The Last President- The Complete Trilogy

by Christophe Martinolli

  It hurts like hell. She's having trouble breathing. She's sucking in liquid, hot, and she's swallowing it. It's her blood. Suddenly, when the light comes on, she sees two hooded faces staring at her, saying nothing.

  She thinks she's being set free.

  She's willing to do anything.

  Screams through his gag, eyes rolling.

  The car's in a garage, no, a semi, and it starts. She begs her captors with her green eyes. She has a dogache in her head, it throbs, every pulse of her heart beats, she bleeds, the red liquid runs down her face.

  Kidnapper closes the trunk door. With a sharp jerk, like a guillotine.

  Amber screams in the dark.

  Chapter 16

  Erwan goes to his mailbox and finds his phone. He frowns. Amber must have given it back to him, but why hasn't she heard from him anymore? He looks all around him, mechanically, because he knows she's never far from the refreshment bar. The waterhole attracts all kinds of animals, predators and prey are forced to mix there. She's not there, and there aren't many people in the corridors anyway.

  The helpers all got the hell out of there, and he's going to do the same.

  Erwan tries to call her back, again, without success.

  Mailbox full.

  Chapter 17

  Silence and darkness surround Amber, she hears only her own breath, and her skull hurts a little less. She's gotten used to the pain. Then men talk, but she is unable to know what they say.

  The truck the car is in is at a standstill.

  Suddenly she recognizes a familiar voice. Maybe it's Dominic?

  The light comes back, she is dazzled, the hooded man takes her out of the trunk, helps her to walk, gets her off the trailer, like a sick and lame cow, and sits her on a wicker chair in a shed.

  Where is she?

  She hears footsteps, she recognizes her step. The man walks around the chair and faces her.

  It's Dominic.

  — Amber! Damn it, Amber, I'm sorry!

  He delicately removes his blood-stained gag as gently as possible and frees his hands. Amber trembles, she is speechless, then suddenly invaded by a wave of anger, gathers her last strength, and slaps him.

  The hooded man holds her, Dominique tries to calm the situation.

  — Why were you running in the halls?

  — Do you need your big dogs to deal with your jealousy issues?

  Dominic sighs, pretends to step back and slaps her very severely. She is dried out.

  — What did you hear?

  — Nothing, I don't even know what you're talking about, have you gone crazy? Do you know what you're going to get if I file a complaint for false imprisonment?

  — Nobody's gonna believe you, I don't give a shit. The President's dead, you think we're gonna listen to you?

  Dominique gets a phone call, he puts his hand over his face. Displeased, he is obliged to accept. Ambre instinctively understands that she is concerned.

  — Dominique, what's going on? You tell me. Please tell me. I won't tell. I swear I won't. I won't press charges. Tell me!

  But Dominique doesn't look at him anymore, out of shame for what he is about to do. Without a word, and with a small gesture of his hand, the hooded man understands his order. Dominique takes a few steps, then stops, and leaves without turning around. The scene lasted only a few seconds, and already the hooded man who had slipped behind her, takes out a strangler. A very fine butter thread, which he places with all his strength on the throat of Amber, who is suffocating, bleeding like a sheep, and struggles with all his strength, in silence. Amber's body wiggles. Dominique perceives the sound of her pumps twirling and resonating in the shed.

  Then nothing.

  Dominique touches his face, passes his hand up and down as if he were putting on a mask.

  His soul at that moment, liquefied.

  Chapter 18

  Erwan gets off in the metro and starts playing his music... Looking at the menu on his mobile, he comes across the recording and smiles when he hears the first words of Dominique's advisers, then understands that Ambre is in danger. She should never have heard that.

  That makes it an assassination.

  Erwan widens his eyes. France? Its assassinated President? A conspiracy? Forbidden demonstrations? Violence everywhere, revolt, and tomorrow? The civil war, the Revolution? If the nation realizes the coup, it's high treason for everyone involved, the return of Terror.

  The subway moves forward, undisturbed.

  Erwan is livid, Dominique's voice resounds through his headphones and glides over the impassive faces of people tired from the heat of the rowing. The President has just been assassinated, and the world ignores him. Only he knows about it, and Amber is nowhere to be found, in mortal danger. He hasn't answered his distress call. Too busy working. Yet she took care to return his phone, even though she knew what was on it.

  All those people in the subway now seem to be staring at him.

  The cold fear starts by irrigating his veins.

  A man, a woman, may be hiding among these anonymous people, to kill him.

  He gets off the subway and calls his wife directly.

  — Claire, are you all right?

  — Yes, why?

  — I'm going in, don't move!

  — Erwan, what's going on?

  — Technical unemployment, Laurent is officially dead.

  Chapter 19

  The sound of keys turning in the apartment door. Claire recognizes this unique way of opening, it can only be him. She walks down the immense Haussmann corridor and comes to meet him.

  Erwan is white as a sheet, livid.

  Claire questions him, but nothing comes out, he's distant. They argue. It's probably the baby that gets him into this state, probably the job, the death of the President is a jolt. The heat that never ends. The tiredness that won't go away.

  Erwan feels very lonely, if he talks to her, he'll put his wife's life in danger.

  Because Amber's still not answering.

  They communicated all the time, ten or fifteen times a day. At first Claire didn't understand her fusional, but friendly, relationship with Amber. Between them there had never been anything sexual. Erwan and Ambre are like brother and sister. She was there when he needed her, and he saved her several times, often bringing her home drunk, or consoling her from too complicated relationships.

  Erwan and Claire are kind of the only family of Amber. She was very happy when Claire's pregnancy was announced.

  She wanted to be godmother of course.

  But right now, Erwan doesn't know what to do with his cursed smartphone. He ends up recording the sound on a USB key and discreetly hiding it in the belly of the future baby's cuddly toy, a penguin they bought recently. Carefully, he carefully erases the contents of the phone, then turns it off, then taps it once on the floor, then ten times until it explodes into a thousand pieces.

  Erwan kneels alone in the children's room. Claire runs towards him, comforting him. Being a dad, it stirs things up a lot. He's a cerebral person, he needs to realise.

  She questions him delicately.

  — Take some time with me. We need time.

  — Yeah... I think I'm freaking out here.

  — Just because you've been working on the burnout doesn't mean you're gonna give me one.

  — We're gonna head south as soon as we can. We'll be fine there. Pierre gave me his leave.

  — But that's awesome, baby, I love you!

  We have to be careful, at all levels. Obviously, the death of the president is causing the networks to go wild. Conspiracy theories are tearing the web apart, and polluted it the minute he collapsed on stage. There are hundreds of Youtube screenshots and psychedelic montages for "debunking" the "official version". There has been talk of assassination by the Russian, Israeli, Pakistani and American secret services, and from memory all the major countries have been through it.

  But the reality is more gruesome.

  The enemy is inside. He is us. />
  Erwan borrows Claire's phone and calls Pierre, her only ally. He tries to reassure him. She probably left with Dominique.

  — Pierre, it's impossible, you don't understand, Ambre never hid anything from me.

  Erwan tries again to reach Amber, but he can't.

  Go to the police?

  What if he gets arrested?

  Who can we trust? To denounce is to confess!

  Violent conflicting thoughts run through his mind.

  He needs quiet. He's getting up. The crouching position cut off his legs.

  The blood is flowing back into his aching body again. Thousands of little needle pricks pierce his limbs, he almost stumbles, he can no longer feel his leg. It's as if it's been amputated. Fortunately, it's only temporary. Blood flows and flows again. He needs to hug Claire.

  To forget all about it.

  He needs her body, close to her, inside her.

  He raises his head, and goes for a kiss she gives him tenderly. Claire takes his hand and puts it on his chest. She helps him to walk and pushes him onto the bed, unbutton his jeans, takes off his panties and rubs herself against him. He unbuttoned his shirt and quickly took off his bra. Erwan feels revived. Claire's pulpy lips are the best of remedies.

  Chapter 20

  It's 4:40 in the morning.

  Erwan can't sleep, and Claire sleeps peacefully, on her side. Her hand rests on her rounded belly.

  He gets up and drinks a glass of sparkling water.

  The water's cold, it's coming out of the fridge. It's the best time to drink a few sips of Perrier. The silence is so perfect that he likes to hear the fizzing of the little bubbles of carbon dioxide bubbling to the surface. If you look closely, the little bubbles jump like a fountain.

  Suddenly, Erwan collapses, victim of a malaise, but without harm, quickly caught up by over-trained and ultra silent agents. One of them holds the glass in his hand. Erwan, without realizing it, has just been put to sleep with gas. The agents gently put his soft body back into bed. Claire didn't even notice. She's also breathing soporific gas.

  The agents dressed in black communicate only by signs, searching everywhere in the apartment with their detectors.

  The order is given to make a mess of the apartment.

  All this in absolute silence so as not to wake the neighbors.

  But they can't find anything. The agents have to go.

  It's mission failure.

  Chapter 21

  Tuesday 10th May

  It's dismay.

  Erwan and Claire still can't believe it. The judicial police and the forensic police on the scene notice that the tags were made at child height, and that they were gassed. It's a new trend among burglars. Until now, it was rather reserved for the suburban areas, but the technique has spread to the city centres.

  Claire has a migraine. A terrible headache.

  She'll need to do some tests to make sure the baby's okay. There's a group of teenagers from Eastern Europe who are rampant in the uptown right now, and this visit is a sign of that. We're gonna have to admit Claire to the hospital.

  It's all happening very fast.

  Erwan looks reflexively at the penguin cuddly toy lying in bed. He doesn't dare to stare at it for too long for fear that cameras have been placed without his knowledge. Obviously the burglary, he doesn't believe in it.

  If the baby has been asleep too, if there are after-effects, if... Erwan tries to keep calm, doesn't show anything to Claire, who is still in shock. But he has no doubt that secret agents came to visit them last night.

  Claire worries about Erwan more than she does about herself because she intuitively feels that her baby is fine... Erwan needs to rest. The grueling campaign, the President's heart attack, and now the robbery...

  She is afraid that he will break down, that by dint of trying to manage everything, he will collapse like many of his comrades, who have gone mad or depressed, spun around by the Republican political machine. Erwan doesn't want to hear about burn-out.

  He doesn't want to hear it.

  He can't take a vacation! Amber hasn't heard from him!

  — Erwan... Calm down.

  — Come ma'am, we have to leave now.

  — Erwan, call me.

  — Yes, I promise. You take care of yourself.

  He kisses his girl and tries to reach Amber again, but nothing, still no answer. The ambulance is taking Claire away.

  Erwan may never see her again. This feeling, infuses his mind, the emptiness of his substance.

  He's losing his strength.

  Suddenly, his phone vibrates in his pocket. He's giving one last goodbye signal to his wife, who can't see him.

  It's the police, another service, telling him they've found a woman, redheaded, dead.

  The woman committed suicide. She burned to death at the wheel of her car.

  That would be her friend Ambre Fontenoy.

  His body was charred. There's almost nothing left.

  They need him to identify personal effects.

  Chapter 22

  Michèle Desrivières gets her daughter, Lucie, a three-year-old brunette, out of a big black limousine in front of a nursery school. She doesn't leave her phone. It's a private conversation with her husband. She is as dry, direct and hurtful as she is with her co-workers. He's the stepfather of little Lucie, the nation's orphan. Suddenly an elderly lady in the limousine interrupts her.

  — You shouldn't talk to her like that in front of your daughter.

  — Mom, please stay out of this.

  In the limo is his mother, the one that was rescued by Erwan's grandfather.

  — Michèle, from now on, the reins of a grieving nation are in your hands. You will have to endure and face many hardships if you are to succeed. Starting with mastering your communication skills.

  Michèle doesn't answer him, but she listens to him carefully. They have a conflictual relationship, but have always respected each other. The truth hurts. They know that. They are direct, never take gloves off. Detours and diplomacy are for the weak.

  In politics with your enemies, it's a lethal weapon.

  Her mother, now a women's rights lawyer, can't wait to meet the grandson of the man who saved her. How is it that he got so close to her daughter without her knowing? Life is really strange sometimes. She thanks Michèle, she has kept her promises, she has found her trace and "it is the most important thing for her", after her little daughter Lucie of course. Michèle promised her that she would take her to the Assembly.

  She'll find him there.

  Chapter 23

  Erwan is paranoid. In the heat-swollen street, he looks all around him. Children, teenagers, looking at a fire hydrant. Are they planning to blow it up?

  He calls Pierre back, with the phone borrowed from Claire, and confides all his grief to him. Ambre is no longer with us. He knew it, he suspected it, but didn't want to believe in this nightmare. Pierre tries to do what he can to reassure him. They need to see each other as soon as possible.

  Erwan rushes into the subway mouth. He feels followed, spied on, scrutinized and speeds up his pace as a precaution. Erwan gets on a crowded train, at the end of the train, and at the last moment, to make sure no one else gets on with him. He's seen this before in a French spy series...

  Erwan arrives at the National Assembly, overprotected.

  Outside the determined demonstrators face the CRS. Consideration is being given to using the regular army in addition to the Reinforced Vigipirate Plan II. Erwan passes a total of five checks and finally heads for Amber's locker, trying to find information.

  His mail locker's been cleared out. His name's already been removed. He opens his and discovers a kraft paper envelope. In the envelope, there is his complete medical file with his name, with the mention psychological profile highlighted in red, and the conclusion is irrefutable: he lied about his health when he entered the Palais Bourbon, the pages scroll.

  He consulted a psychologist at the age of sixteen, conclusion:
he is provisionally fired from the Assembly, "laid off" for having hidden it! Erwan had seen a psychologist because his mother died in childbirth when his sister was born! He has no psychiatric history. We're trying to hurt him. Probably to keep him away. Or protect him.

  That's a good sign. We don't want to kill him.

  Erwan's looking everywhere around him, including the surveillance cameras. Suddenly, an old lady calls out to him, it's Michèle Desrivières' own mother.

  — Hello sir, are you Erwan?

  — Uh... Yeah.

  — It's a pretty Breton name, I couldn't wait another minute, I had to see you in the flesh. At my age time is short... France is eternal, isn't it?

  Michèle follows her mother's interview with Erwan remotely on her cameras from her office. She realizes that Erwan kept the key to Amber's mail locker. So he has a copy. She orders her collaborator to go back in time, around 11 o'clock, to see if Ambre wouldn't have done the same. And there's the surprise, we can clearly see the young redheaded woman opening Erwan's locker to put a smartphone in it! She immediately reaches Dominique. Now it's clear, we have to find him! Meanwhile, Michèle Desrivières' mother takes her leave of Erwan.

  Before leaving, she offers him a small French cockade in faded colours. It is a rather old reward, it dates back to the Second World War and she wanted to give it to him. It's a family treasure, a legacy she got from her father. She has only two copies, the other is worn permanently by her daughter Michèle.