“ISIS.”

Rousseau nodded slowly. “The marriage between hashish and terrorism,” he said, “is as old as time itself. As you know, the word assassin is derived from the Arabic hashashin, the Shia killers who acted under the influence of hashish. Hezbollah, their descendants in Lebanon, finance their operations in part through the sale of hashish, much of it to customers in your country. And almost since its inception, ISIS has been an active player in the drug world, mainly by imposing taxes on product that moves through territory it controls. We now believe the Islamic State has taken over much of the European trade in illicit narcotics. And most of those drugs flow through the organization of one man. The man your friend works for,” he added, tapping the photograph of Nouredine Zakaria.

Rousseau’s pipe had gone dead. Much to Gabriel’s disappointment, the Frenchman reached for his pouch.

“My greatest fear,” Rousseau continued, “was that the relationship was more than financial, that ISIS would use the infrastructure of this man’s distribution network to carry out attacks in Europe. If your British friend is correct, if Nouredine Zakaria supplied the weapons used in London, then it appears my fears have been realized. The question is, was Nouredine operating on his own? Or did he do it with his boss’s blessing?”

“Maybe we should ask him.”

“Nouredine’s boss? Easier said than done. You see,” explained Rousseau, “he’s a very popular man here in France, especially among the rich and well connected. They dine in his restaurants and drink and dance in his nightclubs. They sleep in his hotels, shop in his boutiques, and adorn their fingers and necks with items from his exclusive line of jewelry. And, yes, on occasion, they smoke or snort or inject his drugs. The current president of the Republic is a personal friend. So are the interior minister and a good many others inside French law enforcement. They make certain that uncomfortable questions are never asked and that investigations never stray too close to his business empire.”

“Does he have a name?”

“Jean-Luc Martel.”

“JLM?”

Rousseau appeared genuinely surprised. “You know the name?”

“I’ve spent a lot time in your country over the years. Jean-Luc Martel is rather hard to miss.”

“He’s quite the celebrity, I’ll grant you that. One of our most successful entrepreneurs. At least that’s what they write about him. But it’s all a sham. Martel’s real business is drugs.” Rousseau was silent for a moment. “And if I were to speak these words in my minister’s office, he would laugh me out of the room. And then he would hurry off to dinner at Martel’s new restaurant on the boulevard Saint-Germain. It’s all the rage.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Rousseau smiled in spite of himself.

“Perhaps Martel can be reasoned with,” said Gabriel. “An appeal to his patriotism.”

“Jean-Luc Martel? Not possible.”

“Then I suppose we’ll have to turn him the old-fashioned way.”

“How?”

“Leave that to me.”

There was a silence.

“And if we can?” asked Rousseau.

“It might very well lead us to the one we’re both looking for.”

“Yes,” said Rousseau. “It might indeed. But my minister will never approve.”

“What your minister doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

The Frenchman gave a mischievous smile. “And the ground rules?”

“The same as last time. An equal partnership. I have autonomy abroad, you have veto power over anything that happens on French soil.”

“What about the British?”

“I’ll require the services of the one who speaks French like a Corsican.”

“How much do I know about what really happened with Nouredine Zakaria and those guns?”

“About fifty percent.”

“Do I want to know the rest?”

“Not a chance.”

“In that case,” said Rousseau, “I believe we have a deal.”

Rousseau rang the Interior Ministry and ordered copies of two files, one bearing the name Nouredine Zakaria, the other the name of the man he worked for. The chief of the Registry, a fonctionnaire in the finest French tradition, immediately took issue with the request. Why was Rousseau, whose brief was restricted to jihadist terrorism, suddenly interested in a low-level Moroccan criminal and one of France’s most celebrated businessmen? It was, the registrar pointed out, a rather odd pairing, like red wine and oysters. To his credit, Rousseau did not tell his nemesis that he found the analogy infantile at best. Instead, he pointed out that, as chief of a DGSI division, even a division that did not officially exist, he was entitled to see virtually every file in the French system. The registrar quickly capitulated, though he hinted at a delay of several hours, as the files were quite voluminous. Wasting the valuable time of others, thought Rousseau, was a bureaucrat’s ultimate revenge.

As it turned out, it took slightly less than an hour to locate and copy the files in question. An Alpha Group motorcycle courier collected the documents at 4:52 and by a small miracle delivered them to the rue de Grenelle at eleven minutes past five. There was no disputing the time; the security guard, a recent addition, made a note of it in his logbook, as mandated by the Alpha Group’s new protocols. The guard gave the documents a quick inspection—five hundred pages bound by a pair of metallic clips—before waving the courier into the building. For the sake of his fitness he took the stairs instead of the fickle lift, and at thirteen minutes past he placed the documents on the desk of Madame Treville. Here again, there was absolute certainty regarding the time. Madame Treville made a note of it in her desk diary, which was later recovered.