care. He was always given the same packet, with the details, the orders, the disingenuous niceties in the cursive. Opening up the packet, he looked at the info. He always expected it would explode after he read it, but then this wasn’t Mission: Impossible . No, this mission was very possible, albeit difficult, and this job looked to be one of the nastier ones. He looked at the pictures and faces of Pierre’s crew members, all of whom needed forged papers to access the mansion. He knew some of them and noticed the new ones were cut of a similar and equally rough cloth. He wondered about them, wondered who, if any, might give him the clues he’d need to solve his case. It was early in the morning, Paris time, and he hadn’t slept much, but no matter. Taking his hard drive out of a hidden compartment in his briefcase and connecting it to his laptop, he rang for a pot of coffee and got to work.
‡‡‡
SUSANNAH GOT TO HER B and B in Montmartre and was immediately struck by how tired she was. It had been a long, tough couple of days. Thankfully, the Boss had put her up in a beautiful place, run by a mother-daughter team and decorated like a Victorian town house. Her French was more than passable—a gift from her father’s side of the family—and she had been to Paris several times in her youth. She remembered with fondness splitting her time between her grand-mère’s cottage in the Dordogne and a family apartment in Paris, eating croissants with fresh jam and drinking tea out of beautiful china cups. And the conversations! Her grand-mère had a bunch of female friends ( Les grandes dames , her father called them) who spent nearly every night together, laughing, drinking wine, and talking about men. Her grand-mère was famous for saying that men were like kitchen appliances: useful and very important, but ultimately, quite dull.
Not having been back to Paris for several years, she realized suddenly how much she missed it. It was a second home to her and the place where her heart rested. She often thought that she would move there if and when she could figure out how. It just seemed like things worked better in France: the lifestyle was easier and filled with leisure; the men were well dressed; the women stayed stunning well into their later years. In France, Susannah thought, life was the way it ought to be. She opened the dormer windows to let in the fresh spring breeze. Looking out over the whole of Paris, she smiled. Well, it wasn’t luxury, exactly, but it was perfect for her. Setting her belongings down, she put her laptop in her bag and went to get coffee and Gauloises. She smoked only when in France, and it was one of her treasured vices. Screw sleep— I’ll sleep when I’ m dead —she had a job to do.
Walking down the Parisian side streets to grab a café au lait and a brioche, she vibrated with the anticipation of seeing Chas again.
‡‡‡
THEY WERE MIDWAY through the meeting when Chas went to take a breather. They were in the back room of an old art gallery in the Marais, a perfect cover for this group of unmentionables. The table was littered with cigarettes, coffee cups, maps, floor plans, and bottles of liquor. He grabbed a pack of Gauloises and raised his voice over the din of several accents. “I’m going to take some time to clear my head, gentlemen. Take a walk around the neighborhood. Back in a bit.”
Pierre looked up from the papers Chas had given him upon entry. He smiled. “Your work is exceptional as always, Monsieur Palmer. Monsieur Bruni will be pleased.”
Bruni. The Italian. Terrifying in his single-minded focus on his goal: power. Power and money. And if challenged? Bruni would kill everything that stood in his way.
Chas nodded, swallowing to cover the bile rising in his throat. “Tell him I send my best.”
“Oh, I will, Monsieur Palmer. Now enjoy the streets of Paris. We have much work to do later today.”
He nodded again and slipped out, feeling a rush of relief at
‡‡‡
SUSANNAH GOT TO HER B and B in Montmartre and was immediately struck by how tired she was. It had been a long, tough couple of days. Thankfully, the Boss had put her up in a beautiful place, run by a mother-daughter team and decorated like a Victorian town house. Her French was more than passable—a gift from her father’s side of the family—and she had been to Paris several times in her youth. She remembered with fondness splitting her time between her grand-mère’s cottage in the Dordogne and a family apartment in Paris, eating croissants with fresh jam and drinking tea out of beautiful china cups. And the conversations! Her grand-mère had a bunch of female friends ( Les grandes dames , her father called them) who spent nearly every night together, laughing, drinking wine, and talking about men. Her grand-mère was famous for saying that men were like kitchen appliances: useful and very important, but ultimately, quite dull.
Not having been back to Paris for several years, she realized suddenly how much she missed it. It was a second home to her and the place where her heart rested. She often thought that she would move there if and when she could figure out how. It just seemed like things worked better in France: the lifestyle was easier and filled with leisure; the men were well dressed; the women stayed stunning well into their later years. In France, Susannah thought, life was the way it ought to be. She opened the dormer windows to let in the fresh spring breeze. Looking out over the whole of Paris, she smiled. Well, it wasn’t luxury, exactly, but it was perfect for her. Setting her belongings down, she put her laptop in her bag and went to get coffee and Gauloises. She smoked only when in France, and it was one of her treasured vices. Screw sleep— I’ll sleep when I’ m dead —she had a job to do.
Walking down the Parisian side streets to grab a café au lait and a brioche, she vibrated with the anticipation of seeing Chas again.
‡‡‡
THEY WERE MIDWAY through the meeting when Chas went to take a breather. They were in the back room of an old art gallery in the Marais, a perfect cover for this group of unmentionables. The table was littered with cigarettes, coffee cups, maps, floor plans, and bottles of liquor. He grabbed a pack of Gauloises and raised his voice over the din of several accents. “I’m going to take some time to clear my head, gentlemen. Take a walk around the neighborhood. Back in a bit.”
Pierre looked up from the papers Chas had given him upon entry. He smiled. “Your work is exceptional as always, Monsieur Palmer. Monsieur Bruni will be pleased.”
Bruni. The Italian. Terrifying in his single-minded focus on his goal: power. Power and money. And if challenged? Bruni would kill everything that stood in his way.
Chas nodded, swallowing to cover the bile rising in his throat. “Tell him I send my best.”
“Oh, I will, Monsieur Palmer. Now enjoy the streets of Paris. We have much work to do later today.”
He nodded again and slipped out, feeling a rush of relief at
Similar Books
