Notes
Hypothetical casting:
Stanley Weber as Nicolas Prieur
-o-
As promised, she sent him the address and time of the rendezvous shortly before five-thirty. He went home, left his work bag there, and came out a little later, heading for a bus stop along Van Ness Avenue. There he took a bus which took him north to Fisherman's Wharf. Near that famous part of San Francisco was Chez Luc, the restaurant in front of which Sophie had given him a rendezvous at seven o'clock. He saw her near its entrance, in the company of a man in his early thirties, brown-haired, with a thin moustache and a short, well-trimmed beard which went well with the harmonious features of his face. Sophie was tall but that Nicolas was a few centimetres taller than her and had an equally slender body kept in shape by regular sports activity. Guillaume could easily imagine him jogging every morning in one of the city's parks.
Seeing her long-time friend arrive, Sophie caught his attention with a wave.
"Guillaume! We're here!"
He replied with a nod and as he joined them, Nicolas greeted him:
"Mr Vuillier. Good evening. Sophie told me you were going to join us."
They exchanged a handshake and he added:
"Let's go in. I reserved a table on the terrace."
A few minutes later, they were seated at their table on the terrace overlooking the bay. A waitress came to bring them appetizers and Nicolas ordered a bottle of red Bordeaux.
"She told me that you were an old friend and that her father had been your superior for a while," Nicolas told the WDMC director while pouring wine into their glasses.
Guillaume, who had just received a message from Michaela Kelly, put his cell phone away and looked up to look at him. He had told her that he was at the restaurant and that he wouldn't be able to call her back until later.
"Yes, Jean-Yves and I write to each other from time to time. I first met Sophie when she was eleven."
"I see."
"She had long hair back then and she was very thin. But she was already a very determined fighter," Guillaume continued. "I still remember that time when she beat me in a race at the Parc de la Tête d'Or (*)."
"I remember that too," Sophie said. "You ran well but I still beat you flat."
"I spared my efforts to let you win," the WDMC director specified.
Sophie sketched a slight smile then brought her glass to her mouth to drink some wine.
"Where are you from, Guillaume?" Nicolas asked.
"From the Ain."
"You're from the provinces?"
From the provinces? Guillaume repeated in his head. Great, a Parisian…
"Yes," he replied, slightly annoyed by the term. "And?"
"It's just that it surprises me to see someone from the Ain holding the position of General Director of a UN agency in the middle of an American megalopolis."
"Let's say I was lucky… Anyway, what do you do for a living, Nicolas?"
"Import Export. I'm in charge of the sale of certain French products in the United States."
"Since when do you live in this country?"
"It will be eight years soon."
"Eight years," Guillaume repeated. "I guess you must know the area much better than me."
Then a waitress, a chubby young woman, arrived to take their orders.
"Good evening ladies and gentlemen, have you made your choice?" she asked.
"Yes. I'm going to have stuffed pork fillets with apple Riesling sauce," Nicolas answered.
"A Cioppino, please," Guillaume said.
"As for me, it will be a blanquette of veal," Sophie said.
"I'm sorry Mrs. but it won't be possible for the blanquette," the waitress told her. "We had a delivery problem and we no longer have the mushrooms for the blanquette. However, I can suggest..."
"No. I want a veal blanquette," the DGSE agent cut her off. "Whether it has mushrooms or not."
"But Mrs. ... Without the mushrooms, the blanquette loses a bit of flavor. Wouldn't you rather…."
"You heard me," Sophie said firmly. "A veal blanquette, without mushrooms in that case. Please."
"Very well, a veal blanquette without mushrooms for Mrs.," the waitress conceded, intimidated.
Meanwhile, Guillaume had remembered that colleagues had gone to this restaurant and had recommended the herrings with the potatoes in oil.
"I have a question. I've heard good things about the herrings with the potatoes in oil. Would it be possible to have some as a starter?"
"Sure. The boss will bring you a ramekin, so can you have a taste."
"Thank you," the WDMC director said with a smile.
The waitress finished taking down their orders and headed back inside.
"Are you planning to go to those godforsaken islands?" Nicolas asked later, as Guillaume talked about his scheduled visit to the Five Deaths. "There's nothing but stupid big lizards and barbarians still stuck in the Middle Ages. A no-go zone, that's what this archipelago is. Someone better clean it up."
Shocked by those remarks, Guillaume could not help cringing. He put his spoon back on his plate of Cioppino, looked Nicolas in the eye, and, in a calm but firm tone, replied:
"Nicolas. I'll let you know that I have colleagues there, and they've never complained about the Grey Guards. Some are even among their best friends. Let me guess, dinosaurs would also be affected by this clean-up?"
"Why not? They're just lizards. InGen has others."
"And what about the scientific value of their wild populations?"
"Scientific value?" Which one? We can't get anything out of it. In all honesty, I think the United Nations are throwing their money away with these islands."
It was then that their waitress returned to inquire about their opinion on their food.
"How's your blanquette?" she asked Sophie.
"It's good," replied the latter with an enthusiasm quite restrained to say the least.
She then turned to Nicolas.
"And your pork fillets, sir?"
"Very good, thank you."
The waitress then inquired with Guillaume, who also replied positively, then she left to take care of other customers. Nicolas turned his head to follow her with his gaze for a moment, then returned his gaze to his plate.
"Quelle conne," he said. "The sauce has a funny taste."
Discreetly, Guillaume let out a sigh.
What an asshole! he thought.
"Going back to the question of the Five Deaths, I think it would be a good idea to disband the Grey Guard," Nicolas said. "They may be good guard dogs but nonetheless rambunctious dogs and one day their leash will eventually break and they may well turn against their former allies."
"To say that the guy who led the insurgency on Nublar was French," Sophie added.
"He was French?" Nicolas asked in a tone which felt weird to the WDMC director's ears.
"Yeah, a psycho who served them under a false name. At the DGSE, we know him as the Black Lion. Before, he had worked for the Gaddafi regime in the 1980s and trained Tutsi militias in Rwanda at the time of the genocide."
"Where was he from?"
"From Franche-Comte, I believe."
"From Franche-Comte?" He repeated before bursting out laughing. "That land of peasants whose houses are thatched barns where boors drink in the reek while their brats roll on the floor with the dogs?"
Guillaume, whose nerves were beginning to be worn down by Nicolas's various remarks and his unpleasant attitude, wanted to retort with very degrading words about Parisians, but he held back out of decorum.
"Tell me, Nicolas, did you often leave Paris before moving in the United States? He retorted in a calm but stern tone.
"Why this question?"
"Oh, for nothing..."
"Anyway, it might be not surprising that this red neck found a home in a place like Isla Sorna, among people who are resistant to change."
"Stop, you remind me of the ones we have at home," Sophie told him. "Half-wits who can't even align two words and dare to make blockades. When I hear about them, I want to slap them. The Giflés jaunes, that name would suit them well. Fuck," she cursed.
"And they act like if they were the victims of media and the police," Nicolas added. "They're funny."
"It's been a long time since I've had an extended stay in France, but I know that life is getting more and more expensive there, like elsewhere," Guillaume said. "And when we see that Jupiter likes to please his rich friends while being slanderous towards the working classes, it is not surprising that some of the latter are indignant."
"I forgot to tell you but he isn't a big fan of Manu," Sophie whispered to Nicolas.
"Who did you vote for two years ago?" The latter asked the WDMC director in an almost provocative fashion.
"I voted blank."
"Okay."
Actually, Guillaume had not voted blank but he did not want to share his political opinions with a man he had just met and whom he absolutely did not want to see again afterwards. He was ashamed to share his table and came to regret his decision to dine with them.
Night fell and for the rest of the dinner he avoided discussing politics with them and even remained fairly quiet. Then came the time to pay the bill and leave the table.
"Go ahead, I have to go to the bathroom," he said to his two compatriots.
Once they were far enough away, he walked over to their waitress and handed her a tip. Of course, Sophie and Nicolas had left none.
"For your trouble," the WDMC director specified. "I apologize for the behaviour of my two compatriots."
The waitress looked at the tip, grabbed it, and looked up.
"Oh thank you," she replied shyly. "Is your blonde friend always like that?" she asked after a silence.
He sighed. Sophie had changed since the last time he had seen her, she had become more arrogant and unpleasant, as if her incorporation within the DGSE had gone to her head. The young teenager with whom he had run at the Parc de la Tête d'Or seemed to him to be a completely different person and he wondered if his old friend Jean-Yves had noticed this change in behaviour in his daughter.
"I haven't seen her in years. She was always a rich kid who was a little too pampered, but she was more sympathetic. If the man who was with us ever comes back here, don't do him any favours. He is a slanderous jerk who insults people behind their backs."
"Okay. I'll tell the boss about it."
"Good evening, miss."
"Good evening, sir."
Guillaume left the restaurant, joined Sophie and Nicolas in front of the entrance and after a short discussion, he took leave of them, feigned a polite farewell with Nicolas, and went to hail a taxi further down the street.
While it was driving towards Lafayette Park and he still brooding about Sophie, Guillaume looked at the time on his phone: Nine O'Clock.
Midnight on the east coast, he calculated. Michaela may still be up.
He called her.
"Michaela? Yes it's me. I received your message just now. Do you have anything new?"
"Oh yes, I've got news! You have no idea what tricks I had to do to get my hands on these documents. You owe me one."
"Don't worry, I'll make it up to you. If you're in San Francisco..."
"Instead of thanking me, open the attachments and let's talk about it now so it's settled," Michaela cut him off. "I would like to go to bed."
Guillaume opened the attachments associated with the email and saw that two of them were pictures, taken from CCTV footage. One showed a sidewalk and the entrance of an alley, and the other a hallway in what appeared to be a research building. Both pictures featured the same man, a bearded, broad-shouldered Latino in his late thirties. He read the captions: The first photo was taken in Norman, Oklahoma on August 19, 2011 and the second at MIT in Cambridge on August 26, 2011.
"That man. He was at Norman when Darren Logan died. And at the MIT when Ted Morrison's lab exploded," he noted. "Who is he?"
"Ulises Mendez. A Costa Rican. You'll never guess who he worked for."
"Who?"
"InGen Security! He was part of their elite commando, the Slayers. Many of them were former American soldiers, mercenaries but also people excluded from the armed forces for various serious crimes, but there was also a guy from Congo and several Costa Ricans such as our friend."
"I've read about that death squad. The presence of this Mendez at the scene of the death of two of the geneticists cannot be a coincidence. They and the other five were working on something and InGen ordered this Mendez to get rid of them. But who?"
"Do you know who the CEO was at the time?"
Who was CEO of InGen in 2011? Guillaume wondered. Shit, I don't remember. Lynton took the position only in January 2018, before her it was Lockwood but since when did he held that position? I don't remember either… Ludlow died like a turd in the San Diego incident so we can forget him. Who succeeded him? Wait... I don't think there was anyone between him and Lockwood.
"Lockwood. I believe it was Benjamin Lockwood," he answered.
"Do you think he could have been behind all this?"
"Hard to tell. Another senior executive could be the one who gave the orders. I wouldn't be surprised if it was Lynton. She's been in the board for a while. That woman is ruthless. She is ready to do anything for InGen. Even ordering assassinations and starting wars. Why did InGen wanted those scientists dead?"
"At first I thought they were working for the competition and threatening to allow them to create their own dinosaurs. It would not have been the first time that a corporation has resorted to such extremes to keep its monopoly. Then I started digging, maybe too deep, and guess what? Lockwood funded the research departments of all these scientists for twenty years. From 1994 to 2014."
"Three years after their deaths…"
"A philanthropist doesn't throw his money out the window like that. Their research interested him in one way or another."
"Wu told me their specialty was human genetics, not animal genetics. However, InGen is only interested in human genetics in a limited way."
The taxi parked not far from his building, Guillaume paid the driver and left the vehicle, keeping his phone to his ear.
"Guillaume. I think Lockwood is suspicious," Michaela told him.
"You're right... I really hope he's not like Palpatine."
"Palpa who?"
"The big bad in Star Wars. You know, the creased old guy in a black robe. The emperor."
"Oh him..."
"Yeah. Acting like a nice grandpa in public but accomplishing dirty tricks as soon as everyone's back is turned... If Lockwood is as deceitful as this theory assumes, it wouldn't be surprising that Hammond argued with him shortly before the '93 incident and didn't mention him at all to Ian Malcolm and the other members of the group who had to endorse the first park."
"You also met Malcolm? Claire Dearing, Lockwood, Wu, the famous Professor Malcolm... You meet some really interesting people."
"Stop, I feel like I'm in the eye of a hurricane."
Reaching the front door, he looked carefully around and then entered the building once he was sure that no one was watching him or listening to his conversation. Before taking the stairs, he went to open his mailbox, as he forgot to do that earlier when he returned from the WDMC, and noticed that an envelope had been left. Without reading the sender's address, he took it, closed the mailbox, and went upstairs where his apartment was.
"I shouldn't tell you this, but if you're invited to the sale next week, I'd suggest you take the opportunity to search his closets. Maybe you'll find something."
"The last time I had a field mission as an investigator was years ago," he replied. "I hope I'm not too rusty."
Arriving at the door to his apartment, he inserted his key in the lock, opened the door, turned on the light, and locked it behind him.
"Whatever you do, be careful, Guillaume," his friend warned him, not without concern. "I don't want to learn from a colleague that the body of a fortyish French man murdered in mysterious circumstances was found in California. And that's if you don't just disappear..."
"I'll be careful, I promise," he said, tossing the envelope on his desk, right next to his laptop. "Good night, Michaela."
"Good night, Guillaume."
He put down his phone and settling down at his desk, he turned on his laptop. Moments later, the mind map of his investigation about the Bethany Project was displayed. Before he added the information collected by Michaela, he grabbed the envelope he had retrieved and read the sender's address:
Susan Lynton
International Genetics
100 Farallon Rd
Palo Alto, CA, 94303
UNITED STATES
His eyes widened in surprise and anger.
How did she get my personal address?!
He had never communicated his personal address to InGen and the WDMC employees were strictly prohibited from doing that. If the corporation wanted to send something to him by post, they had to send it to the agency's address and no other.
But who gave her my address? Did InGen tasked a spy to follow me?
Gently, Guillaume opened the envelope and took out the document it contained. He saw that it was a letter, hand-signed by InGen's CEO herself. She was inviting him to attend the sale at Orick on Monday, August 12. But the WDMC director was more than aware that sending this letter to his personal address was far from trivial and hid another message: We know where you live so don't be a fool or you'll have problems. Doubt was no longer allowed, InGen was becoming a great danger and had to be stopped.
-o-
Notes
(*) Parc de la Tête d'Or: A park in Lyon.