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“Too much of them to hack,” Étienne said. “And suppose somehow you do, you get past the perimeter—then you have les soldats, eh?”
“The soldiers. Yeah, they looked like a tough bunch.”
Étienne grunted. “Oui,” he said, and he turned his back. “Maintenant tais-toi,” he said. He was tired of this American and his stupidity. And in any case, he needed to concentrate to steer them through the channel.
But as he put his hands on the wheel, he saw the ridiculous cap perched there. “Feh,” he said. He flung the cap over his shoulder without looking.
He did not see the American make a truly remarkable catch, snatching the hat just before it went over the side and then cradling it as if it was something precious. If he had seen it, he would no doubt have assumed that this man had a fetishistic need to preserve the cap. No doubt because it was a good-luck token and he believed his team would lose if anything happened to the cap. Why else would anyone, even an idiot American, care about a stupid cap?
He would have been wrong about that, too. But then, he hadn’t seen the tiny hole in the logo patch on the front of the hat. Even if he had, he might not have noticed the tiny, barely visible gleam of something hidden inside the patch.
* * *
—
I don’t like long boat rides when I’m not driving. Too much can go wrong on a boat, and why should I think anybody else can take care of me better than I can? More than that, I really didn’t like long boat rides with an asshole French guy in charge who sneered at me the whole way. And when that long, sneering boat ride ends in a fortified cave where the official greeter was probably going to be Bernadette—it’s a perfect trifecta of I-don’t-like. But it was the most important part of the plan, the whole reason I had to make this trip. So I kept my smile on and went through with it.
The smile faded a little when we got through the channel, into the tunnel, and tied off at the dock. Because just like I expected, my official greeting committee was a couple of the soldiers in black—and Bernadette.
I wouldn’t really say her ruined face lit up with pleasure when she saw me. Her eyes just narrowed a little, like she was being forced to hang out with somebody she didn’t like. The feeling was more than mutual. The finger she’d broken started to throb just from me seeing her, and it made me think of a whole bunch of other body parts that would hurt a lot more if she got her way.
But she didn’t do a damn thing except watch me while I climbed onto the dock. Then she turned and started toward the main tunnel. The soldiers nodded at me, one said, “Allons-y,” and the three of us followed her, me between the two of them.
We wound through the tunnels in Bernadette’s wake until we came to the door of Boniface?
?s office. She opened the door and went through. The two soldiers took up station, one on each side of the doorway, and I followed Bernadette into the office.
The office was pretty much like I remembered. There was a nice fire going in the fireplace behind the desk. But the desk itself was deserted. Boniface sat in a beautiful wing chair beside the desk with his hands folded in his lap. There were two straight-backed chairs facing him, and a beautiful coffee table, cut from a huge geode, in between his chair and the two others. A decorator would probably call it a conversation nook. Whatever you called it, Boniface dominated it. Not just because he had a bigger chair that looked like a throne with him in it. He was just the kind of guy who dominated. And sitting there, watching me plod in behind his goblin, Bernadette, he looked like the major diplomat of a powerful country who was accepting the surrender of a humiliated rival country.
“Sit down, Riley,” he said, waving at a straight-backed chair. I took the closest one. Bernadette didn’t sit. She moved to her standard position, standing behind Boniface, where she could make faces at me without his seeing. “I hope your trip was pleasant?” he said.
I shrugged. “It was a trip,” I said. “A long one.”
He nodded as if I made sense. “Would you like a drink?”
“That would be nice,” I said. “Maybe some of that Armagnac?”
He smiled approvingly. “Bernadette, if you please?”
I have to admit, one reason I asked for the drink was because I was hoping he would ask Bernadette to fetch it. It’s very small-spirited of me, I know that, but it was kind of fun to see her working like a servant, especially working for me. And from the look on her face, she got that. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t poison me in front of Boniface, but she looked like she wanted to.
But she handed me a nice big crystal tumbler half filled with Armagnac, which was the other reason I wanted a drink. This stuff was totally yummy. I raised the glass to Bernadette and sipped. If she’d put anything in it, it was the best damn poison I ever tasted. She watched me sip, then moved back to her spot behind Boniface.
“Benny tells me you need to see me,” Boniface said.
“I do,” I said. “I’ve got an idea—but it takes a large chunk of money.”
“That’s not really a problem,” he said dismissively. “Did you really need to come all this way for that?”
“No,” I said. “I came all this way because I want to try something wild—and there’s a certain amount of risk,” I said. I sipped again. That stuff was good.
“I assume there usually is?”
“Risk to the fresco,” I said. Boniface frowned, and I plunged on. “I think this will work, and it’s the only way, as far as I can see, but—” I shrugged. “There’s a chance it might damage the fresco.”
Boniface’s frown turned into a scowl. “How much of a chance?”
I sipped again, trying to look thoughtful. “I’d say . . . ten to twenty percent?”
