The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [90]
“That’s what I said.”
Lebrun shook his head. “Lyon would have no use for a file like that. Interpol is basically a transmitter of information between police agencies, not an investigative agency itself.”
“I started kicking that around on the flight from London. Interpol requests, and gets, privileged information hours before the investigating officer is even informed there’s a fingerprint that might eventually lead to the same information. That is, if the investigator knows what he is doing.
“Even if that sits a little raw, you have to say, okay, maybe it’s internal procedure. Maybe they’re checking to see if their communication system works. Maybe they want to know how good the investigator is. Maybe somebody’s tinkering with a new computer program. Who knows? And if that’s all there was, you say, fine, forget about it.
“But the trouble is, a day later you pull this same guy, someone who’s supposed to have been dead for twenty-odd years, out of the Seine and he’s all shot up with a Heckler & Koch automatic. A job which I sincerely doubt was the work of any angry housewife.”
Lebrun was incredulous. “My friend, you are saying that someone at Interpol headquarters discovered Merriman was alive, learned where he was in Paris, and had him killed?”
“I’m saying fifteen hours before you knew about it, somebody at Interpol got hold of that print. It led to a name and then a fast-forward trace. Maybe using the Interpol computer system, maybe something else. But when whatever system retrieved Albert Merriman and matched him with a guy named Henri Kanarack, alive and living in Paris, and gave that information out, what happened next happened awfully damn fast. Because Merriman was hit within hours of the positive I.D.”
“But why kill a man who was already legally dead? And why the rush?”
““It’s your country, Lebrun. You tell me.” Instinctively McVey glanced up at Vera Monneray’s window. It was still dark.
“Probably to keep him from talking when we got to him.”
“That’s what I’d guess.”
“But after twenty years? What were they afraid of? That he had something on people in high places?”
“Lebrun.” McVey paused. “Maybe I’m crazy, but let me throw it out anyway. All this just happened to take place now, in Paris. Maybe it was coincidence that it had something to do with a man we were already following, maybe not. But suppose this wasn’t the first. Suppose whoever’s involved has a master list of old foes gone underground and every time Lyon, as a kind of international clearing house for quirky law-enforcement problems, gets a new fingerprint, or nose hair, or some other kind of connecting reference, it automatically does a search and retrieve. And if a name comes up that’s on that list, the word goes out. And it goes out worldwide, because that’s how far Interpol reaches.”
“You’re suggesting an organization. One with a mole inside Interpol headquarters at Lyon.”
“I said I might be crazy—”
“And you suspect Osborn is part of that organization, or is in the pay of it?”
McVey grinned. “Don’t do that to me, Lebrun. I can theorize till I’m purple, but I don’t make connections without evidence. And so far, there is none.”
“But Osborn would be a good place to start.”
“That’s why we’re here.”
“Another,” Lebrun smiled lightly, “would be to find who it was in Lyon that requested the Merriman file.”
“ McVey’s attention shifted as a car turned onto Quai de Bethune and came down the block toward them, its yellow lights cutting sharply through the rain that had begun to fall again.
The detectives sat back as a taxi slowed and stopped in front of number 18. A moment later the front door opened and the doorman came out carrying an umbrella. Then the passenger door opened and Vera got out. Ducking under the umbrella, she and the doorman went inside.
“Shall we go in?” Lebrun said to McVey, then answered his own question. “I think we shall.” As he reached for the door, McVey put a hand on his arm.
“Mon ami, there’s more than one Heckler & Koch in this world and more than one guy who knows how to use it. I’d be very careful how