The cell was small and plain: a slit of a window, a table with a jug of water and a bowl, and two narrow bunks placed against opposite walls. Anna stretched out, moaning softly. “I think I may have had too much wine.” She sat up and studied her feet. “Do me a favor?”

  “A glass of absinthe?”

  Anna flinched at the thought. “Pull my boots off. I’ll never make it.”

  Bennett tugged unsuccessfully at one close-fitting boot. “I’m going to have to do this the old-fashioned way,” he said. “Excuse the view.”

  He turned his back to her, straddled her legs, bent over, and eased off the first boot.

  “Bennett?” Anna’s voice was drowsy. “What you did today, what you’re doing … I appreciate it.”

  “All part of the service.” He struggled with the other boot.

  A soft, sleepy giggle. “And you have a pretty nice butt, for an Englishman.”

  By the time he had lifted her feet onto the bunk, she was asleep. He reached down and stroked the hair from her forehead, and she smiled, rubbing her head against his hand like a cat, before turning on her side. He blew out the candle. In the warm darkness, he could hear the sound of her breathing. His last conscious thought was to remind himself to ask Father Gilbert if the monastery possessed such an amenity as a double bunk.

  14

  POLLUCE counted out the five-hundred-franc notes and watched the girl count them again, scarlet nails scratching against the paper, before folding them carefully and putting them in her bag. She had worked hard on him during the night. It had been a pleasant business transaction, at the end of a highly successful business day.

  The girl let herself out of the suite, and Polluce picked up the phone to order breakfast. From his window, he could see the Vieux Port and the dark-blue sweep of the Mediterranean beyond. It would be hot again, perfect weather for lunch in the garden at Passédat before flying back to Corsica. Polluce had always liked Marseille.

  He showered and shaved and dressed, taking pleasure in the featherweight pale-blue voile of his shirt and the discreet sheen of his linen suit. A man should dress appropriately for his age, he believed. Not like that buffoon Tuzzi, with his absurd caftans and shirts open to his hairy navel. He made a final adjustment to the show of his shirt cuffs, and went to answer the waiter’s knock on the door.

  Over breakfast, Polluce allowed himself to speculate on the opportunities for mischief and money that the formula would present to him and his colleagues in the Union Corse. Like their fathers and grandfathers before them, they had no great love for their neighbors on the French mainland. Good Corsicans, true Corsicans, wanted independence. If the French wouldn’t grant it, then it would have to be taken.

  Polluce, who seldom showed any emotion, smiled at the thought of manipulating the French truffle market and extracting millions from French pockets. No doubt the Union would see fit to contribute some of these profits to the Corsican nationalist movement and cause more trouble for the French, trouble funded by their own money. Polluce very nearly laughed, for the first time since his shrew of a mother-in-law had been overcome by too many glasses of Porto, fallen off a barstool in Bastía, and passed away, many years before.

  He looked at his watch. In half an hour, he would have the results of the analysis he had ordered the previous afternoon. There was just time for a cigar. Normally, he would never permit himself such a luxury before lunch, but this was a special day, a day of celebration and indulgence. He took a Montecristo from a case of buffed leather and squeezed it gently: fat, almost juicy. Clipping off the end, he lit it carefully and drew in the first mouthful of heavy, fragrant smoke.

  The ash was getting close to the chocolate-colored band with the simple white letters that Polluce found so plain and pleasing, and he was taking in a final mouth-filling puff, when his visitors arrived: Bruno, his young cousin and personal bodyguard, and Arrighi, the analytical chemist, a gaunt, long-faced man wearing somber clothes and a lugubrious air.

  After the pleasantries, Arrighi put the case down, looked at Polluce, and shook his head slowly from side to side. “I regret to tell you that this”—he waved a contemptuous hand at the case—“is not what we were expecting it to be. The documents are meaningless. A collection of statistics that one could obtain for a hundred francs from the Société Agricole.”

  There was no change in Polluce’s expression as he laid his cigar to rest. “And the serum?”

  “Water, mixed with ordinary herbicide. All it would do is kill a few weeds.” He spread his hands wide and raised his bony shoulders. “I am desolated.”

  Polluce stared out the window, his face tight with the effort of concealing his anger. That Italian clod and his tame aristocrat, they must have known. They had deceived him. Controlling the outrage that only a crook can feel when swindled by other crooks, he dismissed Arrighi and told Bruno to wait downstairs with the car.

  He placed a call to Tuzzi’s office in Cannes and was patched through to the Ragazza.

  “Tuzzi? Polluce.”

  “Eh, my friend, how are you? Missing life at sea?” Tuzzi put his hand over the mouthpiece and told a deckhand to fetch Lord Glebe.

  “I think you know why I’m calling.”

  Tuzzi did his best to sound puzzled. “Did you leave something on the boat?”

  “No games, Tuzzi. I had the formula analyzed. It’s merde. It’s weedkiller.”

  There was an explosion of bogus surprise from Tuzzi. “This I cannot believe! Non è possibile! Wait—here is coming Glebe.” Taking care to speak loud enough to be heard on the other end of the line, he launched into a torrent of explanation. “My friend Polluce, he says the formula is no good, there has been a trick. He has been bimboozled! He is in shock. I am in shock. What can we do? I swore on the head of my mother. My good name has been dragged in the pavement—”

  “Gutter, old boy,” said Glebe. “Here, let me speak to him.”

  Tuzzi passed over the phone and leaned forward attentively as Glebe began the story that they had agreed on the night before.

  “Glebe here, Mr. Polluce. This is all most unfortunate, I must say. Most unfortunate. But it explains certain events that have occurred here on the Ragazza, events that have been puzzling us since last night. Do you remember the Englishman Bennett, and the girl?”

  “Of course.”

  “When I returned from our little meeting in Marseille yesterday, they had disappeared—secretly, and in a hurry. Nobody saw them go, and they left everything in their cabins. We believe they must have swum ashore. Are you with me, Mr. Polluce?”

  Polluce was going to have to report this to his Union colleagues. He began to take notes. “Continue.”

  “Now it makes sense, d’you see? They must have taken the contents of the case—the real formula—and replaced them with counterfeit material.” Glebe’s voice became indignant. “Mr. Polluce, we have all been deceived. All of us,” he repeated solemnly. “They must be brought to justice. They must suffer consequences.” Glebe frowned at Tuzzi, who was pumping a fist in the air and smiling broadly. Damned excitable Italians.

  “They will suffer,” said Polluce. “But we have to find them.”

  “I don’t think they’ll have gone too far. They were in such a hurry they left their passports behind. We found them in their cabins.”

  “They may be forgeries.”

  “Impossible,” said Glebe. “One of them is British.”

  Polluce scrawled a name on his notepad. “Get them to me. I have associates in the police. With the passports, they will have something to work with.”

  “The police?” said Glebe. “Don’t know about that, old boy. Do you really think we ought to involve them?” Tuzzi was shaking his head violently, an expression of horror on his face.

  “Monsieur Glebe, half the police in Cannes are Corsican, some true Corsicans among them. We have collaborated in the past.”

  Glebe looked at Tuzzi and nodded. “Splendid, splendid. That’s settled, then. Marching shoulder-to-shoulder with the boys in blue. We’ll put in to the nearest port immediately, and you shall have the passports by tonight. Where are you staying?”

  Polluce gave the address and phone number of his hotel. “By tonight, yes?”

  “An Englishman’s word is his bond, my dear Polluce.”

  “Does that apply to Bennett?”

  “Afraid he’s a bounder. Probably got smacked by his nanny, or went to the wrong school.”

  “Merde.” Polluce replaced the phone in disgust and went downstairs to his car. On a matter of this importance, it would be best to speak to the captain face-to-face. He told Bruno to turn up the air-conditioning and head for Cannes.

  ——

  Tuzzi leaned over and pinched Lord Glebe on the cheek, a mark of approval that his lordship found thoroughly distasteful. “Bravo, my friend, bravo. What a performance! I think I call you Machiavelli.”

  Glebe wiped his cheek and lit a cheroot. “It did seem to go rather well, I must say. We’ll leave it for twenty-four hours, and then call Polluce and tell him that we’ve found out Bennett’s working for Poe. That should put the cat among the pigeons.”

  “Pigeons?”

  “Never mind, Enzo, never mind. Figure of speech.” Glebe blew a plume of smoke into the still air and smiled. “I dare say, in all the excitement, you’ve overlooked the most important thing.”

  “Eh?”

  “Polluce forgot to ask for his money back.”

  Tuzzi smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand, then opened his arms wide. “Maestro! I kiss your feet!”

  “Please don’t,” said Glebe. “The crew will start to talk.”

  15

  POE looked up from his desk as he heard the chop of the helicopter coming in from Monaco, bringing with it a million dollars that he was determined Bennett and that ungrateful bitch would never spend. Normally, he was a man who was prepared to wait for his satisfactions, a man who subscribed to the view that revenge was a dish best eaten cold. But this was trying his patience. There had been years of humoring the dreary little scientist, with his constant demands for more time, more money, more praise. Then to have it all threatened by a clown like Tuzzi. And now to be double-crossed by two amateurs, with their pathetic games of hide-and-seek. Well, they had a surprise coming their way. The thought of it improved his mood, and he was whistling as he went downstairs to meet Shimo.

  The Japanese unzipped the cheap nylon case, and Poe watched as he emptied the neat bundles of hundred-dollar bills onto the table. “I hope you’ll be taking those back very shortly, Shimo. I’d hate to lose them. They have great sentimental value.”

  Shimo nodded. “This will bring them into the open, and then we have them. Has the Englishman called?”

  “Not yet.” Poe picked up the bag and examined the inside. “Where do you think we should put it?”

  Shimo took from his pocket a small plastic box, half the size of a pack of cards. “We can sew it into the bottom lining, here in the corner, under the money. Range is not long, maybe five hundred meters, but anything more powerful would be too big to hide.”

  Poe smiled as he looked at the homing device in Shimo’s hand. “Watch out, Bennett. You’re being paged.”

  “Mr. Julian, something worries me.” Shimo put down the homing device and lit a cigarette. “Suppose the Englishman is dealing with others, for more money. Suppose he is dealing with Tuzzi.”

  Poe had to admit that it was possible. In fact, it was exactly what he would do if he were Bennett: try his luck, see if he could make an extra few hundred thousand dollars from a couple of phone calls. “You’re right, Shimo,” he said. “Perhaps I’ll have a word with Mr. Tuzzi. He might let something slip. God knows, he’s stupid enough.”

  ——

  Tuzzi and Poe exchanged elaborately courteous greetings on the phone, as though they were old colleagues catching up after a prolonged separation. They were delighted to find each other in good health—Tuzzi avoiding any mention of the painful matter of his still tender testicles—and reassured each other about the continuing success of their businesses. Then Poe came to the point.

  “Enzo,” he said, “it appears that you and I have been the victims of a robbery. I think you know what I mean.”

  “The formula?”

  “Exactly. It has been stolen from you once, and from me twice—although I’m prepared to overlook that and let bygones be bygones.”

  “Bene, bene. We are practical men, you and I. Civilized men.”

  Poe tried to keep the contempt out of his voice. “Indeed we are, Enzo. And above all, we are businessmen. So what I propose is that we join forces to find the Englishman and the girl, pool information, that sort of thing. What do you say?”

  “My dear friend”—Poe recoiled at the phrase—“this is for me great honor, to work hand and glove with such a man as yourself.” His voice became conspiratorial. “Tell me, do you hear anything from them? Has there been any contact?”

  Poe looked at the piles of banknotes stacked in front of him. “Not a word. How about you? Anything to go on?”

  Tuzzi thought about the passports, now on their way to Polluce in Marseille, and the imminent involvement of several Corsican police officers. He sighed loudly. “Niente. They disappear into the air, pouf, and leave us nothing. Now we must look for a pin in a haystack, no?”

  “You have men out looking?”

  “Of course. And you?”

  “Of course. Well, we’ll keep in touch, then, shall we?”

  “My information is yours, my friend. On my mother’s head.”

  Tuzzi was smiling broadly as he put down the phone. It had crossed his mind more than once that Bennett and the girl might have gone straight to Poe with the formula, which would have been a serious complication. But now all he had to do was find them first, and with Polluce and his friends in the police, the odds were promising. He gave orders for the Ragazza to turn back to Marseille. The girls on Ibiza could wait.

  Poe hadn’t expected too much from the conversation, and on principle distrusted anything Tuzzi said. But he was sure that if the Italian had held a trump card, he would have been unable to resist hinting at it, or trying to sell it. So it was a race to find Bennett and the girl, and they’d already made contact. Poe, too, estimated the odds as promising. He resigned himself to spending the rest of the day by the phone, waiting for news.

  ——

  Anna and Bennett had slept late, and they found the monastery deserted by the time they came to the kitchen in search of coffee. The brothers were all at work in the vineyard, the distant chug of their tractors as steady and soporific as the buzz of bees in the lavender.

  Anna waited for a pan of water to boil on the wood-burning stove, while Bennett hacked at the remains of a boule of unleavened bread. Their morning so far had been a mixture—slightly awkward for both of them—of intimacy and self-conscious, polite formality. They had taken turns in the large, open stone bathing area at the end of the dormitory, each staying discreetly in the cell as the other stood under the biting cold water. They had shared soap. They had shared a rough towel. A tension had developed between them that hadn’t been there before, a nervous anticipation of what might or might not come next. A Frenchman or an Italian would have made a pass. Bennett made toast.

  Anna looked at him as he frowned with concentration at the hunks of bread slowly browning on the cast-iron hob. His hair, still wet from the shower, was combed straight back from his tanned forehead, giving him the look of a sepia photograph from the 1920s. She could imagine him in baggy whites, swinging a wooden tennis racket. He speared the bread with the point of a knife and flipped the slices over. “Tricky stuff, toast,” he said, looking up at her. “It’s all a question of timing.”

  “Isn’t everything?”

  Bennett looked at her for a moment without speaking, and realized he was smiling at her smiling at him. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose it is.”

  The water in the pan bubbled, and Anna looked away. “Where do you think monks keep their coffee?”

  They had breakfast on a stone bench in the shade of the cloisters and considered the next move. It was one thing to demand a million dollars; it was quite another to work out a safe way to collect it. Poe would have a man watching for the pickup, probably more than one. A public place, such as a railway station, would provide temporary security, but the minute they left, they’d be at risk. An isolated spot, with no witnesses, would be even more dangerous. As the morning wore on, and possibilities were examined and discarded, they began to feel that they had maneuvered themselves into a cage.

  With a final mechanical shudder, a tractor came to a stop by the cypress trees. Brother Yves, who was on cooking duty, had returned early from the vineyard to prepare the midday meal. Bennett watched the monk hurry up the path to the entrance, mopping his head with a large spotted handkerchief. It must be damned hot in that habit, Bennett thought. And then it came to him.

  He got to his feet and began to pace, head down, his hands clasped in front of him. “Anna,” he said, “listen to this. It could work. We tell Poe to leave the money in a church—there are dozens around here, all shapes and sizes, most of them deserted except on Sundays.”

  Anna frowned. “I don’t know,” she said. “A church would be good, but they’d catch us coming out.” She saw the expression on Bennett’s face. “Wouldn’t they?”

  “That’s just it. We won’t go in. We’ll get Father Gilbert to pick up the cash for us. They’re expecting a man and a woman. They won’t look twice at a monk going into a church.”

  Anna nodded slowly, then raised an imaginary hat. “Bennett, you crook, it’s a pleasure doing business with you.”

  “We need a guidebook for church-spotters. Come on. We’ll get one in Forcalquier.”

  ——

  With a guide to churches and historic monuments open on the table between them, they sat in a café behind the Place du Bourget and drank rosé and allowed themselves to feel hopeful. Bennett had selected three or four possible churches, which they would reconnoiter in the afternoon. They’d choose one, call Poe, and then deal with the task of persuading Father Gilbert to become an ecclesiastical bagman. And this, unfortunately for Bennett, was where Anna began to have misgivings.