He ran his index finger over his notes, stopping at the bottom of a page.
“ . . . as an ‘ideological matrix in which Argentine state terrorism was rooted.’”
“Excuse me?”
“Yes, I know, the formula is a little convoluted. You have to know that when people talk about state terrorism, they’re referring in fact to the death squads that murdered left-wing opponents and that had protection at the highest levels of the state and the army.”
He turned the page over, the rest being on the back.
“The two most famous French activists who became Argentines were Jean Gardes—he’d been a colonel in the French army and a specialist in psychological warfare, was later responsible for recruitment within the OAS, and was sentenced to death in absentia in 1961—and General Paul Gardy, one of the Organization’s last leaders. It was in digging around in the latter’s entourage that the journalist came across Juan Antonio Guzman. She has traced his various identities back to Sigma.”
“Does she have any idea how he managed to make people think he was dead?”
“She hasn’t really tried to find out; that wasn’t important for her investigation. But she thinks that it must not have been that difficult: there was so much confusion during the last weeks of the French presence there.”
“What role did Sigma play in Argentina?”
“At first, he gravitated around this General Gardy. He owned land in La Pampa, around Pigüé, a village that was founded by French settlers in the eighteenth century and has always had a large number of residents who came from France. Then Sigma sold his land and moved to Buenos Aires. He got married there and started a family. But that didn’t mean that he’d changed his ways. According to Marie-Dominique Renard, he belonged to the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance, one of the main death squads. Since the end of the dictatorship, he hasn’t attracted any attention. He retired and lived on his investments.”
“Until he got back into the game for a reason that remains unknown to us.”
“He must have wanted to settle one more account before he died.”
“Let’s assume that for the time being.”
Sebag shivered. He’d been leaning against the window, which had cooled off as night came on.
“By the way . . . Do you have any news about Maurice Garcin?”
“No. He’s still missing, he’s simply disappeared. Our colleagues in Marseille have decided to start searching for him tomorrow morning if he doesn’t turn up in the meantime.”
“I think it’s about time, now.”
Two sharp raps made his office door vibrate. Llach’s head appeared.
“Ah, you’re still there. Super.”
He came in and closed the door after him.
“My cousin has just called me: I’ve got something new.”
“They’ve arrested Sigma?” Sebag asked, feeling to his great surprise a combination of hope and concern.
“If they’d arrested him, I would have told you right away. I wouldn’t have said, ‘I’ve got something new.’
“That’s true. So what’s new?”
Llach took Molina’s chair and Sebag sat in his own to listen to him.
“The Mossos have found a car rental agency in La Jonquera that provided Sigma—or rather Juan Antonio Guzman, since that’s the name he used—with a white Fiat Uno. The car was rented last night and has not yet been turned in. And for good reason! Thanks to the license plate, our colleagues found the car still parked on a street in Girona. It already had a parking citation. The ticket left on the dashboard was valid until only 11 o’clock this morning.”
“So he’s still in Girona?” Ménard asked.
Llach dismissed that possibility with a wave of his hand.
“The Mossos questioned the town’s taxi drivers. One of them remembered having picked up a little old man in Girona’s Barri Vell who spoke Spanish with a strong South American accent. He took him to the train station. The trail ends there. We don’t know which train he might have taken. It was almost 11 A.M. when he arrived at the station, and three trains left during the following hour, for Barcelona, Madrid, and Paris . . . via Perpignan, obviously.”
“There may be a chance that he’s on this side of the border, then,” Sebag said hopefully.
“It’s possible,” Llach confirmed. “But if he’s in France, he could have gotten off in Montpellier or Nimes, or continued on to Paris. So far as we know, he has nothing more to do here.”
“That’s true,” Sebag sighed. “But we have to act as though he’d stopped here. He no longer has a car, he’ll need to rent a new one. We have to contact all the rental agencies again.”
Ménard looked at his watch:
“In ten minutes, it will be 7 o’clock; it’s too late to do anything this evening.”
Sebag tapped his fingers on the top of his desk.
“We should have thought of that earlier and given his description to all the rental agencies in the department.”
“Easy to say after the fact.”
“I should have thought of it.”
“In any case, Gilles, there’s no chance that Sigma is in Perpignan.”
“Who knows what that old madman has in his head.”
“If we were sure that he was here, we’d send patrols to all the hotels in the region; he has to sleep somewhere.”
“That’s an idea.”
“Are you kidding? Ask Castello, you’ll see what he’ll tell you. They’re not going to mobilize all the police and gendarmerie teams in Pyrénées-Orientales on a Friday night when the suspect could very well be hundreds of kilometers from here. In Paris, Barcelona, or Madrid.”
Sebag had to admit that Ménard was right. There was so little chance that Sigma was in the area! He suddenly realized that Llach had listened to their discussion without saying a word. He guessed why:
“Have you got other information, Joan?”
Llach smiled.
“In fact, I do. The Mossos traced Sigma to La Jonquera and they found the hotel where he’s been staying for the past two weeks. He checked out early this morning. He’d presented himself as an Argentine tourist.”
“A tourist in La Jonquera?”
“They must not be very frequent, but that was apparently enough for the hotel manager. According to him, Sigma really looked like a harmless little old man.”
“We’ve certainly encountered enough ‘harmless little old men’ in this case,” Ménard pointed out.
Llach and Sebag granted him a smile that was friendly but not without a certain condescension. Humor wasn’t their colleague’s strong point. Sebag suddenly felt immensely tired. His short, uncomfortable night was coming back to him. He sat up on his chair. His back was hurting. The inspectors looked at each other but no one said any more. A silence full of discouragement gradually filled the room. Gilles closed his eyes for a moment.
CHAPTER 38
Dim streetlights were throwing an orange-colored light on the dirty façades and the damaged asphalt. Closed metal shutters covered with tags completed the street’s sordid look. Jean Servant grimaced with pain as he stepped off the curb. He put his right hand on his shoulder to support it. For once, his pain had nothing to do with his arthritis.
He was walking even more slowly than usual. Despite his caution, he unintentionally kicked a beer can that had been left in the gutter. The can rolled across the street and stopped when it hit the heel of a young Arab, who suddenly stood up, looking for the person who had committed the offense. Jean’s right hand slipped from his shoulder to his belt. Under his overcoat, he still had the Beretta read for use. But the young man, seeing that it was only an old man with white hair, transformed his aggressive scowl into a pleasant smile.
Jean went on his way.
He found this part of Perpignan particularly dirty and wretched. Even th
e suburbs of Buenos Aires seemed to him better maintained. Was France slowly being transformed into a third-world country? He recalled that some people used to say that the loss of Algeria would mean the loss of France’s grandeur. He’d never really believed that at the time. Or more precisely, he didn’t give a damn about it. Unlike his hero Lieutenant Degueldre, Sigma had not engaged in the battle out of patriotic passion but in the single, mad hope of spending his whole life in the country of his childhood. Political commitment came later. And even then . . . Had he really ever had real political convictions? All his life he’d acted more on the basis of affinity and loyalty than on that of dogmas or certainties. His friends in Argentina had often needed his help. He’d given it to them freely.
And he’d never hesitated to kill.
Death was part of his nature and his education. Of his childhood and youth. The Second World War had killed his parents, the conflict in Algeria had killed his illusions. Today, young people grew up in the comfort of living rooms and a haze of marijuana smoke; he’d grown up on the street amid the bitter fragrance of gunpowder. Today, no one could still understand the violence that survived in him. Moreover, his daughter had never accepted it. She’d stopped speaking to him when she’d discovered the details of his past. In Algeria and then in Argentina.
Fortunately his daughter had learned about his turpitudes only long after Gabriella’s birth. Bonds of intimacy and love had had time to be woven between the grandfather and his granddaughter, and Consuela hadn’t dared break them.
Gabriella . . . Would he see her angelic smile again someday? Would he enjoy again the pleasure of hearing her honeyed voice and her pure, crystalline laughter? Without this fierce desire to see his granddaughter again, he would never have tried to escape after Lloret’s death. Exhausted by the hunt, wounded by his old accomplice, he would have sat down in that delightful patio and calmly waited for the police to come. Or he would have killed himself. Maybe, yes, he might have had the courage to do that. Babelo had told him that he had all the marks of a martyr. Perhaps he hadn’t been completely wrong?
He grimaced again.
The cool night air made his wound hurt again. The bullet had passed through his shoulder just below the collarbone. Nothing serious. He’d found what he needed to clean and bandage it in a pharmacy in Girona, and knew that he no longer had anything to fear. In a few days, he would be healed. But it was painful, and he was less and less able to endure pain.
He felt old and tired.
He was weary.
He looked up at the plaque attached next to a kebab vendor’s sign. Rue Lucia. He was no longer very far from his hotel. Soon, he would disinfect his wound again and change his bandage. Then he’d take his pills and go to bed, dreaming about Gabriella.
He hoped he would be able to leave France the next day. He’d reserved a seat on the train to Genoa, via Marseille and Nice. Only the French and Spanish police must be looking for him. In Italy, everything would be easier.
He had to get to the train station in Narbonne by late morning.
But first he had to complete a final mission. Or rather he had to pay a debt. That was the reason why he had come back, contrary to all prudence, to spend a night in Perpignan. He was aware of the risks, but he’d never compromised when it came to honor. Whatever might be said about his crimes and misdeeds, it also was in the name of that value that he had lived, and it was in the name of that old-fashioned and quaint notion that he had come to carry out the last three murders in his life.
So the next morning he would get into his new rental car and set out for a small village in the Catalan outback. He would put a ridiculous gift on a stone. A gift that was valuable precisely because of the risk he was running.
CHAPTER 39
Sebag was walking quickly down the main street in the North African quarter in central Perpignan. It was now completely dark and cold as well. He pulled up the collar of his jacket. In the evenings, the only activity on Rue Lucia consisted of a few young North Africans standing around talking.
He’d dozed off for a few minutes in his office, and that little nap had revitalized him. After Ménard and Llach left, he’d felt the need to go outside. Not getting any exercise was beginning to weigh on him more and more. In every sense of the term. When he’d stood on the scale that morning, he’d been annoyed to see that he’d gained almost five pounds since summer. He certainly didn’t want to develop a paunch. For him, that would be the sign that he was giving in to age.
On the way out of headquarters, he’d let Claire know that he wouldn’t be home before 8 P.M. And then he set out to walk through Perpignan.
As he strode along, he’d passed a dozen hotels and hadn’t been able to resist going in to ask whether a room had been reserved in the name of Guzman, Esteban, Servant, or even Sigma. He was well aware, however, that there was no chance of that. Especially since in France, it had been a long time since hotels were required to ask their guests to show an ID card. People could easily give their names as Michel Dupont, Jean Moulin, Charles de Gaulle, or Jean-Luc Godard.
He noticed the sign for another hotel, but this time he didn’t go in.
He left Rue Lucia and started up a side street that led toward the gypsy quarter. He had to edge along the wall of a building to get past a car that was parked right in the middle of the narrow street. Here, parking places were rare and residents paid little attention to the regulations. They left their cars wherever they could. Wherever they wanted.
Sebag liked to stroll through these old neighborhoods. Sedentary Gypsies had taken up residence in Perpignan’s historic center, making it one of the last downtown areas in France where the poor still lived. Everywhere else, they’d been forced to move to the outlying areas. Sebag liked the atmosphere in this quarter.
He came into the Place du Puig, the neighborhood’s nerve center. Men dressed in black from head to foot went on talking without paying any attention to him. He passed in front of a group that was huddled around a guitar player. A young man let out a long, guttural wail and the others started clapping their hands. For these Gypsies, the day was just starting.
After the Place du Puig, Sebag turned off to the left and walked back down toward the city’s more respectable commercial center. In a quarter of an hour he’d be back to his car, and in less than half an hour he’d be home with his family. With his children and his wife. His . . . faithful? unfaithful? . . . wife.
He was tired of these unresolved questions that were accumulating in his mind and weighing on his stride. And on his life, too . . . Where had Jean Servant gone? Who had wrecked that damned monument? Who had attacked Guy Albouker and threatened Jean-Pierre Mercier?
And who was that bastard who might have slept with his wife?
A stupid idea crossed his mind, an idea worthy of the teenager he hadn’t been for at least twenty-five years. He swore under his breath: “If I don’t solve this case, Claire and I are going to have it out, face to face.”
Then he spat on the ground to seal that ridiculous promise. He preferred to laugh stupidly than to weep sadly.
CHAPTER 40
Sebag and his daughter got to the cemetery in Passa shortly before 10:30. She was holding a big bouquet of roses and he was carrying a pail of water in which he’d thrown a large sponge.
In front of the gate to the cemetery, Sévérine had stopped and smiled at her father.
“I’m not sure I’ve really thanked you for finding the person who was really responsible for the accident,” she told him. “So thanks, Papa.”
She stood on tiptoe and gave him a kiss on his forehead. He would have liked to take her in his arms but the pail was in his way.
“I’m not sure I deserve congratulations. The guy is still on the loose.”
“But you’re going to arrest him, I’m sure of that.”
He didn’t know what to reply and limited himself to putting his free hand
on her shoulder.
“Shall we go? It isn’t too hard for you to come back here to Mathieu’s grave?”
“I’ll be O.K. And then, you’re with me. Thanks for that, too.”
They pushed the heavy gate open and went in. Before leaving the house, Sebag had called headquarters. Llach was on duty but there was nothing new. Not on the French side, and not on the Spanish side, either: Cousin Jordi hadn’t called. To keep busy, Joan had gone back to the list of the car rental agencies he’d contacted three days earlier with Julie Sadet. He was planning to call them again, one by one.
“It’s either that or do nothing at all . . . And then, you never know!”
Mathieu’s grave was separated from the entrance only by a short row of vaults. After that of the Vila family, they turned left. Sévérine froze, speechless, in front of a shiny marble tomb surrounded by a garland of red and yellow flowers. The name “Mathieu Farre” was engraved on it in gilt letters.
“I don’t understand . . . ”
Sebag’s eyes jumped from his daughter to the carefully maintained tomb and back to his daughter. Sévérine seemed embarrassed by her bouquet.
“Friends of Mathieu’s parents, the Vidals, called me yesterday. They told me that the tomb was covered with mud and that there were no longer any flowers. I . . . I don’t understand.”
“Somebody else must have come first.”
“Who?”
“Mathieu had other friends, didn’t he?”
“But when did they come? The Vidals called me late yesterday afternoon. The cemetery had just closed, and since they couldn’t come this weekend, they asked me to take care of it.”
“And if I correctly read the plaque at the entrance, the cemetery has been open for only half an hour . . . ”
As he talked, Sebag was making a rapid calculation. Half an hour was not very much time to clean up and arrange all these flowers. If someone had come this morning, they should at least have seen him in front of the cemetery. He knelt down near Mathieu’s grave. A white thread caught his eye. He picked it up and had a closer look at it. It was a hair. In a flash, he saw in his mind’s eye Elsa Moulin, his colleague on the forensic team, standing in the rain with her yellow rain parka and her red boots. She was putting a white hair in a plastic bag. They were in a different cemetery.
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