Tess Gerritsen - In Their Footsteps

“Where was it?” asked Helena softly. “Where did you find it?”

“The library,” said Beryl. No point in lying now; the evidence was there, plainly in her grasp.

“All these years,” murmured Helena. “He kept it all these years. And he swore to me-”

“What, Helena? What did he swear to?”

There was silence. “That he no longer loved her,” came the whispered answer. Then a laugh, full of self-mockery. “I’ve lost out to a ghost. It was hopeless enough when she was alive. But now she’s dead, and I can’t fight back. The dead, you see, don’t grow old. They stay young and beautiful. And perfect.”

Beryl took a step forward, her arms extended in sympathy. “They weren’t lovers, Helena. I know they weren’t.”

“I was never perfect enough.”

“But he married you. There must have been love involved-”

Helena stepped away, angrily brushing off Beryl’s offer of comfort. “Not love! It was spite. Some stupid, masculine gesture to show her he couldn’t be hurt. We were married a month after she was. I was his consolation prize, you see. I gave him all the right connections. And the money. He happily accepted those. But he never really wanted my love.”

Again, Beryl tried to reach out to her; again, Helena rebuffed the gesture. Beryl said softly, “It’s time to move on, Helena. Make your own life, without him. While you’re still young…”

“He is my life.”

“But all these years, you must have known! You must have suspected that Reggie was the one who-”

“Not Reggie.”

“Helena, please think about it!”

“Not Reggie.”

“He was obsessed, unable to let her go! To let another man have her-”

“It was me.”

Those three words, uttered so quietly, chilled Beryl’s blood to ice. She stared at the silhouette standing before her, her thoughts instantly shifting to ones of escape. She could flee down the road, pound at the nearest door… She shifted onto the balls of her feet and was about to make a dash past Helena, when she heard the click of the pistol hammer.

“You look so very much like her,” whispered Helena. “When I first saw you, years ago at Chetwynd, it was almost as if she’d come back. And now, I have to kill her all over again.”

“But I’m not Madeline-”

“It makes no difference now who you are. Because you know.” Helena raised her arm and Beryl saw, through the shadows, the faint gleam of the gun in her hand. “The garage, Beryl,” she said. “We’re going for a drive.”

“Amiel Foch,” said Daumier, flipping through a file folder. “Age forty-six, formerly with French Intelligence. Presumed dead three years ago, after a helicopter crash off Cyprus-”

“He faked his own death?” asked Richard.

Daumier nodded. “It is not an easy matter to resign from Intelligence and simply start work as a mercenary. One would be subject to constraints.”

“But if one is declared dead-”

“Precisely.” Daumier skimmed the next page and stopped. “Here it is,” he said. “The link we have been searching for. In 1972, M. Foch served as our liaison to the American mission. It seems there was a telephone threat against Ambassador Sutherland’s family. For several years, Amiel Foch remained in contact with the Sutherland household. He was later reassigned to other duties, until his…death.”

“When he became available for private clients. To perform any service,” said Hugh.

“Including assassination.” Daumier closed the folder and said to his assistant, “Bring in Mrs. Sutherland.”

The woman who walked through the door was the same brash and confident Nina Sutherland that Richard had always known. She swept into the room, glanced around with disdain at her audience, then gracefully settled into a chair. “A bit late in the day for a command performance, don’t you think?” she asked.

And a performance was just what they were going to get, thought Richard. Unless they shook her up. He pulled up a chair and sat down, facing her. “You know that Anthony’s been taken into custody?”

A flicker of fear-just a flicker-rippled through her eyes. “It’s a mistake, of course. He’s never done anything wrong in his life.”

“Murder through hire? Contracts with assassins?” Richard raised an eyebrow. “Ironclad charges, multiple witnesses. I’d say this is serious enough to warrant a very long stay behind bars.”

“But he’s only a boy and not-”

“He’s of age. And fully responsible for his crimes.” Richard glanced at Daumier. “Claude and I were just discussing what a shame it was. To be locked up so young. He’ll be, how old when he’s released, Claude? Fifty, do you think?”

“I would guess closer to sixty,” said Daumier.

“Sixty.” Richard shook his head and sighed. “His whole life behind him. No wife. No children.” Richard looked Nina sympathetically in the eyes. “No grandchildren…”

Nina’s face had turned ashen. She said in a whisper, “What do you want from me?”

“Cooperation.”

“And what’s my payback?”

“We can be lenient,” said Daumier. “After all, he is just a boy.”

Swallowing hard, Nina looked away. “It’s not his fault. He doesn’t deserve to be-”

“He’s responsible for the deaths of two French agents. And the attempted murders of Marie St. Pierre and Jordan.”

“He didn’t do anything!”

“But he hired Amiel Foch to do his dirty work. What kind of a monster did you raise, Nina?”

“He was only trying to protect me! ”

“From what?”

Nina’s head drooped. “The past,” she whispered. “It never goes away. Everything else changes, but the past…”

The past, thought Richard, remembering Heinrich Leitner’s words. We’re always in its shadow. “You were Delphi,” he said. “Weren’t you?”

Nina said nothing.

He leaned forward, and his voice dropped to a quiet, almost intimate murmur. “Perhaps it started out as a bit of a lark,” he suggested. “An amusing game of spies and counterspies. Perhaps you liked the excitement. Or was it the money that tempted you? Whatever the reason, you passed a secret or two to the other side. Then it was classified documents. And suddenly you were in their pocket.”

“It was only for a short time!”

“But by then it was too late. NATO intelligence got wind of it. And they were closing in. So you worked out a way to shift the blame. Somehow you lured Bernard and Madeline to your little love nest in Rue Myrha. There you shot them both.”

“No.”

“You planted the documents near Bernard’s body.”

“No.”

Richard grabbed Nina by the shoulders and forced her to look at him. “And then you walked away and went on with your merry life. Isn’t that how it went?”

Nina gave a pitiful sob. “I didn’t kill them!”

“Isn’t it?”

“I swear I didn’t kill them! They were already dead!”

Richard released her. Nina sank back into the chair, her whole body shuddering with sobs.

“Who killed them?” demanded Richard. “Amiel Foch?”

“No, I never asked him to.”

“Philippe?”

She looked up sharply. “No! He was the one who found them. He was frantic when he called me. Afraid he’d be accused of it. That’s when I called in Foch. Asked him to make arrangements with Rideau, the landlord. A cash payment to change his testimony.”

“And the documents? Who planted them?”

“Foch did. By then, the police had already been called. Foch had to slip the briefcase into the garret.”

Jordan cut in, “She’s just admitted she’s Delphi. Now we’re supposed to believe some other mysterious culprit did the killing?”