The Flinck Connection (Book 4) (Genevieve Lenard) (17 page)

“But how would you know if you’ve never tried any of it, handsome?” Francine winked at Manny, her lips pouting.

“And how would you know that I haven’t tried any of it, supermodel?”

“Kabam!” Vinnie burst out laughing. “The old man got you good, girl. He got you good.”

“Oh, shut up.” Francine threw a pen at Vinnie and turned back to Manny. “You have me very curious now.”

“And so you shall remain.”

“Jenny, you said earlier that you wanted to get to the first clip.” Colin’s change of topic was most welcome. “Why?”

“I suspect that if the first clip is indeed the very first video that was recorded, it might give us some clues about that mysterious man. It is just a suspicion that I would like to confirm by finishing the other two and watching the first one.” I got up and took the CD’s from Manny. “I will return to Minister Savreux’s recordings now. When I’m done, I’ll go through these.”

Twelve minutes later, I reached the last clip. The preceding two had been of politicians I’d held in high regard. I was aware that public figures worked hard at the image they presented. Even though, I found myself quite disillusioned. Francine’s mindset of extreme cynicism was becoming an easy trap to fall into.

“May I join you?” Colin dragged his chair closer and sat down.

“That was a rhetorical question, right?”

He had never asked permission before, and he was already seated. His answer to my question was a genuine smile. He was in a good mood and I was certain it was because of the art in the conference room. “Have you watched the last video yet? Or is it the first?”

“It is last on the list, but was first to be recorded. I was just about to start watching it.”

“Good. I’m very interested to know what’s going to come from it.”

“I would’ve thought you would rather be in the conference room.”

“Millard is beginning to annoy me. I’ll wait until he’s no longer there to pollute all that beauty with his presence.”

I was very proud of myself for being able to refrain from commenting. My control was not absolute though and I knew if I opened my mouth, those words might slip out. So I pressed my lips tightly together and turned my attention to the footage. I clicked on the play button and picked up my pencil to take notes.

Minister Savreux was sitting on the sofa, a tall black man on the sex sofa. This was one of the few clips that didn’t start before anyone entered the room. As in the other clips, nothing in the room had changed, the Flinck hanging above the mantelpiece. Both men held whiskey glasses in their hands, not drinking.

“I’m reaching my limits, Savreux.” The African man spoke French, but had an accent—the type of accent found in African countries with French history. “My country is getting out of control.
She
is getting out of control.”

“What do you mean, Paul?”

I wrote the name on my notepad.

“Do you know who that is?” Colin asked.

“No.”

“Hmm. Paul is a very common name, but let’s do a quick search in any case.” Colin leaned closer and reached for my keyboard. I put my arm out to prevent him from taking over my workspace, and paused the video.

“I will do it.” I ignored his chuckle and searched for an African politician or leader with Paul as a first name. The search engine gave me over two million hits within one point eight seconds. It was far too generic. Following the preceding evidence in this case, I narrowed the search to Gabonese politicians with Paul as a first name. One point two seconds later, there were more than one million hits. I checked the images and found him in the first row of photos. The image was linked to an article. I clicked on the link and waited for the BBC news article to open.

“Paul Ngondet from Gabon.” Colin whistled softly. “Gabon again. This place is definitely a key player here. We need to know more about it.”

“Later.” I scanned the article, but it merely reported a diplomatic meeting between Paul Ngondet and the British prime minister to discuss aid for Gabon. It did, however, give me a name and a position. Paul Ngondet had been the CEO of a large international company before he was elected as the Minister of Trade and Industry in Gabon. Not only was he a politician, he was a very prominent politician.

I entered his full name in the search engine and one point three seconds later had numerous articles on him, including a Wikipedia page dedicated to this man. I opened a Gabonese government website that had Paul Ngondet’s profile listed.

“So he is a strong opponent to the president of Gabon?” Colin was reading as fast as I was. “He has also been in politics for the last thirty years. How old is this guy?”

I pointed to the date of birth on the monitor. “He is fifty-nine years old. Some politicians remain in public office well past the usual retirement age, which makes him still young.”

“I think you should go to the Wikipedia page.”

“Why? Those articles are notoriously inaccurate.”

“But they have all the good gossip. You can confirm any facts later, but Wikipedia always gives a better place to start from. On this government site, we’re only going to get their PR crap.”

He was right, both about the state website and about Wikipedia. The latter site had improved the quality of their articles, but I was reluctant to believe anything from an open source site. I went back to the search results and a click later,
we were looking at a much more detailed profile of Paul Ngondet.

“Aha!” Colin pointed to the bottom of the monitor. “Look there. See! There it says that he has been actively campaigning against President Mariam Boussombo. He wants Gabon to go back to its roots, not influenced by Western culture with their customs of giving women the right to destroy men’s masculinity. He appears to have quite a following. Hmm.”

I returned to the clip. One click, and Minister Paul Ngondet answered Minister Savreux’s question.

“I mean that she is now insisting on an independent commission to look into alleged corruption. She doesn’t even want to have any control over or connection to this commission. And you know what’s going to happen if this is approved.”

“It’s going to turn into a witch hunt.” Minister Savreux took a sip from his glass. “A lot of countries that went through a regime change established these commissions. South Africa had the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to address wrongs committed during the apartheid regime. Poland has the Institute of National Remembrance investigating crimes committed during the Second World War and the later Communist rule. The one in Poland especially turned into a witch hunt, destroying people.”

“She will destroy us, Savreux. All of us.” Distress was exhibited on Paul Ngondet’s face through the
corrugator supercilii
muscles pulling his eyebrows down and together. “I—we—cannot allow that.”

“What do you propose?” There was caution in Minister Savreux’s tone.

“Something that will benefit all of us.” Paul Ngondet leaned forward. “If she was to, let’s say, dance her last dance, her little group of do-gooders will be lost without her. I hate saying this, but she is a good leader. People like her and like to follow her.”

“Which makes it even more complicated to get her to dance that last dance.”

“My friend, we’ve come a long way.” Paul Ngondet shifted closer to the edge of the sofa. He was reaching out to Minister Savreux, unconsciously revealing his desperation. “You and I were a dynamic team back in the eighties and nineties. We got things done. Not like today where leaders give their uneducated, uncivilised citizens rights to make decisions. We had a long-term vision and could make decisions that would get us there. These little people see nothing but their own hunger and poverty. They don’t know what we know, what we have already forgotten. It kills me to see how she is destroying my country, my traditions.”

They sat in silence for a minute. The view of Minister Savreux was not as clear as of Paul Ngondet. I could only clearly see two thirds of the minister’s face, enough to know he was deceiving Ngondet. Throughout Ngondet’s speech, he had nodded sagely, barely hiding his elation. I waited to find out what he was so happy about.

Savreux coughed lightly into his hand. “I might have a solution.”

“You do? What is it, my friend? Anything you need, I will give you.”

“Let’s hope it will not come to that.” Savreux gently swirled the alcohol around in his glass, taking his time to continue. “There is already a plan in play. A plan I’m part of. And I think there might be a place for you at the table. Of course, I will first have to speak to the other players before I tell you anything more and you have to know from the very beginning that it will cost you.”

“Anything. You know I have endless resources. Money is not an object.”

“Good. Good.” Savreux nodded slowly. “I’ll meet with them post haste and be in contact with you before the end of day tomorrow. You are staying in Strasbourg for some time, no?”

“I’ll be here until my work is done. There is no reason for me to rush back to Gabon.”

They returned to speaking about inconsequential things and three minutes later, Minister Savreux ushered Paul Ngondet out of the room. He came back and sat in one of the chairs. The video continued to play and I wondered what else could have been recorded. Then a slight movement in the right-hand corner of the screen caught my eye. There was a man standing in the door, just outside the camera view.

“Did he fall for it?” This time the voice was not as obscured by a cold and he was speaking too softly to make his voice identifiable, but I was sure it was the same mysterious man from earlier.

“Hook, line and sinker. We’ve got him.”

“Good. We’ve worked hard to get to this point. Make sure you have all the other people set up for this. No mistakes, Claude.”

“There will be no mistakes…” The video cut out.

“No.” My tone was plaintive. The person who had edited this video had cut out his name. Irrationally, I took it back two seconds and played again with the same results. “We still don’t have his name.”

“Who is this guy?”

“He had a cold in the first video. Here he is speaking very softly, but it is the same man. Look here.” I told Colin about my earlier discovery and played the current video from where the mysterious man came to the door. I waited a few seconds before I paused. On another monitor, I opened the other video with him in it and took it to the exact moment the man touched his little finger to his thumb. “This is his anchor.”

“His what?”

I turned my chair to face Colin. “Do you know what NLP is?”

“Neuro-linguistic programming. I know about it.”

“They use a method which can be compared to Pavlov’s theory on conditioning. Anchoring is an external trigger used to access an internal response.” I sighed when I saw Colin’s expression and took a few moments to organise my thoughts. “When dealing with a certain issue, for example impatience, the theory is to reprogram yourself, your thinking, in order to control your response. While in the process of reprogramming, you need to choose an anchor. It is usually a small gesture like touching your ear, or in this case touching his two fingers.

“When practicing your new patience, you would use your anchor every time, reinforcing the new programming. The next time you are faced with a challenging situation in real life, you could use this anchor to trigger the mind programming to control your response or behaviour.”

“So I’m trying to not get angry and I touch my little finger to my thumb and I’m all
zen? This really works?”

“It’s much more complex than this, but yes, the brain is programmable in most cases.”

“Cool.” He looked back at the monitors. “You think Anchor Man studied NLP? Could he be a psychologist?”

“I think no such thing. He could be an executive who read one of the numerous self-help NLP books available on the market.”

“How would that help us find him?”

My shoulders slumped. “It won’t. It could, however, assist in recognising him as a possible suspect if I spoke to him.”

“But you would need to speak to him.”

“That is true.” This clip had given me additional information to process. “What do you think he meant by ‘dancing her last dance’? His nonverbal cues indicated that it wasn’t about dancing at all.”

Colin tilted his head back for a moment, thinking. When he looked at me, I saw concern. “It could be a euphemism for destroying this woman’s career.”

“Or not. I don’t want to speculate.” Earlier I had been so thrilled with this discovery. Now it seemed moot. I reached for the CD’s on my desk.

“No, Jenny. We’re going home.” He looked at his watch. “It’s way past seven and Vinnie’s already left to make dinner. Let’s go home. We can watch these tomorrow.”

It had been a long day and the thought of dinner, a hot bath and an early night sounded good. Tomorrow I would continue to go through the increasing amount of evidence.

“Dude!” Vinnie’s voice boomed through the combined apartments. The urgency in his tone sent adrenaline rushing through my system, destroying the relaxed mindset I’d had when Colin and I had settled into bed after a filling dinner.

Colin jumped out of bed, grabbing the gun from his bedside table. “Stay here.”

As he ran out the door, I heard Vinnie call for Colin again, this time following up with a string of curse words I had never heard him say. I opened my bedside table drawer and took the weapon Vinnie had given me two nights ago. Armed with pepper spray, I carefully followed Colin. I had no desire to become involved in another physical altercation, but Nikki was in my home. Her safety overwhelmed my thoughts to the point of obsession.

“How the fuck did he get in?” This was one of the very few times I ever heard Colin swear. In his tone I heard anger, but nothing else that warned me of an intruder. Instead of turning to Nikki’s room, I walked to Vinnie’s.

“I don’t know, dude. I cleaned up the kitchen, had a shower and didn’t pay attention until I took out clean boxers.” Vinnie looked at me as I entered his bedroom. “Jen-girl.”

Colin swung around and glared at me. “I told you to stay in our room.”

How could I justify my decision to protect Nikki with a little canister filled with a lachrymatory agent? I ignored his question. “What happened?”

“Jenny!” Colin took two long strides until he was in front of me. In my personal space. “I told you to stay in our room. Why didn’t you listen?”

I weakly lifted the pepper spray and closed my eyes. “I know it doesn’t make sense, but I was going to stand in front of Nikki’s room to protect her.”

“Jenny, look at me,” Colin said after a few seconds.

It took a lot of effort for me to open my eyes.

“What do you see?”

“You’re angry. Very angry.”

He shook his head. “What else?”

I took a deep breath and looked past the embarrassment of my ridiculously irrational action. “You’re worried.”

“About you and Nikki.” He lowered his head. “You need to use your analytical brain to prevent yourself from doing things that can put your life in danger, love.”

“I have seven years of self-defence training.”

“And I would like for you to not have to use that. Not in our home.” He sighed heavily and stepped aside for me to see where Vinnie was standing next to his chest of drawers. Dressed only in a large towel wrapped around his hips, he looked ready to enter a battle. The top drawer next to him was pulled half open, but that was not what caught my attention. It was the three clocks arranged on top of the chest of drawers. My three clocks.

It felt like I was falling from an incredible height. Increasing dizziness reminded me to breathe. I looked away from the clocks and blinked a few times, trying very hard to not lose the tenuous grip I had on my control. “Dukwicz was here? In your room?”

“These are your clocks, right?” Vinnie pointed at the three timepieces. “The ones he stole six months ago?”

I nodded.

“How did he get in, Vin?”

“The window.” Vinnie’s lips tightened to thin lines, the scar on his face becoming more prominent as anger affected his skin tone. “Windows are always a weak spot. They are often the easiest to open. The latches are not made for security, but for locking out the wind or cold. We’re up on the top floor, which makes the windows easier to reach from the roof, but also more difficult because access to the roof is not that simple.”

“It was easy enough for you,” I said to Colin. The first few weeks of our acquaintance, he had refused to use my front door, always breaking in.

“I think by now it is safe to say Dukwicz is good at getting into very secure locations.” Colin looked at the windows. “Vin—”

“I’m on it, dude. Tomorrow, I’ll re-secure the windows. They will be as secure as a nuclear bunker. I hate saying this, but that scumbag has to be good to have gotten past the security I’d set up here. I swear, I’m gonna lock it down like Fort frigging Knox.”

“He’s mocking us.” I stepped closer to the clocks. “It’s like a cat playing with its prey. He wants to terrorise us with these clocks. That knowledge will give him great pleasure.”

“It’s not terrorising me, Jen-girl. It’s making me want to fu… It’s making me angry.” He scowled at the clocks. “Do you want these things?”

“No, thank you.” I was shaking my head excessively to make my point. I doubted I would ever be tempted to buy another antique clock.

“Jenny’s right, Vin. He’s laughing at us, proving that he can get to us without even trying.”

“It’s also significant that he chose Vinnie’s room,” I said. “He picked the room of the physically strongest in the house. That way he can really prove his dominance.”

“Dominance, my ass.” Vinnie grabbed a backpack from his closet and threw the clocks in it. I didn’t even cringe at the sound of the valuable pieces breaking. It felt cathartic. Especially when Vinnie flung the zipped backpack into his closet and closed the doors. “I’ll take the night shift. Try to get some sleep. When I sort out these windows tomorrow, you better solve this case and find this asshole.”

After four more minutes, I concluded that nothing worthwhile could be added to our conversation. Vinnie and Colin went from speculation to discussing security, and I decided it was best to return to bed. Knowing that Dukwicz had been in my home made me clutch the pepper spray tightly in my hand as I walked back to my room. I wondered why Nikki didn’t wake up amidst all the noise. It was highly likely that she’d gone to sleep with her headphones on.

That assumption did nothing to assuage my concerns and I gave in to my need to check on her. I opened her door, took a step into her room and squinted against the dark, checking the bed for her sleeping form. Her room was as messy as always, but it didn’t matter. I stared at her sprawled figure on the bed, headphones on her ears,
the light from the hallway revealing the soft expression on her face. A tightness in my chest I didn’t even know had been there loosened up.

“She’s safe, Jenny,” Colin said softly behind me. He kissed the top of my head and pulled me against his chest. “Let’s go to bed. Hopefully we’ll get some sleep.”

It took only a few minutes to settle back into bed. But it took me much longer to still the frantic activity in my mind. In the end, I didn’t sleep well. Or enough. At five o’clock, I gave up attempting to sleep and got ready for the office. Colin woke up when I came out of the shower, but didn’t say anything about me getting dressed. He just smiled and picked up his tablet.

I left him reading, and met Vinnie in the kitchen. He insisted on driving me to the office and I immediately agreed. I didn’t need to be convinced and was actually relieved to sit next to the large man in his freshly cleaned truck. He even walked me into my viewing room. As I got ready to watch the footage from Minister Savreux’s rented preservation room, he left the room, but I didn’t think he left the building.

It empowered me to be working and not agonise over the break-in. I clicked on the first clip and picked up my pen. Forty-seven video clips later, I had nothing. I supposed it wasn’t nothing per se. These videos contained incriminating evidence that could cost people their careers and, for a few, their freedom. Some videos were conversations Minister Savreux had recorded while discussing sensitive business and political negotiations. He had been extremely careful to never say anything that could be used against him in court.

These videos had to have been taken with a camera attached to Minister Savreux’s tie or shirt buttons. It was at a lower angle, sometimes cutting off the top of the other person’s head. But it was enough to use in some way to control that person. Colin’s earlier mention of
guanxi
combined with these videos now made me suspicious that Minister Savreux had achieved his success not through hard work, but by manipulating others through ill-gained information. It was the worst form of
guanxi
in action. This ethical violation was shocking to observe.

A deep disappointment came from my inability to find anything useful or relevant to our case. I also had not found any meeting Minister Savreux had had with Motte. I had hoped to find a recording that might have told me what plan these men were plotting. There had been a worrying malice in how pleased they had looked with themselves. It didn’t bode well.

“Doc?” Nikki’s voice broke into my thoughts. I turned and saw her standing at the door with a tray. “Okay if I bug you? Colin sent me with food.”

I glanced at my clock and saw it was eighteen minutes past ten. I hadn’t heard anyone arrive or work in the team room.

“Come in.” I looked into the tray. “What did you bring?”

“Colin told me to bring coffee, water and snacks.” She put the tray on the desk next to my keyboard. I would move it later.

“So you brought me enough food to feed five people?” The coffee mug and water bottle took up less than a quarter of the large tray. Three ceramic bowls filled the rest of the space, all three overflowing. One with fruit, one with chocolates and one with pastries.

“I knew this would be too much, but I didn’t know what you would prefer, so I thought I’d rather bring too much than too little.” She chose a chocolate and unwrapped it. “I know that I need a lot of energy food when I’m studying.”

“I’m not studying.”

She snorted. “You might as well be. This is such brainiac work that my little brain would fry in the first five minutes. Nah, I’d rather paint or sketch.”

I was unsure how to reply to her statement. Or whether I should reply. Instead I took the coffee and enjoyed the aroma as I brought the mug to my mouth. The coffee was perfect and exactly what I needed. Nikki didn’t seem in a rush to leave, taking another chocolate and unwrapping it.

I searched for an appropriate conversation starter. I didn’t imagine she would be interested in the intriguing political complexities of this case. I chose personal interest. “What are you busy with?”

“I’m helping Tim. We are checking the provenance of some of the art in the conference room. It’s totes cool. Did you know that when the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911, they thought Pablo Picasso was guilty? They like arrested him and everything. They even arrested his friend, some poet, as well. Another fun fact, it took them two years to get the painting back. In that time, more than six reproductions were sold as the original. Isn’t that cool? Oh, and they let Picasso and the poet go quite quickly. Must have been embarrassing to arrest the wrong people.” She smiled and unwrapped another chocolate.

It was good to see her relaxed and enjoying something. When she had come into my life, it had been under a lot of hardship and anxiety. She had a radiant character, an innocence I did not often come across. For me it was a novelty and an uncommon thrill to be a witness to this personality. She continued to tell me about the two paintings she and Tim had been researching, but I wasn’t paying attention to her words. As I often did, I simply enjoyed her zest.

“You’re doing it again.” Her hands were on her hips. “You’re looking at me in that strange way. What did I do now?”

“Nothing, and that is why I am looking at you. It is refreshing to look at someone so open and guileless.”

“Oh.” She frowned. “Okay. I think.”

She was uncomfortable and I didn’t want that. I didn’t know how to change that, so I asked the question that had been in the back of my mind. “Where’s Colin?”

“He’s helping Phillip and Mister Manny solve that big art theft.” Whenever Manny was being particularly difficult or rude, she stopped calling him by his first name.

“He’s helping Manny? Are they arguing?”

“All the time.” She laughed and rested her buttocks on my desk. I bit down on my jaw. I didn’t want most of my communication with Nikki to be telling her what she couldn’t do when she was with me. It was hard. She didn’t notice my distress. “Francine is not really helping, either. She’s pouring fuel on that fire. Why does she tease Mister Manny like that?”

“I don’t know. She seems to enjoy it immensely.”

“Maybe she likes him.”

“Of course she likes him.”

“No. I mean, likes him.” She drew out the ‘like’ and widened her eyes in a meaningful way. I didn’t know what that meaning was.

“Could you please ask her to come here?” I needed her expertise with the Libreville Dignity Foundation’s banking statements. Those files were on display on the other monitors. Since I’d finished with the video clips, I was going to work on the finances next. I’d made some interesting discoveries and I wanted Francine’s input.

Nikki gave me a genuine smile and winked at me before she grabbed three more chocolates and left with a very light step. Meeting Nikki had once made me wonder what it would’ve been like to live a carefree life. The thought of such a lifestyle had sent me into an intense panic. It had taken a full Mozart concerto and an additional étude before I had felt in control again.

I turned to my computer to organise my thoughts. Explaining my reasoning to other people always required forethought and energy. I had just opened another spreadsheet when the jingling of Francine’s bracelets came closer.