Deadly Jewels (2 page)

I grimaced, but in silence. Most of us
do
speak English, actually, but for rather different reasons than she assumed. Like much of eastern North America, Québec had its share of being tossed back and forth between French and British governments, both completely ignoring the indigenous populations, and both going to war at tediously regular intervals. But it was the wealth of the fur traders and the railroad that built the big mansions up on Mont-Royal, and those captains of industry all spoke English.

Over there, on the west side of the city, they still do.

“Look on the right and you can see a fast-food restaurant, with the chicken?” said Francois. “You see it there? This is a chain of restaurants we have here, it's called Saint Hubert. They've been around since the nineteen-forties, delivering rotisserie chicken in yellow cars. I want you to try some; it's very good.”

Well, my stepkids would agree with that, anyway. Both Lukas and Claudia, who lived most of the time in a Boston suburb with their mother and visited us on a regular schedule, loved St. Hubert chicken. Mine, it seemed, never quite measured up to what the friendly fellow with the red crown had to offer.

“Here we have the rue Sainte-Catherine, Saint Catherine Street. It is the longest commercial street in Canada.…” And has changed a lot, I found myself thinking. There was a time when a good third of this very long street was given over to peep shows, topless bars, and streetwalkers. Prostitution is legal in Canada, but this was a little too in-your-face for a lot of the city to feel comfortable with. Sainte-Catherine cleaned up most of its act, but sometimes I wondered if the upscale chain stores that lined it now were such a big improvement.

Some people, Claudia among them, thought so. The moment my stepdaughter arrives for her bimonthly weekend with her father and me, she's off and running: La Baie, Eaton Center, Sainte-Catherine. Bright lights and the dopamine high of purchasing.

I roused myself. Daydreaming about my family wasn't a great way to spend this tour. “This is the
quartier chinois
, Chinatown,” François was saying. “It is very small, just this one street. It is very good; I invite you to visit it while you are here. I enjoy to have ginger and lobster here, myself.” I listened to the sentence structure with a smile: François was clearly more at home in French than in English.

He wasn't alone in that—a lot of people here don't speak any English at all. Or speak it with some resistance. Take, for example, my boss, the current corrupt mayor of a city that specializes in corrupt mayors. Actually, Jean-Luc Boulanger and I were generally at odds about everything
but
our shared language. He wanted the impossible: to be popular (his biggest and best dream is to have a street named after him), but also to line his pockets at the expense of everyday Montréalers, whom I try to represent before him. That never goes very well.

If it weren't Jean-Luc, it would be someone similar and possibly even worse: we seem incapable of electing a mayor who might actually put the city's well-being first. I remembered my husband, Ivan, remarking a mere two weeks after the election of my current boss's predecessor, “Well, he hasn't called in sick yet. That has to be a good sign.”

We were heading down into the Old City now, with a half-hour stop so passengers could get a coffee, take photographs, and buy souvenirs at the myriad tiny shops lining the rue Saint Paul. We were also very near my office, and I considered whether I should leave the tour and go look at the pile of papers and e-mails no doubt awaiting me. Maybe.

“This is the basilica of Notre Dame,” François announced. “It was an Irish-American architect who designed the church. He was a Protestant, but he converted to Catholicism just so that he could be buried here, it is so beautiful. And now we will all look at our watches to determine the time we will meet here again. If you are not here, we have to leave without you. The good news is that you can wait, and I will be by again at the same time tomorrow!”

A wave of obedient laughter, and then people began getting up, reaching for maps, sweaters, and handbags. I sat and waited. The basilica is in fact, to my mind at least, the most beautiful church in the world. It's where I go to Mass every Sunday. It also is the place where, last year, I was kidnapped, after a surreal chase that had me hiding (rather stupidly) in confessionals, under pews, and behind the high altar, all of it to no avail. For one horrible half hour, the church that usually felt like a piece of heaven had threatened to become my own personal hell.

Not that it was the church's fault, of course. Still, not all of my feelings about the Protestant architect's masterpiece are positive.

François was waiting and I realized I was the last passenger getting off the bus. “
Tu viens de Montréal
?” he asked, conversationally, and I nodded. “Yes, I live here. I like taking the tour,” I said in French. “It reminds me of how much I love the city.”

That got a smile, quicksilver and warm, and then he was shutting the door, closing up the bus. “Will you join me for a coffee?”

“Thanks, but no. I have—an errand. I'll be back on time, though, don't worry!”

“
Très bien
.” He was already turning away and clearly still had no idea who I was. That was a good thing. Another good thing was that I could get to City Hall in less than two minutes, check in with my deputy, Richard, and be back before the tourists had finished buying their cans of maple syrup and their postcards.

*   *   *

As it turned out, I never got back to François and his tour.

Richard texted me even as I was crossing the Old City's cobblestones, heading toward City Hall. “Mayor wants to see you.”

I stopped, staring at my smartphone, annoyed. I'd let everyone know I couldn't be available until well after four o'clock: the Gray Line tour is comprehensive. I punched his single-digit code into my phone and snapped when he answered, “What is it that can't wait?”

“
Bonjour
, Martine,” Richard said calmly.

I sighed. He was right: courtesy should always come first. “
Désolée
, Richard. But, seriously, what is it? I'm out all afternoon. That's what's on the calendar. That's what I told Chantal. Out all afternoon. That's what everyone was supposed to expect.” And
respect
, too, but there's not a lot of
that
in city government.

“I know that you are out all afternoon. Chantal knows that you are out all afternoon. The mayor knows that you are out all afternoon, also, but for his part, he doesn't care.”

I sighed. This wasn't a battle I was going to win. “Okay.
Bon, d'accord.
So, what disaster has occurred that needs me specifically? It's not something you can handle?” Wishful thinking, Martine.

“Perhaps it is; he was not kind enough to offer up that information.” Richard is nothing if not smooth. “But—well, I think you want to come in. There is a buzz that I cannot identify going on in the building. Something is happening here.”

I grimaced; this wasn't going to be pretty. Somebody caught with his hand in the cookie jar, no doubt; that's our usual scandal. Sexual peccadillos aren't as popular here as they are in our neighboring country to the south: we're French enough that we really don't care who sleeps with whom, as long as the job gets done. But graft and corruption?
That
's our daily bread and butter. And that of the newspapers, needless to say: a PR nightmare.

My nightmare.

“All right. Give me five minutes to tell François.”

“François? Who is François?”

“If it doesn't sound too odd, he's the man with whom I was hoping to spend the afternoon,” I said. “The Gray Line tour director. You really have no idea what it's about?”

“As to that,” Richard said cheerfully, “we may be pleasantly surprised.”

*   *   *

There was a little man in the little room, and he was worried.

“They got here from London all right,” he said to Faith Spencer, his assistant, for the fourth or fifth time.

London to Scotland. That alone seemed enough of a miracle.

She shivered. “I don't even like to think about it.” She was twisting her hands. “I can't believe there's not some other way. Some other place. What happens if they never come back?”

He looked at her sharply. “It's hardly up to us to question it. London knows what they're doing. The Prime Minister—”

“You really believe this comes from the Prime Minister?” She started shuffling papers on her desk, lining up the edges of the piles so that they were perfectly even.

He said, “It's not up to us to question who it came from.”

“You know what it means. It means they think we're about to be invaded.”

“It means nothing of the sort,” he said, irritable because he agreed with her.

The crates were sitting under guard in the next room; that knowledge alone was enough to induce a heart attack. The king himself had dismantled the jewels, and had hidden them in hatboxes, much to the delight of his two daughters, Elizabeth Alexandra and Margaret Rose; the royal princesses had helped with the packing, and Princess Margaret had even left a saucy note attached to one of them. Her Royal Highness was known for her cheekiness, and Faith had thought it best to discreetly remove the paper.

“Is it true,” she asked, “that they're not even insured?”

He looked at her sharply. “For heaven's sake, Faith. Who would insure them? For what amount? How do you insure the embodiment of eight hundred years of monarchy?”

She sighed. “I suppose you're right.” Faith liked things clear. She liked everything organized and official and aboveboard. She liked her work accompanied by regular correspondence and excellent filing and predictable outcomes.

This project was none of those things.

The crates had come to Greenoch under heavy—but very discreet—security, and even now the HMS
Emerald
was sitting in the harbor, waiting for them to be added to its cargo.

The
Emerald
, Faith knew, had already started ferrying valuables across the Atlantic: back in September it had headed up a convoy from Plymouth to Halifax with gold—the first installment, as it were. Two million pounds sterling in gold. The mind boggled.

And now? Churchill had replaced Chamberlain as prime minister, and he gave the convoys a name: Operation Fish. He'd used the War Powers Act to confiscate securities ledged with the Bank of England and was sending them, along with the gold bullion, to pay for munitions.

Britain was isolated and embattled and the convoys were its lifeline.

The Royal Navy knew only that there was additional freight being added, and sailors had been instructed to dress in tropical whites; there was a lot of guessing among the men as to why, and what their destination might be. The gold bullion that HMS
Emerald
was taking across the Atlantic to safety in Canada had already been loaded, openly enough; no one in Greenoch had any feelings about gold bullion one way or the other, and they had to pay for the convoys somehow.

But the crown jewels? That was something else altogether.

 

CHAPTER TWO

Jean-Luc was lying in wait for me.

Chantal, our administrative assistant, lurked nervously in the corridor outside the office, looking, as always, as if she'd chosen her outfit somewhat randomly from a vintage-clothing shop, and not a great one at that. For all I knew, perhaps she had. “He is here,” she said in a low voice.

“Who is here? And why are we whispering?”

She lowered her voice still more. “
Monsieur le maire
. He is waiting for you.”

“Yes, I know, Richard already told me,” I said briskly. “I just need to drop off—”

“
Non
,” she interrupted. “
Tu n'comprends pas.
He is
here
. In your office.”

Well. That was a first. Whatever this was, it had to be serious. I wouldn't even have suspected that Jean-Luc knew where my office was located.

Not only was my boss in there, he was pacing like a harried hamster. The comparison was apt: he had plump cheeks that looked like pouches, coupled with a tendency to sniff the air. Trying to home in on possible illicit monetary sources, no doubt. “Madame LeDuc,” he said as I opened the door. “What has kept you?”

I walked past him to put my purse on my desk. Standing behind it gave me high ground in terms of authority, something Jean-Luc never voluntarily gave up. I wondered why he'd been willing to do it this time. “I was working out of the office,” I said.

“So I understand. That is the trouble. You're letting the biggest PR coup this city has ever experienced slip through your fingers!”

Did I mention his tendency to lapse into hyperbole? I should have. I assumed a serious expression. “What coup is that, monsieur?”

He wasn't going to give it away that easily. He pulled out one of my conference chairs and sat down, adjusting his ever-perfect suit coat and tie as he did. A well-dressed hamster, my boss. “I have called a meeting,” he said importantly.

That was nothing new: the mayor liked meetings. Preferably long ones at upscale restaurants, with the city footing the bill. I didn't get invited to
those
very often. Mine were more of the let's-see-what-Martine-has-done-wrong-this-time variety, held in his office or at a convenient corridor for maximum spectator attention. “I see,” I said cautiously.

“In one hour,” he added, looking at his Rolex by way of illustration and urgency.