Blood Game, page 34
There was no judgment or criticism in her voice, only pride.
“She would have done anything to help the people of France. The more I learn about her from my grandfather, she seemed real, not just someone who died and was forgotten.”
“From what we've been able to find out about her, she was not forgotten,” Kris assured her.
“Oui,” Valentine nodded. “They called her Jehanne—Joan of Arc. I have heard this before.” She explained what they already knew.
“It was very difficult then, so many died.” She glanced around at the few remaining guests. “My grandfather does not like to talk about it, about what he did during the war. I think most people don't understand what it was like, or they don't want to,” she added, taking a sip of wine.
“I chose the Cross of Lorraine to honor her memory, and my grandfather.” Her expression was sad.
“He will want very much to meet you. To tell you about Micheleine.” She looked down at the photograph.
“I am very sorry about your friend,” she told Kris. “It was on all the news channels. CB Ross was very well known in France for the books she wrote. I know my grandfather will want to help any way he can.”
Until then, James had listened, occasionally glancing around the café, watching the other guests. His expression, one that Kris had seen dozens of times, was unreadable, like his thoughts, but not the warning.
“You need to know that it could be very dangerous. “
He told her about the incident in London and at the abbey. He didn't want to frighten her, but she was entitled to know the risk.
“We were to meet with a friend of Cate's, who I was hoping might be able to tell us something,” Kris explained.
“We were able to track her calls and we know that she met with him just before the accident. They worked together a long time ago, a very good friend. He lived in Paris...the Montparnasse.”
Valentine's eyes widened. “The explosion in Paris?”
Kris nodded.
“The authorities are saying it was another terrorist attack.”
Kris and James exchanged looks.
“Kris was supposed to have met with him. The explosion happened just before she got there.”
Valentine nodded, dark brows drawn together in a thoughtful expression.
“I understand. One of my friends...” She looked down at her hands wrapped around the wine glass.
“He was at the concert hall. He was such a good, kind person, so intelligent.” She looked up. There was sadness there, but also anger.
“In many ways it is the same as it was for my grandfather—the terror, the deaths. No different, I think.” She took a sip of wine and looked over at them.
“You have experienced this too, in your cities.” She was thoughtful again, as if the answers might be found in her wine glass.
“In the midst of terror, we find hope. It is all we have, it is enough.” She smiled softly.
“My grandfather told me, that they use to say this to keep themselves going during that horrible time. And they found it—hope—so many times in the people who hid them at great danger to themselves, in someone who sacrificed himself so that they could escape, in the work that Micheleine did.” She stared down at the photograph.
“Your friend found something that was perhaps very important. My grandfather would tell you that after what they all went through during that time, there is nothing anyone could do that would frighten him.” She looked up then.
“He will want to help you if he can, for her, for all of them.”
“Eh, Valentine,” the owner called out. “The weather is not good. You should go.”
The last of the customers had left.
Valentine smiled. “Sometimes, it is as if I have two grandfathers, yes?” She handed the photograph back to Kris.
“Where are you staying?”
Kris tucked the photograph into the notebook that contained the print-outs and copies she'd made. She exchanged another look with James.
“We didn't make arrangements. Under the circumstances...” She left the rest unsaid.
“We'll find a place for the night,” James told her.
Valentine frowned. “Most of the houses are rented for the holidays. You will not find a place to stay in the village. There is more than enough room at my grandfather's house, and he would not be pleased with me if I let you return to Amiens.”
“We can't do that...” Kris couldn't bear the thought that they might be bringing down something on Valentine and her grandfather. Especially after everything that had happened over the last several days.
“My grandfather would be very angry with me if I didn't bring you home with me. It is the way he is, yes? He is eighty-five years old, and I do not think he will change.” A smile at that.
“I will help Monsieur Sevier close for the evening, then we will leave.”
“Shouldn't you at least call your grandfather and tell him?”
Valentine shook her head. “I tried to call him earlier, but the line was out.”
Monsieur Sevier made a sound as he came out of the kitchen.
“Ju-Ju again,” he muttered. “He is worthless!”
Kris exchanged a look with James. Ju-Ju?
“He scares the crows from the orchards,” Valentine replied, with an eye roll at what appeared to be a long-standing discussion.
“You will see,” she told them. She shook her head. “And the cell coverage is poor. It does not matter. My grandfather hates cell phones.” She grabbed her apron.
“I will only be a few minutes. My car is in the back. I will meet you there and you can follow me.” She disappeared into the kitchen, Monsieur Sevier making several comments in French.
He was obviously acquainted with Ju-Ju, and didn't hesitate to offer an opinion from the animated conversation Kris was able to pick up. Valentine appeared briefly in the doorway of the kitchen as she helped close for the evening and made a hand gesture, no translation needed.
“Ju-Ju seems to have quite a reputation.”
James nodded. Ju-Ju, whoever or whatever he was, wasn't the concern.
No bloody cell phone coverage at the farmhouse. They would be cut off. He didn't like it. She would call it paranoia, but that sixth sense had saved the lives of him and his teammates more than once.
But not that last time.
Nothing he could have done, the unit commander told him when he was debriefed, repeated by the 'head' doctor in Germany and again in London. There was no way he could have known the number of insurgents waiting for them or that they'd been given bad intel in the first place—until it was too late.
Too late. And his team had paid the price, four men dead. He glanced down at the tattoo of the sword on the inside of his wrist—a bond shared, and a promise he hadn't been able to keep. He pushed back the chair.
“I want to make a call before we leave.”
He left the café and headed for the rental car. The street that ran through the village was empty, except for the rental. It did little to ease that tightness at the back of his neck, as if someone had taken hold of him, that persistent warning that had followed from London.
He hit the remote, the light coming on inside the rental. He slid inside as icy rain pelted down.
The truth was, he hoped they wouldn't find any of the Marchand or Robillard family still alive after all these years. With no other contacts, no other calls that Cate had made to follow up, that would have been the end of it and she would have had no choice but go back to New York.
He lit a cigarette and turned on the phone, the nicotine burning through the uneasiness and that nagging feeling.
The screen lit up.
Good old Danny, he thought, as the text message came through.
“Adnan Faridani, bit time money, import export business, educated in London; rumor he's been radicalized and connected to bombings in London, Berlin, Paris. BTW Faridani is his mother's family; real name Malik. Slippery, dangerous, has connections. If you have more info???”
He had information, all right, from Captain Jack, not exactly what you would call a reliable source. Still, he'd learned to use whatever source he could find when he was in-country.
Malik. The name brought up the image from the video footage. There were common names. In-country, it seemed every other man or boy was named Hasan. Bogus, part of the disguise. That was obvious. And it kept alive the ones who helped them with information if he or his men were caught and interrogated. But the name Malik wasn't nearly as common.
Was there a connection to the artist? Then the next thought, was Jonathan Callish involved?
Ancient artifacts? Smuggling? Twenty million dollars’ worth? Especially if his gallery wasn't doing well?
It was no secret, terrorist groups needed financing for weapons. Over the past several years, the goal had been to cut off the funding for these groups—sever the head of the snake. But as soon as one group had their funding cut off, they found another source—oil, legitimate business enterprises, a web of money sources, and from the beginning, ancient artifacts had disappeared from the Middle East, only to be rumored to have been 'acquired' through a private source.
Was it possible Malik, or Faridani, or whatever the hell he was calling himself, might be that source?
Then, the next question: What might a seven-hundred-year-old tapestry be worth to a private collector with almost unlimited resources, depending on its condition?
Millions? Tens of millions? Possibly more?
It was risky to stay on the phone, but he needed more information. The call was picked up on the third time around.
“Jesus!” Innis said over the background noise. “Where are you?'
“No questions,” James told him, then explained what he needed.
“I don't know,” Innis replied. “It's like a war zone after what happened yesterday, military on the streets, raids in a couple of the districts, everything shut down. This will take some time.”
“No,” James fired back at him. “We don't have time. I need you to find Adnan Faridani, possibly under the name Malik. I need to know where he is, and I need it now. Get back to me when you have something.” He shut the phone down and started the rental car.
CHAPTER
FORTY
Mist curled over the roadway, swirling over the hood of the car, then rolling back as the road slipped around the next bend. Then, several kilometers past the village of Montigny, the tail lights of Valentine's car, an ancient Volvo, angled sharply then disappeared down a dirt track. He made the turn-off, then stopped the car just off the roadway. A light snow had started to fall, the flakes landing on the windscreen.
He stared through the darkness down the dirt driveway where the Volvo had disappeared. He said nothing at first, that same silence since leaving the village.
“I put a call into Danny,” he finally said, still staring down the driveway that cut back through the orchard of the Marchand property.
“I had him check with some people he's worked with.” Fingers drummed the steering wheel. He still didn't look at her.
“The man at the gallery in Paris goes by the name of Faridani.”
The name meant nothing to her.
“The Paris gallery is a front,” he continued. “Faridani funnels money from the sale of stolen artifacts to a terrorist group that has claimed responsibility for several attacks and bombings throughout Europe, and the UK.
“He came on the art scene two years ago,” he went on to explain. “He popped up occasionally prior to that—at university in London, well-educated, but always on the fringe of things, rumored to have been seen with some of the bad characters over the last few years. He turned up again as an authority on Middle Eastern art, acquiring pieces for private parties.”
There was more, she could tell by the expression on his face in the glow from the instrument panel, the way he stared down that dirt track. He was someone else now, someone she'd only glimpsed the past few days. He didn't put the car in gear, but instead kept staring down the road that cut through the Robillard orchards.
“Faridani is the name he goes by. His real name is Hasan Malik.”
Malik. The same name as Jonathan Callish's wife!
Her thoughts reeled.
Did Callish know? He had to. Was he somehow involved? She took that next step.
It made sense. Cate had worked with Callish on the collection of her father's photographs for the gallery showing. It was possible he already knew about the photograph of the tapestry when they went to see him that day in London. That meant that his wife probably also knew about it.
Had he or someone else—his wife?—then followed to the Blue Anchor? And after that?
She felt almost physically sick at the possibility that Jonathan Callish was involved in this, that he might have had something to do with Cate's death.
He saw the expression on her face, the disbelief, then the struggle against other emotions. Betrayal was a bitter pill.
He put the car in gear and eased down the dirt track that angled back alongside the orchard, the lights of the farmhouse gleaming in the distance.
The Robillard farmhouse was typical of old farmhouses in the French countryside, with white plaster walls, low-hanging eaves, and the half-door that had once been painted red but had faded over the years to a pale salmon color, and like the café in Montigny, looked as if it had stood for centuries, except for Valentine's car parked in the side yard, and an old tractor that sat between rows of barren trees in the glare of lights from the rental car.
A black-and-white dog shot out the door and ran straight at them. Valentine immediately called him back—the notorious Ju-Ju. He stopped, looked back, then ignored her and did the typical dog thing and anointed a tire on the rental car, then shot back for the house.
“My grandfather's dog,” Valentine said, meeting them at the door. “He is good at chasing the crows from the orchards.”
“We met,” Kris replied as Ju-Ju sat on the floor, tail thumping.
A large country table sat in the middle of the kitchen, with four chairs that had once been painted blue but were now faded. Shelves lined the wall on either side of the window above the porcelain sink. Blue-and-white plates and an odd assortment of bowls and cups lined the shelves. The slate stones on the floor were worn smooth.
This, Kris thought, was where a young girl who became known as Jehanne had lived as a child. This was where two brothers had lived and gone off with their father to fight the war and never returned. And it was where young Albert Marchand had returned after the war almost eighty years ago, and married Micheleine's younger sister.
Time. It was etched into the surface of the table, on the chipped bowl with the apples in the middle, and the worn stones of the floor.
“My grandfather is in the other room. It's warmer in there.” Valentine led them into the adjacent room.
Albert Marchand, twelve years old at the end of the war, was now an old man. He sat in the chair before the fire, dressed in a heavy sweater and work pants, wisps of white hair molding his head. Heavily veined hands lay over a book he'd been reading. They were the hands of someone who had worked hard all of his life, and now sat before a warm fire in the woodstove.
What did he know? Kris thought. What would he remember?
“I have brought friends,” Valentine announced, crossing the room, and laying a hand on his shoulder.
The eyes that looked over at them were old eyes, eyes that had seen too much in eighty-five years, but still sharp, curious.
“Eh? Friends?” he asked.
Conversation in French followed, most which Kris couldn't follow. She heard both their names as introductions were made, then Cate's name was mentioned, and that sharp blue gaze fastened on her.
“Come closer so that I may see you.” Valentine translated for them, then told him something in French. She exchanged a look with Kris and nodded.
Kris sat in the chair on the other side of the small table between them. Ju-Ju lay at his feet. Those sharp eyes watched her with keen interest.
“My granddaughter tells me that you have asked about Micheleine,” Valentine again translated for him.
“That was all a very long time ago.” He made a dismissive gesture. “Why do you want to know about her?”
“A friend of mine sent me this.” She showed him the black-and-white photograph of the tapestry that Cate had scanned to her as Valentine continued to translate, and explained the reason they were there. He glanced at the photograph.
“There have been others,” he replied with an indifferent shrug. “They came wanting to know about her, then left. They want to know for their stories in the magazines and on the internet, on the anniversaries of the war.” He made another gesture and she saw the amused expression on James' face.
“Then, they leave. They do not care about what happened, they do not understand.”
He sat back in the over-stuffed chair.
“I don't like talking about the war.” He snapped his mouth shut. “We need more wood for the fire.”
Kris exchanged a look with Valentine as he pushed out of the chair, stepped over Ju-Ju with surprising agility for someone of his age, then made his way to the woodstove.
James picked up several pieces of wood, neatly stacked in the basket beside the woodstove, and handed them to him. A heavily veined hand locked around his wrist.
Albert Marchand stared down at the tattoo of the sword with the number of James' unit at his wrist.
“Military,” Albert said in surprisingly perfect English, and Kris exchanged another look with Valentine. Apparently he could speak it when he chose to. That sharp blue gaze was fastened on James.
“I think perhaps you have seen war,” Albert said, with a knowing look.
James nodded. “Some.”
“And death?”
James nodded and Albert patted his wrist, his expression shifting again. He put several pieces of wood on the fire, then latched the door. He returned to his chair.
“Different times, different wars,” he said, easing back into the chair. “And now again, different enemies. We understand these things, you and I.”
