Dust motes danced in the shafts of autumn light cutting through the arched windows of the Quai de la Joliette. Camille Vassal moved her thumb across the rough grain of the morning manifest, leaving a faint blue smudge of carbon ink against the ledger's edge. Outside, the harbor smelled of diesel and salt, a Greek steamer groaning as it settled against the buoy. She worked with the quiet efficiency of a woman who translated lives into line items, her French knot held tight by a single tortoiseshell comb.
The three crates from Odessa sat on the apron, listed under a name that made the blood go cold in her veins. Madeleine Vassal. The old commercial Cyrillic was unmistakable, scripted with a flourish that defied the official customs stamp. According to every story her mother had ever told, Madeleine had never seen the sea, let alone boarded a ship from the Black Sea. Yet here was the ghost of her grandmother, arriving thirty-two years late on a Wednesday tide.
She reached for her date-stamp, but the shadow of a movement at the bottom of the door caught her eye. A thick manila envelope slides under the frosted glass, stopping just at the toe of her shoe.
