Steve Berry - The Paris Vendetta

And any threat would have to be containable.

After all, that was the whole idea. Scare the people into obeying-then extract profit from their fear. The better solution was the simplest. Invent the threat. Such a plan came with a multitude of advantages. Like a dimmer switch on a chandelier that could be adjusted into infinite degrees of intensity. Thankfully, in today’s world, a credible enemy existed and had already galvanized public sentiment.

Terrorism.

As she’d told Thorvaldsen, that precise threat had worked in America, so it should work anywhere.

Tomorrow she’d see if the parchments were correct.

What Napoleon had wanted to do, she would now do.

For two hundred years her family had profited from the political misfortunes of others. Pozzo di Borgo deciphered enough from the parchments to teach his children, as they’d taught theirs, that it truly did not matter who made the laws-control the money and you possess real power.

To do that, she needed to control events.

Tomorrow would be an experiment.

And if it worked?

There’d be more.

LONDON

6:40 PM

ASHBY SEARCHED THE DARKNESS AND THE HUNDRED OR SO faces for a green-and-gold Harrods scarf. Most of the people surrounding him were clearly tourists, their guide yelling something about the feel of gaslight and fog and August 1888 when Jack the Ripper struck terror into drink-sodden East End prostitutes .

He grinned.

The Ripper seemed to interest only foreigners. He wondered if those same people would pay money in their own countries to be taken on a tour of a mass murderer’s haunts.

He was on the city’s east side, in Whitechapel, walking down a crowded sidewalk. To his left, across a busy street, rose the Tower of London, its taupe-colored stones awash in sodium vapor light. What was once an enormous moat was now a sea of emerald winter grass. A cold breeze eased inland off the nearby Thames, with the Tower Bridge lighted in the distance.

“Good evening, Lord Ashby.”

The woman who appeared beside him was petite with short-cut hair, late fifties, early sixties, definitely American, and wearing a green-and-gold scarf. Exactly as he’d been told.

However.

“You are new,” he said to her.

“I’m the one in charge.”

That information caught his attention.

He’d met his regular contact with American intelligence on several of London’s walking tours. They’d taken the British Museum stroll, Shakespeare’s London, Old Mayfair, and now Jack the Ripper Haunts.

“And who are you?” he casually asked.

“Stephanie Nelle.”

The group halted for the guide to spew out something about how the building just ahead was where the Ripper’s first victim had been found. She grasped his arm and, as others focused on the guide, they drifted into the crowd’s wake.

“Fitting we should meet on this tour,” she said. “Jack the Ripper terrorized people and was never caught, either.”

He didn’t smile at her attempt toward irony. “I could end my involvement now and leave, if you no longer require my help.”

The group again started forward.

“I realize the price we’re going to have to pay is your freedom. But that doesn’t mean I like it.”

He told himself to stay calm. This woman, and who she represented, had to be stroked, at least for another twenty-four hours, and at least until he obtained the book.

“The last I was told we were in this endeavor together,” he said.

“You promised to deliver information today. I came to personally hear what you have to offer.”

The group stopped at another notable site.

“Peter Lyon will bomb the Church of the Dome, at the Invalides, tomorrow,” he said in a low voice. “Christmas Day. As a demonstration.”

“Of what?”

“Eliza Larocque is a fanatic. She has some ancient wisdom that her family has lived by for centuries. Quite complicated and, to me, generally irrelevant, but there is a French extremist group-isn’t there always one?-that wants to make a statement.”

“Who is it this time?”

“It involves immigrant discrimination under French law. North Africans, who flooded into France years ago, welcomed then as guest workers. Now they’re ten percent of the population and tired of being held down. They want to make a statement. Larocque has the means and wants no credit, so Peter Lyon brokered a partnership.”

“I want to understand the purpose of this partnership.”

He sighed. “Can’t you decipher it? France is in the middle of a demographic shift. Those Algerian and Moroccan immigrants are becoming a problem. They are now far more French than African, but the xenophobic right and the secularist left hate them. If birthrates continue as they are, within two decades those immigrants will outnumber the native French.”

“And what does blowing up the Invalides have to do with that inevitability?”

“It’s all a symbol. Those immigrants resent their second-class status. They want their mosques. Their freedom. Political expression. Influence. Power. What everyone else has. But the native French don’t want them to have those. I’m told a great many laws have been passed trying to keep these people at a distance.” He paused. “And anti-Semitism is also on a sharp rise throughout France. Jews are becoming afraid once again.”

“And those immigrants are to blame for that?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps some. To me, if the truth be told, the radical French are more responsible. But the political right and the extreme left have done a good job blaming those immigrants for all the ills that befall the country.”

“I’m still waiting for my answer.”

The tour stopped at another point of interest, and the guide droned on.

“Eliza is conducting a test,” he said. “A way to channel French national aggression onto something other than war. An attack by some perceived radical element against a French national monument, the grave of its beloved Napoleon-whom she despises, by the way-would, to her way of thinking, channel that collective aggression. At least that’s her way of explaining it.”

“Why does she hate Napoleon?”

He shrugged. “How would I know? Family tradition, I assume. One of her ancestors carried on a Corsican vendetta against Napoleon. I’ve never really understood.”

“Does the Paris Club meet tomorrow at the Eiffel Tower?”

He nodded his head in appreciation. “You’ve been busy. Would it not have been more prudent to ask me a direct question to see if I would be truthful?”

“I’m in a hurry, and I don’t necessarily believe a word you say anyway.”

He shook his head. “Impertinent. And arrogant. Why? I’ve cooperated with your people-”

“When you wanted to. You deliberately held back this information on an attack.”

“As you would have done, if in my place. But you now know, in plenty of time, so prepare accordingly.”

“I don’t know anything. How is it going to be done?”

“Good heavens, why would I be privy to that information?”

“You’re the one who made the deal with Lyon.”

“Believe me, that devil offers precious little in the way of details. He just wants to know when and if his money has been wired. Beyond that, he explains nothing.”

“Is that all?”

“The Invalides is closed for Christmas Day. At least there will be no people to worry about.”

She did not appear comforted. “You still haven’t answered my question about the Paris Club.”

“We meet tomorrow morning at the Eiffel Tower. Eliza has rented the banquet room on level one and plans to take everyone to the top around noon. As I said, Lyon likes timelines. Noon is when the explosion will occur, and the club will have the perfect vantage point.”