And it struck her again . . . did his opinion matter? She feared the worst. The retinologist hadn’t even responded to her queries.
Chantal and Lucas led full, active lives, adapting and managing without sight. She could learn to live with the darkness. Even if she didn’t want to. Even if it wasn’t fair. Even if the man who caused it was still out there somewhere.
And she would.
She had to keep telling herself that.
She’d never saddle René with a whining, awkward burden. That’s if he would still want to work with her. She’d have to organize her life, adapt her apartment and the office, learn Braille, train Miles Davis to cope. And pay her bills.
But first she had to find out who was after her, before they came calling again. And deal with Vincent’s predicament, as she’d promised René.
She booted up her laptop and opened the Populax file one more time. Checked each entry pertaining to Incandescent, the gun-running firm Vincent had unwittingly represented. After two tiring hours of examining data via the robotic screen reader, she felt convinced Vincent had honored the marketing duties outlined in his standard short contract.
Why would he fear showing his clean laundry in public? Why had he torn up their contract?
Curious, she delved further, checking his e-mail. Then his deleted e-mail. Common thinking was if you deleted e-mail it was erased from the hard drive. But that was true only if you didn’t know where to find it. Once written or received, nothing left the hard drive.
After reading Vincent’s e-mails, she concluded that he was having an affair. A very hot one, almost worshipful in tone, with someone called Inca.
If it was exposure of these e-mails that bothered him, she’d ask René, see if he thought they could have a word with la Proc. Try and work out a deal citing the intimacy factor. They’d done it before and saved face for a few of their clients.
When she was about to end her search, the robotic voice said “Unable to read encrypted e-mail file.”
Startled, she sat back, alarms sounding in her brain.
Vincent had encrypted part of his e-mail! That bothered her. Why just some of it, not all?
She checked the date. A Friday. René picked up all client backup tapes on Friday mornings. A routine. And then it occurred to her that Inca . . . might be short for Incandescent . . . or someone who worked there.
Was Vincent having an affair with someone at Incandescent? Had he wanted to withhold the hard drive because of an affair with an employee . . . an employee in a company being investigated?
She wondered if René’s standard backup files would display the e-mail before it had been encrypted. A long shot, she figured, but worthy of scrutiny. Otherwise she’d ask René for software to crack the encryption. But depending on the code, and with her handicap, it would take time. Longer than they had.
She rummaged in the laptop carrying case, feeling for the velcro tabs holding the tapes, assuming they were where she hoped René kept them.
Sun beat down on her leg, warm and lush for October. A nice break from the rain. From somewhere in the apartment, a parakeet’s song trilled.
Below, a Frexpresse delivery man announced his arrival with a shout from the courtyard. “Delivery!”
What she wouldn’t do right now for an espresso and a cigarette! Yet she wasn’t up to navigating Madame Danoux’s kitchen, redolent of bay leaf, without any help. It would be as daunting as negotiating the Métro platform without a white cane.
Twenty minutes later, after much experimentation, she found the right Populax backup files. They had an extensive batch, since Vincent had been a client for several months. After another two tries, she found the tape.
The robotic voice enunciating the contents of Inca’s hot emails was almost funny. But something nagged her. Why hadn’t Vincent told her? Or had he been embarrassed because she would know the recipient?
She put that thought aside to follow up later.
After Inca’s torrid e-mail correspondence came a series of innocuous messages from Popstar. The subject read Marmalade tea. Then she deciphered:
Call 92 23 80 29 for a good time.
Why encrypt this sort of thing? Something smelled off. Way off.
She decided to check each detail; she reprogrammed the software. Now the robotic voice read each word of the email header. Her system had trace route capability, so she converted the e-mails’ IP address by using a DOS command line and pinging the name which came back as a number: 217.73.192.109.
This pinging, as it hopped on the IP’s traceroute, indicated how many servers the e-mail had gone through. She figured if she listened long enough, she’d hear a pinging symphony.
Excited, she kept going. After twenty hops, it landed.
243ms 246ms 239ms head.rambler.ru ru . . . the origin of the message was Russia.
She sat back, surprised. And tried several more. Every time it went back to the same server in Moscow. That made sense. Even though the Wall had fallen and the Soviet Union disintegrated, she knew Big Brother in Moscow still looked at all email. They probably hadn’t enough money to change their system.
Yet.
Now she had to figure out why Vincent was getting spam-like e-mail from Russia that he kept encrypted. Was he the intended recipient? Was it going first to someone else?
The phone rang. Josiane’s phone.
She hesitated then answered.
“Allô?”
“I’ve just got a minute,” Lieutenant Egérie said. “This came across my desk.”
She picked up an unusual, tense note in his voice.
“I appreciate it.”
“In the process of being charged, a man became ill,” Lieutenant Égérie said. “A Dragos Iliescu.”
That was the name Yann Rémouze had given to René. She held back her excitement.
“Where’s he now?”
“Hôtel Dieu, but he’s due to be charged with drug trafficking in the 11ième.”
“Merci.”
The Hôtel-Dieu, on Île de la Cité between Notre Dame and quai des Orfèvres, supposedly dated from Druid times. However, Aimée’s lycée teacher had insisted it was only from Emperor Julien II’s era. And her parish priest had cited Saint-Landry, the bishop of Paris in A.D. 600, as the builder of this hospital for the needy.
Any of them were good enough for her.
She knew how to circumvent the Hôtel Dieu switchboard, archaic, but still functioning.
“Bonjour,” she said. “I’m calling on Commissaire Morbier’s behalf about prisoner Iliescu.”
The woman at the other end of the line coughed; papers rustled. “Let me transfer you to the ward nurse.”
Clicks and buzzing accompanied her call.
“Ward 13C,” said a brisk voice.
“Checking on prisoner Dragos Iliescu. The Commissaire’s interested in his health status.”
“So he’s a doctor now, your Commissaire?”
“Not in this life,” said Aimée, trying to inject a world-weary tone in her voice as if she did this every day, “but he wants to know if this Iliescu’s healthy enough for arraignment.”
“Let me check,” she said. “Aaah, that one. Transferred from CUSCO to intensive care.”
CUSCO was the prison section of Hôtel Dieu.
“Can you elaborate? Why?”
“He needs twenty-four hour care and supervision,” she said.
What was wrong with him?
“Sounds serious. Want to share it with me so I can give my boss a time-frame here? Two days, a week, or . . .”
“Third degree burns, high fever, nausea,” the sister said. “Hard to say.”