A real fast learner."
"I believe they call this the immersion method."
On a long underground journey to one of the banlieues, the downtrodden areas that ringed Paris proper, the two conversed in low voices, making plans like lovebirds, or fugitives.
They got out at the stop at La Courneuve, an old-fashioned working class neighborhood. It was only a few miles away, but a different world- a place of two-story houses and unpretentious shops that sold things to use, not to display. In the windows of the bistros and convenience stores, posters for Red Star, the second-division soccer team, were prominent. La Courneuve, due north of Paris, wasn't far from Charles De Gaulle airport, but that was not where they'd be heading.
Ben pointed to a bright red Audi across the street. "How about that one?"
Anna shrugged. "I think we can find something less noticeable." A few minutes later, they came across a blue Renault. The car had a light coating of grime, and on the floor inside there were yellow wrappers from fast-food meals, and a few cardboard coffee cups.
"I'll put my money on the owner being home for the night," Ben said. Anna set to work with her rocker pick, and a minute later had the car door unlocked. Disassembling the ignition cylinder on the steering column took a little more time, but soon the motor roared to life and the two took off down the street, driving at the legal speed limit.
Ten minutes later, they were on the Al highway, enroute to the LilleLesquin airport in Nord-Pas de Calais. The trip would take hours, and involve risks, but they were calculated ones: auto theft was commonplace in La Courneuve, and the predictable police response would be to make perfunctory inquiries among the locals known to be involved in the activity The matter would almost certainly not be referred to the Police Nationale, which patrolled the major thoroughfares.
They drove in silence for half an hour, lost in their own thoughts.
Finally, Anna spoke. "The whole thing Chardin talked about it's just impossible to absorb. Somebody tells you that everything you know about modern history is wrong, upside down. How can that be?" Her eyes remained fixed on the road in front of her, and she sounded as utterly drained as Ben felt.
"I don't know, Anna. Things stopped making sense for me that day at the Bahnhofplatz." Ben tried to stave off a profound sense of enervation. The rush of their successful escape had long since given way to a larger sense of dread, of terror.
"A few days ago, I was essentially conducting a homicide investigation, not examining the foundations of the modern age. Would you believe?"
Ben did not directly reply: what reply could there be? "The homicides," he said. He felt a vague unease. "You said it started with Mailhot in Nova Scotia, the man who worked for Charles Highsmith, one of the Sigma founders. And then there was Marcel Prosperi, who was himself one of the principals. Rossignol, likewise."
"Three points determine a plane," Anna said. "High-school geometry."
Something clicked in Ben's mind. "Rossignol was alive when you flew off to see him, but dead by the time you arrived, right?"
"Right, but "
"What's the name of the man who gave you the assignment?"
She hesitated. "Alan Bartlett."
"And when you'd located Rossignol, in Zurich, you told him, right?"
"First thing," Anna said.
Ben's mouth became dry. "Yes. Of course you did. That's why he brought you in, in the first place."
"What are you talking about?" She craned her neck and looked at him.
"Don't you see? You were the cat's-paw, Anna. He was using you."
"Using me how?"
The sequence of events cascaded in Ben's mind. "Think, dammit! It's just the way you might prepare a bloodhound. Alan Bartlett first gives you the scent. He knows the way you work. He knew the next thing you'd demand ..."
"He knew I'd ask him for the list," Anna said, her voice hollow. "Is this possible? That damned show of reluctance on his part a piece of theater for my benefit, knowing it would only steel my resolve? The same with the goddamn car in Halifax: maybe he knew a scare like that would make me that much keener."
"And so you get a list of names. Names of people connected with Sigma. But not just any names: these are people who are in hiding. People whom Sigma cannot find not without alerting them. Nobody connected with Sigma could possibly reach these people. Otherwise they would have been dead already"
"Because ..." Anna began slowly. "Because