by Michelle Wan
Another gendarme, one Hubert Chauvin, checked the interior of the Mercedes. “Clear, mon adjudant.”
Adelheid stared about her, open-mouthed with shock.
“You!” she exclaimed, spotting Julian.
“Afraid so,” Julian said with some satisfaction.
“Funny time of night to be paying a visit,” Compagnon observed to Rocco Luca.
The Ton said coolly, “What’s funny about it? I ordered some plants. I’m collecting them. When I do it is my business.”
“You, a plant lover?” Compagnon snorted.
Luca shrugged. “Well, sergeant, you know how it is—”
“Ad-ju-dant,” Compagnon corrected, biting the word out in three syllables.
“Whatever. You got a conservatory, you fill it.”
“What’s in there?” Compagnon demanded of Adelheid, thrusting his chin in the direction of the van.
“Plants,” said Adelheid.
Laurent played the beam of his flashlight around the interior of the cargo area. Julian peered in. The shelves of the Kangoo were crammed. Roughly twenty pots to a flat, ten flats in all, he counted swiftly, including the one Adelheid held.
“Orchids,” he corrected. He turned to her unbelievingly. “You supply him with orchids?”
“You got something against it?” said the Ton. “I’m not supposed to like flowers?”
“Orchids and what else?” demanded Compagnon. “All right,” he barked at Julian. “Don’t just stand there. Get on with it.”
Julian approached Adelheid. “Let’s start with these,” he grinned. He had to pry the flat from her fingers.
The plants were young, not in flower, and exhibited none of the uniformity of nursery-cultivated specimens. At this stage they consisted of rosettes of leaves, many blotched and lanceolate (some kind of Orchis, he guessed), others rounder and unmarked (probably a species of Ophrys). The fact that most were in terrible condition, limp and bruised from the jostling they had experienced in transport over many days, confirmed all of his suspicions: the orchids themselves were not the objective of the exercise. Moreover, if the objective was to carry out—what had she said?—root regeneration trials, why do it in France? Why not in Turkey? Or if it was necessary to run the trials in Adelheid’s laboratory, why subject the plants to the stress of a long sea and land journey when it would have been so much better to air freight them? Most significantly, why now? Why not wait until the plants were dormant and simply ship the tubers? None of this added up from a botanical perspective.
Julian set the flat on the ground, squatted down, and removed the pot closest to hand. He squeezed the flexible plastic sides and eased the single plant out into the palm of his hand. Gently, he probed with his finger. He saw nothing but soil and moss surrounding an immature root structure. He restored the orchid to its container, carefully tamping down the bedding around it.
Luca, who had been watching the proceedings with an expression of disdain mixed with puzzlement, said, “I’m leaving. You have no right to detain me. I’ll have the skin off your backside for this. I have friends who could have you busted down to gendarme auxiliaire, ad-ju-dant.” He stressed the title with muscular antagonism. He straightened his clothing and started to walk away.
Compagnon said sharply, “I suggest you remain where you are, monsieur.” To Julian, he snarled, “Speed it up, will you?”
Julian pulled out the next container. Again he turned up nothing more suspicious than potting soil. Behind him, Compagnon breathed with heavy impatience. When Luca asked sarcastically if this was going to take all night, Julian had to suppress an almost hysterical desire to giggle. Then he realized that it was a case of hiding the trees in the forest. Go for the plants in the middle. His hand hovered over a pot in the very center of the flat.
“Wait,” Adelheid broke in. For the first time, her voice sounded slightly shrill. “If you must, I will do it.”
Aha! The hairs on the back of Julian’s neck rose up like tiny antennae. He was about to make Adjudant Compagnon a happy man. Unless … his orchid freak’s mind neatly sidestepped the matter at hand to pursue a mystery of its own. Her sudden desire to be helpful could also mean that there was something more than drugs in there, something that she wanted handled very carefully. An orchid, but not just any orchid. She had brought it in, slipping it past the eye of the inspecting agent. Maybe there was more than one, mixed in with the common specimens he saw before him. He took the flashlight from Laurent and directed it at the plant he had been about to pick up. There was nothing really unusual about it, except—yes—its leaves were slightly wider and more strongly veined than those of its neighbors. It was also in considerably better health, as if it had received more careful treatment. And there, if he was not mistaken, was another like it. And another. So what were these little beauties that Adelheid had managed to smuggle in? Turkey, he knew, had orchids that grew nowhere else. Julian felt the woman stiffen as he lifted out the pot. Her tension communicated itself to the gendarmes. All of the officers watched mesmerized as Julian held his prize up. Suddenly, he paused.
But it did not make sense! His mind switched back to what he was supposed to be looking for. The orchid was something he could turn over to the proper authorities later. For now, Compagnon was waiting. Kazim had said une grosse affaire, a big shipment. By his reckoning, Adelheid had brought back some two hundred plants. If the drugs were hidden in the pots, as he had surmised, that would mean each plant, each pot, had to conceal a certain amount of heroin. But the containers were small, scarcely holding two cups of soil, and so far he had found nothing that should not have been there. Perhaps the shipment was a lot smaller than Kazim had thought. Say, 5 to 10 kilos, 25 to 50 grams a pot, that was possible. But would a man like Rocco Luca even bother with something that insignificant? Or—slowly, he turned the container about on his palm—perhaps the orchids were not the medium at all, and they were dealing with a double conjuring trick.
He put the plant down and stood up. “It’s not in the pots,” he said decisively. It was what he should have realized from the beginning. “It’s in the van itself.”
For a big man, Luca’s movement was as swift and fluid as running water. He was around the front of the Kangoo and into the Mercedes before any of the gendarmes could react. Serge turned to run as well, but Albert brought him down in a neat tackle.
“Halt!” ordered Compagnon as the Ton spun the Mercedes around, its tires spewing gravel. Compagnon pulled out his Beretta and fired. Laurent fired. Compagnon’s shot struck the right rear fender of the car just centimeters above the tire. Laurent’s bullet nicked the corner of the house as the Mercedes swung around it and out through the open gate.
“Merde! Putain! Bordel!” bellowed Compagnon, unleashing his armory of expletives. “Laurent, Roussel, after him, dammit!” Then he was on the phone.
“No sign of Luca this end, sir,” a voice answered crisply.
“That’s because he’s here,” Compagnon shouted. “He’s on the run. Stay there in case he returns. I’m ordering blocks on every road leading away from the Besser woman’s place. We’ve got to stop the salaud.”
It had taken Roussel a moment to wrest the Kangoo’s keys from Adelheid, but he and Laurent were now in the van and bucketing through the gate and down the lane after the fast-disappearing tail lights of the Mercedes. Once the Ton reached the main road, the Kangoo would be no match for the powerful Merc. Luca would be away. As for Compagnon’s road block, they both knew that there were as many byways threading the area as there were capillaries supplying the human body.
The Kangoo bounced over the deeply rutted lane, its cargo of plants shifting crazily, its rear door swinging wildly. As it lurched around a bend, the door caught a tree and crashed shut with a noise of breaking glass. The impact was enough to cause the van to slew sideways. Roussel gunned the motor and pulled back onto the lane, but it was precious seconds lost, and the Merc was gaining distance, accelerating toward the bottom of the hill, with fifty, n
ow twenty-five meters to go before it met the junction with the road.
“Merde!” Laurent shouted. “We’re going to lose the bastard.”
Suddenly, as if he had willed it, a wall of white shot across the Mercedes’ path. The Ton, with the momentum of his downhill escape, had no time to brake. He smashed headlong into it with a sickening thud followed by the endless blaring of a horn.
•
The horn wailed, an alien sound, through the woods. Adjudant Compagnon set off at a run, Julian behind him. Albert and Chauvin remained behind to handcuff Adelheid and Serge to the wrought-iron gate and ensure that they stayed that way.
“Mon Dieu!” shouted Julian when he saw the wreckage.
The nose of the Mercedes was buried in the right side of a van—Julian’s van—which was folded at a crazy angle. Rocco Luca was slumped forward against the steering wheel, his groans muffled by the deflated airbag. His head rolled sideways, and the horn stopped, leaving an almost jarring silence.
Laurent backed out of the Mercedes.
“What?” demanded Compagnon, breathing hard.
“He’s alive, sir,” Laurent called over his shoulder. “I’ve called SAMU. An ambulance is on its way.”
It took Julian a moment to realize what must have happened. When he did, he felt sick.
“Mara!” he cried out as Roussel appeared around the front of the van. In the illumination of the headlights the gendarme looked white and shaken.
“She—she’s not there,” he stammered. “The driver’s door is sprung open. She must have been thrown out on impact. But I can’t find her.” He waved his flashlight around him, as if to prove his point.
Julian snatched it from him. “Mara!” He ran forward, sweeping the beam across the ground. He saw nothing but empty asphalt and broken glass.
Roussel, Laurent, and Compagnon joined him in the middle of the road.
“Mara!” four voices called together.
Their ringing cry elicited only silence.
A dense wall of shrubbery rose up on the other side of the road. Julian stumbled toward it. Could she have been thrown that far? Her injuries would be terrible. And then, in the tall grass, lying at the base of a tree, he saw something that nearly broke his heart.
“Mara!” he shouted in anguish, dropping to his knees beside a limp form, sprawled face down, that was frighteningly still.
•
“She’s alive,” said Compagnon.
“Don’t move,” Julian ordered gruffly as she tried to raise her head. In the illumination of three flashlights, he was relieved to see no serious bleeding. She must have jumped at the point of collision and rolled, finishing up on the other side of the road. Only the thick grass had saved her from major injury. She was stunned, bruised, badly scratched, and winded, but otherwise intact.
“The ambulance will be here any minute,” said Laurent.
A few minutes later, when Mara had recovered enough to speak, she told Compagnon rather jerkily: “He told me to go home”—indicating Roussel—“but I decided to hang around. I drove the van down the road and left it. Came back on foot. Then I saw a Kangoo go up the lane. Then a Mercedes. So I went back for the van. I thought if any of them tried to get away, there the lot of you’d be. Up a hill with no vehicle.”
“Up a hill—?” the genuine concern in Compagnon’s face flushed into embarrassment.
“Well, I was right, wasn’t I? I was driving back when I heard gunfire. Then I saw headlights coming down the hill. Fast. I knew someone was making an escape. That’s when I got the idea of blocking off the lane. I—I’m sorry about your van, Julian.”
“The van? The van? Forget the sodding van!” cried Julian with feeling, not knowing where to touch her, how to hold her.
• 45 •
The Two Sisters Restaurant was full for lunch as usual that day. They had not been to bed, but Mara, too keyed up for sleep by the night’s wild events, had downed two painkillers and insisted on celebrating. She had wanted a table on the porch, where patrons were sitting happily in the sunshine. However, it was market day, and the only spot available was the same one they had sat at the last time they had eaten there. It was, Julian decided, a placement of last resort. The rush of waiters past them created, as before, a constant stirring of air, and the clanging of the elevator door disturbed their conversation.
They had a lot to talk about. Eleven hours earlier, Jacques Compagnon and his officers had lifted a false floor in the cargo area of the Kangoo to discover 200 kilograms of very good-quality white, sealed in zip-lock bags, worth an estimated forty million euros, street value. The adjudant was crowing like a morning cock. His flair about Rocco Luca had proved right, and he had just pulled off one of the biggest drug busts in French history. As for Yvan Bordas, Compagnon was confident that this was the important shipment the narc had got wind of, that Kazim’s testimony established an MO linking Luca and Serge to the undercover agent’s murder. The chlorinated water found in Yvan’s lungs was consistent with his having been drowned in Luca’s hot tub. The potting material found in his nostrils could have got there if he had been dumped or pushed face down into one of Luca’s flower beds. Samples found on the dead man were being compared with samples from the Ton’s conservatory.
It was the best day in Compagnon’s life, and for the Brames Gendarmerie. All of the gendarmes attached to it shared in their commanding officer’s glory. If the adjudant forgot to acknowledge the role that Mara and Julian had played in his success, it was no doubt because he had many other things to occupy him. Congratulations rained down on him from his peers and superiors. Judge Bouchillou, the juge d’instruction heading up the case, had commended him. Praise had come direct from the Procureur de la République himself. Promotion was sure to follow.
Rocco Luca was in a closely guarded hospital room, recovering from a fractured jaw, a broken nose, and major facial burns from the airbag. Serge Taussat was in custody being questioned about the murder of Yvan Bordas, along with a string of other unsolved gangland assassinations.
Adelheid had been charged with possession and trafficking of illegal drugs. She vehemently denied all involvement, claiming to know nothing about the cargo of heroin and admitting only to agreeing to leave her Kangoo, while in Istanbul, in the care of a man named Mustafa for the space of three days. She had done this at the explicit request of Rocco Luca, to whom she sometimes supplied orchids. The greenhouse assistant confirmed that her employer often traveled with the Kangoo on orchid-related business. It was equipped for the transportation of plants, and Madame Besser had planned to bring back a load of orchids from Turkey for research purposes. She was certain her employer would never have anything to do with drugs. However, Kazim had positively identified Adelheid as the woman he had seen in the conservatory at the time of his dunking, making her an accomplice to the plan.
It was clear now how Luca’s mind had worked. Seeing his Toulouse base compromised, he had hit on his orchid supplier as a fallback. She was, providentially, planning to attend a conference in Istanbul. Kazim’s little sideshow had given the Ton the idea of diverting the police’s attention to Lokum. He knew a tap would be ordered on the Ismets’ line, enabling the gendarmes to hear what they were meant to hear, and he had ordered Osman beaten up to make things look convincing. It was a cunning scheme, worthy of the Ton, but not clever enough, everyone was saying, for Jacques Compagnon. The adjudant was almost convinced of it himself.
That morning, Julian had the pleasant experience of informing Géraud that he could kiss goodbye any expectations, botanical or monetary, where Adelheid was concerned.
“Bah,” Géraud had scoffed. “I never needed her.”
“Oh, and by the way, I happened to mention to the gendarmes that you are a business associate of hers,” said Julian happily. “They’ll be round to talk to you. In due course.”
“What?” said Géraud, badly shaken.
That, Julian thought with satisfaction, should take the wind out of the old goat’s sails
. Just long enough, he prayed, to let me find Cypripedium incognitum first.
Mara had come through her ordeal with nothing worse than bruises and loss of skin. Her elbows and forearms were bandanged, she showed a purple welt on her forehead, and the palm of her right hand was heavily gauzed and taped. Since she was left-handed, it did not impede her lifting a glass to Julian.
“Congratulations,” she said.
“And to you.” He toasted her. “We deserve this.”
•
Kazim had had his time with a lawyer and was now sitting on one side of a table in an interview room at the Brames Gendarmerie. He had been there since ten o’clock that morning. His posture, at first cocky, had sagged as his interrogation proceeded. Now he was slumped sideways, legs splayed, in an attitude of sullen antagonism. Opposite him sat Laurent and Adjudant Compagnon.
“I need to take a piss,” said Kazim.
“You just had a piss,” said Compagnon. His bulging eyes were bloodshot. His carrot-colored hair stood on end. His uniform was rumpled and he was running on nothing but coffee, but elation over his success buoyed him above bodily considerations.
Kazim shifted his legs in the other direction. His eyes followed the flight of a hornet thumping senselessly against a window.
“Let’s go over this again,” said Compagnon.
“Look, I keep telling you. My parents had nothing to do with any of this. They knew rien, nada, niente. Got it? And you might remember, this is my first offense, quoi.”
“So you keep telling me.”
“Plus, I’ve co-operated. I’ve spilled my guts, haven’t I? You’re supposed to go easy on me.”
Compagnon barked out a laugh. He leaned in. “Come on, Kazim.” His tone was as heavy as the fall of an axe. “Face it. You’re in it up to your neck, and so are your parents. You’ve been bringing in drugs with their knowledge and acquiescence for months. It doesn’t get more serious than that, even if you and your father turned co-operative in the end. And don’t count on Luca to help you out. Once he’s able to talk, he’ll be fighting to save his ass.”