“Finish your breakfast, my friends,” said Mimi. “Thank you so much for coming.”
In minutes she had them firmly out the door. “They weren’t much help, were they?”
“Every bit helps. Thank you.” He glanced at his watch.
“Don’t rush off,” said Mimi.
“I have a full schedule.”
“But I have another guest for you.”
“Who?”
“An angry policeman.”
Janson stifled the impulse to leave. Mimi was gaming him, but with a smile that suggested she had something special in mind. “What do you mean?”
“He is a Frenchman. He held a very high position in security. He ran afoul of the French president, who was not known for treating his officers kindly. He was demoted, unfairly.”
“Are you thinking he knows something about Sécurite Referral?”
“No— I mean for all I know he might, but that’s not why I telephoned him.”
“Then what?”
“Guess where he held his high-security post?”
“Princess!”
“Corsica.”
Janson smiled back at her beaming face. “Bless you, Mimi.”
“He’ll be here in an hour. Would you like a shower or something? You’ve been on a plane all night.”
“A shower would be terrific.”
* * *
DOMINIQUE ONDINE HAD served most of his career on the island of Corsica, a French province, where he had battled national separatists, Union Corse mafia, and the contentious clans that warred over slights, insults, and long-simmering feuds. He was a pale-skinned man who appeared to have worked mostly indoors or at night.
“My life I give my country. My life is snatched from me by a politician.”
It was still not noon, but Dominque Ondine had had several cognacs by the smell of him. Mimi poured him another, which he gripped tightly in a thick fist with scarred knuckles. Janson nursed his as they spoke across Mimi’s table, which was now laden with a hamper’s worth of cheese, bread, and sausages that the nearby Harrods Food Hall had wheeled to her house in a pram.
“Madam Princess informs me that you are traveling to Corsica.”
“Yes, I’m meeting up with an associate there.”
“I hope for your sake you are not in the business of developing property.”
“Why is that?”
“Corsica teeters on the brink of anarchy. The nationalist movement protests ever more vehemently against ‘colonization’ by rich tourists. They hate developers seizing beachfront property for hotels.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem. I’m a corporate security consultant.”
Ondine raised a bushy eyebrow, blinked through a haze of cognac, and gave Paul Janson a closer look. Shaved, showered, and wearing a crisp blue dress shirt borrowed from Mimi’s collection, the American with the pleasant demeanor had struck the Frenchman as a banker, physician, or lawyer on a London vacation. Now Ondine wondered.
“Arson and dynamite,” he told Janson, “are the Corsican’s weapons of choice. Vendetta his ‘court of law.’ Corsicans are a people who look in, not out. Such an attitude complicates the task of guaranteeing security for outsiders who annoy them. You’ll have your hands full.”
Janson answered casually, although with earlier Iboga sightings neither as credible nor as current as the ex-SEAL Daniel’s, he was already working up a legend to cover an operation on the island. Jessica Kincaid was there already, doing recon and feeding information back to CatsPaw. Freddy Ramirez’s Protocolo de Seguridad was recruiting an exfiltration force. Quintisha Upchurch was marshaling intermediaries to lease helicopters, boats, and a freighter.
“Fortunately,” Janson told Dominique Ondine, “we have contracted only to guarantee the legitimacy of foreign investors. Their physical safety falls to others.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your government, the French government, desires not to run afoul of EU laws against money laundering. It is my job to vet potential investors in development projects that have French government support. In other words, if a drug smuggler wants to put his illegal profits into a Corsican beachfront hotel he will fail to pass scrutiny and his money will not be allowed into the project.”
“Ah. You’re more of an accountant.”
“Precisely,” said Janson, putting on his wire-rimmed glasses.
“I repeat: Corsica teeters on the brink. If the separatists attack and you happen to be among those sipping champagne in a millionaire’s holiday palace at Punta d’Oro, angry Corsicans may not honor the distinction.”
“Thank you for the warning.” Janson raised his glass and inclined it toward Ondine. “I will avoid the bubbly and stick to honest cognac.”
Ondine smiled at last.
“Tell me,” Janson asked. “In your experience, which Princess Mimi assures me is broad and deep, have you come upon an organization named Securité Referral?”
“Non.”Ondine cut a length of sausage, slapped it on a chunk of bread, and chewed mightily. Janson noticed Mimi’s bright eyes zero in on the Frenchman. He’s lying, Janson thought.
“Does the name Emil Bloch ring a bell? Possibly one of their people.”
“There was a mercenary named Bloch,” said Ondine. “A former Legionnaire.”
“But you’ve not heard his name in connection with Securité Referral?”
“Non!”
“Another I have heard mentioned in connection with Securité Referral is a Corsican. Andria Giudicelli.”
“Merde.”Ondine looked like he would spit on the floor if he weren’t in Mimi’s kitchen.
“You know him?”
“Know him? I arrested him twenty years ago.”
“On what charge?”
“Corsican recycling.”
“I beg your pardon? Recycling?”
A smile twitched Ondine’s lips. “‘Recycling is what Corsicans call arson. He burned down a rival’s factory. His friends broke him out of prison and he fled. Hasn’t been on Corsica since.”
“Could he have joined up with Securité Referral?”
“I don’t know what Securité Referral is, so how could I answer that?”
“Did I understand correctly that you are retired?” Janson asked.
Ondine finished chewing and wiped his hands on a napkin. “I do occasionally what you do—consult. It is better than sitting around.”
Janson gave him a Janson Associates card. “I wonder if I might have your card so I could call on your services.”
“But of course.” Ondine produced a card and stood up from the table. “ Merci, Princess. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Janson.”
“I hope to call you soon,” said Janson. They shook hands.
Mimi saw the Frenchman to the door and came back. Janson was shrugging into his jacket.
“Where are you going?”
“As I told the man, Corsica.”
“He lied about Securité Referral.”
“I believe so.”
“Why?”
“Either he’s heard of it and fears it or he works for it. From what I’ve seen, he’s the type they look for: sharp, professional, connected, and on the edge. On the other hand, he’s a bit over the hill.”
“Why didn’t you question him further?”
“Because he would not expect such questioning from an ‘accounting fellow.’ ”
“But you will follow up?”
Janson kissed her on the cheek. “You have been wonderful. As always.”
THIRTY-ONE
A fire-gutted hotel was the first sight to greet Paul Janson as he steered a motor yacht he had chartered in nearby Sardinia into Porto-Vecchio, a sailing and tourist town that occupied a deep indentation in the rocky southeast coast of Corsica. Shattered windows gaping like dead eyes, walls blackened by smoke, the burned-out twelve-story tower stood grim sentinel over the gleaming boats that crowded the inner harbor. Spray-paint graffiti reading “
Resistenza!”