Growing up under the Communists in Warsaw, where apartment blocks had been filled with informers and nightly ESKEK—secret police—visits were the rule had honed his senses. Some things one never forgot. His thoughts went back to the unfamiliar faces on the street; men sitting and smoking in their telltale Trabant sedans; the day his father was taken to Bialoleka, the political prison. All gulags were hell, but the Soviets had taken particular delight in torturing his father, an intellectual of aristocratic lineage.
His uncle never wanted to hear about real Warsaw life, which had been governed by the kartki—coupons. Standing in line for gas, sugar, and clothes, his mother had used her maiden name. A title had meant nothing without a kartki. Or bony towarowe, dollar bonds printed by the government and exchanged for goods only in special stores. Reality had been quite unlike the romantic vision of prewar Warsaw his uncle nurtured.
The physics lab lay at the south end of the building; a nearby fire exit to rue Descartes was indicated in small red letters. Perfect. He avoided the electrical panel with its green lights and levers, opened another metal door, and found himself in a peeling brown stucco tunnel breathing warm, fetid air tinged with dry rot. Safe for a moment, he began to feel his anger mounting, overcoming the hurt and shame. After his uncle’s accusations, the long hours of work, his commitment to MondeFocus, now he’d been accused of betraying the cause. He’d been disgraced and would likely be expelled as well, when all he’d done in reality was skip his engineering exam to organize the vigil! And Brigitte, whom he’d regarded as a mentor, had informed on him to the flics. His life was ruined. He had no hope of finishing his studies and obtaining a degree. Now he was being hunted, condemned to hiding.
And despite everything, the Ministry would sign the agreement with Alstrom tonight. If he didn’t do something, they’d win.
Perspiration dampened his sweater by the time he found the physics lab. Empty. Lab classes were over for the day. The last rays of weak light reflected off the slanted slate roofs opposite. The hour of dusk, entre chien et loup, when a dog and a wolf were indistinguishable, as the saying went. He set his backpack down. Above him, arched ceilings were frescoed with portraits of the forebears of physics and science: Pasteur, Curie, Fourier. By the old stained porcelain sinks, beakers and test tubes had been rinsed and left to dry on the drain board. He stared at the liter bottles and vials of chemicals and reactive agents.
Bottle bombs? He snorted, kicking the cabinet. How primitive. On the Internet, recipes for destruction written by fourteen-year-olds were more sophisticated! They involved remote ignition triggered by cell phones, and the explosions packed far more punch. He could rig something twenty times more effective if he had a mind to.
But he’d been caught on video, probably laughing and singing, carrying the backpack with bottle bombs.
Not only ruined, he faced prison like his father. Except that his father, finally recognized for his work after the overturn of the Soviet regime, lay under a gravestone in Warsaw’s Powazki Cemetery.
He took stock of the chemicals on the shelf, the solutions packed in the drawers. If a candlelit vigil against the oil-company negotiations had ended with Gaelle in the hospital after a beating, MondeFocus labeling him a saboteur, and now the flics hunting him, then what had peaceful means accomplished?
The heavy hand always worked . . . in Warsaw and here, too. Didn’t they say the end justified the means? And now he had nothing to lose.
Wednesday Morning
AIMÉE REACHED OUT her arm. Instead of Claude’s taut chest she felt something wet against her hand and she blinked. Light streamed through the window. Something was ringing near her head. Beside her, half under the duvet, Stella cooed like a little pigeon with a leaking diaper. Time to change the sheets. Again.
Warm air floated through the open window. She groped under the pillow, fumbled in the damp sheets, and found the phone.
She stretched her legs, inhaled the baby’s smell and the sandalwood scent of Claude still on her skin.
She rubbed her eyes and pressed the answer button. “Allô?”
“Mademoiselle Leduc,” Vavin said. “I’m concerned. Have any more firewall attacks occurred?”
She sat up, grabbing her father’s old flannel robe, still dotted with spit-up. She was awake now. Not many heads of departments worried about this kind of detail once they’d hired a consultant.
“Un moment.” She hurried to the laptop on her desk. Thank God she’d forgotten to turn it off last night. She clicked on Regnault’s system.
“Right now we’re working on your new workstations setup, Monsieur Vavin,” she said. She had to act as if she was on top of the assignment and to be polite, she reminded herself. And enthusiastic, too; they were paying Leduc Detective big francs. “I’ll check with my partner. Can you give me ten minutes?”
She’d come back so late last night. Stella, wide awake and hungry, had given her no time to discuss anything with a grumpy René but getting the formula temperature right. Not even the time to decipher the odd look in his eyes. “I’ll call you right back,” she promised.
“Meanwhile, there’s another detail,” Monsieur Vavin said, his voice tentative.
New user account configurations filled her screen.
“Of course, we’re making great progress.” She glanced over at Stella’s kicking feet. Slants of sunlight played over her pink toes.
“Glad to hear it,” he said. He cleared his voice. The clinking of cutlery and the sounds of chairs scraping were in the background.
Some breakfast meeting?
“I’d appreciate a favor,” Vavin said. “This involves accessing a colleague’s e-mail. It’s very confidential. Can you help me?”
As system administrators, she and René controlled the domain and e-mail server. Their clients often asked them for this kind of service: evidence of a colleague’s wasting time in chat rooms or visiting dodgy sites. But spying on his colleague’s e-mail wasn’t her kind of thing.
“Monsieur Vavin, we’re on a tight schedule,” she reminded him. “We run on deadlines, you know.”
“I appreciate that,” he said.
Stella would need a bottle soon; the little thing packed away more than Aimée had imagined.
“Newborns lose weight, then gain almost a kilo in the first few weeks,” René had quoted from the birth-to-one year book he’d bought. Thank God she could read up on breaks, try to get some handle on why babies spit up and what infant gas was all about and how to avoid it.
“It won’t take but a minute for you, I’m sure,” he said.
Her fingers typed at 120 strokes a minute; one didn’t get much faster than that. His request seemed to be made with the assumption that she had nothing better to do with her time than snoop. But it would be impossible to refuse him.
“This sounds odd,” he continued,“but certain negotiations . . . well, it’s difficult to go into right now.” He lowered his voice, she heard the sound of a door being closed. “I’ve heard some disturbing information. But I can’t say anything until I know what’s being concealed from the public.”
This sounded cryptic and not like anything she wanted to get involved in. Probably some promotion blackmail or a hatchet job he wanted the skinny on.
“The e-mails I’m concerned with could have been read by hackers who got past our firewalls. Please, take a look. I’ll hold on. The name’s de Laumain.”
She turned to her second laptop, which was already logged on. She hit some keys and entered a back door in systems administration mode.