The Blood Promise: A Hugo Marston Novel

by Pryor, Mark

  Too bad for them but good for me, the professor thought. Country boots, heavy but quiet, allowed a silent approach and therefore a close look into the house: a few lights on here and there but no one home, as expected. Watching a house like this wasn’t easy, but a routine had quickly established itself: on Friday nights the Bassin family would pile into their Renault and take the E54 out of the countryside and into nearby Troyes for dinner. The drive was twenty-five minutes one way and the meal no doubt two hours or more, which meant more than enough time to find the object that was the sole purpose of this trip.

  The professor stood on the patio, a dark shadow beside the supporting beam of a pergola carrying crisscross strands of wisteria that in May would drape purple, sweet flowers over the worn stones of the terrace. Inside the house, the drawing room was unlit but lumpy shapes of furniture were visible, silhouetted by a glow that emanated from a room deeper inside the house.

  A deep breath and then a hand on the latticed glass doors that led inside, pressure downward on the handle but no movement, no give: locked. Adrenaline flushed into frustration, but there were other doors on this side of the house and, if necessary, windows. This was supposed to be a quick and easy heist and, if all went to plan, one that might go unnoticed for days or even weeks, but if a rock had to fly through a window, so be it. Too much was at stake.

  The next door brought relief, an unlocked side door that led into a mudroom. It smelled damp in there, and rows of boots and shoes sat on their low wooden racks beneath pegs laden with coats. Half a dozen umbrellas poked out of a ceramic planter at the far end, mostly black, but one was half-sized and pink for the young lady of the house. Two steps led into a tiled hallway that looked to split the house—this wing of it, anyway.

  The professor ventured down the passageway, confidence growing, but froze as a voice called out from the drawing room, where the lights were now on.

  Why wasn’t she at dinner?

  Panic fought with anger, both quelled by a moment of stillness and deep breaths.

  “Allo? Il y a quelqu’un?”

  Retreat, thought the professor, I can come back another time, next week or the week after.

  “Allo? Monsieur, whoever you are, I saw you outside and I’m calling the police.”

  Which meant no retreat. How to explain the car tucked behind a hedgerow, a blatant if weak attempt to be surreptitious, let alone the nighttime entry?

  One chance, perhaps: bluff.

  “C’est moi,” the professor said, stepping into the large room, hands extended to the side and a smile to show no threat. “It’s just me.”

  “Who are you?” Collette Bassin seemed more puzzled than afraid, but she held a cell phone in her hand. “Why are you in my house?”

  “You don’t remember me?”

  “No.” The woman’s eyes flickered down. “Why are you wearing gloves?”

  “It’s cold outside. I get cold easily.” And I’m losing control of the situation. Calmly, the gloves came off, tucked into a back pocket, a gesture of friendliness and trust.

  But the old woman shook her head. “Non, it’s not cold at all.” Her eyes moved back up to the intruder and she began to raise the phone.

  “Non, please, you don’t need to call the police!” The professor started forward. “I was here a month or two ago, we talked about your family, don’t you remember?”

  “I talked to a young lady, not to you. About my family, she was asking questions.”

  “Oui, c’est vrai, but she’s . . . Madam, I was here too, in the other room talking to your daughter, and we did meet.”

  They were four feet apart now and the professor could see the suspicion, the disbelief on the old woman’s face and the fear that lingered in her eyes.

  “I don’t remember that, I don’t remember you.” She looked at the phone and pressed a button to bring it to life. “The police. When they come we can settle this.”

  “No!” The professor stepped forward and reached for the phone, intending just to diffuse the immediate danger, take away the phone and talk, but the old woman let out a cry and stepped back. She stumbled and twisted her body to stop herself from falling.

  “Don’t hurt me, please.” She fumbled with the phone, crabbing sideways between tables and over-stuffed chairs, legs weakened with fear taking her away, but too slowly, from the thief in her home. The intruder’s own fear kaleidoscoped, splintering into flashes of frustration, desperation, and anger, all coalescing in the time it took to grab hold of a thin vase in a teeth-gritting resolve to finish the job, to break away from the transfixing glow of the phone and the danger it represented. Reputation, honor, profession, all flickered within that rectangle of light, and all would disappear if this old woman called for help.

  The vase swung down, aimed at the phone but catching the woman on the wrist and the room echoed with a loud crack that came from more than just the china breaking. The phone dropped to the floor and the old woman grabbed her arm and turned deathly pale. She began to wail, fear and pain combining into a high-pitched sound that wouldn’t stop, even when she sank to her knees.

  “I’m sorry, please, be quiet, I’m sorry.” But the line had been crossed and no clever invention or story would undo this, and the horror of the future that was itself shattering elevated one emotion above all others, and the fear that burned through veins like acid suddenly froze into a cold and sharp drive for self-preservation.

  The cushion was blue and rough, a rectangle half the size of a pillow, and it fit over the woman’s face as though it had been designed for this purpose. Thin arms flailed as Madam Bassin’s brain screamed for air and began to shut down, the professor’s weight more than a match for her struggles and the soft cushion that starved her of life also muffled the sounds of her killer’s voice, a whispered and mildly regretful chant of, “You weren’t supposed to be here, you weren’t supposed to be here . . .”

  Ninety years old and weak, weak enough that it didn’t take long before she bucked twice and was still. So quick that, much later, the professor would find comfort in the idea that there was no premeditation, that it was a reflex action just to hush the old lady and that death came because of her age and frailty, not because of murder.

  The small chest was where Collette Bassin had said it would be, a throwaway story told months ago, tucked into the back of a huge wardrobe in the old lady’s bedroom. Seeing it was like a charge of electricity and the professor pulled it out carefully, kneeling beside the strongbox to admire it. Made from walnut, it was square and no more than two feet every which way. Solid, though, made by a true craftsman and held together with hinges and handles made of brass, as were the inlaid strips and swirls that decorated it. The metal was dark with age and this chest had been harshly treated at some point, but an experienced eye could recognize it as a more ornate piece than the plain sailor’s chests of old.

  Getting it down the stairs was a slow but simple task and it was halfway down that the professor stopped and swore.

  “Merde, les gants.”

  They were still tucked deep in a back pocket but, once they were back on, a dish towel grabbed from the kitchen sufficed to wipe down the wardrobe, and then the area around the body. The heavy boots took care of the vase, crushing it into pieces too small to render evidence.

  A quick time check, and a pang of guilt; theft and death had taken longer than planned so the professor retreated back out through the mud room and, the chest weighing more with each step, a stumbling run down the gravel driveway to the car, pathetically camouflaged and suspicious-looking rather than hidden. Especially after what had just happened.

  Hugo drove and Senator Lake rode in the front seat beside him.

  “I’m an egalitarian, don’t expect me to sit in the back.”

  Hugo smiled. “You do that in taxis, too?”

  “Tried it a few times, actually.” Lake shook his head and laughed. “Just scared the driver, turns out they’re not used to it. Plus, no offense, but a lot of cabbies
smell a little funky, with their pots of weird food next to them.” He saw Hugo shoot him a look. “Oh, I get it, you think I’m a racist. God forbid I don’t like the smell of Indian food.”

  “I didn’t say that, not at all.”

  “Look, Hugo, I’m a regular Joe who happens to be a senator. That’s why I’m a senator, because people are sick of electing the same family name decade after decade. They want one of them, a blue-collar guy with no pretensions.” He laughed gently. “No pretensions, but I can get defensive, sorry. The lecture’s over.”

  They headed west out of the city center, swaying in and out of the busy traffic with an identical black vehicle close behind them, two agents glad of a break, Hugo thought. They crossed over the Boulevard Périphérique, the road that marked the boundary between the city center and the suburbs, and one of the busiest thoroughfares in Europe. Hugo didn’t drive often in Paris, there was no need, but when he did he hated this road with its endless loop of fume-spitting traffic, the four lanes bordered by concrete rather than shoulders so that the inevitable accidents always tied up traffic for hours.

  They stayed on it for less than two miles before peeling onto a quieter road toward their final destination a hundred kilometers away, Chateau Tourville. Lake was quiet, watching out of his window as villages rose out of the countryside and disappeared as fast, low stone houses connected by one or two winding streets that led out into the flat fields of northern France. Overhead, gray clouds gathered and filtered the sunlight into an eerie yellow.

  After a while, Lake grunted. “Pretty countryside isn’t it?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I do like these old stone buildings, amazing how long they’ve stood. Hundreds of years, I’d bet, through use, war, and the weather.” He sounded almost wistful and Hugo was surprised to hear him express such appreciation. It didn’t last long, as if Lake had surprised himself. “Be prettier if the weather wasn’t so bad. Rains pretty much all year, I’m told.”

  “A slight exaggeration,” Hugo said. He felt Lake watching him now.

  “Look. I know what people say about me, the whole isolationist thing. And I play that up to some degree because a lot of people in my district like it, they believe in that. And I do, too, but for slightly different reasons. I’m not a xenophobe, Hugo. I don’t hate the French or the Germans.”

  “The English?”

  “Nor them. The royalty thing disgusts me, but that’s another subject. The point I’m trying to make is this: I’m an American. I even have native blood, or so my grandmother told me, but it’s not just about that. I love America and I’m sick of policing the rest of the world, saving Europe from the Nazis, Iraq from a lunatic. What is it now, Iran? North Korea? I’m just saying, enough is enough. We do all that and what thanks do we get?”

  “Not my bailiwick, so I wouldn’t know.”

  “None, Hugo. Instead we get scorn. And we get fleeced because it’s our troops who get sent in first. So all I’m saying, let’s just make the most of being American and let the rest of the damn world fend for itself for once. Let them have inbred Royal families and eat snails. Go for it. Just keep it to themselves.”

  “And your constituents, you have this discussion with them?”

  “Like I said, most are more anti-Europe than I am. And not just anti-Europe, but anti-privilege, and I’m one hundred percent on board there.” Out of the corner of his eye, Hugo could see the man was annoyed. “And this discussion is between you and me. The people who support me, with votes and money, are perfectly happy to malign Europe, and since our interests are one and the same, the nuances of my position are irrelevant. And potentially damaging. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Just between us,” Hugo said mildly. “But when you say, ‘people who support me,’ do you mean the big donors or the small ones?”

  Lake smiled. “Here’s how it works. The big ones follow the lead of the small ones. I piss off my blue-collar base, the heavy wallets leave, too. Double whammy, you might say. Ugly game, isn’t it?”

  “Sounds like it,” Hugo said. “Glad I’m not playing.”

  “Right.” Lake took a breath, as if to calm himself. “So you’re former FBI, right? Into all that profiling business?”

  “I did some of that, yes.”

  “Interesting. You have some pretty high-tech surveillance equipment, too, for that antiterrorist work.”

  “We do.”

  “Got my hands on some, it’s amazing.”

  Hugo glanced over. “Why would a senator need surveillance equipment, if I may ask?”

  Lake chortled. “Are you kidding? Some is because I like playing with it, some to make sure no one stabs me in the back.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “People come into my office and we talk. Then they leave my office and misquote me, misrepresent my position.” He shrugged. “I got sick of that happening.”

  “You bug your own office?”

  “Heavens no. I just record the conversations I have with people, to protect myself.”

  “Phones, too?”

  “Of course. I’m not stupid, I know there are people out there trying to trip me up. The closer you get to the top, the more that happens, believe me.” He looked out of the window. “This way I’m covered. Safe.”

  They drove in silence for a moment, then Lake turned to Hugo. “So, did you profile the people meeting us for dinner? Any psychos?”

  Hugo raised an eyebrow. “A few politicians, if that answers your question.”

  “Funny guy, Hugo, but yeah, it does. Seriously, I don’t know much about the people there, do you?”

  “Not really.” Hugo tried to recall the brief that his secretary Emma had given him. It was tucked in his overnight bag, but Emma had included insight as well as facts, which meant it was for Hugo’s eyes only. He recited the bits he could remember, the facts anyway. “The chateau is owned by Henri Tourville, been in his family for years. Centuries probably. He’s high up in the MAEE, roughly translated as the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs.”

  “That guy I know. Spoke to him on the phone when I took Jonty Railton’s place, asked whether I preferred brandy or port. Felt it was like some kind of test.”

  “It probably was.”

  “You think?” Lake grimaced. “Anyway, he said his drinking buddy would be there, Felix or Victor someone.”

  “Felix Vibert. I don’t have my ministers and undersecretaries straight, but I gather he’s the brains behind the political power Tourville wields. They met while teaching at the Sorbonne—Tourville is a history buff and Vibert was a bigwig in international relations.” Hugo glanced across. “No offense, but shouldn’t you know who you’re dealing with?”

  “On the one hand, you’d think so. On the other hand, it’s a dinner party with, what, twenty people? Maybe thirty? And we’re talking about a pile of rocks in the Caribbean that you, as a member of the voting public, don’t seem to care about. I’m pretty good with people, Hugo, despite what you may have heard about me, and as far as personalities go, I’m confident I can wing it a little.” He paused and his tone changed. “Although I have heard a little about Tourville’s sister.”

  “Ah yes.” said Hugo. “Although I imagine she’s been misrepresented.” Emma had briefed him on the sister, too, in a way that tip-toed the line between informing and gossiping. She knew that Hugo disdained the latter, believing that salacious tattle, particularly among the upper echelons of society, was usually exaggerated if not completely wrong. And if factually correct, it was no one’s business anyway.

  “Turned her life around, do you think?” Lake said—a little sarcastically, Hugo thought.

  “You can ask her when we get there.”

  “Oh, come on, Hugo. In a room full of stuffed shirts, myself included, she could be the most interesting person there. She off limits to your intelligence briefing? Since you’re there to protect me, I doubt it.”

  Babysit, thought Hugo. “My brief relates to security, I think,
not so much sexual trysts.”

  “More’s the pity.”

  And not entirely true. Hugo had wanted to know the background of everyone there and Emma hadn’t been able to resist some of the more scandalous details, delivered with a knowing smile and entirely designed to provoke Hugo into self-righteousness.

  The sister, Alexandra Catherine de Beaumont Tourville, or Alexie to her friends, had long been the black sheep of the Tourville family. Booted from several boarding schools for her antics, she managed to make her way to university where she found her niche, using her high intelligence to breeze through several degree programs and develop her liberal instincts.

  When she’d finally racked up enough diplomas, she used them and her father’s money to try numerous careers, skating between the entertainment world and the political. Hugo suspected, from what he’d read and heard, that she may have some minor mental or emotional issues, becoming focused on a project or person to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. Greenpeace, saving the whales, the death penalty in America, and legalizing LSD and marijuana were the ones Hugo could remember. If Emma was right, she’d used up pretty much all of her inheritance chasing world peace and harmony, and a few magical dragons to boot. An internationally successful blog, mostly kept up by one or two people close to her, kept her name in the news whenever she upset a political apple cart or blew into an awards ceremony.

  Two years ago, the gallivanting around the globe had come to an end in a blaze of humiliating publicity. She’d returned to France to live full time, reformed her blog to discuss the more serious issues of the day, and eschewed the party circuit. She then launched a serious and expensive campaign to win a seat in the National Assembly, France’s lower house of Parliament, using her family’s name and reputation at every turn and relying heavily on the electorate’s short memory, libertine instincts, and forgiving nature.