“Allowing her to walk after she participated in a firefight in the streets of Paris is going to be a difficult thing for me to sell to my superiors.”
“Can you tell me what happened?” I asked.
Marché hesitated and then said, “We believe one person, maybe more, got access to the basement of a building nearly two blocks from the shooting. All the buildings in the seventeenth are connected in one way or another. These people somehow knew the route. They got to the top of an apartment building near the restaurant Canard de Flaque and shot Philippe Abelmar’s chief of security with a silenced weapon.”
Bree nodded and said, “After that, they shifted to an automatic weapon to draw out Abelmar and kill him.”
“Your wife is a very brave woman, Dr. Cross,” Inspector Marché said. “She rescued Abelmar’s young personal assistant while the bullets were still raining down.”
Bree shook her head. “I thought for sure they were going to cut us in half, but they stopped shooting when the bullets were less than a foot away. Valentina and I weren’t targets, I guess.”
“They were professionals, no doubt,” Marché said. “Which is why I suspect this is not terrorism but an assassination.”
“Motive?” I said.
Marianne Le Tour said, “I’ve got one. Desmond Slattery, our financial expert, has been looking into the books of the Pegasus Group, especially the Paris operation. There appear to be ties to accounts in banks in Mexico that have been known to do business with the Alejandro cartel.”
“Wait, what?” I said. “From here?”
“It fits, Alex,” Bree said. “Abelmar was talking to me about setting up shell companies to move money to the Caribbean.”
“This also fits,” I said, reaching into my pocket for my cell phone. “Before I flew here, I was able to interview Marco Alejandro in prison in Colorado. He told me that the cartel itself has been under attack for years from a group of people known as Maestro or M.”
I showed them the text I’d received when I landed. “I’ve been getting texts from this M for years and always assumed it was a single person. But Alejandro convinced me that Maestro is actually a group of people acting in concert under the command of a leader they call M.”
“You think this Maestro group is behind the shooting in the seventeenth?” Marché said.
“I do. I also believe M or someone in Maestro stopped the shooter from cutting down Bree and Abelmar’s personal assistant.”
Chapter
45
Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam
Matthew Butler sat in the KLM/Delta lounge, forced another espresso shot down his throat, and picked up his cell phone. He had not slept in nearly thirty hours but could not afford the luxury of closing his eyes and resting when there were so many tasks at hand.
He called a number in Luxembourg that transferred him through towers and stations around the world before he got an answer.
“Mmm?”
“Sorry not to have called earlier, M,” Butler said. “I thought it wise to wait until we’d left France. The cartel’s international financier is no more. Francois sends his regards and deepest thanks.”
“I’m glad we could kill two birds with one stone. Cross’s wife?”
“We didn’t touch her. Though she almost got Cortland.”
“We can expect a retaliation of some sort from the cartel. What is your ETA at the ranch?”
“Fifteen hours?”
There was a long pause. “Once you get there, lie low for a month. You’re getting too hot.”
The line went dead. Butler immediately punched in a second number.
“Circle M Ranch,” a man said. “Dexter Mann speaking.”
“It’s Matt, Dex,” Butler said. “How’s the weather?”
“Gonna rain but we got in that first cut on the alfalfa yesterday, so we won’t lose a thing there.”
“You moving the herd up onto Forest Service?”
“I’m taking Wheeler and Sandy up in the morning to start.”
“Sounds like we’ll be around the ranch for a while. The next month, anyway.”
“Well, we’ve a couple miles of fence down on the upper pasture.”
“Fence work never ends.”
“Never does,” Mann said. “Safe travels, boss.”
Chapter
46
Paris
Inspector Marché finally released Bree around noon. We went to her hotel and both of us collapsed into a long, dreamless sleep that left us a little befuddled when we woke around six that evening.