“You did the right thing to call me,” Bill Winter assured her. “Two weeks of sleep and she’ll be a new person.”
“I hope so,” Lucy said. “I really do. She’s been through so much. And I don’t feel I’ve helped her. Not really.”
“I’m sure you have.” Bill got into his car. “By the way, does she work? Will her insurance cover an in-patient stay?”
“Oh yes.” Dr. Lucy Grey smiled. “That’s one thing she doesn’t have to worry about. Kate’s husband, Daniel, was a CIA lifer. He died in Iraq on some special op, but the agency still pays all her bills. She’s covered for life, I believe.”
CHAPTER 19
HUNTER DREXEL ADMIRED HIS reflection in the mirror.
He’d been nervous about the blond hair. That it would look like an obvious dye job. But actually it worked. Cropped short, and paired with newly dyed blond eyebrows, it transformed his appearance. He looked younger, tougher, cleaner cut. He looked like a soldier.
Which, in a way, he was. A warrior for truth.
Laughing at his own pretensions, he pulled on a fake Rolex watch and began fastening his cuff links.
His current rooms were a step down from what he’d been used to. After Neuilly, the entire city was swarming with police, searching for the three escaped gunmen. Hunter had immediately left the expensive hotel where he’d been staying on Avenue Montaigne and moved here, to a much more low key pension close to the Bois de Boulogne.
It was from here that he’d called Kate. A triumphant moment and a turning point in the story he was writing. Of course he still had to speak to her face-to-face. But he’d made huge strides in Paris, and would soon be ready to go to print. Then, at last, he could come out of the shadows and face the world, friends and enemies alike.
Soon.
Right now his priority was to get out of France. He really should have left the day after Neuilly, but he’d been tempted into staying by one last poker game.
Pascal Cauchin would be there tonight. Pascal had bought and single-handedly destroyed thousands of acres of ancient Chilean forest, pumping water deep into the ground to extract hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of shale gas. Not only had he effectively robbed the Chileans, swindling them out of their land at a knockdown price, but he’d devastated the local ecosystem for hundreds of miles around. Cauchin was right up there with Henry Cranston as one of fracking’s least responsible, most obnoxious kingpins.
Not like the positively saintly Cameron Crewe.
The thought of getting to look Cauchin in the eye across a card table, whilst concealing his own identity and successfully relieving Pascal of thousands of dollars in winnings was more temptation than Hunter Drexel could resist. He would play tonight as Lex Brightman, New York theater impresario and amateur poker enthusiast.
One last game. Then I’m out of here.
JEFF STEVENS SAT AT a corner table at Café Charles, near Notre Dame Cathedral, opposite Frank Dorrien.
“Do you have any idea how English you look?” Jeff asked the general, glancing at Frank’s off-duty uniform of brogues, dark green corduroy trousers, Turnbull & Asser striped shirt and MCC tie. “Not exactly the gray man in the crowd, are you?”
“What would you prefer?” Frank quipped. “A Breton shirt, beret and a string of onions around my neck?”
Despite their profound, even seismic differences as people, Jeff and Frank had developed a productive working relationship. As Jamie MacIntosh had succinctly put it, “Frank can be a bit abrasive. But if you want to help Tracy Whitney, suck it up.”
Jeff had taken this to heart. Even though “a bit abrasive” turned out to be something akin to wearing a pair of sandpaper underpants. He could handle Frank.
“How was Hawaii?”
Jeff scowled. “Awful.”
“Any useful intelligence?”
“Not really. Tracy’s tight with Cameron Crewe of Crewe Oil. But we knew that already. It looks as if the two of them are working together, cutting Walton and Buck out of the loop.”
“Hmm.” Frank considered this. “That may be to our advantage. The less the CIA knows, the better.”
“Spoken like a true ally,” said Jeff.
Tracy working closely with Cameron definitely wasn’t to Jeff’s advantage. He didn’t trust Crewe as far as he could spit.
Frank said, “And now Tracy’s here in Paris?”