Paris Match(16)

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            THE BLACK VAN was waiting in the courtyard when Stone came down, and there was a lump wrapped in tissue paper on the seat.

            “Brasserie Lipp?” the driver asked, and started to move without waiting for the answer. The guard in the passenger seat handed Stone a small device.

            “There’s only one button,” the man said. “Press it once two minutes before you need us to pick you up. Press and hold as a panic button for a rapid response.”

            “Thank you,” Stone said. He unwrapped the package and found a small 9mm handgun in a holster that clipped onto his belt. His tweed jacket covered it nicely, and it didn’t make a big bulge.

            They pulled out of l’Arrington’s courtyard and into the evening traffic.

            “Hang on!” the driver shouted, and the van began to make quick turns down dark streets, then back onto the boulevards. Stone figured this was precautionary and not due to a threat. They arrived at Lipp at two minutes before eight, pulling up behind a black Mercedes S-Class with darkened windows. He got out of the van as Mirabelle got out of the Mercedes.

            In a moment, they were inside, and the headwaiter immediately showed them to a cozy table well away from the windows.

            “I don’t know if this table is for me or for you,” Mirabelle said.

            “For the both of us, I think.”

            They ordered drinks and dinner.





                     9


            They both ordered the house specialty, choucroute garni, which was a selection of sliced meats on a bed of sauerkraut, and beer, instead of wine.

            While they waited for their food, Stone sipped his beer and had a good look around the place. He had taken the seat with his back to the wall, and he could survey the whole restaurant from there. His eyes stopped at a table across the room.

            “Something wrong?” Mirabelle asked.

            “I’m having a déjà vu experience,” he said.

            “Describe it to me.”

            “It’s last year, I’m having dinner at this restaurant, and two Russian thugs are seated at a table across the way.”

            She looked into the mirror above his head. “Which ones?”

            “The two in dark suits with shaved heads. An inordinate number of the Russians I come into contact with have shaved heads.”

            “I see them,” she said. “They look like their type, don’t they?”

            “They do.”

            “Well, they aren’t going to start shooting in one of Paris’s best-known restaurants. They’ll wait until we’re outside to kill us.”

            Stone laughed. “So we’re two courses away from an ugly death?”

            “But a famous one. We will be all over tomorrow’s papers, and my father and brother will be on TV, separately, promising to destroy our killers.”

            “Why separately?”

            “They don’t like each other very much.”

            “How do they get along with you?”

            “Better than they get along with each other.”

            “That must make for tense family dinners.”

            “There are no family dinners—at least, not with both of them in attendance. They take turns seeing my mother.”