by Dov Alfon
“I don’t know. Could not be very big. She threw it into this skip here, the green one, not the recycling one. She closed the lid and went back outside, and that’s when our eyes met.”
“And the guy in the other photograph? He was not with her?”
“No, no-one was with her. She went back to the front door, did not even pretend that she wanted to go upstairs or anything. Still, she could at least have said ‘hello’. Nothing. She pressed the exit buzzer and opened the gate to the street.”
“You weren’t curious to see what she threw into the skip?”
“No, of course not. It’s none of my business. Could have been drugs or something like that.”
“I’d like to think that if you really thought it was drugs you’d call the police.”
“With you coming around here all the time, I would not need to call,” the concierge replied in a triumphant tone.
In the meantime, the police officers went through the skip. From among the full, tightly sealed bags of rubbish, quiet as pillows, an object was released and hit the stone tiles with a plastic-sounding thud. Police torches shone on the gun with the golden butt.
They were close, they were far. A police officer with surgical gloves picked up the gun by the barrel, standard procedure when collecting weapons as evidence, but she was not sure they were in such a situation.
“What’s that?” Léger said.
“It’s a toy gun,” Abadi replied. “We should have guessed that from the way she held it in the security footage. Something seemed off to me, but I wasn’t sure what. That gun is supposed to weigh two kilos, but she passed it from hand to hand and held it at shoulder level as if it weighed nothing at all. Now we know why.”
Léger’s deputy approached the police officer and took the gun from her to examine it. He studied it at length, as if willing the gun to speak. It did not. The rain kept coming down.
“Why use a toy gun?” he said.
“When typically do you use a toy gun?” Abadi replied with a question.
“When you don’t have a real one,” the deputy tried. “Or to get a lesser sentence in case you get caught.”
“Or when you’re filming a movie,” Abadi said. “You yourself mentioned it when we first saw the gun in the security footage. You recognised it as the gun from ‘The Matrix’. She wasn’t really kidnapping him, he knew it was a toy gun. He used her to kidnap himself. It was all a show, like the red uniforms and the blonde herself.”
“Then why did she bother to throw the gun away?” Léger wanted to know.
“Some places are difficult to get into with a gun,” Abadi replied. It was only a guess, but in their situation a guess was better than nothing. “In some public places they search your bags, and maybe they’re on their way to such a place.”
“A public place in Paris that’s not only open at this hour but also bothers to search your bags?” Léger’s deputy scoffed.
The rain kept pelting them. Abadi lifted his eyes to the sky in supplication; the clouds had painted it the white of a flag.
It was 4.30 a.m., Tuesday, April 17.
Chapter 98
Aluf Rotelmann put on his headphones and buttoned his shirt to the top. He was not crazy about video calls, certainly not those that took place before the break of dawn, but it was convenient for his U.S. counterparts across the ocean, so there was little use objecting.
It was 10 p.m. in Washington, and Aluf Rotelmann was hoping his counterparts would be tired and polite, or at least cautious and formal. He checked his messages from Zorro again. “The French have been briefed, our men at the Paris embassy are ready, I’m confident everything will be worked out in the next hour,” his deputy had written three minutes ago.
How exactly could one be confident that “everything” would be worked out? The affair might end well, or at least result in a bigger disaster being averted. But that “everything” was about to be worked out?
In light of the harsh test before him, he deviated from his usual tradition and ordered from the secretary on duty coffee befitting the occasion: strong and black, with a lethal amount of sugar. He sipped it while waiting for the encrypted signal to appear on his screen. His plan was simple: if they asked, he would deny everything; if they pressured him, he would play dumb; if they got angry, he would say he had to double-check; if they threatened, he would promise to hand over the results of his investigation.
In the office with him, outside camera range, sat the Prime Minister’s Military Secretary and his political advisor. Aluf Rotelmann was no longer sure who knew what. The governing body was under the control of a flesh-eating virus that used the normal immune system – the law, media, military and intelligence agencies – to fool its own organs, to the extent that it had become impossible to distinguish between the healthy body and the virus.
The algorithm activated the transfer encryption. Behind the flickering marks, Aluf Rotelmann detected his interlocutors huddling around the camera. He recognised the Cyber Warfare Commander of the U.S. army, who was also head of the N.S.A., the Under Secretary of Defence for intelligence, and the head of National Intelligence, a stubborn old general who for years had publicly disdained co-operation with the Israeli intelligence community.
“Any news?” the political advisor rasped from across the room.
“Shut your mouth,” Aluf Rotelmann replied. The conferencing system beeped and he looked straight into the camera. It did not occur to him to smile.
Chapter 99
The gate was at the corner of the alley to the right. It was bolted, and a sign warned in four different languages that it was the entrance to a private courtyard. This is misleading, the patrol officer explained to Léger’s team. He was nervous, sometimes saluting at the end of a sentence, and Léger’s shouts did not have a reassuring effect.
But even if he stuttered and blushed, the information he offered was solid. This historic alleyway, which ran from rue Saint André des Arts towards the Odéon intersection and was called “La cour du Commerce-Saint-André”, was his beat, and he patrolled it three times a day. It was generally packed with tourists: they came for the many souvenir shops and to Café Procope, the oldest café in Paris if not the entire world. The Three Musketeers fought in this alleyway, and a section of the original cobblestone had survived here ever since.
But hidden to the right, beyond a bend, was the entrance to “La cour de Rohan”, a series of historic courtyards surrounded by two distinguished buildings. One of the buildings housed the Giacometti Foundation – “he was a famous artist,” the officer added – and the other building belonged to the city of Paris, which used it to house foreign guests. Commissaire Léger raised his head to offer the younger man a blank stare.
“The sign is misleading. The courtyards are public property and the gate has to stay unlocked during the day because the schools are open, the Du Jardinet primary school and Fénelon secondary school. But outside school hours they are allowed to lock the gate.”
“Explain to us again who you think lives upstairs,” Léger interrupted him. His deputy kept pressing the intercom buttons in a futile attempt to summon the concierge.
“It’s not a matter of what I think,” the officer protested, his face more flushed than before. “It’s a matter of what I know. There’s a models’ apartment up there. I believe that at first the city rented it to models only during the fashion shows, but now they live there all the time. They’re all tall and thin, walking on these impossible cobbles on insane heels, there’s no mistaking them. I don’t know how many live there, but I can say for certain that there are a lot of them, mostly blondes. So when my captain asked me if I happened to know . . . ”
“Got it, thank you,” Léger interrupted him again. “In a few moments, you’ll show us where it is exactly.”
“My name is Brigadier Jacques Martinon,” the officer said. He was not so confused as to miss out on his moment of glory. Léger suddenly noticed a young bespectacled man in a suit. He was listening
to the conversation and keenly taking notes in a leather-bound notepad. Racking his brain, he miraculously remembered, a split second before losing his temper, that it was the juge d’instruction appointed by the justice department.
“What’s he doing here?” his whispered to his deputy.
“I called him, Commissaire,” the deputy said. “We have to follow the rules, so they don’t come accusing us tomorrow. I also called the Israeli police attaché, but he didn’t want to come. He asked only that I update him if we actually find the Israeli soldier in the apartment.”
“And the juge d’instruction wanted to come, I see.”
“Yes, and he also said not to start without him. Said he lived nearby.”
Léger did not like people meddling in his business, checking if he was dotting his ‘i’s and crossing his ‘t’s, and he certainly did not like people who could afford to live in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. But this was not the time to mull over his likes and dislikes, so he approached the young man and requested authorisation to break into the building.
As he had feared, the judge set about detailing his objections. The police were allowed to break into a private house this late at night only, he reminded the commissaire, if there was probable cause to believe that an act of terrorism could be prevented. Léger swore on all he held dear that there was indeed probable cause, since there were already eight bodies, and the man they were searching for was an Israeli spy, and if that was not probable cause enough, well Léger did not know what probable cause was.
“Let’s first break into the building. I’ll think of something by the time you reach the apartment,” the juge d’instruction said, trying to save both his dignity and the outcome of the investigation.
Léger nodded to his deputy, and less than a minute later two policemen opened the historical gate with impressive breaching tools. The force piled into the courtyard, and Brigadier Martinon, leading them safely into the second courtyard, pointed at a red steel door. “Here. Fourth floor.”
This time yet more serious tools were required. From a window in the building next door, shutters were thrown open and a neighbour peeked out from above, retreated, and banged the shutters to again. Much less visible in the dark, two young Chinese men in dark suits lay on the roof of the adjacent École du Jardinet, patiently following Leger’s every move.
The red door yielded to a welding torch, and the officers lined up single-file, waiting for the order. Léger turned to the juge d’instruction.
“Maybe we should send in only women officers,” the younger man muttered.
The Commissaire did not value advice at such moments, not from someone who lived on the Left Bank.
“There’s nothing in the regulations requiring us to favour female police officers even if there are only women in that apartment,” he said.
“There will be a lot of undressed young women in that apartment. We’re breaking in at an illegal hour based on a warrant I issued to you by authority of emergency regulations that have absolutely nothing to do with this apartment. Even if the officers behave impeccably, which you cannot guarantee, it’s still asking for trouble. And let’s not forget that the owner of this agency managed to rent them an apartment in one of the most expensive neighbourhoods in the city, in a historic building reserved exclusively for foreign dignitaries. He sounds to me like a man who does not want for connections,” the judge said, sharing his concerns with the Commissaire.
Before surrendering, Léger brought in a third party.
“What does Abadi say?” he asked his deputy.
“He isn’t here. Said it’s a waste of time.”
“Why?”
“He thinks Yerminski has to be somewhere he can blend in or hide, otherwise he would have stayed at the hotel.”
“Isn’t a models’ apartment the best possible hiding place? Who could ever find this place?”
“Well, we did,” the deputy observed. “He said that there was no point in his waiting, and that he’s going to look somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“He didn’t say.”
“He has no authority to conduct a search without us,” Léger said.
“He has no authority whatsoever,” the juge d’instruction reminded him. “And yet somehow things seem to happen the way he wants.”
Chapter 100
Abadi ran along the abandoned street, looking up at lit windows, into passing cars, listening for unexpected sounds. Every restaurant and café he passed was dark and locked. The market on rue de Buci was deserted, and in the square in front of the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés two homeless men and four dogs were sprawled out. Rue de Seine, rue Mazarine, rue Dauphine, rue Bonaparte – during the day, these streets were unpleasantly crowded, but it was as if he were in a ghost town.
Obviously the model could have brought Yerminski to a more lively area – the Champs-Élysées, Belleville, Pigalle, Montmartre. Abadi did not know how Yerminski had reached her, or what he had offered in exchange for her help. But he knew now she lived in this area. It was perhaps the only area she was familiar with in Paris. So when Yerminski asked if there was anywhere they could hide, she took him in a taxi here, far from the Chinese, and they went to a place he could blend in, far from the killers.
The sky began to clear, and soon the rain stopped and a chill set in. Abadi picked up his pace, partly to beat the forces of evil and partly to keep himself warm. Turning into rue Jacob, he approached his favourite spot in Paris, place de Furstenberg. The green doors of the abbey were still locked, the red doors of the wine bar next to it closed. It was as if the city were sealed off to him.
He kept walking, left onto rue Saint-Benoît, and then it happened. A small crowd huddled on the pavement, not far from the entrance to Café de Flore. Women in skimpy dresses, men in ripped jeans, a Mercedes parked on the pavement, two goons with baseball caps guarding the stairs. The partygoers were calling it a night.
A discreet sign: Le Montana. The entrance was almost pitch black, and Abadi would have ignored it were it not for the large group coming out at that very moment.
There was no point in trying to sweet-talk the bouncers. In Paris or New York, Tel Aviv or Beijing, a man of Abadi’s age could enter such a club only if accompanied by the right people. The young group at the exit were the right people: granted access to Le Montana once, they could go back in again.
They were too large a group for him to have that kind of conversation with them. He waited for them to start going their various ways, and that took longer in Paris than anywhere else. The men seemed eager to get into the Mercedes and leave, but not to leave their female companions near the club alone, not even for ten seconds. They stood and waited for the girls to finish swapping farewell kisses and wishing each other all good things. Moments later their Uber rides showed up, hastening the goodbyes.
Finally the group broke up. Some walked to their own cars, others had a driver waiting. Four of them remained on the pavement by the entrance, one guy and three girls. Out of the limited options at Abadi’s disposal, the only reasonable means of persuasion was to play on their emotions. These people did not want for money and violence would take too much time.
“Vous l’avez vue peut-être? Une fille toute en rouge, blonde. Elle se sent mal et voudrait que je la sorte de là.”
He deliberately skipped an introduction, did not bother with explanations, and despite making sure to inject a healthy amount of worry in his voice, he refrained from dramatic gestures. He had appeared out of the blue, a man relatively old for this time and place, but with a plausible and promising story, the first test of acceptance.
“I saw someone matching that description, she was on the dance floor the whole time. Looked perfectly fine to me,” said one of the girls, who was wearing a dress of fleeting transparency.
“Was there a guy with her, about her age, blue eyes, jeans and a T-shirt?”
“He’s not with her anymore,” she said. “She’s on the big dance floor alone. He’s s
itting in the quiet bar, downing shots. He’s the one who doesn’t seem to feel too well.”
“That could explain why she’d call me to help,” Abadi said.
“What’s your connection to them?” the man asked. He looked burned out from exhaustion perhaps, or maybe from a brutal comedown, but his suspicion was still aroused.
“She texted me that she needed help, but now I realise that she meant she needed help with him. I’ll just take him home.”
“Are you a friend of his? Why not call an ambulance?”
Common mistake, asking two questions in a row. Abadi ignored the first and answered the second. “That’s what I said. But she said he’s afraid they’ll do blood tests, and he’s taken a lot of drugs tonight. I told her the medics wouldn’t call the police, but he’s still afraid it’ll get registered in some system.”
“And she’s absolutely right,” the girl in the sheer dress said.
The guy apparently felt that the decision had been made and, in the way of most men, he quickly joined the winning side despite his reservations. “You have to go get him out now, they’re closing in an hour and the bouncers will call the police if he’s too messed up to stand.”
Abadi looked at him adoringly. “You’re right, of course. But how will I get in this late? It’ll look suspicious to the bouncers.”
“I can get you in,” the girl said, who, as far as Abadi could tell, was not the guy’s girlfriend, but was not entirely not his girlfriend either. And indeed, as she had probably been hoping, the guy immediately signalled the seriousness of his intentions, at least for the next few hours.
“We’ll all go in, it’ll look more natural, as if we just went outside to say goodbye to our friends and now we’re going back in to dance.” Abadi nodded enthusiastically, and they approached the entrance. The bouncers searched their bags and hardly looked at Abadi, who, with these girls, could have made it past a velvet rope just about anywhere.