The Doomsday Conspiracy   ::   Sheldon Sidney

Good morning. I regret I am not home, but there is no danger of my not returning your call. Be careful to wait for the tone. Robert counted out the words in their private code. The key words were: Regret … danger … careful.

The phone was tapped, of course. Li had been expecting his call, and this was his way of warning Robert. He had to get to him as quickly as possible. He would use another code they had employed in the past.

Robert walked along the Rue St Honore. He had walked this street with Susan. She had stopped in front of a shop window and posed like a mannequin. Would you like to see me in that dress, Robert? No, I’d prefer to see you out of it. And they had visited the Louvre, and Susan had stood transfixed in front of the Mona Lisa, her eyes brimming with tears …

Robert headed for Le Matin. Half a block from the newspaper office, he stopped a teenager on the street.

“Would you like to make fifty francs?”

The boy looked at him suspiciously. “Doing what?”

Robert scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to the boy with a fifty-franc note.

“Just take this into Le Matin to the Want Ads desk.”

“Bon, d’accord.”

Robert watched the boy go into the building. The ad would get in in time to make next morning’s edition. It read: “Tilly. Dad very ill, needs you. Please meet with him soon. Mother.”

There was nothing to do now but wait. He dared not check into a hotel because they would all have been alerted. Paris was a ticking time bomb.

Robert boarded a crowded tour bus and sat at the back, keeping a low, silent profile. The tour group visited the Luxembourg Gardens, the Louvre, Napoleon’s Tomb in Les Invalides, and a dozen other monuments. And always, Robert managed to lose himself in the middle of the crowd.

He bought a ticket for the midnight show at the Moulin Rouge as part of another tour group. The show started at two a.m. When it was over, he filled in the rest of the night moving around Montmartre, going from small bar to small bar.

Day Twenty-Two

Paris, France

The morning papers would not be out on the streets until five a.m. A few minutes before five, Robert was standing near a newspaper stand, waiting. A red truck drove up and a boy threw a bundle of papers onto the pavement. Robert picked up the first one. He turned to the Want Ads. His ad was there. Again there was nothing to do but wait. At noon, Robert wandered into a small tobacconist shop, where dozens of personal messages were tacked to a board.