3
Tuesday

 

 

Paris, Boulevard Saint-Michel, 8:30 a.m.

As he walked along the Rue Deparcieux, John was trying to figure out who would have it in for him. He had changed course several times and taken one of his anti-surveillance shortcuts between the boulevard and the Avenue de l’Observatoire. No trace of his tail. According to the rigged coins, he was still in his room at the Hôtel Louxor. In a bad mood, John strode through the gate of L’École des Mines. Mary Harper had arranged to meet him in the cafeteria. Good at remembering faces and endowed with an uncommon memory for voices, John would have no trouble recognizing her, even if she were disguised as a polar bear. The sound of Mary’s voice on her mother’s phone was burned forever on his biological hard drive. He had an excellent ear—thanks to a childhood divided between two continents—and a certain skill in languages. He might not speak them fluently, but he understood Arabic, Pashto, and even Farsi.

The old Latin Quarter building was a cauldron of feverish students and third worlders. White sheets pinned to the walls displayed the message “Miners Stick Together” in big red letters. John weaved his way through the crowds milling in the halls, trying to respond to inquisitive eyes with a smile. His muscular build and rugged looks, appropriate for a physical fitness advertisement, were out of place in this setting, which was filled with skinny kids in tight jeans and short skirts.

“Where’s the cafeteria?”

He had to go on a charm offensive before a student in blue and green pointed to the second floor. Taking two steps at a time, he reached the top of the stairs and found the cafeteria. Mary Harper had her mother’s determined forehead but lighter and noticeably more insolent eyes. He was going to be earning his hundred thousand euros! They acknowledged each other amid the hubbub, but some students bumped into them just as he was holding out his hand to shake Mary’s. He took advantage of the moment to slip a one-euro coin into the young woman’s canvas shoulder bag. He figured he’d put his tags in place right away.

“It wasn’t the best idea to meet among your comrades. They might not appreciate it.”

“Why?”

“A bodyguard for the North Land heiress. You can’t say that it makes for solidarity with the rest of the student body.”

“I was told you were good-looking, but you’re also an idiot!”

John restrained himself from giving the cheeky brat a slap, surrounded as she was by her giggling girlfriends. He paused for a moment, staring at her black T-shirt, which was emblazoned with the image of a polar bear.

“Could we find a quiet corner somewhere?”

A few seconds later, John was sitting opposite the last of the Harpers. With her elbows on the table and her hands on either side of her face, she stared at him. Her skin looked lighter than in the photos. Her blue eyes and thick eyebrows reminded him of Abraham Harper. Under the makeup, John saw genuine wildness. According to Luc, who’d poked his nose into North Land’s database, with a little help from some hackers, Geraldine Harper’s ancestors were hunting bears in the Canadian Rockies at the beginning of the nineteenth century. They were lone brutes who had built an empire in fur and wood in Hudson Bay before turning to the extraction of bitumen from the tar sands. Nothing could be less green or more polluting.

“My mother chose you so I’d sleep with you, but there’s no chance of that!” she said, murdering a Canadian accent that didn’t suit her at all.

“Listen, Mary, we could start off on another note.”

“What did she tell you?”

“That it was your father who had the idea of contacting me to ensure your protection here in Paris while you’re studying. It seems you excite envy. I’m just repeating what your mother told me. That’s why I called you early this morning.”

Mary looked put out.

“I hope you didn’t believe her.”

“Who?”

“My mother.”

“I shouldn’t have?”

“You sound incredibly naïve, despite your conspiratorial act.”

John pulled out one of his cards. He had to raise his voice because the loudspeakers were calling students to a general assembly in the Eiffel lecture hall.

“Here’s my number in case there’s a problem. Don’t hesitate to call me.”

Mary Harper threw a disgusted glance at the little card, as though it were an over-ripe camembert.

“It’s odd, your name. What are you, really?”

“Spencer is my mother’s name, and Larivière is my father’s.”

“I see now why my father chose you.”

John thought the remark was interesting.

“Fermatown, what is this shit?”

“It’s my bread and butter.”

“It’s dumb, whatever it is. Farm Town. You live on a farm on the Rue Deparcieux, in the middle of Montparnasse?”

John clenched his jaw and focused on the mission.

“Have you noticed anyone or anything suspicious around you lately?”

“I’m sometimes followed by boys.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. Nothing more sinister?”

Mary Harper got up, slipped the card into a back pocket of her jeans, and turned toward the door. The announcement was emptying the cafeteria.

“Nothing worth noting. Do your job, and leave me alone,” she finally replied, walking away.

John swallowed hard. This little bitch of a kid had humiliated him. It was no easy feat, earning a living this way. He finished his coffee and got up to pay the bill. In the corridor, older heads were mingling with the mob of students. Intrigued, he let himself be swept into the throng.

The spectacle he found in the lecture hall was worth the detour. A polar bear projected as a hologram above the platform was gazing at the crowd with sad eyes. Everyone was staring at the screen next to the bear. It was a televised press conference, and a woman in her fifties was quickly explaining the events that were unfolding. It looked like the press conference was taking place outside a convention center. Patches of snow gave John the impression that it might be in Greenland, maybe Nuuk, the capital of the newly independent state.

Laura Al-lee-Ah, whose name had just been displayed, was bemoaning the plight of the bears, the victims of global warming. The news report drew to a close to a round of applause. John recognized Mary’s black hair and denim jacket close to the platform. The Bouc-Bel-Air was featured in the second report. After a few sequences on the drifting of the Terre Noire ship in the middle of the smashed ice sheet, the camera zoomed over the estuary of the Seine and swooped down toward the sedimentation ponds of Sandouville. John had to move back to let a new group through. The school kids of the Latin Quarter were rushing in to the siren call of the North Pole and the endangered polar bear.

The sound suddenly cut out. A student armed with a mike climbed up to the platform, replacing the commentary of the journalist, who’d apparently sold out to the multinationals. “What you see here is the homeport of the Bouc-Bel-Air. The boat in view now is the Marcq-en-Barœul. It’s the exact replica of the other ship.”

Hostile cries erupted from the rows of seats.

“This is where Terre Noire carries out the analysis of the soils and geological strata that its ships collect from all over the planet. With the complicity of the French and Danish governments, they’re opening Greenland up to all its predators!”

Whistles shot out from the crowd. The following live coverage showed a crowd outside Terre Noire’s Champs-Elysées headquarters. A young man speaking under a Northern Peoples Congress banner condemned the experiments being conducted in the sedimentation ponds. Those around him were nodding. All of a sudden, John recognized the silhouette, then the face, of the man who’d followed him the day before. Same hard look, same gray bomber jacket. The phantom evaporated almost as soon as it appeared.

John left the lecture hall and found a less congested corridor to call Victoire and ask her to view the footage on CNN.

“The guy that followed me is on the Champs-Elysées.”

“Yes, he left his room. We’re keeping track of him. I’ll keep you posted.”

Back in the lecture hall, John saw that Mary had disappeared. That wasn’t surprising. Without getting flustered, he retraced his steps to the Boulevard Saint-Michel. The idea of taking a bit of initiative again gave him some comfort. The sky over Paris was as luminous as the sky over Greenland. He crossed the street and sat down outside a café where he could see both the school entrance and the door of the apartment block opposite it. The Harpers had rented an apartment for their offspring in this building.

“A grand crème and two croissants.”

A few minutes later, he grabbed Geraldine’s phone and checked it. Mary’s last call was again to her brother.

“It’s getting crazy here because of the melting ice cap and the Bouc-Bel-Air business. Everyone’s coming down on Terre Noire. I’m amazed we haven’t been attacked yet. But I sense it won’t be long. I’m leaving tomorrow for Greenland to look for Dad. How are you?”

“The doctor reckons I’m making progress.”

Mary Harper paused for a few seconds, which moved John.

“What about your guardian angel?” Harold asked.

“Gorgeous as a god. Dumb as they come. He’s probably crouched under one of my windows now. Dad was the one who chose him.”

“Why him?” Harold asked in a tired, depressed voice.

John picked up the sister’s embarrassed silence.

“He must also suit Geraldine. You know what she’s like.”

“Take a photo of him. I’m tired, little sister. I’m going to hang up.”

John’s identity and physique had become an issue in the very bosom of the Harper family, where no one was telling anyone everything. It made him feel uneasy. He stopped listening in and glanced around. That little bitch was capable of pulling out a camera and filming him for her own amusement. Everything looked normal, but it had become suffocatingly steamy. Now disturbing black clouds were hanging over the Jardin du Luxembourg. He was beginning to sweat.

“Mademoiselle, do I look dumb?” he asked the waitress, who had come over to see if he needed anything else.

“Not at all. You remind me of my philosophy lecturer.”

John almost blushed. It was rare for anyone to take him for an intellectual.

“Really?”

“I assure you.”

When the waitress had gone, he checked on Mary Harper’s phone calls again. After she’d talked to her brother, she had called a number in Burgundy that she’d also called the day before, without success. Using his personal phone, he sent Victoire the number and asked her to find out whose it was.

John left the waitress a tip befitting her compliment and headed back to Fermatown. While he was crossing the Boulevard Montparnasse, he received Victoire’s call.

“The man who followed you yesterday is in a café on the Champs-Elysées.”

“Which one?”

“The Deauville. It’s opposite Terre Noire headquarters.”

“Send Luc.”

On the way home, John stopped at a boulangerie and bought a box of calissons d’Aix, the almond-shaped marzipan sweets made in Aix-en-Provence.

“Is it a gift?”

“Yes.”

Paris, 18 Rue Deparcieux, noon

Back at Fermatown, John announced that Mary was planning to go to Greenland.

“I can still refuse.”

Victoire gave him a bored look as she smoothed her long black hair. He loved her enough to guess the contradictory feelings that were keeping her awake at night.

“I’ve looked at the accounts. We have no money coming in next month.”

“So we need the money from North Land.”

John put the calissons on the table. Victoire understood that the present was not for her but for someone in Greenland. She had a talent for guesswork and making it known without saying a thing. Yet again, he felt he’d been seen through and forgiven without a word being exchanged.

“You’re not going to land in Nuuk with nothing but Geraldine Harper’s cell phone and a credit card in the name of North Land, are you? It reeks of a trap.”

“You’re right. I’ll take precautions. That’s why I bought this...”

“Sh!”

Victoire put her index finger over her lips. She didn’t want their conversation to be caught by a listening device. Luc swept the place regularly, but there could always be a spy drone somewhere. John smiled and kissed her fingers.

The opening notes of the Eroica Symphony, Beethoven’s Third, filled the media room. That was Luc calling from his stakeout on the Champs-Elysées. Victoire grabbed one of the cell phones.

“Well?”

“The Rue de Richelieu killer is talking to a guy he’s just met. I’m sending you the photo.”

“Got it.”

John and Victoire turned as one of the screens opened on the touch wall. Wearing a bomber jacket, the guy who’d tailed John was sitting with a young man in a tie and a dark suit. The man was wearing glasses with black rectangular frames. It was the perfect getup of a busy, self-important executive. Victoire called up the identification software that John had gotten from the logistics department at Les Invalides.

“Bingo! Got it!”

Christophe Maunay appeared on the Terre Noire website with his e-mail address, his direct line, and his title: manager of human resources. A closed face and razor-thin lips. He looked like a clam.

“Pinched little rat face of an informer. Madame Le Guévenec wasn’t spinning Luc a story. This guy’s Lanier’s protégé, the one who grills the scientists about what they’ve discovered in the Barents Sea.”

“What’s a Terre Noire exec doing with a killer?”

The Franco-Danish company had wasted no time reacting. Victoire called Luc to give him the identity of the man in the business suit.

“Can you record them?”

“They’re talking very softly, and there’s music. What’s more, there’s a demonstration outside Terre Noire. But I’ll take advantage of that and try to slip a coin in Maunay’s pocket.”

As Victoire continued to monitor the unusual tête-à-tête, John went upstairs to pour himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen. Through the window, he saw that the forsythias were in bloom in the garden that opened onto Number 9 on the Rue Fermat. Spring was really early this year. The three little balls that he intended to take to Greenland were bathing before him in a Nevers earthenware dish filled with alcohol. The meeting between his killer and someone from Terre Noire had left him stunned. Why would the protection of the North Land heiress bother Lanier and his HR man? He had almost turned down a hundred thousand euros so as not to spy on a French company, yet Terre Noire had had him followed, probably even before he’d met Geraldine Harper. There was more to this than protecting that kid. He felt manipulated and disarmed.

But he was determined to force the hand of fate and get Fermatown out of the poverty rut, even if that meant battling the Scandinavian killers employed by a French firm! In the fog of what looked like war, he’d use weapons his adversaries, no matter who they were, could never match. It was make-or-break time. He went upstairs to take a shower and phone Patrick, Fermatown’s official physician.

“I need you.”

“When?”

“Straightaway.”

“Do you have the material?”

“Yes.”

“The Rue Sarrette. Be there at three o’clock.”

Back in the media room, John found Victoire in front of a map of Greenland. A few red dots flagged places with bizarre names. Every other one ended in the letter q.

“Weird, all these q’s. Where’s the Great Wound of the Wild Dog?”

“Somewhere over here.”

Victoire pointed to an area hatched in red. It was the size of a French département. A tiny piece of the island continent had been touched by a mysterious illness. Actually, it was a gaping wound.

“It should be around here.”

“It’s weird. No one talks about it. Nothing online or in the newspapers. You’d think it was a black hole. What the hell can Abraham Harper be doing up there?”

“His job. It’s not a place you go for pleasure. I can’t see you wandering around up there, John. You’ll get lost,” Victoire said, visibly troubled by the immensity of the problem.

“Would you be unhappy if I ended up in an ice block?”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

John planted a kiss on the nape of her porcelain neck.

“I’ve made arrangements to meet Patrick, and I’ll be seeing Guerot shortly. I have to tell the agency. Any news from the Champs-Élysées?” he asked.

“Nothing new on the Terre Noire front. On the North Land front, Mary Harper has left her apartment. She’s on the Rue de Richelieu right now.”

“Don’t tell me she’s going to join the man in the bomber jacket! Not her, too?”

The notion that both oil-exploration companies were having him followed by the same Viking with the herring head was too much for his brain to handle.

“We’ll know soon enough. Luc is following the guy. You told me you were going to take precautions.”

“Find me the address of North Land’s subsidiary in Nuuk. I’m going to send them an urgent parcel.”

“What have you dreamed up now?”

John wrapped his arms around her and whispered in her ear, the ear of the little girl she had never been.

“The Harpers may well want to fuck me over for some reason that escapes me, but we’ll soon see who fucks whom. That’s why I bought the calissons. If there’s a gorgon in the snows of Greenland, I’ll cut its head off with my confectionary.”

Baffin Bay, 8:05 a.m.

Pursued by bloodthirsty bears, Le Guévenec woke up screaming like one of the damned. With both hands gripping the bunk, he steadied his breathing as his memories of the events arranged themselves in his mind.

After washing his hands and face in the thin trickle of warm water that was all the Bouc-Bel-Air’s boiler was able to produce, he checked the ship’s list. The inclination was no worse. Lanier’s unexpected arrival and the way he’d taken hold of the steel box obsessed him as much as the helicopter catastrophe. He found a change of clothes in the closet and left his cabin to join the platform aft. The sight of the helicopter seized him with terror. Frozen by the violent drop in temperature, the machine looked like a charred scorpion with a broken back. At the bottom of the wreckage, a black hand pointed toward the sky. Perhaps it was the hand of Romain Brissac, his wife’s lover. Le Guévenec turned away and grabbed his phone.

“Bring a tarpaulin to the deck aft, and cover up this coffin for me.”

Chilled to the marrow, he headed toward the passenger deck and passed the scientific team’s cabins. With the aid of his master key, he opened Romain Brissac’s cabin. Everything was topsy-turvy, thanks to the tidal wave. He wouldn’t be able to find the slightest clue here. Everything was soaked and scattered over the floor. He was about to leave when a stench of rot that was different from the stench on the rest of the ship made him turn toward the refrigerator. He thought of the blackened hand sticking out from the guts of the helicopter and had a sense of foreboding. What atrocity was he going to stumble upon now?

He walked over hesitantly and then quickly opened the door. A mass of tangled algae fell at his feet in a greenish and gelatinous glob. The organic matter looked to be alive and was moving almost imperceptibly. A noxious gas immediately seized him. Covering his mouth and nose with his arm, he retreated from the cabin and headed to the first mate’s cabin to tell Lanier what he had just found. The Terre Noire leader listened attentively and asked him to come closer. Lanier then sniffed his clothes, which were still impregnated with the gut-wrenching odor.

“Those are algae that have been genetically modified to live on the ice by feeding on methane emissions.”

“Why?”

“To block the sunlight and stop the melting, but especially to stop up the wells,” Lanier replied.

“What wells?”

“The wells of methane that are springing up from the decomposing permafrost under the ice cap. We’re seeing the same phenomenon at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. Unfortunately, the algae haven’t worked.”

Le Guévenec nodded. Something Brissac said as he lay on his stretcher obsessed him.

“Before he died, Brissac said that the South was heading north. I didn’t quite get it.”

“He actually said that?”

“Yes.”

Lanier leaned right to counterbalance the tilt of the ship and ran his hand over his red beard. Le Guévenec unconsciously did the same. The head of Terre Noire looked agitated. He stared at the captain of the Bouc and began talking in a low voice.

“We know that during the last ice age, temperatures in Greenland veered sharply, going up and then down by twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit in the space of a few decades. Studies in Greenland over the last several years have led to the discovery of what’s called a bipolar seesaw. The energy necessary for these variations has to come from somewhere. In this thermal shift, as the Arctic warms, the Antarctic cools. That’s what Brissac was trying to say before he died.”

“That’s incredible.”

“But true. We’ve known about these extreme changes for a long time. The mechanism stems from shifts in the atmospheric flow, which actually occur from one year to the next. It can also arise during the planet’s hot periods, like the Eemian some one hundred and thirty thousand years ago. We’re seeing something similar right now. Brissac’s initial analyses are consistent with that. It’s fantastic. And it’s terrifying.”

“How is it possible?”

“The Earth’s axis and orbit around the sun shift, and because of that, some regions of the planet get more exposure to the sun, while other parts get less.”

With his fist above the leaning table, Lanier imitated the change in the planet’s axis. “At the end of the Eemian, about one hundred and fifteen thousand years ago, the Earth entered an ice age from which it emerged some ten thousand years ago, once again because of a change in the planet’s rotational and orbital parameters.”

“Are they sure about that?”

“Yes. The Eemian lasted sixteen thousand years. If we find out how it started, we’ll know how we’re going to live in the sixteen thousand years to come.”

“If I understand you correctly, CO2 emissions and the other ways we’re polluting the planet count for nothing in what’s going to happen to us.”

“Several factors enter into the equation, but larger phenomena are driving things. The Earth has no interest in assigning guilt, as Brissac would have told you.”

Le Guévenec shook his head, thinking of Isabelle and her Nobel Prize lover. Guilt seemed to be irrelevant for them, as well.

“And where’s all this going?”

“Climatic upheaval that may happen very fast.”

“The end of humanity.”

“Yes, but not because of the climate.”

“Then what?”

“Because of our inability to govern a new planet together. The most fatal inclination isn’t the Earth’s. It’s the one that makes us lean toward an outdated economic and political model. But I’d really like to sleep now, Captain.”

“I’ll leave you to it.”

Paris, Sarrette Clinic, 3 p.m.

Staring at the opaque-glass window set ablaze by sunlight from the Rue Sarrette, John let his doctor examine the grafts. Patrick had done this regularly since John’s return from Afghanistan.

“What do you think?” John asked, averting his eyes from the scarred flesh on the right side of his body.

“Looks like it’s holding,” Patrick responded. “I’m still impressed. Can you feel my fingers?”

“No.”

John had been stitched up with the frozen skin of a Taliban soldier shot down not far from Special Forces headquarters. Then he had been flown to France for treatment in the special burn unit at the Hôpital Saint-Louis, which was renowned for reconstructive surgery. After a spell in the Val-de-Grâce, a French military hospital, he had returned to Les Invalides to push a pen before leaving the government.

“You think I can go to Greenland?”

“Yes.”

John put his clothes on again and settled into the chair used for minor surgical procedures. The telephone vibrated in his pocket.

“Excuse me, but business is picking up again.”

Victoire was calling from Fermatown.

“The man in the bomber jacket has returned to his hotel on the Rue de Richelieu. Mary Harper is nearby on the same street. She’s visiting an exhibition of paintings at Greenland House. For the moment, they haven’t met.”

“That’s surprising.”

“I’m looking into Christophe Maunay. The guy graduated from L’École des Mines five years ago and joined Terre Noire. He was sent to Libreville in Gabon, but it looks like he must have quickly been sent back to France.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea. Something happened there. In fact, Terre Noire began its expansion into Africa well before it got interested in the poles. Maunay takes care of the nonscientific personnel on the exploration ships. We’re being had somewhere.”

“How do you mean?”

“Geraldine Harper promised you that we wouldn’t investigate Terre Noire, but that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

“I have to give it some thought. I’ll call you back later. Patrick’s here’s with me. He sends his love.”

John turned off his phone and tried to relax before the procedure. Fermatown was being dragged into a peculiar whirlwind. One of Terre Noire’s executives had just met up with the man who’d tailed him from the Ritz. This same executive had studied at L’École des Mines. They were caught between Terre Noire and North Land—between the devil and the deep blue sea. He thought of the captain of the Bouc-Bel-Air, who was getting quite a bit of attention from the media and whose wife Luc had seduced too easily. He felt bad about that and thought back to fighting in the Afghan mountains. Over there, everything happened out in the open. You could see the enemy. But then, of course, there were the land mines that maimed people on both sides.

“Worries?” asked Patrick.

“I take off tomorrow.”

“Does your trip involve the ship that is accused of damaging the ice shelf?”

“In my business, you never know what you’re really dealing with.”

Patrick nodded and, with the aid of tweezers, picked up the three tiny steel balls on the tray and examined them closely.

“I assume you have your reasons, and they’re inside these little balls.”

“Right. They have to rub against each other nonstop to generate energy.”

The doctor put the balls back on the tray. He picked up a syringe and pricked John’s right earlobe.

“Just giving you some local anesthetic.”

Five minutes later, he began his work with an ear-piercing gun.

“Avoid swimming pools and chlorinated water.”

“Yes, boss!”

“How’s Victoire?”

“Not good. If you could, stop at the house and reassure her.”

“I’ll show her the pictures I took during our Greenland cruise last summer. That way, she can see where you’re going. We visited glaciers that were melting into the Ilulissat Fjord on the coast of Baffin Bay. It was impressive. There were thousands of people there. That’s where I met the Chinese guys who gave me this stuff.”

Patrick handed John a little pot of blue cream. The pot was decorated with Chinese characters and a fire-breathing dragon.

“Dab this on your grafts once a month. It regenerates the dermis and keeps the evil spirits away,”

“Thank you.”

John got another call from Victoire as he left the clinic.

“Luc paid a visit to Mary’s apartment. He opened her computer and found confirmation that she’s taking a flight to Copenhagen tomorrow, then going on to Nuuk on Air Greenland. The plane is booked solid because of everything that’s going on up there. But with a bit of luck, at least one passenger won’t show up.”

Victoire, at Luc’s request, had hacked into hotel and airline booking systems to see if she could find any last-minute cancellations.

“Did Mary Harper meet up with the killer from the Ritz?”

“They’re in the same neighborhood, but they haven’t connected. Not yet, anyway. I’m trying to figure it out. Did the procedure go okay?”

“Yes,” John replied, looking at his reflection in the mirror of the boulangerie across the street from the clinic.

“Can’t wait to see it!”

“Patrick gave me some Chinese ointment, and he wants to tell you about his trip to Greenland.”

John took in the silence at the other end of the call. Victoire didn’t like Patrick’s style. He was attractive, but for some reason, the surgeon bugged her. With Victoire, nothing was ever simple.

Maine-Montparnasse Bowling Alley, 6:20 p.m.

John ended his tenth frame with a strike and sat down at an unoccupied table illuminated by a Coca-Cola sign. He felt the admiring glances of the adolescent girls in the lane next to his. The piercing, meanwhile, was bothering him, and he fiddled with the three steel balls that Patrick had inserted without asking even one indiscreet question.

As usual, François Guerot, his handler at the agency, had arranged to meet him in an unlikely place. Since he had opened Fermatown, John had met the man a dozen times and had never detected the tiniest security team accompanying him. Either he was blind or Guerot had complete confidence in him. It didn’t occur to John that Guerot didn’t want any witnesses. Once again, John scrutinized the place, but nothing looked remotely like a support team—unless Guerot was employing schoolgirls these days. And maybe he was. The government was always looking for ways to save money.

Deputy Director Guerot headed security-clearance investigations. After the global financial crisis and the rise of ethics committees, the agency at Les Invalides headed by Hubert de Méricourt had instituted more rigorous background checks on staff and prospective employees. But it was too much even for the agency to handle, and so it relied on private subcontractors such as Fermatown.

Fermatown, which reported to Guerot, drew the bulk of its cash from this contract work, which consisted of confirming the accuracy of employee and prospective-employee résumés. It wasn’t the kind of money that Asian and African firms were making in more intelligence-rich places where good information sold at a premium. In France, private intelligence was just barely above suspicion, and regularly subjected to bad press. The revenue stream provided by Guerot helped pay the bills. But Fermatown needed more than this contract work to flourish, and it couldn’t afford to pass up a client like North Land.

There he is, John said to himself, spotting the low-key blazer and grim mouth of the deputy director. According to Victoire, who was fond of him, Guerot wasn’t interested in women. He liked literature and passed for an intellectual, which wasn’t an asset in the world of Les Invalides. For the past few years, Guerot had despaired of making it up the greasy pole to inspector general. No doubt he’d forgotten to join the right Masonic lodge, or he’d unwittingly stepped on someone’s toes.

Guerot sat down with a grimace. His tiny gray eyes had just spotted the three steel balls. Shouts from a group a few lanes down greeted a strike. Real life continued around them. John smiled.

“You asked to see me,” Guerot whispered.

“I need your help.”

“I’m listening.”

The deputy director’s countenance didn’t give John much hope. He decided to prioritize what was most important.

“I’m still waiting for you to pay me for checking the sixty CVs you gave me three months ago. Times are tough.”

“I’ll see what I can do. It’s hard for everybody. You wanted to talk to me about something else?”

“Fermatown has gotten a security contract for Mary Harper.”

“Mary Harper?”

“The daughter of Geraldine and Abraham Harper, the North Land bosses. You know who I’m talking about?”

“I see.”

The smooth, impassive face of the once-youngest and soon-to-be-oldest deputy director at the agency went from milky white to ash gray. Paranoid as he was, he seemed shocked at this turn of events. John was almost moved. Guerot paid badly, but from time to time, he came up with the money urgently needed to keep Fermatown going.

“Why you?” he asked, looking dumbfounded.

John felt that the moment was right to hammer the message home. He leaned in. “Fermatown is starting to have a reputation. I told myself it was only right to warn you.”

“You’ve done the right thing,” Guerot replied with an air of resignation.

“I’m most likely leaving for Greenland,” John confided, not mentioning the disappearance of Abraham Harper at the Great Wound of the Wild Dog.

“Oh.”

“Mary Harper’s going to Nuuk. I just thought I’d let you know.”

Guerot stared at John as if he were from another planet. John told himself he’d just ventured into a murky and dangerous area—a very dangerous area, judging by the expression on his handler’s face.

“Do you think she’ll be interested in the Bouc-Bel-Air?” Guerot asked anxiously.

John knew he was walking in a minefield, just as he had so many times in Afghanistan. It seemed that the agency and Terre Noire were connected in some way. This was a scenario he dreaded the most. It was crucial now to avoid lying and say as little as possible.

“Geraldine Harper has hired me to provide security for her daughter. She hasn’t asked me to do anything in regard to the Bouc-Bel-Air or Terre Noire.”

“For the moment.”

“There is something else, though,” John continued.

“Of course.”

“After my meeting with Geraldine Harper at the Ritz, some guy tailed me. He was most likely from Scandinavia or the Baltic region. Victoire’s worried, and we’d like some discreet security at Fermatown.”

Guerot’s eyes widened.

“Are you still at 18 Rue Deparcieux, near the Rue Daguerre?”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow I’ll have an envelope dropped off with all the money we owe you. I’ll send some surveillance. You can reassure Victoire.”

John remembered that Guerot had a soft spot for his beautiful, exotic wife.

“Thank you,” John responded, keeping quiet about the means at his disposal for identifying his shadow.

There was no point in humiliating Guerot.

“This may surprise you,” Guerot said, “but in exchange for our protection, I’d like you to look into the Bouc-Bel-Air and what Terre Noire’s doing in Greenland.”

John drew a long breath. Guerot was asking him to investigate Terre Noire. It was the exact opposite of what he had foreseen. The situation was becoming unbelievable.

“I thought you’d seize the opportunity to find out more about North Land.”

“One doesn’t exclude the other. If Terre Noire’s in trouble, France needs to know.”

“What sort of trouble?” John asked, thinking of the meeting on the Champs-Elysées between the mercenary and Terre Noire’s HR manager, Christophe Maunay. It would be hard to tell Guerot about that without giving away Fermatown’s secrets.

“The Geological Survey of Canada has just published a new atlas of the Arctic. According to the Canadians, the geological extension of their continental shelf authorizes them to claim just about all the resources in the subsoil. France registered a protest with the UN. We’ve urged Terre Noire to come up with countermeasures. Romain Brissac, the Nobel in chemistry, and Lanier have developed software that saves a lot of time in assessing resources. We’re watching very closely.”

“I follow you.”

“Abraham Harper is American, but Geraldine is Canadian and owns three-quarters of the tar sands on the planet. She’s the one keeping North Land going. Her daughter has dual Canadian-American nationality. She’s studying in France. Until now, everything was going nicely for France in the Far North,” Guerot concluded.

He looked angry. John tried to be reassuring.

“You know you can count on us.”

“I’ll send the Canadian committee’s report this evening. It’s been published, and you can take it with you. Try not to get lost on the ice cap. These days, it tends to shift.”

John rubbed the balls in his right earlobe.

“I only half trust my distress beacon, and I don’t think I can count on Greenland authorities to help me if I get into any trouble up there. These balls will allow you to localize me wherever I happen to be.”

Guerot looked at the three little objects in disgust and held his hand out for the card on which John had written the frequencies that would allow the agency to track him.

“So, you’re also asking us to provide security in Greenland.”

“I’ve become your agent abroad, no?”

“Right,” Guerot replied with a fake smile that revealed a well-maintained set of teeth.

“Obviously, all that will entail expenses. Greenland-bound planes are packed, and the hotels are full to the rafters. Because of the Bouc-Bel-Air, the media have flocked to the Far North.”

“I suppose North Land’s paying you to ensure little Mary’s security.”

“Yes, but not to spy on them or on Terre Noire.”

“We’ve been very interested in Nicolas Lanier since he allowed the Russians and the Norwegians to collaborate, based on research into the subsoil of the Arctic Ocean. We wouldn’t want anything nasty to happen to him. But there’s a more awkward issue.”

“I was waiting for it,” John replied.

Guerot was on the verge of confessing a secret that was tearing at his guts. John suddenly sensed that he was in a strong position. He didn’t let it show and made himself as small as possible, despite his javelin-thrower build.

“The Chinese, as you know, own ninety-five percent of the seventeen chemical elements that constitute what we call rare earths. Among them is praseodymium, which goes into very resistant alloys used in the manufacture of airplane engines. It’s also used in the production of radar equipment and electronics, such as cell phones and those balls in your earlobes.

John instinctively brought his hand to the three spheres that were making his earlobe itch. Guerot continued.

“In the region of Qaqortoq, in the south of the island, there’s a fabulous deposit of rare earths that could undermine Chinese supremacy in the sector. Every country on the planet is interested in it. Well, it’s Gaia, a French software program invented by Terre Noire, that can point to where and at what depth praseodymium, rubidium, lanthanum, and other treasures can be found.”

John felt that Guerot was going to make another revelation, but the deputy director held back. Terre Noire’s relationship with the agency wasn’t exactly transparent. This was to be expected in the current time of global warming.

“I’ll do my best to keep you informed.”

“In the envelope you get tomorrow, there’ll be a substantial advance. The sum will astound you, if I say so myself.”

“It will be put to good use.”

“But I’d still like to see your expense account when you return. We don’t have the means of all these multinationals.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

On board the Bouc-Bel-Air, 2:35 p.m.

Shut away in his cabin, Le Guévenec pulled the map of Greenland out of a drawer and taped it to one of the walls. With a ballpoint pen, he marked the position of the Bouc when the helicopter had landed and drew a large circle around it.

Nicolas Lanier could have flown from the western part of Greenland just as easily as the east coast of Canada. But could he have taken off from another ship? The only vessel in the helicopter’s range was a Danish ore carrier, the Copenhagen, which was also equipped with a landing platform.

Lanier had given him no explanation. And there were more pressing matters on their minds at the time. Where did he come from? Le Guévenec carefully folded the map and slipped it back in the drawer. He thought again of the metal box and the boatswain. He decided to lance the abscess. He left his cabin and went back on deck. Then he took out his cell phone and called Terre Noire headquarters on the Champs-Elysées.

“Who’s calling?”

“Le Guévenec, captain of the Bouc-Bel-Air. You remember me?”

Anxious whispering greeted the call from the Far North.

“Hello, can you hear me?”

“I’ll put you through to the vice president.”

Le Guévenec recognized the voice of Terre Noire’s second in command. He was clearly embarrassed, but courteous.

“I’d like the file on Rox Oa, the boatswain you sent me from Le Havre just before we left.”

Le Guévenec felt the man hesitate. The former French ambassador whom Nicolas Lanier had entrusted with routine business responded with polished confidence, giving the impression of having solved the problem.

“I’ll ask Maunay to get back to you pronto. I want you to know that the entire company is behind you, Loïc. Don’t hesitate to call me if you need anything.”

“Thank you.”

Le Guévenec hung up with a feeling of unease. The seaman’s death and Lanier’s bizarre attitude disturbed him as much as the death of Brissac and the other people on the helicopter. Two minutes later, the phone vibrated in his pocket.

“Christophe Maunay here. The vice president asked me to call you.”

“I’d like to get hold of the file on Rox Oa, the boatswain who was killed by the bears on the Bouc.”

More embarrassed silence.

“I’m at the Champs-Elysées office right now. We’ve got a crisis meeting and a demonstration under our windows. It would be better if you asked Monsieur Lanier directly for the file.”

“I’m asking you!”

“I know, Captain, but it’s just...”

“Just what?” Le Guévenec shot back, riled.

“Monsieur Lanier downloaded it and asked me not to give it to anyone else. You see?”

“Yes, I see.”

Le Guévenec hung up and headed back to the bridge, wondering what was going on. From the Barents Sea on, a heavy silence had replaced the bonhomie at mealtimes. The collaboration with the Russians and Norwegians had given way to long and painful conversations among the scientists from the three countries. As the captain, he hadn’t meddled, but he had felt the tensions rise. The atmosphere had deteriorated after the long stopover in Narsaq. The mission, back on board after taking the soundings in Qaqortoq, was no longer enlivened by a spirit of camaraderie. Nobody smiled at the table anymore, despite the excellent food. Only Lanier could understand the nature of the stakes that had darkened the climate on the Bouc-Bel-Air. His presence on board was proof of that.

Le Guévenec went back over his conversation with the HR manager. What was there between the chairman of Terre Noire and Rox Oa? He thought about the black box that he’d returned to Lanier. What was in it? The sky above the shattered ice shelf looked sick. The watchman was miraculously managing to navigate through debris as sharp as razors caused by the global warming. The roaring of the bears reminded him that the nightmare was ongoing. Or maybe it was just beginning.

Paris, 18 Rue Deparcieux, 9 p.m.

Sitting next to Victoire, Luc was listening to the news. John had returned with more than the three little balls in his earlobe. He’d brought back a revenue stream. Money would finally rain down on Fermatown. Farewell, stakeouts at fifty euros an hour, sleazy cybercafes, nights spent leaping from one anonymizer to the next, stolen minutes sorting through the wastepaper bins of the future ethics directors of tired old companies. Holding a knife above his second pear, Luc gazed at John the way a baby gazed at his mother.

“We’re in business.”

“When I think about how you didn’t want to spy on Terre Noire, and now, it’s France that’s asking you to,” Victoire said, looking somber.

“They trust us,” John responded. “That’s all.”

“They don’t trust anyone. They’re up against something that’s too big for them, just as we are. Did you tell him about the killer?”

“Yes. They’re going to put surveillance in place around the house.”

“They ought to protect us in Greenland, as well as in Paris!”

“Any developments here while I was gone?” John asked.

In one precise move, Victoire took the knife out of Luc’s hand and declared that he had things to say. The ex-hacker cultivated weird tastes that ranged from gothic music to underground gatherings in the catacombs of the fourteenth arrondissement. John had intervened more than once to smooth over a sticky situation. The Internet pirate gave his plate one last glance and got to his feet.

Brilliant in everything he did, the tall dark man in sneakers, as Colette, the woman who ran La Bélière called him, sometimes had trouble keeping work and play separate. John had sniffed traces of coke more than once on his clothing. But if the company Luc kept wasn’t always savory, it was thanks to him that Fermatown could get in all over the web and even beyond. Luc’s stormy eyes finally lit up.

“Mary Harper spent part of the day at Greenland House, Rue de Richelieu. She talked to artists at an exhibition of paintings by Laura Al-lee-Ah.”

“That’s the woman I saw on television this morning at L’École des Mines,” John said. “She paints bears.”

“Bears are her favorite subject. She also makes seals and seagulls out of wrought iron. A bit repetitive, but nice work. There’s something poignant in the way those creatures look at you. It sends shivers down your spine. So, she’s one strange woman I’d like to meet. She’s supposed to be coming to Paris soon.”

“And Mary?” John asked.

“She didn’t hook up with your shadow, who was three hundred and thirty yards away in the Hôtel Louxor. I checked in person. I’m positive.”

“It’s still a strange coincidence, though.”

“Mary Harper went back home. Right now, she’s packing her bags in the apartment that Daddy and Mommy rent for her. The Dane is still in his room at the Louxor. No physical contact.”

“You said the Dane?”

“I asked one of our friends in Lyon to give Interpol the fingerprints on the laminated ad that Victoire put in the backseat of the taxi. We also have his DNA and the photos taken at that meeting on the Champs-Elysées.”

“Can’t do any better than that. So?”

Luc moved to the touch wall and whistled the three opening notes of one of the voice-recognition programs. Photos of the man in the gray bomber jacket appeared on one of the screens, front-on and in profile, first in black and white and then in color. He had the menacing face of a mercenary trained for combat. A wild animal.

“Per Sorenson was born in Copenhagen, Denmark.”

“Interesting.”

“According to Interpol, he was a sergeant in the Danish army, but he was thrown out for mental cruelty and homophobia. He then sold his services to a private British army. He fought as a mercenary in Somalia and Iraq, but he quit a few months ago. They don’t know who he’s working for now.”

“Fascinating.”

“He was seen a month ago in Oslo, Norway, in the company of a Spaniard going by the name of Rox Oa, who is wanted in Denmark for identity fraud. He supposedly faked a diploma as a boatswain in the merchant marine.”

“So what?” Victoire quizzed.

“There are strange things going on between Terre Noire, the Norwegians, and the Russians. The Danes and the Spanish are all we need,” Luc replied.

“What about Christophe Maunay, Terre Noire’s HR guy?” John asked.

“I managed to slip him one of our coins, taking advantage of the pushing and shoving outside the Champs-Elysées headquarters. He went back to his office and has just returned to his home on the Rue de Bourgogne, near the National Assembly. To sum up: for the moment, we know only that a Danish mercenary is tailing you in Paris. He reports to Nicolas Lanier’s HR man. He must know you’re in contact with North Land and believe that you’re working for the Canadians. Lanier’s having you followed. Logical, no?”

“But why? He’s in contact with the agency. If he needs to know something about us, all he has to do is ask Méricourt or Guerot,” John said.

“And why is the latter asking you to gather information on Lanier?” Luc wanted to know.

It was all too confusing. John felt caught between Terre Noire and the agency, two monsters with dubious connections. He went to the window and scanned the Rue Deparcieux as though expecting to see the Dane or the director of human resources at Terre Noire.

“You see, we’ve had our noses to the grindstone while you were off getting your ear pierced,” Luc said, reaching for another pear.

“What about your article on the Bouc-Bel-Air?” John asked.

“I’ve just given Victoire the draft. She liked it. She’s a woman, too.”

“I’d noticed,” John responded sarcastically.

Victoire gave her opinion, pushing the fruit bowl out of Luc’s reach. “Luc has written a fabulous article for the website. I’ve hardly corrected a thing. He’s done a vivid and realistic portrait of Connie Rasmussen and Isabelle Le Guévenec. He’s made them really sympathetic. You feel like you want to meet them and find out more about them.”

“They’re certainly subjects he’s delved into.”

Victoire didn’t respond to John’s comment and simply continued. “I think we’ll get some instructive reactions on future-probe.com and the social networks. Those two women are fabulous entrées into the world of Terre Noire and North Land.”

“It’ll create buzz. All we’ll have to do then is set our nets and collect the information,” Luc said, slicing away the bruised parts from his pear.

John agreed. A fan of open-source software, he had confirmed numerous times that most secrets all over the planet were available if you asked the right people the right questions at the right time. The site they’d created to attract bees to the honey of critiques and unusual points of view was a wonderful tool. All you had to do was read and listen. With its analysis software, Fermatown was equipped to map the invisible colleges and networks of leading experts who could answer questions on any subject whatsoever. There was no need to blast through safes or climb over walls, as spies had in the good old days.

“We’re just finalizing the article now,” Victoire said. “We’ll draw to future-probe.com all the people interested in the Bouc-Bel-Air, Greenland, Brissac, and the bears. People are crazy for climate theories. A lot of them have family and friends working for North Land and Terre Noire. I’d be very surprised if we didn’t find someone we’ve already come across.”

“I don’t doubt it,” John said, a bit envious of Victoire’s gift for weaving connections between people and distant events. He himself wasn’t capable of inventing original stuff.

“Did you identify the number Mary Harper called several times in the Morvan without getting anyone on the other end?” John asked in a gruffer tone than he would have liked.

“Yes,” Luc answered. “It corresponds to a chalet in the village of Dun-les-Places. The middle of nowhere. We’ll have to do some digging, there, too.”

“I’m going up to get my bags ready. My flight’s at dawn.”

John took the stairs up to the kitchen. He got a yogurt from the fridge and a banana, which he put on the table and looked at without enthusiasm. The idea of leaving Victoire in Paris was tearing at his guts and taking away his appetite. Since the crash that had nearly cost him his life in Afghanistan, he’d become slightly paranoid. He observed the lights of the Rue Fermat through the kitchen window and tried to spot the surveillance team charged with protecting Fermatown in his absence. He didn’t notice anything in particular and sighed before going upstairs to the studio.

John got out the laptop that he intended to take to Greenland. He turned it on and checked for the presence of the little monster that was supposed to leap at the enemy’s throat. Something rubbing against his leg made him jump. He was ready for combat.

“What are you doing here?”

He gathered Caresse in his arms.

“If you take care of them, I’ll bring you back some fish.”