Masquerade (31 page)

“Blount, I'm calling because I have an esoteric question only you can answer.”

“Esoterica, erotica, whatever.”

“Ah, but maybe you won't know the answer.”

“I
always
know the answer.”

“Always?”

“Well, if I don't, I'll find out.”

“That's what I needed to hear. Okay, here it is: What does
Je Suis Chez Moi
mean?”

“ ‘I am at home.' ”

“That's the translation. What I need is what it
means
. The phrase is engraved on a very expensive Cross pen, and each of the words has initial caps. The lettering's very small, very discreet, as if given to a secret lover, but I have a hunch it's some kind of memento. Maybe from an event or an organization.”

“You expect me to find out something that obscure and probably private?” Doubt was in his voice.

“I always believe everything you tell me, Blount, and you just told me if you didn't know you'd find out.”

He grumbled, and she said she'd call back.

At the same time, on the rue St.-Honoré, Asher Flores checked through the
Herald Tribune
for news of his and Walker's arrival, and then, encouraged by its absence, he found the baseball scores. Yes! The Dodgers had won the double header yesterday. They'd beaten the Padres 5-2 and 13-11. And they were away games, in San Diego, Padre territory. His boys were picking up speed!

Savoring the victories, he tucked the newspaper under his arm and slouched down the street. He was thinking about Sarah Walker. A damned puzzling woman. He sensed she was going through a period of questioning, that she wasn't sure she was up to what she was facing. He hoped she was. He liked that she thought about what she did—and whether it was worth it.

As he turned into a computer shop, he could see her in his mind. There she was in the shed at the airport, sweating like crazy and mad as hell at Gordon, but refusing to kill him. The woman had ethics. Also extremely good legs and a knock-out face. He thought about it a while longer and decided he liked her. Yup. He'd been distracted by her dynamite looks, but once you got beyond that, there was a lot of other good stuff there, too.

The manager of the computer shop greeted him warmly:
“Bon soir! Comment ça va
? It has been months, Asher!” Gray-haired and steely faced, Christine Robitaille eyed him up and down as if he were a fine Charolais steak.

Because of his boyhood French friends, Asher spoke the language with no accent. He said in French, “Months, Christine? No. I've stayed away too long. I must be losing my mind.”

She laughed heartily, her gold-tipped cigarette dangling precariously from the corner of her well-lipsticked mouth. “You are my favorite liar,
petit
Asher. Oh, how I adore you! Now you must tell me we will have dinner tonight.
Poisson cru
marine au citron vert
!” Seafood marinated in lime juice.

“Sounds delicious. But I can't, Christine. I'm working.”

She frowned around her cigarette and glanced at the quiet store.
“Zut! Zut! Alors, qu'est-ce vous voulez?”
She wanted no one to overhear.

He dropped his voice. “May I use one of your computers?”

She was a stringer for Interpol, and she'd saved his life once. That gave her a proprietary interest in him. If she could help, he knew she would.

“What about the Languedoc's computers?” she demanded.

“What I have to do is much too secret for the Languedoc.”

“Ah?” She smoked thoughtfully. “Very well.” And led him to a terminal with a modem. On the wall above, overlooking the entire store, was a hand-lettered sign:
De par le roi, defense a Dieu, de faire miracle en ce lieu
. By order of the king, even God isn't allowed to work any miracles here.

Using Gordon's code, Asher ran Gold Star Rent-a-Car through Langley's behemoth CM-5. He hoped to find a link between Gold Star and Hughes Bremner, Gordon Taite, and/or Langley.

On the Boulevard St.-Germain, Sarah Walker made three more telephone calls. Between each one she dialed her colleague Blount McCaw, but each time his line was busy. The students were growing more enthusiastic, singing and dancing and making speeches. Some were selling
delire
, “delirium,” which she knew to be an illegal drug composed of half LSD and half ecstasy.

At last she got through to Blount, who picked up instantly. “Jesus, darling!” He was impressed. “How did you find out about that restricted little spa-club? Do you know the Prime Minister goes there? And the governor of the Banque de France, and the Archbishop of Paris, not to mention the
crème de la crème
of Paris business and government? It's by invitation only. If you have to apply, you're not good enough to get in!”

“I'm not following you, Blount. ‘Je Suis Chez Moi' is a club?”

“An inordinately exclusive, exceptionally expensive, very,
very
secret health club.”

“Why is it so secret? What exactly happens there?”

Over the phone line, Blount cleared his throat. “You have no idea how impossible this information was to come by. I think you'd better fill in old Uncle Blount with what
you've
got.”

“The phrase was on a pen owned by somebody I used to know. A nobody, as far as you're concerned. Neither you nor I would bother to do a profile on him.” How had Gordon come to possess a pen from such a select club?

“You're researching something, Sarah. I know you. Fill me in, if you want me to fill you in.”

She hesitated, then: “I can't. My life's in danger. I can't say any more than that.”

“Your
life
? Give me a break.”

“Do you remember the Italian godfather—what was his name, the Beast?—who put out a murder contract on you for researching the revered
Catholic
actress who was the mother of his six illegitimate children?”

“Five
illegitimate children.” Blount sighed. “What a marvelous, juicy scandal, and no one will ever read a word of it. One of my most glorious exposés! To die for . . . almost.” He'd withdrawn the article and mailed it and all his research to the Beast's lawyer in Rome. It would never be published, but at least the Beast had canceled the contract on his life. “All right, Sarah, I suppose I'll have to take pity and share what I've got, but you have to promise to tell me what happens. If you drop the ball, I'll want to write about this place myself.”

Blount McCaw told her the spa's address and phone number. He warned her there was nothing outside the building to identify it, only a street number. The club was open seven days a week, 5:00
A.M.
to midnight, to accommodate clients' busy schedules. It was a private health spa that ran a full regimen of stretch, aerobic, and resistance classes, plus the usual massage, vitamin and nutrition therapy, and cosmology. At the same time, the doctor treated mild psychological disorders, particularly depression and anxiety brought on by the stress of high-powered life-styles.

“The clients love this place,” Blount finished. “People who hate exercise, or who maybe were sunk in depression, have found they never miss a day of workouts and treatments. Think of a designer drug like Prozac. It sounds to me like this health spa does what Prozac's alleged to do—help clients design their ideal personalities as well as their bodies. People arrive a mess, and a few months later they're fit, energetic, and have a strong sense of well-being. No wonder they keep going. Who'd want to lose results like those?” He paused. “I'm talking myself into this. I may have to pull a few strings and join.”

The demonstrators outside Sarah's phone booth were painting slogans on one another's naked bodies. TV cameras had arrived. She turned into the stuffy air at the back of the booth where no one could record her face. A plan was forming in her mind—

“Sarah, are you daydreaming?” Blount's voice was stern.

“I've got to go. Thanks, Blount. When things settle down, I'll get back to you. Promise.”

“Sarah! Wait a minute. What are you up to?”

“Can't talk. Sorry. Cross your fingers for me.”

She hung up and slipped out of the booth. At the edge of the crowd, she stopped and watched the drugs changing hands right out in the open. She approached one of the peddlers of delirium. Beyond the view of the television cameras, for US$500 she bought a tiny vial wrapped in a wad of paper towel. She put the vial and its protective towel carefully in her backpack.

The address for Je Suis Chez Moi was on rue Vivienne near the Bourse, the Paris stock exchange. Blount had been right: The spa's only identification was a tiny gold street number on a massive double door enameled in black. The gray stone building resembled others on the block, most modeled on ancient Greco-Roman architecture and dating from the time of Napoleon.

Sarah passed the facility once, noting it extended deep into the block with a cobbled drive on the right. It was stately and enormous, probably a private mansion in earlier days, an
hôtel parh'culier
. She glanced up at the sky. It was nearly 7:30
P.M.
,
and the sun was low, but night was still an hour or more away. She saw a café—Café Justine—went in, ordered
café glace
to refresh her from the August heat, and returned outside to sit at a small table. From here she could watch Je Suis Chez Moi.

What an odd name—“I Am At Home.” But it fulfilled an interesting objective: It was deceptive. Who would guess it was really an elite health spa?

She drank her iced coffee and glanced around. An older man was the only other patron at the outdoor tables. He was wearing a straw Panama hat with a red tartan band, reading
Le Monde
, and smoking a pipe. Just as she looked at him, he lifted his gaze, and their eyes accidentally met. Both were unguarded, and the experience was too intimate. They looked away.

Over the next hour two limousines turned down the spa's narrow drive and stopped to let passengers out directly at a side entrance. Some half-dozen clients left during the same time, out through the same side door straight into taxis or sedans. No one had used the massive front entrance doors.

Sarah ordered a seafood salad. A young couple arrived in light summer clothes, holding hands, in love. They ordered
vin ordinaire
. The older fellow finished his newspaper, got up, and left. Sarah settled in to continue watching Je Suis Chez Moi.

As twilight began to spread over Paris, a tall, lean man who appeared to be in his thirties, with smooth, tanned skin and startling snow-white hair left the spa's side door, heading for a waiting limousine. Sarah felt a shock. She recognized him. She stared as he turned back to chat easily with someone inside. From where did she know him? The Ranch—? Yes, from something she'd read at the Ranch. A newspaper or magazine. He was an elegant man in a dark, expensive, conservative but stylish suit, and then she remembered—

He was Vincent Vauban, the Prime Minister of France.

She watched as he climbed into the back of the long, black limousine. It was amazing: He looked and moved like an athlete in his thirties, but she knew he had to be in his mid-fifties!

As the limo rolled away, she tried to figure it out. What connection could there be between the Prime Minister of France and Gordon Taite? Or Hughes Bremner?

She had to get inside Je Suis Chez Moi.

Chapter 35

After lunch with Bunny Bremner, Leslee Pousho drove her rented Ford Taurus up toward her remote cabin in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. There was no point trying to sleep. She would get some work done on the second installment of her series before she headed back for her three o'clock appointment with Mrs. Bremner.

As she rode up through pines and sycamores, memories of yesterday morning chilled her. Yesterday she'd driven Lucas to the State department. Yesterday he'd been murdered.

Misery thickened her throat. When she wasn't writing, she felt miserable. She wondered how long before she'd get used to his never coming back.

She turned onto a blacktop mountain road and entered a forest of birch trees. Their chalk-white trunks reached straight up toward the luminous mountain sunshine. The glossy leaves trembled silver and white in a fine, clean breeze. She heard a blue jay give a raucous call, and another answer.

Just a few days ago she would have gloried in the verdant mountains. Now her mind could manage only the tasks at hand. She watched carefully, ahead and behind, for Hughes Bremner's men. She felt relatively safe, but she was no fool.

As she watched, she considered the next installment of the Sarah Walker series. This one would encompass the last four days before Sarah's final collapse. As she thought through the article, she noticed a big green Volvo behind her.

Instantly she was alert. It couldn't be—

The Volvo closed in. She stared back at the two men in the windshield behind her. They were dressed like locals. She could see their casual, Pendleton shirts. But they also wore black sunglasses like the men who'd attacked Lucas.

She hit her accelerator and surged ahead.

The big Volvo easily kept up.

She raced up the mountain road. The Volvo swung to the left and accelerated to come around her. They were going to try to push her over to the right, where the road dropped off in a sheer precipice.

She veered her car left, blocking the Volvo. The Volvo dropped back. Sweat bathed her face and saturated her sundress. Both cars were traveling nearly seventy miles an hour on a road designed for thirty-five.

Again the Volvo swung left. Trees whipped past in a blur. Again Leslee blocked the Volvo, but this time, before she could react, it dropped back and came up in her lane on the right. Now she was hurtling along on the wrong side of the mountain road.

She hit the brake. The Volvo slowed with her. She turned into it, tried to force it back. It was too big. It smashed heavily into her right fender. Sparks flew. Metal screamed. The jolt rocked her to her teeth. Fear clutched her heart.