Page 30 of The New Girl

“Where’s our first stop?”

“I thought we should have a look at the crime scene.”

Sarah took another bite of the sandwich. “Are you sure you won’t have one?”

“Maybe later.”

“The sun has set, Gabriel. You’re allowed to eat.”

She switched on her overhead reading lamp and opened the dossier that Paul Rousseau had slipped into Gabriel’s attaché case as they were leaving Alpha Group headquarters. It contained a surveillance photo of Khalid and Rafiq al-Madani aboardTranquillity. Gabriel gave it a sidelong glance before returning his gaze to the road.

“When was it taken?”

Sarah turned over the photo and read the DGSI caption on the back. “The twenty-second of August on the Baie de Cannes.” She scrutinized the image carefully. “I know that expression on Khalid’s face. It’s the one he adopts when someone is telling him something he doesn’t want to hear. I saw it for the first time when I told him I didn’t want to be his art adviser.”

“And the second?”

“When I said he would be a fool to spend a half billion dollars on a suspect Leonardo.”

“Have you ever been aboard the yacht?”

Sarah shook her head. “Too many bad memories. Every time Khalid invited me, I always made up some excuse to turn him down.” She looked at the photograph again. “What do you suppose they’re talking about?”

“Maybe they’re discussing the best way to get rid of a meddlesome journalist named Omar Nawwaf.”

Sarah returned the photograph to the file. “I thought Khalid was going to cut off the flow of money to the radicals.”

“So did I.”

“So why is he hanging out with a Wahhabi true believer like al-Madani?”

“Good question.”

“If I were you, I’d put him under surveillance.”

“What do you think I was doing downstairs at the embassy?”

“I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t invited.” Sarah drew another photograph from Rousseau’s dossier. A man and a woman sitting at separate tables at Brasserie Saint-Maurice in Annecy, each holding a mobile phone. “And what do you supposetheywere talking about?”

“It can’t be good.”

“They’re obviously not Saudi.”

“Obviously.”

Sarah studied the passport photo. “He doesn’t look British to me.”

“What do British people look like?”

Sarah unwrapped another sandwich. “Eat something. You’ll be less surly.”

Gabriel took a first bite.

“Well?”

“It might be the finest sandwich I’ve ever eaten.”

“I told you,” said Sarah. “Everything tastes better in France.”