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Page 32.

16. Mélusine Three Months Ago

The house phone began to ring about one in the afternoon in a small white bungalow in the pleasant Luxembourg City quartier of Belair. Romain and Mélusine Poncelet were both home, enjoying a day of rest. They were an attractive, athletic couple, thirty-something and enjoying life while working hard at their professional careers.

Romain sat in their little study, playing computer games in his underwear with a hot cup of coffee at his elbow. It was homey and relaxing in the semi-dark room among their books, papers, knick-knacks, and electronic gadgets.

She was in the garden, watering her roses with a green rubber hose. If he looked up, he could see her white top, her bright red shorts, and the white band holding her plain, straight brown hair. She wore tapioca-yellow leather gardening gloves.

Mélu rapped on the window with her knuckles. Romi, den Telefon schellt bis op de Plafang. "Romi, the telephone is ringing to the ceiling."

"I hear it," he said reluctantly, swinging his rear out of the seat while leaning forward and continuing with the keyboard and mouse to run down corridors shooting alien invaders. He forced himself to tear away, and picked up the old-fashioned white plastic receiver.

"Allo."

Visible out in the garden, Mélu held the hose with one gloved hand, and wiped sweat off her brow with the back of her other wrist.

It was a PAX contact calling from London. The young woman was native to Longwy, France, not far from the Luxembourg border. The contact had gone to Uni Lux with Mélu and Romain. Professor Sander had been their faculty advisor, and remained their ideological leader as a major intellect of the Progressive Alliance. The woman spoke in French.

Romain's face went gray as he heard the news. While listening on the phone, Romain walked to the window and rapped to get Mélu's attention.

Mélu turned innocently, saw his expression, and opened her mouth in shock and anticipation. She knew immediately that something horrifying had occurred.

Romain made frantic circling motions with one hand to make her come inside.

Mélu dropped the hose. She turned off the water, peeled off her gloves, kicked off her muddy shoes on the doormat in the rear, and rushed inside.

Romain hung up and faced her. "Pierre has been murdered in London."

"No." Mélu froze with a shocked face and open mouth.

"He was shot and left in the back seat of a stolen and abandoned taxi found in Wapping. Police cannot find any fingerprints or leads. It's undoubtedly the work of CEOC hardliners because—get this—his empty briefcase was turned in as lost and found at a bus station near Wapping. Police made a positive I.D. that it belonged to Pierre. When PAX heard the news, they figured out he must have been carrying vital defense data when they robbed and murdered him."

"Oh god. And the data?"

"Gone."

"Does Dr. Sander know?"

Romain shook his head. "I don't think so. We have to drive to Echternach immediately to see him. Whether he knows the news already or not, he will need our support as friends. He will be devastated."

"I would rather be the first to tell him, much as it hurts me," Mélu said.

Pierre had been a drinking buddy of Romain at Uni Lux. Mélu had sometimes gone along with the two men to this tavern or that in Grond or Knuedler. Pierre was single, a handsome and flirtatious bachelor, who always had the prettiest girl by his arm. It was impossible to comprehend that he was dead.

"Why?" Mélu cried as she washed up at the kitchen sink. She paused to lower her face between her elbows, bowing her head. She shook with sobs. Romain rose to comfort her.

Romain shook his head. "There are rumors that he was developing some special aviation technology for a NATO consortium. I think it is called Intelligent Fuselage Skin (IFS)."

Mélu was all the more shocked. "Strange. I have an upcoming contract job for a month in Shanghai, working for Wan Industries. As far as I know, the assignment has something to do with airframes and fuselage components. Nobody mentioned IFS, though."

"Probably top, top secret," Romain said. "The rumors speak of it as the McGuffin."

"Like some sort of code name." She nodded, and stepped into the shower.

She emerged five minutes later naked and toweling herself. "Let's hurry. The poor, poor man."

"Maybe it's a coincidence," Romain said as they hurried in the foyer, gathering street clothes for a quick run of twenty minutes to the Luxembourg town of Echternach near the German border.

"I will find out soon enough," Mélu said.

They walked out to the car and got in. Romain started the engine and backed out of their little driveway onto a narrow, quiet residential street.

Within ten minutes they were on the E29 heading east toward Echternach, Luxembourg's oldest town, famous for its ancient monastery and shrine. It was also famous across the region for its annual Sprangprozessioun or Jumping Procession in honor of St. Willibrord, an English missionary to the Frankish people, who had miraculously cured some local people of St. Vitus' Dance in the early Dark Ages.

Along the way, Mélu called the Professor's house from her cell phone.

Of all possible phone calls in her life, this was the call she least ever wanted to make. She felt a pit of devastation in her stomach as it rang and the professor's housekeeper picked up.

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