"Close." Bruno grinned. "My cousin saw furniture and paintings lying on the rails. Incredible things flung from the trains."

Looted in Paris by the Germans.

"Common knowledge, Gaubert. Whoever could helped themselves."

He'd heard. Now the French were looting their own.

"So we say a POW found a gold bar on the bombed tracks."

"A POW? They're all gone, non?"

"Remember those Polish POWs who repaired the train tracks last week?" said Bruno. "We could say one of them found it and hid it. If anyone asks, we can deny all knowledge, say the POW didn't give us exact details."

"Sounds thin," said Gaubert.

Bruno shrugged. Exhaled a rush of smoke. "We let Minou think it's equal cuts all around."

"Equal?" Alain spit in the dirt.

"Eight ways," Bruno said. "We say there're others who need to be paid off. So we get everything but one eighth, tu comprends?"

Minou, the blacksmith, was dim but not stupid.

"He's my second cousin," Bruno said. As if that made him trustworthy.

"For God's sake, Minou shoes horses and forges farm tools," said Gaubert. How nave could they be? "There must be special equipment for melting gold. It's not chocolate. He doesn't have those kind of things."

"But the jeweler, Baret, would," said Philbert. "Your old comrade-in-arms, non?"

Gaubert looked at the other three men. Village leftovers: Alain, seventeen, a lug and too young for conscription; Bruno and Philbert exempted as agricultural workers on their families' farms. The existing male village population, almost decimated in the last war, were the disabled like him and those who were too young or needed on the farm, like these.

"Let me think."

"We need to do this now, Gaubert."

"I think better while I feed my cows."

In the pale moonlight, he pitched hay into the cow shed. The cows' soft mewling floated in the night air. His thoughts were filled with Fanny. How he wished he could talk this through with her now.

Part of him didn't want to touch this gold with blood on it; but his hunger threatened to overcome all his scruples. Alain, Philbert, and Bruno's greed shone through; they'd be like rabid dogs when their own hunger set in. Better to wash his hands of this as much as he could. Distance himself. Go to Fanny. Be a father to Gaby.

That was all well and good, but he couldn't undo the damage that had already been done, the reprisals. No matter how far from here he went, he'd never escape that cry of the cheesemonger's baby. The innocents murdered for four men's stupidity and greed.

They had to give the gold back. He remembered Rouxel's note, knew that someday, somehow the Germans would come back for the gold. The puppet Vichy government was a joke. It was only a matter of time until the Boches rolled over the flimsy boundary. They'd blitzkrieged into Poland, walked into Paris.

He decided.

Returning to his barn, Gaubert set the pitchfork down and nodded. "Agreed."

Philbert patted Gaubert on the back. "I knew you'd see reason." The others took up shovels.

"Only on the condition we move the gold."

"You're giving conditions?" Alain, already digging, sounded spiteful and childish. "What gives you the right?"

The right? This damn Alain, an overgrown boy with a pea brain. "Notice whose barn we're in? And whose family's in danger of being shot if it's discovered?"

"Wait a minute, Gaubert," said Bruno. "You're talking like you're the only one at risk."

"My wife and child, your families, the people of Chambly are as innocent as those across the river," said Gaubert, his face flushing. "Who deserves to be executed against the village wall and dumped in a common grave? It's our fault and we have to make it right."

"So getting ourselves shot would make it right? I don't know what you think-"

"At least I'm thinking." He took a breath. Had to get rational, explain it in a way these idiots would understand. "We need to distance ourselves, so if the gold is ever discovered it doesn't point straight to us."

All eyes were on him. He had to talk fast, now that he had their attention. "You saw Rouxel's note. Someday the Germans will come looking for that truck. They know."

"But they're leaving for the Eastern Front."

"Not all of them." Gaubert shook his head. "Do you honestly think whoever went to the trouble of loading a troop truck with gold bars has forgotten? What happens if the fifth German survived?"

Quiet except for the sputter of candles. Gaubert sensed a palpable fear vibrating in the barn. He had them now. "Or that a commander who suspected won't answer to the chain of command? Someone's neck is on the line."

"Gaubert's right," said Philbert. "It's chaos now, but for how long? Let's hide this in the old Bourgault vault in the cemetery."

Philbert, the wheat farmer, made sense when he put in the effort to think.

"Out there?" Alain chopped at the dirt with the shovel. "What if someone steals it?"

"From a decrepit, abandoned crypt? It's in the old section no one visits."

"Anyone could walk right in."

"Anyone who knew it was there, Alain. So far it's only us four."

"I agree with Gaubert," Bruno said. "Alors, if anyone tried to hawk a bar of Nazi gold, they'd be shot on the spot. We keep it away from prying eyes until we have the chance to melt it down."

But Bruno's inflection raised a sliver of distrust. They had something planned. Something Gaubert wouldn't see coming.

Paris * November 11, 1989 * Saturday, Noon.

Aimee stumbled barefoot into the toasty kitchen. Nodded at her grand-pere, who poured her a steaming bowl of dark coffee and topped it with frothy hot milk.

"Bonjour to you, too," he said.

She mumbled bonjour, scrunching her toes against the warm, sunlit tiled floor. Bleary-eyed, she plopped two lumps of brown sugar in the coffee, stirred, and sipped. She sat and tore off a piece of baguette, slathering it with butter from a blue pot. Farm fresh, from one of her grand-pere's friends at the market.

Breakfast was peaceful in her father's absence, since the two men didn't have to sit reading their respective newspapers in stony silence. In the cavernous apartment, they usually managed to avoid each other. More and more, her grandfather spent time at his mistress's.

Her anatomy book sat on the table, next to her report with the photos arranged in a row.

Her grandfather hung up his apron and ruffled Miles Davis's ears. "Our Prince Charming has quite an appetite."

"Where did you find him, Grand-pere?" She dropped the butter knife. "Dognapping's an offense, you know."

"Dognapping? Pah, an abandoned, hungry, homeless thing, shivering on the quai?"

"No doubt the owner's looking for him. Put up signs, Grand-pere."

"Leaving him in such a condition. That's criminal. He needs a name."

"He has one," she told him. "Miles Davis."

"Meels Daveez?"

"Has a penchant for barking, too."

"Vraiment? I didn't hear him."

Of course not, he'd calmed down when she'd let him curl up on her duvet. She couldn't afford to get too close to him; he wasn't hers. Like so much in her life.

"Et alors, Meels Daveez burned my cassoulet, too?"

"Desolee, you know my culinary skills." She tried for an engaging grin, but it came out lopsided. She'd been so tired she'd fallen asleep again before she could clean everything up.

"Don't tell me you take care of your lab instruments like that?"

She winced. Couldn't go into that now. She dunked her buttered baguette in the milk froth, the crisp brown crust soaking up the sweet coffee. Rubbed off the coffee splattered on her anatomy book, pushed it aside with her palm.

Her grand-pere pointed to the photo of the man's body in the water.

She shuddered. "Last night. I found him like that. Floating by the quai, the same spot where they found Peltier, our relative. I couldn't get it out of my mind."

"So this man took a bullet and got left for fish food, too?"

She gulped down a mouthful of tartine. Nodded. "Remember at Le Soleil d'Or, when the police Zodiac sped by on the river? All those flics near us responding to an emergency?"

Her grand-pere pulled up the stool. Tore himself the heel off the baguette. "You've got my attention." He threw a crumb at Miles Davis, who skittered across the floor, his nails clacking like tap shoes. "Start from when you left me with le petit prince."

She explained her conversation with the bartender, how things didn't add up, the terrible coincidence of Peltier's friends dining together the night before, the man's bloated body. She showed him the photos.

"Coincidence, Aimee? I don't think so. Sounds planned and methodical. The killer knew this circle of men meets monthly. He's knocking them off one by one. It's got hallmarks-conforms to the previous MO. Symbolic, I'd say, ritualistic."

"Or the killer's making it look symbolic to throw everyone off."

"You sound like your father," he said.

But she heard a quiet pride in his voice.

"Passionate, too. As I was at your age." Wistful, her grandfather played with the pepper grinder. "It's smart to view a murder case from different sides. Investigate until it leads somewhere-or nowhere-then pursue the next angle."

Aimee's hand slipped on the coffee bowl. "A murder investigation?" she choked. "It's not my case. Elise hired Papa to find Suzy. I stepped in. C'est tout. I'll finish the report and deposit the check."

How furious her father would be when he found out.

"Of course." Her grand-pere nodded. Stood.

"I mean it."

"Bon, I'm late for a minor masters auction at Drouot. A steal if my bid wins."

Why did her hands quiver? Her gaze kept being drawn to the photo on the quai.

Her grandfather paused to look down at the photo again. "Aimee, you did notice the weapon, non?"

"The weapon?" She looked closer. "There's no gun, Grand-pere."

"Come, come, you're more observant than that."

"I see candy wrappers. I noticed he is wearing a prosthesis."

Her grand-pere nodded. "Anything else?"

"A water bottle."

Another nod. And then she remembered once overhearing some men at the police firing range talk about silencers.

"You mean that plastic bottle was used as a silencer? This Vichy mineral bottle?"

"And you don't call that symbolic?"

Her pager indicated one call. Her father? No, Martine, her best friend since the lycee who studied journalism at the Sorbonne. Martine could wait for a few minutes. She tried the Berlin hotel, heard a series of clicks.

"Hotel . . ." Fuzz and buzzing, then the line clicked off.

A bad connection. Had the falling of the Wall disrupted the lines? On her third attempt she got through.

"Herr Leduc, you say he has a reservation?"

"Hasn't he checked in?"

"I don't see his name."