No way around this but to plunge right in. And stretch the truth.
“I worked with Pascal Samour volunteering at the museum.” A little lie.
Scraping noises. A long pause.
“I don’t understand, Mademoiselle.”
“Matter of fact, I still do. But his murder—”
“Murder?” She heard shock in his tone.
“You didn’t know? But as Gadz’Arts, his classmate, I thought …”
A sigh. “It’s complicated. Pascal’s not on the Gadz’Arts list. No wonder he didn’t attend the memorial. But why call me?”
“Now I don’t understand,” she said. “A list?”
A snort. “I’m a crapaud, a toad. Not that I bought into the traditions, just enough to get by. Pascal never did. So he’s unofficial. An HU.”
“Which means?”
Pause.
“The Mentus, upperclassmen, enlisted cadres to prove themselves. If you resisted, you’d be labeled ‘outside the factory,’ hors usinage, HU, like Pascal. Me, I did the minimum, a crapaud, so I made the list.”
“Pascal’s not part of the family, then?” She sipped her espresso, trying to understand.
“That’s one way to put it,” he said. “This lore goes so far back.” He gave a little sigh. “Ritualistic traditions passed on in a mysterious booklet with arcane symbols, mystical directions. We were pressured to wake up before dawn, wear long robes, learn chants.” His tone was embarrassed. Almost apologetic. “Exerting constant pressure on us until our class coalesced into a unit, a cohesive mold.”
Not a system Pascal seemed to have fit into. “Sounds like the military,” she said.
“Cadres were coached to do the dirty work. ‘Killers.’ ”
Her breath caught. “Killers?”
The girl behind the counter peered up from her Marie Claire. Aimée turned away.
“I mean, it was perfect preparation for the cutthroat corporate world. Daring each other to man up, take risks,” he said. “Prove they’re worthy, part of the group. This notion of group loyalty and camaraderie through shared suffering. Ridiculous when you think about it.”
Pause. The clanking and shouting of men came from the background.
“I’m sorry about Pascal,” de Voule said. “He looked up to Becquerel. A mentor, even to HU.”
“Outcasts like Pascal?”
“Look, I’m at a work site with heavy machinery lined up.”
“Pascal confided his project to Becquerel,” she said quickly. “But I think it links to the contract we’re working on for his department. Can you think how Becquerel would have been involved?”
“Beats me, Mademoiselle,” de Voule said. “The professor looked toward the future. He was a visionary. Foresaw computing systems, communication networks, fiber optics years ago.”
She grabbed her brown lip liner and wrote “communications networks, fiber optics” on a serviette.
“One more thing. His friend Jean-Luc Narzac, a fellow classmate, you know him, of course?”
Pause.
“Narzac? Haven’t seen him in several years.” De Voule’s tone had changed. “The team’s waiting for me, Mademoiselle.”
He’d shut down.
“May I just ask what you do, what your company does?”
“Solar energy.” Pause. “I tried to recruit Samour, a brilliant research analyst and engineer. But he never cared for an office, four walls.”
“He liked them rounded, Monsieur,” she said. “He lived in a tower, did you know that?”
“I’m sorry.” Another pause. “But I can see him living in a tower, now that you say that. A visionary much in the mold of Becquerel. Both seeing the roots of tomorrow in the science of the past. I can picture him living in a fourteenth-century tower.”
Now she was alert. “Fourteenth century?”
“Samour was obsessed with the fourteenth century,” de Voule said. “It was his passion, studying arts and sciences from that period. According to him, no one’s ever invented anything new since then. Was going to set out and prove it, or so he said when I offered him a job. It’s my company, I told him, you could make your own hours. But he followed his own path.”
“His great-aunt said the same thing,” Aimée said. “Becquerel knew what he was working on, but with his death …” She paused. “Did Pascal have enemies?”
Her phone clicked. Another call. She ignored it.
“Look, it’s terrible. But I don’t know. Sorry if I’m not helpful.” She sensed there was more he wanted to say.
“Au contraire, you’ve told me a lot. If there’s anything else that comes up for you, you’ve got my contact number.”
She slapped five francs on the counter and listened to the message. Mademoiselle Samoukashian, and she sounded afraid.
AT THE APARTMENT door, Mademoiselle Samoukashian took one look at Aimée’s raised Swiss Army knife and stepped back. “Overreacting, Mademoielle?”
“You sounded worried, you stressed urgency,” Aimée said. “Has something happened?”
“In the kitchen,” she said, “but put that away first.”
Aimée slipped the knife in her purse. A high, warbled bleeping, like birdsong, came from the high-end laptop.
An e-mail received.
Mademoiselle Samoukashian blinked and sat down. “That’s from Pascal.” She pointed to the screen. “His e-mail signal. I’ve gotten two of them today.”
“You’re sure?” Aimée asked, startled.
She nodded.
Pascal kept busy for a man on the slab at the morgue. A coldness spread in her stomach. “And you didn’t open them?”
“I wanted to show you.”
Seating herself on the stool, Aimée stared at the address: Pascal@wanadoo.fr.
There was an attachment. A virus, a sick joke? Or had someone hacked his account already? She’d view the message before deleting it.
If something has happened to me, give this to Becquerel. He can lead you in the right direction.
But Becquerel was dead.
“I just asked one of Pascal’s Gadz’Arts classmates about Becquerel.”
“And?”
“Nothing.” Aimée pulled out her cell phone. “I’ll need to confer with my partner.”
Mademoiselle Samoukashian nodded, her gaze glued to the screen.
René answered on the first ring.
“Any idea how Pascal could e-mail his great-aunt with an attachment a moment ago?”
Pause. “He had a dead man switch on his computer account,” René said. “Common practice for nerds to store secrets in encrypted files. Each time you log in, it resets the clock. But if you don’t log in within a certain period of time, it sends an e-mail. Then deletes files, if he programmed it that way. No telling how long ago he set this up.”
“So he could have programmed this a week ago, two weeks ago?”
She heard the clicking of keys in the background
“Shoot it to me right now with the attachment. Hurry.”
She typed in René’s address. Hit FORWARD and said a little prayer. “Done.”
René sucked in his breath. “Let me find a program to figure this out.”
“How long, René?”
“An hour, a day. Call you back.” He clicked off.
Aimée looked up. “I have to go.”
“You’ll find who murdered Pascal?” The old woman’s voice quavered.
Determined now, she nodded. “Count on it, Mademoiselle Samoukashian.”
Sunday, 9 A.M.
RENÉ RUBBED HIS shoulders. Two hours of endless configurations spent over Samour’s decrypted attachment and he still couldn’t get a grip on it.
At least he’d left Meizi safe at the hotel.