The New Girl Read online

Gabriel went to the window and peered around the edge of the blinds. “Which building is Villard’s?”

  “Number twenty-one.” Mikhail handed Gabriel a Zeiss monocular. “Third floor, right side of the building.”

  Gabriel scanned the two street-facing windows of Lucien Villard’s flat. He saw a sparsely furnished bachelor’s sitting room but no sign of Villard himself. “Are you sure he’s there?”

  Mikhail raised the volume on the laptop. A few seconds later Gabriel heard the opening phrase of Coltrane’s “I Want to Talk About You.”

  “What’s the source of the audio?”

  “His mobile phone. The Unit got the number from the school’s internal directory. By the time I’d landed this morning, the phone was hot and we were reading his e-mails and texts.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “He’s leaving for Marrakesh tomorrow afternoon.”

  Gabriel aimed the monocular at Mikhail. “Is he really?”

  “He’s booked on Lufthansa with a brief stopover in Munich. First class all the way.”

  Gabriel lowered the glass. “When is he coming back?”

  “The ticket is open ended. He hasn’t booked the return yet.”

  “Now that he’s no longer working, I suppose he has a lot of time on his hands.”

  “And Morocco is lovely this time of year.”

  “I remember,” said Gabriel distantly. “Was the Unit able to see his file?”

  “They grabbed a copy on their way out the door.”

  “Was there any mention of the fact he was run out of the SDLP for having an affair with the wife of the French president?”

  “He seems to have neglected to mention it when he interviewed for the job.”

  “Any black marks?”

  Mikhail shook his head.

  “How much were they paying him?”

  “Enough to rent a flat in a chic Geneva neighborhood, but not enough for the little things.”

  “Like a long trip to Morocco?”

  “Don’t forget the first-class air travel.”

  “I haven’t.” Lucien Villard’s music filled the silence. “What about his private life?”

  “He was married once a hundred years ago.”

  “Kids?”

  “A daughter. They exchange the odd e-mail.”

  “Nice.”

  “I’d reserve judgment until you read the e-mails.”

  Gabriel raised the monocular to his eye again and trained it on Villard’s apartment. “Is there a woman over there?”

  “If there is, she isn’t awake yet. But he’s having drinks with someone named Isabelle Jeanneret at five o’clock.”

  “Who is she?”

  “For now, she’s an e-mail address. The Unit is working on it.”

  “Where are they meeting?”

  “Café Remor on the Place du Cirque.”

  “Who chose the venue?”

  “She did.” A silence fell between them. Then Mikhail asked, “You think he knows something?”

  “We wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

  “How do you intend to play it?”

  “I’d like to have a word with him in private.”

  “A friendly word?”

  “That depends entirely on Lucien.”

  “When are we going to make our move?”

  “After he’s finished having drinks with Madame Jeanneret at Café Remor. You and Sarah will be sitting at the next table.” Gabriel smiled. “Just like old times.”

  The Coltrane piece ended, and the next began.

  “What’s that one called?” asked Sarah.

  “‘You Say You Care.’”

  Sarah shook her head slowly. “Couldn’t you have found someone else to send to Geneva?”

  “He volunteered.”

  They saw Villard for the first time at half past one, standing in the window of his sitting room, stripped to the waist, his compromised mobile phone to his ear. He was speaking in French to a woman whom the device identified only as Monique. They were obviously well acquainted. Indeed, for some ten minutes, the woman explained in excruciating detail all the things she would do to Villard’s body if only he would agree to see her that evening. Villard, citing a scheduling conflict, declined. He made no mention of the fact he was having drinks with someone named Isabelle Jeanneret at five o’clock. Nor did he make reference to his pending trip to Marrakesh. Gabriel found much to admire in the performance. Lucien Villard, he surmised, was a man who lied often and well.

  The woman ended the call abruptly, and Villard disappeared from their view. They glimpsed him occasionally when he passed within range of the phone’s camera, but mainly they listened to drawers opening and closing—a sound that Gabriel, a veteran of many surveillance operations, associated with the packing of a suitcase. There were two, actually, a duffel bag and a rolling rectangular behemoth the size of a steamer trunk. Villard left them both in the entrance hall before heading downstairs.

  When they saw him next he was stepping into the busy street, dressed in a mid-length leather coat, dark jeans, and suede chukka boots. He paused on the pavement briefly, his eyes moved left and right—perhaps out of habit, thought Gabriel, or perhaps because he feared someone might be watching. A cigarette found its way to his lips, a lighter flared, an exhalation of smoke was carried away by a cold winter’s wind. Then he shoved his hands deep into his pockets and set off toward the center of Geneva.

  Gabriel remained in the hotel room while Mikhail and Sarah followed Villard on foot. The phone allowed Unit 8200 to track his every move from afar. Mikhail and Sarah served merely as human eyes on the target. They kept to a safe distance, sometimes posing as a couple, sometimes working alone. Consequently, only Sarah observed Villard entering a small private bank off the rue du Rhône. The compromised phone allowed Gabriel to monitor the transaction Villard conducted inside—the transfer of a rather large sum of money to a bank in Marrakesh. Villard then requested access to his safe-deposit box. Because the phone was in his pocket at the time, the camera was effectively blinded. But the sequence of sounds—the squeak of a hinge, the rustle of paper, the zipping of a leather jacket—led Gabriel to conclude that items had been removed from the box rather than added.

  Mikhail was drinking coffee in the Starbucks across the street from the bank when Villard finally emerged. The Frenchman checked the time on his wristwatch—it was half past four exactly—and struck out along the rue du Rhône. He followed it to the river and then wound his way through the narrow, quiet streets of the Old Town to the Place de la Synagogue, where Gabriel was sitting behind the wheel of the Passat.

  Café Remor was a hundred meters farther along the boulevard Georges-Favon. There were several unoccupied tables on the Place du Cirque, and several more beneath the shelter of the awning. Villard sat down outside along the square. Mikhail joined Sarah under the awning. A gas heater burned the evening chill from the air.

  Sarah raised a glass of red wine to her lips. “How did I do?”

  “Not bad,” said Mikhail. “Not bad at all.”

  For ten minutes no one appeared. Villard smoked two cigarettes, lighting the second with the first, and cast several glances toward his mobile phone, which was lying on the tabletop. Finally, at five fifteen, he signaled a passing waiter and ordered. A single bottle of Kronenbourg arrived a moment later.

  “Looks like she stood him up,” said Mikhail. “If I were him, I’d call Monique before it’s too late.”

  But Sarah wasn’t listening; she was watching a man walking toward the café along the boulevard. In dress and aspect, he looked to be a Swiss banker or businessman, late forties or early fifties, on his way home after a prosperous day at the office. His costly overcoat was tan, and the leather attaché case he carried in his left hand was the color of oxblood. He placed it on the pavement next to Lucien Villard before sitting down at an adjacent table.

  Quietly, Mikhail asked, “Think it’s a coincidence he chose to sit next to our boy when there are sever
al other tables available?”

  “No,” answered Sarah. “It isn’t.”

  “His face looks familiar.”

  “It should.”

  “Where have I seen it before?”

  “At Brasserie Saint-Maurice in Annecy.”

  Mikhail stared at Sarah, perplexed.

  “It’s the face you ran through the databases at King Saul Boulevard last night.”

  Mikhail drew his BlackBerry and dialed. “You’ll never guess who just walked into Café Remor.”

  “I know,” said Gabriel. “I’m right across the street.”

  19

  Geneva

  The space where Gabriel was parked in the Place du Cirque was by no means legal. Neither was the 9mm Beretta pistol with a walnut grip that lay on the passenger seat beneath a copy of that morning’s Le Temps. Gabriel had placed the gun there after spotting the man in the tan overcoat walking along the boulevard. His dress was more businesslike, his hair was arranged in a different manner, he was wearing dark-rimmed eyeglasses. Nevertheless, there was no mistaking him for anyone else. Having spent a lifetime repairing Old Master canvases, Gabriel had developed a near-perfect ability to spot familiar faces, even faces that had been heavily disguised. The man now seated next to Lucien Villard had been at Brasserie Saint-Maurice in Annecy the day of Princess Reema’s abduction.

  Gabriel considered attempting to take the man into custody but rejected the idea at once. The man was a professional and no doubt heavily armed. His surrender would not be amicable. It was likely bullets would fly in a busy square in the heart of Geneva.

  It was a risk Gabriel was not prepared to take. The code of the Office forbade the use of deadly force in crowded urban settings unless the officer in question was in danger of losing his life or his liberty, especially to a hostile power. Such was not the case now. Gabriel and Mikhail could follow the man after he left Café Remor and take him into their possession at a time and place of their choosing. They would then encourage the man to reveal Princess Reema’s whereabouts, either through persuasion or force. Or perhaps, if fortune was in their favor, he might lead them directly to the princess. Better to wait, Gabriel reckoned, than to act rashly and risk losing the opportunity to save the child’s life.

  From his vantage point, he could see the man in the tan overcoat had yet to order. His pose was identical to the one he had adopted at Brasserie Saint-Maurice—legs casually crossed, right elbow on the table, left hand resting on his thigh, within easy reach of his gun. The attaché case he had carried into the café was standing upright on the pavement between his table and Villard’s. It was an odd place to leave it. Unless, thought Gabriel, he had no intention of taking it with him when he departed.

  But why was the man in the tan overcoat sitting in a café next to the former director of security at the International School of Geneva? Villard’s compromised phone lay on the tabletop before him. Unit 8200 had routed the feed securely to Gabriel’s BlackBerry. The audio quality was crystalline—Gabriel could hear the clinking of cutlery and glass in the café and the chatter of pedestrians as they passed along the pavement—but there was a transmission delay of several seconds. It was like watching an old movie where sound and picture were not in sync. The two central characters in this film had yet to speak. It was possible, thought Gabriel, they never would.

  Just then, there was a knock at his window, two firm raps of a policeman’s knuckle, followed by a curt wave of a gloved hand. Gabriel raised his own hand in a gesture of apology and eased away from the curb, into the swiftly flowing evening traffic. He made a series of rapid turns—right into the avenue du Mail, left on the rue Harry-Marc, left again on the boulevard Georges-Favon—and returned to the Place du Cirque.

  A red traffic light gave him an excuse to loiter. Several pedestrians flowed through the crosswalk directly in front of him. One was a prosperous-looking man in a tan overcoat. A few paces behind him was Mikhail Abramov. Sarah was still at Café Remor. Her eyes were fixed on Lucien Villard, who was reaching toward the briefcase standing upright on the pavement.

  He noticed him for the first time, the long-limbed man with pale skin and colorless eyes, sitting next to the attractive blonde at Café Remor. And now here he was again, the same man, following him through the darkness along the rue de la Corraterie. A car was following him, too—the same car that had been parked illegally in the Place du Cirque. He had seen nothing of the driver other than a smudge of gray at the temples.

  But how had they found him? He was confident he had not been followed to Café Remor. Therefore, the logical explanation was that it was Villard, not him, who was under surveillance. It was no matter; Villard knew next to nothing. And in a very few minutes, he would no longer be a threat.

  He removed his phone from his coat pocket and dialed a preloaded number. The conversation was brief, coded. When it was over he killed the connection and paused in a shop window. Glancing to his left, he saw the man with pale skin—and farther along the street, the car.

  He waited for a tram to pass, crossed to the opposite side of the street, and went into a small movie house. The feature had just begun. He purchased a ticket and entered the darkened, half-empty theater. On the left side of the screen was the emergency exit. The alarm chirped loudly as he leaned on the panic latch and went once more into the night.

  He found himself in a courtyard surrounded by a high wall. He scaled it effortlessly, dropped onto a cobbled street, and followed it through a passageway into the Old Town. A Piaggio motor scooter was parked outside an antiquarian bookshop, a leathered, helmeted figure perched atop the saddle. He climbed onto the back and wrapped his arms around a slender waist.

  The fire alarm was still howling when Mikhail barged through the entrance of the cinema. He did not bother with the ruse of a ticket, and it took him two attempts to scale the wall of the rear courtyard. The street onto which he toppled was empty of traffic and pedestrians. Rising, he sprinted pell-mell along the cobbles until he reached a quaint square in the heart of the Old Town. There he saw the man in the tan overcoat climbing onto the back of a motorbike. Mikhail briefly considered drawing his weapon and taking the shot. Instead, he jogged back to the rue de la Corraterie, where Gabriel was waiting.

  “Where is he?”

  Mikhail explained about the motorbike.

  “Did you see the driver?”

  “She was wearing a helmet.”

  “It was a woman? Are you sure?”

  Mikhail nodded. “Where’s Villard?”

  “He’s leaving Café Remor now.”

  “Followed by an unarmed museum curator with limited training in street surveillance techniques.”

  Gabriel put his foot to the floor and swung a U-turn in front of an approaching streetcar.

  “You’re going the wrong way on a one-way street.”

  “If I go the right way, it will take us ten minutes to get back to the Place du Cirque.”

  Mikhail drummed his fingers nervously on the center console. “What do you suppose is in the briefcase?”

  “I hope it’s money.”

  “I hope so, too.”

  Sarah’s first mistake was that she failed to pay the check in advance, a cardinal sin of the watcher’s trade. By the time she managed to catch the waiter’s indifferent eye, Lucien Villard had left the Place du Cirque and was a long way up the boulevard Georges-Favon. Fearful of losing him in the evening crowds, Sarah hastened too quickly after her quarry, which was how she made her second.

  It happened at the intersection of the rue du Stand. Villard was about to cross the street, but when the light changed to red, he stopped abruptly and removed a packet of cigarettes. The breeze was from the Rhône, which was directly before him. Turning, he spotted Sarah gazing into the window of a wineshop, about thirty meters away. He stared at her unabashedly for a long moment, the cigarette between his lips, the lighter in his right hand, the briefcase in his left. The briefcase that had been given to him by the man in the tan overcoat.<
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  All at once Villard flicked the cigarette to the pavement and took two violent steps toward Sarah. It was then she saw the flash of brilliant white light and felt a hurricane-force gust of superheated air rush over her. It lifted her from her feet and hurled her to the pavement. She lay very still, unable to move or breathe, wondering whether she was alive or already dead. She was aware only of shattered glass and human limbs and viscera. And blood. It was all around her, the blood. Some of it, she feared, was her own. And some of it was dripping on her from the bare limbs of the tree under which she had come to rest.

  At last, she heard someone calling her name, with the emphasis on the second syllable rather than the first. She saw a woman limping slowly across a sun-drowned esplanade by the sea, her face shrouded in a black veil. Then the woman was gone, and a man took her place. His eyes were blue-gray, like glacial ice, and he was shouting at the top of his voice.

  “Sarah! Sarah! Can you hear me, Sarah?”

  Part Two

  Abdication

  20

  Geneva–Lyon

  The bomb had been small, just five kilograms of military-grade high explosive, but of expert construction. It had been contained not in a car or truck but a briefcase. The man who was holding it when it detonated was reduced largely to a collection of organs and extremities, including a hand that landed on the windshield of a car traveling along the boulevard Georges-Favon. A billfold was found inside the remnants of a leather coat, which was wrapped around the remnants of a human torso. All belonged to one Lucien Villard, a veteran of the French Service de la Protection who until recently had held the position of chief of security at the International School of Geneva. Two other people, a man of twenty-eight and a woman of thirty-three, were killed in the explosion. Both had been standing directly next to Villard as he waited to cross the rue du Stand. Both were Swiss citizens and residents of the canton of Geneva.

  The briefcase was harder to identify, for there was almost nothing left of it. The Swiss Federal Police would obtain closed-circuit video showing Lucien Villard taking possession of the bag at Café Remor. It had been discarded there by a bespectacled man in a tan overcoat. As the man left the café on foot, he was followed by a tallish man with fair skin and hair, and by a second man driving a Passat sedan. The man in the tan overcoat had conducted a brief phone conversation before entering, and then quickly leaving, a movie house on the rue de la Corraterie. Onyx, Switzerland’s capable signals intelligence system, would eventually produce an intercept of the call. The recipient was a female, and they had communicated tersely in French. Linguistics analysts would determine that neither came by the language naturally.