Page 82 of Under Her Protection

Vivienne came in behind her.

"Mademoiselle Cole."

"Madame."

"Dinner."

"Yes."

"Downstairs."

"Yes, Vivienne."

She turned from the window and followed her out.

Leo didn’t know quite what was between them, but it felt more powerful than she could control right now.

15

The first image hit the wires at six-fourteen on Wednesday the first of December.

Vivienne read it in the back of the car on the avenue Marceau at six nineteen, Fournier at her left shoulder, Eric driving, Leo beside Eric in the passenger seat, and the image was black and white, twenty-five years old, grainy, of Vivienne at twenty-seven and Lara at twenty-five on a terrace in Zurich with the lake behind them and Lara's hand at the small of Vivienne's back. The second image came at six twenty-three. The third and fourth at six twenty-six. The subscriber-only finance bulletin had been the first venue, and then the news desks had picked it up at six thirty-eight, and by six forty-two there was a headline on Le Monde's business page that read, in English, at the top of a feature box below the fold, PRIVATE LIFE, PUBLIC COMPANY. QUESTION OF JUDGMENT FOR STRAUSS.

The feature box had a letter in it.

The letter was her handwriting.

She did not need to read it. She had written it in October of nineteen ninety-nine on a single piece of cream paper at her grandfather's desk in Zurich, and she had posted it herself, and she knew, to the line, what was in it. The lines were now on the screen of a telephone in her hand in the back of a black car on an avenue in the eighth arrondissement on the first of December at six forty-two in the morning. It was her handwriting. It was the four cowardly paragraphs. It was the sentence she had composed in her head at the cafe opposite the post office with her coffee going cold and her hand, then, steady.

Her hand, now, was not steady.

She put the phone face down on her thigh.

"Fournier."

"I see it."

"Everybody."

"Le Monde, the Financial Times, Bloomberg, and three of the German papers have picked it up as of six forty-two. The Telegraph will be in the next window. Twitter is, as one would expect. Our own legal team has been alerted. PR are in the building, Madame."

"Good."

"Madame."

"Yes."

"Dr. Kossek has not, so far, been named in the reporting. The framing is that the correspondent was a woman in Zurich whose present identity has been withheld."

"Mm."

"For now."

Leo, up front, had not turned around. Her hand was at the earpiece. Her voice was low. "Avery, are you on? I need the PR team schedule forward by two hours. I need you in the Strauss boardroom by seven thirty, not nine. I need a clean image list of everything that is in public circulation before you walk in. And I need a read from your end on whether the envelope includes anything after nineteen ninety-nine."

A pause.

"Copy."