She clenched her knuckles under the table. The project. “What’s that got to do with me?”
“We’ve got more resources than you, but we need the pieces you can offer in the investigation to find Pascal’s murderer.”
Since when did the DST concern itself with a homicide? Already she didn’t trust Sacault. But had Pascal worked for them? It boiled down to Samour’s project. Or Sacault was lying. Or both.
“I don’t understand.”
He paused. “I think you do.”
She didn’t want to understand. She scanned the café. Empty. A chill ran up her arm. It made some kind of sense.
“Pascal died for his country,” he said. “I’m to remind you that your father worked for the forces in a similar consultant capacity.”
“So the DGSE claimed. I don’t believe it.” She’d refused a work “offer” from Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure military intelligence last month. Then, as now, she had no intention of taking them up on anything. “So you’re implying you at DST get in bed with the other big boys at DGSE when it suits you?”
He averted his eyes. Had she touched a nerve? A bitter rivalry existed between the DST and the DGSE, their military counterpart at the Ministry of Defense. Hatred described it better.
“For all intents and purposes, I liaise with the DGSE,” Sacault said.
It cost him to say it, she could tell. Napoleon’s design to pit various forces against each other worked to this day. Like so much of the little dictator’s centralization in France. “Too bad,” she said. “Not a partnership I’d relish.”
“Alors, you’re in place,” Sacault said, his mouth tight. “Don’t ask me why. We want you to continue.”
How much did he know? She held her question until the waiter uncapped the moisture-beaded bottle of Badoit, poured her a glass, and retired.
“In place? I don’t understand, Sacault.”
“Your connection to the Musée des Arts et Métiers.”
“Connection?” She sat back, felt a gnawing at her stomach.
“We know it’s not your thing,” His lips pursed. “Not something you want to do. But we need your help to bring Pascal’s killer to justice.”
“You’re right, Sacault.” She hit her fist on the table. “It’s not the way I work. No contract with the DST. Not my style.”
She pushed her chair back and stood up.
“But if you cooperate, this will open channels,” he said, plopping a white sugar cube in his espresso and stirring with the little spoon. His tone was everyday conversational. “Highlevel security dossiers with intel might be interesting to you.”
She froze. He swam in the big league, like his predecessor, Bordereau. Was he implying what she thought he was?
“Concerning my … my family?”
A brief nod. He glanced at his vibrating phone on the table.
She remembered the ten-year-old letters from her supposed brother, the postmarked American stamps, the faded, childish scrawl.
“But the handwriting expert said there’s no proof I have a brother,” she said. She swallowed. “Do you know something more?”
“I know nothing about a brother,” he said, giving her a quizzical look. “But I could open other doors.”
He glanced at his still-vibrating phone on the table. “Un moment, I need to take this call.”
He stood and disappeared into the back.
She sat back down. Her mind traveled back a few weeks, before Christmas, to the crowded café with fogged-up windows. Paul Bert, the handwriting expert, hunched across from her with an open file on the marble-top table.
She’d leaned forward, wanting him to be wrong. “Didn’t laser techniques identify the paper’s age, the ink, the handwriting?” She paused her hand on the wineglass.
“Eh voilà, inconclusive results, Mademoiselle.” Bert exhibited all the charm of the wooden chair he sat on. And the warmth.
Empty-hearted, she’d stared at her untouched glass of Bordeaux, the café light fracturing on the rim.
These faded ten-year-old letters had led nowhere. A dead end to a supposed brother. No trail to her American mother, a seventies radical, still a fugitive on the World Security watch list.
She shook aside the memories, her brief hope gone.
“Do we have a deal?” Sacault sat down across from her.
Jolted back to the present, she noticed how he slid his phone in the pocket of his suit jacket.
“Information concerning your family in return for cooperation.”
Her mind spun with temptation. And simmering anger. For years she’d gotten nowhere. Time to test him. “A bit unusual coming to me now after all these years. Why?”
“Right place, right time.”
Intrigued now, she smiled.
“I want access to Interpol, MI6. CIA,” she said. “Show me proof. Or nothing.”
He met her gaze. Inclined his head with a slight nod.
Too easy. She should have asked for more.
“So you can reopen my mother’s files, grant me access?”
“On Sydney Leduc?” he said. “I said open channels, establish communication. But no guarantees.”
“Meaning?”
“I’m a fixer,” Sacault said. “I can make things happen. Or not. That’s the limit of my capability.”
Her pulse thudded. “That’s too vague,” she said. “Give me specifics.”
He sipped his espresso. “For example, access to a buried surveillance report, a sighting, a tracking log. Those types of things.”
Was her mother alive?
In his echelon, the shadow world, business was conducted behind closed doors, favors granted and repaid, a nod here, a career step up or down, the give and take of information. Priceless. Unavailable to outsiders like her.
“Compris?” he said. “You accept or not?”
She’d be a fool not to grab this shot, never get one like it again. But everything cost something, one way or another. To pay the devil? What the hell was she supposed to do? Foreboding hit her deep in her bones.
“Tell me what Pascal Samour worked on,” she said.
“I’m a fixer,” Sacault said again. “Furnished with limited intel. All I know is that Samour worked on a project vital to the country and he died for it.” His voice was businesslike. “Now, I received the call to assemble an operation. Recruit operatives, consultants, work the setup, get them in place. According to my instructions, you’re already in place at the museum. We agree, and I set up meets.”
“That’s it?”
“Routine.” He downed his espresso.
“Give me proof.”
“Your handler will contact you. With proof.”
He stood. The café had begun to fill up.
“One more thing,” he said. “You’ll have no cell phone contact on this. Remember in here.” He pointed to his head. She felt something slide into her hand. A matchbox with a red rooster on the cover. “Follow your instructions. Then destroy it.”
He’d counted on her cooperation. How transparent could she be? Ruffled, she wanted to slap it on the table.
But he’d gone.
She sipped the fizzy Badoit as everything whirled in her mind: Pascal murdered a few blocks away, his great-aunt, a fourteenth-century document, Pascal’s job recommendation for Meizi, Prévost’s role in the investigation, the strange chalk diagrams on Pascal’s walls.
Pascal Samour spawned more secrets in death than in life.
Events had ratcheted up another level. If Pascal worked on a project for the DST, that explained why they’d surveilled and recruited her.
They were after what he’d hidden.
She shuddered, fingering the matchbox in her palm. Hesitated. Most access to intelligence dossiers came after the deaths of those involved. Even then, it could still be decades, given sensitive security issues.