Page 83 of Under Her Protection

Vivienne looked at the back of Leo's head.

Leo, without turning, reached her right hand back, over the headrest, open, palm up.

Vivienne put her hand in it.

She put her hand in it and she let Leo close her hand around hers, and she let Leo hold it, unseen by Fournier at her left shoulder, unseen by Eric in the driver's mirror, for the ninety seconds it took to cross the place des États-Unis and turn onto the avenue d'Iéna. At the turn Leo let go, and Vivienne let go, and Leo put her hand back on the dash, and Vivienne, in the back, put her own hand flat on her own sternum for the space of one breath, and then took it away.

"Fournier."

"Yes, Madame."

"Reach the board. All twelve. By nine. I want to speak to them, each of them, in person, by midday."

"Yes."

"And Isabella."

"Yes."

"I will call her myself."

"Yes."

The car went through the gate of the Strauss building at six fifty-one. Leo was out before Eric had pulled the brake. The door on Vivienne's side opened, and Leo was there with a hand, and Vivienne, who had been getting out of cars alone in front of her own building for thirty-two years, took the hand.

---

The boardroom on the top floor at seven thirty-four was full.

Vivienne at the head of the glass table with the view of the Tuileries at her back. On her right, PR, three suits. On her left, legal, four suits. Opposite, at the far end, Leo in a charcoal jacket. Next to Leo, standing not sitting, a woman Vivienne had seen on a screen for eleven seconds on the morning she had signed the access order and had not otherwise met.

"Avery Cole," the woman said, put one hand flat on the back of the chair at the foot of the table, and did not sit. "Blackthorn. I am running the data side."

"Ms. Cole."

"Madame."

"I am told you have a list."

"I do."

Avery put a tablet down on the glass. On the screen, in a matrix Vivienne had not, personally, ever seen a PR firm produce for her, was every photograph, every letter fragment, every headline, every social-platform thread, every message-board mention of the Strauss name from six-fourteen to seven thirty-three, and each of them had next to it a small coloured tag. The tags were green, amber, and red.

"Red is in the envelope we recovered from Dr. Kossek's offsite storage in Geneva nine hours ago," Avery said. "Amber is circulating in the public domain but not in our envelope. Green is noise. So far the envelope is, you will note, October of nineteen ninety-eight to March of nineteen ninety-nine. That is consistent with the known window. We have nothing outside that range."

"Good."

"Madame."

"Yes."

"That does not mean there is nothing later. It means we do not, as of the seven-thirty-three cut-off, have anything later. I would like, with your permission, to keep the access your team granted me on Thursday last, and to extend it to the archive on the fourth floor of this building, which I understand Fournier maintains on a separate server."

"Fournier."

"Granted, Madame."

"Ms. Cole."