“Eastern European arms—?”
“Taken from Croatia, stockpiled by our military in Solenzara, at least until they disappeared six years ago. This past year they’ve been turning up in Paris with disturbing regularity.”
“How do you know this?”
“We have big ears, Mademoiselle.”
Big Ears . . . Frenchelon?
She opened the file. Lucien Sarti’s image stared back at her.
Friday Morning
LAURE SAT UP IN the hospital bed, the computer keypad propped lecternlike on her hospital tray table. A hospital phone stood on the night table next to the violets Aimée had brought.
“Très bon, wonderful progress, the commissaire’s so pleased you can use this special equipment,” said the young therapist, beaming at her. “Each time you tap a key, I copy down a letter. So far, you’ve said, ‘I remember’ and what looks like a name and phone number, oui?”
Laure blinked. If only she would stop running off at the mouth and hurry up. Why didn’t this saccharine-voiced woman call Aimée?
“I’ll inform the officer on duty and we’ll take it from there.” She patted Laure’s arm. “He wants to hear right away about anything you know that may help with their investigation.” Laure blinked twice for no.
She slid her finger onto the letters n . . . o . . . w.
“Now?”
Laure blinked. Cold saliva drooled down her chin and she felt her shoulders sliding down the damn pillow.
“Excuse me, Laure,” the therapist said, “I must check with the officer first.”
The therapist stepped out of the ward. Laure slid further down, her head sinking into the pillow. And then she saw the pencil. She gripped it between her thumb and index finger. If only she could knock the telephone receiver off its cradle. With all her might, she swatted at it with the pencil. The smudged receiver wavered but held.
She tried again, this time wedging the pencil under it and levering it up. As the receiver fell she heard the dial tone. Quick, she had to do it fast, before the therapist returned or the recorded message came on and said, “If you’d like to make a call . . .”
She tapped Aimée’s eight numbers. Where was the connect button?
She heard footsteps, saw the blue uniform.
“What’s she doing?”
Friday Morning
AIMÉE HANDED THE FRANCS to Pascalou, her local butcher, who wiped his hands on the red-smeared apron straining around his rotund figure.
“I threw in a little treat,” he said and grinned. “Something Miles Davis likes.”
“You spoil him, Pascalou,” she said.
“Time for him to have a special friend, Aimée,” he said, wagging his finger.
And what about me? She just smiled.
“Merci.” She pocketed her change and hefted the white waxed-paper packet of Miles Davis’s lamb shanks. The bells tinkled on the butcher-shop door as she shut it.
Not thirty minutes ago, she’d listened to Jubert’s description of the terrorist cell concealing arms somewhere in Montmartre. She had kept quiet regarding Lucien Sarti. She couldn’t figure him out. Suspicion of Jubert still nagged her. Would he keep his end of the bargain concerning Laure?
She had to find Petru, more and more convinced was she that he, rather than Lucien, was the key. There was no reason to inform Jubert yet. She would deliver a terrorist to him, but it wouldn’t be whom he expected.
First, she had to work on Frenchelon to find out how they’d traced the terrorist network back to Lucien Sarti.
She called Saj, ordered Indian takeout from Passage Brady, and booted up her laptop at home. By the time Saj arrived, in a flowing Afghan embroidered shearling coat, the pakoras and vegetarian thali sat on the fireplace mantel, the steam escaping and fogging the tarnished mirror behind it. Cumin and the scent of coconut curry filled the salon that doubled as her home office.
“Smells wonderful,” he said.
“Ready for overtime?” she asked. “I think you’ll like this project.”
Saj eyed the laptop screen. “Frenchelon, hmmm. So we’re working on satellite netspionage?” he asked.
“Netspionage? I like that,” she said, her fingers clicking over the keys. “Digital dead-letter drop, heard of that?”
He nodded, hung his coat behind the chair, and kicked off his sandals. “Do it all the time. Where’s René?”
“At his place,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “Working.”
“So they’re watching your office like last time, eh?”
Saj was quick.
“Who is it this time?”
“Supposedly Corsican Separatists, or else the local mafia under the guise of the Armata Corsa. Charming mecs, either way.”
Saj paused, holding a garlic naan midair. “Talk about a bad-boy magnet! I don’t get it. You and René do computer security. How come you keep getting involved with thugs?”
“Nice segue,” she said. “It’s all related. And something smells way off. That’s why I called you.”
“I need to center, Aimée,” Saj said, wiping his hands and settling cross-legged on her threadbare Savonnerie carpet.
She groaned inside. Why couldn’t he center before he came?
“Why don’t you join me? It’s been a while for you, non?”
She’d made a stab at meditation at the Cao Dai temple in November and failed at mindful breaths. Her legs had cramped, her mind run rampant, yet she had experienced one brief shining moment when the world fell away and somehow she’d breathed with the universe.
“Right now I can use all the help I can get.”
She sat cross-legged beside him, touched her thumbs to her middle fingers. Tried to clear her mind.
“Deep asana,” Saj said. “Breathe in through the nostrils, hold it, good, now a long exhale.”
Conscious of the leafless tree branch slapping her window, the crackle of the logs in the fire, and the hardness of the wood floor, she waited. The other “state” remained elusive. Yet after ten minutes her mind had cleared.
Saj stood up and helped himself to the Indian food.
Bordereau of the DST had mentioned a data-encryption leak in the same sentence with Corsican Separatists. “Look at this,” she said. “Data-encryption leaks and one link relating to Frenchelon. What do you know about a connection to the satellite Helios-1A?”
“The satellite has a stowaway on board, the Eurocom, an interception cartridge that picks up Inmarsat and Intelsat signals so it can read microwave and mobile phone communications. My friend at Dassault Systèmes worked on the Eurocom’s manufacture.”
“Impressive,” she said. “A great tool with which to find terrorists.”
“They call it searching the Bitstream; it’s like sifting sand to find a coin most of the time.”
“Say that again,” she said, drumming her chipped nails on the space bar.
“Eh, searching the Bitstream . . . .”
“That’s it!” Hadn’t Zoe Tardou heard “searching the stream” from the men on the roof speaking in Corsican to cloak their meaning? She’d found the connection at last.
Saj grinned, pushed a dark blond dreadlock behind his shoulder. “All things to all people, I’d say. One juicy intercept was Brezhnev’s phone call to his mistress from his limo. Another, the Rainbow Warrior scandal with Greenpeace, via ARABSAT and Gadhafi’s conflict with Chad. But NATO’s the prime target for Echelon and a real sieve. Of course, it’s also used for rampant corporate espionage.”
Her ears perked up. She sat forward in her chair. “Can you crack it?”
“Now why would I do that?”
“To show you can,” she said. “How difficult would it be for you or anyone else?”