The Paris Vendetta

“Then what the hell am I doing here?”

A stubborn smile found the older man’s lips. “I hope you’re here to help.”

He kept his eyes on Thorvaldsen. “My way.”

“I want Ashby, Cotton. Do you understand that?”

“I get it. But let’s find out what’s going on before you kill him. That’s the way you talked yesterday. Can we stick with that?”

“I’m begi

“Then why screw with Larocque and the Paris Club? Just kill Ashby and be done with it.”

His friend went silent.

“What about Sam?” Thorvaldsen finally asked. “I’m worried.”

“I’ll deal with that, too.” He recalled what Stephanie had said. “But he’s a big boy, so he’s going to have to take care of himself. At least for a while.”

SAM ENTERED THE APARTMENT IN A SECTION OF TOWN MORRISION had called Montparnasse, not far from the Cluny Museum and Luxembourg Palace, in a building that offered a charm of days long gone. Darkness had swallowed them on the walk from the Métro station.

“Lenin once lived a few blocks over,” she said. “It’s now a museum, though I can’t imagine who’d want to visit.”

“Not a fan of communism?” he asked.

“Hardly. Worse than capitalism, in a multitude of ways.”

The apartment was a spacious studio on the sixth floor with a kitchenette, bath, and the look of a student tenant. Unframed prints and travel posters brightened the walls. Improvised board-and-block shelving sagged under the weight of textbooks and paperbacks. He noticed a pair of men’s boots beside a chair and wadded jeans on the floor, far too large for Morrison.

“This isn’t my place,” she said, catching his interest. “A friend’s.”

She removed her coat, slid the gun free, and casually laid it on a table.

He noticed three computers and a blade server in one corner.

She pointed. “That’s GreedWatch. I run the site from here, but I let everyone think Jimmy Foddrell does.”

“People were hurt at the museum,” he told her again. “This isn’t a game.”

“Sure it is, Sam. A big, terrible game. But it’s not mine. It’s theirs, and people getting hurt is not my fault.”

“You started it when you screamed at those two men.”

“You had to see reality.”

He decided, instead of arguing again about the obvious, he’d do what the Secret Service had taught him-keep her talking. “Tell me about the Paris Club.”

“Curious?”

“You know I am.”

“I thought you would be. Like I said, you and I think alike.”

He wasn’t so sure about that, but kept his mouth shut.

“As far as I can tell, the club is made up of six people. All obscenely wealthy. Typical greedy bastards. Five billion in assets isn’t enough. They want six or seven. I know someone who works for one of the members-”

He pointed. “Same guy who wears those boots?”

Her grin widened into a crescent. “No. Another guy.”

“You’re a busy girl.”

“You have to be to survive in this world.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“I’m the gal who’s going to save you, Sam Collins.”

“I don’t need saving.”

“I think you do. What are you even doing here? You told me awhile back that your superiors had forbidden you to keep your website and talk to me. Yet it’s still there and you’re here, wanting to find me. Is this an official visit?”

He couldn’t tell her the truth. “You haven’t told me a thing about the Paris Club.”

She sat sideways across one of the vinyl chairs, legs draped over one arm, her spine pressed to the other. “Sam, Sam, Sam. You don’t get it, do you? These people are pla

“That tells me nothing.”

A knock on the door startled them both, the first time he’d seen a crack in her icy veneer. Her gaze locked on the gun, lying on the table.

“Why don’t you just answer it?” he asked.

Another knock. Light. Friendly.

“Do you think bad guys knock?” he asked, invoking his own measure of cool. “And this isn’t even your place, right?”

She threw him a discerning glance. “You learn fast.”

“I did graduate college.”

She stood and walked to the door.

When she opened it a petite woman in a beige overcoat appeared outside. Perhaps early sixties, with dark hair streaked by waves of silver, and intense brown eyes. A Burberry scarf draped her neck. One hand displayed a leather case with a badge and photo identification.

The other held a Beretta.

“Ms. Morrison,” the woman said. “I’m Stephanie Nelle. U.S. Justice Department.”

THIRTY-FIVE

LOIRE VALLEY

7:00 P.M.

ELIZA PACED THE LONG GALLERY AND EAVESDROPPED ON A WINTER wind that battered the château’s windows. Her mind replayed all of what she’d told Ashby over the past year, disturbed by the possibility that she might have made a huge mistake.

History noted how Napoleon Bonaparte had looted Europe, stealing untold amounts of precious metals, jewels, antiquities, paintings, books, sculptures-anything and everything of value. Inventories of that plunder existed, but no one could vouch for their accuracy. Pozzo di Borgo learned that Napoleon had secreted away portions of the spoils in a place only the emperor knew. Rumors during Napoleon’s time hinted at a fabulous cache, but nothing ever pointed the way toward it.

Twenty years her ancestor searched.

She stopped before one of the windows and gazed out into the blackness. Below her, the River Cher surged past. She basked in the room’s warmth and savored its homely perfume. She wore a thick robe over her nightclothes and sought comfort within them both. Finding that lost cache would be her way of vindicating Pozzo di Borgo. Validating her heritage. Making her family relevant.

A vendetta complete.

The di Borgo clan was one of long standing in Corsica. Pozzo, as a boy, had been a close friend of Napoleon. But the legendary revolutionary Pasquale Paoli drove a wedge between them when he favored the di Borgos over the Bonapartes, whom he found too ambitious for his liking.

A formal feud commenced when Napoleon, as a young man, sought election as a lieutenant colonel in the Corsican volunteers, with a brother of Pozzo di Borgo as his opponent. The high-handed methods Napoleon and his party used to secure a favorable result roused di Borgo’s enmity. The breach became complete after 1792, when the di Borgos sided with Corsican independence and the Bonapartes teamed with France. Pozzo di Borgo was eventually named chief of the Corsican civil government. When France, under Napoleon, occupied Corsica, di Borgo fled and, for the next twenty-three years, skillfully worked to destroy his sworn enemy.

For all the attempts to restrict, suppress, and muffle me, it will be difficult to make me disappear from the public memory completely. French historians will have to deal with the Empire and will have to give me my rightful due.

Napoleon’s arrogance. Burned into her memory. Clearly, the tyrant had forgotten the hundreds of villages he’d burned to the ground from Russia, to Poland, to Prussia, to Italy, and across the plains and mountains of Iberia. Thousands of prisoners executed, hundreds of thousands of refugees rendered homeless, countless women raped by his Grande Armée. And what of the three million or so dead soldiers left rotting across Europe. Millions more wounded or permanently handicapped. And the destroyed political institutions of a few hundred states and principalities. Shattered economies. Fear and dread everywhere, France itself included. She agreed with what the great French writer Émile Zola observed at the end of the 19th century: What utter madness to believe that one can prevent the truth of history from eventually being written.