"My Russian's better."

She slipped an envelope over the tablecloth. Inside it was a newspaper clipping, words underlined. He nodded. How he'd taught her. Then another article clipped from Le Parisien with lurid headlines of a murder.

"That's background," she said. "Read it later. But notice this?" She pointed.

His hands went cold as he scanned the photos. "Give me the gist of what's not here."

She applied coral lipstick, blotted her lips with her napkin. Looked around again. "Monsieur Peltier is . . . I mean, was . . . from my quartier, a neighbor down the street. Wealthy, but who isn't around there? My niece saw this article about his murder and, my God, she's upset because she made her First Communion with the daughter, knows the family."

Heinz had forgotten how the woman gossiped. But then that's what he'd paid her for in the past. The Marie he knew had resurfaced.

She noticed his look. "Alors, Heinz, I'll tell it my way. Long story short, at Peltier's funeral, my niece hears he came from a village next to Givaray, where your brother was lost. See, I never forgot."

Heinz folded his napkin. Put it on the table. Irritated, he wished he'd thought this through before jumping on a train a day after the Wall fell.

"Sounds like a coincidence," he said. "It's not even the same village."

He'd seen the death notifications of his brother's unit-his brother was listed as missing in action, whereabouts unknown.

"I left the business, Heinz, but I didn't abandon my contacts." She tugged her diamond tennis bracelet, checked the clasp. "Recently, a German troop truck was found sunken in the river by Givaray. I know an old commissaire who told me that in Givaray sixty villagers were executed in reprisals by your lot. Even the priest's parents. No one in Givaray has forgotten or forgiven."

The reprisals for four soldiers murdered on the night Heinz's brother had disappeared. He nodded. He'd developed a theory, after years of researching in the military archives, that his brother's unit had been guarding a gold train en route to Portugal.

"Go on," he said. He almost snapped his fingers for coffee and service, almost barked orders at the waiter, when he caught himself. Not even here two hours and he could slide back into those old habits. He might have just walked away from a Gestapo interrogation in rue des Saussaies . . .

"Rumor is the mayor of that Vichy village was responsible for the reprisals," Marie was saying. "The village over the river where the Peltiers come from, Chambly-sur-Cher. Only a kilometer away. It even made the Paris papers." She indicated the article he was holding. "That's why I got interested. Remember, Heinz? I promised I would follow up on anything I heard."

She sat silently while he read the whole of the newspaper article.

While engineers surveyed the Cher riverbed to reinforce dikes by the old Roman bridge, they discovered more recent history-a sunken German WWII convoy truck on the river floor by the mill. A far more intriguing war-era discovery than the usual shells and Nazi helmets. Old-time villagers of nearby Givaray insist the German truck links to the murders of sixty villagers who were shot after four German soldiers' bodies washed up on their bank in 1942. "They blamed us, but we'd never seen them before," said a sixty-year-old woman, Pascale Alfort, a teenager at the time. "Who'd be such an idiot? Whoever killed them never came forward." Another old villager who spoke anonymously said Alphonse Gaubert, then mayor of Chambly-sur-Cher across the Cher, had been rumored to be responsible for killing the German soldiers. Rumors continue to this day, according to the anonymous villager, that a fifth German soldier escaped.

Escaped. Heinz's brother's body had never been found. But after all this time . . . "You're saying the mayor, this Gaubert, murdered my brother and the others?"

She shrugged.

"Where is Gaubert?"

"Dead for all I know. In the South of France?" Marie paused. "Is it possible your brother is still alive? In Argentina?"

Even with the Wall, Gottfried would have gotten in touch. Wouldn't he?

Or had he gone AWOL, been afraid to surface? Had he made off with that gold? Maybe over the years he'd bought a new identity and burrowed into another life. That's what Heinz would have done.

After all these years, he wanted closure. Could that be all there was to it-a dead end and a hollow feeling inside?

He couldn't accept that. Not yet. He'd follow this to the end or he'd never have peace.

"Don't you have something for me, Heinz?"

"Have I ever come empty-handed?"

He pulled out the missing persons reports dated 1954 and 1961. The copy of the POW and Red Cross list, the displaced persons camp in Poland, all with whereabouts unknown stamped in red. He'd kept them for years, wondering if this day might come.

"I still check that name every few years." He passed what he had over to her. "But that's the last record I found."

Her shoulders sagged, her eyes deep pools of longing. And for a moment he saw a vestige of the young woman she was-the heartbroken young woman.

"Who was it?"

She opened her lizard-skin handbag, took out her wallet. "Silly, but . . ." A much-thumbed black-and-white photo in a Plasticine case: a smiling boy in short pants with a side part in his hair. "Yves, my little brother."

Heinz nodded in understanding. He turned the pinkie ring on his finger, the initials worn away from years of remembering, like the one worn by his own little brother. At least she had a photo.

"You did include a train timetable here in the envelope?"

"And a ticket, Heinz. I knew you'd want to talk to the priest yourself."

Paris * Saturday, 2 P.M.

Aimee worked on her histology report at the kitchen table, Miles Davis at her feet on the warm tiles. The kitchen was full of the yeasty smells from her grand-pere's rising brioche dough on the counter, where it sat in a bowl covered by a damp dishtowel. Outside the window, low-lying mist, like an old man's wispy beard, wound over the Seine. The gunmetal sky promised rain.

The phone rang. She hoped it was Elise.

"Weren't you going to call me?" said Martine.

"Mais oui, Martine." She'd forgotten. Oops.

"You forgot. How could you-"

"Forget your birthday? Never. In fact I'm wrapping your present right now."

Her eye caught on Miles Davis. She pondered how he'd look with a pink bow.

Martine squealed. "Don't tell me. But I hope it's what I want."

Good thing she'd doubled back and bought that one-of-a-kind silk scarf last week from the Saint-Germain boutique after Martine gushed over it.

"What's with your pager, Aimee? You never answer."

Where had she put the damn thing? She should check it for messages.

"Don't forget the party's Madonna-themed," Martine went on. "You're bringing Florent, of course."

She couldn't tell Martine that going to a party was the last thing she felt like doing. "Alors, Martine, last night . . ."

"Tell me later. I'm counting on you." Click.

Looking at her notebook, she gulped. She had to finish her histology report and make the deadline today. She'd gotten one extension already, couldn't afford to blow this one.

And what could she do with the puppy nestling at her feet? He'd peed twice on the carpet this morning. She couldn't leave him here.

"Allons-y, Miles Davis, time to go to school, okay?" she said, not wanting to move.

In answer he jumped up into her lap.

Fifteen minutes later, the report as done as she could make it, she forced herself to stand and headed to her armoire. The Breton striped shirt and classic cropped cigarette trousers? Or pencil skirt and retro silk blouse?

Her fingers paused on the Chanel. The first treasure she'd found at the vintage stall at the flea market. Her hands had caught on the silk lining of something at the bottom of the bin. A Chanel jacket. Un coup de foudre, love at first sight.

"Une classique. Can't say I remember wearing that, wish I had," said the chignoned middle-aged woman at the flea market stall.

"How much?" Aimee asked.

The worn cuffs didn't detract from the jacket's simple, elegant line.

"Of course it goes with your cowboy boots; un peu chic, tres eclectique." The woman smiled. "Those authentique?"

From her summer abroad in America looking for her mother, when all she'd come back with were the boots.

"Oui, from Houston." Courtesy of a desperate phone call to her father to beg for a money order. "May I try it on?"

And she did, in front of the cracked oval mirror, the stall's merchandise flapping in the wind around her. She surrendered to the silk lining. It breathed style, panache.

"For you, mon enfant, a thousand francs."

Her heart fell. "Not in my budget." She tried to bargain. "It's years old."

The stall owner's eyes narrowed in bargaining mode. "But never out of style. See, even with your jeans, the jacket adds classe. Trust Coco, I've always said. A little black dress or a jacket of hers takes you everywhere."

Eventually Aimee brought the woman down, but still it emptied her snout-nosed piggy bank. Couture, the woman insisted, meant hand-stitched work, fitted lines, something to wear for years-cheap at the price if you consider true quality. And at this price until it rots off my back, Aimee thought, feeling like a sucker all the way home on the bus.

From then on, she added a bit of Chanel if she found a piece at the flea market or consignment shop. Learned how to combine, accessorize with a scarf or old pearls. The goal was to look effortless and tousled, not too studied, spontaneous-the real chic, as madame insisted.

For Martine's party, she donned her cowboy boots, a silk T-shirt softer than skin, and the Chanel, then slipped into her lined leather overcoat.

In the courtyard, her breath fogged as she pulled her bike out from behind the old stable. With Miles Davis wrapped in his blanket in the straw bike basket, she double-knotted her scarf. Her pager beeped somewhere in her bag. She checked, but it wasn't her father or Elise. Annoying. Was the battery low again? She'd deal with it later.

She rode out of her courtyard onto the quai, over the damp leaves and along the Seine. At the corner she turned, narrowly missing the chestnut seller's cart. The aroma of roasting chestnuts and damp leaves-autumn smells-filled the street.

Ten minutes later, she was at l'ecole de medecine, passing the engraved wall plaque honoring doctors who had given their lives in the First World War. In the campus courtyard of Universite Paris Descartes, Miles Davis watered the cobblestones. Aimee turned in her histology report and got a stamped receipt from the department secretary. By then her pager was beeping nonstop, piercing little shrieks. What appeared to be some kind of code in repetitive alphanumerics streamed across the small pager window. Had the thing jammed?

Miles Davis whined and pulled at his leash. Without a working pager, Elise and her father couldn't contact her.

"Isn't there an electronics shop near here?" she asked the secretary.

The secretary put her hands over her ears. "You need Rene."

"Who?" Aimee tried hitting the off button, but the power switch kept sliding. It fell off.

"The only one who understands these infernal machines."

Did she have time?

Piercing shrieks erupted again.

"That's breaking my ears. You need Rene," she said again. The secretary wrote down an address at one of the Sorbonne's science divisions and waved her away.

The Sorbonne's Universite Paris annex in the rear of Palais de la Decouverte reeked of damp paint and mildew. The "temporary" classrooms that had been lodged here since before the Second World War were lined with peeling notices, and there was an old bomb shelter sign-Abri-with an arrow pointing to the cellar. Aimee shivered in the cold warren of passageways. She passed through the student lounge with an upright piano and sagging sofas and found the computer lab, a few terminals bathed in the dirty pearlescent light streaming through tall windows.

The only occupant was a male dwarf with brown, curly hair. He wore a tailored wool coat and clicked away one-handed on a keyboard. With the other hand he popped glistening orange segments in his mouth.

"Bonjour, I'm looking for Rene."

"Pager problems?" he said, a deep voice for a small person. Absorbed in whatever program he was running, he didn't look up.

She set down her bag. Wished she could grab an orange segment. "So you're the pager wizard?"

"Depends. It'll cost if I can fix it."

She didn't care. "I'm desperate."

She noticed his goatee and big green eyes as he looked up and gave her the once-over. "You, desperate?"

In more ways than she wanted to admit.

"Interesting," he said.

Aimee shrugged. "Can you fix it?"

"Give me a second." He stood, flicked the pager over, pulled out the battery, inserted a new one, and attached a new power button.

Handsome little devil, she thought, noting his long torso, short arms, and muscular legs. Tried to remember the answer to last week's exam question-were achondroplastic dwarfs disproportionate and hypochondroplasia dwarfs proportionate, or vice versa?

He pressed the power button several times. Clicked messages. "Hmm. You're getting a message. It looks like what's called 'leeting.'"

"What's that?"

He grabbed a paper and wrote something down. "See, a code like this, using numbers to represent letters. So here 'loser' is 10ser. But this? 3838-well, the first part, 3838, means bebe. and the rest-that's saying back off or else. Looks like someone is threatening you."

A frisson rippled up her spine. "Who is sending them?"

Rene shrugged. "Want my help or not? Leave it and come back later. Or better yet, tomorrow."

"You're kidding, tomorrow? This petite chose?"

But Rene's attention was taken by two male students, one blond and gangly, the other in a jean jacket, striding into the room. Before she could ask how much fixing the pager would cost her, the jean jacket grabbed Rene's arm. She could almost smell the testosterone.

"You owe us, petit," he said. "Pay up."