The Flinck Connection (Book 4) (Genevieve Lenard) (24 page)

“What photo?” Isabelle asked.

“Let me,” Colin said. I was grateful to not have to speak. I was pleased with the fast and concise manner in which Colin briefed them on our findings of the previous day, including the photo of the four men.

“Now you know everything we know,” Manny said to Daniel.

“They know everything too.” Daniel looked at Luc and Isabelle.

I stomped my foot again. “Do you know who the fifth man is?”

“Can I see the photo?” Isabelle asked. “I have never met this Remi Dubois, and know the others mostly by name. Maybe I’ll see something on the photo.”

“Here it is.” Francine pointed to the monitor in front of her. Pink was sitting next to her, working on a laptop in front of him. I assumed he had brought that with him.

Isabelle walked closer and leaned towards the monitor. She stared at the screen for a few seconds and straightened. “Sorry. I don’t even recognise the men in that photo. They’re so young there.”

“We think the photo was taken in the late seventies, early eighties,” Manny said.

“It certainly looks like it. That hair. I remember the bad hair of those days.
” She became quiet, her body shifting towards Luc. “Give me the files, please, Luc.”

He handed over the backpack and she gave it to Francine. “Everything that is on paper is also on flash drives. They’re in the little pocket in the front. You can open that.”

Francine nodded, took the backpack and unzipped the front pocket. “Is this related to Savreux’s murder?”

“Maybe.” Isabelle sighed. “These are the files President Boussombo prepared for the ICC prosecutor.”

“The files Dukwicz was looking for?” Manny asked.

“Yes. She gave it to me, knowing that there were a lot of people who didn’t want her to hand this over to the ICC.”

The content of the backpack was not as interesting as Isabelle’s body language. I waved my hand lightly until she looked at me. “What else is worrying you?”

“Whispering is hard work, isn’t it?” She sighed, walked to the closest chair and sat down. It was the chair in front of my laptop. “When Daniel told me what you guys have found, I just knew that everything must be related. Luc, tell them.”

Luc’s eyebrows lifted. “Sure?”

“Tell them.”

“A month ago I started receiving SMS’s. We tried to trace it, but every time it was sent from a different number.”

“Let me guess,” Francine said without looking away from her computer. “The phone was used only once and never turned on again. You couldn’t trace it.”

“Exactly. So far I’ve received three SMS’s, but they stopped more than a week ago.”

“What did they say?” I mouthed the words, but Luc saw it.

“All three warned about the president being in danger. Not life-threatening danger, but that something was going to happen that will destroy him. The sender said to be careful and watch the president’s back. Those he considered allies were actually working toward his downfall.”

“Do you suspect someone?” Colin asked.

“Henri Fabron.” Luc lifted both shoulders. “Isab… Madame Godard disagrees with me, but he’s the only one I can think of. He’s been acting more awkward than usual around the president and Madame Go—”

“Oh, stop it, Luc,” Isabelle said. “We’ve been friends since university and these people are also friends. No need to be so pretentious.”

He rolled his eyes. “As I was saying, Henri’s been acting more awkward than usual. He calls himself the president’s biggest supporter. The SMS did say that it was someone the president considered an ally.”

“Why are you taking these threats seriously?” Manny asked. “The president must be getting daily threats.”

“Well, I wasn’t taking them seriously at first. These SMS’s weren’t direct threats to the president. They were phrased as warnings, like telling me that I should look out for the president.”

“Which is not his job,” Isabelle said. “He’s my personal detail, not Raymond’s. And I don’t think
it’s Henri.”

“Neither do
I.” I tried to make my whisper louder, but it was too painful. I had been whispering too much.

“Girlfriend, be quiet for a moment. Let me sort something out here.” Francine jumped up from her chair, walked over to my computer and clicked a few times with the mouse. Seconds later, she straightened. “I set up Word so it will convert the text to speech. You type very fast, so it won’t be a problem to converse like that.”

It was a brilliant solution. I knew of a few autistic people who were non-verbal, and communicated by using their computers in such a manner. Colin rolled another chair closer and I sat down with my computer on my lap, facing everyone.

“Isabelle, why don’t you think Henri is the person behind this?” I typed and a female voice with a British accent asked.

“I have no proof, but I know it’s not him. Henri has been with us for the last ten years, since Raymond got involved in politics. He’s devoted himself to Raymond’s career. Only recently did he start dating someone. I wish I knew who. Of course, he met her at some political function, but at least… Sorry, I digress. It is not Henri.”

“I don’t know, Isabelle.” Luc folded his arms. “He’s a little twerp and he’s been
more twerpy lately.”

I thought of Henri’s behaviour when he had come into the team room. His body language had been calculated. As usual I needed to analyse body language within its context and I didn’t have enough context about Henri to correctly interpret the contradictory micro-expressions I had seen when he had tried to intimidate us.

“You know, now that I think about it…” Manny rubbed his jaw. “I met with Henri and Minister Lefebvre yesterday. He asked me at least three times if we were staying away from the Savreux case. The little shit seemed too eager. I told him that of course we were not looking into it at all. Doc knows that I can tell a whopper when I need to. Henri bought my lie and I really thought that I saw disappointment for a moment. I didn’t think about it again until now, because Lefebvre came into the conference room.”

I knocked on the arm of my chair until Manny looked at me. I started typing. “What happened to Henri’s body language when Minister Lefebvre came in?”

Manny thought about it for a moment. “Hmm. He changed. You know, Luc was talking about his awkwardness. I saw that when he was with me, but not with Lefebvre. He was one hundred percent professional then. He glowed under Lefebvre’s praise that we had found the Jean Monnet Museum paintings. Lefebvre would’ve preferred an arrest, but recovering the paintings had made a lot of important people happy, so he was happy. Bloody politician. Uh. Sorry, Madame Godard.”

Isabelle laughed lightly. “I call my husband that at least twice a day, Manny.”

“Do you think Henri is scared of Minister Lefebvre?” the British female asked as soon as I finished typing.

“I don’t know, Doc. Maybe. Maybe that is why he was acting so kiss-arse.”

“You can’t possibly suspect Antoine Lefebvre.” Isabelle’s eyes were wide. “He’s been a good friend to Raymond. His prosecutors are very excited about the No Secrets law. He’s even warned Raymond that there might be quite a bit of backlash from this. He’s meeting with Raymond later this evening to discuss this before Ray’s big speech next week in front of the Senate.”

I did a quick calculation.

“This could be the ten days we were warned about,” the British voice said. “The second direct message came ten days before next Wednesday when the president is supposed to give his final appeal for the law to be passed.”

“Ooh, girlfriend.” Francine pointed frantically at her computer monitor. “I think I know why people want to stop President Godard from even dreaming about this No Secrets law. Looky here! Big, delicious scandals.”

I put my laptop on the table and walked to Francine’s desk. Everyone else was standing close, but on Francine’s other side.

“Are you familiar with this material?” Colin asked Isabelle.

“The basic situation, yes. I didn’t know all of these details until three days ago. Mariam brought the human, drug and arms trafficking to my attention just after Ray became president. By then she had been looking into the case for a long time and had gathered some evidence, but nothing like this. When I looked through these files, I was horrified at the names, the amounts of money, and the shocking crimes outlined in it. Mariam has done an incredible job putting it together, but she told me that is would be useless if she didn’t have our support.

“When Ray became president two years ago, she felt that we could put our powers together to deal with this. Two presidents working together are more effective than one president in a
Third World country trying to stamp out corruption. She would have been ousted before she could email this evidence. A lot of the people named in these files are high ranking officials in Gabon. It would be easy for them to push her out. And if Ray went at this alone, he would be decried as a witch-hunter and they would find some scandal to bury him.”

“Lili Lescot’s bank account is the perfect scandal to destroy the honest president of France,” Francine said, still focussed on the computer monitors.

Isabelle took a deep breath and nodded to Luc. “They have more than just that bank account.”

Luc opened the briefcase and took out a painting. Colin tensed next to me a second before he sprang forward and took the painting from Luc.

“Oh God, Jenny. This is the Flinck. This is Flinck’s Landscape with an Obelisk.” He turned to Isabelle. “Where did you get this?”

“In the back of my closet. I was looking for a pair of winter shoes I had promised myself I would never wear again when I found this.”

“Someone got into your bedroom? Into your closet?” Francine turned around, her lips slightly parted. “That’s sacred ground.”

“And should never have happened.” Luc’s insistence on not leaving Isabelle’s side made more sense now.

“Oh, come on, Luc. You know how many people have access to our home. You security guys are in and out all the time.” She pulled back her shoulders. “It’s even worse here than in the residence in Paris. Here I’m supposed to feel like I’m home, but I have you guys all over my home all the time. There is security, yes, but if someone wants to get in, they can use the catering company, the cleaning company, the gardening company. Then there are the entourages that come with Raymond’s guests. Last week, that billionaire came with his bodyguards and personal assistant. It’s easy enough to sneak through my house if someone really wants to.”

“It should not be possible at all.”

“This could also suggest that the person is close to the president or close to you if they had access to your bedroom,” Manny said.

I didn’t want to think of the possibility that Dukwicz could have been in Isabelle’s bedroom. Colin and Vinnie both had already reluctantly acknowledged Dukwicz’s skill at breaking into seemingly impenetrable locations. I retuned my attention to Francine’s computer monitor while Manny and Colin looked over the painting. The information was extremely well organised. The first page was a table of contents, giving an overview of the thousand-page document.

“Please go to chapter fifteen,” I whispered. Fortunately, Francine heard and I was looking at the list of names implicated in the crimes Mariam Boussombo had been investigating. Next to each name were the crimes they could be accused of. I scanned the list, recognising many names. “These are not only Gabonese people.”

“That’s the biggest problem,” Isabelle said. “France and Gabon are very closely connected in trade, industry and politics. When we had that huge scandal in the nineties—”

“The Elf scandal?” Francine asked.

“Yes. It did a lot of damage to the trust on both sides, but some of those people had kept contact. Mariam hadn’t told me about these French politicians and executives until she handed me these files three days ago. She had told me that there were some French people involved, but she played this close to her vest, even with me.”

I thought that it couldn’t have been because Mariam didn’t trust Isabelle. She had after all given her these files. I wondered about Mariam’s motivation for not sharing this information earlier. Protecting Isabelle could have been one of her reasons.

“Let’s have a look then, Doc.” Manny leaned over Francine’s shoulder and quietly read for a few seconds. “Holy hell! They’re all here. Bloody Savreux, Motte, Legrange,
even dead Dubois. Isabelle, does your husband know about this?”

Isabelle swallowed and straightened her shoulders. “I promised my friend total confidentiality. I hadn’t told Raymond about this, but was going to tell him. Then I found the painting in my closet this morning, and Daniel told me about your discoveries, so I thought it might be better to first show it to you.”

“Why?” I whispered.

“Because I’m terrified that if this situation is not handled correctly, it will destroy everything Raymond and I have been working for. It has taken us a decade to convince the leaders of this country to be more accountable to the people who have put them in those positions.” Tears formed in her eyes. “Already Ray is worried about the speech on Wednesday. He’s worried that something will happen to shift the majority support he currently has for this law. I didn’t want to add to his worry. I thought you guys would help fix this.”