"Where's the woman I married, who promised to love and obey?"

He pushed her toward the back door. She clung to him. "And didn't you promise to have and hold me forever?" She wouldn't go.

Trembling with panic, he raised his hand at her-the first time he ever had.

"Hit me a thousand times, I'll still love you."

He turned away. His heart was bleeding. "If you love me, you'll take our son, keep him safe."

Gaubert waited until Fanny was gone before he answered the door.

Dresden * November 10, 1989 * Friday Evening.

Heinz Felsen was irritated to see the teaching assistant waving to him from the back of Dresden University's full lecture hall. What now? Unless his granddaughter had gone into labor early, they knew not to disturb him during his evening lecture.

"Entschuldigung, Herr Felsen," the TA said, handing him an envelope. "This came priority for you. It's marked urgent."

Felsen took his glasses from the lectern and tore the strip on the yellow-and-red DHL envelope. Inside he found a slip of paper. On it: Go to a secure phone. Dial-in procedure activated.

Wasn't that all over now? He'd once been a low-level Stasi, a communist double agent, but he had been out of the field for years, done his time in a West German prison until he'd been traded. Now he just taught espionage techniques. Questions flitted through his mind. But habit and instinct died hard.

"Take over, finish up the class for me," he said to the TA, handing over his notes. "Make sure you hand out next week's assignment, verstehen Sie?"

Outside the lecture hall, he waved to his teaching colleagues, pointed to his watch and shook his head. No time for their usual evening beer after classes. Out in the Universitt's parking lot, he got in his Russian-made Trabant, drove it out onto the potholed road and past the Stalin-era concrete housing projects. Put Robert Schumann's Sonata in D minor in the tape deck and tried not to overthink this.

He'd taken care of his files long ago. The old boys' network turned up loose cannons sometimes, an erstwhile informer needing money and thinking the world hadn't changed.

The Wall had fallen, for God's sake, and after the semester ended he'd be lucky to have a job. Who knew what this new era would bring.

Twenty kilometers away, he pulled into the Gasthaus. The phone cabin-a working one, so rare these days-was shielded from view from the road by the car-wash exit.

He dialed the number he remembered by heart. A number he hadn't called in ten or more years. Not since he'd been sent back to the East in a prisoner exchange.

"Take this number down," said a voice. The required three-second pause. "Ready?"

He was. Pencil and Nestle chocolate wrapper in hand. Prepared as always, according to Stasi procedure.

He wrote the message down. Hung up. Read it slowly. Then again.

He felt tempted to call back for reconfirmation. Instead he called the number he'd written down with a Munich area code and used his alias.

"It's Willi," he said. "How are the reunion plans going?"

A woman answered. Standard procedure. Only his former handler from the old days would track him down like this to relay a message. Whatever it was, it was important or he wouldn't have gone through such machinations.

"The invitation from Marie got lost," she said. "She wants a reply."

His Paris informer needed to speak to him-his Paris informer from his SS days in occupied France.

After all these years. It would have to mean . . . He sucked in his breath. But no, it couldn't.

His brother.

Heinz twisted the worn gold signet ring on his pinkie. The ring matching the one worn by his brother Gottfried, who'd disappeared in France in 1942. Gott im Himmel. This was about Gottfried-she had information. He knew it. His pulse raced like it hadn't in years.

He drove to the storage facility to visit his locker and withdrew an alternate passport, French francs, and a carton of Ernte 23 cigarettes. At Dresden Bahnhof, he left the Trabant on a side street, purchased a ticket to Paris. In Leipzig, he disembarked, smoked a cigarette on the platform, and used the public phone to call his wife and tell her he wouldn't be home for a few days. The next call was a message for his Paris informer, whom he hadn't seen in forty-five years.

Paris * Friday, 11 P.M.

Aimee knew Vortek, the photographer around the corner from Leduc Detective, kept late hours in his darkroom. She also knew she had to get her film developed right away.

She gave a quick glance behind her in case she'd been followed, but saw only a few taxis passing in the mist. She parked in the garage on rue Bailleul, the narrow street by Leduc Detective, in her grand-pere's spot. The damn sidecar filled up a whole space. She shook wet drops off her grand-pere's motorcycle jacket and nodded to the young attendant, safe and dry in his office, where he listened to the radio.

For a moment she stood below the overhang at the corner of rue de l'Arbre Sec, thinking. Hadn't she done the job-found Suzy and questioned her?

But there'd been another murder. This murder, with the same MO as the murder of Elise's father-how could they not connect? It wouldn't be right not to follow up.

Her hands were still shaking. She couldn't clear the image of the body bobbing in the quai, the old man's blood-matted hair.

What the hell was going on? Was a serial killer attacking old men-old men who met at that chic restaurant?

She wished her father were there, that she could ask him what to do-or, better yet, let him take over, make everything right. But he'd rushed off to Berlin with no explanation. She had no idea how to even reach him.

In the pouring rain she ran across the street and through the opening of a small courtyard. The shop was dark. A steady drip from the gutter beat a rhythm on the cobbles. Wet and shivering, she shouldered her bag and hurried under the passage to the shop's side door.

She knocked. Knocked again. "Vortek, it's Aimee. Please, I need your help." She pounded now. "It's important."

A window shutter on the top floor creaked open. "Quiet out there. We're trying to sleep."

The door cracked open a few centimeters.

"Please, Vortek-"

Then her wet sleeve was yanked forward so hard she almost tripped. "Shh, careful of the steps," said Vortek, "and be quiet."

The shop, which had been a warehouse, was stacked with turn-of-the-century magazines, old press photos, and newspapers halfway to the peaked glass ceiling. In addition to his photography business, Vortek collected and sold vintage photographs, newspapers, and magazines. The smell of newsprint made her sneeze. He guided her toward the door on the far wall, a small office full of index-card boxes whose dates went back to the seventeenth century.

"Call next time. You're lucky I opened the door." A Polish accent tinged his speech. He wore a dark wool sweater, corduroy pants, and slippers. Salt-and-pepper hair stuck out in thick tufts and a scarf was wrapped around his neck. "What's so important?" He lit a cigarette.

"Can I have this film developed?" She handed him the roll she'd taken out of the camera. "Please, as fast as possible."

"It's for your father?"

Her father brought Vortek work all the time. Leduc had an account. Vortek made the best false papers this side of Lodz, her father said.

"You could say that," she said, not wanting to lie.

His gaze hovered on the roll of film. "Then let's say that."

"Prints only. Three copies each. And I want the negatives back." Merde, that sounded nave. Vortek could make prints anyway. She handed him three hundred francs. "We'll keep this off the account for now. How long, Vortek?"

"That's it? And you want a rush order?"

She handed over another hundred-franc bill and nodded.

"I'll call you when it's done. You know the way out." He let her out of the office and disappeared behind another door, offering her a brief glimpse of a small room bathed in red light and dripping photos hanging from a clothesline.

Even using her penlight, she stumbled in the warren of dusty aisles, knocking into a stack of 1900 Paris Illustres. Back outside, she walked in the wet shadows through the covered passage, then back into the downpour, through the sliver of a courtyard and to the street.

She wished she had an umbrella and her boots weren't soaked. She bolted down the narrow cobbled street. In Leduc Detective she took off her wet clothes, kicked the radiator into life, and put on her father's English Hobbs electric kettle.

Wearing her father's oversized Breton sweater and her old riding jodhpurs from her lycee days which she'd just discovered in the back armoire, she scrounged in the secretary's desk drawers for the old-fashioned pair of Charentaise felted wool slippers she hid in her desk. Now at least her feet wouldn't freeze on the wood floor. She found a tilleul sachet of lime flower tea, poured in the hot water, and inhaled the steam. Always good prevention against a winter cold, her grandmother used to say. She'd been gone several years now-how Aimee missed her. Thinking of her grandmother made her wonder about her grandfather and the fluffy puppy he'd brought into the bistro. He had a knack for picking up strays; it used to make Aimee's grandmother shake her head in faux despair whenever ragged mutts followed him home.

Aimee blew her nose, wrote up her notes into a report. She would attach the photos once they were ready. She mulled over her situation. As much as she wanted to get her report to Elise so she could try to get those family photographs of her mother before her father came home, she decided she couldn't rush this anymore, now that she thought there was another related murder. She wanted to confer with her father and see the developed photos first. Her father had forbidden her to take any action on Elise's case, but God knows she needed his advice now. He'd understand, wouldn't he?

But her father wouldn't be in Berlin yet. She could leave a message at the hotel, but which damn hotel? Gerhard would know. Now what was Gerhard's last name?

She thumbed through her father's Rolodex. After five minutes she found Khler, Gerhard in Berlin. Hoped it was the right guy.

She punched in the country code and listened to the ringing for what felt like a long time.

"Ja?" a sleepy voice answered.

"I'm Jean-Claude Leduc's daughter, Aimee."

"Do you know what time it is?"

"Desolee, Gerhard," she said, glancing at the clock. 11:30 p.m. Oops. "Forgive me for calling so late."

"A problem? Are you all right, Frulein-I mean, mademoiselle?"

Finding a murdered man floating by the quai had altered her evening. No need to bring that up. "Fine."

"Mein Gott, when I get a call in the middle of the night-"

"No, I'm okay, it's just-desolee, but where's my father staying? I need to get in touch with him."

"Hotel Altdorf . . ." His voice faded. Came back. "I haven't found those files yet. My contact's gone incommunicado."

She wondered if the files had anything to do with the German couple and that missing husband he'd mentioned before he left.

"The Stasi center's . . . Si . . ." He fuzzed out.

"We've got a bad connection. Please repeat that, I'm writing it down." Not her business, but she should leave the info for her father.

"Sydney Hartman. His relative, he said."

Her breath caught. Her mother.

"Her Stasi file's thick," Gerhard was saying. "Already interest from the Americans. They're willing to pay."

Pay? Pay for files? The news hit her like a punch to the stomach.

"What files do you mean?" Her voice came out broken and small. "Wh . . . where is she?"

"It's . . . bad connection." The phone line or to do with her mother?

Think. Get information before he hung up.

"Who else's interested?"

"Vas . . . ?" His voice wavered.

"Who's interested in her files?"

"Mossad. Tell your father I'll know more tomorrow. Auf Wiedersehen."

Gerhard hung up.

She clenched the phone, shaken. Her knuckles were white.

After her mother had left them when Aimee was eight, Jean-Claude had refused to speak of her, burned her things, acted as if she'd never existed. Had he known where she was all this time? Why had he hidden this from Aimee-why? What else had he lied about?

This gaping pit of sorrow and guilt and rage opened, the pain that never went away.

She rang Hotel Altdorf and left a message with the concierge, asking her father to call her at home as soon as he arrived in the morning.

Sunk in her dark thoughts, she jerked when the phone rang.

"I don't do snuff photos, Aimee," Vortek's voice rumbled with anger.

She'd forgotten to warn him. An amateur mistake. Merde, he'd tell her father. Her father, who'd lied to her.

"I'm sorry, Vortek," she said. "I meant to say those photos go to the police."

"Or to a tabloid or Le Parisien, who would pay a lot for something like this, eh? You skimming off your father now?"