“A sham?” she asked worriedly.
“The humanitarian mission,” she said. “The fund goes to the military—they turn around and buy surplus military ware.”
Aimée shook her head. She had a hard time believing the second part.
“What do you mean?” she said. “How can that work?”
“French military surplus; I saw trucks filled with night-vision goggles,” Youssefa said. “Some idiot boasted there were thirty thousand pairs, at only two francs a pair! So cheap, he said, the General had bought the lot.”
The humanitarian mission—Philippe was involved in that. No wonder he’d wanted to keep her quiet.
“What’s it got to do with the AFL hunger strikers in the church?”
“Eugénie trusted Mustafa Hamid,” Youssefa said. “Several times she told me if I got in trouble to go to Hamid. That’s all.”
“What happened to them?”
“I gave the rest of the photos to Zdanine,” Youssefa said. “He said he’d give them to Hamid, get me time to speak with him.”
Zdanine! For a price he must have hid the photos, left them for Dédé in that abandoned house. Dédé’s mecs recovered them, but she and René had surprised them in the park.
“You didn’t destroy the negatives, did you?”
She averted her gaze. “In good hands.”
“Give me a contact sheet.”
Youssefa turned away.
“I need to have proof if you want me to stop them.”
She shook her head. “That’s what Eugénie said.”
Gently she turned Youssefa’s disfigured face toward her.
“Trust me,” she said, mustering as much bravado as she could. “Believe it or not, I do this for a living. And they’re after me as well.”
She saw agreement in Youssefa’s sad eyes.
Youssefa led her toward the room they’d first entered. The room with the Piaf photos and the black dress. Youssefa opened a wooden armoire. Musty smells laced with lavender wafted out. On the shelves Aimée saw a row of little black shoes, some T-strapped, others open-toed, all from the thirties and forties. She stared. The pairs of shoes couldn’t be bigger than her hand.
“Piaf’s?”
Youssefa nodded.
For such a tiny woman, Aimée thought, Piaf had touched the world.
Youssefa reached to the upper shelf, where rows of yellowed kid gloves lay.
In good hands, she’d said.
Youssefa pulled out an envelope, checked it, then handed it to her. “These show the piles of bodies.” She looked down. “Other than this, the proof lies in the desert, fifty kilometers outside Oran. Bones bleached by the sun.”
She thought about Gaston’s words. His experience in the same part of Algeria. History repeated itself in sad, twisted ways.
AIMÉE SLID out of the back kitchen window, climbing down the rusty fire escape to an asphalted yard. Following the yard, she exited onto rue Crespin du Gast and walked the two blocks to Samia’s apartment.
She knocked on the door. No answer.
“Samia, it’s Aimée.”
All she heard was pounding Rai music with a techno-beat.
She tried the handle. Locked.
If Samia was scared, why play the music so loud?
Aimée tramped back down to the courtyard. The rain was coming down hard. She rolled up her collar, passing the boarded-up butcher shop. Peeling posters lined the facade. She headed toward the spot overlooked by Samia’s kitchen window.
And then she saw the orange-pink phosphorescent watch on the stones. She bent down, picked it up, her heart quickening.
“Are you here?”
Water rushing from a rain gutter answered her.
She edged toward the passage, reeking of urine, that bordered the hammam. And then she saw Samia sprawled against the stone wall.
“Samia, ça va?”
But when Aimée got closer she froze.
A dark red wound blossomed on Samia’s chest, staining her peach twinset, her eyes open to the falling raindrops. Aimée gasped and knelt beside her. “You’re too young,” Aimée whispered, reaching for Samia’s hands. Cold.
Dead cold.
Guilt stabbed at her. And was supposed to protect the streetwise, childlike Samia.
She closed Samia’s eyes, saying a prayer, promising her justice.
She punched in 17 for SAMU on her cell phone, gave the location, then waited until she heard the siren scream before she slipped into the street.
Where had Samia been going? Why here? But that was for the flics to chase, she thought grimly. Dédé had been two blocks away looking for her; he’d meant business when he’d warned her others would die.
She dreaded calling Morbier, debating when to tell him. But in the end she stood on the rainswept corner a block away on rue Moret and tried him on her cell phone. She didn’t want him hearing it on the news or over the flic’s radio.
“I messed up, Morbier,” she said.
“Any good news, Leduc?”
She heard the flick of a match, and heard him inhaling.
“Bad. Samia’s gone.”
Morbier’s silence seemed to last forever. She knew this news had pierced him.
“Nom de Dieu,” he sighed. “I’m so stupid.”
“Désolée, Morbier.” The tears welled in her eyes. “My fault.”
Why hadn’t she made Samia stay in the car, baby-sat her until she’d made the plastique connection.
“You took a bullet too, didn’t you, Leduc,” Morbier said finally, his voice sad and tired. “Where are you?”
She told him.
“Get out of there, Leduc. Start walking. Now!”
She stumbled against the street sign, then ran all the way to rue de Belleville and flagged a taxi. They’d be after her now, double strength. An icy determination took over; she could play hardball too. She handed the taxi driver a hundred francs and told him he’d make another if he got to the Ministry of Defense in under thirty minutes.
TWENTY MINUTES later in the ministry reception area Ai-mee told Philippe’s secretary, in a hushed polite tone, that she needed to see le Ministre immediatement!
The secretary reluctantly acknowledged that the minister was busy. He had high-level meetings but would get back to her within the day.
Aimée continued, her tone just above a whisper, that if she couldn’t be accommodated the secretary would have the blood of innocent people staining her silk blouse. No amount of dry cleaning could take care of that.
The secretary blinked but still refused.
However, when Aimée threatened to burst into the meeting she rose up in alarm and showed her into an adjoining office.
“Oui?” Philippe said, coming in a moment later.
His haggard eyes and stooped shoulders projected an air of defeat. A new experience for Philippe. Pathetic, she thought, and pitied him. But only briefly.
“Philippe, I’ve got proof that the humanitarian mission’s bogus,” she said. “And someone’s blackmailing you.”
Alarm shone in Philippe’s eyes. He stepped back. Voices buzzed in the background, papers rustled under a glowing chandelier. He turned and shut the door.
“There’s a conference going on, officials from my department,” he said, his voice tight. “I can’t talk.”
He hadn’t denied it. And he looked pale.
“Don’t talk, Philippe,” she said. “I can help. Just listen.”
He’d changed after his threats on Canal Saint Martin. He looked almost tame and so beaten. Maybe she had a chance. She pulled a gilt upholstered Louis XV chair close to him.
“Sit down. Give me three minutes,” she said easing him toward the seat.
For a moment, she thought he’d refuse, but he sat down. That was a start.
“You didn’t know the funds went to the Algerian military, did you?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Of course not, you trusted Hamid, Kaseem, and Sylvie. Why not? They’d been your friends since the Sorbonne. When the late sixties revelations about French repression came to light, the legacy left in war-torn Algeria—you joined what became the AFL.”