The Bonaparte Secret (37 page)

With a little luck, the Hummer and its tracking device would be a mile or so down the road before loss of oil and coolant brought it to a stop.

By that time, she intended to be gone.

Where and how, she was not sure.

She made it back to the shed just before the light from the helicopter swept overhead, the aircraft’s twin-turbine engines roaring malevolently. She watched as the pool of light moved away before going outside to the pickup truck. Rusty hinges complained bitterly as she opened the door and felt for the ignition switch. She was grateful the truck was an older model without the complicated antitheft mechanisms. She was fairly certain she remembered Agency training for how to direct-wire the ignition, bypassing the switch itself. What was it Lang called the procedure? Hot-wiring, that was it. Now if only the battery in this dilapidated scrap heap was working.

There was something else in the training for doing this . . .

Oh! Her instructor had mentioned the surprisingly high percentage of drivers who left the keys in their cars. Perhaps the same was true of pickup trucks.

A quick search found a key on the driver’s sun visor. The owner had taken for granted his vehicle would be safe at a remote spot on his own property.

Gurt leaned over to search the sky, saw nothing and inserted the key in the ignition. Her fears swam to her mind’s surface when the engine whined as it turned over. She took her foot off the gas, fearful of flooding the fuel system.

On the next try, the engine gave a wet cough, whined again and caught.

Gurt reached for the lights and caught herself just in time. Instead, she felt out the manual transmission and eased it into first gear, inching toward the shed.

In less than a minute, Manfred was beside her, Grumps on the floor at his feet.

“You forgot the car seat, Mommy!” the little boy giggled, glad to be free of the restraint. “Vati will be mad if he finds out.”

That’s a bridge I’ll jump off of when I come to it.

“Why aren’t we in the Hummer? Whose truck is this? Did you ask if you could take it? What about our clothes and stuff?”

Gurt searched the night sky. Wherever the chopper had gone, it was out of sight.

“When will we get to the farm?”

Gurt was thinking about the cars she had smashed into. Surely there were others available. But there were a number of crossing highways shortly past where she had taken the dirt road. Did they have enough men and vehicles to cover all possibilities?

“Mommy, will Vati be at the farm?”

And the truck. It would be reported stolen. But with this weather and in the winter, she guessed later rather than sooner. She wondered if the farm’s pond was deep enough to conceal it.

“Mommy, why did we leave the Hummer?”

Manfred, like most small children, tended to ask questions not so much out of curiosity as for attention. For once, Gurt found them comforting. They kept her from thinking about what could have happened.

The Sorbonne

One of the two men in the doorway gestured with his weapon, speaking French to the professor. His harsh tone gave a sharp edge to words Lang did not understand. D’Tasse’s eyes went to the manuscript he had just shown Lang.

The first man saw the glance and stepped forward to reach for it. Whoever these people were, they apparently kept up with articles in
American University & College Review.

D’Tasse snatched the papers up, holding them out of the man’s reach. The academic “duty” he had described included resisting armed robbers? Pompous or not, the little man had guts.

The first man spoke to the second in another language, one Lang thought might be Chinese.

Motioning Lang away from the door, the second man went to help his comrade, obviously thinking Lang presented no clear threat.

That told Lang two things. First, neither was the same man who had tried to firebomb the house in Atlanta. That man would know what Lang looked like from observing before he struck. Second, there had been a real failure to communicate by the People’s Republic. These would-be thieves of academic treasure, if they were even aware of the problems Lang had caused, had not expected him here.

The first man grabbed D’Tasse by the turtleneck, the collar of his overcoat falling away. Lang was not surprised to see he was, in fact, an Asian. So was the other.

As the first man used the hand not holding the gun to drag the diminutive professor across the desk by his shirt, the other tugged on the papers D’Tasse had clinched in his fist. Lang felt powerless. If he attacked either one of the assailants, he or D’Tasse or both were likely to get shot. If he pulled out the Browning, gunfire would follow, with the same result.

Before he could decide on a course of action, the decision was taken out of his hands. With the sound of ripping fabric, D’Tasse’s shirt tore, the inertia of his resistence sending him backward and into the bookcase behind the desk. With a crash, the bookcase slammed forward, showering D’Tasse as well as the other two men in a paper avalanche.

In an instant, the Browning was in Lang’s hand. A single step brought him next to one gunman still struggling to free his feet from the pile of books. Lifting his pistol above his head, Lang brought the barrel down sharply on the gunman’s wrist.

The crunch of shattered bone merged with a howl of pain as the man’s weapon hit the floor and spun across the room.

Lang whirled to face the second man, whose gun was already coming to bear. Lang squeezed off a shot, the sound physically assaulting his ears in the confines of the small office. His target staggered toward the door as a red splotch grew on his light-colored overcoat. His weapon dangled from his hand as though forgotten. Then he turned, raising it. Before Lang could fire a second time, the man’s knees gave way and he sunk to the floor and lay still.

D’Tasse yelled something, pointing. Lang turned just in time to see the other man sprint through the doorway, one hand holding both the smashed wrist of the other and the manuscript. Go after him? What was the point? What would he do even if he caught him? Besides, there was the possibility these two intruders had left backup outside.

“My article!” D’Tasse shrieked. “Do not let him get away with it!”

Lang holstered the Browning. “He only has the English copy. What’s the problem? I doubt he’ll have much luck selling it to
Playboy
.”

“It is my intellectual property,” the professor said huffily. “Allowing it to get into other hands almost guarantees it will be pirated.”

A man is possibly dead, another crippled, a second ago you were staring down the muzzle of a gun and you can only think about a few pages of paper being stolen?

By now, D’Tasse had a cell phone in his hand, talking—no, shouting—into it. It was more than an even bet he had not called a friend to describe his good fortune in still being alive. Lang guessed the police would arrive shortly.

The stinking cordite fumes were bringing tears to Lang’s eyes, a man was bleeding on the floor, the office was a wreck and it was definitely time to take his leave unless he wanted to spend the rest of his time in Paris answering questions in whatever the current version of the Bastille might be. D’Tasse was so intent on yelling into his phone, he did not notice when Lang slipped one of the French copies of the manuscript into a pocket as he shrugged into his coat. Lang cautiously peeked out into what proved to be an empty corridor. The professor was so intent on making sure the police knew what had happened even before their arrival, Lang doubted he even noticed his departure.

On the first floor, Lang proceeded to a door with wc stenciled on it under the standard figure of a man. Inside, he took a stall and removed the Browning from its holster, transferring it to the pocket of his Burberry. If he had to use it, he was not going to have time to remove his overcoat.

He had not gone two blocks before a white police car wailed past, blue light flashing, in the opposite direction, followed only moments later by two more. A half block farther, half a dozen police carrying automatic weapons were walking up the hill, checking out every business as they came. A quick glance told him he was the only pedestrian in sight. Had the professor given a description of him?

Abruptly turning in the opposite direction would attract attention. Lang spied one of those street flower vendors common in European cities in the summer. Where this one had obtained her inventory this time of year was a mystery, perhaps North Africa. But the flowers’ source was not what interested Lang. To the flower seller’s surprise and delight, Lang purchased the first dozen roses he saw, paying full price without the haggling that takes place with those who do business on the streets.

Just as a pair of cops reached him, Lang continued the way he had been going, roses in hand. He drew no more than a cursory glance. A man carrying a handful of flowers along a Paris street was hardly a man escaping from just shooting and possibly killing someone. He was a man on his way home to please his wife. Or more likely at this time of day, his mistress.

24H rue Norvins, Montmartre, Paris
That evening

Lang remembered Patrick’s third-story walk-up flat. On the city’s tallest hill, it was equidistant from Paris’s last vineyard, also on the hillside, and Sacré-Coeur, with its odd, ovoid domes. The church, built in the late nineteenth century with private funds, was visible from nearly anywhere in the city.

Montmartre had been a center for Paris’s artistic community for two hundred years. Géricault and Corot had painted here at the beginning of the nineteenth century. On any day it was not raining, almost every corner had its impromptu gallery displaying everything from copies of old masters to photographically real scenes from the city to contemporary blobs of undecipherable meaning.

Patrick’s wife, Nanette, had chosen the area, Lang suspected, with her husband’s less-than-enthusiastic agreement. An artist herself, she had spent her earlier years here before her talent brought her to the attention of one of France’s largest advertising firms, where she had put her ability to work in a commercially successful if less-inspiring career.

Since French law strictly mandated a thirty-five-hour-maximum workweek and four weeks minimum vacation, she still had ample time to paint, as evidenced by the artwork decorating the walls of the apartment. She embraced Lang at the door, thanked him profusely for the dozen red roses and insisted on opening a bottle of reasonably good champagne in his honor.

Lang watched her pour two flutes. She was almost as tall as Gurt, slender with a face slightly too narrow, a feature emphasized by shoulder-length dark hair that he knew she wore in a chignon with dark business suits for work.

Stem glass in hand, Lang inspected the paintings that covered every available bit of wall space, murmuring appreciation of each. As usual, he silently marveled at the ability of Europeans, particularly those dwelling in large cities, to live in spaces Americans would consider claustrophobic. Two small bedrooms and a single closet of a bath opened off of a living room/dining area of less than three hundred square feet. Standing at the stove, no part of the kitchen was out of reach. Yet Nanette, Patrick and their son, Gulliam, seemed quite comfortable.

Gulliam. The boy would be about the same age as Lang’s nephew, Jeff, had he not . . .

Don’t go there. You have a son, a wife and life is good.

“Patrick will be late,” Nanette announced in flawless English. “Something to do with a shooting at the Sorbonne. A refill?”

Lang held out his glass, saying nothing.

He went to the sofa, his bed for the night, and shuffled through the pockets of the Burberry he had tossed there upon entering the apartment. “While we’re waiting, I wonder if you could translate something for me?”

“I will try.”

Lang handed her the French version of D’Tasse’s work. “Thanks. If you don’t mind, just read it to me in English.”

She went to a desk and took out a pair of glasses. Lang did not recall her using them before. But then, he had never seen her read anything other than a menu. He supposed vanity had prevented her from wearing them in public.

Leaning over to catch the light from a lamp on a table, she studied the first page before she began. She had been reading for only about five minutes before Patrick’s key rattled in the lock and he entered, overcoat draped over one arm.

“Sorry I am late.” He went the armoire against the far wall and carefully hung up his coat before giving Lang a meaningful look. “There was a shooting at the Sorbonne this afternoon. D’Tasse’s office. The police wanted to question you.”

“Question Lang?” Nanette asked in confusion. “Surely they don’t think . . .”

Patrick shut the armoire’s doors.
“Wanted
is the past tense, no? It is a matter of national security, since we believe the victim is employed by the Guoanbu.”

Lang guessed the French had a picture-ID system like the Agency’s.

Patrick continued. “It is a matter for the DGSE, not the local police.”

Lang wondered how much weight Patrick had thrown around to accomplish that.

“The Guo-what?” Nanette asked.

“Chinese state security,” Patrick said, taking the champagne bottle from the ice bucket and inspecting the label. “Strange. They wanted an article written by a professor, something about Bonaparte. And were willing to take it at gunpoint.”

Nanette looked from the manuscript in her hand to Lang and back again. “Could they not simply read it when it was published?”

Patrick was pouring into a flute. “We believe they did not want to wait until the article became public. We do not know why. The inscrutable Oriental, no?”

Nanette held up the papers in her hand, puzzled. “Why would Chinese want . . . ?”

Patrick forgot the champagne. “Is that it? Is that the article on Bonaparte by your friend Henri D’Tasse?”

Even more confused. “Yes, yes it is. I was translating it for Lang.”

Patrick sat on the sofa, glass in one hand, the other fishing for the box of Gitanes. “Please, start at the beginning and read it to both of us.”