“Fair enough. And, by the way, don’t you think you’d better inform the policeman in question that his services are required?”

“Right you are.” Stone called Dino.

“Hey.”

“Where are you?”

“Exiting a dull meeting.”

“Can you be here at six—you and Viv—for a drink with a Paris cop?”

“Sure, I guess. Who is he?”

“One Jacques Chance.”

“I shook his hand yesterday.”

“Good, that will help. Be here at a quarter to six. I have to brief you on what to say.”

“What do I have to say?”

“I’ll tell you at a quarter to six.”

“Okay.”

Stone hung up, called room service and asked for a bottle of pastis.

“What is pastis?” Holly asked.

“Some sort of French booze. It’s all Chance drinks, apparently.”

The waiter arrived in record time, clutching a bottle.

Stone invited him in. “How do I prepare a drink with this?”

“You just add cool water,” the man said. “Four or five to one of the pastis.”

“Got it.”

“Or you might offer your guests a small pitcher—such as the one in your bar—filled with water, and let them decide how much.”

Stone slipped the man a fifty-euro note. “I’m grateful to you,” he said. The man left, very happy.

Holly opened the bottle and took a small swig, then screwed up her face. “Holy shit!”

“He said to mix it with four or five parts of water.”

“I didn’t hear that part.”

“That’s what you get for drinking from the bottle.”

“It’s how I was brought up,” she said.

30

Dino and Viv let themselves into the sitting room from their adjoining bedroom on time, and Stone sat them down and gave them a drink while he briefed Dino on what to say.

“Got it,” Dino said, sounding bored.

“Why does Dino have to do this, instead of you?” Viv asked.

“Because Chance, to put it in the words of his sister, ‘has contempt for non-policemen.’”

“That’s a little stiff, isn’t it?”

“Nevertheless,” Stone said, quoting Mirabelle further.

At precisely six o’clock there was a sharp rap on the door; Stone answered it and ushered in his guests. “M’sieur Prefect,” he said, “may I present the police commissioner of the city of New York, Dino Bacchetti? Commissioner, this is Prefect Jacques Chance, of the Paris police.”

“We met yesterday,” Chance said, with a small smile as he shook Dino’s hand.

“May I also present Vivian Bacchetti, the commissioner’s wife, and also Madame Holly Barker, who is an important official of my country’s Central Intelligence Agency.”

“Enchanté,” Chance said, lightly kissing the hands of both women.

“Charmed, I’m sure,” Holly said drily.

Stone gestured toward Mirabelle. “And this is the prefect’s sister, Madame Mirabelle Chance, the famous Parisian couturier.” Dino, to Stone’s astonishment, kissed her hand.

Everyone took a seat.

“May I offer you a pastis, M’sieur Prefect?” Stone asked.

“You may,” Chance said.

“And Mirabelle?”

“Vodka martini, straight up, two olives stuffed with anchovies,” Mirabelle replied. “If you please.” Mirabelle well knew the contents of Stone’s bar.

Stone quickly mixed the martini, then poured a substantial pastis and offered both drinks on a tray, along with a small silver pitcher of water, containing one ice cube. They accepted the drinks, and the prefect added a judicious amount of water from the pitcher.

“I was very impressed with your presentation earlier this week, Commissioner,” Chance said. “You gave me some ideas for my own jurisdiction.”

“Thank you, Prefect,” Dino said. “Tell me, being an American, I am uncertain of the difference between your office and that of your father.”

“My father, Michel, is prefect of the national police, of the whole country. I am prefect of the police of the city of Paris, plus three other adjoining departments, much as your own jurisdiction includes Manhattan, plus four other boroughs,” Chance explained.

Mirabelle spoke up. “Jacques likes to think that his job is by far the more difficult and important of the two jurisdictions.”

The prefect managed a slightly haughty laugh. “It is my sister, not I, who has . . . How do you put it? Delusions of grandeur?”

Everyone chuckled appreciatively.

“Now,” Chance said, “I have been informed that you, Commissioner, have some information of interest to me to convey.”

“Yes, Prefect,” Dino said. “But first, having heard that you enjoy the company of other policemen, I should tell you that Madame Bacchetti is a retired detective first grade of the NYPD, and that Madame Barker, before joining her present employer, was a military police officer of the United States Army and the chief of police of a significant city in our state of Florida.”

“I am very impressed, Commissioner,” Chance said. “How is it that M’sieur Barrington comes to be in such distinguished company?”

“My friend Stone is a veteran of fourteen years of the NYPD,” Dino said, “ten of them as a detective and my partner during those years. He also held the rank of detective first grade.”

“Ah,” Chance said, “so we are all colleagues here.”

“Except me,” Mirabelle said, a little too sweetly.

“Yours is a more intriguing profession,” Holly said to her, “and I’m sure you come by more intelligence each day than I do in my job.”

Everyone chuckled appreciatively.

“Now,” Dino said, “may I call you Jacques?”

“Oh, please.”

“And I am Dino to my colleagues. Now, Jacques, it has come to my attention, through Madame Barker’s intelligence service, that there appears to be a highly placed person in your prefecture who is also employed by a Russian criminal organization, and who reports to them on the activities of your prefecture on a regular basis.”

Chance’s expression remained frozen, except that his eyebrows shot up. “If your information is correct,” he said, “then it is most distressing to me. How, may I ask,” he said, turning toward Holly, “did your agency come by this knowledge?”

“We learned that a four-man team of professionals were hired to interrogate a member of the Russian organization, in order to learn the name of the person in your prefecture.”

“Ah! And what is the name, according to the interrogatee?”

“I’m afraid that the interrogatee, who, unknown to his interrogators, had a serious medical condition, died before he could reveal the name, in spite of having been questioned under stressful conditions for three hours. He refused to speak at all.”

Chance threw up his hands. “Well,” he said, “that is most disappointing. Perhaps if his interrogators had come to me I might have been able to help in the interrogation, without actually killing the interrogatee.”

“It was unfortunate,” Holly said, “but beyond the scope of my agency. We learned of the situation only after the fact, from a confidential informant.”

“Perhaps, if I could speak to your informant?”

“I’m told that he has left France, and his name is unknown to me.”

Dino spoke up. “I should say that, in spite of the disappointing nature of this information, it has revealed, to the satisfaction of the Agency, that this spy in your prefecture exists, and that is important intelligence in itself.”

“Important, but frustrating,” Chance said. “Tell me, was this Agency able to learn any details of this spy, other than he is, as you say, ‘highly placed’?”

“Regrettably,” Holly said, “we have no other information about him, but we thought it important, as well as a necessary professional courtesy, to tell you what we had learned.”

“Of course, I appreciate your professional courtesy,” Chance said, “and I would be most grateful if you would continue to pass along any further information that you might acquire in the future.”

“Certainly, we will,” Holly said. “However, all of us in this room will be leaving France quite soon, so I will ask our Paris station chief, Richard LaRose, whom I understand you know, to communicate directly with you should he come into new information.”