by Manda Scott
‘It’s me,’ Patrice says, from a safe stance to the side. He steps onto the threshold, holding his laptop up where they can see it. ‘Pierre Fayette inherited a farmhouse from his grandmother. His heir is Elodie Duval.’ He looks from Picaut to Rollo and back again. ‘I think I’ve brought you to the wrong place.’
‘How far?’
‘Two and a half kilometres. The ground’s not great. The Maps app says we can do it on foot in fifteen minutes if we push.’
00.35
‘Martha?’
‘Martha!’
And yes, Martha. Martha, who is standing very, very still, with Elodie’s Colt – which was once Céline’s Colt – pressed to the back of her head.
To the man standing in the doorway, Elodie says, ‘If she moves, she dies. If you move, she dies. Keep your hands where I can see them. Where’s Conrad?’
‘He couldn’t come,’ Edward Lakoff says. He holds his hands up, palms flat, unthreatening. He knows exactly where Laurence is, but his gaze never leaves Elodie and Martha. ‘He’s chairing a war game. He couldn’t leave. I came instead.’
‘You’ll do.’ Laurence is leaning on the wall by the kitchen door. The back door is to his right; beyond it is one of the new toilets, and then the door to the yard. ‘I’m sure you know as much as he does of the family history, possibly more. Kramme was your father, after all.’
Martha says, ‘I don’t understand.’ She is not weeping now. She stands carefully, as if even her hair needs to stay still, and it might choose not to.
‘Your grandfather will explain,’ Laurence says. And to Edward: ‘You will take the seat Martha has just vacated. Speaking to the camera, you will detail your heritage, the acts of your father, his intentions and yours, and those of your son. You will leave nothing out. If you do, I shall kill Martha without hesitation. You understand, I think, that I have absolutely nothing to lose, and the opportunity to kill the great-granddaughter of both a Boche killer and a Maquis traitor would outweigh any possible regrets I might have at ending the life of so charming an individual?’
‘What happens afterwards?’
‘That’s not entirely in our control. I imagine you will tell us that you shot Sophie; I recommend that you do. After which, we shall present the tape to the authorities. I imagine you will be arrested.’
‘Martha?’
‘Martha, being innocent, will go free.’
Edward Lakoff is in his seventies, but he has weathered well. He has a sharp mind, and an active one. His gaze, turned on Laurence, is unreadable, as is his face. He raises one brow, slowly. ‘Your word on that? You will not implicate Martha?’
‘I swear, here, now, that I will not implicate Martha. Nor will I kill her.’ There’s a relief in this. Even now, Laurence is not sure he could kill a young woman in cold blood. Sophie could have done. Elodie might do. Laurence is not sure what Elodie Duval can and cannot do. He is not alone in his uncertainty.
Edward Lakoff says, ‘Elodie?’
She says, ‘If you give us living proof that John Lakoff was Kramme, if you give us the identity of Diem, I won’t kill Martha, I swear it.’
Lakoff makes the only choice open to him. ‘Let’s do it.’ Elodie moves away from the video camera, herding Martha with her. Edward Lakoff takes her place.
‘The camera is rolling,’ Laurence says. ‘All of this has been recorded. Face the lens. Treat this as a congressional hearing. Speak clearly. Leave nothing out. We do, after all, know most of it.’
Edward Lakoff could be reading the weather on a dull and rainy Thursday, but for the tap of his little finger on his knee.
‘I am Edward Patrick Lakoff, former Senator for Illinois, former Chair of the Intelligence Select Committee. My father was John Lakoff, Assistant Director of the CIA. He was previously known as Sturmbannführer Maximilian Kramme, of the Geheime Staatspolizei. He was the senior officer in charge of the town of Saint-Cybard, in which capacity he personally tortured and killed members of the Maquis de Morez and sundry other men and women of the town. My wife’s father was Jean-Jacques Crotteau, known to the intelligence services as Diem. In the early hours of this morning, JJ killed Sophie Duval.’
‘JJ was Diem.’
‘Yes.’
‘And he killed Sophie.’
‘He did.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he could. Because she killed my father, who was his friend. Because she had gone to the States to collect a video that could have identified my father as Kramme. But primarily because she knew who we were and, with Paul Rey dead, it seemed likely she would seek vengeance for the war.’
‘You were afraid of her? She’s ninety-two.’
‘Nobody I know has suggested that age stopped her capacity for violence. Or her need for revenge.’
‘Who killed Pierre Fayette?’
‘JJ again. He could get closest. I would have done it if it had been necessary.’
To Martha, Elodie says, ‘How long have you known?’
Rigidly white, Martha is holding herself, arms across the mound of her abdomen. ‘I am just now finding out.’ She does not look at her grandfather.
For the first time, Edward Lakoff looks discomfited. ‘We didn’t want to—’
A sound outside. Laurence turns from the room to the back door. He braces himself against the wall, and raises his Colt in both hands. He is not as steady as he was, but still. To the door, he says, ‘They say the asparagus is best picked under the full moon.’
From the far side of the door, René answers, ‘And Churchill’s cigars are green in its honour.’
Laurence opens the door. On the other side is Conrad Lakoff, his hands raised to shoulder height. René Vivier stands behind him, holding him at gunpoint. From the look on René’s face, Conrad Lakoff’s life hangs by a particularly fine thread.
There are not many times in Laurence’s experience when a plan has come together so neatly. It feels good when it does, even if it is not yet complete. He reaches behind him and flicks down a switch that has been up.
To Lakoff, he says, ‘I’m sure René has explained the situation. Your father will continue to speak to the camera. You will remain where you are. If any of us thinks that you are about to move, Martha will be the first to die, and her unborn son with her. Your legacy will end. Diem’s legacy, in effect, will be over, because you, now, have no future and Martha’s child is your only gift to the world.’
‘You cannot—’
‘I am not going to harm Martha, I have said so. But you need to tell us all that you know. We have established for the camera that Edward Lakoff is Kramme’s son, born during the war, and that, after his escape to the US, he married Diem’s daughter, Marie. You, Conrad, therefore, are the grandson of two wartime Nazis.’
‘No.’ It is Conrad who speaks. ‘JJ was never a Nazi.’
‘He was Diem, though. All his adult life, he was Kramme’s agent.’
‘Yes, but not a Nazi. He was captured early in the war. Kramme threatened him. He went along with it, and was never able to stop. He kept thinking that after the war, he could walk away, but after Patrick Sutherland was captured … He had no choice. He—’
‘Thank you. You can stop now.’
If he doesn’t, René will shoot him. Laurence brings the focus back to Edward Lakoff, Kramme’s son. ‘Whatever JJ’s affiliations, Kramme was a Nazi and he was not the only one. We need now for you to paint the broader picture. What were your plans for after Conrad entered the NSA? Are you planning a constitutional convention to overturn democracy, with the intelligence services leading the charge? What happens, what actually happens, when the virus of fascism is injected undiluted into the body politic of a sovereign nation? Can you tell us that?’
00.52
‘Torches off.’
Picaut is fitter than she had feared. Guided by Patrice’s map, her team ran for the two and a half kilometres, and she did not lag behind.
Elodie Duval’s farm is ablaze with inner and outer lights that
make the darkness beyond their reach all the more profound. Of the four cars parked outside, she recognizes Martin Gillard’s Mercedes and Elodie Duval’s MX-5. The BMW, she thinks, is likely to be Conrad Lakoff’s, which leaves an aged, but beautifully maintained, Aston Martin for Laurence. As the man, so the car. You have lied to me from the start. I’m sorry. I did like you. I think perhaps I still do.
Her team gathers around her in the dark. They are fifty metres from the farm, probably more. She can hear voices through an open window, a man and a woman, both speaking English. They are too far away to identify.
‘Rollo: front.’ Picaut’s voice is the barest whisper. Her hands, signalling. ‘Evard: to the corner.’ He is not Petit now, just himself. ‘Sylvie: with me.’
And last: ‘Patrice, stay here.’
‘It might be— OK. I’m not moving.’ He sits down, cross-legged, on the road. ‘Break a leg.’
‘Captain Picaut, stop. This is not your fight.’
That voice! She spins, and she is ready to shoot, but the voice came from the dark behind them and she is, perhaps, silhouetted against the yard lights. Softly, she says, ‘Martin Gillard? Paul Rey’s son. Are you here to stop Diem’s legacy?’
He laughs, just as quietly. ‘Well done. On all counts, well done. When did you work it out?’
Never let the assailant take charge of the conversation. She says, ‘I trusted you,’ and it is true.
‘You can trust me still. I am not here to hurt anyone, certainly not you.’
‘Why then?’
‘I promised my father I would let no harm come to his daughter.’ There’s a depth to his voice, a roundness, that may be grief.
Unkindly, she says, ‘How? You weren’t with him when he died. Not even when he knew he was dying.’
‘No.’ Just that one word and she knows she has hit home. ‘We couldn’t risk it. We thought … my father thought that I was his secret, that Sophie didn’t know who I was, and so Elodie the same.’ If there was pain before, it is magnified now a hundredfold.
Off balance, she asks, ‘What changed?’
‘There was a second cipher in Elodie’s email.’ She feels Patrice shift, as his interest sharpens. To him, Martin Gillard says, ‘It was based on Céline’s poem; you’d never have got it. You weren’t supposed to.’
‘She wrote two ciphers in that one email? Really?’
‘Really. My sister was taught by Sophie and Laurence. She’s been writing ciphers since before she could spell her own name.’
‘What did it say, her second message?’
‘“Our father sends his love and asks that you not get in the way of what is coming.”’ He lifts one shoulder in a shrug. ‘So this is me, not getting in the way.’
‘That must be hard.’
‘More than you can ever imagine. I was born for this moment.’ He is striving for irony, and failing. Something is not right.
In the farmhouse, a new light flickers on. Still, Picaut cannot see him. She asks, ‘What are they doing inside?’
‘Filming the evidence. This goes beyond stopping Diem’s legacy, or exposing the descendants of a Gestapo agent; there is a principle at stake. Kramme was not the only Nazi given a new life inside the US. There were many of them – and their children, their grandchildren, are woven through the fabric of the nation. Look at our politics, our investment banks, our universities, our science. What do you see?’
She sees corruption on a scale never before imagined, but that is not her problem. ‘I will not allow you, Laurence, René … anyone, to shoot someone on French soil.’
‘Of course not.’ A crunch of gravel and at last, Martin Gillard steps into the light. He has his hands out, empty. His gun is clipped into his shoulder holster and however well trained he is, he couldn’t draw in the time it might take her – and Rollo, Sylvie and Evard – to fire. He says, ‘I told you I have never killed a police officer, Captain Picaut, and it is true. I will not do so now.’
‘Then why are we having this conversation?’
‘Timing is everything. You will have seen the lights change at the farmhouse. We can go in now. The Lakoffs have admitted on camera that John Lakoff was Max Kramme and that JJ Crotteau killed both Sophie Destivelle and Pierre Fayette.’
‘You are giving us permission to do our duty?’
She is crisply furious. He takes a step back. ‘Perhaps we could say I’m no longer doing my best to delay you. Also … I would remind you that on both sides of this confrontation are men – and women – who are not afraid to kill. They have little to lose, any of them. I would prefer not to see you hurt.’
‘Then don’t get in the way. Rollo? Evard? Sylvie? As you were.’
Rollo takes the front door with Evard behind him. Picaut takes the back door: slide round the side, duck beneath a window, creep along. She can hear Edward Lakoff speaking inside in much the same measured tones he used when he was describing the images in his museum.
‘… weakness, a softness, to be extirpated. America needs a strong hand at the helm, just as …’
The back door hangs ajar. She signals Evard, standing at the corner of the farmhouse, who signals Rollo. Three …
Two …
One …
Go!
‘Armed police! Stop what you’re doing and—’
Three gunshots crack past, as if all they were waiting for was the excuse and she has offered it.
Without thinking, Picaut hits the floor. With almost as little thought, she pushes herself back up. ‘Stop! Lay your guns down, I have more men outside. Martin, I will arrest you. Laurence, stop! This is over. You’ve made your point.’
There are no more shots.
She scans the room. Edward Lakoff has drawn his own gun, but has had no time to fire before he was hit. He is on the floor, using his own tie to bind a flesh wound on his arm. Martin Gillard, she thinks, fired the shot, but it may have been Rollo: both of them fired.
René Vivier is dead: a single shot to the head from short range. Conrad Lakoff spun, took his gun and killed him. My God, that was fast. Never again will she assume this man is desk-trained, and not competent in the field. Now he is standing with both hands on his gun in a textbook triangle, a mirror image to Laurence, who looks as if he is considering what it may cost him to fire.
Evard has Conrad Lakoff in his sights. Sylvie is covering Edward. Everyone is armed except Martha Lakoff, who stands frozen in the centre of mayhem. Martin Gillard is aiming at her. Perfectly amiably, he says, ‘Same rules as before. You all drop your guns or Martha dies. Captain Picaut, I’m sorry, but these men are ruthless and there are very few things they care about. Martha and her unborn son are our only levers.’
Picaut says, ‘But you have your film, you can destroy them. Is it true that JJ killed both Sophie and Pierre Fayette?’
Conrad Lakoff catches her eye and nods.
‘Then there will be no prosecutions for those deaths. Whoever killed René will have to face …’ It was Conrad, there is no doubt. Picaut has her entire team as witness to this, but still, she cannot imagine a successful prosecution against the man who will head the NSA.
‘Exactly.’ This is the Laurence she has never seen. He is not hard, but he is no longer playing a role. ‘We can’t let them go, Captain. You know what they are.’
‘Nonetheless, I will not let you kill them.’
‘Then I will be dead within a day and this film will vanish. No part of it will ever see the light of day. If you are allowed to live, you will be silenced by authorities whose will you cannot defy. They have the power to do this, and you know it.’
‘Not if your video has been streamed to the web. If it’s any good at all, it’ll go viral within an hour. The Americans don’t completely own the internet yet. Even the Lakoffs won’t be able to take it down. Their reputations will be destroyed. You don’t have to kill them.’
Laurence gives a rueful laugh. ‘Captain, we may give the impression that we can perform miracles, but sadly, this is untrue. Wh
at you are suggesting is far beyond our technical capacity.’
‘But not ours. You will all put your guns down and we will make this happen. Evard, will you ask Patrice to join us?’
REUTERS: Monday 19 March 2018
EX-SENATOR AND SON IN DUAL SUICIDE AFTER VIRAL ‘CONFESSION’ HITS 26.7 MILLION VIEWS
Edward Lakoff, former Senator of Illinois, was found dead in his hotel room this morning having taken an overdose of phenobarbitone tablets.
His son, Strategic Operations Director Conrad Lakoff of JTARG, was found dead at his home of a gunshot wound to the head. The police are making no further enquiries.
EPILOGUE
CHARLES DE GAULLE, PARIS
22 March 2018
Picaut asked them to wait and here they are, her three wise monkeys, sitting on a bench in the Departures area: Laurence Vaughan-Thomas, Elodie Duval and Martin Gillard.
Laurence stands, extends his hand. ‘Captain, you’re looking well.’ This is the real Laurence. She likes him better like this.
Beside him, Martin Gillard is relaxed, in jeans and a dark green polo shirt. He looks almost harmless. ‘Have you come to arrest me?’
She was going to. She has ballistics evidence that the shot which injured Edward Lakoff came from Martin’s gun. She took it to Ducat, but men whose security clearance gives her vertigo even to think about it have let it be known that any attempt to prosecute would lead the forensic department to conclude that the shots came from Picaut’s own weapon.
Ducat relayed the message, white-faced. She has had the best part of three days to get over it.
‘You know I can’t do that. But you do owe me some answers.’
Martin Gillard says, ‘Ask. We will answer what we can.’
She has a list of priorities, at the top of which is this: ‘Did Sophie sacrifice herself to the Lakoffs?’
‘Of course. They could never have killed her otherwise.’ Laurence has taken the role of speaker. He gives a small smile, the layers of which she does not hope to understand. ‘The bleating of the lamb attracts the tiger.’ He pulls his pipe from his pocket, remembers where he is, and puts it away again. ‘Please understand, this is not some whim dreamed up to make your life difficult but the end of sixty years of uncertainty. For years, we have known that Kramme had a mole inside the Maquis de Morez, but we didn’t know who it was. We had lost Kramme, too. He vanished into the States in fifty-seven and as far as anyone could tell, he, his case handler and Diem were the only three people who knew who he was.’