“People were hurt at the museum,” he told her again. “This isn’t a game.”
“Sure it is, Sam. A big, terrible game. But it’s not mine. It’s theirs, and people getting hurt is not my fault.”
“You started it when you screamed at those two men.”
“You had to see reality.”
He decided, instead of arguing again about the obvious, he’d do what the Secret Service had taught him—keep her talking. “Tell me about the Paris Club.”
“Curious?”
“You know I am.”
“I thought you would be. Like I said, you and I think alike.”
He wasn’t so sure about that, but kept his mouth shut.
“As far as I can tell, the club is made up of six people. All obscenely wealthy. Typical greedy bastards. Five billion in assets isn’t enough. They want six or seven. I know someone who works for one of the members—”
He pointed. “Same guy who wears those boots?”
Her grin widened into a crescent. “No. Another guy.”
“You’re a busy girl.”
“You have to be to survive in this world.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“I’m the gal who’s going to save you, Sam Collins.”
“I don’t need saving.”
“I think you do. What are you even doing here? You told me awhile back that your superiors had forbidden you to keep your website and talk to me. Yet it’s still there and you’re here, wanting to find me. Is this an official visit?”
He couldn’t tell her the truth. “You haven’t told me a thing about the Paris Club.”
She sat sideways across one of the vinyl chairs, legs draped over one arm, her spine pressed to the other. “Sam, Sam, Sam. You don’t get it, do you? These people are planning things. They’re expert financial manipulators, and they intend to actually do all the things we’ve talked about. They’re going to screw with economies. Cheat markets. Devalue currencies. You remember how oil prices were affected last year. Speculators, who artificially drove the market mad with greed, did that. These people are no different.”
“That tells me nothing.”
A knock on the door startled them both, the first time he’d seen a crack in her icy veneer. Her gaze locked on the gun, lying on the table.
“Why don’t you just answer it?” he asked.
Another knock. Light. Friendly.
“Do you think bad guys knock?” he asked, invoking his own measure of cool. “And this isn’t even your place, right?”
She threw him a discerning glance. “You learn fast.”
“I did graduate college.”
She stood and walked to the door.
When she opened it a petite woman in a beige overcoat appeared outside. Perhaps early sixties, with dark hair streaked by waves of silver, and intense brown eyes. A Burberry scarf draped her neck. One hand displayed a leather case with a badge and photo identification.
The other held a Beretta.
“Ms. Morrison,” the woman said. “I’m Stephanie Nelle. U.S. Justice Department.”
THIRTY-FIVE
LOIRE VALLEY
7:00 P.M.
ELIZA PACED THE LONG GALLERY AND EAVESDROPPED ON A WINTER wind that battered the château’s windows. Her mind replayed all of what she’d told Ashby over the past year, disturbed by the possibility that she might have made a huge mistake.
History noted how Napoleon Bonaparte had looted Europe, stealing untold amounts of precious metals, jewels, antiquities, paintings, books, sculptures—anything and everything of value. Inventories of that plunder existed, but no one could vouch for their accuracy. Pozzo di Borgo learned that Napoleon had secreted away portions of the spoils in a place only the emperor knew. Rumors during Napoleon’s time hinted at a fabulous cache, but nothing ever pointed the way toward it.
Twenty years her ancestor searched.
She stopped before one of the windows and gazed out into the blackness. Below her, the River Cher surged past. She basked in the room’s warmth and savored its homely perfume. She wore a thick robe over her nightclothes and sought comfort within them both. Finding that lost cache would be her way of vindicating Pozzo di Borgo. Validating her heritage. Making her family relevant.
A vendetta complete.
The di Borgo clan was one of long standing in Corsica. Pozzo, as a boy, had been a close friend of Napoleon. But the legendary revolutionary Pasquale Paoli drove a wedge between them when he favored the di Borgos over the Bonapartes, whom he found too ambitious for his liking.
A formal feud commenced when Napoleon, as a young man, sought election as a lieutenant colonel in the Corsican volunteers, with a brother of Pozzo di Borgo as his opponent. The high-handed methods Napoleon and his party used to secure a favorable result roused di Borgo’s enmity. The breach became complete after 1792, when the di Borgos sided with Corsican independence and the Bonapartes teamed with France. Pozzo di Borgo was eventually named chief of the Corsican civil government. When France, under Napoleon, occupied Corsica, di Borgo fled and, for the next twenty-three years, skillfully worked to destroy his sworn enemy.
For all the attempts to restrict, suppress, and muffle me, it will be difficult to make me disappear from the public memory completely. French historians will have to deal with the Empire and will have to give me my rightful due.
Napoleon’s arrogance. Burned into her memory. Clearly, the tyrant had forgotten the hundreds of villages he’d burned to the ground from Russia, to Poland, to Prussia, to Italy, and across the plains and mountains of Iberia. Thousands of prisoners executed, hundreds of thousands of refugees rendered homeless, countless women raped by his Grande Armée. And what of the three million or so dead soldiers left rotting across Europe. Millions more wounded or permanently handicapped. And the destroyed political institutions of a few hundred states and principalities. Shattered economies. Fear and dread everywhere, France itself included. She agreed with what the great French writer Émile Zola observed at the end of the 19th century: What utter madness to believe that one can prevent the truth of history from eventually being written.
And the truth on Napoleon?
His destruction of the Germanic states, and the reunifying of them, along with Prussia, Bavaria, and Saxony, facilitated German nationalism, which led to their consolidation a hundred years later, which stimulated the rise of Bismarck, Hitler, and two world wars.
Give me my rightful due.
Oh, yes.
That she would.
Leather heels clicked off the floor from the gallery. She turned and watched as her chamberlain walked her way. She’d been expecting the call and knew who was on the other end of the line.
Her acolyte handed her the phone, then withdrew.
“Good evening, Graham,” she said into the unit.
“I have excellent news,” Ashby said. “The research and investigation have paid off. I think I may have found a link, one that could lead us directly to the cache.”
Her attention was piqued.
“I require some assistance, though,” he said.
She listened, her mind cautious and suspicious, but stimulated by the possibilities his enthusiasm promised.
Finally, he said,
“Some information on the Invalides would be helpful. Do you have a way to make that happen?”
Her mind raced through the possibilities. “I do.”
“I thought you might. I’m coming in the morning.”
She soaked in more details, then said, “Well done, Graham.”
“This could be it.”
“And what of our Christmas presentation?” she asked.
“On schedule, as you requested.”
That was exactly what she wanted to hear. “Then I shall see you on Monday.”
“I wouldn’t miss it.”
They said their goodbyes.
Thorvaldsen had teased her with the possibility that Ashby may be a traitor. But the Brit was doing everything she’d recruited him to do, and doing it rather well.
Still, doubt clouded her thoughts.
Two days.
She’d have to juggle these unstable balls, at least until then.
SAM CAME TO HIS FEET AS STEPHANIE NELLE ENTERED THE apartment and Meagan closed the door. Ice-cold perspiration burst out on his forehead.
“This isn’t the United States,” Meagan said, her passions clearly aroused. “You have no jurisdiction here.”
“That’s true. But at the moment, the only thing stopping the Paris police from arresting you is me. Would you prefer I leave, allow them to take you, so we can talk while you’re in custody?”
“What did I do?”
“Carrying a weapon, discharging a firearm within the municipal limits, inciting a riot, destruction of state property, kidnapping, assault. I leave anything out?”
Meagan shook her head. “You’re all alike.”
Stephanie smiled. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” She faced Sam. “Needless to say, you’re in a world of trouble. But I understand part of the problem. I know Henrik Thorvaldsen. I assume he’s at least partly to blame for why you’re here.”
He didn’t know this woman, so he wasn’t about to sell out the only person who’d treated him with a measure of respect. “What do you want?”
“I need you both to cooperate. If you do, Ms. Morrison, you’ll stay out of jail. And you, Mr. Collins, you might still have a career.”