Free Murder Without Pity by Steve Haberman Page B

authorities?”
    “Not if we find a no-questions bank. After that, it’s simply a bank-to-bank transfer. Say look, I ask as someone who’s known you many years, what is this? You sound suspicious.”
    “I also understand something about this kind of operation. The Americans prefer the Caribbean. The British, Gibraltar. But these tidbits don’t make me an expert in money laundering.”
    “Tidbits is what you call my work?”
    “We’re playing for big stakes. I must ask questions, not just because I’m supposed to. For my grandchildren’s future, too.”
    Out of the mist ahead a policeman loomed in the headlights. He shrilled his whistle at them. His hand shot out demanding they stop. Mikhail braked suddenly.
    An outburst of klaxons beyond the cop cut through the fog. A motorcade of jeeps, vans, and trucks, police motorcyclists as escorts, sped past the intersection with Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré.
    Gennadi belched as he leaned back into darkness, out of the policeman’s sight. Boucher pressed back, too. Had the government proclaimed martial law and a curfew? Called out the army? Declared a stop-and-search?
    He felt trapped in the one-way street in the stuffy Citroën with this reckless half-drunk. A sudden image came to him, and he began huffing in ragged breaths.
    “You’re sick, Louis?” Gennadi whispered. “Maybe it was that roast lamb. My Mikhail can take you home, if you want. Mikhail, see if there’s something in the glove compartment for him.”
    “No, no, I have my own.” Boucher fumbled inside a coat pocket for his pill case. Throwing his head back, he swallowed a tranquilizer. “My doctor recommended certain pills for my digestion.”
    But the image stayed with him…the liberation of Paris. A convoy of trucks. Resistance fighters jumping out. Swarming over Rue Daru. Slamming him against a wall. Torturing him into confessing his work with the Gestapo, everything.
    The tightness in his chest and legs began to ease. He saw Mikhail tap his impatience on the steering wheel as the last of the motorcade swept past. He saw Gennadi still leaning back out of sight of the policeman. Neither indicated he had noticed anything other than a bad reaction to a meal. Yet the terror of feeling exposed remained. How had he ever let himself get involved in acting as a money finder? That crazy scheme might collapse on him and his family at any moment from any reason. From a policeman conducting a random stop. Or from a criminal investigator. And this time, he feared, neither his contacts or position could save him.

CHAPTER 11
    BEGGAR, THIEF, SPY?
    “What’s the military doing over there?”
    Stanislas glanced up from reading Monsieur Lenoir’s deposition, realized his driver-bodyguard had idled the Peugeot, and said something. Gazing out on the mist-fouled morning, he knew only that they had braked somewhere south of Boulevard de la Villette. The shift of fog along the sidewalk off to his right revealed the presence of spectators. Somewhere a woman pleaded to someone she was frightened and wanted to leave. Through a clearing to his left, he could see a little street barricaded to entry; further down, armored vehicles clustered in front of a building.
    “An anonymous phone tip,” a man with a husky voice answered.
    The man dipped his head, and Stanislas saw he was a motorcycle cop directing traffic past.
    “There’s a huge armament cache uncovered in a warehouse,” the cop explained. “I didn’t believe it till I peeked inside. Stockpiles of AK 47s, helmet-piercing AR-18 rifles, VP70 pistols. Enough to equip one regiment of terrorists. And to turn part of Paris into a slaughterhouse.”
    “I wouldn’t doubt it, the way things are heating up,” the chauffeur said.
    Stanislas glanced at his wristwatch. Whatever some terrorist group might plan didn’t interest him. He had his cases, and he didn’t want to be late for one of them. Could they proceed to the witness’s studio? he asked his driver. He had an