Black Ice - Anne Stuart [51]
“So what happened at Hakim’s?”
That was one of the things Bastien hated about Harry—the man wouldn’t say shit if his mouth was full of it. “Things got fucked. What can I say?” He stubbed out the cigarette. He’d lost the taste for them, another annoyance.
“You can tell me what happened to the girl. Who was she?”
“Girl?”
“Don’t play me, Jean-Marc. You weren’t the only operative at Château Mirabel this weekend. The little American secretary—who was she working for? What happened to her?”
Bastien shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. I’m thinking she was on the baron’s payroll, though she may have been there for recreational purposes. You know how the baron likes to watch, and he’s always enjoyed Monique with another woman.”
Harry wrinkled his nose with the distaste of a born celibate. “And you didn’t bother to find out?”
“I did my best, boss,” he drawled, knowing Harry hated being called “boss.” “I couldn’t get her to admit to anything.”
Harry looked at him for a long moment. “If you couldn’t get anything out of her then I doubt there was anything to find out. If I can say one thing about you, it’s that you’re the best interrogator we’ve got. Better than anyone on the other side, even the late Gilles Hakim. He always tended to enjoy his work a little too much. So tell me, what happened to our old friend Gilles, and what happened to the girl?”
“Dead.” He lit another cigarette. He didn’t want it—even Gitanes were tasteless, but it gave him something to do.
“You kill them both?”
“Just Hakim. He’d already done the girl.”
“What happened to her body?”
Bastien looked at him through the drifting smoke. “There wasn’t much left of her by the time Hakim got through.”
“I see.” Harry took a drink of his coffee. The man didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t fuck as far as Bastien could tell. He was a machine, nothing more. Just as Bastien was trained to be. “A little premature,” he continued, “but it should be salvageable, as long as there are no loose ends. Hakim was disposable, but Bastien Toussaint is not. The others will be coming to Paris to finish the discussions, and the dilatory Christos will be joining them. You’ll be waiting for them.”
“You don’t think they’ll be suspicious? Wonder why I killed Hakim?”
“They know you and they knew Hakim. Why should they wonder? All that matters is they cement the arrangements, divide up the territory and choose a new leader. They might have chosen Hakim because he was a hardworking SOB, but with him out of the picture I’m guessing that Christos has a clear shot. And you’re going to stop it.”
“They may be willing to overlook Hakim’s death, but Christos has a great many more people in his organization. There are bound to be repercussions.”
“And so you’ll die,” Thomason said.
Bastien didn’t even blink. “Will I?”
“It’s very simple—you’ve done this sort of thing before, and even if you hadn’t I wouldn’t put anything past you. Once they choose Christos you’ll make a fuss, put a bullet in his head, and someone we’ll already have planted will shoot you. You’ll be wearing a dummy blood patch, and once you hear the gun go off you drop like a stone. Which means you only have one shot at Christos—you need to make it count.”
“I’ve never had any trouble hitting my target.”
“No, you haven’t. So Bastien Toussaint will be dead and if I’m feeling particularly generous I might let you take a little vacation in the south of France until your next mission. There’s a first time for everything.”
Bastien lit another cigarette that he didn’t want. “And the arms cartel?”
“The next obvious choice is the baron, and he’ll be easy enough to control. We have no interest in putting them out of business. Someone’s going to be supplying the arms to the international terrorists, and by watching the