Steve Berry - The Paris Vendetta

“This is the Marais,” Meagan told him as they stepped back out into the cold. She had shed her blue smock and wore a canvas barn coat, jeans, and boots. “It was once a marsh, but it became prime real estate from the 15th to the 18th centuries, then fell into disrepair. It’s making a comeback.”

He followed her down a busy prospect lined with high, elegant houses far deeper than they were wide. Pink brick, white stone, gray slate, and black iron balustrades dominated. Trendy boutiques, perfumeries, tearooms, and glitzy art galleries pulsed with the holiday’s vitality.

“A lot of the mansions are being restored,” she said. “This is becoming the place to live once again.”

He was trying to gauge this woman. Part of her seemed ready to risk anything to make a point, but she’d shown a cool head in the museum.

More so than he’d exhibited.

Which bothered him.

“The Templar’s Paris headquarters was once here. Rousseau himself found sanctuary in some of these houses. Victor Hugo lived nearby. This is where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were imprisoned.”

He stopped. “Why are we here?”

She halted, the top of her head level with his Adam’s apple. “You’re a smart guy, Sam. I could tell that from your website and your emails. I communicate with a lot of people who think like we do, and most are looney tunes. You’re not.”

“What about you?”

She grinned. “That’s for you to decide.”

He knew the gun was still nestled at the small of her back, beneath her jacket, where she’d tucked it before they’d left the museum. He wondered what would happen if he walked away right now. She’d fired on those two men in the museum with practiced skill.

“Lead on,” he said.

They turned another corner and passed more buildings with entrances flush to the sidewalk. Not nearly as many people now, and much quieter. Traffic lay well beyond the warren of close-packed buildings.

“We would say, ‘Old as the hills,’” she noted. “Parisians say ‘Old as the streets.’”

He’d already noticed how street names were announced on blue enameled markers set into corner buildings.

“The names all have meaning,” she said. “They honor someone or something specific, tell where the street leads, identify its most prominent tenant or what goes on there. It’s always something.”

They stopped at a corner. A blue-and-white enameled plate read RUE L’ARAIGNéE.

“Spider Street,” he said, translating.

“So you do speak French.”

“I can hold my own.”

A look of triumph flashed across her face. “I’m sure you can. But you’re up against something you know little about.” She pointed down the narrow way. “See the fourth house.”

He did. Redbrick façade with diagonals of varnished black, stone-mullioned windows, iron balustrades. A wide archway, crowned by a sculpted pediment, was barred by a gilded gate.

“Built in 1395,” she said. “Rebuilt in 1660. In 1777 it housed a swarm of lawyers. They were a front for the laundering of Spanish and French money to American revolutionists. Those same lawyers also sold arms to the Continental army against bills for future delivery of tobacco and colonial wares. The victorious Americans welshed on delivery, though. Aren’t we a grand people?”

He didn’t answer her, sensing she was about to make a point.

“Those lawyers sued the new nation and finally got paid in 1835. Determined bastards, weren’t they?”

He still stayed silent.

“In the 13th century, Lombardian moneylenders settled around here somewhere. A rapacious bunch, they loaned money at outrageous rates and demanded high returns.”

She motioned again at the fourth house and cocked an eye his way.

“That’s where the Paris Club meets.”

6:10 PM

MALONE LIGHTLY KNOCKED ON THE PANELED DOOR. HE’D LEFT the museum and taken a taxi across town to the Ritz. He hoped Thorvaldsen had returned from the Loire Valley and was relieved when his friend answered the door.

“Were you involved in what happened at the Cluny?” Thorvaldsen asked as he entered the suite. “It was on television.”

“That was me. I managed to get out before getting caught.”

“Where’s Sam?”

He recapped everything that happened, including Sam’s abduction, crocheting the facts while explaining about Jimmy Foddrell being Meagan Morrison, omitting any reference to Stephanie’s appearance. He’d decided to keep that close. If he was to have any chance of stopping Thorvaldsen, or at least delaying him, he could not mention Washington’s involvement.

Interesting how the tables had turned. Usually it was Thorvaldsen who held back, sucking Malone in deeper.

“Is Sam okay?” Thorvaldsen asked.

He decided to lie. “I don’t know. But there’s little I can do about it at the moment.”

He listened as Thorvaldsen recapped his visit with Eliza Larocque, ending with, “She’s a despicable bitch. I had to sit there, so polite, thinking the whole time about Cai.”

“She didn’t kill him.”

“I don’t relieve her of responsibility so easily. Ashby works with her. There’s a close connection, and that’s enough for me.”

His friend was tired, the fatigue evident in weary eyes.

“Cotton, Ashby is going after a book.”

He listened to more information about Napoleon’s will and The Merovingian Kingdoms 450-751, A.D. , a volume supposedly on display in the Invalides.

“I need to get that book first,” Thorvaldsen said.

Vague ideas floated through his brain. Stephanie wanted Thorvaldsen halted. To do that, Malone would have to take control of the situation, but that was a tall order considering who was currently in the driver’s seat.

“You want me to steal it?” he asked.

“It won’t be easy. The Invalides was once a national armory, a fortress.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I do.”

“I’ll get the book. Then what are you going to do? Find the lost cache? Humiliate Ashby? Kill him? Feel better?”

“All of the above.”

“When my son was taken last year, you were there for me. I needed you, and you came through. I’m here now. But we have to use our heads. You can’t simply murder a man.”

An expression of profound sympathy came to the older man’s face. “I did last night.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Not in the least. Cabral killed my son. He deserved to die. Ashby is as responsible as Cabral. And, not that it matters, I may not have to murder him. Larocque can do it for me.”

“And that makes it easier?”

Stephanie had already told him that Ashby was coming to Paris, and had assured his American handler that tomorrow he would provide full details of what was about to happen. Malone despised the Brit for what he’d done to Thorvaldsen-but he understood the value of the intelligence Ashby could offer and the significance of taking down a man like Peter Lyon.

“Henrik, you’ve got to let me handle this. I can do it. But it has to be my way.”

“I can get the book myself.”

“Then what the hell am I doing here?”

A stubborn smile found the older man’s lips. “I hope you’re here to help.”

He kept his eyes on Thorvaldsen. “My way.”

“I want Ashby, Cotton. Do you understand that?”

“I get it. But let’s find out what’s going on before you kill him. That’s the way you talked yesterday. Can we stick with that?”

“I’m beginning not to care about what’s happening, Cotton.”

“Then why screw with Larocque and the Paris Club? Just kill Ashby and be done with it.”

His friend went silent.