The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [104]
“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.”
Lebrun set his cup down, lit a cigarette and looked at his watch. “For your information, I’m taking the rest of the day off,” he said quietly. “A short, one-man holiday. A trip by train to Lyon. Nobody knows where I’m going, not even my wife.”
McVey frowned. “Pardon me if I don’t understand. But you show up in Lyon and start asking questions, you think whoever did it is just going to raise his or her hand and say,. ‘It’s me’? You might as well call a press conference first.”
“Mon ami.” Lebrun smiled. “I said I was going to Lyon. I didn’t say it was to Interpol headquarters. Actually, I’ve asked a very old friend to a very quiet supper.”
“Go on,” McVey said.
“As you know, Group D, to which your investigation of the headless bodies was assigned, is a subgroup under Interpol Division Two. Division Two is the police division revolving entirely around case tracking and analysis. Whoever made the request for the Merriman file will be a member of Division Two, quite possibly a high-ranking member.
“Division One, on the other hand, is general administration, which manages finances, staff, equipment procurement, custodial services and things like personnel, accounting, building maintenance and other everyday activities. One of those everyday activities is subgroup Security and is responsible for headquarters security. The individual in charge of this subgroup will have access to data records identifying the employee who requested the Merriman file.”
Lebrun smiled, pleased with his plan. McVey stared at him.
“Mon ami, I don’t mean to sound like a cynic, but what if that individual you’re so nicely taking to supper turns out to be the one who made the request? Don’t you realize you’re the guy they were keeping the information from in the first place? So they’d have time to locate Merriman. You asked me before if I thought these guys would kill a cop. If you were uncertain before, look at the Marseilles report again.”
“Ah, the man loves to warn via the bloody metaphor.” Lebrun smiled and squashed out his cigarette- “My friend, I appreciate your concern. And were circumstances different, I would wholeheartedly agree with you that my approach was careless. However, I rather doubt the supervisor of interior security would harm his eldest brother.”
55
* * *
A NEW, dark green Ford Sierra with Pirelli P205/70R14 tires and fourteen- by five-and-a-half inch wheels, drove slowly past the apartment building at 18 Quai de Bethune, turned the corner at the Pont de Sully and pulled in behind a white Jaguar convertible parked on the rue St.-Louis enl’Île. A moment later, the door opened and the tall man got out. It was a warm afternoon but he wore gloves just the same. Flesh-colored surgical gloves.
Bernhard Oven’s train arrived at Gare de Lyon at twelve fifteen. From the station he’d taken a cab to Orly Airport, where he retrieved the green Ford. By 2:50 he was back in Paris and parked outside Vera Monneray’s building.
At 3:07, he slipped the lock and stepped into her apartment, closing the door behind him. No one had seen him cross the street, or use the newly minted key that fit the security door to the service entrance. Once inside, he’d climbed the service stairs and entered the apartment through the rear hallway.
To most of France, the story first broadcast on Antenna 2 television and, soon after, repeated by every other media, about the mysterious, dark-haired woman who’d driven away the American murder suspect from the golf club after he had climbed out of the Seine, was a juicy, romantic intrigue. Just who she was and who the American might be were the subjects of reckless speculation—from a major French actress, film director and author, to an international tennis star, to an American rock singer, dressed in a black wig and speaking French; the doctor was whispered to be no doctor at all, the picture given the press a fake, but a famous Hollywood actor, currently in Paris promoting a film; darker stories vouched it was a veteran United States senator,