The Predator

by Denis Pitts

  The solitary D’Isigny office in the Bourse was a discreet prerevolutionary house, curtained in green damask, where visitors were greeted by charming and well-mannered young men in frock coats and wing collars.

  Napoleon the First banked with D’Isigny; so did most Presidents of France. To ensure an exclusivity that was a question less of social cachet than of financial prudence, no new individual client was accepted by D’Isigny unless he could show a personal value of a quarter of a million United States dollars.

  Jacques d’Isigny was a slender aesthete, a gentle man who did not care a great deal for publicity but was always willing to lend his name to good causes.

  He adored his wife, whom he had met when she was a young refugee Hungarian concert pianist; he fretted about his son’s fast driving but gave him complete latitude; and he doted on his daughter Claudine, who, at the age of twelve, bore her mother’s striking good looks and shared her musical talent.

  A simple man of simple tastes, he usually drove himself in a small Peugeot; he smoked Caporal cigarettes, but not to excess; and he was happiest in the company of his family or the workers in his vineyards.

  If he had any vanity it was pride in his racehorses, which were among the finest in the world. They had won the English Derby, the Arc de Triomphe, the Kentucky Derby — every classic race. And the champagne produced in the D’Isigny vineyards was of such vintage quality that the government itself would allow only a limited number of bottles to leave France. It was a singular honor, accorded to no other wine.

  PISA, 1630

  It was twilight when the helicopter reached Pisa, and it had started to rain. A small group of German tourists sat waiting to be returned to Munich and watched from the lounge of the terminal as the Petite Concorde was prepared for takeoff on the apron in front of them. Earlier they had watched it towed from a hangar to the main departure area.

  Now, ground crews stood by the aircraft, sheltering under its razor-edged wings from the rain, which was increasing in strength.

  A generator choked itself into noisy life and two firemen took up positions at each of the two Rolls engines that powered the supersonic jet.

  The engines began to whine gently.

  At that moment, the helicopter landed a hundred feet away, and the tourists watched with curiosity as the door opened and a blond man ran from the helicopter, ducking his head under the still-turning rotors, and boarded the jet.

  The steps were retracted into the body of the aircraft and the doors closed. A ground controller signaled to the pilot that all was clear. As he walked briskly away, the sleek aircraft moved forward and turned toward the runway.

  Three minutes later, the jet engines were under full power, and the tourists heard the windowpanes rattle in the terminal building. It was a long takeoff and the Petite Concorde used almost all the short runway, certainly more than would normally have been considered prudent. This was because the aircraft was loaded with sufficient fuel to keep it airborne for twelve hours. At the end of those twelve hours, Jean-Paul Becker would know whether or not he was going to be the master of Europe.

  7

  The notice on the wrought-iron gates of the house said:

  DUE TO THE DEATH OF M. MARCEL D’ISIGNY IN A RACING ACCIDENT, THE D’ISIGNY FAMILY REGRETS VERY MUCH THAT THE CHATEAU WILL NOT BE OPEN TO THE PUBLIC THIS WEEKEND.

  Jean-Paul turned to Blum.

  “So the son’s dead. That’s good. She’s an only child, that Claudine. They’ll pay. Don’t you worry, they’ll pay.”

  *

  On the following Saturday afternoon, Jean-Paul joined the line of tourists at the gate and paid ten francs to a servant who sat at a table in the garden.

  Most of the tourist interest was in the gallery, which was filled with paintings rarely seen except in reproduction — Cézannes, Van Goghs, Gauguins and other post-impressionists for whom the Louvre, the National Gallery and every major American museum had made bids in the past.

  Two guards, discreet in lounge suits, kept a careful vigil throughout, so careful, in fact, that they failed to notice the boy who slipped through a side door in the gallery and walked, quite casually, into the private area of the house.

  Jean-Paul found himself in a capacious drawing room with tall windows that looked down over the valley and the town.

  Two big sofas, covered in a dark, quilted print, were arranged at right angles to a huge brick fireplace. A window seat was covered with cushions in the same print. With its soft carpeting and tasteful wallpaper, it seemed a friendly room.

  Jean-Paul was not seeking atmosphere but looking for a place to hide. The window seat attracted him.

  He lifted the top and saw that it was a storage place for long-discarded toys, everything from teddy bears to toy cars. It was ideal; just enough space, he thought.

  He closed the window seat and examined the bolts on the window. Simple enough, he judged. And no sign of a burglar alarm. Strange, with all the loot in the house. Maybe they had dogs. But there was no sign of them, either.

  The door opened suddenly behind him and he turned quickly. The face of the man who stood there showed slight surprise, but there was no hint of suspicion. It was a sad face, and Jean-Paul guessed that this was the father of the dead racing driver.

  “M’sieu?” the man said softly.

  “I’m sorry, I’m lost,” said Jean-Paul. He smiled innocently. “I noticed this painting on the wall and I could not resist a closer look. I’m sorry, monsieur.”

  The man smiled. It was a soft, wan smile.

  “You flatter me, young man. You are looking at an original d’Isigny. I painted this ten years ago. My wife insisted that it should stay on the wall here. Come, I’ll take you back.”

  The banker steered the young man to the art gallery, where the line had grown.

  “Goodbye, young man,” he said, “Enjoy the pictures. I do.”

  *

  In a shop in Grasse they stole two cheap walkie-talkies, a pair of inexpensive field glasses, a stopwatch and a Japanese pencil flashlight. They tried the walkie-talkie transceivers in the barn. Jean-Paul walked along a lane until he could no longer hear Blum’s voice reciting “one-two-three-four-five” every thirty seconds. He paced the distance back to the barn.

  “Two point two kilometers,” he said. “That’s plenty.”

  “But you forgot that you are going to be locked in a box in a house with thick walls.”

  They tried again, this time with Blum concealed behind a wall of straw and wood and stone. This time they lost contact almost immediately. The boy swore.

  They spent all day experimenting and discovered that they could signal for a considerable distance by clicking the on-off switches.

  Jean-Paul worked out a simple code system.

  They rehearsed for a full week. The following Saturday was the day of the snatch. They drove ten, maybe fifteen, maybe twenty times from the chateau to the barn, along every possible route — the stopwatch in Jean-Paul’s left hand, a notebook strapped to his right knee on which he recorded every bend, every crater, every hump-backed bridge, every minor variation along the rocky track to the barn where they intended to hide the girl.

  They built a false room behind three thicknesses of bales. They made sure that there was an ample supply of air, food and water. With commendable delicacy, Blum set up a bucket toilet arrangement.

  Jean-Paul estimated that it would take three days, because that was the time he figured it would take for d’Isigny to organize the money from Paris.

  They climbed for hours on the mountainside overlooking the town to find a site from which they could view each of the three chosen possible places for the ransom “drop.” From this height, they could be sure that the police were not lurking nearby.

  On that same rock, high in Provence, Blum asked: “And suppose he calls in the Surêté?”

  “He won’t.”

  “He’s important enough to have the whole damn army out if he wants.”

  “He won�
�t.”

  “If he knew it was you and me he would.”

  “But he won’t.”

  “And suppose he does?”

  “He won’t. He’ll assume, as most people would, that this is the work of the Mafia or the Union Corse or any one of the big mobs from Paris or Marseilles. He’ll pay.”

  “I ask again, Jean-Paul. Suppose he knows that it is just a couple of boys. What of the girl?”

  Jean-Paul shrugged his shoulders.

  “It’s his daughter,” he said. “He’ll pay. I’ve seen him, Blum. He’s soft.”

  *

  There were two small airholes in the windowseat, and he lay with his nose as close to one of them as he could in an almost impossible position in which his knees were pressed hard into his chest and throat. Breathing was difficult. He remembered the advice of a contortionist in the Egyptian prison.

  “Breathe very lightly with the muscles in the middle of your body. Forget everything else. Let your mind become completely empty.”

  It had not been easy to get into the box in the very short time he had allowed himself. He had slid the toys to one end and cramped his body into the coffinlike space together with the transceiver, the flashlight, a screwdriver and a number of plastic strips with which he intended to break his way through the rest of the house.

  The bandage with which he intended to gag the girl, and bind her, if need be, was wrapped around his waist.

  Like every other part of the operation, Jean-Paul had rehearsed this for several days. But the byre in which he had lain had been fractionally larger than his window box, and soon he was feeling pain. It started after an hour — dull stabs in the muscles of the thighs. And then a greater pain began in his abdomen, which was taking the bulk of the pressure.

  He switched on the flashlight. His watch told him that it was four p.m. The visitors would be leaving now. Blum would be moving into position. He expected the first signal from his accomplice at five: three clicks on the transceiver.

  The dull pain was becoming sharper now. Could he really withstand this for another eight hours? Forget every thing, the gully-gully boy had said; then all pain goes and you just breathe and drift on the highest clouds.

  It was so damned quiet in that box. He heard just the sound of his own shallow breathing and the thumping of his heart.

  Forget everything. Out of your mind, get it right out of your mind. The fall, oh my God that fall, the cornicestone was still in his hands as he fell, his knee catching the ledge, the somersault when he saw all the lights of Cannes and the yachts in the harbor upside down. It should have killed him. He felt himself sweating at the thought and the cramps in the middle of his body were almost impossible to take.

  Forget everything. Clear your mind.

  And then he heard the transceiver, once, twice, and finally for a third time.

  Blum was close at hand. The system was working. Now it was a matter of waiting.

  Eventually there was a noise outside the box. Artificial light came flooding through the airhole. Jean-Paul edged himself very slowly along in the box and peered out.

  It was d’Isigny. Jean-Paul watched him, hardly allowing himself to breathe at all lest he should make a sound.

  The banker walked across the room to the fireplace, picked up a photograph from the mantelpiece and looked at it for a long time. His lips moved, but Jean-Paul heard no sound. He watched as d’Isigny sat heavily down on one of the sofas and burst into deep, heaving sobs. He stayed like that for several minutes, his whole body convulsing with the strength and the pain of his grief.

  He stood up and put the picture back on the mantelpiece. He stood very straight and turned, rather as a soldier would; then he walked out of the room, switching off the light.

  *

  He was falling, falling, all pain gone now, through a purple sky, his body almost weightless, twisting and whirling in flight and bouncing softly off clouds.

  The boy did not know it, but by constricting the flow of blood through his body, he was depriving his brain of oxygen; he was perilously close to complete unconsciousness, even death.

  He had lain in the darkness for seven and a half hours. No one else had entered the room. He had conquered the agony in his body but now he suffered great torments of mind.

  In periods of lucidity, he had thought about d’Isigny and the grief which he alone had witnessed. A man crying over a damn silly son who had crashed his way out of the family fortune. So what?

  But he had felt something profound for this man, and he couldn’t place it in his register of feelings.

  Hating, despising; he had had that; they were quite easy, for, after all, he had been taught them in Camp Five. Liking? Yes, he liked. Blum, for instance. He had liked some of the others: Kokkinos, for instance, and Fatima, and the Scottish ladies. What about Razziz? No, he had not liked Razziz, but he hadn’t hated him either. Respect, yes, that’s what it had been. So he had feelings of hate, liking and respect. What else? Trust. He considered, and decided that he distrusted everybody. Even Blum? No, he trusted Blum.

  What about love? They had talked a lot about love in the reformatory. Oh, what brotherly love, the bastards. For insulting your master, Maurice Bronstein, twelve strokes ... Pierre Brunel, for indifference, six strokes ... Jean-Paul Becker, for silent insolence, six strokes ... Michel Chonez, for indecent talk ... The Principal would read the punishment list each evening after benediction, when M. le Curê, blessed them and offered them into the safe keeping of God for one more night.

  One more night. They would lie silent in the gaunt, gray punishment dormitory, sobbing as silently as possible, for to make even the slightest sound was to invite the doubling of tomorrow’s thrashing. Love?

  Jean-Paul, he said to himself, you have hate, liking, respect, mistrust and no bloody love.

  So what the hell was this feeling for the gentle little man with gray hair whose tears had run like rivers down his cheeks as he looked at the photograph?

  Of all the emotions he knew, it was nearest to liking. But no, he could not like someone he did not know, certainly not someone whose daughter he planned to steal from this very house at midnight. Then he suddenly realized that he had felt a warmth, not in his organized brain, but in the very center of his breast; and this was something he could not control.

  And recognizing this, he told himself that he was a softie, a sissy. Then the purple sky enveloped him again and he began to fall, even more slowly now, until there was a violent crash in his head as the transceiver clicked.

  He eased himself very slowly and painfully out of the window seat and tried to stand. He found that the slightest movement of any of his limbs was such an unbearable torture that he had to lie on the floor in the same fetal position with which he had cramped himself into the box.

  Gingerly, stretching one limb at a time, he allowed the blood to start flowing freely through his body. As his heart began to pump harder and harder, he writhed on the floor, fighting hard not to shout with the excruciating hurt of the racking, convulsing release.

  It was several minutes before he was able to stand freely and breathe normally and collect his wits for the task ahead.

  He was in complete darkness. Using the pencil flashlight sparingly, he made his way across the carpet to the door. He tried the handle and it was unlocked.

  During the previous week, perched in the heights above the house, he and Blum had guessed that the girl’s room was on the first floor facing southeast. It was a room with pink curtains, and once they had seen a girl with long blond hair sitting at the window reading a book.

  From where he stood in the downstairs hall, he supposed that the room would be at the top of the stairs, the first door on the left. He paused at the bottom of the wide, thickly carpeted staircase, arranging the bandages with which he would gag and truss the girl. He prepared himself to move now with tigerlike stealth and speed; then he heard music.

  He noticed for the first time that there was a thin chink of light from the roo
m opposite. Music was coming from this room — music of a sort he had never heard before. It came from an instrument strange to his ears which had been attuned to the reedy and squeaky string and wind instruments of the East and lately to pop and jazz from Radio Monaco.

  This was mellow and chordal and very gentle to listen to. He bent down and peered through the keyhole of the room and saw a girl’s back. She was wearing a dark-blue cotton nightdress and her hair streamed down her back. She was playing a harpsichord. There were two candles in silver holders on the instrument.

  The boy paused in the hallway and made a decision. The girl was probably alone in the room.

  He opened the door very gently. He was right. God, he thought, this is going to be easy money. He pushed the button on the radio transceiver in his hand and held it there for several seconds. It was one of the prearranged signals, telling Blum to get ready.

  He held the pad of bandage in his left hand and walked, very slowly, very gently, on the balls of his feet, toward the girl.

  There was a large, gilt-framed mirror on the wall of the music room of the Chateau Tranquille, and it was the picture he saw in this mirror that made the boy freeze stock-still there on the carpet, holding his breath, seemingly overwhelmed by yet another emotion which was stronger than anything he had felt in his fourteen-year-old life.

  He had stood behind the girl. But now, in the mirror, he could see her face. It was the face, a face of simple, radiant beauty reflected in exquisite profile, that made him stop in the very center of the room.

  She was sitting upright at the harpsichord, looking directly ahead of her. Her hands moved with delicate ease, making this curious, wonderful music, her face was composed and supremely innocent. Without thinking why, he was rooted on the spot.

  Behind her, in the mirror, he could see the boy standing in the shadows.

  It was a long moment before he recognized the boy, but when he did he saw at once the terrible contrast between the girl and this hollow-eyed, stalking creature, hands stretched out to grasp and steal and destroy if necessary. Was this really him?