After a moment, Terrier put his shoes back on and went and opened the doors of the bedrooms, taking precautions. The rooms were all lit up, but no one was inside. In the first room, the bed was unmade, men’s clothing was thrown over a seatback, and on a little desk was a framed photograph of two black men in their sixties, dressed up in their Sunday best. The second room had not been occupied recently. The mattress on the bed was bare. A vacuum cleaner and boxes of old magazines were set against one wall. There was dust on the furniture. In the third, Terrier found blond hair on the rumpled bed and an empty cognac bottle lying in the corner. Another bottle had been thrown at the door; the pieces were on the floor, and cognac had splattered the wall and run down to the floor.
Holding the Valmet out in front of him, Terrier advanced along the balcony. With one shoulder against the corner of a wall, he surveyed the dining room below, where Stanley, standing in the noncarbonated mineral-water box, his stocking feet on a squat metallic cylinder reminiscent of a pressure cooker, strained his neck muscles to see behind him. He saw Terrier on the balcony at the head of the flight of stairs leading down to the dining room. Stanley groaned sharply behind his gag. The muscles tightened in Terrier’s neck. He groaned like Stanley. Then he came quickly down the stairs, keeping the Valmet at the ready and glancing warily this way and that.
Without for the moment concerning himself with Stanley, who was shaking, sweating, and groaning, Terrier went briskly through the ground-floor rooms and found no one. He came back to Stanley and ripped off his adhesive-tape gag.
“I’m standing on a mine,” said Stanley.
Terrier gave him a perplexed look. Then he raised his eyebrows and proceeded to examine the flat cylinder of dull metal on which Stanley stood trembling in his stocking feet.
“My left heel is on the detonator,” said Stanley. “It was armed by my stepping on it. They made me step on it.” A terrible trembling ran up and down his left leg. “If I raise my foot, it goes off. I can’t hold on much longer. Hurry up—go to the kitchen and get a knife from the table drawer.”
Terrier rushed to the kitchen, opened the table drawer, found a carving knife, and returned to Stanley.
“I’ll do it myself,” said the black man. “It’s too dangerous. We’ll have to cut the chain of the handcuffs. Go down in the cellar. There’s a toolbox. Bring up the wire cutters.”
Terrier put a knee on the floor near the Vittel box, set down the Valmet, and crouched down to examine the box and Stanley’s feet.
“No, stop, no, shit,” said Stanley. “Go get the wire cutters. Please, Christian—it’s too dangerous.”
Holding the knife handle in one hand and the point of the blade in the other, Terrier slid the knife under the black man’s left foot, slowly interposing the blade between the man’s heel and the detonator. The heel was trembling. Sweat ran down Stanley’s face. Once the blade was interposed between the detonator and the foot, Terrier raised his eyes toward Stanley and nodded and smiled. Stanley dropped to the floor. He curled up, then stretched out, then curled up again. His muscles quivered all over, and suddenly he urinated in his impeccable trousers. With one knee on the floor, Terrier looked at him and kept the blade of the knife pressed against the detonator.
“I’ve just taken a piss,” observed Stanley. “What fucking bastards. I think they’ve got your chick, you know. They got the jump on me late in the afternoon. I think they took her away about an hour ago. They put me here, on this thing.” He shook his head. “What fucking bastards,” he repeated. All at once, he seemed to grasp Terrier’s position; he moved quickly then, bending his knees, passing his handcuffed wrists under his heels, and then standing back up, with his hands in front of him. “Wait,” he exclaimed uselessly. “We have to put something on the blade, something heavy. I have some bricks in the cellar. Will you go down? Bring me up the wire cutters, too. My legs have turned to jelly. Go on—I’ll hold the knife.”
On all fours near the Vittel box, Stanley pressed both fists down onto the blade. His fists were trembling. He half smiled at Terrier, who had extricated himself and was heading toward the cellar.
“You’re no chatterbox,” he observed. “Hurry up—I’ve got the shakes, my friend.”
As Terrier was starting down the cellar stairs, Stanley swore with surprise, and then the mine exploded. It was a powerful mine. The weekend house was fragile. The whole interior was blown up and all the windows shattered. The bearing walls and the roof then began to collapse piece by piece, just as matter collapses, or so they say, in the hearts of distant stars.
The shock had flung Terrier to the bottom of the cellar stairs—he landed flat on his hands and knees on the irregular ground strewn with coal dust. Grains of coal were embedded in his palms. An avalanche of debris came tumbling after him down the stairs. Kilos of broken boards and pieces of brick struck Terrier’s back and head. Terrier got right back up. With debris falling all around him, he energetically climbed up the steps, slipping in the rubble and the fragments of laths, in the midst of a thick cloud of smoke and diverse particulate matter. His lips moved and uttered a sort of low squeak. He rapidly traversed what remained of the dining room. Around him, sections of the roof and walls solemnly collapsed and struck the ground with dull thuds and rebounded. Terrier stepped over the twisted, useless Valmet, almost trod on Stanley’s red-and-white thoracic cage, and left the house by way of the back wall. He must have run back to the Estafette in a matter of seconds. He started the vehicle, backed up, and then set off again toward the highway.
19
Shortly after three in the morning, Martin Terrier entered Paris via the Porte d’Italie at the wheel of a stolen car, a white Peugeot 504. He had gotten rid of Maubert’s body by leaving it under a truck parked on a street in Fresnes. Before doing so, he had gone through Maubert’s pockets because he needed a little money. As for the various cards decorated with the French flag—they bore Maubert’s photo and the name François Guénaud, along with the information that he belonged to the DST and other, less official services—Terrier had left them, after a moment’s hesitation, in the dead man’s wallet.
He had left the Estafette in Bagneux, where he had stolen the 504. He kept Maubert’s .38 and the transceiver that communicated nothing. The 504 was equipped with a radio and cassette player, but the three o’clock news said nothing more than the one o’clock news, stating only that the assassination attempt against Sheik Hakim would make the headlines of all the morning papers—except for the sports paper, L’Equipe.
Traffic was light in Paris at that hour. Terrier headed toward Montparnasse. He noticed no unusual police activity.
A bar was open in Rue du Départ. Terrier entered around three-thirty. He went to the counter and handed the bartender a scrap of paper. The bartender frowned, then read what was written in pencil on the scrap of paper. He nodded and gave Terrier a grimace of sympathy. While the man bustled about, Terrier glanced around the room, but there was nothing to see except two men in a drunken stupor, a haggard semi-professional whore, and, on the tile floor, a layer of sawdust and cigarette butts.
In Rue La Boétie, in the offices of Impex Films International, men in dark clothing waited in the darkness with their revolvers.
In Rue du Départ, the bartender set before Terrier a small draft beer and a snifter containing vodka, two ice cubes, and a few drops of lemon juice.
“Careful with the mix,” he said. “It can do you in.” And since Terrier didn’t react, the bartender added: “You’re not deaf, too, are you? Don’t tell me you’re a deaf-mute!”
Terrier shook his head.
“Just mute, huh?” said the other man, wagging his head in a wise but pathetic way. “Maybe you just don’t feel like having people talk to you?”
Terrier shrugged. He picked up the beer glass, knocked it lightly against the glass of vodka next to it, and took a swallow of beer. It was rather good but too cold.
“There are nights,” said the bartender, “when I would love to be
deaf myself.” He sighed. “Well, that’s how it is.” And he went to sit down on a stool behind the cash register.
In Rue de Varenne, the doorbell resounded in the vast gray-and-white duplex full of ultramodern furniture and Pop, Op, and kinetic art. In the courtyard, the name “Lionel Perdrix” appeared on a framed visiting card above the doorbell.
“I don’t believe it!” exclaimed Lionel Perdrix’s bedmate in a tone of disgust.
On the night table, the digital clock read “3:46.” Perdrix interrupted his movements. Someone rang the doorbell again. Perdrix disengaged, got out of bed, and left the bedroom, pulling on a white terry-cloth bathrobe. He was a short, pudgy man in his forties, with incipient baldness and bloodshot eyes. He was out of breath. While he was hurrying to the door, the bell rang again.
“Okay! Okay! What is it?”
Through the peephole in the white-lacquered door, he saw Cox and other silhouettes in coats or raincoats. His face took on a worried look. He hastened to unlock the door. Cox and three other men came right in, almost knocking into him. One man closed the door. The two others climbed the short flight of stairs to the duplex.
“Is there someone with you?” asked Cox.
“Yes, but. . . . ”
“A girl?”
“Yes. Hey, what’s going on? You told me it was all over. You told me that you would never use my apartment again. And, anyway, why didn’t you call first?”
Cox didn’t answer. He was looking toward the upstairs, whence a feminine voice cried out in protest. Perdrix started to go up, but the man who had closed the door held him by the arm.
“Look, I demand to know what’s going on!”
Cox didn’t answer. He pulled a Nuts bar from his pocket, tore away half the wrapping, and bit into the candy. The two scouts reappeared.
“There’s a young woman in the bedroom, that’s all,” one of them reported.
Cox went up the stairs, and Perdrix followed, grumbling that it was all crazy, with the last guy still holding him by the arm; in the other hand the guy carried a case. Once they were upstairs, he released Perdrix’s arm, put the case on the painted floor, and opened it: it contained three Ingram M11 machine pistols with silencers and night-vision sights. Perdrix’s teeth began chattering. He was looking at the weapons. He automatically brought one hand to his jaw to arrest the trembling. “But what are you doing?” he asked in a shrill voice.
“The bathroom is the only room without windows,” said one of the scouts.
“Take the mattress from the bedroom and put it in the bathroom,” Cox ordered. He turned to Perdrix. “Stop trembling. These weapons aren’t for killing you. They’re for your protection. You and your girlfriend have to stay in the bathroom the rest of the night. My men will stay here to protect you.”
“I don’t need protection. I’m not in danger,” protested Perdrix through chattering teeth.
“Yes, you are,” said Cox. “You know that I use your apartment for meetings. . . . ”
“I don’t know anything. I don’t want to know anything. Go away, I beg you.” Perdrix put his head in his hands. He may have been trying to block his ears with his palms.
“Someone dangerous is trying to find me,” Cox explained reassuringly. “He doesn’t know how to find me. But he knows where you live. Now you’re going to shut yourself in the bathroom with your girlfriend, and my men will protect you.”
“Who are these madmen?” shouted Perdrix’s bedmate who had rushed out onto the balcony, wrapped in a sheet. (Meanwhile, the two scouts were dutifully carrying the mattress into the bathroom.)
“I’m calling the police,” Perdrix told Cox.
“No,” said Cox. “You’re going to give me a radio so I can listen to the four o’clock news. And then you’ll go upstairs and shut yourself in.”
“Fine,” said Perdrix. He went reluctantly toward the staircase that led to the balcony. He waved in the general direction of a hi-fi system and its tuner on the shelves of one wall. “There’s the radio,” he said weakly.
He went up and shut himself in the bathroom with his girlfriend. Through the door, one could vaguely hear the girl protesting vociferously and the man responding in a spineless way. Cox’s three men took their Ingram M11s and posted themselves at the windows. Cox turned on the radio.
“I’ll listen to the news, then I’ll go,” he announced. “If he shows up here, don’t miss.”
He waited for four o’clock, finishing his Nuts bar.
In Rue du Départ, Martin clinked glasses once more with the untouched glass of vodka, then he downed his beer, collected his change, and left. After a minute or two, the bartender picked up the glass of vodka, shrugged, and drank it. Then he summarily washed the beer glass and the snifter. Meanwhile, Terrier had reached the 504. He turned on the radio and listened to the four o’clock news. The police had now identified the author of the failed assassination attempt against Sheik Hakim: he was a person known in international terrorist circles, one Martin Terrier, alias “Monsieur Christian.” This killer, of French nationality, but in possession of several foreign passports, had been trained by the KGB in its special school in Odessa, then in the Palestinian camps and by the Cuban DGI. He had left his tracks in Africa, Italy, and South America. Many assassinations could be attributed to him, notably the killing of Luigi Rossi, an arms dealer identified as a “traitor” by the Red Brigades and, most recently, the execution in England of Marshall Dubofsky, likewise denounced by the Provisional IRA. Interviewed by telephone, Principal Commissioner Poilphard had declared: “He’s big game, very big game.”
Seated in the darkness of the 504, Martin Terrier listened attentively to this news. His haggard face at first registered great perplexity; then it registered worry, thoughtfulness, or whatever other movements of consciousness that might cause his face to look as it did. Once the news was over, the man started his engine.
20
Rue de Varenne is quiet at four o’clock in the morning, especially in cold weather, and right then the temperature was no more than one or two degrees above freezing. The porte cocheres of the large town houses were shut. The security guards and doormen to be seen there during the day, in the entrances to ministerial buildings and government offices, had disappeared. The odd car or two sped by at rare intervals.
Cox left furtively and quickly at five after four in a black Citroën SM driven by a Eurasian man.
Martin Terrier appeared a quarter of an hour later, hands in pockets, coming around the corner from a side street about two hundred meters from Lionel Perdrix’s place. He walked quickly, a little hunched over and with his collar turned up. All kinds of private cars were parked along the sidewalk: they were empty. Near Lionel Perdrix’s home was a Volkswagen minibus; curtains hung in its back windows. Terrier came to the entrance of a building about a hundred meters farther down, on the other side of the street. He buzzed the door open, went inside, switched on the timer lights, went into the hall, turned, went through a self-closing door, and started up a staircase with wine-colored carpeting. He climbed up to the top floor and went down a corridor with a sloping ceiling and a row of flimsy doors along one side. His face was haggard. When he arrived at the last door, he took out his Swiss Army knife and silently jimmied the cheap lock. He went in, turned on the lights, and punched the jaw of the young girl in pajamas who had sat bolt upright in her bed and was opening her eyes to see and her mouth to scream. She instantly fell back on her pillow—blonde, short, plump, and knocked unconscious. Terrier closed the door.
The man crossed the small room in two steps and looked out a mansard window with cretonne curtains. He had a view of Rue de Varenne and, notably, of Perdrix’s building. With a contented expression, he went back toward the unconscious girl and rummaged through the three drawers of a white wooden chest. He used two pairs of woolen pajama bottoms to tie up the little blonde and a stocking and a third pair of pajama bottoms to gag and blindfold her.
He straightened up and looked around the place. T
he furniture was very basic: a table, a chair, a hot plate, a sink. On the floor were a record player and a few pop music records. On the wall was a movie poster of Jane Fonda in Barbarella. Postcards from distant lands were tacked up around a circular mirror. The clothes in the chest of drawers and the small wardrobe were cheap. Near the bed, the alarm clock was set for seven-fifteen. Terrier picked up the unconscious girl and deposited her on the floor. He took off his shoes and his sheepskin jacket, turned off the lights, and slipped into the warm bed. He quickly fell asleep.
When the alarm went off, the man immediately got up. The girl on the floor wriggled and groaned. She went quiet and rigid when she heard him moving around in the room. Terrier went straight to the mansard window. Aside from the numerous vehicles using Rue de Varenne, nothing was happening in front of Perdrix’s building. The minibus was still in the same place. Terrier heated water in a pot. He went and got the Lyman scope from the inside pocket of his jacket and, while the water was heating, watched more carefully.
On the floor, the dumpy blonde began wriggling and groaning again. Terrier looked at her with annoyance. He rummaged through the table drawer and found a nylon-tipped marker and a piece of paper. A short while later, the girl felt someone pulling her up by the hair. The blindfold was removed, and the knee of her aggressor rested against her back. She saw a hand holding up a piece of paper with a hastily written inscription in capital letters: “NO HARM WILL COME TO YOU. BE QUIET. YOU WILL NOT BE ROBBED OR RAPED OR KILLED OR ANYTHING. PLEASE BE NICE AND PATIENT.” Then the blindfold was put back and tightened, and Terrier laid the blonde down and hurried off to the hot plate, because the water was about to boil. He made himself three cups of instant coffee and drank them with jam and bread. He ate and drank standing up, listening to the little radio turned down low and watching Lionel Perdrix’s building. News bulletins were frequent at this time of day. That morning there was much talk of the assassination attempt on Sheik Hakim and of an airplane crash and the accidental death of a popular singer. About Martin Terrier, aka Monsieur Christian, there was the same biographical information that had been broadcast at four o’clock in the morning.
The Prone Gunman Page 11