Private Paris (Private 10)

Walking away, I’d rarely been happier.

Chapter 30

9th Arrondissement

April 8, 1 a.m.

WEARING SOILED CLOTHES, his face smeared with grime, Émile Sauvage acted the drunken bum and lay sprawled in an alleyway upwind of a Dumpster and downwind of some of the most amazing odors he’d ever smelled. The scents boiled out of a steel door that was ajar about fifty feet away, and made the major realize he should have eaten more. Then the breeze stilled and he could smell the beer he’d poured on his pant legs.

Sauvage glanced around, saw no one, and pressed his hand to the tiny transceiver in his ear. “How many left?” he murmured, knowing that the throat microphone would pick it up loud and clear.

“Two,” Epée said. “Maître d’ and the sommelier.”

“Stay patient,” Sauvage cautioned. “You know his rep. Every day the same way. Like clock—”

The steel door pushed open. The maître d’, a plump, intense-looking man in his late thirties, exited and immediately lit a cigarette. The sommelier, a younger woman, came after him, turned, and called back inside, “À demain, René.”

Then she closed the door, locked it, and followed the maître d’ toward Sauvage’s position.

“He works too hard,” the wine steward was saying.

“It’s his passion,” the maître d’ said.

“His heart will just break one of these days.”

Glancing in disgust at Sauvage lying in the filth, the maître d’ replied, “The price of greatness.”

“I just wish he’d pause to look around, relax, enjoy what he’s built.”

The man said something Sauvage did not catch, and then they were gone.

“Fifteen minutes,” the major said, and rolled to his feet, putting on gloves.

Down the alley, Captain Mfune was already up and moving toward the door. The captain picked the lock and they were quickly inside a small entry area with work clogs on the floor and white jackets in a large hamper.

The major took two careful steps and peeked around the corner of a doorway, seeing a large, softly lit commercial kitchen with a high ceiling. A cluster of red enamel ovens and stovetops dominated the room, with gleaming copper pots of all sizes hanging from an overhead beam.

Sauvage knew at a glance that the kitchen was immaculate. This was a restaurant run with discipline. The major admired it, and almost changed his mind about the target. But when it came to impact, this was the man they wanted.

They padded through the kitchen. Sauvage glanced through the porthole into the dining area. Pitch-dark. Near the refrigerators and a freezer, they reached a door that Mfune opened, revealing a steep wooden staircase and an exposed stone wall. Light glowed in the cellar below them.

Keeping their feet to the outside of each step, right above the riser support, they made it to the basement with nary a creak. The light came through an open oak door down a narrow hallway.

The major led the way, quiet as possible, until they’d reached the doorway. Sauvage drew a pistol and stepped around and through the passage.

Wine bottles filled floor-to-ceiling racks on all sides of a room about forty feet long and fifteen feet wide. A silver-haired, barrel-shaped man in a white blouse and apron sat at a table with an open bottle of red wine, an almost empty glass, and a plate holding a baguette, cheese, chocolate, and fruit.

“Chef Pincus,” Sauvage said as Mfune came in behind him.

The chef startled, saw the gun, and jumped up, knocking the table. The bottle fell over. Wine spilled across the tabletop, dripped on the floor.

“Who the hell are you?” Pincus demanded.

“The future,” the major said. “We need you to help us set things right.”

“Right about what?” the chef asked, stepping back, looking around, seeing that he was cornered. “Is this about the Bocuse d’Or?”

“We’re about so much more than the quality of French food,” Mfune said.