Delphine reared her head. “We should give billions more.”
“All I’m saying is that sooner or later people have to solve their problems themselves.”
“And if they can’t? What if they need someone to solve them for them?”
Simon sat up, seeing that she was crying.
“Sometimes I just feel so damned helpless,” she said. “I can’t do anything about it.”
“But you can,” said Simon. “You are. All your work helps. Everything you write. It makes a difference.”
“You believe that?”
“I do.”
A disgusted laugh. A scowl. She pushed herself away from him. “As if words matter. One day, I’ll show you. I’ll prove to you I can.”
Simon had had the answer all along.
The slow winter afternoons at the Louvre. The visit to the museum his last day with Delphine. He’d looked at the painting a hundred times, she for the first time.The Raft of the Medusaby Théodore Géricault. It was a giant canvas, sixteen feet by twenty-three. Survivors of a shipwreck clinging to a sinking raft, hardly more than a few planks lashed together, adrift on a rising sea beneath a turbulent sky. And yet…hope. There, at the top of the picture, far, far away, a sail illuminated by a shaft of sunlight.A ship! Salvation!One of the survivors, marshalling all the strength that remains in him, has pulled himself upright and raised a hand, waving a tattered shirt. A final desperate gesture.Save us!
And the ship had done just that. The men on the raft had been rescued. The painting, like Samson Sun’s eponymous film, was based on a true incident.
And Delphine? All she’d said was that the painting was too gruesome. Surely it must have affected her, yet she’d said nothing more.
It had been right there in front of him all this time.
“Simon!”
Danni’s voice brought him back to the present as the front wheel wandered off the asphalt. He jerked the wheel, correcting the path of the automobile. In the back seat, such as it was, London braced herself. But Danni was as relaxed as if they were taking a Sunday drive. She spoke in even tones, briefing him on how Israeli intelligence had come to be involved, beginning with her company hacking into Rafael de Bourbon’s phone and laptop, then turning their attention to Luca Borgia, going on to describe what she had discovered at the Chalet Edelweiss.
She showed Simon the circuit board she’d found, explaining that it was commonly used in explosive devices detonated remotely by cellphones. She’d counted over twenty Semtex wrappers. She guessed there were at least three vests, maybe four. There could be more. She was not an optimist.
“Have you alerted the French authorities?” asked Simon.
“We talk to Paris. Paris evaluates the intel. They phone Cannes. In the meantime they tell us, ‘the police are already on highest alert.’”
“You didn’t tell me how you knew where we were.”
“The same way we know about Borgia and the chalet in Gstaad.”
“My phone?”
“Did you receive any strange emails recently? Something out of the ordinary or anything with an attachment.”
“A hospital bill. But it was from Harry Mason. He works for me.”
Danni shrugged unapologetically. He’d taken the bait. “I’ve been told you have some expertise in these matters.”
Simon nodded. It was pointless to ask any more questions. The Israeli intelligence apparatus had turned its spotlight on him. They possessed as formidable a surveillance capability as the United States National Security Agency or British General Communications Headquarters, GCHQ. What they wanted, they got.
“For what it’s worth, thank you,” he said. “Mr. Kruger was not in a merciful frame of mind.”
“Yes,” said London. “Thank you, thank you.”
Danni smiled, an amusing memory. “You were right back there.”
“About what?” said Simon.
