“I’m being watched,” Linh said. “By whom, I’m not sure. One of the meditators gave me a ride here. She let me off around the block. But I may have been followed.”
Aimée opened her eyes. Linh had gone to the window. Shadows from the trees on rue du Louvre bruised the office walls. Aimée couldn’t read Linh’s expression.
“The pieces were disguised—” Linh began.
“Don’t you mean they were used to disguise twelve much older jade disks?” Aimée interrupted. “To hide them in plain sight, so to speak?”
Silence, except for the buses shuddering in diesel agony and the klaxons heralding a traffic jam below. A cobweb clotted the edge of her vision. Linh made no reply.
“And they’ve been stolen. Tell me, what do they have to do with—”
“Reste tranquille. Let the herbs work,” Linh said, soothingly. She rubbed more mint oil on Aimée’s temples.
“The Vietnamese secret police are watching me. I told you that,” Linh said. Her eyelids batted in the nervous mannerism Aimée remembered. “My mother gave me a jade bracelet when I was five. She called it a fortune teller. Good quality jade changes color after its been worn. If the jade fades, it indicates bad luck. But if it grows more vibrant, a lush green, life energy is flowing well and this predicts good luck, good health, wealth, and many offspring.”
“And your bracelet?”
There was another long pause. Now warmth ringed the crown of Aimée’s head, her palms felt moist and she noticed a tingling sensation coursing down her arms.
That’s personal,” Linh finally said. “
Was that why Linh became a nun? Now, Aimée felt a deep sadness emanating from her.
“You Westerners don’t understand. Jade means much more to us than a trinket in a jewelry store window. The only way to win our people is through our beliefs, our souls.”
“Does this have to do with PetroVietnam and oil rights?” Aimée asked bluntly.
“The only politics I’m concerned with is obtaining my brother’s release,” Linh said. “Please, you’re the only one I can trust. Find the jade, before someone else does.”
Then Aimée’s vision gave out.
AIMÉE BLINKED several times. Afraid to try to focus. Light reflected and prismed from the decanter on her office desk. Her silk sleeve smelled of mint and her head felt curiously clear. No cobwebs or blurriness. Just a curious tingling at the base of her skull. And clear vision.
The herbs? A combination of pills and herbs? Linh had left a small vial of mint oil on her keyboard.
She reached into her pocket for the jade disk. Felt the cold comforting roundness.
Her pills were finished. She picked up the phone to call Guy.
But he had had a blonde in his arms on the street.
She debated. But a minute later she punched in his number, determined to sound businesslike.
“Guy?”
“I’m in the middle of rounds right now,” he said, curtly.
“Sorry, I just ran out of pills,” she said.
“I’ll call a prescription in.”
Coward. She wished she could tell him she missed him. How it hurt her to see him with another woman. Did he hear the false bravado in her voice?
“Right away,” he said.
She heard someone say ‘Doctor, what about the intravenous line?’ and the pinging of bells in the hospital ward.
“If that’s all . . .” he said.
Silence.
“Can we talk later?”
“What’s there to talk about, Aimée?”
“I guess nothing.” The words caught in her throat and she hung up. She’d blown it again.
She forced herself to stand up, get her bag. Not to call him back and accuse him of being with another woman. What would be the point? He’d made his choice and moved on fast. Seems he’d had someone else waiting in the wings. Better to end it now.
She’d ignore the hollowness she felt. Sooner or later she’d get over it. What if she’d agreed to move to the suburbs? He’d have expected her to have his dinner waiting. She couldn’t even whip up an omelet! Forget Guy. She had to focus on finding René. Somehow the disks were the key; Linh had as good as confirmed it. Why had de Lussigny tried to enlist her to spy?
She pulled out Regnier’s card and called him. She hated to deal with the devil, but perhaps he could help find René, as Morbier insisted.
His phone rang. No answer. Great! Waiting stretched her patience. The little reserve she had, as René often told her. She had to do something.
She locked the office and pushed the button for the elevator, a temperamental, grunting wire-framed affair from the last century. She stepped inside and rode it down to the second level. The glass elevator door slid open. She came face to face with Regnier. His freshly shaven scalp gleamed in the chrome yellow light. He stepped inside the elevator car and stood a few centimeters from her.
Fear was the worst thing to show with someone like him. She was afraid he could smell it on her.
“Any reason you don’t answer your phone, Regnier?”
“Did you call with good news for me?” Regnier’s aftershave bothered her. It smelled cheap and metallic. The accordion pleated gate closed and the elevator juddered upward.
“My partner’s been kidnapped. The captor’s threatening to dismember him. Believe me, if I knew where the jade was—”
“I’d be the first to know, Mademoiselle Leduc?” he said. “I hope that’s what you were about to say.”
Had he kidnapped René? She watched his dull black eyes, saw no quiver of response.
“I’m sure you want to help me now.” He hit the out of service button. The elevator halted with a jerk. Her spine tingled. Up close she saw the threads in his overcoat.
Then he leaned closer, and whispered in her ear, “You’re under surveillance.”
First Tessier and now Regnier, but it didn’t make sense for him to warn her. He’d ransacked her apartment.
“By who?”
“We’re not all what we seem,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Was she a pawn in someone else’s power play?
He lifted her chin with his cold hands, so he could see her face.
Only then did she realize that she’d lowered her head and remembered how he’d stared at her on the quai. And that she had seen the butterscotch-colored button in his ear.
“How long have you been deaf?” Aimée asked.
His mouth twisted in a sad grin. “Long enough. Mine is only a tonal deafness at low range decibels.”
Was this a crack in his tough-guy façade? Aimée heard a buzzing sound and his finger shot up, adjusting the clip behind his ear.
“So the RG uses you, like they used my father, Regnier,” she said. Could she play on his sympathy? “I can help you,” she said.
“If you help me find my partner.”
He stared at her. In the small elevator with him and his aftershave, she felt claustrophobic. But she knew she should play along with him.
“You have more resources than I do, Regnier,” she continued.
Then his hands circled her neck. Terrified, she stepped back, tried to loosen his thick fingers. How could she have misread him like that?
“Let go!” His grasp tightened. Nowhere to move. It was like before, when she had been attacked. All she knew were those hands squeezing her neck. Choking her. No air.
She kneed him hard in the groin. Hit the elevator service switch with her elbow, then the button. The elevator shuddered and descended, throwing him off balance. He cried out in pain, let go of her neck and knelt on the floor.
She pried the elevator door open.
“Eh bien! I’ve been waiting a long time,” said a disgruntled man, on the ground floor.