Suspects(20)

“Should I meet you there?” She sounded unsure, and he didn’t know what her security arrangements were.

“What’s easiest for you?”

“I have a driver who can bring me.” He gave her the address so she didn’t feel crowded if he picked her up at the hotel. It might be too much for her for a first meeting. As he hung up, he couldn’t believe how lucky he had been. He nearly did a jig when he left his office. He couldn’t even call it a date, and what right did he have to date Theo Morgan? But she had agreed to see him again. He felt incredibly lucky that she had accepted his invitation.



* * *



—

The following morning he called a number Robert Richmond had given him at the DGSE in Paris, which was part of the defense ministry. It was the branch that had been in charge of the investigation of the Pasquier kidnapping. They coordinated foreign intelligence, since the criminals were Russian, and internal protection within the country. They had handled other situations like it, sometimes with better results and a less tragic outcome. The man in charge of the investigation was Agent Guy Thomas. Mike was surprised when he picked up his own extension and identified himself immediately. He spoke reasonably good English, and Mike said that Robert Richmond at MI6 had given him his number. Mike introduced himself as CIA. He didn’t share his concerns for Theo immediately, and started with the subject of Pierre de Vaumont, which Mike suspected would be less threatening to Agent Thomas.

“We’ve had some recent inquiries about a Pierre de Vaumont, who has some unusual Russian connections, as well as Chinese, Saudi, and several others. He seems to be a small-time player from what we’ve been able to find out. But he had some minor contact with Theodora Morgan Pasquier, which concerned me. He mostly seems like a clever opportunist, but it’s hard to say how deep his connections go and what he uses them for, and what his motives are with her.”

“We know about him,” Agent Thomas said, sounding tired. “His motive is always the same: money. He takes it wherever he gets it. He ‘connects’ people, for good or bad purposes, and works for whoever pays him.”

“That can prove to be dangerous,” Mike said in response.

“True. But I think most of the deals he makes are fairly low-level. He’s not a big player on the Russian side. He knows them, but he’s more involved in their entertainment.”

“Did you ever have evidence of a link between him and the Pasquier kidnapping?”

“None,” Guy Thomas answered bluntly. “The basic motivation for that was revenge and money. Pasquier opened, or intended to open, two very large, lavish multi-brand luxury stores in Russia. He put in two hundred million and took a Russian partner for another hundred. The project went sour from the beginning. There was so much graft and corruption just in the building process alone. The permits cost them a fortune. Everyone wanted a piece of it—not to put in, but to take out. Pasquier worked on it for nearly three years and decided the project was unmanageable. He had the governing control with majority ownership. He shut it down unilaterally. His investor has powerful connections in the Russian underworld and the government. We think he’s had a lot of bad dealings, but he’s so well connected, he’s considered untouchable. He’s got a pretty nasty reputation, which I don’t think Pasquier knew at the outset. He was probably ill advised. Aleksandr was looking for a respectable business to put money in, to use as a showcase for how honest he was, which he wasn’t. Pasquier lost a lot of money when he shut it down, but he could afford to. So could Aleksandr, but he was vengeful. From what we could piece together, he wanted Matthieu Pasquier to refund him the whole hundred million he’d lost, which of course Pasquier wouldn’t. He had lost a lot of money on it himself because it went so far over budget. The bribes alone were outrageous. We haven’t been able to prove it, but I will tell you confidentially and unofficially that we believe that Dmitri Aleksandr hired the team that kidnapped Pasquier. There’s no solid evidence, but the ransom was exactly the amount that he wanted Pasquier to pay him, the original hundred million of his investment.

“I think Pasquier’s wife would have paid it, but the agencies involved, and mainly the police, wouldn’t let her. They wanted to bargain with them to string them along, and gain time to try and identify them. They were supposedly in the Russian mafia and a very rough bunch.

“She finally overrode us and paid them fifty million as a start, with a promise of more to come. But they were panicking by then, and probably thought they wouldn’t get the rest, and could get caught if it dragged on. We took too long before we moved. They reacted badly to the half payment, and killed Pasquier and the boy to show their displeasure, then ran. We didn’t expect them to pull out as fast as they did. We found the boy and his father two days later, they’d been dead since the day the kidnappers got half the ransom and disappeared. None of our informants or others we deal with, like the British, have heard a word about them since they left. Everyone claims they don’t know anything. We can’t prove that Aleksandr did it, and people are afraid of his connections. He’s a dangerous man to mess with. We’re still hoping for evidence or a solid informant to tell us what we need to know, so we can go after him. I’m not sure we could ever get near him. And for now, it’s been radio silence for a year, nothing. It all went quiet. They took the money and ran. And we can’t trace it back to Dmitri Aleksandr. We’re just guessing that he was involved because he was so angry about the money he lost because of Pasquier. He had the motive and we think he used men who weren’t known in Russian criminal circles so it couldn’t be traced back to him. He’s smart and careful, and very thorough.”