Free Murder in the Sentier by Cara Black Page A

heaping plates of grilled rougets , the brilliant red fish skin still crackling, in front of them. Thyme and olive oil aromas filled the air.
    She felt sure the Berlin trip, to investigate clues to her father’s death, from which she’d just returned had kick-started Jutta’s effort to contact her. She pulled out the paper she’d taken from Romain Figeac’s desk.
    “Figeac wrote ‘agit888’ and ‘Frésnes,’ the prison where Jutta and my mother were held,” she said. “Know anything about it?”
    His eyebrows knit in concentration. “How old are you?”
    He should know. She’d been nine when he and her father assembled her bike over a bottle of wine on a long-ago Christmas Eve. She’d watched from behind a door. The bike had always wobbled.
    “You know a woman never reveals her age.”
    “Will you let me eat in peace?”
    She nodded.
    Morbier tucked his napkin into his collar, spreading it over his suspenders. “All I know, which isn’t much, is that sometime in the early eighties a number of RAD members—”
    “RAD?” Aimée interrupted.
    “The Red Army Division,” he said. “Some German fugitive terrorists wanted to leave the underground. They were given a chance to lead new lives in East Germany, under different names.
    “So by Red Army Division,” she said, dipping her bread in the sauce, and keeping her hand steady with effort, “you mean the seventies Haader-Rofmein gang who blew up banks and kidnapped people?”
    “The newspapers called them that.” Morbier took a long sip of rose. He raised his thick eyebrows. “They called themselves the RAD. Their French counterparts were Action-Réaction.”
    This fit what Jutta had told her.
    “This came out in the late eighties when some ex-terrorists living in East Germany were arrested. Then the Wall came down.”
    “What’s the connection to agit888?”
    “Thank Jean-Paul Sartre for that,” Morbier said, attacking the rouget with gusto.
    “Sartre?”
    “The Marxist fool interviewed Haader in his cell,” he said. “And gave that infamous press conference about terrorists. For that the Ministry of Interior kept Sartre under surveillance until he died.” Morbier made a moue of distaste. “Your tax francs at work.”
    “Sounds convoluted to me.”
    “Agit888 is what they called the Sartre surveillance squad.”
    Aimée thought old Sartre would have been secretly pleased. An existential thorn in the establishment’s side until the end.
    “What happened to the RAD gang?”
    “Most of them testified against their former comrades and received fairly mild sentences.”
    “What about …?”
    “Some did time in Frésnes. Most are free by now, I imagine.”
    Aimée paused. Jutta Hald’s visit—the timing of it—right after her release, was significant. She took a deep breath. “Was my mother one of them?”
    Morbier’s fork stopped midair. He didn’t look at her.
    “I asked you a question, Morbier,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm.
    “Some things in life should stay buried,” he said.
    Her appetite disappeared. “I just want to know if she’s alive.”
    “Rumors circulated,” he said.
    “What kind of rumors?”
    “A moucharde , a stoolie,” he said. “That she played both sides.”
    “A stoolie?” She gripped the table edge. Hard. “For who?”
    “The Sorbonne riots in ’68 threw everyone into turmoil,” he said. “Crazy times.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “She put her nose into places it didn’t belong.”
    Morbier got the waitress’s attention and pointed to his empty glass.
    “I asked your father once, but he avoided the topic.”
    “But …”
    “ C’est fini , Leduc,” Morbier said.
    Aimée’s heart sank.
    Her father had refused to discuss it with her, too. The whole family had.
    She didn’t know what to think or how to figure out what her mother had or hadn’t done.
    “You knew my mother, didn’t you, Morbier?”
    He shrugged. “Not well.”
    “What was she like?” Sadly, she realized