Masquerade (29 page)

For a moment she wondered whether this was a trick to seduce her. But the small Mouse's eyes were worried, not lustful.

“Of course,” she told him. “I will meet you,
mon ami
.”

It was midnight in Henri le Petit's nineteenth-century mansion on the rue de Grenelle. The
cuisine classique
dinner was finished, and his wife, Madame le Petit, Prime Minister Vincent Vauban, Madame Vauban, and the two other guests followed Henri into the library for brandy and coffee. Henri was the powerful governor of France's central bank, the Banque de France. He was rich, conservative, and full of unquenchable vitality.

“Non, non!”
he argued good-naturedly. “The human body is like government, a system of checks and balances. Or should I say
banque cheques
and balances?” He chuckled at his little joke and listened happily as his guests joined in. He was in a rare mood, confident, less and less feeling burdened by the responsibilities of his sober position.

“This new spa then is the source of all your youthful vigor?” asked Gigi Devant, the founder of Paris's toniest fashion salon. “If you have been going daily for nearly a year, you must know what you are talking about. How do I join?”

Henri exchanged a look with Prime Minister Vauban. The spa discouraged members from suggesting new members.

“Ah, dear Gigi.” The Prime Minister took his brandy snifter to the huge ornate fireplace and stood before it. “Alas, the spa is by invitation only, although certainly you should join, if that is your wish. We will give your name to the doctor who runs the establishment and insist he take you in. How would that be?”

Gigi, with her close-cropped platinum hair, glowing pink skin, and shining, curious eyes, was only thirty-five years old, and, in Henri le Petit's opinion, hardly needed to be reinvigo-rated or relieved from the stress of life.

“I suppose you would like to join, too, Charles?” Henri asked, to be polite.

Charles la Marie owned controlling interest in an engineering firm that built dams, bridges, and power plants around the world. He shook his head and raised his snifter. “I find plenty of energy in my glass,
merci
. But Gigi, of course, is on her last legs—although they are very lovely legs, I assure you—and needs every bit of professional help she can get.”

Gigi slapped his arm, and again the group laughed, mellowed by the fine dinner and congenial company.

“Too bad Phillipe Paquin did not join your miracle spa,” Gigi said mischievously. “He would no doubt be alive today.”

“And Prime Minister,” added Charles, grinning wickedly.

“Ah, but that would not be good for France!” Madame Celeste Vauban said quickly.

The Prime Minister stared into his empty glass, then went to the Napoleon III table to refill it. Henri le Petit knew the Prime Minister felt some kind of odd guilt about his youthful rival's death, and so he glared at Gigi and Charles and said, “Thank heaven Vincent has sense enough to take care of himself. He began at the spa even before Phillipe's heart attack, which at last drove less visionary leaders, such as myself, to better health care. See how fortunate we are? Our new Prime
Minister doesn't wait for problems to make themselves known, he takes care before there are problems!”

“Speaking of problems, Vincent. I have waited long enough.” Gigi fixed her guiltless eyes on the Prime Minister as he resumed his spot before the fireplace. “My salon is in an uproar. Between the higher taxes, the recession, and the general
malaise
, my business has plummeted.”

“Alors
! No wonder you are worried!” Madame le Petit raised her perfectly lined brows in mock horror. “A yearly profit of a million francs is never enough!”

Gigi looked around the room for sympathy, but found none. “It could be so much more, if my clientele felt secure!”

Shaking his head, Henri again exchanged a look with Vincent. They had a daring plan to set France back on her financial feet and make her the economic giant of all Europe. Of course, some would be hurt, but there were always costs for bold action. In the long run, the nation—and Europe—would thank them.

“On Monday, dear Gigi, just three days from now,” the Prime Minister said with a calm, knowing smile, “many of these economic problems will begin to end. You can be assured Henri and I are going to restore
La Grandeur
to France!”

Outside, across from the
banque
governor's mansion on the rue de Grenelle, a man sat in a parked van, his gnarled hands aiming a rifle microphone. Next to him was a video camera on a tripod, aimed at the library. His grizzled partner leaned forward, constantly adjusting gauges to maximize the quality of sound. They were excited. They'd been here three hours unable to record anything because the dining room was out of sight. But since the party had moved to the library at the front, they'd been able to chronicle it all. They were back in harness, and life was worth living again.

On the other side of the Seine, Chantelle Joyeaux had no trouble ignoring the students still carousing outside her Left Bank rooms as she read Maurice Arl's stolen reports. She was sweating
and feeling faint. At one o'clock she forced herself to lay aside the clinical studies and prepare for bed. She took a sedative because otherwise she'd never sleep with so many questions and suspicions rampaging through her brain.

In bed, as she tried to compose herself, she planned the next day. In the morning she had a four-hour anatomy lab, and after that she would put on her white T-shirt and trousers and go to work, as she did each Saturday. But this time instead of looking forward to massaging the handsome Prime Minister, who came daily for rejuvenation, she planned how to slip into the doctor's office. She must learn more about this MK-U
LTRA
.

Unnoticed by the noisy students on the street in front of Chantelle Joyeaux's rooms on the rue de la Harpe, a man of medium height and weight, his body hidden in the dark shadows of a recessed doorway, stared up at her windows. When her lights went out, he left to make a phone call. He walked stiffly, his face constantly in shadows.

“Good work,
compadre
,” his chief told him. “Think you can get a copy of the clinical reports?”

He returned to continue his vigil another two hours. When at last the streets emptied, he limped up the stairs to her door and listened. He moved with quiet deliberation, each footstep an act of planning. He used skeleton keys to enter, listened to her breathing in the bedroom, and then saw the papers on the desk. Using infrared light, he scanned enough to know they were what he was seeking. He photographed them, then left as silently as he'd entered. He disappeared with ease into the narrow streets of the ancient city.

Chapter 32

About ten o'clock that night in Virginia, Hughes and Bunny Bremner sat in their leather-lined den, apparently watching a new film by Bunny's nephew, the producer. Bunny was engrossed in her usual Scotch on the rocks, the sixth since cocktail hour, and Hughes had more to worry about than a drunken wife and some stupid goddamn film.

He stretched the tension from his arms under his Chinese silk lounging coat and continued to read Sid Williams's report on Lucas Maynard and Leslee Pousho. Maynard was dead, and his documents safely shredded. That was the good part. The girl friend was another matter. By the time Sid and his men had traced her license plate to her apartment in Arlington, all they'd found was an empty safe under the bed.

But she'd clearly been there not long before, since a cigarette stub still smoldered in an ashtray. Why had she risked returning after Maynard's death?

Sid had found the answer—a single Xeroxed page from a secret Sterling-O'Keefe report with that morning's time stamp. It must have fallen out of what she was carrying, and she hadn't seen it. A journalist's reflex: Always date your source material. The bitch had copied Maynard's documents.

One of Sid's men still watched outside, a female operative was staked out at the
Washington Independent
, and Sid himself led a team combing Washington, Virginia, and Maryland. They'd entered Pousho's name and driver's license into the
Langley computer, the interstate police bank, and Sterling-O'Keefe's private corporate network. With luck she'd do them the favor of renting a car from their company, Gold Star. That way they'd have both her business and her corpse. One way or the other, they would eliminate her and the documents.

Bremner glanced over at Bunny, calming his mind as he reflected that, after all these wretched years, he could at last sit with her in their den, the picture of matrimonial harmony.

Once he'd wanted her money. The Bremners' wealth had been only a memory by the time he'd been born. Once the thought of his being evicted from this fifty-room mansion had seemed the end of the world. His family had owned it for nearly a century before hers. Once he'd believed marriage and time would win her over and she would tear up the prenuptial agreement that doomed him to a life of relative poverty after her death.

They'd had no children, and Bunny had willed everything to her nephews and nieces. Nothing had softened her. She was still connected at the hip to her money, her father's daughter.

When he'd complained and she'd still loved him, she'd made good-natured vows. “Next year, sugar. When Grandfather's estate is settled.” But when next year had come, she'd said, “I'll talk to my accountants. Promise.” She never had.

When she'd at last begun to hate him, she'd waved his bills in his face: “You spendthrift! I've given you plenty. Why should I keep supporting you when you put me through such hell?”

“Because, dear Bunny, you need our hell as much as I do.”

Such clarity had given him an odd sort of peace. The half-billion hidden in tax havens in Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands gave him even more. Now G
RANDEUR
would give him everything.

He rubbed his eyes and felt the sharpness of his cheekbones against the heels of his hands. He was tired. When he was tired, his resemblance to his blackbirding ancestor increased—the hollowed cheeks, the thin, prominent nose, the chilly gaze. He leaned back and let his eyelids droop.

Until he was suddenly aware of Bunny watching him. His eyes snapped open. Her pink pig eyes stared from her fat face with hatred so open he saw the vulnerability behind it.

“Close your mouth, Bunny. You'll drool.”

“You bastard. What're you hidin'?”

He chuckled. “Amazing your brain works at all. Alas, I hate to disappoint you, but I'm not ‘hiding' anything. I do appreciate the vote of confidence though. Perhaps it will motivate me.”

“Asshole.” She drank long and deep.

The phone rang. It would be for him. Bunny's few remaining friends knew not to call after cocktail hour. He picked it up.

“Sorry, sir.” It was Gordon Taite in Denver, cool and professional as always. “Flores and Walker got away again.”

Inwardly Bremner groaned. “What happened?”

Gordon reported quickly and succinctly. Then, “The team found us five hours later in the shed. We traced Asher and the woman to a catering company. An employee told us the manager drove them away. They must've boarded one of the jets, but we don't know which. Thirty-six were loaded while we were tied up, and we can't ask the manager because he's missing.”

“Continue.” Where in hell had Walker and Flores gone?

“The homer we had planted in Flores's rental car led us to a forger. They had passports made, so they must have taken some international flight. We've got the artist. She told us the cover names they're using.”

“That had to have cost cash. Where'd they get it?”

“Flores tapped one of our emergency slush funds.”

“Impossible. I cut him off. Whose number did he use?”

A brief silence. “Mine, sir.”

Bremner swore inside, but his voice was calm as he asked his next question. “The woman stole it from you?”

“She must have, sir.”

He sighed and considered what Flores had discovered in the Langley computer base. That's when he knew. He didn't want to know, but he knew. The pair had to have gone after the truth about the Carnivore and Liz Sansborough.

“All right, it's got to be Paris,” he told Gordon. “I'll notify
our people to cover De Gaulle International, but I doubt that will do it. Flores will have some other way to get into the city. You'll need a jet to go after them. Arrange it.”

“Yessir.” Gordon hesitated. The silence stretched. “She knows she's Sarah Walker.”

“Jesus Christ!” This time, Bremner couldn't stop the curse. For M
ASQUERADE
to work . . . for the Carnivore to be eliminated . . . for Sterling-O'Keefe to be saved . . . and—most especially—for G
RANDEUR
to succeed, she had to believe she was Liz Sansborough!

Bunny turned in her stupor to stare at him. He seldom swore in front of her, and he knew his face was blotched with anger. He composed himself as his mind fought panic.

He lowered his voice. “How?”

“Hughes, she must've fooled me. She could've stopped taking her pills. I know she wanted to.”

Bremner said, “That's why she kept snooping in personnel. Okay, I'll talk to the doctor to see what else he's got in that lab. Now you've got a real job: Get her back alive, quickly!”

Gordon's voice was low and furiously controlled. “I will, Hughes. Believe me, I will.”

“I'm going to authorize a new access code for you. Call the section in fifteen minutes.” Bremner hung up and dialed his personal shift operator at the computer center. He described Asher's use of Gordon's code. “Keep both codes open. I want to know if either is used anywhere—bank accounts, slush funds, whatever. Be sure to let him in so we can trace where he's accessing from. Also, input his credit cards.”