Eric Lustbader - The Testament

"Jenny, talk to me," Bravo said, after a time.

She continued to eat with an eerie kind of mechanical precision, as if she knew she was required to fuel the system but was tasting nothing. Her gaze was neither on him nor on her food but was focused on something-or someone-he would never be able to see.

He had just mopped up the last of his eggs when she suddenly spoke: "It's just that, you know, we didn't bury him."

"Do you really think that would've been wise?"

"Now you're an expert?" As if she had just noticed the food, she dropped her fork with a clatter, pushed the plate away in a gesture of disgust. "This tastes like week-old grease."

"Jenny, do we have to be at odds?"

She stared at him, mute.

"I'm sorry he's dead. I can't begin to imagine what he meant to you, but-"

"You're an idiot, you know that?" she said vehemently. "You think you have it all figured out, but you don't. You don't know anything at all."

A familiar silence rose between them, bristling with the defensive thorns they brought out in each other. At length, he held out a hand, palm up. "Why don't we make a pact to put aside our personal anger and grief, whatever their causes?"

For a long moment she did nothing. The way her eyes searched his face made him think that she was trying to get a sense of whether his offer was genuine.

She drew herself up and her expression became defiant. "You can forget about screwing me."

He laughed, somewhat surprised and, quite possibly, disappointed.

"I'm serious."

"Okay," he said, sobering.

At length, she extended her hand until it rested lightly in his. She looked at him, her eyes glittery, magnified by her tears. "A pact would be good."

Back in the Lincoln, he pulled out the paper on which he'd copied the number-and-space sequence his father had etched onto the lens of the glasses. "I've been thinking about this," he said, "and I think I know what it might be."

"You've had time to work out the math formula?" she said.

"It's the wrong configuration for a formula." He held the paper up so that they could both see its reflection in the rearview mirror. "This is a trick my father taught me when I was a kid. Reverse the entire sequence even though each letter-or in this case, number-isn't reversed. That way, to anyone who doesn't understand the cipher, the sequence will look wrong even if viewed in a mirror." Rummaging through the glove compartment, he found a pad and pen, and while Jenny held up the paper, he copied the sequence down in reverse. What he was looking at were three sets of six numbers, followed by one set of four numbers.

Jenny looked from the sequence to Bravo's face, trying to read his expression. "Well?"

Leaning forward, he took the GPS out of its cradle and punched in the numbers.

Jenny was dumbfounded. "It's a location?"

"The three sets of six numbers are longitude and latitude, down to the minute."

"But what about the last four-digit set?"

"I don't know." He showed her the glowing GPS screen.

"St. Malo," she said. "France, right?"

He nodded. "Brittany, to be exact."

"That's where we're going now?"

"Right." Bravo reached for his cell phone. "But not on our own."

It was already midmorning in Paris and Jordan Muhlmann was in his office at Lusignan et Cie. He was a tall slender man with dark hair, dark, deep-set eyes and a long jaw. His was a powerful face but somehow haunted. He was speaking with a woman in her late forties, her beauty undimmed by time. She was dressed in a chic black Lagerfeld suit, under which she wore a buttery silk blouse. A single strand of matched pearls glowed at her neck, and a gold band with the head of a woman incised into it circled one finger. She sat, wrists crossed over her knee, with a Zenlike serenity.

Outside could be seen rising the sterile white stonework of the Grande Arche de la Defense, which was not an arch at all but a cube with the center carved out of it. Fitting, in a way, Jordan thought, for Paris's modern-day monument to business. Farther away was the solid, magnificently carved Arc de Triomphe, monument to the triumphs of France's last great military hero, Napoleon Bonaparte.

The day was bright and clear with only a hint of clouds low on the northern horizon. The new sidewalks were filled with suits. Though they were from all over the world, you could not tell them apart. They spoke a common language, prayed to a common god, wished upon a common star, and that was commerce. After the cultureless euro, faceless electronic transfers, corporate takeovers that involved two, three or four countries, did any variations remain of the beauty that had flowered here for centuries?

Like everything else in this self-consciously postmodern sector of Paris, the facade of the building Lusignan et Cie owned was in keeping with its surroundings: contemporary, sleek, stark, entirely without character. The office complex was, however, the opposite, filled with Old World garnishments and charm, especially Jordan's office suite, which stretched away in Art Nouveau majesty. There were virtually no hard edges: everything, curved and sculpted in high relief, had an organic shape to it. On the shelves were artifacts from an earlier age-French and German sculpture from the 1920s, pottery from the nineteenth century, fragments of ancient religious scrolls, the guard of a sword purported to be from the Crusades-remnants of civilizations long past. This fascination with history, culture and religion was one of the things that had drawn Jordan and Bravo so closely together.

The intercom buzzed. Muhlmann's secretary said, "It's Monsieur Shaw. He says it's urgent."

Jordan hit the speakerphone switch and picked up the receiver. "Bravo, I have been trying to reach you-as usual." The anxiety in his voice was palpable. "Is everything all right?"

"It is now," Bravo said.

"Ah, bon, that's a relief!"

"But I'm coming to Paris immediately. I'll be arriving early tomorrow morning with a friend of mine, Jenny Logan, and I'll need transportation."

"Of course. You shall have it. Alors, you must tell me more of this Jenny Logan. This is good news, indeed. In the midst of your grief you have found a companion-what is the American word?-a girlfriend."

Bravo laughed. "Girlfriend? Not exactly." He cleared his throat. "Listen, Jordan, I think I ought to tell you that things have taken a very nasty turn here."

"Mon ami, what do you mean?"

"Not over the phone," Bravo said. "But whoever you send must be absolutely trustworthy, do you understand me?"

At that moment, the woman stood up, walked over to Jordan's desk. Her movements were flawless. She held in her magnificent, fierce face the full knowledge of who she was and what powers she possessed. She exuded an innate authority that made it clear it would be foolish either to deceive her or to oppose her.

"Bravo, un moment, s'il te plait." Jordan jabbed the hold button, looked up at her expectantly.

The woman parted her lips and said very softly, "Let me do it, my love."

Jordan shook his head. "It's too dangerous. After what happened with Dexter-"

"Don't fret, I'll be careful," she whispered. Then she smiled.

"Jordan, do you understand me?" Bravo repeated.

He hit the hold button again and said into the phone, "Mow ami, I hear the urgency in your voice and my concern for you grows deeper."

"Then you do understand."

"But of course," he said. "I will come myself."

"Isn't the quarterly companywide directors' meeting this week?"

"Tomorrow, in fact. Not to mention the Dutch, who have come in to finalize the deal you and I have been working on for almost a year."

"What about the Wassersturms?"

"That deal is dead, Bravo, you made certain of that."

"They've proved to be remarkably insistent."