Private Paris (Private 10)

The door buzzed and we entered a dimly lit hallway that led us to staircases and other hallways that Louis seemed to know intimately.

“So who are we meeting?” I asked.

“The director,” he said.

“And how do you know this person?”

“The director is an old, discreet, and dear friend,” Louis said.

&nbs

p; He went to some double doors and opened them, revealing a breathtaking room composed of four large and dramatic alcoves that met at a central amphitheater. The massive arches that defined the alcoves also supported a cupola that soared above the amphitheater to a dome built of stone buttresses and stained glass. The glass was starting to glow blue and gold with the dawn.

A woman in a red pantsuit with a blue and white scarf about her neck stood below the cupola on an oval rug in the dead center of the amphitheater. She was talking to a younger man in a crisp white shirt and red tie. She was in her fifties and strikingly handsome, with silver-blond hair.

“This is where all members of Les Académies meet,” Louis said quietly. “You could say that there is no place more French than this one room.”

Before I could reply, the younger man turned and headed up the far set of stairs. The woman spotted us, grinned, and came over quickly to embrace Louis and buss his cheeks. “How are you, old friend?” she said in French.

“I am magnificent as always, chéri,” Louis said in English, before gesturing to me. “Allow me to introduce Monsieur Jack Morgan.”

She reached out to shake my hand and began speaking to me in perfect British English. “Pricilla Meeks, director of the institute. Very nice to meet you, Mr. Morgan. Louis has spoken highly of you in the past.”

I shook her hand, wondering how she could speak both languages with such perfect accents. But before I could dope that out, the spotlights went on outside. They hit high on the cupola, illuminating the interior of the tower while Louis went straight to the matter at hand.

“Was René Pincus up for a vote on admission to Les Académies?” he asked.

Pricilla Meeks sobered and said, “You know I can’t discuss things like that.”

“Pincus is dead,” Louis grumbled. “So is Henri Richard, a member of the academy. And now, I hate to say it, Lourdes Latrelle.”

Meeks gasped. “Lourdes! My God, Louis. How?”

“I can’t get into the particulars under orders from a magistrate. But she’s dead. I saw her body myself.”

Meeks sank into one of the plush blue seats, shaking her head. “What a tragedy. Why would anyone target—”

“Pricilla!” the man with the red tie cried from the far staircase. “Someone has defaced the cupola!”

The director jumped up and we had a hard time keeping up with her as she ran through the hallways and outside. The sun was just rising. It was difficult to see from the front courtyard, but when we retreated across the street and onto the Pont des Arts, the pedestrian bridge that spans the Seine, we got the full effect.

High on the curved front face of the cupola’s dome, someone had painted a huge version of the AB-16 tag and an inverted cross in three parallel colors: red, black, and fluorescent green.

“My God,” Meeks said, clearly horrified at the way the graffiti seemed to glow in an otherworldly way against the dark blue skin of the dome. “Why are they doing this?”

“AB-16 is declaring war,” Louis said, as grim as I’ve ever seen him.

“On what?” I asked. “The institute?”

“Think of the symbolism and the placement,” Louis said. “AB-16 is making war on the entire French culture.”

Chapter 48

I THOUGHT ABOUT that, and maybe Louis was right. Paris was his city and France his country. He would know the symbolism and the meaning of this sort of thing. And yet I wondered if there was more to it than that.

“Do you have any current or former disgruntled employees at the institute?” I asked.

“Everyone in France is disgruntled to some extent these days,” Meeks said dourly. “But actually, people who work at the institute are by and large happy. Unless they really screw up, the job is for life, and it is a life of and for the culture, which they love, or they wouldn’t get hired in the first place.”