"You got me, Georges. Eh, but just between us?"

He shifted into second. Checked the rearview mirror. "There's been a German here asking questions."

The Boche Madame Peltier saw-just before she had a stroke.

"We've got twenty minutes or so, non?" She pulled out her anatomy notebook. "And I won't quote you-I'll just say an anonymous source. And along the way, I need to buy some tape."

She jumped on the train, threw her bag up in the rack, and settled in with her new roll of tape to repair her smashed pager. Once she'd reinserted the battery, voil, the thing worked. Wonder of wonders.

She kicked her boots off and started reading Ducray's file of information. Immersed, she barely noticed the glow of a November sun laying a russet orange over the rolling green fields, or the lulling schwa schwa of the wheels over the tracks. Two impressions stayed with her: Givaray, a bustling village, and Chambly-sur-Cher, lifeless-as if poisoned. Poisoned by the past. Shouldn't it be the other way round?

She reached in her pocket for the photo she'd pocketed from Elise's collection. Youthful Dufard and Peltier with the mayor, Gaubert, and the little boy.

Her pager showed a number. She didn't know it.

When the train stopped in Lyon, she jumped off onto the platform, ran to the pay phone and dialed.

"Oui? Who's this?"

"It's Rene . . ." The rest of his answer got muddled amid the loud speakers. Passengers rushed to the train, dragging children and suitcases.

"Rene, can you meet me at Gare d'Austerlitz in half an hour?"

"Make it forty-five minutes, upstairs at le Train Bleu in Gare de Lyon."

The train conductor blew a whistle.

"Rene, but that's not-"

"Le Train Bleu. Upstairs. I want breakfast."

Breakfast this late? But he'd hung up. The train to Paris was pulling out of the station with her notes, the damn file. She took off, jumped over an old woman's suitcase, pumped her legs. Leapt onto the train car's steps as the train gathered speed.

"Let me get this straight." Rene's short legs dangled as he leaned forward. He looked around, sipped his fresh-squeezed orange juice. "Sabotage?"

She whispered, "Non. I just need info on a company called Foundry, Inc. I thought you could use your computer skills to help me find what I'm looking for. You know, use your computer to get into their computer-people can do that kind of thing, right?"

Pause. His folded Le Monde sat beside his late breakfast: croissant, orange marmalade, yaourt de nature, and a stiff double espresso. The front page was hoopla about the opening of I. M. Pei's pyramid at the Louvre. "You mean hacking? That's illegal." Rene pulled a laptop out of his briefcase. "Shame on you, trying to lead me into a life of crime. Why don't you do it yourself?"

She would if she could. And if she had a computer. "Why, when I can ask an expert like you?"

"Who said I'm an expert?" He sipped his orange juice.

"Your card does, in case you hadn't noticed." She pulled out his card. "Says you can rebuild a computer, rehab motherboards. So you should be able to weasel into them too, non? How about deciphering a floppy disk?"

Rene set down his glass. Shrugged. "I'm expensive."

Playing hard to get? "So you keep saying. And worth every franc, I'm sure." She pulled out the floppy disk she'd taken from the bookstore. Checked the time. Merde, she had a biology study group! She signaled the waiter with the long white apron for the check.

"What's that?" Rene was peering at Ducray's thick stapled file.

"Railway manifests. I need to figure out what stock the Germans were bringing in from Portugal in 1942." She pulled out her worn Vuitton wallet. "Talk about a headache."

"Wolfram."

She blinked. "Eh, c'est quoi ca?"

"Wolfram ore, also called tungsten. The German army plated tanks with it."

Did he know everything, this man of short stature with the liquid green eyes?

"A history buff, too? I'm impressed." She leaned back in thought. "Did they pay Portugal in gold?"

"Bien sr. The only way Salazar would do business. Gold up front shipped in trains and the return-trip boxcars filled with tungsten." He adjusted his tie.

She pulled out Ducray's old rail map. Studied it.

"So according to the checkered history," she said, "would-be Nazi gold, plundered from murdered Jews, would leave occupied France on trains bound for Portugal's tungsten deposits via Spain?"

"More or less." Rene nodded.

That meshed with Ducray's findings.

"After the war," said Rene, "rumor goes, Nazis escaped through Allied hands on these same tracks."

"One problem solved," she said.

"Any more?"

"What ever happened to the fifth German?"

"Now I could sink my teeth into something like that. Sounds like that thriller I read. A Ludlum."

"So we agree on your price . . ."

"I said I'm expensive. That's all. I won't decide until you tell me what the hell it's all about. Then I balance the risk."

Cautious, smart, stubborn, a kick-ass machine. He pissed the hell out of her. She'd like to work with him.

"I can't prove everything yet," she said, "but in a nutshell, in 1942 during a flash flood, five German soldiers in a troop truck recovering gold from bombed-out train cars get lost. Some farmers from this village, Chambly-sur-Cher," she pointed to the map, "plus maybe the village mayor, murder the five Germans, or so they think, empty the gold out, and dump their truck in the river. Four German soldiers wash up in the village on the opposite bank, Givaray. The Germans shoot sixty villagers in reprisal."

She took a breath.

"That's a nutshell?"

"There's more. The Chambly-sur-Cher mayor is executed later, supposedly by the Resistance. But now, more than forty years later, two of the four remaining farmers who took the gold have been murdered. Copycat style-just like the mayor's execution."

Rene raised his pudgy hand. "Dites-moi, how does this involve the fifth German?"

"Madame Peltier, the first victim's widow and my distant relative, suffered a stroke. She said the fifth German has come back. Meanwhile, a man with a German accent has appeared, wanting to see this old truck." Aimee gave him the rundown of her visit to Chambly-sur-Cher. "For years these men bribed the villagers to keep quiet. Meanwhile they left the village for residences in le triangle d'or. And now Elise, Madame Peltier's daughter, is afraid the two other farmers are trying to prevent her from assuming control of Foundry, Inc. as all had agreed."

Rene whistled. "They melted Nazi gold, laundering it through their company, Foundry, you're saying? Reminds me of something Balzac wrote-behind every great fortune is a crime." He inserted the floppy into his Compaq SLT-286 laptop, a model she'd lusted after. "And what do you want from me, exactly?"

Doubt hit her. Did she want the only extended family member she'd ever met slapped in the face with more of the ugly truth? How could she make Elise face the kind of person her father had been? The murders he'd been involved with, the lies. But wasn't he also a victim?

Fragmented loudspeaker announcements called out train departures. "The 15:07 to Limoges . . ." Get back to the task, her father would say. Focus. Follow up. She'd need Rene's help to learn more about Foundry.

But she was done, wasn't she? Her paying job was over. And hadn't Elise used her, trading on a distant family tie, suckering her in with talk about Aimee's mother?

But Aimee's gut said Elise was the one being used. It was only instinct, not something she could formulate into coherent thought, but Aimee couldn't shake the idea that Elise wasn't one of the perpetrators here-and that if Aimee didn't help her, she might become one of the victims.

The mouse was out of the hole, as her grand-pere would say, no stopping things now.

"Ground control to Aimee," said Rene, waving his short-fingered hand in her face. "You back on the planet?"

Aimee pulled out the wad of francs Dufard had stuffed in her bag. Peeled off several five-hundred bills. "Hope you take blood money."

"What?" Rene's eager eyes clouded.

"Squeamish?" A heaviness filled her. "I guess I want Elise to know the truth. Where the fortune came from and what she's signing on for. Once we show her, it's her decision."

Rene hadn't picked up the bills. Stared at them, crumpled and dirty in the low afternoon glow coming from the high windows.

"Do it for the Givaray families whose sixty innocent relatives were slaughtered in revenge for a crime they didn't commit." She shivered. She pushed the photos across the table. "All Georges Ducray has to remember his papa by is an old photo. It's different when you meet a human affected by this."

"You're making this personal, Aimee. Looks to me this Georges Ducray's a possible suspect. "

"Maybe you're right, Rene. Still, can you just let a murderer steal the gold those sixty innocent people died for?"

Rene was staring at the photo of Dufard, Peltier, the mayor, and the little boy. "They were executed, too?"

"Non. This photo is from Chambly-sur-Cher." She told him what she knew about each of the men in the picture.

"There's something familiar about that man, the mayor," said Rene. "Too bad it's blurry."

Rene shrugged. "Puzzles intrigue me. Still, without more info, this is a wild-goose chase."

"Plenty of meat to chew on here, Rene. I know someone who knows someone at the mairie's archives."

Rene's brow knit. "Alors, it's pro bono. I don't care for blood money." He handed the cash back. Checked his laptop. "The disk's files are encrypted. I need to open it with a program back at the computer lab."

"Merci, Rene."

She glanced out the door at the station clock, whose hour hand was on the 4. Late, so late already.

Rene stuck his laptop inside his bag, stood up. Grunted. The laptop had to weigh close to ten kilos. "Contingent on one thing, Aimee."

What now?

"Next week you're taking me to Martine's sister's party at ELLE."

Paris * Late Sunday Afternoon Aimee rushed up the stairs of Ptisserie Viennoise, a student haunt on narrow rue de l'ecole de Medecine. She loved the homey, wood-paneled old-style Viennese bakery. The butter smells. And its pastries.

Her study group, at a back table, had gathered their books and were already breaking up. "Late as usual," said Serge, the group leader. "C'est fini."

Merde.

There was Florent, blond hair tousled, wearing a wool scarf she recognized as the one she'd forgotten in his apartment. Her insides wrenched as she watched him help a woman into her jacket. His new fiancee? Talk about throwing it in her face.

"Desolee," she said to Serge. "Here's my section summary. I'll get copies to the others."

"We've covered the section already. Handed out exam study questions."

Already? How could she catch up?

"I saved you one." Serge handed her a stapled sheet. "We're eighty percent sure of the exam questions."

Stunned, Aimee scanned the sheets. "Don't they call this cheating?"

Serge's eyes clouded behind his thick lenses. "Your boyfriend had already shared copies before I got here. Ethics matter little to first years. You do anything to make it into second year. You know that."

"Report him, Serge."

"I did once. Like that made a difference."

It made her sick. One of her fellow study groupers stashed the paper and winked at her. How could this be fair, or make for a good doctor?

"You think it stinks?" said Serge. "Just wait until the exam."

"So only those students in the right study group will have a chance of passing? How do you go along with it?"

"I don't. But I've wanted to be a doctor all my life. I'd rather fight to be a forensic pathologist than battle an archaic medical system." Serge shrugged.

Just as corrupt as the flics-where only the inner circle got the leg up. No wonder her father had been glad to leave the force.

She turned on her heel.

Halfway down rue de l'ecole de Medecine, she felt a hand on her shoulder. "What's the hurry, Aimee?"

Florent pulled her close before she could stop him. His warmth, that smell of his-a trace of musk and lime-were so familiar it was hard to push him away.

"Where's your fiancee?" she blurted. Stupid. She wished the cobblestones would crack open and swallow her and her big mouth.

"That's not important." He brushed her hair from her eyes. "You're important." He pulled her into the doorway of a bar, kissed her hard.

By the time she came up for air, his arms had circled her under her jacket. "We're going here for a drink and you'll understand why."

She caught her breath. "What's to understand?"