Murder in Belleville (23 page)

T
ENSE AND WARY
, A
IMEE
stood on the Metro platform as the train blared its arrival. She heard the wheels clacking, smelled the burning rubber. She held her leftover newspaper over her face. Neither Dede nor the
mecs
had spotted her yet. But when the platform emptied, she was afraid.

She realized what she had to do.

As she broke the red glass door on the emergency box with her miniscrewdriver, she screamed, “My baby fell on the tracks,” and yanked the switch. Every face turned toward the electric line—the train’s brakes screeched and whined, shuddering to a painful, jolting stop. Passengers were thrown against the windows.

The platform passengers looked around, asking, “Where’s the baby?” Over the loudspeaker came a recorded message, “Standard procedure allows no train to proceed without Metro personnel clearing the track.”

The anxious buzz turned into a disgruntled murmur. She wanted to melt into the crowd. Dede and the
mecs
trolled the platform, bumping into people taking a good look before excusing themselves. She turned to the men standing near her, in suits, with briefcases and newspapers under their arms. She picked the one with the nicest eyes, wearing a large trenchcoat.

“Pretending you don’t remember me?” she said, sliding into the folds of the man’s coat and wrapping her arms around him. He wasn’t bad looking on closer inspection. And he smelled nice, as if he’d just showered with lavender-olive soap. She put her finger to his lips.
“Shh,
it’s our secret.”

“Do I know you?” the man asked, a look of happy surprise struggling with suspicion on his face.

“Don’t be coy,” she said. “I’ve never forgotten.” She pulled his head down, shielding herself from view and started kissing him. She kept her eyes open, scanning the platform. Another of Dede’s
mecs
had stopped by her elbow.

“You’re even better than I remember,” she breathed into the man’s ear, pulling his arms around her, and guiding him back into the tiled Metro wall. She saw the wedding band on his finger. “Let me enjoy it once more: Your wife will never know.”

“You know, you’ve got the wrong person …,” he murmured. But he didn’t pull away.

She pulled him tighter, edging toward the exit stairs, “I’ve heard that before. Play along with me, okay?”

His eyes crinkled in amusement. “Who said anything about stopping?”

“I’m going to slip away,” she said, walking backwards up the stairs. “Merci for your help.”

“Anytime,” he grinned, digging in his pocket for a business card.

But she’d gone.

T
WENTY MINUTES
later Aimee slammed her office door.

Startled, Rene dropped the book he was reading.

“You just missed Claude,” he said, shaking his head. “That man has unsettling eyes.”

She picked Rene’s book up off the floor. “Reading again?” she asked, looking at the title,
Life with Picasso,
by Francoise Gilot.

“Picasso appeared and disappeared in her life,” Rene said. “A stormy relationship.”

Aimee gave a wry smile.

“Like Yves,” she nodded. “Too bad he’s not around long enough for the stormy.”

She threw off her wet clothes and kicked the radiator to life. In the armoire she found wool tights, black skirt, ankle boots, and a striped silver ski parka to wear over a black sweater.

Back in the office she opened her bag, thrust some disks into Rene’s hand, and pulled out her laptop. Logging on, she glanced at the clock.

“Let’s get to work,” she said. “We may not have much time.”

“Are we catching a plane?”

“Dede’s getting a little too close for comfort,” she said. She told him about the men watching her apartment and the Metro.

Rene climbed into his orthopedic chair, then logged onto his terminal. Aimee’s phone started beeping.

“Let me give you a proper battery, Aimee,” he said, handing her a new one. “Try that.”

“My phone has been messed up,” she said. “My watch, too. Ever since the EDF.”

He set the battery on her desk.

“Right now,” she said, “I want to know why Sylvie dealt with Dede.”

“Figure this. If Dede knows everybody in Belleville,” Rene said, “he might be the one people use to reach the
Maghrebin
network.”

“Good point,” she said. “But first we’ve got some bank tunneling to do.”

By the time she’d checked the links from Sylvie’s Channel Island bank, she’d found the money transfers.

“Look Rene, the deposits come from the Bank of Algiers,” she said, excited. “Several million each time.”

Rene pulled up the Bank of Algiers account on his screen then clicked away. “I found them,” he pointed. “Here, wire trans-fers come from AINwar Enterprises.”

Aimee peered at his screen, seeing a long list of wire transfers. She sat back down; something familiar tugged at her.

“Why would AINwar Enterprises pass amounts via the Bank of Algiers to a Channel Island account in Eugenie Grandet’s name,” Aimee said. She swiveled her chair to the office terminal and logged on.

“Smells bad to me,” Rene said.

“Guess it’s time to find out about AINwar.”

After she dug into an Arab net server, she’d discovered the company’s charter and by-laws of incorporation, required by the French government for any contract.

Nothing illegal in that.

Then it hit her. The night of the explosion. Philippe introduced her to Kaseem Nwar. Kaseem had been with Olivier Guit-tard, both intent on Philippe’s passing some project and humanitarian mission. She remembered Philippe’s strained reaction and how he got her out of there quickly. Then she’d seen him again in the cafe in Belleville. Was Kaseem Nwar part of AINwar?

She accessed the company records; Downloading took time.

Aimee thought back to those photos of people with numbers pinned to them. All Algerian.

Curious, on her office computer she started accessing information about AINwar while Rene concentrated on Philippe de Froissart’s account. She kept digging for the company structure, list of shareholders and employees. When she found them, she stood up and whistled.

“Kaseem Nwar’s the director,” she said. “Appears he’s into nepotism.”

“Why?”

“Most of the employees and shareholders are Nwars, too.”

“What kind of firm?” Rene asked. “Heavy machinery or something to do with oil?”

She shook her head.

“Jewelry importer,” she said. Odd. “How does
that fit with a
project in connection with humanitarian aid?”

“Pearls for the masses?”

“That’s it, Rene,” she said, grabbing his arm excitedly. “Pearls! The Lake Biwa pearl. I keep saying you’re a genius. And you are.”

He grinned. “I’m never one to refuse a compliment, but where does that fit?”

“I don’t know yet, but I’m getting there,” she said, unable to sit down. She paced back and forth.

It was all there. Somehow. She had to piece it together. Figure out where the odd bits went. One big piece was Mustafa Hamid and the AFL; she felt they were part of it. In some way they belonged.

“AINwar sent huge sums to Sylvie,” she said. “Why? Were they bribes for Philippe so contracts went AINwar’s way?”

“But a jewelry business?” Rene” asked. “Unless AINwar fronts another kind of company?”

She sat back down and searched AINwar’s records. Two firms were listed as subsidiaries; NadraCo and AtraAl Inc.

But she could find nothing more.

Rene couldn’t break into the Banque de France. They were blocked at every turn.

He stood up and stretched.

“Aimee, if the bribes came in, they’re hidden,” Rene said, sucking air through his lips. “Takes time to unearth them. All my tools sit in my database at home.”

Rene left, promising to call her when he found anything.

Frustrated, she knew more information existed. How to find it was the problem.

Start simple. Go with what she knew.

She logged on to the Ministry of Defense. Using a secure government password, one of many Rene kept current, courtesy of his ever-changing connections, she found a list of ministry-funded projects. Then she refined her search to projects under funding consideration.

Hundreds.

She took a breath and narrowed her topic to those involving Algeria. The list slimmed down considerably. While the list printed out, she sat down at Rene’s desk.

On his terminal she accessed the National
Fichier
via Renews connection, because if the government didn’t catch you when you were born, they always caught up when you checked out.

She knew that Algeria, at the time of Mustafa Hamid and his brother Sidi’s birth, was regarded by France as more than a colony. Even more than an extension of France across the Mediterranean—a department. However, this wasn’t reckoned with in actual voting terms. Unable to vote, Algerians belonged to the Republique like a member of the wedding but never the bride.

If Hamid or Sidi emigrated to France, she figured, they would probably have paid some application fee, surcharge, or tax.

In Hamid’s case she found his
carte banccdre
via his date of birth and S
ecurite sociale.
No names were listed as next of kin, only a Sidi, H., as father, and Sidi, S., for mother, both entered as deceased. She entered Djeloul Sidi’s name. His wife’s maiden name, El Hechiri, appeared.

Aimee’s eyes widened as she saw a cross reference to Kaseem Nwar. That seemed odd.

Further on, records indicated that El Hechiri had been married to Kaseem Nwar from 1968 to 1979. Aimee peered closer, then scrolled back. Sidi’s records showed he’d been married to El Hechiri during 1968-1979, the same years.

Aimee sat back and whistled. He’d changed his name, and the computer hadn’t caught it—just cross-referenced it.

She remembered him appearing in the cafe, telling her how he’d brought food to the
sans-papiers
—why hadn’t he just said, “I saw my brother.”

Come to think of it, why hadn’t he admitted he sent Sylvie millions of francs and Lake Biwa pearls? But then she hadn’t asked him, either.

She scanned the Algerian project list, running her fingers over the names, ticking them off until she found a name that struck her.

Taking the list to her wall map of Algeria, she followed the course of the Atlas Mountains and pinpointed the area south of Oran. Once a rebel
fellagha
stronghold against the French, the area had then become a munitions-dump wasteland, now declared off limits by the military.

Staggered, she sat down. It was hard for her to believe what she’d discovered.

She knew what she had to do.

Her charged phone signaled several voice mail messages. She tried not to hope, wondering if Yves had left her a message. But when she listened, all three were from the same person.

“Aimee,” Samia’s voice, high, shallow-breathing. “Pick up!”

Again the same message. Samia’s voice rising, sounding frantic.

The last message just a phone number, mumbled quickly. Samia. Very frightened.

Aimee listened to the number several times to make sure she’d written it correctly. Had Samia come through with the explosives connection? And should she believe her? The last time she had, Aimee had been shot.

Aimee hit the call-back function. A woman answered, saying this was a pay phone in rue des Amandiers, but if Aimee would like to buy Ecstasy she’d give her a good price.

She hung up and dialed the number Samia had left.

“Oui,”
a voice answered after six rings.

“Samia gave me this number,” she said, keeping it vague.

A pause. “Who is this?”

“Aimee. Is Samia there?”

Another long pause. “I expected her by now.”

“I’d like to come over.”

“Call back.”

The phone went dead.

No one answered on her next three tries.

Had Samia given her the number to the explosives? She recognized the phone number. In her bag she checked the folder—”Youssef’ was written above the matching phone number. Her heart raced. And she remembered Denet’s words. On her minitel she searched under EuroPhoto. She found the same number with an address for a lab on rue de Menilmontant. So now she knew that they connected.

She redialed the number. The same voice answered.

“Please don’t hang up, listen to me,” she said. “I think you have something I want to see.”

“Who are you?” the voice said.

“I found your name in the ‘ST 196’folder,” she said. “Did you take the photos?”

The phone slammed down.

She stuck the Beretta in her waistband, pulled on her gloves and long wool scarf.

In the hallway she climbed down the back fire escape and made her way to the Metro.

E
URO
P
HOTO’S GRIMY
lab entrance stood in the rear of a courtyard filled with trucks and vans.

Inside Aimee leaned on the Formica counter. She smelled the acidic photographic chemicals and heard the chomp of print machines. On the office walls hung huge photos of white marble mosques and shots of sugar-sand beaches with sapphire slivers of the Mediterranean.

Through an open grime-stained window, Aimee noticed a company van pulling into the courtyard.

“Dropping an order off?” asked a smiling dark-eyed young woman, her head covered by a scarf. From behind the counter she passed an order form toward Aimee.

Aimee returned her smile.

“Actually I need to talk with Youssef about some processing,” she said. “Does he have a moment?”

She backed up, shaking her head. “There’s no Youssef here.”

“But I talked with someone—”

“Orders come in all the time,” the woman said, turning away. “You must have misunderstood.”

This woman was scared, Aimee thought, hiding something.

“Yes, of course, you’re right,” she said, thinking fast, “I’m terrible with names. A man helped me, he seemed about my age. He limped.”

Loud buzzing erupted from the back of the lab. Lights blinked green. “You’re in the wrong lab, I think,” the woman said, gesturing toward the rear. “Try the one on rue de Belleville.”