Page 88 of Under Her Protection

"But."

"But."

"Vivienne."

"Yes."

"I have set up a safe room on the basement level of the Salle des Fêtes. If I say the word 'quai', you will walk with me, not ahead of me, not behind me, and you will not slow down between the Salle des Fêtes and the south-east door and the service stair, and you will not speak in the stair, and you will be in the safe room in seventy seconds."

"The word."

"Quai."

"Quai."

"Yes."

"Copy."

She smoothed a jacket that did not need smoothing.

They went.

In the car Vivienne did not speak. Leo did not speak. Eric drove. The avenue d'Iéna to the pont de l'Alma to the quai Branly to the quai Anatole-France in thirteen minutes, and the lit façade of the Musée d'Orsay at the end of it was gold-pink against a wet sky. Leo was in the passenger seat. Her earpiece was live. Avery was in her ear. Two Blackthorn bodies at the west entrance. Two at the south. Three on the quai. One at the top of the service stair behind the drapery.

At the kerb on the quai, Vivienne opened her door before Leo had got round to it, and stood on the pavement in the black silk with her coat over her shoulders and the wet quai behind her, and Leo, coming round the back of the car, met her at the kerb, and Vivienne, under her breath, only for Leo, said, "Thank you for the south-east door."

Leo did not answer.

She held Vivienne's elbow for the one second the photographer at the top of the steps needed to take the arrival photograph, and released it at the one-second mark, and they went up.

---

The Salle des Fêtes at nine twenty-six was at the height of its noise. Crystal on crystal, shoes on parquet, somebody at the piano playing Satie too slow, the chandelier light at the level the lighting designers had paid themselves a quarter million euros for. Vivienne moved through it. She took the small glass that was put in her hand by a waiter at eight fifty-four and did not drink it and did not set it down. She shook hands. She accepted the small formal double kiss of the patron whose husband ran the foundation's board. She spoke to the British cultural attaché for six minutes, in English. She spoke to a Belgian collector in French for four. She stood in the centre of the room at the height of its noise and ran her own show.

Leo was three paces behind her at every door.

One pace behind her inside every room.

The man named Petit was not there. He had not checked in at the registration table at eight oh-eight. Avery, in Leo's ear, was running the face-recognition software Blackthorn had put on the three cameras Leo had put up at the west entrance, the south entrance, and the quai entrance, and at nine thirty-one Avery said, into her ear, quiet, "Leo."

"Yes."

"West entrance. Twenty seconds ago. He came in with the second catering shift."

"Copy."

"He is not staff. He is in a catering jacket but the jacket is wrong."

"Where now?”

"North service corridor. Heading south. Toward the Salle des Fêtes service door."

Leo put her hand on Vivienne's elbow.

She did not squeeze it. She did not pull. She put her hand there, in the line of movement, and Vivienne, who had been mid-sentence with the Belgian collector, stopped mid-word, finished the word with the collector's own last syllable as if she had planned it, smiled, permitted the Belgian collector to take her hand, excused herself, and turned.

"Quai," Leo said, at her ear.