“What?” Aimée caught the bottle before she dropped it.
“Don’t tell me adopting this baby hasn’t crossed your mind.”
“What’s crossing my mind is what Nelie may have found in the Alstrom file, how MondeFocus is involved, and where she might be.”
“Phhft,” Martine said. “Everyone hates oil companies. You’ve got an in—hacking or whatever it is you two do on the computer—and . . .”
“Tunnel into Alstrom?” Aimée finished. “Easier said than done.”
They were working for Regnault, Alstrom’s publicity firm. There was a definite conflict of interest, as René had quickly pointed out. She reached in her back pocket for another stop-smoking patch, handed one to Martine, and stuck one above her hip.
“This should get you through the christening.”
Aimée saw a gift certificate inside Martine’s pocket.
“What’s this?” She looked at the name. Jacadi, a baby store carrying top-of-the-line frivolous baby clothes.
Martine shrugged. “I’m always going to a christening these days, have to keep them handy! What’s with your grunge outfit . . . infiltrating the Sorbonne?”
“Close.”
And then it hit her—Martine was going to the oil conference. “Can you e-mail me your notes on Alstrom’s participation in the oil conference?”
“I’m lead article editor, I write the overview, gluing everything together for L’Express. We’re doing a four-page supplement in this week’s issue.”
Impressive. Martine had risen above straight investigative journalism.
“A young Turk’s covering Alstrom, doing the nitty-gritty.”
Aimée stood and they walked into the next cavernous room. “You’ve got the perfect reason to request his notes. To verify sources, legality, et cetera.”
“It’s better if I introduce you. He’s a dish.”
Martine never stopped trying to set her up.
“Pass.”
Martine pulled out a parchment-paper envelope that contained an engraved invitation and dangled it in front of Aimée.
“The Institut du Monde Arabe reception for the Fourth International Oil Conference?” Aimée said. “How’d you get that?”
“Press corps,” Martine said. “Come with me. You’ll get more out of him that way.”
She had a point.
“It’s formal, Aimée. Bring a bottle of Dom Pérignon, too,” she said, a shrewd twinkle in her eye. “The slush they serve’s undrinkable.”
Martine always had deluxe ideas concerning payback.
“Right now I’d appreciate an entrée into MondeFocus.”
“Not again. I’ve only got my old press pass . . .”
“Brilliant idea, Martine.”
AIMÉE LEANED ON Pont de la Tournelle’s stone wall, scraping Martine’s name off her old press card with her nail file. She used manicure scissors to snip her name from a business card and glued it and her photo from her Metro pass on top of Martine’s. She sealed the result with wide, clear tape. Not bad. A quick flash of credentials and with luck it would work.
She crossed the bridge and reached Ile Saint-Louis. She gazed to the right at Quai de Béthune which Marie Curie and Baudelaire had once called home and where President Pompidou’s widow still lived, and hoped the sky didn’t open up.
At the MondeFocus address on the Quai d’Orléans, she pressed the buzzer. The door clicked open. Inside the dark port cochère entryway, another door opened. A dark-curly-haired woman wearing a blue smock stuck her head out the loge door.
“MondeFocus office, please.”
“Don’t think they’re open.”
Had the MondeFocus, wary after the demonstration, instructed the concierge to vet visitors?
“I’m with the press,” Aimée said. “They must have forgotten to inform you.”
The woman looked over Aimée’s jeans, shapeless trench coat. Shrugged.
“Bon. Third floor left rear.”
The door slammed shut.
ON THE THIRD floor, a woman wearing pink capris and a striped man’s shirt opened the door. She paused in her conversation, a cell phone held to her ear, scanning Aimée up and down. “Oui?”
Aimée smiled and flashed the press card and a folded copy of Bretagne Libre. “I’m working on an article. May I talk with you?”
“Un moment.” She motioned Aimée toward a worn blue-velvet window seat. Silver rivulets of rain ran outside the window, condensation fogging the corners and a draft hit Aimée’s back. Her face looked familiar but Aimée couldn’t place her.
The office was not a hive of activity. No one sat behind the desk or worked at the computer that rested atop a narrow slat over sawhorses. An Andy Warhol silk screen of Yves Saint Laurent hung on the wall; an orange modular couch stood in the interior of the salon. It looked like a makeshift office had been set up in this woman’s apartment. Warm, close air filled the room. Aimée took off her coat and scanned a pile of brochures. The World Wildlife Movement’s story about rhino abduction competed with pamphlets about other causes piled up on the parquet floor.
And then she saw the vinyl record jackets in the corner and recognized the woman. Brigitte Fache, a seventies pop icon who’d had a handful of record hits. She came from an aristo background and was still well connected with the gauche caviar, society liberals. She was older and her eyes were devoid of her signature black eye liner. The gauche caviar had been lampooned in the daily Le Canard enchaîné for lending a sympathetic ear and sending hefty checks to Brigitte’s pet causes until she had founded MondeFocus and gained credibility and grudging acceptance in the ecological movement.
Brigitte resumed arguing into the cell phone. “They had no search warrant . . . what do you mean, who? I call that more than intrusion—it’s breaking and entering,” she said. “Not just harassment, it’s illegal.” She listened, then laughed, a short sardonic laugh. “So who raided our office, Brigadier, if you didn’t, eh? The sandman?”
She held the phone away from her ear, rolling her eyes at Aimée, who heard indecipherable words tumbling over the line. Brigitte exuded an air of entitlement. “We’ve organized a dozen rallies for which we’ve always obtained permits, put in place a first aid corps and a contingent of legal aid, but of course, that’s standard for a demonstration. Now, this candlelight march! We never sanction weapons. You’ve made a mistake.”
She listened to an explanation, then Brigitte’s palm slapped the metal file cabinet. “Proof? You call that proof, Brigadier?”
But her brow knit in worry. Outside the window, needles of rain beat down on the rising Seine.
“Krzysztof Linski’s not in our organization,” she assured the caller.
Her blunt-cut, unmanicured nails drummed the cabinet. The woman was lying, Aimée sensed it. But now she was forewarned; she wouldn’t mention Krzysztof as a contact.
Barefoot, Brigitte padded into the other room. By the time she returned, wearing a wool trouser suit, with a cigarette and without the cell phone, Aimée had her makeshift card ready.
“Aimée Leduc, freelancer, referred by Léon Tailet of Bretagne Libre.” She stood and handed Brigitte the card.
“How is Léon?”
Thank God she’d prepared and actually spoken to him on the phone.
“Rheumatism bothering him. As usual. You know, the damp in Brittany. But it didn’t stop him last week from attending the demonstration.”
Brigitte nodded, set the card on the desk, and rummaged through a worn black Day-Timer. Good thing she had a lot more on her mind than delving further into Aimée’s credentials.