Deadly Jewels (36 page)

“Right. So then it's spring of 1943 when he loses it over the Allied bombing of the Ruhr, all the industrial targets they were hitting. He blames Göring again.”

“Sounds like a long decline.”

“I think Göring lost interest in the Luftwaffe. He was behind the final solution.” Neither here nor there, I told myself. “Anyway, here it is: April 1945, Hitler's cut off and Göring's in Austria, and Göring sends that telegram. Hitler flips out, but then kills himself. Göring thinks he can have some sort of role in the new Germany and gives himself up to American troops, thinking that he's going to consult with the Americans.” I sighed. “But that's in May. No dice.”

Julian had read ahead of me. “There it is,” he said, his finger on the screen.

And there it was. October 1, 1945: the judges of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg sentence Göring to death by hanging. He'd cheated them, of course, swallowing a cyanide pill in his cell the night before his scheduled execution. But the sentencing date was there, and it was the only date in the fall.

Julian and I looked at each other. “What's the date today?” I asked. It didn't matter, I already knew.

“September 30,” said Julian.

“We have one day,” I said faintly.

*   *   *

Jean-Luc Boulanger, my intrepid boss, had managed to tear himself away from the delights of an all-paid vacation—oops, I mean,
conference
—in Québec City, and was finally on his way back to Montréal. This I learned from Chantal when I got back to City Hall; the building had been swept for additional explosive devices, and people allowed to return to their business.

Even Jean-Luc couldn't justify not being around when his office became a possible terrorist target. Although I suspected that he'd tried.

Richard was on the telephone talking to news outlets. “He's been doing that since we got back,” said Chantal. There was something in her voice that wasn't quite an accusation, and it was clear she thought my deputy was doing my job. I let it go. If this really happened, dealing with the press was going to be the least of the city's PR problems. “The mayor will be here by one thirty,” she said.

“I'm happy for him.”

“Is there anything you want me to be doing?”

I glanced up at her. She was twisting her hands together and looking a lot more nervous than I'd ever seen her. “Are you all right, Chantal?”

A quick nod. “It's just … the bomb.”

“Of course. Anyone would be shaken,” I said.

“It's not that,” she said. “The police interviewed us, and Martine, I swear I didn't want to tell them, but they asked the questions and I didn't want to lie, so I finally told them…”

“Told them what?” Her hand-wringing routine was getting on my nerves.

“That you knew about it ahead of time.” Her voice caught on a sob. “I'm sorry, I'm so very sorry, I couldn't think of anything else to say when they asked, you called Richard and you told him to evacuate the building, how could you have known, I wondered, but you know all sorts of things and I just couldn't think fast enough to make anything up.…” She was running out of steam. “And so if you want me to resign, of course I will, it's the least that I can do after betraying you like that, I will totally take the blame for it.”

I put up my hand. “Chantal, stop it. Of course you had to tell them the truth. Of course I don't want your resignation. What I would like, very much, is a coffee.” Well, not really, since I'd just had one at Second Cup, but I wanted to be nice to her, make her feel useful. “Why don't you get that for me, and then we'll talk some more. But you should never, ever feel that you need to lie to protect me. That has never been part of your job description.”

She swallowed. “Thank you, Martine, thank you. Of course I'll get the coffee, thank you, I never want to betray you in any way, and if I do—”

“Chantal,” I interrupted. “The coffee?”

“Yes, yes, of course, Martine.” Blessedly, she left.

I just had to make sure I didn't become a bombing suspect.
That
would play havoc with the city's PR. I sank into my chair with a sigh and looked at the piles on my desk. Clippings of any mention of Montréal in French and English-language publications—all available online, but Jean-Luc didn't believe anything unless he could touch it. Letters that had to be answered, requests and comments and heads-up about everything from foreign dignitaries in town to school tours of City Hall.

And all of it, one could argue, important. All of it worthy of my attention. All of it part of my job. And the worst part, I knew, was that Richard had already picked up the most urgent messages, without a word, without a complaint, leaving me free to traipse around the city doing he knew not what.

If we all survived this, I was going to have to do something very,
very
special for Richard.

In the meantime, there was Jean-Luc to deal with. I picked up the telephone and hit the speed dial for Ivan's phone. “I was just thinking about you,” he said.

“Glad to hear it. How's your day?”

“Great. You should see the kids, you'd think they were born and raised here, the way they're showing off the city. They actually listened to you from time to time, it would seem.”

“Will miracles never cease,” I said. “Listen, Ivan, I just have a quick question.”

“Shoot.”

I winced at the word. “Do you know someone named Gabrielle Brand?”

A pause; I could imagine him searching his mental data banks. “Doesn't sound familiar. Any context in particular?”

“I'm not sure.” I twirled my chair around so I was looking out the window. “She's an older woman who lives downtown. Emigrated here from Germany, I don't know, decades ago.”

“She comes to the casino?”

“No. Well, I don't know, but I don't think so.” I paused. “I only ask because she knows your name, knows you're my husband, and that just seemed—odd. You're right, you don't have a context together, there's no way she should normally know that.”

“On the other hand,” said Ivan diffidently, “it's not exactly a secret. You'd be surprised, the number of people who know I'm married to you—well, married to the PR director. We're public figures, babe.”

“I know,” I said.

“But there's more to it than that, isn't there?” he asked. “Something about this woman. She's special?”

“Not in a particularly good way,” I said. “But, yeah, she's—important, I guess.” I wasn't sure how much I was comfortable sharing with Ivan. I was dealing with people who had some sort of sixth sense in regards to my thoughts, and I didn't want to put him out there any more than was absolutely necessary. “Never mind, babe. I'll figure it out.”

“You said the name was Gabrielle Brand, right?” Ivan asked. “If anything comes up, I'll let you know.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But—don't go looking for anything, Ivan, okay? Only if you hear something.”

There was a sound and then muffled voices, and I could picture him with his hand over the receiver before he came back on. “What's going on, Martine? Are you all right?”

His voice, calm and gentle, felt like soft, sheltering love, miles away from the coldness of that morning. I wanted to cry. I wanted to say no, please come get me, hold me, protect me. Help me forget everything that I've learned in the past five days.

I drew in a breath that I hoped didn't sound too shaky. “I'm okay,” I said. “Just tired. I'll talk to you later.”

“And I'll let you know if I remember anything about your Gabrielle Brand.”

I was already regretting having spoken her name. “See you when I see you,” I said.

“See you when I see you.”

I sat for a few moments looking at the telephone and wondering if I'd just made a very bad mistake.

*   *   *

One day, and time running out.

I sent a quick e-mail to Richard—the tip of the iceberg about what I wanted and needed to say, but there was no way that I could stay still at my desk all afternoon—and drank Chantal's coffee in three swallows. “I have to go out again,” I told her.

“Of course, Martine.” She was cooperation itself.

“I'm on my mobile if there's an emergency.”

She nodded. “Richard is here.”

“Right.” Richard was clearly getting Chantal's vote for Boss of the Year. I sighed. When I was in college, at the Université de Québec à Montréal—UQAM—there was a guy I knew who would disappear from time to time, and when he returned, he kept talking about how he'd been off saving the world on some astral plane. It was probably a combination of some mild mental illness and some of the drugs that were always floating around campus, but he seemed quite convinced that we'd all been going about our lives and business without any knowledge that the earth had been in grave danger and that he alone had pulled it through. Yves: that was his name.

I looked at Chantal now and couldn't help but think of Yves as I prepared to go out and do some sort of battle with some sort of unseen forces that were possibly threatening the planet, and nobody else had any clue what was going on.

Just trying to keep things in perspective.

No word from Julian. He really was the one saving the day, I thought: he would have to go through official channels to mobilize the police out at Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu to stop whatever was going to happen at the warehouse. He was doing the heavy lifting; but I still was concerned about Avner, and thought it might be useful to find out where the hell he'd gone when he'd decided to ditch his police minder.

I called Élodie. “What are you doing?”

“In a meeting,” she said, her voice muffled. “I can meet you later.”

“What kind of meeting?”

“The kind I can't tell you about in a room full of people,” she whispered into the receiver. “I'll call you when I'm done.”

So that was that. No Julian, no Marcus, no Avner, no Élodie. I thought briefly of Avner's wife, but she'd have called if she'd heard from him. Or so I fervently hoped. It was high time, I decided, to meet the mysteriously still-single Lev Kaspi.

I ran him down in an almost-empty computer lab at McGill's McConnell Engineering Building, sitting in front of what looked suspiciously like a video game on the screen. I sat down in the seat next to him. “For someone whose father is missing, you seem pretty carefree,” I said.

He spared me a quick glance. “You must be Martine LeDuc.”

“I must be,” I agreed.

Bushy eyebrows over dark, intelligent eyes. “Give me a moment,” he said.

I watched as several alien-looking individuals were vaporized on his screen before scores flashed across it and then it went dark, and Lev turned to me. “I've been expecting you,” he said.

He was large, far larger than his father, with pasty white skin that probably came from too many hours in this room, with its lack of windows and flickering florescent lights. Curly dark hair and a blue embroidered yarmulke. I wondered if Naomi had embroidered it for him.

There was a gentleness about Lev, though, and clear intelligence in the dark eyes, and … something else, a strange feeling of peace that seemed to emanate from him. This was someone totally at ease with himself, who either didn't have any shadows or had banished them a long time ago. I felt as though I knew him already, had known him for years, forever. “Well,” I said, “I wouldn't want to disappoint you.”

“You're looking for my father.” It wasn't a question.

“When the police go to the trouble of arranging protection for someone, it seems bad manners to slip out the back way,” I said. “And it's funny, but your father didn't strike me as a man with bad manners.”

“You're perceptive,” Lev said and glanced around the room. “Would you care for a coffee, Mrs. LeDuc?”

At my current rate of caffeine consumption, I was going to be awake for the next month. At least. “Why not?”

We went to the aptly named and recently renovated E-Café and Lev bought me coffee; the food court was large and filled with students, but we were there between meals and Lev found us a table by the window. “So,” I said encouragingly.

“So,” he echoed, stirring his coffee. He looked up at me suddenly. “You think that my father was frightened by that swastika,” he said.

“I don't know. It seemed like a credible threat,” I said cautiously.

He shook his head. “Credible threat,” he repeated. “Do you really think that's anything that's new to my family? Do you think it's the first swastika we've ever seen?”

I sipped the coffee: too hot. I put the cup back down. “I'm sure it's not,” I said. “But it's the first one that we could do anything about.” I paused. “What happened, Lev? Where's your father gone? Wherever he is, he'd be safer with us, you know that.”

He sighed. “My father has felt all his life that he arrived too late to do anything useful,” he said. “Oh, he had the business, of course, for years and years he's run the business, and made a success of it. Well, you saw where we live, you saw what we can afford. He's done well for himself, and for us, carrying on a family tradition, making enough money to help others. For a lot of people, that would be enough.”

“More than enough,” I agreed. “It sounds like a good life.”

“It is a good life. It was a good life. He's got money. He's got stature in the community—both through his own trade and through my grandfather, who's a pretty influential rabbi.” He glanced at me. “His name wouldn't mean anything to you, but believe me, he's very important in our community, and it was considered an honor for my father to marry into his family. A big honor. But that's not necessarily enough.” He looked at me speculatively. “I don't know if you know much about the dynamics of being a child of the Holocaust,” he said.