Kiss Me While I sleep (13 page)

He’d been chasing around after her the day before, trying to catch up, but now he had to adjust his thinking. He was no longer necessarily behind her, which was good only if he knew what her next move would be. Until then, he couldn’t afford to alarm her or she would disappear on him again.

Through channels-with Murray dealing with the French-he knew that Lily had flown back to Paris using the identity of Mariel St Clair, but the address listed on her passport had turned out to be a fish market. Just a little humor on her part, he thought. She wouldn’t be using the St. Clair identity again; she had probably slid effortlessly into yet another persona, one he had no way of finding. Paris was a big city, with over two million inhabitants, and she was far more familiar with it than he was. He had only this one chance where their paths might intersect, and he didn’t want to ruin it by jumping in too fast.

Disgruntled, he drove around the neighborhood getting the lay of the land, so to speak, and more than casually studying pedestrians as they hurried up and down the streets. Unfortunately, most of them carried umbrellas that partially hid their features, and even if they hadn’t, he had no idea what disguise Lily might be using now. She’d been just about everything except an elderly nun, so maybe he should start looking for those.

In the meantime, maybe he should take a look at that Nervi lab, eyeball the outward security measures. Who knew when he might need to get inside?

After an unhealthy and extremely satisfying lunch, Lily took the SNCF train to the suburb where Averill and Tina had lived. By the time she arrived there, the rain had stopped and a weak sun was making fitful efforts to peek through the dull gray clouds. The day wasn’t any warmer, but at least the rain wasn’t making everyone miserable. She remembered the brief snow flurry the night Salvatore had died, and wondered if Paris would see more snow this winter. Snow events didn’t happen in Paris all that often. How Zia had loved playing in the snow! They’d taken her skiing in the Alps almost every winter, the three adults who’d loved her more than life itself. Lily herself never skied, because an accident could put her out of commission for months, but after they’d retired, both her friends had taken to the sport like fiends.

Memories flashed in her mind like postcards: Zia as an adorable, chubby three-year-old in a bright red snowsuit, patting a small and extremely lopsided snowman. That was her first trip to the Alps. Zia on the bunny trails, shrieking, “Watch me! Watch me!” Tina taking a header into a snow bank and emerging laughing, looking more like the Abominable Snowman than a woman. The three of them enjoying drinks around a roaring fireplace while Zia slept upstairs. Zia losing her first tooth, starting school, her first dance recital, showing the first signs of changing from child to adolescent, getting her period last year, fussing with her hair, wanting to wear mascara.

Lily briefly closed her eyes, shaking with pain and rage. Desolation filled her, the way it often had since she’d learned they were all dead. Since then she could see the sunshine but hadn’t been able to feel it, as if its warmth never touched her. Killing Salvatore had been satisfying, but it wasn’t enough to bring back the sun.

She stopped outside the place where her friends had lived. There was someone else living in the house now, and she wondered if they knew three people had died there just a few months before. She felt violated, as if everything should have been left the way it had been, their things untouched.

That very first day she’d returned to Paris and discovered they’d been murdered, she herself had taken some of the photographs, some of Zia’s games and books, a few of her childhood toys, the baby album she had started and Tina had lovingly continued. The house had been cordoned off, of course, and locked up, but that hadn’t stopped her. For one thing, she had her own key. For another, if necessary she would have torn the roof off with her bare hands to gain entrance. But what had happened to the rest of their belongings? Where were their clothes, their personal treasures, their ski equipment? After that first day she had been busy for a couple of weeks finding out who had killed them, and beginning her plan for vengeance; when she’d returned, the house had been cleaned out.

Averill and Tina had each had some family, cousins and such, though no one close. Perhaps the authorities had notified those family members, and they had come to pack up everything. She hoped so. It was okay if family had their possessions, but she hated the idea of some impersonal cleaning service coming and boxing things up to be disposed of.

Lily began knocking on doors, talking to neighbors, asking if they’d seen anyone visiting that week before her friends were murdered. She had questioned them before, but hadn’t known the right question to ask. She was known to them, of course; she’d been visiting for years, had nodded hello, stopped for brief chats. Tina had been a friendly person, Averill more aloof, but to Zia there’d been no such thing as a stranger. She’d been on very friendly terms with all the neighbors.

Only one had seen anything that she remembered, though; it was Mme. Bonnet, who lived two doors down. She was in her mid-eighties, grumpy with age, but she liked to sit by the front window while she knitted-and she was constantly knitting-so she saw almost everything that happened on the street.

“But I have already told all of this to the police,” she said impatiently when she answered the door and Lily posed her hi question. “No, I saw no one the night they were killed. I am old; I don’t see so well, I don’t hear so well. And I close my curtains at night. How could I have seen anything?”

“What about before that night? Any time that week?”

“That, too, I told the police.” She glared at Lily.

“The police have done nothing.”

“Of course they have done nothing! Worthless, the lot of them.” With a disgusted wave of her hand she dismissed a small army of public servants who every day did the best they could.

“Did you see anyone you didn’t know?” Lily repeated patiently.

“Just that one young man. He was very handsome, like a movie star. He visited one day, for several hours. I hadn’t seen him before.”

Lily’s pulse leaped. “Can you describe him? Please, Madame Bonnet.”

The old lady glared some more, muttered a few uncomplimentary phrases like “incompetent idiots” and “bumbling fools,” then barked, “I told you, he was handsome. Tall, slim, black-haired. Very well dressed. He arrived by taxi, and another came for him when he left. That is all.”

“Could you guess his age?”

“Young! To me, anyone under fifty is young! Don’t bother me with these silly questions.” And with that, she stepped back and closed the door with a bang.

Lily took a deep breath. A young, handsome, dark-haired man. And well-dressed. There were thousands who met that description in Paris, which abounded with handsome young men. It was a start, a piece of the puzzle, but as a stand-alone clue it meant absolutely nothing. She had no list of usual suspects, nor a selection of photographs she could show Mme. Bonnet and hope the old lady could pick out one and say, “This one. This is the man.”

And what did this tell her, really? This handsome young man could have hired them to blow up something at the Nervi lab, or he could have been no more than a friendly acquaintance who happened to visit. Averill and Tina could have gone somewhere else to meet the person who hired them, rather than letting him come to their home. In fact, that would have been more likely.

She rubbed her forehead. She hadn’t thought this out, but she didn’t know if it could
be
thought out. She didn’t know if it mattered why they’d taken the job, or what the job was. She couldn’t even be certain there
was
a job, but it was the only scenario that made sense and she had to go with her instinct on that. If she started doubting herself now, she might as well pack it in.

Deep in thought, she walked back to the train platform.

Georges Blanc believed strongly in law and order, but he was also a pragmatic man who accepted that sometimes there were difficult choices and one just did the best one could.

He didn’t like providing information to Rodrigo Nervi. He did, however, have a family to protect and an older son who was in his first year at Johns Hopkins University, in the United States. The tuition at Johns Hopkins was almost thirty thousand American dollars every year; that alone would have beggared him. But he would have managed, somehow, if Salvatore Nervi hadn’t approached him over ten years ago and genially suggested that Georges would greatly benefit from a second, very generous income, for which he would have to do nothing but share information now and then, and perhaps do some small favors. When Georges had politely refused, Salvatore had kept smiling, and had begun reciting a bone-chilling list of misfortunes that could befall his family, such as his house burning down, his children being kidnapped or perhaps even physically harmed. He told how a gang of thugs had broken into an old woman’s house and blinded her by throwing acid in her face, how savings could disappear like smoke, how automobiles had accidents.

Georges had understood. Salvatore had just outlined the things that
would
happen to him and his family if he refused to do what Salvatore demanded. So he had nodded, and tried over the years to limit the damage he did with the information he passed on and the favors he did. With those threats as motivation, Salvatore could have had the information for free, but he had established an account for Georges in Switzerland, and the equivalent of twice his yearly salary was paid into it every year.

Georges was careful to outwardly live on his Interpol salary, but pragmatic enough to dip into the Switzerland account to pay for his son’s education. There was a healthy amount in the account now, having accumulated for ten years and drawn interest as well. The money was there; he wouldn’t use it to buy luxuries for himself, but he would use it for his family. Eventually, he knew, he would have to do something with the money, but he didn’t know what.

Over the years he had dealt mostly with Rodrigo Nervi, Salvatore’s heir apparent, and now heir in fact. He would almost rather have dealt with Salvatore. Rodrigo was colder than Salvatore, smarter, and, Georges thought, probably more ruthless. The only advantage Salvatore had had over his son was experience, and more years in which to accumulate a devil’s list of sins.

Georges checked the time: one pm. With the six hours time difference between Paris and Washington, that made it seven am there, just the right time for reaching someone on a cell phone.

He used his own cellular phone, not wanting a record of the call on Interpol’s records. Marvelous inventions, cell phones; they made pay phones almost obsolete. They weren’t as anonymous, of course, but his was secure against eavesdropping and far more convenient.

“Hello,” a man said after the second ring. In the background Georges could hear a television, the modulated tones of newscasters.

“I’ll be sending you a photograph,” Georges said. “Would you please run it through your facial-recognition program as soon as possible?” He never used a name, and neither did the other man. Whenever one of them needed information, he would call on a personal phone, rather than going through channels, which kept their official contact at a minimum.

“Sure thing.”

“Please send all pertinent information to me by the usual channel.”

They each rang off; conversations were always kept to a minimum as well. Georges knew nothing about his contact, not even his name. For all he knew, his counterpart in Washington cooperated for the same reason he himself did, out of fear. There was never any hint of friendliness between them. This was business, which they understood all too well.

“I need a definite answer. Will you have the vaccine ready by the next influenza season?” Rodrigo asked Dr. Giordano. There was a huge report on Rodrigo’s desk, but he was concerned with the bottom line, and that was whether the vaccine could be produced in the volume needed, before it was needed.

Dr. Giordano had a hefty grant from several world health organizations to develop a reliable vaccination against avian influenza. Theirs wasn’t the only laboratory working on this problem, but it was the only one that had Dr. Giordano. Vincenzo had become fascinated with viruses and had left his private practice behind for a chance to study them, becoming an acknowledged expert and seen as someone who was either a remarkable genius or remarkably lucky in working with the microscopic nasties.

A vaccine for any strain of avian flu was difficult to develop, because avian flu was fatal to birds and vaccines were made by growing the influenza virus in eggs. Avian flu, however, killed the eggs; therefore, no vaccine. The developer of a process for producing an effective, reliable vaccine against avian flu would have a huge cash cow.

This was, potentially, the biggest moneymaker in the entire Nervi corporate structure, more lucrative even than opiates. So far avian flu itself was following dead-end paths: The virus would pass from an infected bird to a human, but it lacked the means of human-to-human infection. The human host would either die or get well, but without infecting anyone else. Avian flu, as it was now, was still incapable of causing an epidemic, but the American CDC and the World Health Organization were greatly alarmed by certain changes in the virus. The experts were betting that the next influenza pandemic, the influenza virus against which humans had no immunity because they’d never come in contact with it before, would be an avian influenza virus-and they were holding their breaths with each successive flu season. So far, the world had been lucky.