by Cara Black
The next article, dated the previous week, a stilted translation, led further:
This year in continuing reverberations from the revelations of high-placed security officials on trial suspected of organized vigilantism under the auspices of GAL, the dirty war, ETA’s attacks have escalated.
The airing of the state-sponsored GAL, “dirty war,” scheme in the early 1990s led to a political scandal in Spain.
Reactions to those attacks have caused an ideological split within ETA between those who refuse to condone violence and those who support armed struggle. The shift from general support for ETA showed during the election of former ETA sympathizing with Goikoetxea, a French Basque assemblyman from Navarre, who engineered the referendum recently passed by a narrow margin.
So Goikoetxea’s formal announcement tonight of the referendum agreement had faced dissent in broken ranks. Serious enough to spur the ettaras?
If Martine had had the time to read this, her tune would have changed.
Still, what did that have to do with Xavierre’s murder? Why now, on the eve of her daughter’s wedding?
But Irati’s connection, slim if anything, existed. Covert operations required money. A network needed funds to operate safe houses, to purchase arms. Irati, with the town house in the 16th and her inheritance from a successful, rich father, represented a small fortune.
Could Irati have sympathized with Euskadi Action, attended meetings, even donated, been put on the mailing list? An unwitting accomplice? Forced by … by what?
“In the next room, we see Balzac’s genealogical chart of La Comédie Humaine,” said a guide leading a group of middle-aged couples, educated retirees by the look of their culture-vulture guidebooks and high-end anoraks. Part of a culture tour, so popular with active retirees who boned up on history for educational dinners with their grandchildren or to impress their belote playing partners.
“On this chart, illustrated by Balzac himself, he outlines the saga’s chronology, with an amazing and detailed fictional character family tree. The interrelatedness by marriage, dalliances, friendships, village and clan ties, love triangles, tied by oaths, connecting …” the guide droned on.
Aimée looked up. Tied by oath. Agustino’s words.
Her cell vibrated in her pocket. “Allô?”
“Irati’s on the phone,” Léo said. “She’s on the move, too.”
At last. Aimée scooped up the printouts and slipped them in her bag.
“No cell phones allowed, shhh.” Poking her head around the corner, the guide, a white-haired, pert-nosed woman with frameless designer glasses, frowned. She pointed to the sign. “You’re disturbing our tour.”
Aimée nodded, rushing to the stairs. “Can I listen, Léo?”
“My equipment’s not hooked up for second-party relay,” Léo said. “But I’d say she’s in a car.”
“What’s she saying, Léo?”
“Too much interference, fading in and out of dead zones. Doesn’t sound French.”
Aimée stiffened. “Basque?”
“Sounds Greek to me. But I can give you her geographic coordinates.”
High-pitched bleeping noises punctuated by intermittent blips sounded in the background.
“Hold on, Léo.”
With the phone to her ear, she took the narrow stairs two at time, crossed the tree-lined courtyard, and went up more stairs to rue Raynouard. Not two blocks from Xavierre’s, yet still several blocks from her parked scooter.
“Her tracking signal’s emitting on rue de Passy.”
“Cross street?”
“Looks like Boulainvilliers Métro.”
Merde! Blocks away.
“Keep talking, Léo.” A biting wind hit her cheekbones. She wrapped her scarf tighter around her neck, plugged in her earbuds, stuck the phone in her pocket, and ran.
By the time she reached her scooter, she was out of breath. She pulled the scooter off its kickstand and keyed the ignition.
“I’m at Passy Métro. Which way?”
“Go north to Trocadéro.”
She gunned the scooter, the wheels bumping over the cobbled street.
After climbing the Trocadéro hill, she saw the bland white wall of the Passy cemetery. “I’m at Trocadéro … the Passy cemetery?”
“The signal’s moving down rue de la Pompe.”
Aimée turned left, shifted into second gear. She wove among the buses, faster now, flying over the zebra-striped crosswalks.
“She’s passing Lycée Janson de Sailly.”
The elite Catholic high school was several blocks ahead. Aimée swerved to avoid a sweeping street cleaner. Aimée tried to think where she was headed: Shop? A market? “What’s nearby, Léo?” A gust of leaves swirled by her feet from the gutter. Horns blared.
“On the map, Marché Saint-Didier,” Léo said.
“Can’t you pinpoint her caller’s location, the number?” Aimée asked, breathless.
“If she stays on long enough,” Léo said. “All my other scanners are monitoring work-related contracts right now.”
In other words, the military. And Léo needed another scanner to pinpoint Irati’s caller’s number and location.
Irati would be driving a Mercedes, the other dark-colored one from the driveway. But that described every other car in this neighborhood. Straining now, her breath vaporous in the chill mid-morning air, she veered right onto rue Saint-Didier.
A block down, she saw the rose-brick—covered Marché Saint-Didier. Locals with string bags clogged the pavement. A Mercedes was backing up into a crosswalk. Aimée braked, hopped off, and pulled her scooter near the lamp post.
A gray Renault came to an abrupt stop on her left. Two men jumped out. From the look of their short hair, nondescript dark blue windbreakers, and thick-soled black shoes, undercover flics. Or a special forces terrorist branch.
Aimée didn’t have time to figure this out, much less to speculate about how they’d known and gotten here so fast. She had to warn Irati, use this chance to get information from her.
Irati, wearing a long dark chocolate wool coat and boots, carrying a full Printemps shopping bag, hurried across the narrow street and into the crowd. Morning shoppers thronged the entrance.
Aimée followed her; she had to reach Irati before these men got to her. The playing field had shifted, but she didn’t know how.
“No signal, Aimée.”
“Got her, Léo. Merci.”
Aimée lowered her head and followed. The two men split up, and Aimée reached for the phone in her pocket.
She hit Irati’s number.
“Two men followed you, Irati,” Aimée said. “They’re entering the market.”
“You again? Leave me alone.” Pause. “You’re lying.”
“Turn around. See the one in the blue windbreaker?”
A gasp of air. She’d seen him. “You had me followed … why?”
“No, not me,” she said. “You’re being watched.”
“But who are they?” Irati’s voice quavered.
“Flics, special forces, who knows? But before you find out,” she said, “tell me where you’re meeting the Basques.”
“But you.… ” Irati stumbled. “How in the world … ?” she caught herself.
But not in time. She hadn’t denied she was meeting the Basques.
“Trust me, Irati,” she said. “I’m trying to help you, to find out who murdered your mother. What do they want?”
The line buzzed. Irati had hung up.
Aimée ran past counters of hanging red string sausages, lifeless beady-eyed rabbits suspended upside down, and displays of winter melons. Milling shoppers lined the aisles in the cavernous iron-strutted market hall. Shouts of “fresh Bresse chicken” came from a butcher in a bloodstained apron, along with scents of rosemary and fennel from the herb counter.
No Irati.
Think. Given the phone call, a “meet” set up in a crowded market, Irati’s options narrowed. Damned if she didn’t meet their deman
ds, damned if she led the flics to them. In Irati’s position, she’d get the hell out.
One of the blue windbreakers stood by the cheese counter, the other near the sample segments of glistening orange clementines behind an iron column. They were ignoring the first rule of shadowing, the rules her father had taught her: never attempt to hide. No doubt they’d break the others too: keep behind the suspect, act naturally no matter what, and never meet the suspect’s eye. But she wasn’t going to wait to find out.
Aimée walked backward in the crowd, mingling in the stream to avoid attention. At the entrance, she turned and hurried like everyone else. A rear side entrance exited on rue Mesnil. In the distance she saw the back of Irati’s coat, already three quarters of the way to Place Victor Hugo. Almost a block ahead.
Aimée took off, her boot heels echoing off the tall limestone buildings lining the street. The sharp wind made tears form in her eyes. And then Irati had turned the corner.
Aimée pumped her legs. Ran as fast as she could. A minute later, she rounded the corner. Place Victor Hugo shone in the weak sunlight, a roundabout with ten streets radiating from it like the spokes of bicycle wheels. And no Irati.
Wednesday Midday
IN THE HUMID vaulted visiting room, Morbier wiped his neck with a stained handkerchief.
“Life’s a tightwire, high above the circus crowd: any moment, you risk falling,” said Lucard, the juge d’instruction. “But I don’t need to tell you that, Morbier.”
Lucard tented his slim fingers, trained his beady black eyes on the ceiling, and emitted a sigh.
Lucard had always reminded Morbier of a crow, scanning for shiny bright things in the gutter. After all, that was his job, so why shouldn’t he resemble a scavenger?
“The IGS insists on extending your time in the garde à vue. They asked for my opinion,” Lucard said. “A formality, of course.”
Another twenty-four hours in this hellhole. No chance of reaching Laguardiere, or finding Xavierre’s killer. A shame, too, since he’d worked with Lucard, a tough, thorough examining magistrate despite his youth, stylishly tousled hair, and Grandes Écoles bearing. He’d turned out to be just another lackey, a pinstripe suit in the system.
“Think I’m a flight risk, Lucard?”
“Liken it to the balancing act between the past and present,” said Lucard. “Keeping to the tightrope analogy, you reach the wire by practicing, preparing. Above the crowd, it all depends on using what you’ve learned, drawing on your skill. This expertise gets you to the other side. To success, Morbier. Worry too much about the height, the past, and it weighs you to one side. If you don’t focus and balance, you plunge.”
The less-than-veiled analogy meant “back off.” Forget the corruption investigation assigned him by Laguardiere. Turn over the source he’d met en route to Lyon.
The reigning powers assumed that a smart flic would wish to maintain the esprit de corps of his men, exit his lifetime of service with some dignity. Have a retirement to enjoy. Especially if they could dangle the carrot of a reduced murder charge.
No one except Laguardiere remained to watch his backside. Morbier’s stitches itched, two in his scalp tugging on his hair; a dull pain thudded in his side. He needed more painkillers.
“Anything wrong, Lucard? Wrong enough that twenty-four hours makes a difference, eh?” Morbier wiped his brow. “Or did the photographer raise ripples in the IGS sea?”
Last night, light-headed, he’d keeled over during transport to the sixth-floor prisoners’ clinic of Hôtel Dieu. At the elevator, a freelance photographer had snapped his fall. Almost a bit of luck. He’d known the photographer, a strident Communist, for years. But, if they hadn’t confiscated the photographer’s camera already, they’d get to him.
No doubt his “incident” had necessitated a hurried meeting to defuse a scandal. No one could know the flics allowed their own to suffer what they did to other prisoners. They’d sent Lucard to make nice before the ax. Cover their judicial asses. As always. He’d been a fool to think he’d be able to nail corruption this deep.
“But I can make this go easier.” Lucard smiled. “I want a name, Morbier.”
Reveal his informer and sign the man’s death warrant?
“Pierrot le fou. Jacques Chirac. Take your pick.”
“Don’t waste my time, Morbier,” Lucard said, his black eyes squinting in frustration. “The IGS consulted your team, assembled your investigation reports and notes. You’ve got no alibi. It’s a done deal. You know how this works. Make it easier for yourself. Cooperate. You’ve commanded respect in a long career. You don’t have to throw it all away.”
Morbier swallowed, his throat dry. What he wouldn’t give for a glass of water.
“Then think of the men you work with,” Lucard said. “What about your team? I promise to do what I can. You know I keep my word, Morbier. I’ve worked deals for your cases before, haven’t I?”
Tired, Morbier wanted all this to end. Had no stamina for it any more, apart from Cheb DJ’s broken fingers. A nagging part of him longed to pick up his last paycheck, get incoherent in his apartment with a crate of half-decent Bordeaux, and maybe Xavierre’s face would go away. For a little while.
“Five years for a crime passionnel,” said Lucard, gauging his reaction. “But I can suggest health issues to the IGS and sentencing judge, knocking it down to three. A private cell, télé, the protected wing in La Santé.”
All flics served their sentences in the protected wing; they wouldn’t last five minutes in the general prison population.
“The IGS, unofficially of course and pending their investigation,” Lucard said, “recommends you retire effective today so your pension remains intact.”
They’d thought of everything.
“But I need a name, Morbier. You owe your partners, your team; time you came through on this.”
Lucard had hit home. Morbier thought of his relationships made in the force. Like those friends and enemies formed on the school playground, they never went away. Did the past ever go away?
Fresh from the police academy, he’d entered the Commissariat boy’s club—a camaraderie of brothers—they joked. Formed bonds with his partner, his team. The ones watching his back, his life, when he faced the street. Depending on each other. Trusting the code that kept each other alive to the end of their shift.
Like war, he imagined: only those who’d lived it understood. The good ones, like his first partner, operated that way. Had all his life. He’d made closer bonds with Jean-Claude Leduc than his own daughter or her mother.
But they were dead. Gone. And Aimée? A stab of guilt hit him. He’d made provisions in his will: his reduced retirement pension would keep Leduc Detective afloat for a while. But he’d have to do what he’d avoided for years and in all conscience should have done a long time ago: give her the key to the safe deposit box holding the letters, her mother’s things. Tell her the truth. The whole truth. And she’d spit in his eye, walk away, and never see him again.
Not that he’d blame her.
Et alors, in the end, the men he’d worked with were all he had.
“You’re mulling it over, I can see. That’s good. Think of your men, this tight unit who look up to you, Morbier. It’s your only recourse.”
Morbier took a deep breath. Pain sliced his ribs. He clenched his teeth, feeling the tremor in his jaw, the shaking of his hands.
“We want to oil the wheels for the IGS, make it a formality, don’t we?” Lucard leaned forward, pushing a water bottle that had materialized from his pocket toward Morbier. “Water?”
“Eat shit, Lucard.” He leaned on the table. “And make sure to quote me.”
Wednesday Afternoon
DRUMMING HER FINGERS on the round marble-top table of the café overlooking Place Victor Hugo, Aimée watched for Irati. The outdoor rattan café chairs gleamed like copper in the mid-afternoon light. Sparse brown-leafed plane trees encircled the spurting fountain. Opposite stood Saint Honoré d’Eylau, a
narrow toffee-colored stone church. Hemingway married one of his wives here, the story went. She had a clear view of the three streets Irati might use to return to her car.
A traffic light shone green above the PIETONS ATTENTION sign as a rush of pedestrians crossed the zebra crosswalk.
She answered her phone on the first ring.
“Allô?”
“Aimée, have you seen L’Humanité?” René said.
Since when did René read that Communist rag?
“Not your style, René.”
“Look at the latest edition, the last page.”
“Hold on.” She found the newspaper rack on the café wall, took the wood roll, and scanned L’Humanité’s back page. Her breath caught when she saw the photo of a bruised, kneeling Morbier clutching his stomach.
“My god, they’re torturing him.”
“Gets worse. Read the caption. ‘Untold story of a bent Commissaire Divisionnaire.’” Concern vibrated in René’s voice. “The article accuses Morbier of beating up a fellow flic who discovered irregularities in a Lyon investigation.”
Her heart fell. “Lies!” she shouted. The waiter looked up.
“A trumped-up charge,” she said, lowering her voice.
“You don’t know that, Aimée,” he said. “What the hell’s going on?”
“Confined in jail, bruises? They beat people up, that’s what they do, to make them talk,” she said. “Maybe I’m ruining his chances after all.”
“What do you mean?”
A flicker of dark brown passed the window. She leaned forward, her gaze traveling over the passersby, alert. She bit her lip. Only a blonde pulling a shopping cart.
“There’s a leak in the force.”
A long expulsion of air from René. “So now you’re going to take on the Préfecture?”
“Not by myself.”
She couldn’t trust the flics, Melac most of all. Aimée slid a ten-franc note under her demitasse saucer in case she had to leave in a hurry.