions will be with the rental car agreement.” He looked from one to the other. “You have your passports?”

Rosie held up her satchel. “Packed days ago.”

“Good.” Bourne was relieved. He did not want to call Deron, his contact in DC, for forged passports because of the delay it would cause. Besides the Domna, he had to assume both FARC and the federaleswould at some point be after them. The fire in the tunnel and now the conflagration at Vegas’s house were signs that even the somnolent Colombian military could not ignore. On the other hand, they could not know whether Vegas and Rosie were alive or dead—the same for him, for that matter.

He checked the time. They had almost two hours before their flight left and then, in Bogotá, ninety minutes more until the departure of their overseas flight at 8:10 PM. He was certain they would make their plane here, but Bogotá might be a different story. He needed a plan.

He excused himself. Perales was a small, regional airport. He knew he would have better luck finding what he needed in Bogotá, but if the airport in the capital was being surveilled that would be too late. It was here or nowhere.

There were four shops in the departures terminal: a drugstore, a clothing store, a newsstand that also sold sundries aimed at travelers’ needs, and a souvenir shop, the bright yellow, blue, and red horizontal strips of Colombia’s flag in evidence on everything from T-shirts to bandannas to pennants. They weren’t ideal, but then nothing ever was.

He spent the next fifteen minutes limping from shop to shop buying what he thought he would need. He paid cash for all of his purchases.

When he returned to where the couple were sitting, he divvied up the purchases. Then they all went off to the restrooms.

“Is this really necessary?” Vegas said as he set out the shaving paraphernalia on the stainless-steel ledge above the line of sinks.

“Get on with it,” Bourne said.

Shrugging, Vegas splashed his face with hot water, applied shaving cream, and began to take off his beard and mustache.

“I haven’t seen this part of my face in maybe thirty years,” he said as he rinsed off the disposable razor. “I won’t recognize myself.”

“No one else will, either,” Bourne said.

He took the buzzer he had bought and began to give himself a “high-and-tight,” the military haircut preferred by marines. Then he opened up the various pots of cosmetics he had purchased and started applying color to darken the lower half of Vegas’s newly shorn face to match the rest of it. He made his own lips ruddy, his cheeks hollow and sunken. By the time he was finished, Vegas had emerged from a stall in the new outfit Bourne had picked out for him: shorts, flip-flops, a straw porkpie hat with a yellow, blue, and red band, and a T-shirt with MEMBER: COLOMBIAN CARTEL emblazoned across the chest.

“ Hombre, what have you done to me?” he complained. “I look like a fool.”

Bourne had to stifle a laugh. “All anyone will notice is the T-shirt,” he said.

Taking up a pair of scissors, he slit the left leg of his new jeans. He threw a new roll of gauze at Vegas and said, “Bind up my leg from just below the knee to the bottom of my calf.”

Vegas did as he asked.

Bourne put on the pair of magnifying glasses he had bought and said, “Let’s go see how Rosie looks.”

“I can’t wait,” Vegas said with an exaggerated grimace.

At the last moment, he pulled Bourne away from the door and said in a low voice, “ Hombre, escuchamé. If anything should happen to me—”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you. We’re all going to talk to Don Fernando together.”

His grip on Bourne’s elbow tightened. “You’ll take care of Rosie.”

“Estevan—”

“What happens to me is of no concern. You’ll protect her no matter what. Promise me, amigo.”

The intensity in Vegas’s voice struck Bourne hard. He nodded. “You have my word.”

Vegas withdrew his grip. “ Bueno. Estoy satisfecho.”

Bourne opened the door and they stepped out into the terminal, Bourne limping noticeably.

Rosie was waiting for them. The clothes Bourne had bought for her fit her perfectly—maybe too perfectly, as Vegas’s eyes seemed about to pop out of his head when he saw her standing there, hands on shapely hips.

The clothes clung to her curves like a second skin, the low-cut shirt showing off the tops of her breasts to electrifying effect. The skirt was short enough that more than half her powerful thighs were revealed.

“ ¡Madre de Dios!” Vegas exclaimed. “With that display even dead men will get an erection.”

Rosie gave him what looked like a Marilyn Monroe moue before breaking out into giggles. “Now I’m ready, sugar,” she said to Vegas. “I feel as strong as Xena, the Warrior Princess.”

“That’s the spirit.” Bourne looked around. “Now all we need is the wheelchair.”

Hendricks, on his way to the conference room a floor below his office, was possessed with the desire to call his son, Jackie. Instead, he was stuck in his meeting with Roy FitzWilliams, the head of Indigo Ridge, who it seemed already had some problems with the details of Samaritan.

Last night, after dropping Maggie off, he had spent an hour tracking Jackie down. Good thing he was secretary of defense, otherwise he would have gotten nowhere with the Pentagon concerning his son’s deployment. Jackie, as it turned out, was in Afghanistan. Even worse, he was heading up black-ops patrols scouring the cave-riddled mountains between Afghanistan and western Pakistan, which were inhabited by both Taliban tribal chieftains and the elite al-Qaeda cadres guarding bin Laden. Hendricks had lain awake the rest of the night thinking alternately about Jackie and Maggie.

Entering the conference room with his satellite aides, he settled himself at the head of the table. One of his aides laid down the sheaf of folders dedicated to Samaritan and opened them for him. Hendricks stared down at the computer printouts, trying to anticipate FitzWilliams’s objections, but his mind was elsewhere.

Jackie. Jackie in the mountains of Afghanistan. Maggie had done this to him, opened up his heart. He had kept his desires locked up tight, but now he wanted his son back. His dinner with Maggie, such a simple thing, had been a night of normalcy after years of being out of the flow of life, of immersing himself so deeply in the sinkhole of his work. He had ignored—or was it resisted?—the current urging him onward.

FitzWilliams was late. Hendricks channeled his anger away from himself, toward the head of Indigo Ridge, so that when FitzWilliams came bustling in, all energy and bonhomie, Hendricks barked at him.

“Sit yourself down, Roy. You’re late.”

“Sorry about that,” FitzWilliams said, sinking into a chair like a punctured balloon. “It couldn’t be helped.”

“Of course it could have been helped; it can always be helped,” Hendricks said. “I’m sick of hearing people use excuses instead of taking responsibility for their actions.” He flipped the pages of the Samaritan file. “No one’s fault but your own, Roy.”

“Yessir.” FitzWilliams’s cheeks were flaming. His voice seemed caught in his throat. “Definitely my bad. Won’t happen again, I assure you.”

Hendricks cleared his throat. “Now,” he said, “what’s your problem?”

Five, Rue Vernet, which housed the Monition Club, was a large, vaguely medieval-looking building constructed of pale gold stone. To one side there was a sunken formal garden with curving gravel paths looping back on themselves, lined with sheared boxwood hedges. In the center was a boxwood fleur-de-lis, ancient symbol of the French royal family. There were no flowers, giving it an austere beauty all its own.

Soraya allowed Aaron to take the lead, standing just behind and to one side of him as he rang the front doorbell. Amun stood directly behind her, so close she could feel his heat. It was odd how the three of them had become a triangle simply because Amun had willed it into being.

As the door opened and they were led inside, she wondered whether her love for Amun was real or imagined. How could something that had seemed so real last week dissolve into a mirage? She was appalled at the thought of how easy it was to fool yourself into believing an emotion was authentic.

They were led through the interior of the building by a young woman unremarkable in every way: medium height, medium build, dark hair pulled back in a severe bun, a detached expression that squeezed all personality from her face.

Soft indirect light illuminated their way down corridors lined in expensive wood and small framed illuminated manuscripts, which were hung at precise intervals. Their footfalls made no sound on the plush charcoal-colored carpet into which they sank as if in a marsh.

At length, the young woman stopped before a polished wooden door and rapped softly. She responded to an answering voice and opened the door. Stepping aside, she waved them into the suite beyond.

The first room of the suite appeared to be a study as well as an office. It was dominated by a hardwood refectory table and floor-to-ceiling library shelves filled with oversize tomes, some of which looked very old. A number of chairs upholstered in fragrant leather were scattered around the room. To one side was a large globe showing the world as it was known in the seventeenth century. Beyond this space was another distinct room that appeared to be a living room in a residence, modern and lighter in tone and decoration than the study.

When they entered, a man atop a low rolling stepladder twisted his torso, peering at them over a pair of old-fashioned half spectacles.

“Ah, Inspector Lipkin-Renais, I see you have brought reinforcements.” Chuckling lightly, he came down off his perch and approached their group. “Director Donatien Marchand, at your service.”

Amun shouldered past, interrupting before Aaron could complete introductions. “Amun Chalthoum, head of al Mokhabarat, Cairo.” His stiff, formal bow had about it a vaguely threatening aspect that caused Marchand a brief hesitation, a startle in the depths of his black eyes, before his mouth returned to its business-like smile.

“I understand you’ve come about M. Laurent’s unfortunate demise.”

Aaron cocked his head. “Is that how you would characterize it?”

“Is there another way?” Marchand meticulously dusted off his fingertips. “How may I help you?”

He was a shortish man whom Soraya judged to be in his mid– to late fifties, but quite fit. His long hair was graying at the sides, but his widow’s peak was still pure black. It possessed the peculiar metallic gloss of a raven’s wing, spinning invisible light into an oil slick of colors.

Aaron consulted his notes. “Laurent was run down on Place de l’Iris, at La Défense, at eleven thirty-seven in the morning.” He looked up abruptly into the director’s eyes. “What was he doing there?”

Marchand spread his hands. “I confess I have no idea.”

“You didn’t send him to La Défense?”

“I was in Marseilles, Inspector.”

Aaron’s smile was sharp as an arrow. “M. Laurent had a cell phone, Director. I assume you do, too.”

“Of course I do,” Marchand said, “but I didn’t call him. In fact, I had no contact with Laurent for a number of days prior to my leaving for the south.”

Soraya noticed that Amun seemed to have lost interest in the conversation. He had broken away and was studying the books that lined the director’s study.

Aaron cleared his throat. “So what you’re claiming is that you have no knowledge of what business M. Laurent had in the Île de France Bank building two days ago.”

Very clever, Soraya thought. Aaron waited until now to mention the Île de France Bank.

Marchand blinked as if blinded by a very strong light. “I beg your pardon?”

“Until M. Laurent’s murder—”

“Murder?” Marchand blinked again.

Now Aaron had him, Soraya thought.

“Until his murder, M. Laurent was your assistant, is that not correct?”

“It is.”

“Well, then, M. Marchand. The Île de France Bank.” There was a slight edge to Aaron’s voice, and he had picked up the pace of his questioning. “What was M. Laurent doing there?”

Marchand’s voice turned abrupt, waspish. “I have already told you, Inspector.” He seemed to be losing his temper, which was the point.

“Yes, yes, you claim you don’t know.”

“I don’tknow.”

Aaron consulted his notes, flipped a page, and Soraya felt a little spark of glee rise up in her. Aaron opened his mouth. Here it comes, Soraya thought.

“Your answer interests me, Director. My research has revealed that much of the funding for this branch of the Monition Club comes from accounts in the Brive Bank.”

Marchand shrugged. “What of it? A number of our senior members have their accounts at Brive. These men are large annual donors.”

“I applaud their altruism,” Aaron said lightly. “However, after no little digging it has come to my attention that the Brive Bank is a subsidiary of the Netherlands Freehold Bank of the Antilles, which, in turn, is owned by, well, the list goes on and on and I don’t want to bore you. But at the end of the list is the Nymphenburg Landesbank of Munich.” Here Aaron took a breath, as if to emphasize the exhaustion brought about by the amount of digging he’d had to do.

“Is Nymphenburg Landesbank wholly owned? Indeed it is. And for a time this stopped me in my tracks. But then I decided to turn my supposition upside down. And what do you know? Early this morning I discovered that for the past five years the Nymphenburg Landesbank of Munich has been quietly buying up pieces of…” Now he shrugged. “Need I say it, Director?”

Marchand was standing stock-still, his hands in midair. Soraya, looking at them, had to give the man credit: His hands were rock-solid, not a tremor to be seen.

Aaron grinned. “Nymphenburg Landesbank now owns a controlling interest in the Île de France Bank. The takeover was devilishly difficult to detect mainly because both the Landesbank and Île de France are private institutions. As such, they are not required to divulge changes in policy, key personnel, or control.”

He stepped toward Marchand a pace and lifted a forefinger. “However, it occurred to me that there might be another reason for my difficulty in unearthing the connection.”

The silence grew so thick that finally Marchand said through gritted teeth, “And what would that be, Inspector?”

Aaron closed his notebook and put it away. “ À bientôt, M. Marchand.” Until next time.

With that, he turned on his heel and left. Soraya followed in his wake, but not before grabbing a handful of Amun’s jacket and dragging him away from his study of the book spines.

Outside, the sun was shining and the birds were chirping, flitting from tree to tree.

“How about some lunch?” Aaron said. “My treat.”

“I’m not hungry. I’d rather get back to our hotel room,” Amun replied.

“Well, I’m hungry enough for two,” Soraya said, avoiding Amun’s dark glare.

Aaron clapped his hands. “Splendid! I know just the place. Follow me.”

Soraya sensed that Amun didn’t want to follow Aaron anywhere, but unless he could find a taxi station, he had no choice.

“Why didn’t you tell me what you had discovered?” Soraya said as she came up alongside Aaron.

“There wasn’t time.”

Soraya suspected this was only partially true. But she held her tongue because she sensed that Aaron hadn’t wanted her to say anything to Amun.

They returned to the Citroën and when they were all settled in, Soraya next to Aaron up front and Amun in back with his carry-on bag, Aaron fired the ignition. But before he could put the Citroën in gear, Amun leaned forward and put a hand on his arm.