been impressed with French bistros. Every one he'd ever visited was either overpriced, overrated, or both.
"Do you really like pan-fried kidneys?" he asked Foddrell.
"What's wrong with them?"
He wasn't about to explain the many reasons why ingesting an organ that rid the body of urine was bad. Instead, he said, "Tell me about the Paris Club."
"You know where the idea came from?"
He saw that Foddrell was enjoying his superior status. "You were a little vague with that on your website."
"Napoleon. After he conquered Europe, what he really wanted was to settle back and enjoy. So he assembled a group of people and formed the Paris Club, which was designed to make it easier for him to rule. Unfortunately, he never was able to use the idea-too busy fighting war after war."
"Thought you said he wanted to stop fighting?"
"He did, but others had different ideas. Keeping Napoleon fighting was the best way to keep him off guard. There were people who made sure he always had a crop of enemies at his doorstep. He tried to make peace with Russia, but the tsar told him to stuff it. So he invaded Russia in 1812, an act that nearly cost him his whole army. After that, it was all downhill. Three years later, bye-bye. Deposed."
"Which tells me nothing."
Foddrell's gaze fixed out the window, as if something suddenly caught his attention.
"There a problem?" Malone asked.
"Just checking."
"Why sit by the window for all to see?"
"You don't get it, do you?"
The question declared a growing annoyance at being dismissed so easily, but Malone could not care less. "I'm trying to understand."
"Since you've read the website, you know that Eliza Larocque has started a new Paris Club. Same idea. Different time, different people. They meet in a building on the Rue l'Araignee. I know that for a fact. I've seen them there. I know a guy who works for one of the members. He contacted me through the website and told me about it. These people are plotting. They're going to do what the Rothschilds did two hundred years ago. What Napoleon wanted to do. It's all a grand conspiracy. The New World Order, coming of age. Economics their weapon."
Sam had sat silent during the exchange. Malone realized that he must see that Jimmy Foddrell existed light-years past any semblance of reality. But he couldn't resist, "For somebody who's paranoid, you never even asked my name."
"Cotton Malone. Sam told me in his email."
"You don't know anything about me. What if I'm here to kill you? Like you say, they're everywhere, watching. They know what you view on the Internet, what books you check out from the library, your blood type, your medical history, your friends."
Foddrell began to study the bistro, the tables busy with patrons, as though it were a cage. "I gotta go."
"What about your pan-fried kidneys?"
"You eat them."
Foddrell sprang from the table and darted for the door.
"He deserved that," Sam said.
Malone watched as the goofy fellow fled the eatery, studied the crowded sidewalk, then rushed ahead. He was ready to leave, too. Especially before the food arrived.
Then something caught his attention.
Across the busy pedestrian-only street, at one of the art stalls.
Two men in dark wool coats.
Their attention had instantly alerted when Foddrell appeared. Then they followed their gaze, walking swiftly, hands in their pockets, straight after Jimmy Foddrell.
"They're not tourists," Sam said.
"You got that right."
Chapter Nine
TWENTY-FIVE
SALEN HALL
ASHBY LED CAROLINE THROUGH THE LABYRINTH OF GROUND-floor corridors to the mansion's northernmost wing. There they entered one of the many parlors, this one converted into Caroline's study. Inside, books and manuscripts lay scattered across several oak tables. Most of the volumes were more than two hundred years old, bought at considerable expense, located in private collections from as far away as Australia. Some, though, had been stolen by Mr. Guildhall. All were on the same subject.
Napoleon.
"I found the reference yesterday," Caroline said as she searched the stacks. "In one of the books we bought in Orleans."
Unlike himself, Caroline was fluent in both modern and old French.
"It's a late 19th-century treatise, written by a British soldier who served on St. Helena. I'm amused how these people so admired Napoleon. It's beyond hero worship, as if he could do no wrong. And this one's by a Brit, no less."
She handed him the book. Strips of paper protruding from its frayed edges marked pages. "There are so many of these accounts it's hard to take any of them seriously. But this one is actually interesting."
He wanted her to know that