"Yes, we know this now. She fooled us," the senior French diplomat said. "The French bankruptcy lawyer was tricked. He did not understand the significance, so he overlooked the investigation, but Moreau knew all of this. She knew he was failing in his duty."
"You opened an escrow with an impeccable Swiss escrow agent. It says in the instructions that there are no promises or covenants between the parties, except those expressed in the escrow documents. Is that agreed?"
The French were silent.
"I take your silence to be similar to that of Pontius Pilate."
"It says that in the instructions, but that is no license for fraud," the French diplomat shot back.
"Certainly. Let us go further. It says in there, does it not, that Georges Raval was the inventor?"
More silence. "I won't keep referencing the murderer of our Savior in the same breath with the French position, but once again I take your silence to mean agreement."
"It says that, but once again-"
"It is not a license for fraud, and we would agree. Neither is it a license for stupidity, is it? So, if we continue to follow the beauty of logic and undertake the glories of wisdom, we get to the affidavit of Georges Raval. It says that this description of Chaperone is from the official records of Grace Technologies. And then Raval says that he cannot personally vouch for the efficacy of the science, as presented in these papers, but only that these are the official documents of Grace Technologies."
"This is merely legal jargon to protect him in case, for some reason, it doesn't work as expected."
"Precisely. And as I understand it, this doesn't work as expected."
"But he held back the real thing."
"No, he held back the version that he kept personally as the inventor. He states he is the sole inventor. Had he given you his version, he would not have met your demand. Your demand was for the official Grace Technologies documents."
"You're saying that Grace paid for all of this and has nothing."
"Absolutely not. They have a license by contract and Mr. Raval, or rather the foundation to which he has transferred the patent, will honor that perpetual royalty-free license. The French can use the Chaperone recipe without royalty. You obtained all of the vector technology from Gaudet. And I might add you got most of your money back."
"But this foundation can also sell Chaperone to the world and reap all the benefits," the French countered.
"Yes. That sometimes happens when you buy a pig in a poke. Now I agree that Mr. Gaudet as the seller could have done more to research the matter, but he did not, and you al lowed him to close and dropped your demand to review the matter and voluntarily gave up your opportunity to ensure that you understood the species in your poke. One would think that you would be grateful that the foundation is going to honor your royalty-free license and actually give you the right pig."
"We are not happy with the asylum. Benoit Moreau knew what she was doing."
"She knew that she was being lied to about a pardon by Messieurs Baptiste and Larive. She suspected those men were taking kickbacks. She knew that they planned to profit from Cordyceps. So, in her words, she used devil bait and caught some devils. She couldn't stop the atrocity of Cordyceps unless she got to America. To get to America she had to lie and convince these French devils that they could acquire Chaperone. All the while she knew, of course, that they had only a license, so she would get them what was rightfully theirs. And then"-Jefferson Peakum drew himself up and paused-"Benoit intended to stop the transaction before French dollars were transferred. This has been documented. But it could not be stopped because at the time set for closing she still had not learned enough about Cordyceps to save American lives. So she risked her own life and a few French dollars to save millions of lives. Now, that might not please a devil, but it should be good enough for an angel. You get what is right fully yours under the law and she saves the free markets from a calamity and potentially millions of lives. Only a devil would quibble with that. So which are you? Angels or devils?"
Sam could see that Jefferson was going to do just fine. He nodded to Harry and they left.
Epilogue
It was billed as an engagement party. Sam had seen Anna five times since she'd emerged from the coma. In keeping with the doctor's advice he had kept the conversation to light topics: her family, her pets, her upcoming scripts, celebrity news, and who was winning in sports. Nothing had been said about the loss of their child. In fact, Sam had been told by her doctor that her memory of the days preceding the shooting were unclear. They had the party at the home of a friend of Anna's in the Hollywood Hills. Below the house was a large pool, with a pool house at one end and gardens going up the opposite hillside. Sam had been there before but chose not to think about it. There was a spacious patio by the pool and that was the site of the party.
It was an eclectic group. Agent Ernie Dunkin was present, along with several other FBI types, including an assistant di rector as well as officials from Homeland Security. There were officials from the CIA, politicians-such as the mayor of Los Angeles, folks from the publishing industry (but no journalists allowed), a goodly number of celebrities-many of whom had read Bowden's books, producers, and directors. All in all, it was an important party for people who wanted to be in the know about the near-miss terrorist attack that wasn't publicized until a few days after it was thwarted. The Dow had risen two hundred points with the news that the govern ment had done it right.
Jill was present, acting as bartender, and Sam was chief of security, his usual cover. Harry was in charge of cleaning up-when people dropped their hors d'oeuvres and such, he took care of it with his long pink tongue. Then sleep seemed to overtake Harry, since there were too many droppings and not enough help.
Guests of honor, Georges Raval and Benoit Moreau, billed as the medical wizard and the spy who loved him, were mingling and had lines of people waiting to meet them, as did the other guests of honor, Michael Bowden and his gorgeous girlfriend. The engagements giving rise to the party were, of course, those of Michael and Grady and Georges and Benoit. For a band they had landed a group that Grady loved and no one had ever heard of-their career was launched.
Anna wandered over and stood next to Sam. Just like Sam, she had an earpiece. Sam saw it and smiled.
"Working security today, huh?"
"Figured it was the only way I could stand by you."
"I tell you what. If you'll drop your earpiece, I'll drop mine."
"Really?"
"Yeah. This once. And if it works out, we might try it again."
"Deal," she said.
"Let's have some wine and then maybe we'll actually eat hors d'oeuvres. I don't know if I've ever really eaten in quantity at a party."
"Me either. But you realize it's not cool to actually eat food. It's cool to nibble and waste it."
"Tell that to Harry." They shared a moment of comfortable silence. "We're going to Benoit's wedding?"
"Absolutely. And you're going as my security guy, right?"
"That would be one way we could do it."
Anna left the answer alone.
After some more banter they sat down under an umbrella, amazingly getting a few moments to themselves.
"You know, Sam, I seem to remember that we were dis cussing marriage…"
"Yes. We were."
"I'm a little unclear on the details. But neither of us seems quite there right now. If I could just be blunt about it."
"We were at a point there… one of those crossroads in life… and whatever decision we had made, I believe it would have been good. But we somehow got pushed right through that crossroads."
"And now maybe we need a new crossroads."
"Right."