“What do you think?” said Philippe. “I’m not a country boy, but this is special.” They were standing outside the house, looking east, where the first splinter of sunlight had just appeared above the horizon. Sam made a slow, 360-degree turn. There was no other house in sight. They were surrounded by fields that would turn purple later in the year, the clumps of lavender looking like rows of green hedgehogs. Behind them was the mass of the Luberon, misty blue in the early light.

“You know what?” said Sam. “It’ll look even better after we’ve had breakfast. I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday.”

They drove down to Apt, found a café with a terrace in the sun, and raided a nearby bakery for croissants. Big, thick-rimmed cups of café crème were set in front of them. Sam closed his eyes and sniffed the fragrant steam. Only in France did it smell like this; it must have something to do with French milk.

“Well, my friend,” he said, “we have a rich, full morning ahead of us.” Philippe, his mouth busy with croissant, raised an eyebrow. “First, we’d better check out of that hotel before Vial discovers that he’s suddenly five hundred bottles short, and we need to find someplace else to stay-not in Marseille. So I’m going to need to rent a car. Then we have to find some unmarked cartons, come back to Grandma’s house, repack the wine, and get rid of the other cartons. After that, we can celebrate.” He checked the time and reached for his phone. “Do you think Sophie will be awake yet?”

She was. Not only that, she had anticipated a swift exit from the hotel and had already packed. She went up even further in Sam’s estimation.

Philippe dropped him outside the Hertz office at the airport. He told Sam to meet him in the parking area at the entrance to the autoroute and went off in search of wine cartons. A friend of a friend was a vigneron. He would have a barn full of cartons, Philippe was sure.

In his rented Renault, Sam joined the early-morning traffic going into Marseille. He had forgotten that inside every self-respecting Frenchman lurks the soul of a Formula One driver, and he found himself in the middle of an amateur Grand Prix-tiny cars hurtling along, wheels barely touching the ground, the occupants conducting animated phone conversations while smoking and, if there was a hand free, steering. When he arrived intact at the hotel he offered up a silent prayer of thanks to the patron saint of foreign drivers, and went to find Sophie.

She was finishing breakfast, looking remarkably relaxed for someone who had just conspired in the execution of a crime. “Alors? How did it go?”

“Great. I’ll tell you in the car. Let me get my bag and pay the bill, and then we’ll take a drive. You’re not going to believe this place.”

By 8:30, well before Vial’s working day started at the Palais du Pharo, they were on their way out of Marseille.

It was turning into one of those spring days that Provence does so well: not too hot, a sky of flawless, endless blue, the fields speckled scarlet with poppies, and the black skeletons of the vines softened by a green blur of new leaves. The atmosphere in Sam’s rented Renault, as it followed Philippe’s van through the countryside, was as lighthearted as the weather. The job was done.

“Now you can go back to Bordeaux,” said Sam, “and get married to Arnaud, and live happily ever after. When’s the wedding?”

“We’re thinking about August, at the château.”

“Do I get an invite?”

“Would you come?”

“Of course I would. I’ve never been to a French wedding. Any plans for the honeymoon? I could show you a good time in L.A.”

Sophie laughed. “What about you? What are you going to do next?”

“Finish up here. Then I guess I’ll go to Paris to brief the people in the Knox office.”

“Are you sure about that? What are you going to tell them?”

“Well, I certainly don’t want to confuse them with the facts. So I thought I’d stick to Philippe’s story. You know, the anonymous tip-off, the fearless reporter following up the clues that lead him back to Roth. The people at Knox won’t ask too many questions once they know they’re not going to have to pay out three million bucks.”

Ahead of them, Philippe’s van was wheezing around the final steep hairpin bend in the mountain road that led up to the plateau and the old house. Sam was looking forward to seeing him when he came to L.A. to interview Roth. They could rent a World War II jeep, hit the army surplus stores, and maybe take in one of those testaments to red-blooded virility, a gun show. It would be interesting to hear a Frenchman’s logic applied to the question of why Americans think it necessary to have a semi-automatic assault rifle to hunt squirrels.

For the second time that morning, Philippe led the way through the house to the cellar, a large canister of raticide under one arm, a stack of cartons, folded flat, under the other. With three of them sharing the work, it took no more than an hour to repack the bottles. When the others had left the cellar, Philippe scattered a generous coating of lethal pellets on the floor, wishing the rats bon appétit before closing the door behind him.

He joined Sophie and Sam outside as they were loading the last of the empty Reboul cartons into the van. These would be left in a garbage dump on the way back to Marseille.

“That’s about it,” Sam said to Philippe. “All we need to do now is find somewhere for Sophie and me to stay tonight. Any ideas?”

Philippe scratched his head, dislodging some more cobweb. “You might be spotted in Marseille, so that’s out, and you don’t want to stay anywhere around here. It’s too remote, and you’d be noticed. Why not try Aix? I’ve heard the Villa Gallici is a nice place.”

And so it proved to be-small, charming, and a two-minute walk from the cafés and other delights of the Cours Mirabeau. But Sam was starting to flag. The adrenaline rush had been replaced by a pervasive, numbing fatigue. Apart from a short nap in the van, he’d been two nights without sleep. He made his excuses to Sophie, went up to his room, and toppled onto his bed fully dressed.

Six hours and a shower later, he felt sufficiently restored to venture out onto the shady terrace of the hotel and wake himself up with a glass of champagne. He turned on his phone and checked it for messages: Elena, wanting a progress report, and Axel Schroeder, fishing again. He decided to save Elena for later, and called Schroeder.

“Axel, it’s Sam.”

“Dear boy, I was beginning to worry about you. I hope you haven’t been working too hard.” He sounded like a doctor practicing his bedside manner.

“You know how it is, Axel. Scratching a living from the parched earth. But I’ve had a stroke of luck.”

There was no reply from Schroeder. It wasn’t necessary. His curiosity was almost audible.

“I found the wine. All of it.”

“Where is it?”

“Safe.”

Schroeder took his time to reply. “Sam, we need to talk. I happen to know a couple of people who would be very, very interested.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“No risk, and we could split the proceeds.”

“Axel, you set it up, didn’t you?”

“Sixty-forty, in your favor. A nice piece of change.”

“Maybe next time, you old scoundrel.”

Schroeder chuckled. “Worth a try, dear boy. You know where to reach me if you change your mind. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Sam looked out across the terrace. Tables had been set for dinner, and he felt a powerful urge for a steak, rare and bloody, and a bottle of good red wine. He’d call Sophie and ask her to join him. But first, Elena.

After congratulating him, she wanted to know all the details.

“Elena, it’s not something I want to talk about on the phone. How soon can you get over here?”