Private Paris (Private 10)

But when the sculptor reached the floor of the old linen factory, Émile Sauvage opened the door that led to the war room and called out to her, “Haja, you need to see this.”

She took one more look at her work in progress, sighed, and hurried through the steel door. At twenty-five by fifteen, the room was windowless. The wall to Haja’s left was covered in whiteboards. Across the top it said, “AB-16.”

Underneath there was an appointment calendar of sorts with dates on a long horizontal axis, hours in military time stacked on the vertical axis, and cryptic notations in the boxes.

The wall opposite the door featured fifty black AK-47 7.62mm assault rifles standing upright in an improvised gun rack. Boxes of ammunition stamped “For disposal” were stack

ed below the rifles, along with empty magazines and a thick, rolled-up Oriental rug.

Captain Mfune sat beside the rug, oiling the action and barrel shroud of one of the rifles. Epée lay on a couch watching a television screen that showed a close-up of the AB-16 tag up on the cupola.

“There it is again!” he cried. “They keep showing it over and over!”

“I knew putting it there would do the trick,” Amé said.

“A brilliant idea, brilliantly executed,” said Mfune, returning the now gleaming rifle to its spot on the rack.

The screen cut away to show the entrance to the Red Rooster, along with an author photo of Lourdes Latrelle.

Epée said, “Your execution was brilliant too, Captain. The great minds are under fire. That’s all they’re talking about besides the tag.”

“And we got out clean,” Amé said. “The mystery of AB-16 intact.”

“Perhaps too intact,” Sauvage said. “They think this is solely about Les Académies.”

“The slow burn is critical to mass awareness,” Amé insisted. “You have to let them chew on the mystery of it, employ their imagination to suggest answers, so that when the true scenario is revealed, it comes as even more of a shock to the population.”

“A call to action,” Mfune said.

“Exactly,” Amé said, snapping her fingers. “If we make the next few moves well, AB-16 will be bigger than the Dreyfus Affair.”

The screen jumped away from coverage of Lourdes Latrelle’s murder to an interview with Pricilla Meeks, the Institut de France’s director, who was out on the bridge with the tagged cupola visible behind her.

Haja spotted two men behind Meeks. They looked familiar.

Did she know them?

The screen cut to an exterior shot of La Crim and a shaken Investigateur Hoskins, who was vowing to track down AB-16 at all costs.

“I have been authorized to bring in as many detectives as is necessary to solve these murders,” Hoskins said. “We have even brought in the world-famous Private agency to work forensics and as consultants on the case.”

That provoked silence in the room until Mfune looked at Sauvage and said, “Private has a strong reputation, Major. A first-class operation.”

Sauvage said nothing, just twisted his head as if adjusting his collar.

“Can you rewind that?” Haja asked. “Back to when Meeks was talking?”

“Sure,” Amé said, and backed the feed up.

“Stop there,” Haja said, and then stepped closer to study the men behind the institute’s director. “I know these two. I saw them outside the mosque the other day.”

“Are you sure?” Sauvage asked, engaged again.

“Positive,” she said. “I never forget a face, Émile. The older one is French, but I think the other one is American.”

“Then we have a problem,” said Epée, who’d lost color. “The old one is Louis Langlois. He used to be a top investigator with La Crim.”

“How do you know that?” Haja demanded.