Vortex by Catherine Coulter

Armament Météore Headquarters

Lyon, France

Tuesday

Henri Delos gently replaced the elegant receiver into its art deco cradle. He preferred it to his soulless cell phone that wanted to be everything, telling him when to exercise, when to brush his teeth. The antique phone had been his grandfather’s, a savvy old pirate who’d founded the Armament Météore at the start of the First World War. He’d sold weaponry and armaments to any country willing to pay his price, except to Germany, of course, because he was, after all, a French patriot. Henri’s father hadn’t appreciated either the phone or his own father and was fast running the company into the ground when he’d keeled over dead from a heart attack. Finally, Henri took over. Henri had expanded into aeronautics and aerospace and, like his grandfather, sold to anyone he could, except the Chinese, who stole the technology from other countries and had the brains and hands to build as many weapons as they wished. His major clients of late were in the Middle East, on all sides, an endlessly profitable place with its bone-deep hatreds and tankers of oil to finance never-ending attacks. Of course, many of his sales were off the books, the profits funneled back into his own pockets. He thought of the lovely little cliffside getaway near Portofino both his wife and his mistress enjoyed. Better in Italy, and not France, no reason to take chances. He’d learned early that dealing with the bureaucrats in the Direction Générale des Finances Publiques required a bit of stealth and subterfuge. As for the Sûreté Nationale, he knew the players, knew whose pockets required a few euros to look the other way, how to skate smoothly through their loopholes. All in all, everything had been working very well in his world. Until now.

He looked over at a painting of his father, done only six months before his death. Tufts of white hair stood up from his bone-white skull and Henri saw a familiar hint of a snarl in his compressed lips. His father had been a vicious drunk, a bad combination for a wife and son but now he was gone, forever. Henri thought of his mother living in luxury with her handmaiden divorced daughter, his older sister, to see to her every whim. When his mother spoke of her husband, it was with near reverence. He’d prefer to believe her myriad medications had altered her memory.

Henri did have to admit the old man had done one thing right. He’d been active in establishing the Organisation for Joint Armament Co-operation, or OCCAR, which had positioned his company, Armament Météore, as one of the actual authors of its export restrictions and their loopholes. Henri himself was a very vocal presence in the European Defence Agency, the EDA, which gave his company a position with far-reaching influence and respect.

Except with the cursed Americans, who bulled their way around Europe, threatening companies with their sanctions, telling them who they could and couldn’t do business with, interfering with their sovereign rights as French citizens to follow their own laws, see to their own interests. Americans sought the role of the world’s peacekeeper, depending on who was in power any given year, but Henri thought them imperialists, like their cousins the now toothless English had been throughout history. What choice did they leave him but to find ways around them? Off the books, of course—disguised shipments through third countries, payments in cash through small regional banks, even using the ancient Persian system of havaleh and its regional brokers to make sure his payments moved across borders secure and out of sight, as they had since the eighth century. No traces of anything to piss the Americans off, all under their radar.

He sighed. All was going so well, until the unexpected cock-up by the Iranian military, and loss of the flash drive that could end with the American CIA tracing it all back to him. It would mean prison and the destruction of his company, and he wasn’t about to let that happen. He’d railed at the Iranian general who’d sent the soldiers after the CIA agent, and he, naturally, had blamed the captain for disobeying orders. And now the flash drive had disappeared as well as one of the CIA agents. Henri had sent his own man to the US to take care of the matter, and he’d failed. Claude Dumont, the idiot, had left a dead man behind, and not just any dead man. Razhan Hasid was an Iranian security agent they’d insisted be involved. Well, that hadn’t worked out as they’d hoped, had it? Henri had no doubt the American CIA would identify Hasid soon, what with all the new computer technology the Americans had. He rubbed his fist into his palm. Dumont’s incompetence was unacceptable, and anyone who worked for him knew it. He hated failure.

In fourteen years he’d had to use mortal discipline only three times. Perhaps now he’d have to make it four if there was any chance the Americans could trace Claude back to him. But how could they? He might give Claude one more chance.

Henri drummed his fingers on his ebony desktop, thinking through the blunders that shouldn’t have happened. For the first time, he felt a tingling of fear. He got hold of himself; he could deal with this.

He rose, walked to the window of his sixth-floor office to stare beyond the thriving city of his birth to the hills beyond, toward his family vineyard. His vineyard now, since he’d saved it from bankruptcy along with the company from his father’s excesses and stupidity.

At a knock on the door, he called out, “Entrez.”

His own personal assistant, Trevor Cavandish, minced into his office, a frown on his face. A dapper little man, maybe five and a half feet in lifts, he was dressed in his habitual too-tight Savile Row suit, a frown on his face. He was older than Henri, at least sixty, and he dyed his hair black as midnight, reminding Henri of a manager for a second-rate cabaret on the Left Bank. Still, he was useful, had the brain of a chess master who saw twelve moves ahead.

“Oui, Trevor? Qu’est-ce qui se passe?”

Trevor knew his boss spoke French only to remind him a Frenchman ruled his life—Henri spoke only minimal French—as a point of pride. Because Trevor was very well compensated, he let it go. His status-conscious boss didn’t know Trevor had been born in Liverpool to two very common parents named Smythe, though he claimed Mayfair in London. He said smoothly, in his carefully learned Oxford Brit, “You are aware the CIA agent, Olivia Hildebrandt, killed Hasid at her house last night.”

“Of course I know. Claude called me, whining.”

“Yes, well, he will arrive within the hour. He wishes to explain what happened to you personally, which, I imagine, will find no favor.”

Henri said, “You of all people know I despise failure. He knows quite well what this could mean. It’s a fine kettle of fish, isn’t that what you English say? I’ve decided to send René to straighten things out.”

“René will not be happy. He enjoys his current mistress in Cannes.”

René had always been a vicious creature who wallowed in death and mayhem. “I hope he doesn’t hurt her since he takes after the old man.” Henri shrugged. “He will do as he’s told.” René was many things, but he understood necessity and financial recompense. He would clean up the mess Claude left in the United States. “I will deal with our clients.”

Trevor knew Henri preferred leaving any killing he needed done to his vicious younger brother. Trevor hoped René would never be sent to visit him.

“We must move quickly. Get René on the phone, Trevor.”