Chased Down Page 7

  Solito chewed his lip. He let out a sharp exhale and removed a notepad from his back pocket.

  ‘This is the last thing I’m gonna do for you guys,’ he muttered while he scribbled on the paper.

  ‘Thanks, Bob,’ I said gratefully.

  The address Solito gave us was for a house in Chinatown. I took the wheel, drove down Massachusetts Avenue, took a right on 5th, and parked along a side road. A narrow, nondescript, two-story building stood sandwiched between an electrical store and a restaurant a couple of doors down. Lights were still on in the store. The restaurant was dark.

  We left the Cruiser and walked to the house. I climbed a short flight of concrete steps and pressed the buzzer.

  ‘Why are we here again?’ said Ashely with a puzzled frown.

  The door creaked open before I could reply. A small, wizened man peered at us through the crack.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he said in thick Mandarin, squinting in the glow cast by a nearby street lamp.

  ‘We’re here to see Yuan Qin Lee,’ I replied in the Zhongyuan dialect.

  The old man brightened. ‘You speak Han Chinese?’ he exclaimed in broken English.

  ‘A little bit,’ I said with a faint smile.

  ‘Come in, come in.’ He beckoned us inside the building with a sharp wave of his liver-spotted hand and closed the door.

  We were faced with a cramped corridor filled with the smell of cooking and cheap disinfectant. Curious faces appeared in an open doorway to the left. The old man gestured frantically and shouted harsh words in Mandarin. The faces disappeared.

  I glanced at the toys littering the passageway. ‘Are you the patriarch?’

  ‘For my sins,’ grumbled the old man. ‘They all useless, the lot of them. Only one who make money is Qin Lee.’

  We followed him to an alcove at the end of the hall. He pulled aside a curtain and revealed a door that opened onto a dimly lit staircase spiraling down to the lower level of the house.

  The basement was large and extended well beyond the boundaries of the property. I spied a second door at the rear of the room.

  Banks of computer monitors lined benches along the walls, their screens flickering oddly under the harsh light from the half-dozen fluorescent tubes crowding the low ceiling. A low hum emanated from the hard drives on the left, dark monoliths in the otherwise bright room. Wires crawled between the cable organizers dotting the concrete floor.

  A young man with horn-rimmed spectacles and shiny black hair sat hunched over a drafting table in the middle of the room. The frames around his eyes glinted under the spotlight screwed into the desk.

  ‘Qin Lee?’ I called out. The young man’s head came up sharply. Almond-shaped eyes narrowed behind the lenses. ‘Solito sent us.’

  He observed us for a couple of beats before carefully putting down the document he had been working on. He removed the latex gloves from his hands, rose from the chair, and spoke a few words to the old man. The latter glanced at us with a troubled expression, nodded once, and left.

  Qin Lee waited until the door closed at the top of the stairs before turning to us with a frown. ‘What do you want?’

  I indicated Ashely. ‘I need some passports for him, among other things.’

  ‘I already have a passport,’ Ashely protested.

  ‘You need new ones,’ I retorted.

  He held my gaze for a couple of seconds before sighing; he knew not to ask for the reasons why. Yet.

  I listed the additional items I required.

  Qin Lee crossed his arms and pursed his lips. ‘This will cost you.’

  ‘Money’s not an issue. When can you have the documents ready?’

  He shrugged. ‘Day after tomorrow, at the earliest.’

  ‘We need them tonight.’ I ignored his shocked expression. ‘Like I said, money isn’t an issue.’

  Two hours later, we walked out of the house with three fake passports and a document wallet.

  ‘It would help if I knew what was going on behind that thick skull of yours,’ Ashely muttered once we were inside the Cruiser.

  I started the engine. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, why the hell did you just fork out a fortune for those forgeries?’

  ‘Because I suspect we’re going to need them before the week’s over.’

  ‘Why? Where are we going?’ said Ashely.

  ‘France.’

  His brow furrowed. ‘Any particular reason?’ he said after a beat.

  ‘The last paper Strauss published was from UPMC, the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, in Paris,’ I explained. ‘I want to know why Burnstein and the Crovir First Council are so interested in this person.’

  Ashely studied the road for a while. ‘You sure about this?’ he said finally.

  I hesitated. ‘It’s the only clue we’ve got.’

  He sighed. ‘When do we leave?’

  I took out the cell and dialed the Vauquoises’ number. ‘Hello, Pierre? It’s Adam.’ I listened. ‘We’re fine. Look, we need to get to Paris. Can you help?...No, commercial flights are out of the question. This has to be discreet.’

  There was a longer interlude while I waited for Vauquois to return to the phone. I pulled a pen and paper out of the glove compartment and wrote down the address he dictated.

  ‘Thanks, Pierre. Give my love to Solange.’

  We headed north of DC and reached the private airstrip Vauquois had directed us to outside Baltimore around midnight. The only plane on the tarmac with its lights on was a white Cessna 750. I parked the Cruiser inside the hangar next to it and followed Ashely to the aircraft.

  A tall, trim, middle-aged man with silver-streaked brown hair came down the steps to meet us when we entered the shadow of the plane.

  ‘Are you Pierre’s friends?’ he said in an amiable voice.

  ‘Yes, we are,’ I replied. We shook hands.

  ‘I’m Jim, your pilot.’ He glanced at our bags. ‘Will this be all?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Come aboard.’

  Thirty minutes later, we were airborne. As the east coast fell away beneath us, I turned to the documents I had printed at Qin Lee’s place; before the Crovirs surprised us in Capitol Hill, I had forwarded the photograph from Burnstein’s computer to a fake email address on a separate server. The research articles by Strauss and generic information on the UPMC had been freely accessible on the internet.

  ‘Wake me up when we get there.’ Ashely reclined his seat and closed his eyes.

  I spent the next two hours poring over the information in Strauss’s papers. Occasionally, my gaze would stray to the black and white print of the man and the woman in the restaurant.

  Why was a senior member of the Crovir Councils so concerned with a scientist involved in genetics and molecular biology? Sure, Burnstein was the head of a biotechnology corporation, but the security measures surrounding the information on Strauss suggested the President and CEO of GeMBiT Corp had a more vested interest in the professor than pure academic curiosity. More importantly, what did it have to do with the Crovir Hunters’ renewed attempts on my life? The timing of the events was too close for this fact to be a coincidence. And where did Chapman feature in all of this?

  Somewhere over the Atlantic, I was lulled into a troubled sleep by the drone of the Cessna’s engines.

  Eight hours after we left Baltimore, we landed on a deserted airfield thirty miles outside Paris. The local time was fifteen hundred.

  ‘Pierre called,’ Jim told us when he opened the cabin door. ‘He said he would arrange transportation for you.’

  We unloaded our bags and bade the pilot goodbye. As we stood on the tarmac and watched the Cessna dwindle to a speck on the skyline, on its way to Le Bourget Airport to refuel, the distant backfiring of engines alerted us to approaching vehicles. We turned and gazed down the strip.

  A black Jaguar XK120 roadster was making its way rapid
ly across the tarmac toward us. Not far behind it was a dusty, mustard-yellow Citroën 2CV; French hip-hop music blasted out of its open windows.

  The roadster braked to a stop some three feet from us. An energetic young man with blond hair and blue eyes leapt out of the driver’s seat.

  ‘Bonjour! Vous êtes Adam?’ he said with a blindingly white smile.

  ‘Oui,’ I replied distractedly, my eyes roaming over the familiar Jaguar.

  He threw the car keys across to me. ‘Compliment de Monsieur Vauquois!’ he shouted and jogged over to the 2CV.

  The bearded youth behind the wheel of the Citroën nodded a brief acknowledgement and pulled his shades down. We watched the car do a screeching U-turn and hurtle erratically down the runway. The rap lyrics faded in the distance.

  Ashely studied the roadster with a grimace. ‘Do all immortals have a thing for nice cars, or is it just you and the people you know?’ He dropped our bags in the boot and climbed in the passenger seat.

  ‘What can I say? We like the classics.’ I slipped behind the wheel and ran my fingers lovingly over the dashboard and the gearbox.

  Pierre and Solange had left the vintage car with friends in Chantilly when they moved to New York; they still used it whenever they visited France. It had been a while since I had driven the antique.

  Despite the heavy Saturday afternoon traffic and Ashely’s occasional acerbic comment on my driving, we made Paris in just under an hour; the old back roads had not changed much in the few decades since I had last been to the capital. I crossed the Boulevard Périphérique near the 16ème arrondissement, went over the Place du Trocadéro, and headed for the Pont d’léna.

  ‘Nice,’ said Ashely moments later. Up ahead, the Eiffel Tower rose majestically at the head of the Parc du Champ de Mars.

  Traffic slowed when we hit the Boulevard Garibaldi and the Rue Froidevaux. By the time we reached the 13ème arrondissement and pulled over opposite an apartment building halfway down a side street, the sky was starting to redden. A smile curved my lips when I spotted the well-preserved green Renault 5 Supermini taking center stage in the allocated parking space in front of the edifice.

  I climbed out of the roadster, crossed the sidewalk to a pair of oak doors, and pressed the buzzer for apartment 3A.

  A gruff voice barked a disgruntled ‘Oui?’ through the speakerphone seconds later.

  ‘C’est Adam.’

  There was a pregnant pause. ‘Adam?’ Surprise elevated the pitch of the man’s voice. ‘Nom de Dieu!’

  Heavy footsteps sounded on the other side of the doors after a minute. They slammed open. The figure on the threshold gaped before engulfing me in a bear-like embrace.

  ‘My word, Adam! You haven’t changed at all! What’s it been, ten, twelve years?’

  I grinned at the short, portly, middle-aged French man with the thick mustache. ‘About that.’

  Gustav Lacroix was a retired detective who used to work at the headquarters of the French National Police; he was one of the few mortal friends the Vauquoises and I had maintained contact with since we left France. Although the Frenchman often joked that we had discovered the secret whereabouts of the Fountain of Youth, I had a feeling he suspected our somewhat unearthly origins. Still, he never asked us questions.

  I glanced at the Supermini. ‘I see you’ve still got the old car.’

  ‘Pah! I wouldn’t trade it for any of these new fancy-schmancy contraptions.’ Gustav’s eyes glinted when he saw the roadster. ‘On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind getting my fingers on that little beauty.’ He greeted Ashely like an old acquaintance and ushered us inside the building.

  ‘So, what brings you to Paris?’ he said once we were inside his apartment.

  ‘We have business in town.’

  A wry smile dawned on the old detective’s face. ‘Ah. I see.’ He placed a tray of freshly brewed coffee on a low table in the sitting room. ‘I take it it’s the kind of business you can’t talk about?’

  I nodded.

  He sat in a large, padded armchair. ‘Well, if there’s anything I can do to help, don’t hesitate to ask.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I reached for one of the porcelain cups and took a gulp of the hot, fragrant liquid; the familiar taste flooded my mouth, bringing back memories of lazy summer days spent in the French capital. ‘Actually, I do have a question.’

  Gustav looked at me expectantly.

  ‘Have there been any—unusual incidents in the city of late?’

  A bemused expression washed across the retired detective’s face. ‘In Paris?’

  I smiled. ‘Sorry, that was a stupid question. What I meant was, something out of the ordinary, mysterious—unnatural even?’

  Gustav thought for a moment before shaking his head. ‘No. Not that I’ve heard of anyway. But, tell you what, my nephew works at the DCPJ, la Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciaire. You haven’t met him before. He just moved to Paris from Lyon. He’s coming over for dinner tonight.’ The old detective shrugged. ‘He might know something.’

  Christophe Lacroix turned out to be a much taller and slimmer version of his uncle. It became rapidly evident that his warm, chocolate-brown eyes and loose demeanor belied a sharp intelligence.

  ‘You’ve known my uncle for long?’ he said curiously while we sat at the dining table and sipped wine from a fine bottle of Cru Beaujolais.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Gustav mentioned you wanted to know of any strange events that may have occurred in the city recently?’ he asked.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ I said with a noncommittal nod.

  Christophe Lacroix leaned back in his chair. ‘What do you do for a living?’ he drawled, watching us over the rim of his glass.

  ‘We’re private investigators,’ Ashely replied, his tone carefully blank.

  The French detective’s eyes moved to my face. ‘Oh? And what exactly, may I ask, are you investigating in our lovely Ville-Lumière?’

  Ashely and I exchanged glances.

  ‘It’s a missing person’s case,’ I said levelly.

  Lacroix raised his eyebrows, a sardonic twist distorting his mouth. ‘Really? Why don’t you tell me more? I might be able to help.’

  I smiled. ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible. Our clients are very particular. They would like to keep this as low-key as possible.’

  Lacroix frowned.

  Gustav entered the room and lowered a large casserole dish in the middle of the table. He lifted the lid. Steam billowed out, followed by the fragrant aroma of slow-cooked meat and vegetables. ‘Voila! My famous Coq au Vin. Dig in!’

  The conversation turned to more mundane matters. Gustav’s nephew took his leave just after ten, blaming an early start the next day. He stopped in the apartment doorway and studied us carefully.

  ‘In response to your earlier query, no, there haven’t been any unusual incidents in the city of late. None that has attracted the attention of the DCPJ anyway.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I murmured.

  We rose from the table and headed for the door a short while later.

  ‘Here, this is the spare key for when you get back,’ said Gustav, handing me a door key. ‘I’m afraid one of you will have to sleep on the sofa. The guest room only has a single bed,’ he added apologetically as he let us out of the apartment.

  Earlier that evening, I had looked up the H.E. Strausses listed in Paris in the retired detective’s White Pages. There were five of them. Although the CGM, the Center for Molecular Genetics research lab where Strauss was assigned, was located on the Gif-sur-Yvette campus some twenty miles southwest of the French capital, my instincts told me that the professor quite likely kept a place in the city. I ruled out the Strausses who lived too far from the center and the addresses that were not within walking distance of a train station or metro. That left only three H.E. Strausses; one in Montreuil and two within the Boulevard Périphérique, in the 11ème and 7ème arrondissements.

  We took the ro
adster and headed east past the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital and the Quai de la Gare. I crossed the River Seine at the Pont de Tolbiac and turned right onto the Quai de Bercy before joining the Boulevard Périphérique. Eight minutes later, we entered the suburb of Montreuil.

  The first address was a detached house in a small road not far from the metro station. Lights were still on behind the ground floor windows when we pulled up some fifty yards from the property. After watching the place for ten minutes, I left the car, crossed the shallow fore garden, and knocked on the front door. It was opened by an elderly gentleman.

  ‘Est-ce que je peux vous aider?’ he said in a frail voice, blinking in the porch light.

  ‘I apologize for bothering you at such a late hour,’ I replied in French. ‘I was passing through and thought I’d look up an old university friend, a person by the name of H.E. Strauss?’

  ‘Oh. I’m terribly sorry, I’m afraid I’m the only Strauss living at this address,’ he said with a weak smile.

  I thanked him and strolled back to the car.

  ‘Any luck?’ said Ashely.

  ‘No. Let’s try the next address.’

  Traffic had thinned out considerably and the drive to the 11ème arrondissement took less than ten minutes. The address was an apartment located in an old neoclassical building halfway down a quiet cul-de-sac. I parked the car at the entrance of the street and we sat watching the block. The curtains were drawn and the lights were off behind the large French windows on the second floor. They remained so for the next half hour.

  ‘Wsheila check out the last place?’ Ashely suggested. I nodded.

  The apartment in the 7ème was owned by a Hélène Eveline Strauss, a teacher at a local elementary school. Her voice sounded thin and harassed on the speakerphone and the high-pitched screams of children rose in the background.

  ‘Sorry to bother you,’ I said hastily after confirming her details. I returned to the car.

  ‘No luck here either?’ muttered Ashely.

  ‘No. Let’s go back to the 11ème arrondissement. I have a feeling that’s the place we want.’

  We headed across the river and I pulled into the empty parking space we had previously occupied. The apartment on the second floor was as dark as when we had left. Minutes after I turned off the engine, the front door of the building opened. A man stepped out with a dog on a leash. He glanced curiously at the car when he walked past.