Steve Berry - The Paris Vendetta

“Could have been a malfunction?” she said.

“I don’t think so.”

Sirens grew louder.

Stephanie’s radio came to life. She answered the call, and Malone heard what the man on the other end reported.

“We have a live bomber in the Court of Honor.”

THORVALDSEN LISTENED AS LAROCQUE FINISHED HER EGYPTIAN tale, explained Napoleon’s original concept of a Paris Club, and provided an overview of the four papyri. He noticed she hadn’t mentioned that he, too, had been previously told much of the information. Clearly, she wanted their conversations private. Her reading of the newspaper clipping had surely affected her.

How could it not?

Her reaction also told him something else. Ashby had not reported that, thanks to Stephanie and Cotton, he now possessed the book.

But what was the Magellan Billet doing in this business?

He’d tried to make contact with Malone during the night and all morning, but his friend had not answered his phone. He’d left messages, and none had been returned. Malone’s room at the Ritz went unused last night. And though his investigators had not spied the title of the book Stephanie gave to Ashby, he knew that it was the one from the Invalides.

What else could it be?

There had to be a good reason why Malone handed the book over to Stephanie, but he could not conceive of one.

Ashby sat calmly across the table, watching Larocque with attentive eyes. Thorvaldsen wondered if the other men and women sitting in this room realized what they’d actually signed on for. He doubted Eliza Larocque was solely interested in illicit profits. He sensed from their two meetings that she was a woman on a mission-determined to prove something, perhaps justify her family’s denied heritage. Or maybe rewrite history? Whatever it may be, it was more than simply making money. She’d assembled this group here, at the Eiffel Tower, on Christmas Day, for a reason.

So he told himself, for the moment, to forget about Malone and concentrate on the problem at hand.

MALONE AND STEPHANIE RACED INTO THE COURT OF HONOR and stared out into the elegant square. In the center stood a young woman. Maybe early thirties, long dark hair, wearing corduroy trousers and a faded red shirt beneath a black coat. One hand held an object.

Two security men, guns aimed, were positioned in the shadows of the opposite arcade, near the scaffolding where Malone had entered the museum yesterday. Another armed man stood to the left, at the archway that led out through the Invalides’ north façade, the iron gates closed.

“What the hell?” Stephanie muttered.

A man appeared behind them, entering the arcade from glass doors that led into the museum. He wore the protective vest and uniform of the French police.

“She appeared a few moments ago,” the man informed them.

“I thought you searched these buildings,” Stephanie said.

“Madame, there are hundreds of thousands of square meters of buildings here. We have been going as fast as we can, without drawing attention, per your instructions. If someone wanted to evade us, it would not be hard.”

He was right.

“What does she want?” Stephanie asked.

“She told the men she controlled a bomb and told them to stand their ground. I radioed you.”

Malone wanted to know, “Did she appear before or after the van exploded in front of the church.”

“Just after.”

“What are you thinking?” Stephanie asked him.

He stared at the woman. She swung around, looking at the various men who continued to train their weapons on her. Wisely, she kept the hand with the controller moving, too.

“Gardez vos distances et baissez les armes,” she screamed.

Malone silently translated. Keep your distance and lower your weapons.

None of the men complied.

“ Il se pourrait que la bombe soit à l’hôpital. Ou à l’hospice. Fautil prendre le risque?” she yelled, displaying the controller. The bomb could well be in the hospital. Or the pensioners’ home. Do you risk it?

The policeman standing beside them whispered, “We searched both of those buildings first. Carefully. There is nothing there.”

“Je ne le redirai pas,” the woman called out. I shall not say it again.

Malone realized that it was Stephanie’s call on what the French would do, and she was not one to be bluffed.

Still.

“Lower the weapons,” she ordered.

ELIZA STROLLED TOWARD THE STAGE AT ONE END OF THE HALL. A quick glance at her watch confirmed the time. 11:35 AM.

Twenty-five minutes left.

“We will take our trip to the top soon. First, though, I want to explain what I am proposing for our near future.”

She faced the group.

“Over the past decade we’ve seen a great deal of change in world financial markets. Futures, once a way for producers to hedge their products, are now simply a game of chance, where commodities that don’t exist are traded at prices that bear no relation to reality. We saw this a few years ago when oil topped off at more than $150 a barrel. That price had no relation to supply, which was, at the time, at an all-time high. Eventually, that market imploded and prices plummeted.”

She saw that many in the room agreed with her assessment.

“America is mainly to blame for this,” she made clear. “In 1999 and 2000 legislation was passed that paved the way for a speculative onslaught. That legislation actually repealed older statutes, passed in the 1930s, designed to prevent another stock market crash. With the safeguards gone, the same problems from the 1930s recurred. The global stock market devaluations that ensued should have been no surprise.”

She caught the curious expressions of a few faces.

“It’s elementary. Laws that place greed and irresponsibility before hard work and sacrifice come with a price.” She paused. “But they also create opportunities.”

The room was silent.

“Between August 26 and September 11, 2001, a group of covert speculators sold short a list of thirty-eight stocks that could reasonably be expected to fall in value as the result of any attack on America. They operated out of the Canadian and German stock exchanges. The companies included United Airlines, American Airlines, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Merrill Lynch. In Europe, they targeted insurance companies. Munich Re, Swiss Re, and AXA. On the Friday before the attacks, ten million shares of Merrill Lynch were sold. No more than four million are sold on a normal day. Both United and American Airlines saw an unusual amount of speculative activity in the days prior to the attack. No other airline company experienced this.”

“What are you suggesting?” one of the group asked.

“Only what an Israeli counterterrorism think tank concluded when it studied Osama bin Laden’s financial portfolio. Nearly twenty million U.S. dollars in profits were realized by bin Laden from the September 11 attacks.”

MALONE HEARD THE ROAR OF A HELICOPTER OVERHEAD AND glanced up to see a Royal Navy Westland Lynx sweep past at low altitude.

“NATO,” Stephanie said to him.

At Stephanie’s instruction, the men encircling the woman in the courtyard had lowered their weapons.

“I did as you wanted,” Stephanie called out in French.

The bomber did not reply. She stood fifty feet away and kept her gaze on the arcades that surrounded the Court of Honor. She remained edgy, unsteady, keeping her hands in constant movement.