Murder Below Montparnasse - By Cara Black Page 0,92

other choice but forget his … how you say? Doubts. Forget his doubts.”

“Doubts?” Aimée said. Huppert’s words came back to her.

“This part—it’s not clear.” Marevna bit her lip. “Something how his beliefs, the lies, worth the price, the sacrifice. Nothing holds him back now.” Marevna’s voice quivered. “She’s left him.”

And by this hot stove in the back kitchen, Aimée sensed a presence. A spirit. As if the soul released from this missive after eighty years now hovered and breathed in their midst.

“We say a passion that shakes the tree roots,” Marevna said, “happens once in a life. Makes the pain worthwhile.”

Aimée knew there was an equivalent expression in French but couldn’t remember it.

Marevna’s hand shook. She pointed to the signature on the letter. “Vladimir.”

Aimée gasped. “You mean … Vladimir Lenin wrote this? That’s his handwriting?”

Shaken, Marevna leaned against the dishes.

Proof of what Huppert had intimated. Modigliani painted Lenin in love, a man caught between his lover, his comrade-wife, his political aspirations, his theories, his doubts before he sacrificed ideals to fanaticism.

“But who was this woman?” Marevna patted the letter, which she now held like a precious object away from the pot of borscht. “There’s no name.”

“A Russian woman whose role faded long ago,” Aimée said. “Does it matter? She played her part in history and left. He led the Revolution, changed the world.”

“No one will believe this,” Marevna said, her eyes wide.

“I thought Russians were romantics, souls as deep as Lake Baikal, wide as the steppes,” Aimée said. “All those things from Tolstoy. He wrote in French, Marevna. We read him in school.”

“No one wants to believe this. This is dangerous, Aimée.” Marevna glanced at the babushka. “Stone deaf. She refuses hearing aid. But him.…” She jerked her thumb at the snoring old Trotskyist. “Trouble.” Her mouth pursed. “Lenin’s still an icon. Old people, tourists line up all day in snow in Red Square … hours to see his mummy. He is myth, but they still must believe in myth.”

Aimée watched Marevna. “Does it bother you knowing he’s not the Lenin you thought he was?”

“Phfft.” She handed the letter back to Aimée. Stirred the borscht with a wooden spoon. “In every school we saw big letters: ‘Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live.’ ” But Marevna’s eyes brimmed. “Okay. Inside, romantic me think it’s like Casablanca, give up great love. But Lenin was no Rick, no hero. But it would devastate my grandma.”

Thursday Evening

RENÉ WIPED HIS damp temples with his handkerchief and took a deep breath. Then another. He’d spent hours circumnavigating the firewall, disabling his safeguards, the alarm triggers he’d installed. But thank God for the thumb-drive containing his backup and the cloned token to override part of the system. Then recoding the disabler with Saj’s help. Tradelert’s mainframe, as designed, only allowed modification in twenty-four-hour cycles and the clock was ticking.

Now it all came down to these few seconds to stop them.

But if Tradelert had re-keyed the code, had time to install new passwords, it wouldn’t work. He prayed they hadn’t. Prayed they had kept the system up to show off and impress the investors who were due today, California time.

“I can keep the connection and the back doors open for two more minutes,” Saj said. “Ready, René?”

Now or never.

René entered the last code. Hit the keys. Nothing.

Sweat broke out on his upper lip.

“Connection’s gone, Saj!”

“Keep your sombrero on.” René heard the furious clicking of keys. “One minute thirty seconds,” Saj said. “Should reestablish connection within fifteen seconds.” When nothing happened, he muttered, “Relay’s temperamental. Weather issues cause havoc with the satellite transmission.”

Please God, René thought. He was hunched over, his eyeballs glued to the screen, his fingers poised.

“Connection. Go, René.”

René’s fingers flew over the keyboard. He hit send.

“Done.”

“We’re still up. Connected. It’s out of our hands now.”

Wednesday Evening

LENIN IN LOVE. All the more reason for the Russian oligarch to want the painting—either to legitimize his museum or hold it over the old guard and threaten exposure.

Ten minutes later, Aimée found the bar’s address behind bustling rue de la Gaîtié, studded with theaters and concert halls famous for Piaf and Georges Brassens. She’d followed rue d’Odessa past the old bains toward Place Joséphine Baker. It was indeed a leather bar. And she wasn’t dressed for it.

Her cousin Sebastien had frequented this bar before he’d gotten clean. Run-down, she remembered, haunt of dealers and stray Bretons fresh from the train at Montparnasse, mistaking the faded leftover Breton sign for a home away from home. Looking for a buckwheat crêpe