Private Paris (Private 10)

“No one has screwed up lately?”

Meeks said, “In answer to your question, Mr. Morgan, no. It’s been some time since we’ve had a major screwup. I run a tight ship.”

“Okay, are there any current or former campaigners, people trying to be elected into one of the academies, who are embittered by their exclusion?”

Meeks hesitated and said, “Many great Frenchmen and -women were never elected to Les Académies, including Victor Hugo and Marie Curie.”

I picked up on the hesitation and said, “Since they’re both dead, we’ll put them out of consideration. I’m talking the last year or two.”

Meeks glanced at Louis before sighing. “There is one who has been giving us—uh, me—many headaches.”

“A name?”

She seemed to struggle inside.

I said, “AB-16 is targeting your members, Madame Meeks. I should think you’d want to protect them.”

That got to her. “Of course I wish to protect them!”

News vehicles pulled up in front of the institute. Cameramen got out and filmed the tag up on the cupola.

“Who is it, Pricilla?” Louis grumbled.

“Jacques Noulan,” she said, and filled us in.

Noulan, a noted Paris fashion designer, was evidently infuriated when he lost an open seat in the academy of fine arts to Millie Fleurs, a more famous member of the fashion world. Meeks said that Noulan, who was more an expert marketer than an innovator, had organized a smear campaign after the election, trying to get Fleurs unseated. He was unsuccessful.

“He made threats to me at a party recently,” Meeks said. “He was quite drunk, and belligerent.”

“He unstable enough to start killing academy members?” I asked.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” she said, playing with an earring.

“You just did,” Louis said.

“Pricilla!” cried a female television news reporter who’d come out onto the bridge to get a better angle on the cupola and the tag. “Have you heard about Lourdes Latrelle?”

Meeks turned toward the reporter, and the klieg lights went on.

Squinting, I took a step back as Meeks replied, “I have heard, and it’s a tragedy. France has lost another of her immortals.”

Investigateur Hoskins and Juge Fromme climbed from a police car and were swarmed by reporters. The tag’s placement and the murders had struck a deep nerve. No doubt about it now.

“I still think we want to talk to Monsieur Noulan, and sooner than later,” I said, backing away from Meeks and the journalists grilling her.

“Why?” Louis said, unconvinced.

“From an L.A. point of view, this is starting to feel like a well-organized marketing campaign with the tag as a brand,” I said as I headed toward the west bank and the Louvre. “Noulan is supposedly strong at this kind of thing, right?”

Louis stopped, looked back over his shoulder at the tag, and said, “With the coordination and the brutal precision of the murders, it feels more militant to me.”

Chapter 49

Pantin, northeastern suburbs of Paris

8:35 a.m.

HAJA LIFTED THE welding mask to study the latest muscle group she’d been working on, deciding that it suggested the beast’s raw power but didn’t overstate it, at least up close. She’d have to climb down and get a different perspective to tell for sure.