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  He hung up and ran back to the car. "Go."

  They drove back those two blocks and stopped at the intersection before the DGSE headquarters.

  "Keep the engine running," Milo said as, through the noise of the rain, they heard a faint two-toned alarm. "You'll either drive forward or backward. I'll tell you."

  "The hell did you do?" Einner said as people began to emerge from the building. Not running, but not strolling either.

  "Shh."

  A few had umbrellas they popped open, but most had fled too quickly. Since it was the weekend, there were only twenty or so to evacuate, and then he saw them. They crossed the road together and found shelter under a cafe awning.

  "Ahead," said Milo.

  "What?"

  "Now!"

  Einner sped forward in first gear, splashing through puddles as they reached the awning. Morel and her partner weren't alone; others had just lit cigarettes and were hugging themselves. They all stared at the Mercedes. Milo rolled down his window and caught Morel's eye. "Get in."

  Both she and her partner stepped forward. Milo raised a finger. "Just you."

  "I'm not going anywhere without him," she said. Milo glanced at Einner, who shrugged. "Okay," said Milo. "Hurry."

  They got in the back through separate doors, the man first. Before Morel's door was shut, Einner was already moving.

  "Was that you?" she said. "The bomb?" She sounded out of breath.

  "Sorry. I just need to chat."

  The man beside her shook his head. "You have a funny way of talking."

  Milo gave him a smile, then stuck out his hand. "First, though, please give me your phones.”

  “No," said Morel.

  Milo finally produced Einner's pistol. "Pretty please."

  31

  After several evasive maneuvers, including a dangerous U-turn in a tunnel, they left Paris proper and stopped at a near-empty bar outside Les Lilas, in the suburbs. Following some negotiation, Milo and Morel took a table in the back, while Einner and Adrien Lambert, her partner, began a staring contest at the bar. The bartender, a heavy man in a soiled smock, brought over espressos as Morel said, "So glad you've returned to our country, Mr. Weaver."

  Milo thanked the bartender and watched him leave.

  "You wanted to talk to me?"

  "I have some questions."

  "What luck!" she said, tapping the table. "I have questions, too. For example, we heard from our American friends that you were on the loose, but we have no record of your entry into Europe. Please. What name are you traveling under?"

  "I'm sorry," Milo told her. "That's one question I can't answer."

  "Then maybe you can tell me why you murdered Angela Yates."

  "I don't know who killed her. I'm trying to find that out."

  Diane Morel crossed her arms under her breasts, watching him across the table. "Then maybe you can tell me why you care about a little civil servant like myself."

  "You have a friend with a place in Brittany," Milo told her. "When he was still working out of London, you visited him on the weekends and in the meantime worked on what I hear is an excellent socialistthemed novel. He's Chinese, and I assume he made the trip across the Channel from London just to meet with you. Am I right?"

  Diane Morel opened her mouth, then shut it. She stretched back in her chair. "That's interesting. Who told you that?"

  "A friend."

  "The CIA knows a lot of things, Mr. Weaver." She grinned. "To tell the truth, we're often jealous. We have a paltry staff, and every year the socialists attack our budget. They came close to scrapping us completely in the seventies." She shook her head. "No, I'm not the type of woman to write a new Communist Manifesto."

  "Then I'm misinformed."

  "Not entirely."

  "No?"

  Diane Morel noticed his interest. "I'll tell you everything, Mr. Weaver. Just be patient."

  Milo tried to exemplify patience.

  She rubbed the spot between her brows. "Last week, Friday, you were seen lunching with Ms. Angela Yates. That same night, you were with Mr. Einner, watching Angela Yates's apartment. You left early, yes, but then you returned and visited Ms. Yates. Some hours later she died of poisoning. A barbiturate, the doctors tell me. They say all her regular sleeping pills were replaced with this drug."

  "Yes," said Milo.

  "Mr. Einner and another associate entered the building at 5:16 a.m., Saturday. Then, Mr. Einner went to your hotel. Soon after, both of you fled through the rear entrance." She cleared her throat, sounding like a heavy smoker. "We found both of you at the airport, fleeing. Remember?"

  "Einner wasn't leaving," said Milo. "And we left through the back of the hotel because I was in a hurry."

  "To get home."

  He nodded.

  "In actuality, Mr. Einner did flee, but not by airplane. He got in his car and left the airport. Unfortunately, we lost him. He disappeared."

  "I suppose he had someplace to be."

  "Had I known in the airport that Angela Yates was dead, you wouldn't have left the country. Sadly, I didn't learn this until that afternoon." She pursed her lips, considering him. "You see where I'm going with this, don't you? It looks a lot like premeditation."

  "Does it really?"

  Diane Morel stared at him. Unlike Janet Simmons, she had no lightness in her face. With her swollen eyes, she looked as if the motif of her life had been suffering. "Also, you tell me you know nothing about Angela Yates's murder, but the story I've just described suggests something different. It suggests that you came to Paris and worked with Mr. Einner until your job was completed. As soon as Angela was dead, you left." She paused. "If I'm missing something, please let me know."

  "Angela was a friend of mine," he said after a moment. "I didn't kill her, and neither did Einner. If I believed he did, I'd hand him to you right now."

  "A question," she said, raising a finger. "Who, exactly, is Mr. James Einner? He seems to have been working with embassy personnel, but there's no public record of his employment there. In fact, he only arrived in Paris three months ago. Before that, he was in Germany for three weeks; before that, Italy for two months… before that, he was in France again, Portugal, and Spain. And before Spain -he arrived there a year and a half ago-there's no record at all of him in Europe. Who is Mr. Einner?"

  That was the one question Milo wished she hadn't asked. Diane Morel had done her homework. "I don't know," he said. "That's the truth. But I will tell you something that I hope we can keep private."

  "Go on."

  "Angela Yates was under suspicion of treason. Selling secrets.”

  “To whom?”

  “To China."

  Morel blinked again, rapidly. It wasn't the kind of thing the Company would ever admit to, and he hoped it would push the question of James Einner out of her head. Finally, she said, "That's curious."

  "Is it?"

  "I now ask the same of you, Mr. Weaver. Some privacy." Milo nodded.

  "Until about a year ago, Ms. Yates and I were also close friends- which, I imagine, is why I haven't just shot you and handed your body to the Americans. I, too, would like to know the truth."

  "I'm glad."

  "My point is that I tried to get her to do the same thing. Sell secrets." She shook her head, biting her lip. "I find it very surprising that Angela would sell them to the Chinese. In fact, I'm sure she wouldn't."

  "I agree," he said, then stopped. A year ago… "Oh." Morel sat up. "What?"

  This was the woman Angela had dated, who had left her with a broken heart. Morel had broken her heart by showing that their affair had simply been a way to turn her. "Nothing. Go on."

  She let it go. "Angela wouldn't sell to us, but she did work with someone else. We spotted her having meetings with a man."

  "A red beard," Milo said.

  Morel frowned, then shook her head. "No. Why do you say that?"

  "Just a hunch. Go on."

  "The man she met with was clean shaven. An old man.
Turns out our friend Angela was a double agent of sorts." Milo stared back. "Who for?”

  “For the United Nations."

  He wanted to laugh, but it was too ludicrous even for that. "You mean Interpol. That would make sense."

  "No. I mean she worked for the United Nations."

  "Really," he said, finally smiling nervously. "The United Nations has no intelligence agency. Maybe she was getting information from them."

  Morel rocked her head from side to side. "That's what we thought at first. She met with someone from the UNESCO office here in Paris. His name is Yevgeny Primakov."

  "Primakov?" Milo said dumbly.

  "You know him?"

  He shook his head to cover the sudden feeling of panic. Not Yevgeny. "Go on."

  "We did some background checks. Primakov used to work for the KGB. He reached a colonel's rank and kept it when the KGB became the FSB. Then he quit in 2000 to work for the UN out of Geneva. There's not much on him, but in 2002 he worked with some representatives from Germany, trying to institute an independent intelligence organ. Their argument was that the Security Council could only make educated decisions with an independent agency giving them information. Of course, it didn't even reach a vote. China, Russia, and your own country made it clear that they would veto it."

  "There you go, then," said Milo. "There is no UN intelligence agency for Angela to work for."

  Morel nodded, as if Milo had finally put her suspicions to rest, but said, "In early 2003, Mr. Primakov vanished for approximately six months. He reappeared in July of that year in the Military Staff Committee of the Security Council, working out of the financial section. He's kept his position despite changeovers of all the other staff. I find it all highly suspicious."

  "Are you telling me that this man, Yevgeny Primakov, is running a secret agency within the United Nations? Impossible."

  "Why is it impossible?"

  "If there was an agency within the UN, we would know about it."

  "You mean you would know about it."

  "Listen." Milo felt himself reddening. "For the last six years I've been running a desk that deals solely with Europe. If there was a new intelligence agency working the same beat, I'd figure it out pretty quickly. You can't hide that kind of stuff. Inexplicable events start to build up, little black holes that need filling. After a year or two, it becomes simple to put together, and there you have a new organization."

  "But don't be so sure," said Morel, smiling. "Back in the seventies, this Primakov was running successful operations for the Soviets in Germany. He helped a network of Baader-Meinhof terrorists. He knows how to keep things quiet."

  "Okay," said Milo, still not believing, but for reasons he couldn't share with Diane Morel. The same reasons he'd never shared with the Company, nor even with his wife. "Please. Tell me about Colonel Yi Lien."

  "You seem to know everything already, Mr. Weaver. Why don't you tell me?"

  So Milo did. "You met with him on weekends at his cottage. But you were working on him, weren't you? You might have slept with him-I suppose that was unavoidable-but he brought his laptop, so you could take what you liked from it. Am I right so far?"

  Diane Morel didn't answer. She waited.

  "We know all this because MI6 was watching the colonel. They're the ones who helped him when he had his heart attack; they also copied his laptop. That's how we learned he had some of our embassy documents, which he received at the cottage from a man named Herbert Williams, or Jan Klausner. We suspected that Williams received the documents from Angela, which is why we were watching her."

  "Is that why Mr. Einner killed her?"

  He shook his head. "You don't understand. Einner didn't kill her. He didn't want to kill her. We needed to see who she passed the information on to."

  Morel's face had turned a deep shade of red as Milo talked. She appeared livid, but didn't shout. Quietly, she said, "Do you have a cigarette? I left mine in the office."

  Milo tapped out two Davidoffs and lit hers for her. She took a long drag, exhaled smoke, then looked at the cigarette. "They're not very good."

  "Sorry." Through his own smoke, he said, "Did you talk to Angela's neighbors? She took sleeping pills regularly, so they were probably switched on Friday, during the day. A neighbor could have seen the murderer come into the building."

  "She took pills every night?"

  "Maybe. I don't know."

  "That's not very smart," she said, then glared at the surface of the table, perhaps at the ashtray. "Was Angela depressed?”

  “She didn't seem so."

  Morel took another drag. "We talked to the neighbors. A few descriptions, but in a town the size of Paris workmen and deliverymen show up all the time."

  "Anyone suspicious?"

  She shook her head. "They say she didn't get many visitors."

  "Did you ever talk to her? In the last year, I mean."

  "Sometimes. We were in the same business, after all. We remained friends of a sort."

  "She came asking for information?"

  "Sometimes I asked as well."

  "Did she ever ask about Rolf Vinterberg?"

  She blinked. "Once, yes. She wanted to know if we had anything on him."

  "Did you?"

  "No."

  "What about Rahman Garang?"

  A look flashed across Morel's face-whatever trust she'd felt was evaporating fast. "That was a mistake. We have them sometimes, just like the CIA."

  He understood. "I don't care about that. But Angela was working with him, trying to figure out who killed Mullah Salih Ahmad. Did you help with that?"

  Again, she shook her head. "The last time we talked was two weeks ago. A week before…" She shifted in her chair. "She was upset about that little terrorist's death. She wanted to know if we'd killed him."

  "What did you tell her?"

  "The truth. We didn't know anything about it."

  Milo didn't doubt this. Two weeks ago, upon learning of Rahman Garang's murder, Angela's suspicions must have run in all directions, and like any good investigator she'd followed up on anything she'd had the ability to follow up on.

  Morel looked into her empty espresso cup. "You were talking about Yi Lien earlier.”

  “Yes."

  "And his laptop computer.”

  “Right."

  She scratched the back of her neck. "Mr. Weaver, Lien never brought his laptop to the cottage. He never even took it out of the London embassy. It would have been an unforgivable security risk."

  "Perhaps you didn't see it."

  "I saw everything he brought with him."

  "But that's…" He trailed off. He'd wanted to say "impossible," but it wasn't, not really. All it meant was that someone, somewhere between the ferry where Lien had his heart attack and Grainger's office in New York, was lying.

  Morel watched the changing expressions on his face. She leaned forward to get a better look. "This is news to you, isn't it?"

  There was no sense lying to her, so he didn't.

  "I think you should find out why you're getting such bad information."

  "I think you're right," he said, and when she didn't answer, he added with a grin: "I hear the novel's pretty good.”

  “What?"

  "The novel you're supposed to be writing."

  "Oh, that," she said, leaning back again. "Some years ago a computer programmer in the Foreign Ministry committed suicide. Nothing suspicious about it, but for a long time she passed information to a Cuban boyfriend. Very devout Marxist, it turned out-you see, in France, Marx is not yet dead. When we went through her belongings, we came across the novel she'd written. She hadn't shown it to anyone. I imagine she thought it would be discovered and published posthumously." She paused. "Instead, I used it to convince the colonel that I'm not only beautiful, but a literary genius. Sometimes I feel sorry for the girl."

  Morel got a long-focused, melancholy look in her eyes, so Milo said, "She loved you, you know."

  "What?" The word seemed t
o terrify her.

  "Angela. In the cafe, she told me she'd been dumped by a French aristocrat. That was you."

  Morel tugged at the hem of the soiled tablecloth. Then: "Aristocrat?"

  "Consider it a compliment." She nodded.

  Gently, Milo said, "Where did you and she meet?”

  “What do you mean?"

  "Angela was a private person. Any relationship she had, she'd want to keep secret. Particularly if her lover was a DGSE agent."

  Diane Morel raised her shoulders, looking squarely at him, but didn't answer.

  "You wouldn't meet in her place, because people would know. You wouldn't meet in your place for the same reason. It would have to be somewhere else."

  "Of course. Security is always a consideration."

  "Where did you go? Did she have another apartment?"

  Morel smiled. "So you've been to her apartment, and you've searched it. And you're hoping there will be another place where she hid the evidence that will prove your innocence. Is that right?"

  "In a nutshell."

  "Well, you're out of luck. It was a friend's apartment, in the Nineteenth Arrondissement. You won't find anything there. We went there two, three times. After that, we only used hotels. Understand?"

  "The address," he said. "Please."

  "Rue David d'Angers, number 37, apartment seven. Near the Danube metro stop." He committed it to memory by repeating it back to her; then she said: "Tell me about the man with the red beard."

  He blinked at her, and she smiled. "Let's not play games. Just tell me."

  "It's the man Angela was seen with during the surveillance on her. Herbert Williams. The one we thought was her contact to the Chinese."

  Morel nodded. "Why?"

  "Because one of the neighbors reported that, on that Friday afternoon, around four, she'd let in a man with a red beard and a funny accent. He said he was a civil engineer, checking on the foundation of the building."

  "Was she with him the whole time?"

  "She was just heading out."

  "I think that was Angela's murderer."

  "I do, too," Morel said, then looked past the bar, where Einner and Lambert were talking animatedly. "The rain's stopped. Are we done?"