The Grave Gourmet (15 page)

E
arly the next Saturday morning Capucine bundled a very testy Alexandre into the Clio for the forty-five-minute ride to the town of Versailles to attend the baptism of one of her cousins' first child.

“I don't understand why anyone would choose to live in Versailles,” Alexandre whined, “and if they absolutely must, why do they find it necessary to baptize their scrofulous little urchins at the crack of dawn?”

“They live in Versailles because Marie-Chantal is a bit of a snob and Aurélien doesn't make very much money in his job selling insurance. It's less expensive than Paris and Marie-Chantal feels it's just as chic as the Sixteenth Arrondissement. And I hardly think eleven o'clock counts as the crack of dawn.”

Capucine was enchanted with the church, a small but delightfully proportioned example of early French baroque architecture complete with an inverted-bowl cupola, delicately carved oak paneling, and a lavishly gilded baptismal font. To her utter amazement Cousin Jacques was standing by the basin, proprietarily resplendent in a Prince of Wales check suit, clearly unwilling to relinquish any of the godparental limelight as he unabashedly upstaged the horse-faced godmother. Dimly Capucine recalled that Jacques had been at boarding school with Aurélien but she had had no idea the unlikely friendship had survived into adulthood.

As tiny Marie-Aymone's head was dipped in the chilly holy water, she burst into muted wails that politely ceased the instant Jacques wrapped her in a white lace baptismal shawl that had been in the family for generations. Capucine's throat caught and her eyes misted as she realized that she had been baptized in the selfsame shawl. Biting her lip was no help at all, and she was forced to conjure up an image of Rivière smirking disdainfully at her before she could regain her tough-girl flic's demeanor.

After the ceremony, the forty or so guests were gently herded into the enclosed garden of Marie-Chantal and Loïc's small stone house. Over the phone Marie-Chantal had explained to Capucine with a titter that the house—which she insisted had been built by one of Louis the XIV's foremen during the construction of the château—was just too bijou for so many guests and so they were going to have a garden party even though the garden, so sadly, was hardly at its summer best. A small table placed in a corner held two crested silver dishes that offered a meager pile of finger sandwiches, and a rococo silver wine cooler abstemiously proffered four bottles of champagne.

Alexandre was aghast. “Here I am, hauled all the way out to the very marchland of French culture and when I arrive it turns out I'm to be denied even basic human sustenance.” With alarm Capucine recognized this as the preamble to one of Alexandre's lectures and could easily imagine him searching out the priest to make wittily acerbic comments about Jesus' self-proliferating loaves and fishes for the multitude. Still, she fully shared his dismay. Two or three miniscule sandwiches and a few sips of champagne did seem well beyond parsimonious under the circumstances, particularly as her stomach was beginning to growl.

From behind Capucine heard a familiar mocking voice directed at Alexandre. “Fear not, dear cousin. I took the liberty of booking a table for the three of us at a lovely restaurant with a charming view of the chateau's famed royal vegetable gardens. Since this little hostelry sports a Michelin star, your day may yet be saved,” Jacques said.

Capucine cringed again. Alexandre had always been—completely foolishly, of course—a little jealous of Jacques, but, to her surprise, Alexandre warmly grasped Jacques' hand and, without even a trace of irony, said, “Cousin, you are a ray of sunshine in my bleak day.”

“Well, then,” said Jacques, “let's not stand on the order of our going; let's just get rolling. If I hear one more iteration of ‘Jaaaaaques' in that god-awful Neuilly-Auteuil-Passy lockjaw or have to kiss one more wrinkled, geriatric hand I may find myself teaching this branch of the family a few words they don't know,” Jacques said, leaning back languidly against an ancient wooden door in the stone wall, which gave way under his weight with a loud cinematic creak. The three slipped out and made for the Clio.

The Relais du Potager du Roi's long suit was its panoramic view of the royal kitchen gardens, which had been painstakingly restored to the original ornate checkerboard and populated with fruits and vegetables guaranteed to be identical to those present in Louis XV's day. Happily, despite the restaurant's pronounced vegetarian bent, in deference to the French veneration of protein, game held pride of place on the menu. Capucine opted for partridge, Jacques for pheasant, and Alexandre for French grouse, which he delightedly explained was now almost impossible to find.

By the time the birds were nearly consumed—the shot delicately removed from mouths and placed on the sides of plates with a satisfying little ping—and a second bottle of Nuits-Saint-Georges was uncorked, Capucine felt the day might turn out to be a success after all.

Jacques put his hand under the table and squeezed Capucine's leg just above the knee. Alexandre's face tightened.

“So, cousin,” Jacques asked with a knowing smile, “how goes your famous case? I read your report on the Trag agent who was impersonating one of our people. What a jolly time you must have had catching him.”

“All in a day's work,” Capucine said, removing Jacques' hand. “Actually, we have a suspect, but I can't make myself believe he had anything to do with the murder. Other than that, I'm dry.”

Jacques produced his little Cheshire grin and put his hand back on Capucine's leg. “I would have thought you'd be up to your eyeballs in international intrigue by now.”

The bubble of Capucine's contentment burst. “Jacques, are you keeping something back from me? Tell me right now!”

Jacques giggled and pinched Capucine's kneecap, making her squirm and Alexandre frown. “Little cousin, you love to think I'm hiding secrets from you. I think it's because your id is begging you to offer me sexual favors for them.” Capucine was obliged to calm Alexandre with one of her most severe looks.

“Actually,” Jacques continued, “there are no secrets, just pure logic. Didn't you ever ask yourself how Trag just happened to know about Project Typhon?”

“Of course. It seems they just guessed Renault would be working on improving gas mileage and used Delage's death as an opportunity to plant a spy.”

“That's exactly what they did. But you never stopped to think there might be other Trags at work, did you?”

“There can't possibly be other firms like Trag, can there?”

“Good Lord, there are any number of private firms, most much smaller, of course. And then there are all the national intelligence services who can be even better than Trag and twice as unscrupulous even though their employees earn far less. I'm willing to bet Renault is like a big steaming cow pie alive with industrious little beetles tunneling in and out.”

“But Typhon is top secret. How could it attract that many people?”

“Project Typhon may be a secret but the fact that Renault is working on gas catalysis is an obvious truism. You see, technological leaps invariably turn out to be a race between a number of competitors and Renault is such a strong technical player it will obviously be in the race.”

“I don't get it,” Capucine said.

“I see his point,” Alexandre said. “Let me try to explain. When most major scientific and technological discoveries are made it always seems that any number of different people in different places are working on exactly the same thing at the same time. For example, we like to think that only Santos Dumont and the Wright brothers had a monopoly on cooking up the airplane. But no one ever talks about Karl Jatho or Traian Vuia or Jacob Elle-hammer, who all flew airplanes in different countries at about the same time. The point is that when technology is ready to pop, it pops all over the place like ripe pieces of fruit dropping off a tree.”

“I still don't get it,” Capucine said.

“Look, cousine, it's the same thing with this gasoline catalyst,” Jacques said, “people are working on it all over the world. It's ready to drop off the tree, as dear cousin Alexandre says. Its time has come.”

“And what does all this theorizing about the nature of technological discovery have to do with the case?” Capucine asked.

“Remember my cow-dung heap?”

“How could I forget? Such a charming metaphor to use at lunch.”

“You see, it's not just the number of beetles crawling in and out, it's the fact that there are different kinds.”

“I suspected the metaphor would get even more delightful. Let's hear it.”

“Industrial spies come in two basic types: moles and hackers. Moles look like trusted employees and spirit information out. Hackers burrow in from the outside and bleed information out of your computer systems. You were confronted with such a rare type it's almost never seen: a scam artist. They're so unusual you should have pickled the one you caught in formaldehyde and put him on your desk.”

“That's exactly what Commissaire Principal Tallon wanted to do.”

Capucine removed Jacques' hand from her leg and placed it firmly on the table with a loud thunk. “It took a while, but the penny finally dropped.”

A
t ten the next morning—heeding her mother's dictum that it was not proper to make phone calls before ten in the morning or after nine in the evening—Capucine called Florian Guyon to announce she would be stopping by his apartment that evening to ask him some questions. Guyon sputtered, both at the early hour of the call and at the Sunday invasion of his home, but finally agreed to see her.

He received her with a coolness that verged on ill grace and led her almost reluctantly to the living room. Capucine suppressed a grimace. The entire space—walls, floor, and ceiling—had been painted in the same stark, relentlessly gleaming, high-gloss institutional white that looked like it had come from a hospital supply outlet. A monstrous kinetic sculpture dominated the room, looming from a towering white pedestal. It had countless shiny stainless-steel parts that plunged, rotated, swiveled back and forth, and spun hypnotically within other parts, clanking and clattering noisily as if the machine had been carelessly assembled and was about to come apart.

“I didn't think there were any Kanamgires outside of museums,” Capucine said over the din. “I understand he's very particular where his work goes.”

“I wouldn't have thought a police officer would recognize his work,” Guyon replied with obvious delight. “I knew him when we were students. I was very fortunate that he allowed me to purchase one of his earlier pieces. The motion is precisely ordered by a tiny computer hidden inside. It is both unstoppable and unfathomable. That is its message. It's an inspiration to me.”

“You're lucky to have it, Monsieur Guyon. Sit down. We need to talk.” Capucine noticed she had raised her voice in an unthinking shout the way she did when speaking into a cell phone with a bad connection.

“I trust the subject is important enough to merit the invasion of my home in this manner,” Guyon said. The tone was such that he could just as easily have been attempting levity or showing bad temper.

“Monsieur Guyon,” Capucine said loudly over the background noise of the sculpture, “when we last spoke you told me that you found it natural that the DGSE send an agent to interview you and inspect Project Typhon. I had the impression that you were almost expecting someone from the DGSE. Why was that? Had you asked for assistance?”

“Madame, as I recall telling you at the time, Project Typhon is of national interest. It was entirely natural that the DGSE would have sought to investigate that security was up to the required level.”

Capucine smiled a complicit little smile at him. “So, I was mistaken. The visit just came out of the blue?”

“Where are you attempting to go with this line of questioning?” Guyon asked, even more loudly than the level of background noise required.

“Oh, it's nothing complicated. It just struck me that something out of the ordinary might have happened and I was trying to figure out if the DGSE had been alerted.”

“In fact, it is true that there had been mild concern that some sort of leak might have occurred. Personally, I was quite sure there was no danger at all, but, of course, it never hurts to be too careful.”

“So you did call the DGSE?”

“Of course not. It came up in a routine meeting with Président Delage. He became unreasonably alarmed. Later I assumed he had taken it upon himself to contact the authorities even though I told him it was entirely unnecessary.”

“And what was it that aroused your suspicions of a leak?”

“It was nothing. I was at a conference in Seoul and a rumor was going around that could have led one to believe, if one were in the right frame of mind, that someone had some knowledge of the substance of Project Typhon. It was foolish, really.”

“Have there been other indications of breaches of security?”

“Of course not, madame. Who do you think you're dealing with? Project Typhon has the most sophisticated security system of any industrial project in France. No one can enter any of the Project Typhon sites without an extremely high-tech security badge that is impossible to forge. On top of that employees are screened when they come to work and when they leave. They go through a metal detector and have their briefcases and handbags run through an X-ray machine to see if they have cameras or any other means of secreting data. Naturally, they are not allowed to take laptop computers in or out of the building. No, the system is completely foolproof. That's why I'm sure there were no leaks. Utterly impossible.”

“That sounds impressive.”

“It's as impressive as it is unnecessary. Don't forget that our staff are real engineers. Professionals. All handpicked by me. I would know instantly if there was a fake, a mole as they call it. He or she would be detected immediately.”

“When you say everyone goes through the security check twice a day, do you really mean everyone?”

“Of course! No one at all is exempted.”

“Absolutely no one?”

“Of course not. Obviously, the président didn't have to go through, nor do I. That would be unthinkable.”

“And what about the président's and your staffs?”

“My secretary certainly doesn't go through security checks, nor does Président Delage's. They have our complete trust. But just to show you how strict we are, the acting president has to go through,” Guyon said with a vindictive little smile.

“So in fact there are still at least three people who are completely free to take whatever data they want from the Typhon sites. It's a good thing that ‘Etienne' turned out to be a fraud. A real DGSE agent would have given you a scathing report. There would have been hell to pay.”

“What do you mean?” Guyon said angrily.

“It looks like there have been at least two breaches of security. Who or whatever it was that fed the rumor at Seoul and the Trag operative, who was not only given a grand tour of the installation but had a free lunch thrown in as well.”

“How did you know about the lunch?” Guyon's gestures had become jerky and he was no longer able to look Capucine in the eye. “Oh, yes, it had to be that imbecile Vaillant. He's left the company, of course.”

“Are you sure he didn't take a briefcase full of data when he went?”

Guyon glowered. “Madame, I find these insinuations insulting. My security measures—Renault's security measures—are none of your business. I admitted a DGSE agent to the company on the assumption that it was at my president's behest. No problem there that I can see. Also, there were rumors at an industry convention. I'm sure there are even rumors at police conventions if you have such things.”

“Monsieur Guyon, I beg your pardon. I thought you said the président had merely expressed concern about Seoul. Now it seems he actually ordered you to contact the DGSE.”

“Madam,” Guyon said through clenched teeth, “I said nothing of the kind. These kangaroo court attempts to put words in my mouth are as laughable as they are offensive. I have no more patience for this interview. And you have no right to be here without my invitation. I must ask you to leave immediately.”

Capucine basked in the feeling of peace when the door closed behind her. It was just as satisfying as the sudden quiet when she turned the vacuum cleaner off.