Suspects(41)

“Apparently he wanted to help one of his clients buy the chateau. It’s worth a fortune and probably represents a huge commission to him. I think the intention may have been very subtle. If she thought that she was so upset when she went there to the point that she felt ill, she might sell to him more quickly, and at any price. It’s one way to close a deal, if it was him. I took a statement from her and the bodyguard myself, and they both mentioned that he was wearing gloves. He may have applied the poison to the doorknob himself, or someone else did. It could have been a very convincing tactic, if you hadn’t figured out immediately what it was.”

“Robert Richmond at MI6 had given me some of the information before and it rang a bell,” Mike said simply.

“The Russians use a lot of those nerve agents. They can be brutal. With the stronger ones like Novichok, most of the victims die, or are severely impaired for years or for life,” Guy said.

“I’ve read a lot about it lately in The New York Times. We haven’t seen any of that here,” Mike said, deeply troubled by what had happened.

“I think we should arrange a conference call between you, me, and Richmond this week,” Guy suggested.

“That’s fine. He said he’d be willing to come to Paris if you want. He’s been hearing vague rumors from informants in the Russian underworld that the original kidnappers want to come back to collect the other fifty million. That means you’ll have to watch Mrs. Pasquier like a hawk. These people will stop at nothing.”

“We will be watching her closely from now on, even more closely than we have been. We want to catch them this time, once and for all,” Guy said, angry at what had just happened to her.

“Yeah. Me too. What are you going to do about de Vaumont?” Mike was anxious to know.

“I think we’ll bring him in for a little visit. We’ll tell him how concerned we are about him, that he may have come in contact with it too during his brief visit, and we want to test him, for his own sake, to make sure he wasn’t exposed. We’ll see if we find traces, but he may be knowledgeable about how to handle it. It’s a long-lasting agent, so we may find traces. I’m sure he threw away the gloves.”

“What a sonofabitch,” Mike said in a fury.

“You were right,” Guy admitted. “He’s worse than I thought, and not as small-time as I believed he was. Or maybe his friends are teaching him new tricks. He bears watching, very closely. Apparently he’s willing to do anything for a price. Who knows, he may have supplied information to the kidnappers a year ago. Maybe he talked to a gardener or a maid to learn their habits. Anything is possible. If he did, we’ll find out eventually, even if it takes time. Someone always talks.”

“I hope so,” Mike said, shaken by the experience of the day. He thanked Guy for his rapid action, and the very efficient agent he had assigned to Theo, who had moved quickly and effectively to get her medical help.

He called Robert after that and thanked him too.

“De Vaumont is a rotten piece of work. I didn’t think so at first. I thought he was a lightweight,” Robert said apologetically. “I question that now.”

“We all did, but I had a bad feeling about him,” Mike said. “I think now that he’s worse than we believed. A lot worse. He’ll stop at nothing to cash in on any situation. I wonder what they paid him to poison Theo today, or maybe it was his idea to speed along the sale of the chateau. Pretty heavy-handed.”

“Thank God it was a small dose of a less lethal substance. We deal with these things all the time. If it’s bad enough, they don’t recover. They die within a few months because nothing can reverse the damage. I hope she’ll be all right,” Robert said.

“It sounds like she will.” He had already booked a flight and was taking Thursday and Friday off to be there through the weekend. She was expected to be out of the hospital by then, if all went well.



* * *



—

Mike had spoken to Theo that night before she went to sleep. They had given her something to relax her, so she was drowsy but she made sense. She had had a long, traumatic day. She still felt ill from the poison, but not extremely so, and she had been exposed to so little of it that they thought she’d make a full recovery, but it was very upsetting anyway.

“Do you really think de Vaumont would do that to me to make me sell?” she asked him, still somewhat incredulous about everything that had happened, and the theories that had been proffered.

“I don’t know,” he said, “but it’s possible. He sounds like a very greedy guy with some dangerous connections.” He didn’t discuss the kidnapping with her. He didn’t want to upset her. “Just rest and get well this week, till it gets out of your system. Leave the bad guys to the agencies who are there to take care of that.”

“I feel bad about Daniel. The poor guy was sicker than I was. But they said we were both lucky it was on a doorknob and not some other place. Apparently your palms are more resistant than other parts of the body, so it couldn’t penetrate as easily.” They had learned more about poison that day than they ever wanted to know.

“I’m just glad they got you to the hospital quickly, and it was a small dose of a less dangerous substance than some of what’s out there.” He wondered how they were going to keep her safe from people who used such lethal and creative methods to destroy their victims.