Page 11 of Under Her Protection

At seven-oh-four the executive committee filed in.

She sat at the head of the glass table. She did not stand to greet them. The coffee service was already there, which meant Fournier had been in by six-thirty, because Fournier was the only one of them who came early enough to beat her. She had noted that a long time ago. She had marked Fournier for promotion on the strength of the coffee.

Seven of the eight chairs filled. The eighth belonged to Delacroix, who was on a flight from New York and would arrive, if she was honest, in a mood that did not interest her.

"Good morning," she said, in French.

"Good morning, Madame." They said it in a uniform tone that was somewhere between respect and wariness, and today that tone was heavier on the wariness.

"Sit."

They were already sitting.

"You have read the Bellini note."

"Yes, Madame."

"You understand what has happened."

No one answered, because the question was not one that had been asked for an answer. She let the silence sit one beat longer than was comfortable.

Then she said, in French, "Pricing from our August model was in the deck at the Milan meeting on the fourteenth. That deck was seen by eleven people. Five of them are in this room."

She did not look at any of them in particular. She did not need to. The eleven faces around the table rearranged themselves without moving. Blanchet's throat flushed. Fournier's hands settled flat. Delacroix was not here; three of the other four who had seen the deck were staring at her with a kind of determined blankness that told her nothing she had not already expected. Blanks did not interest her. People who looked startled did not interest her. People who did not look startled, this morning, interested her very much.

"I want to be clear with you about what I know and what I do not know," she went on, in English now, which was a courtesy to Hamid, who preferred it. "I know the pricing was leaked. I know it was leaked to Vinciguerra, who used it with enough discipline that Bellini has, as of last night, paused. I know the leak could not have come from Bellini's side without a level of technical sophistication that is not consistent with what I know of his people. I know it came from ours."

Nothing on their faces moved.

"I do not know who. Yet."

Fournier took a small slow breath, which was as much as Fournier allowed herself in a meeting.

"I am engaging outside counsel today," Vivienne said. "I am also engaging outside security. Both of those engagements will begin conducting interviews within seventy-two hours. You will cooperate. You will not be told that you are being interviewed; you will simply notice that every meeting for the next two weeks runs slightly long, and that the questions are more curious than they used to be. If any of you have something you would like to say to me privately before those interviews begin, my door is open today and tomorrow. After that I will assume you preferred it the other way."

Blanchet's flush deepened. That was interesting. Blanchet had been high on her list anyway.

"That is all."

They stood. They filed out. Fournier was the last, which was the Fournier way of indicating availability without making a production of it, and Vivienne gave her a small nod, which was the Vivienne way of saying I will call you when I call you. Fournier inclined her head and left.

The door closed.

Vivienne let her shoulders down a full half inch and looked at the Tuileries.

The coffee in her cup had gone cold an hour ago. She drank it anyway. It tasted of burned paper. It tasted the way mornings tasted after a night one had not slept, and she did not mind it.

She had spent the night here, in this office, at this desk, with two of her analysts on the other side of the glass wall working quietly through revenue models and a timeline that was going to need to be rewritten. She had told them to go home at four; they had not gone home. She had not told them a second time.

At five a.m. she had permitted herself ten minutes on the sofa against the side wall, lying on her back with her hands folded on her stomach and her eyes closed. She had not slept. She had lain there and catalogued the short list of people in her organization who could have walked that pricing model out of the building in a form precise enough to be usable. She had not liked any of the names on the list. She had particularly not liked how short it was. She had stood up at five-ten and had made a second pot of coffee herself, which none of the analysts had dared remark on.

She had lost a deal worth two hundred million euros, and she had lost it to a person in her building. The second fact weighed more than the first. The first was money; the second was a wound, and the wound was one she had not allowed herself for a very long time.

The phone on her desk rang.

"Isabella," her assistant said.

"Put her through."