Obsession (Year of Fire)

by Florencia Bonelli

  “His name is Udo Jürkens, at least that’s what he told me. It could well be a pseudonym.”

  Udo Jürkens, Udo Jürkens. The name bounced around his head, driving him crazy.

  “Come in.” Ezequiel came in flanked by two security guards. “Escort this individual out of the hospital. He’s disturbing my brother.”

  Al-Saud looked at Ezequiel furiously.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “You won’t be back!”

  “Ezequiel, shut up!” Roy intervened. “Bring what I asked for, Al-Saud.”

  From the hospital he headed toward the offices at the George V with the name Udo Jürkens in his head. When he was about to go into the underground garage at the hotel, he swerved, brakes squealing, and headed toward L’Alma Bridge. He was home in five minutes. He left the Aston Martin in the street and entered through the door on Rue Maréchal Harispe, which led directly to the base.

  “Masséna!” he shouted as soon as the elevator doors opened. “My office, now!”

  The computer expert brushed off the crumbs from a brioche he had just taken a bite of and hurried after his boss. He was trembling. Al-Saud must have just discovered his betrayal. His plans were ruined. He would never be able to wreak his vengeance.

  “Quoi?” Masséna was shocked when he found out that Al-Saud was summoning him for something else.

  “Are you deaf, Masséna? I’m asking you about Udo Jürkens. Some time ago I asked you to investigate the license plate of a car that was parked in front of my house, one that that I didn’t like the look of. You found that it was rented by one Udo Jürkens. And I entrusted you with following this guy closely. You promised me you would do so through the Rent-a-Car system. So what did you find out?”

  “Nothing,” he lied.

  “Merde!” Al-Saud accompanied the curse by punching his desk, which made the hacker jump out of his chair. “You’re incompetent! I expressly asked you to follow that trail. What the hell do you waste your time on? Time that I pay you a fortune for.”

  “I’ve got a lot on my plate, sir!” Masséna made excuses.

  “You have five assistants! I don’t have half the number you have. And you’re telling me that you have too much work? Get out of here right now and get into the Rent-a-Car system. I want to know what happened to that car, the one Jürkens rented. Close the door behind you!”

  Al-Saud put his fists on the desk and pressed down, as if he were trying to bore through the wood. He exhaled loudly, spraying spit all over the desk, and threw himself back into his chair. Damn Udo Jürkens! Who the hell are you? What are you looking for? He opened a bottle of Perrier and drank half of it down in one gulp. He wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve. He knew that he had to calm down. He sat in his chair and did the breathing exercises that Takumi sensei had shown him to prepare his body and mind for meditation. His head started to clear, his heartbeat evened out and his body relaxed. He pictured the night he had noticed the car parked on Avenue Elisée Reclus. It was the second of January, he remembered, the day I intercepted Matilde in the métro. At the time, there hadn’t been any connection between him and Roy Blahetter, so Jürkens had been standing guard outside his house for a different reason. Could he be working for the Israeli Secret Service? Maybe they had been warned about his investigation in Buenos Aires and they were keeping an eye on him. Wouldn’t he have noticed them following him a while ago?

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Come in, Masséna.”

  “Sir, according to the Rent-a-Car system, Udo Jürkens returned the car on the thirtieth of January in the office on Rue des Pyramides.”

  Al-Saud felt a profound rage mixed with anxiety. He wanted to kill Masséna. But he also wanted to beat his own head against the wall for having forgotten the order, for not asking about Jürkens again. In truth, it had completely slipped his mind. The Horse of Fire’s capacity to deal with many things all at once had a limit.

  “Go back to work, Masséna,” he said, after regaining some control over himself. He stayed quiet, his eyes fixed on one point, while he organized his ideas and revised all the matters that were pending. He dialed Chevrikov’s number. “Lefortovo, it’s me.”

  “How can I be useful to you, Horse of Fire?”

  “Investigate one Fauzi Dahlan. Apparently he’s Iraqi. I need the name immediately.”

  “Yes, sir. Anything else?”

  “Do you know the name Udo Jürkens?”

  “Not at all. It sounds German, doesn’t it? Do you want me to ask around among my contacts to see if they know him?”

  “Yes, go ahead.”

  This feverish race to analyze Blahetter’s plans and notes would lead to an attack of porphyria if he didn’t lie down to rest. Although Gérard had taken the precaution of eating something every two hours, the lack of sleep—it had been twenty-four hours since he’d rested—would chip away at him. He knew the symptoms. Nonetheless, the excitement he felt at seeing an invention of this magnitude kept him awake and filled with adrenaline.

  From the analysis of the plans, it emerged that Blahetter had finally finished his invention and resolved the gaps of the past, though without a prototype to test there was no way to guarantee that it would work. Still, he bet that it would. His experience told him so. Saddam Hussein would be obliging about financing the construction of the prototype if he could persuade him properly. And the truth was he always knew how to deal with the sayid rais.

  He urgently needed to get rid of Blahetter. The Argentinean scientist must already know about the disappearance of the plans. Had he had time to patent the centrifuge in his name? The doubt tormented him. Would Blahetter have made a formal complaint? Did anyone else know about his development? His wife, for example? He remembered that Eliah was involved with Blahetter’s wife. What an ironic situation!

  Udo Jürkens knocked and came in.

  “What have you found out about Blahetter?”

  “I found him, boss. It was easier than I thought. I stood guard outside the building on Floquet Avenue and this morning, very early, I saw a guy who looked very similar to Blahetter come out. I knew it must be this Ezequiel. I followed him to the Hospital Européen Georges Pompidou, on Rue Leblanc.”

  “And you discovered that Blahetter was hospitalized there,” Moses inferred, and Jürkens said yes in German with a smile that only helped to accentuate his sinister features, as if his soul were reproduced in his brutal face and inhuman voice.

  “Room three oh four.”

  Moses sat up and felt his head spin. Jürkens hurried to stabilize him, and Gérard shook him firmly away.

  “I’m fine. I sat up a little too fast.”

  “When was the last time you slept, boss?”

  “Don’t nag me about that, Udo. We’re so close to achieving something incredible. There’s no time for sleep, only action.”

  Gérard Moses walked toward an oil painting and swung it away from the wall as though it was a little door. He struggled to remember the password to the safe. He turned the numerical lock anxiously and waited with bated breath for the little click that meant the bolt had opened. He took out a black box and carried it to his desk before opening the lid. It held two parallel racks of upright test tubes organized by the color of their caps. Gérard lifted up one with a red cap. He read the label in Arabic: ricin, one of the most lethal toxins known to man, for which no antidote had been developed. The sayid rais had used it during the war with Iran and continued to make it in his secret laboratory in the desert, which the allied forces hadn’t destroyed for the simple reason that they weren’t aware of its existence.

  “Take care of Blahetter,” he ordered. “Listen to me carefully, Udo. This tiny pellet”—he held up the tube so that Jürkens could see what looked like the head of a pin lying on the bottom—“contains a lethal dose of ricin, a highly poisonous alkaloid. It’s covered with a sweetened substance to prevent the poison from escaping from inside the pellet. Once inside the human body, the sweetened substance wi
ll dissolve and let the ricin out. It kills its victims in two or three days at most.” Gérard went back to the safe and took out another box from which he took a syringe that reminded Udo of the one his dentist used to anesthetize him. “Go to Blahetter’s room,” he said while he sucked up the little pellet with the peculiar point of the syringe, “and press the needle into his skin a little at the same time as you press the plunger. Just a little. You don’t need to push it all the way in. Do you think you can do that?” Moses asked, fitting a cap onto the syringe.

  “Boss, what if I just shot him with a silencer? Nobody would know the difference.”

  “Udo, do you think the sayid rais gave me this box of different poisons as a birthday present? We need to test the technology,” he said, waving the strange syringe with its pellet. “Do you think you can do it?” he insisted.

  “Yes, boss.”

  After the argument with Masséna, Al-Saud returned to the George V offices around noon. Without letting him draw breath, his secretaries bombarded him with messages and requests. Fortunately, Tony Hill had called from Monrovia to say that the situation with President Taylor was under control.

  “Mr. Hill,” said Victoire, “has asked you to call him. He has to find a replacement for Markov as soon as possible.” Markov was the bodyguard accused by Taylor of having sex with his niece.

  “Prince Abdul Rahman also called,” Thérèse alternated, “and asked you to call him whenever you can, at any hour.”

  Al-Saud cursed inwardly. His uncle Abdul, commander of the Royal Saudi Air Force, would be pressuring him to present the training plan for the recruits, just when he had no desire to leave Paris, not with Matilde in danger.

  “Inspector Dussollier and your lawyer, Dr. Lafrange, called,” said Victoire, “to tell you the same thing, sir: that the three men were released this morning.”

  Amburgo Ferro, Peter Ramsay’s man, would be on their trail.

  “Monsieur Lafére called,” Thérèse continued, “about the painting you sent him yesterday.”

  “Put me through to him now.”

  Lafére was the Al-Sauds’ trusted dealer, the manager of an art gallery that had prospered in the last thirty years thanks to Prince Kamal’s passion for paintings. Eliah had known him since he was a boy, and so had entrusted him with Matilde’s painting.

  “Eliah, do you have any idea what you sent me?”

  “You’re asking just because you know how ignorant I am about paintings, aren’t you?” Al-Saud joked.

  “You’re not your father, that’s true, but I doubt that many people would know the history of this painting. Did you know that it’s an authentic Martínez Olazábal? She’s a great Argentinean painter, one of the most sought-after living painters in the world.” Al-Saud didn’t say anything, and the dealer continued, “This is Enriqueta Martínez Olazábal’s favorite painting. Lovers of her work have been searching for it ceaselessly for years. But Martínez Olazábal declared that this painting would remain in her family and that she would never sell it to a stranger. And now you send it to me in a terrible state. I got very curious, as you can well understand.”

  “I understand. What else can you tell me about the painting?”

  “Here, let me read you a paragraph from a book I consulted yesterday…yes, here it is. I marked the page. It’s called Peintres Latino-américains. It has biographies and photographs of paintings by the major Latin American painters; there’s even a little interview with each one. In the part dedicated to Martínez Olazábal, the largest, I should add, she says that, of all her work, her favorite oil painting is Matilda and the Snail.” Al-Saud overlooked the error. “I’ll read you the artist’s own words. ‘It’s not my best painting if you analyze it with a critical eye; it’s not the best from the technical point of view; it was one of the first. Nonetheless, it’s the one that moves me the most because the sight of my niece is something that moves me deeply.’ So you see, this Matilda is her niece. And she continues, ‘There’s something about that creature, I don’t know what, an ephemeral quality that she was born with and that seems to cover her in light and peace. You can’t help but be hopelessly attracted to her. I draw and paint her tirelessly because I can’t take my eyes off her when she’s near me.’ So you see, Eliah, Martínez Olazábal treasures this painting in a special way. So, if I might so bold as to ask, how did you end up with Matilda and the Snail?”

  “Matilde.”

  “Sorry?”

  “The girl in the painting is called Matilde, not Matilda.”

  “Oh, oh…yes, well yes,” Lafére noted, rereading the paragraph. “It’s Matilde, you’re right. I always called it Matilda and the Snail and even now with it written correctly I still said Matilda. How do you know that it’s Matilde?” he asked, suddenly surprised.

  “Because the little girl in the painting is now my woman.”

  A silence fell over the line.

  “I see that the painting will stay in the family after all. You can come to get it at closing time today. I’ll have the frame ready.”

  “Merci beaucoup, Lafére.”

  Al-Saud propped his elbows on the desk and rested his head on his hands. The dealer’s voice echoed in his ears: “…an ephemeral quality that she was born with and that seems to cover her in light and peace. You can’t help but be hopelessly attracted to her. I draw and paint her tirelessly because I can’t take my eyes off her when she’s near me.” So it was some kind of sorcery—there was no logical explanation for what he had felt in the airport in Buenos Aires when he saw Matilde’s long golden hair. If he were a superstitious person, he would think a spirit had possessed him and had been controlling him since that day. All he wanted was to be with her, in her. The issues at Mercure, previously the great focal point of his life, had lost their importance and disappeared. He yearned to go home and see her. Without a doubt, Matilde held the same fascination for Leila; her magic had even made her speak.

  That afternoon, on the way to Lafére’s gallery, he stopped in the WH Smith bookstore on Rue Rivoli and bought the book Peintres Latino-américains. On his way out, he passed a jeweler’s window and stopped to admire the rings, necklaces, earrings, bracelets and watches he would have loved to drape over Matilde. She, however, found herself above such worldly things; style left her indifferent. He bought a gold chain for the Médaille Miraculeuse.

  When he got out of the Aston Martin, in the garage at the house on Avenue Elisée Reclus, he heard Matilde’s laughter filtering down from the kitchen, and smiled out of relief and happiness. She was putting the nightmare they had experienced outside of the Lycée des Langues Vivantes behind her, and happiness was flowing into her life once more. He found her alone with Leila, still laughing, a wholehearted laugh in which her eyes brimmed with tears. He knew immediately that Leila had spoken again. He kissed Matilde on the lips, pretending not to have noticed the situation, and kissed Leila on the forehead. He took off his jacket and handed it to her with his briefcase.

  “Ma petite, take these to my room.”

  Matilde looped her arm around Al-Saud’s waist and pressed her cheek against his chest.

  “She spoke again, didn’t she?”

  “She just said, ‘Matilde, Eliah est arrivé.’ I couldn’t control my excitement and started to laugh. She immediately changed back from a woman to a child and tilted her head and smiled, as if she didn’t understand why I was laughing.”

  Later, while they were eating dinner, Al-Saud announced to Matilde and Juana that the next day they could resume their classes at the institute. Sándor and Diana would guard them.

  “I already assigned you a car from Mercure”—he didn’t tell them that all the windows and bodywork were bulletproof—“and you’ll have to use it to go everywhere, with Sándor and Diana coming along with you. You can never go out alone. I know it will be annoying for you.”

  “Not for me!” Juana replied. “It makes me feel like a diva!”

  Diana and Sándor showed up after dinner, when they were
drinking coffee. Eliah bolted down his espresso and ordered them to accompany him to the base. They went into the projection room, where the recording from the apartment on Rue Toullier was frozen on the image of Udo Jürkens.

  “Look at this individual carefully. Memorize his face. He goes by the name Udo Jürkens. Protect Matilde from him at all costs.”

  Around midnight, Udo Jürkens entered the Hospital Européen Georges Pompidou through the emergency room. He changed in the men’s room and came out dressed in the white nurse’s uniform. The looseness of the garment hid the two devices hanging from his waist: the syringe and the night-vision mono-goggle. He got to the third floor through the service elevator and walked down the empty, half-lit corridor. He passed the head nurse’s glass office after checking that no one was inside, then slipped into room 304 and closed the door. He put on the mono-goggle and everything around him turned green. Blahetter was sleeping with his leg elevated. He prayed that Blahetter had been drugged, otherwise, after injecting him with the pellet of ricin, he’d have to run. He lifted the blanket and the sheet and found the good leg. He waited for Blahetter to react. Nothing, not even a change in his deep breathing. He brought the syringe to his thigh and pressed the plunger. Blahetter barely moved on the pillow and kept sleeping. They must have given him a very strong sedative.

  Jürkens hung the syringe from his belt. He took off the mono-goggle near the door and hid it under the uniform. The he walked calmly out into the hall, not noticing that the head nurse had spotted him from the far end of the corridor. Was that the new intensive care nurse? she wondered. Lilian told me that he was tall.

  After overwhelming them with instructions, Al-Saud brought the meeting with Sándor and Diana to a close. Before they left, he told them that Leila had spoken again to Matilde.