Gabriel turned to the left, trying to spot whom she’d signaled, but he saw no one. With a minimum of fuss, he made a U-turn on the sidewalk and began to walk back up the block. He hugged the concrete façades and slowed at the storefront windows, a hand brushing his hair, dabbing his sideburns, anything to conceal his features. And all the while his eyes scoured the opposite side of the street-the café, the kiosk, the boutique, the bakery.
Claudine had left the ATM and was folding a wad of bills and shoving them into her pocket. All he had to do was follow her to his son. She waved ever so slightly and nodded her head. A greeting of conspirators.
Gabriel’s eye darted up the sidewalk and landed on a tall, rough-boned boy who had emerged from a public rest room. The boy was wearing baggy jeans, an oversize T-shirt bearing a scowling black youth’s face above the words “Fifty Cent,” and a baseball cap with its bill turned backward. Sunglasses hid the boy’s eyes, but there was no mistaking the face.
Marc Gabriel had found his son.
Chapter 38
“Miss Charisse, please come in. I’m Dr. Ben-Ami.”
Claire Charisse passed from the waiting room into the doctor’s suite of offices. “Thank you for seeing me,” she said, ever her officious self. “I know it was short notice.”
“Not at all,” said Maurice Ben-Ami, gesturing toward an empty examining room. “I’m happy to help. I spoke with Hugo Luytens at Novartipham. He says you’re making some real progress at the WHO. It’s the least I could do, to see you.”
Claire put down her purse and took a seat on the raised bench, nervously adjusting her skirt beneath her legs.
“These are the latest?” he asked, accepting the manila envelope from her. He threw the X rays on the light box as if he were dealing cards. “Let’s have a look, shall we?”
Sixty, sallow, with twenty-pound bags of coal under his eyes and a miner’s fractured posture, Maurice Ben-Ami looked as if he hadn’t left his offices in a year. His specialty was oncology, the branch of medicine concerned with the study and treatment of tumors. Staring at the X rays, he saw three knotty masses attaching themselves to the elbow joint.
“Hmm,” he grunted. “I had no idea the case was so advanced. Hugo didn’t mention anything-”
“Hugo doesn’t know. Our relationship is strictly professional. I strong-arm him into sending my patients drugs. He gets me doctors’ appointments.”
“What I mean is that you look too healthy.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“So you’re familiar with the prognosis?”
“Intimately.”
“And how are you feeling?” he asked, sitting down on a rolling stool.
“Not great, or else I wouldn’t be here.” Claire touched her elbow and winced.
“There, there.” Ben-Ami took her arm in his hands and gingerly worked the joint, his practiced fingers probing the afflicted area. “You’ve started your second round of treatment?”
“Tuesday.”
“No nausea?”
Claire flashed him her survivor’s grin. “Nothing a cigarette won’t cure.”
The strong, capable hands slid up the arm, massaging the biceps, the triceps. “Your hair is staying with you.”
She lifted the three-thousand-dollar wig off her head. Clusters of brittle, gray-white hair clung to her scalp. “Fooled you, didn’t I?” she asked, before repositioning the hairpiece. Ben-Ami smiled briefly, as if smiles were rationed. “Loss of appetite?”
“I was never a big eater.”
Finished with his examination, Maurice Ben-Ami frowned. “Strange. Usually, I can get some feel of the growths. Your arms feel strong. No deterioration in the muscle. The tumors seem to have shrunk.” He bent Claire’s arm to her shoulder and she stifled a moan. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” she said, wiping at a tear. When she allowed her eyes to meet his, she appeared ashamed of her low tolerance for pain.
“One of the brave ones, eh? Good for you. It’s important to put up a good fight. So many people, after a cancer metastasizes-when they have bone mets like you-they give in to the pain. They give up. It’s a mistake. Our will to live is the strongest weapon we possess.”
Sighing, Ben-Ami rose from the stool and lumbered to the cupboard. He returned with two vials of clear liquid. “This might do the trick. Metastron. The newest stuff we’ve got.”
“Will it help the pain?”
“Takes a few days to kick in, but I think you’ll be happy. A third of my patients tell me they don’t feel a thing. Of course, it’s only palliative. It treats the pain, not the tumor, but it will add significantly to the quality of your life. Your appetite will come back. You’ll be able to enjoy your wine. I always like Fendant this time of year, or maybe an Aigle Les Murailles.” He raised a finger in admonishment. “But no more than a glass at dinner. Cut the cigarettes, too. They knock out your immune system.”
“And movement?”
“Your range of motion will improve. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t play tennis. Best of all, you should be able to sleep through the night.”
“Sounds wonderful,” said Claire.
Swabbing her arm, Ben-Ami opened a vial and dosed a syringe. It wasn’t a small syringe, the stuff of flu shots and tetanus vaccines. It was a large metal syringe, the needle a good three inches long, with the diameter of a ballpoint pen tip.
“You can expect some discomfort,” he said. “It’s necessary to administer the drug slowly.”
Claire winced as the needle entered her skin.
“This will only take a minute or two.”
“How does it work?” She already knew, but she needed him to talk, anything to distract her from the needle working its way into her muscle.
“Metastron? It tricks the bones into thinking it’s calcium and gets sucked up into the tumor. The active agent is strontium. The radioactive isotopes bind with the tumor and lessen the friction against the bone. Hence less pain.”
“Strontium?” A look of horror passed across her face. “Goodness, will I glow in the dark?”
“You’re thinking of strontium ninety, which is a by-product of nuclear fission-the stuff we get comes from spent fuel rods, nuclear reactors, that kind of thing. Metastron uses strontium eighty-nine chloride. It’s a different molecule.”
“But it is radioactive?”
“Mildly. All you need to worry about is that in five days most of your pain should have dissipated.”
Claire was more concerned about the shorter term. “How long will it stay in my system?”
“The half-life of the active radioisotope is fifty-one days. You’ll pass the debris by urination. The best part of it is that there are no side effects. You’re getting your life back.” Ben-Ami removed the syringe and pressed a cotton ball to her arm. “Dr. Rosenblum told me that you’ll be traveling soon.”
“Yes, this weekend. I’m flying to the States.”
“I’d like to schedule some X rays. We can do them now, in fact. In the next office.”
“I’m afraid I can’t this afternoon.”
“Tomorrow, then?” It was almost an order. “I’ll clear some time in the morning. Say, nine o’clock? I’m hoping to have some good news for you.”
“Can we say after the weekend? Monday morning?”
“Certainly. Anyhow, in the meantime, you may need this.” Ben-Ami scribbled a note on his drug pad. As to be expected, it was illegible.
“Thank you,” said Claire Charisse, rising from the bench. “It’s a great relief.”
Chapter 39
Leclerc sipped his coffee in the back-office operations center of the Banque de Londres et Paris. “How many men have we got on the street?”
“Twenty-six,” answered Dominique Maison, chunky, ill-shaven, a twenty-year veteran of the Sûreté.