Number 7, Rue Jacob

by Wendy Hornsby

  “Your identification, sir.” The officer guarding the door outside the immediate treatment suite crossed her arms and stood wide as she studied us. When Jean-Paul handed her his mangled passport, she grew still more wary. “Is that blood, sir?”

  “It is,” he said. “Whether it’s mine or my colleague’s, I can’t say.”

  “Have you law enforcement or justice department credentials?”

  “I have a national health card and a membership card for an American store called costco,” he said. “Which I would be happy to lend you if you should want to buy a new television or a gross of frozen buffalo wings. Beyond that, what I have is official permission. You were told by your superior that I was to be granted an audience with your esteemed prisoner, were you not?”

  Her chin rose two degrees in grudging acknowledgment as she reached behind her to push the electric door opener. Jean-Paul took my arm and we started past, but she put up her hand to stop me. Jean-Paul looked her in the eye as he pulled out his phone and began tapping numbers. She sighed to show her displeasure, but stepped aside and let us both go through. Her parting words were, “This is highly irregular. Highly.”

  I leaned close to him as we walked past her into the hallway beyond, and said, “costco?”

  “Interesting place. On my first visit, I was able to acquire enough toilet paper to supply the Los Angeles consulate for the remainder of my tenure, buy my son a lifetime supply of athletic socks, and verify that the company had not ripped off a single French product.”

  “Did you ever go back?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “I was curious to find out what a buffalo wing might be.”

  A second officer stood outside the third treatment room along the corridor. When the guard watching from the outer door gave him a nod, he pushed the door opener and, with a little bow, ushered us through.

  Our first glimpse of Sabri Qosja made it clear that he had lost the fight. Enthroned in a big chair that looked like it was borrowed from a dentist, his arms bound to the chair arms, chest strapped to the back, his legs shackled, not by chains but by a solid metal bar and locked to the foot rest so he couldn’t kick, and flanked by armed officers, he was the poster boy for abject defeat. Or maybe the captured racoon king. Both eyes were so black and swollen that I could not tell whether he could see until he spoke.

  “You,” was all he said.

  “Us,” Jean-Paul answered. He turned to the doctor who followed us in, and asked. “How is he?”

  “There’s nothing we can do here to cure his foul disposition, but for the rest? He isn’t as badly off as he looks,” the doctor said, gently palpating the purple mass in the middle of Qosja’s face that, until a few hours ago, was a nose. “We’ll need to build him a new sniffer, probably with a bone graft from his hip. But until the swelling subsides and we can get after it, he’ll be breathing through his mouth.”

  “Take these fucking restraints off,” Qosja demanded. “My feet have gone to sleep.”

  “Good,” the doctor said, patting his shoulder. “Let them sleep. When they wake up, we’ll see if you still want to kick people.”

  During that little back-and-forth, I pulled out my camera and snapped a couple of pictures of Qosja for Madame Gonsalves’s scrapbook. Qosja turned his head, trying to avoid the camera, but he was locked down so thoroughly that all he could do was give me a good profile shot. When I had my shot, I flipped to the image I captured at the department store in Venice and offered the camera to the doctor. “Would you like to see him before he tried to mug the wrong woman?”

  “Yes, indeed.” The doctor walked around his patient, comparing the photo, a semi-profile, to the ruin in the chair. When he handed the camera back to me, he addressed Qosja. “Monsieur, we will do our best, but…?” And there he left it before walking out of the room again.

  Slowly, Jean-Paul took off his coat and handed it to one of the blue-uniformed police guards, a gesture meant to establish his superior rank in the room, I thought. When he finally got around to speaking with the prisoner, he stood just a bit to the side, making Qosja work to see him.

  “So, we meet again, Monsieur Qosja,” he said, at last. “And once again I find you in shackles.”

  “If my hands were free, I would break your neck.” Qosja’s voice was surprisingly high-pitched for a tough guy. And nasal, but that was Madame Gonsalves’s doing. “And hers, too.”

  “I have no doubt of that. And yet, your scattershot efforts over the last week to do some approximation of that have come to nothing, except that here you are, in custody again, and here am I, once again asking you questions.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Perhaps I will. But in the meantime, let’s chat, shall we?” Jean-Paul took a step closer, forcing Qosja to look up at him. “We know that you are being paid through an entity called ProtX4, and we know, of course, that ProtX4 is also paying a hacker to track our movements and report them to you. But what, exactly, are you being paid to do?”

  “I don’t have to talk to you.”

  “You do, you know. You are in France, sir, not Argentina. A little under-the-table mordida or baksheesh will not buy your freedom here; don’t expect your employer to sweep in and save your ass. Trust me, the charges will be serious, and you will be a guest of the miserable French prison system for a very long time. Because your activities amount to international terrorism enhanced by the attempted assassination of two Eurozone officials and the cold-blooded murder of a young nurse, not to mention the attempted bombing of a ship in harbor, you can expect to be brought before the same international court you faced after the Kosovar War. Except this time your father will not be around to take the fall for you.”

  “You bastard,” Qosja spat. “You fucking bastard. You killed my father, and I will kill you.”

  Jean-Paul turned to the policeman holding his coat. “You heard what he said. Please include his threat on my life in your report.”

  “Of course, sir,” the policeman said, but I could see a bit of a tooth-sucking grin behind his starchy façade.

  “And, just so we are clear, Monsieur Qosja, your father, may he rest in peace, took his own life. That was, what, sixteen or seventeen years ago? A long time. But, if memory serves, before he hanged himself in his cell, your father confessed to the very crimes you stood accused of committing. Rape and murder of women and children, correct?”

  “Not correct, pig. Anything he and I did were legitimate acts of war. Payback for what was done to my mother and sisters.”

  “Even in war, sir, there are rules. You broke those rules, and your father paid the ultimate price. So, tell me, Monsieur, is that what all this stalking crap has been about? Payback?”

  “No. But why waste an opportunity?” Qosja leaned his head back and gulped air. Maybe he had accepted the reality of his situation, or maybe he was just saving energy for whatever was to come next. Whatever the reason, he seemed calmer. After another deep, gulping breath, he turned his swollen eyes to me. “I don’t know why you’re here. You are that idiot Bord’s job, not mine.”

  “Job?” I repeated. “Job to do what, exactly?”

  “Same as me,” he said. “We were hired to keep you both out of Paris.”

  “Why?”

  “No one told me why, and I did not ask. It isn’t my place to ask questions.”

  “How were you to keep us away?” I asked.

  “No one told me that, either. I’m a professional; I know what to do. Bord thought he was some kind of chick magnet: you know what that is?” When I nodded, he said, “He thought he could get you to go out for drinks with him, slip you some roofies, park you somewhere until the job is over.”

  “When will that be?”

  “When they tell us it is over.”

  “They are ProtX4?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know who their client is.”

  “The client is a company or consortium called InterCentro.”

  “If you say so.”

  I said, “
You weren’t hired to kill Monsieur Bernard, just to keep him out of Paris?”

  “Correct.”

  “But you did try to kill him.”

  “Sure,” he said, a cocky bastard once again. “No one said not to. If it had been anyone else, I would have just kidnapped him, maybe drugged him for a while, like Bord planned for you. But when I realized who the job was—”

  “You wanted revenge,” Jean-Paul said.

  “Call it what you want.”

  “Un grand faux-pas?” I offered. “You failed.”

  Jean-Paul laughed. “Remind me, chérie, to help with your vocabulary of French obscenities.”

  “I will. I have been at such a disadvantage.”

  Qosja chimed in. “Just because you have me, you think it’s over?”

  “Bord is out of commission, too,” I said.

  “So what? Men like us, we’re a dime a dozen. Now ProtX4 just goes to the next guy on the list, and the game continues.”

  “It isn’t a game,” I said.

  Qosja laughed, an ugly, guttural burst. He strained forward and sneered at me. “You’re about to find out how wrong you are.”

  One of his guards kicked the bottom of his foot and he winced. The guard grinned at his partner. “Looks like the foot isn’t asleep after all.”

  “The irony here, Mr. Qosja,” I said, keeping my distance, “is that if you hadn’t dropped a bomb on Monsieur Bernard, indeed if you had simply left him alone, he would have returned to Paris only long enough to meet me and take me away again. You have wasted a great deal of time, energy, and someone else’s money. And for what?”

  “For what?” he shrugged. “I told you. I don’t ask.”

  Jean-Paul collected his coat from the policeman and stepped over to take my arm. He turned and studied Qosja long enough to make the prisoner shrink into himself to get away from the scrutiny.

  “Monsieur Qosja,” he said, “I recommend that you use your time in prison wisely. Learn a good trade, because, sir, if you ever gain your freedom again, you will need a new line of work. Clearly, you are an abject failure in your current field.”

  With that, we turned and left the room.

  “Do you believe him?” I asked as we walked out of the hospital.

  “About being hired to keep us out of Paris?”

  “No, about the client sending someone else after us?”

  He toggled his head, a yes-or-no answer. “Except, we are here, in Paris, yes? So what would be the assignment now?”

  “I do not want to find that out.”

  “We may,” he said, leading me down the ramp into the underground parking garage. “Qosja is a great liar. But, in spite of himself, he did give us some useful information. First, as these things go, from the beginning the effort to stop us has been a low-budget, private operation. Whoever is behind this went for cheap, hired mediocrity. Remember, Qosja also failed his last assignment and had to be rescued out of Argentina. Bottom of the barrel; if either he or Bord was good at what he does, we’d be dead or drugged and tossed into a dark hole by now.”

  “They misjudged their target,” I said, pulling up the collar of my coat against the cold.

  He laughed softly. “Yes, one should always send in the A Team against a filmmaker and a bureaucrat.”

  “Ninja filmmaker and bureaucrat who has the phone number of every official in the Eurozone,” I said. “A tough pair.”

  “Tell yourself that, but don’t forget to watch your back.”

  “Jean-Paul,” I said as we approached his car. “If this is as you say, a low-budget operation, then whoever is behind it will run out of funds at some point. I’m sure that by now he’s weighed the value of whatever he’s after against the cost of obtaining it. Maybe it’s over.”

  “Maybe.” He pulled out his car keys and punched the automatic unlock. “You have an idea what he’s after?”

  “So do you. In Paris, what links us?”

  “Other than a shared bed?”

  “Other than that.”

  “Number seven, rue Jacob.”

  “And the treasure in the basement.”

  As we pulled out of the garage, a white Citroën with a blue stripe down the side emblazed with the word police in red, fell in behind us.

  “We have an escort,” I said. “Courtesy of your friend David Berg?”

  “Probably. Do you object?”

  “Not at all. But what did you tell him?”

  “Not much. David’s a good cop. I’m sure he made a few phone calls of his own.”

  It was already dark by the time we drove through the big gates at number seven, rue Jacob. The police car that followed us from the hospital was still parked across the driveway when the gates closed behind us. Jean-Paul and I carried in his bags and the groceries we bought at the shops in Vaucresson that afternoon. Though the food had sat in the trunk for several hours, the car was at least as cold as a refrigerator, so I wasn’t concerned about anything spoiling. Except for maybe some produce that might have frozen.

  In the kitchen, I put the heat under the remains of the soup Madame Gonsalves had brought the day before, and stowed the new purchases.

  “Is there enough soup for tonight?” Jean-Paul asked.

  “It’s soup,” I said. “If there isn’t enough, I’ll just add some water.”

  “Water?” He sounded dubious. I confess, I am no cook, but why not water? He left the kitchen before I could ask, headed toward the bedroom with his bags. I followed him as far as Isabelle’s office. Dinner could wait until I’d had a look at the library, I decided as I fished the keys out of her desk drawer.

  When I went back out into the salon, I could hear men talking somewhere outside the apartment. In the courtyard? In the entry hall downstairs? I wasn’t familiar with the sounds of the building, of neighbors coming and going or regular service people doing their jobs, so I stopped to listen, not to eavesdrop, but to try to figure out where the voices came from. There were muffled good-byes, and a door closed. Barry Griffith’s door downstairs? The keys were in my hand when someone knocked on my door. I froze for a moment to listen again before I went over to the wall panel and flipped on the monitor to see who was there. Philippe, the elder of Freddy’s two sons, stood there holding a turquoise bag from a Patrick Roger chocolate shop—a very expensive chocolate shop—by its little handle.

  “Company, Jean-Paul,” I called out as I opened the door. Poor Philippe, clearly nervous, turned bright red the instant he saw me. The chocolates he bore were doubtless a peace offering.

  “Aunt Maggie,” he managed to say.

  “What a nice surprise,” I said. We exchanged les bises and I drew him inside. “Come in. It’s freezing out there.”

  “This is for you.” Standing in the vestibule, he held out the bright little bag on both hands like the offering of a penitent. “I came to tell you I am sorry for all the trouble my friends and I caused you. I hope I can forgive me.”

  “How kind of you, Philippe,” I said, accepting the offering. “Thank you. Certainly, I forgive you, though I would love to hear exactly why you think you need forgiveness. Monsieur Griffith downstairs might be tougher to convince than I am, however.”

  “I just left him. We’re okay. Except I had to promise him I would go shopping with him during the school holiday to buy a new computer and set it up for him.”

  “Is that terrible?”

  “No. He’s very nice really. He was a good friend of Mamie Izzy.”

  “Mamie Izzy. Is that what you called her: Granny?”

  He smiled, finally. “She would not let us call her Grand-mère. Besides, it would be too confusing to have two Grand-mères, yes?”

  “I suppose it would.” We had progressed as far as the salon when Jean-Paul walked into the room. Poor Philippe blushed all over again.

  “Philippe, good to see you again, man,” Jean-Paul said, offering his hand and leaning in for les bises. I forget sometimes that Jean-Paul’s family and mine had been friends long before th
ey conspired for us to meet. “How is school?”

  “Oh, you know, sir. School is school. Very difficult this term. How is Dom?”

  “I think he would give the same answer,” Jean-Paul said, showing Philippe to a comfortable chair. We sat opposite him, on Isabelle’s down-stuffed sofa. “What brings you all the way across the Channel to Paris?”

  The poor boy colored yet again.

  “Would you like some water?” I asked. “Or a cider?”

  “Have any cyanide?”

  “Oh, Philippe.” I went over to him, sat on the arm of his chair and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, which he tolerated. “It can’t be that bad. Tell us what happened.”

  He took a breath, sighed, stalling while he steeled himself. “Did Papa tell you my friends and I stayed here over the New Year?”

  “He did.”

  “We had permission to stay one night, New Year’s Eve, to see the celebration. But—”

  We waited.

  “But— Je suis un imbécile.” He dropped his face into his hands. We waited some more. Finally, he straightened up, looked from Jean-Paul’s face to mine, and began again. “It started when my friends said they were disappointed we couldn’t stay to see the fireworks. In Paris, it’s really big, you know? Papa agreed we could, if we promised not to get drunk and be stupid, and to get on the Chunnel train back to school in the morning. So, after Papa and Robert left, we hung out with a guy I know in the Marais for a while before going over to the Champs Elysées for the show. There were concerts, and— We stayed out pretty late. After, when we got home, I thought, it’s New Year’s, we should have some Champagne. So, we went down to Mamie Izzy’s wine cellar to get some.”

  “Isabelle had a wine cellar?” Apparently, from his reaction, this was news to Jean-Paul. “Where?”

  “Uh, in the cellar, sir.” Philippe pointed toward the floor.

  “Why not? There’s plenty of space down there,” Jean-Paul said with a little shrug. “Wish I’d thought to put one in. Sorry to interrupt. Go on.”

  “So, we went down to get the wine. And that’s when things got crazy.”

  “Crazy how?” I asked.

  “It’s my fault. My friends, Val and Cho, had never seen basements like that. Cho called it Hogwarts. He thought it would be so great to play this sort of laser tag we play at school with our phones sometimes. It was really late; I should have said no.”