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I squint at him.Are we talking about field agents and analysts or about us?
He holds my gaze, his expression unreadable.
Our guide leads us down a smaller corridor. We climb another flight of stairs and walk down another hallway until we reach a door that stands out. He uses a badge and a passcode for this door and then directs us to the thumb scanner and retina scanner.
Once the scans are completed, the agent opens the door and we enter the office of Adam Von Dietz, the deputy head of MESS. He’s an inoffensive-looking middle-aged man with a shiny scalp, round face, and beer belly.
He stands up to greet us. “My lord.” He motions to two visitor chairs. “Madame Mussey. Please.”
Louis sits down and leans back, crossing his legs. “I see you’ve jacked up the security measures since my previous visit five years ago.”
“You must be referring to the passcode and retinal security scanning?” Von Dietz asks.
“I don’t remember MESS being so spooky,” Louis says. “But then, I might’ve been wearing rose-colored glasses at the time.”
Von Dietz smiles. “You were just named emissary to Portugal, my lord. Your first commission. You were walking on clouds.”
Louis’s eyebrows go up. “You remember that visit?”
“I remember everything I see and hear.” Von Dietz turns to me. “That made me a good spy back when I was in the field. But I must admit, my inability to forget details does clutter up my mind.”
Louis and I make sympathetic faces.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have much time,” Von Dietz says in a more businesslike tone. “So, let’s talk about the matter that interests you, Madame Mussey.”
I scoot my chair closer to his desk. “The official version of what happened on the night of the palace fire never made sense to me.”
“Which part in particular?” Von Dietz asks. “That the fire was arson or that the arsonist was your sister?”
“Neither. How do you know the fire didn’t start accidentally because of an overloaded wall outlet for example?”
“The point of origin wasn’t near an outlet but on the opposite side of the hallway, where the curtains were set on fire,” he replies.
I knit my eyebrows. “How can you know that?”
“The investigators found igniter residue beneath the curtains.”
“It was arson then,” I’m forced to recognize. “But have you considered the possibility that Jeannette was framed for another person’s crime?”
He gives me an affronted look. “Of course, we have, Madame. But the evidence points to your sister.”
“She was a chambermaid in Prince Theodor’s wing,” I say. “She went missing that night, only to be found dead in the woods a few months later. The state of her body made it impossible to establish the cause or time of death.”
“That is a very accurate summary,” Von Dietz admits to me.
I scoot to the edge of my chair. “Did her autopsy reveal anything at all? Like, did she die from starvation while hiding in the woods, from food poisoning, poison, or suicide? Is there any way to tell if her already lifeless body had been dumped where you found it? Did she have any broken bones?”
“The wild beasts and vultures left nothing that would allow us to answer those questions,” he admits. “The only thing we know for sure is that the corpse wasn’t charred.”
“Then your evidence is worth zilch.”
“Not so fast,” Von Dietz says. “Your sister was great with electrical devices. She was capable of disabling the fire alarms and security cameras.”
“Any trained spy could’ve done that, too.”
“True,” Von Dietz concedes. “But there’s her prior, too.”
Louis goggles at me. “What prior? I didn’t hear anything about a prior.”
