Alex Archer - Day Of Atonement

“And that was a mistake,” Roux said, then hung up.

Moerlen was right; the world was changing, and changing faster than it had for decades before. It was already smaller than it had been even twenty years ago with the pernicious invasion of television, but now with so many people having access to computers and those machines somehow connecting like some giant message network, it was so much more dangerous for a man like him.

This was escalating too quickly. The risk now was that it would slip out of his control. There were strings he could pull, more favors he could call in, but once the story had a life of its own there was no way he could put that genie back in the bottle. And that was what those bulletin boards and chat rooms promised to do.

Which meant he had to find another way to stop the story.

He needed to speak to someone who understood this electronic world, and the very real damage that could be done if he were to be exposed. There was one obvious choice, but given that they hadn’t talked for longer than Moerlen had been alive, it wasn’t exactly an easy call to make. The last time they’d been together Garin Braden had tried to kill him. The same thing had happened the time before. A third time and he’d start to take it personally.

He dialed the number, but he was forwarded straight to voice mail.

“Call me,” he said, then hung up.

There was nothing more to say.

Garin—his former pupil—would recognize his voice, and understand just how important it was that they talk simply because he’d swallowed his pride and reached out.

He thought about ignoring the situation and hoping the mess would just go away. The more he fought against it, the more obvious it was he had something to hide, after all. But what if it didn’t go away? What if those damned photographs led to more journalists banging on his door, asking more and more questions he couldn’t answer? He hadn’t asked for this life, even if, looking around him at the riches he had assembled across the centuries, it might look like a blessing rather than a curse. All it would take was the wrong person digging deep enough and everything would begin to unravel. The last thing he wanted to do was to have to begin a new life somewhere else. It was getting harder and harder to do that in this era of powerful computers and international cooperation.

His world, and Garin’s, was in danger of falling apart.

He punched a number on his phone again.

“Mr. Moerlen,” he said before the man on the other end of the line had had a chance to say hello. “You are right, we should meet. I will be in Paris in a couple of hours.”

“I’m so glad you’ve come to your senses, Mr. Roux. But things have changed since the last time we spoke.”

“How so?” Roux asked, not liking the sound of this.

“Remuneration, Mr. Roux.”

“Ah, so despite all of your protestations, this is about money, then? I’m disappointed.”

“Don’t be. I’m a child of the modern age. The modern age, as I’m sure you have noticed, is an expensive place to live. Let’s make it the top of the Eiffel Tower shall we?”

Moerlen named a time and hung up.

Roux wondered how much this was going to cost him. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the money. He had plenty of money, but would it ever be enough to guarantee his privacy? Pay the blackmailer once and then what? Expect him to be good for his word and never turn up on the doorstep again looking for another handout? Blackmail was a dirty business. There could never be an end to it.

Which, unfortunately for Moerlen, meant it needed to end very differently.

* * *

IT WAS A long climb.

There were a dozen tourists already on the viewing platform by the time Roux reached it.

There was no sign of Patrice Moerlen.

Roux’s plane had been refueled and would be ready to leave Orly Airport at a moment’s notice if things went the way he assumed they would. He would need to distance himself from the city for a while. A glance at his watch, an eerily precise Patek Philippe chronograph, showed that he was almost five minutes early. He hated to be early for anything; time spent waiting around was time wasted. Perhaps it was because he had so much of it he hoarded it?

A couple of tourists glanced in his direction, no doubt wondering why he had made the dizzying climb up the iron stairs and wasn’t leaning over the rail to take in the view across the city.

“Are you afraid of heights?” a small boy with a thick American accent asked him. “You can’t fall out you know. You’d have to climb and jump because of the railings, so it’s really safe.”

Roux forced a smile.

“That’s good to know.”

The boy’s mother took hold of his arm and pulled him away, muttering something about not talking to strangers.

Roux checked his watch again. Ninety seconds. Still no sign of Moerlen. And no sign of him on the stairs below, working his way up to the platform. This wasn’t good. He couldn’t control the situation. He didn’t like it when he couldn’t control the situation. The elevator doors opened behind him.

Another handful of tourists emerged, but the journalist wasn’t among them.

As the last of them stepped onto the platform, his phone rang.

He still wasn’t used to the fact that technology had advanced so quickly over the past few years that it was possible to carry a phone around wherever you were in the world, even if reception was patchy.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“I’m at the foot of the tower.”

“I’m not in the mood for games, Mr. Moerlen. You said the observation platform,” Roux said. “I am on the observation platform, you are not. How am I supposed to trust you if you can’t even keep this simple agreement? This does not auger well for our relationship.”

“What can I say? I changed my mind. I wanted to know how serious you were. Now I know.”

“Serious? I’m trying to save you from wasting any more of your life, and in the process ending your career, but it looks like you are intent on leading me off on some wild-goose chase. I don’t appreciate being treated like an idiot.”

“Save me?” Moerlen had the temerity to laugh at him. “Save yourself, you mean. You misjudged me, Mr. Roux. It was never about the money. I’ve only ever been interested in the truth. And you’ve just given it to me. Goodbye.”

Roux pressed against the viewing window, knowing there was no hope of being able to spot the damned journalist so far below.

People milled around like so many ants on the ground below. He’d read somewhere that if a person dropped a centime on its edge from this height it would cut through a man, splitting him in two. He had a problem. If he didn’t do something about Moerlen now, he might not get the opportunity again before it was too late. He had to stop that story getting out. His privacy afforded him a certain standard of living. Exposed, his life could never be the same again. It really was as simple as that. Moerlen, consciously or not, had forced his hand.

Behind him, the elevator doors began to close. He moved quickly. Two strides, three, and he reached out, sliding his hand between the doors before they could shut. He stepped inside. The silence was punctuated by the occasional disapproving tut from the woman whose boy had spoken to him before.

Roux said nothing.

He waited out the short descent, then pushed his way through the doors before they were fully open, elbowing between the next wave of tourists eager to make their way up to the observation platform without the climb.

He couldn’t see Moerlen; not that there was any guarantee the journalist had ever been there, no matter what he’d said. But if there was the slightest chance he was there, maybe watching from the safety of a nearby café to note how Roux reacted to his taunt, he had to try everything he could. If the guy wanted him to beg, then he’d beg. If he wanted to negotiate some exclusive deal to his story, then he’d negotiate it, but only if he could control it. That was what it was all about now—control.