“Why should Crimson do what Paul wants and hand the documents over to the press?” Pamela asked. “I thought you said this researcher you invented wanted money for them.”
“You’re right,” Bruno replied. “And he was supposed to be expecting them to go to a private person, not to the press.”
Might the plan be saved, Bruno asked himself, if Crimson just said no and insisted on the original arrangement? He’d have to think this through and keep his thoughts to himself. He didn’t need the distraction of Pamela trying to talk him out of it.
“How much money did this researcher want?” she asked.
“I’m not sure any deal was reached. The story is that this was a professional researcher who used to do occasional work in the archives for Fullerton, paid by the day. Crimson thought that would be at least two hundred euros a day, but these documents are supposed to be special, classified papers that have not been publicly released. I imagine the price would be two or three thousand, maybe more.”
“Where would Paul get that sort of money?”
“He got three thousand on the company credit card.” Bruno turned onto the long lane that led to Pamela’s house. “Maybe that was why he wanted the cash. Look, we’re almost home.”
He always enjoyed this approach, the long ridge climbing to the left and then the fringe of poplars that shielded the house and grounds from the north and east, the ivy-covered pigeon tower and the welcoming sight of the house itself, the courtyard formed by the flanking barns that Pamela rented as gîtes.
“The sooner that gardener gets here the better,” said Pamela. “I’ve got three families arriving Saturday.”
“And I have to get to work,” said Bruno, helping her from the car.
“Dinner tonight after you ride Hector?”
“Let me call you.” He kissed them both and headed back toward town, punching Crimson’s number into the phone as he drove.
28
Crimson’s house was not quite in order. The rugs had been laid, the pictures hung, and most of the furniture was back in place. But the dining room table was still to be reassembled, and cases of wine were stacked beside it. Crimson took Bruno to his study, where a desk phone and a cheap disposable were lined up on the desk. A large-scale map of the area and a laptop stood open on a small table beside the desk.
“You dyed your hair,” said Bruno. As arranged, both men were wearing khaki slacks and blue shirts.
“It was the nearest I could get to looking like you. Even with binoculars, if we have the same clothes and hair color he won’t be able to tell us apart. We’d better synchronize watches and be sure we have each other’s phones on speed dial.”
“Quite a little operations room,” said Bruno.
“I’ve got other maps as well, notepads and tape recorders, and there’s coffee in the thermos. Why did you bring the dog? I mean I’m delighted to see the little fellow, but you can’t intend to take him along.”
“He’s my secret weapon. Murcoing likes dogs.” Bruno looked around the study. “It looks like you’ve done this sort of thing before.”
As soon as he was out of sight of Pamela’s house, Bruno had called Crimson and suggested that he reply to Paul by saying he had no intention of giving the documents to the press. He wanted to deal only with someone who was personally known to and trusted by Fullerton. Otherwise he’d return to England and forget the whole thing. Crimson had agreed and sent the e-mail.
“Florence is teaching, but she wants to drop by after school. She’s arranged babysitters,” Crimson said. “Now we just wait.”
“Not quite,” said Bruno. “If you can find a screwdriver we could put that dining table of yours back together.”
It took them twenty minutes and would have taken longer but for J-J’s arrival with Josette, who explained that she and her husband had just furnished their new house from IKEA so she knew about putting furniture together. She added that she loved dogs, and Balzac was the friendliest little charmer she’d seen in years, which sent her soaring in Bruno’s estimation. She took off her jacket, rolled up her sleeves and took charge. Crimson excused himself to make more coffee. When he returned with a tray, the table was assembled.
“Well done, we can spread out the other maps now,” he said, gingerly resting the tray on it as if unsure of Josette’s skills.
“Don’t worry, monsieur. I sat on it to be sure I’d done it right.”
“Before we start on today’s operation, I have some interesting news,” said J-J. “When Josette looked at Édouard’s mail, she found a letter from the traffic police. His Jaguar was caught by a speed camera on the autoroute from Périgueux to Bordeaux just after eight on the evening of Fullerton’s murder.”
“That means he was there,” said Bruno.
“He was certainly in the general vicinity. And the juge d’instruction shares your suspicions, but Édouard now has a lawyer, and he’s not saying a word.”
“Putain, I was sure you’d broken him yesterday.”
“Me too, but it seems we were wrong. I’ll get back to him when this is over. Now listen carefully because I have something I’m required to say,” said J-J. “This is not an officially sanctioned operation. You are doing this at your own risk, and I know nothing about it, understood?”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Here’s a slim-line flak vest, not the latest model, but it will stop a handgun. We’ve changed the license plates on your car so it looks like it was hired in Paris,” J-J went on. “And here are the shoes.” He handed over a pair of black hiking boots. “The tracker’s in the heel, and Josette has the monitor. We’ll need to be no more than a mile away for it to work, so keep me informed by phone of where you are. Inspector Jofflin has a second car waiting outside Bergerac with another monitor.”
“Any support?” Crimson asked.
“Somebody owes me a favor, so a team of Gendarmes Mobiles will be doing an antiterrorist training exercise with live weapons and a helicopter at the Golfech nuclear power plant near Agen. They’re about fifty miles away, say thirty minutes, but give me some notice, and I’ll have them moved closer. They’ve been informally briefed and we’re on the same communications network.”
Bruno nodded, and inquired innocently: “The favor would be from the brigadier?”
“Don’t ask. And here’s a wire for each of you so we know what you’re saying if you can’t use the phones. It goes under your clothes, and we have to attach the transmitter to your backs with tape, so get your shirts off. It’s very short-distance, maybe three hundred yards if we’re lucky.”
Bruno and Crimson began to strip. J-J waited until they were taped, the system tested and Bruno had the flak vest under his shirt.
“And here’s the gun I want you to use.” He put his foot up on a chair and drew up his trouser leg to reveal an ankle holster in black webbing and Velcro and drew out the gun.
“It’s a Smith and Wesson Centennial Airweight, designed for this holster. It’s an American thirty-eight, which is pretty much the same as our nine-millimeter. A revolver, because it’s less likely to get jammed by sock lint or any kind of debris you pick up walking through rough ground. And I want it back.”
“I don’t want to carry a gun.”
“Take it, and don’t be a fool.”
“At least this way you have the option,” said Crimson. “And it really is concealed.”
Reluctantly Bruno strapped it on, privately suspecting with a soldier’s superstition that this would probably ensure that Paul never made contact again. Crimson’s disposable phone rang.
“Hello,” he said, his English accent more evident than usual. Bruno saw the little cogs on the cassette recorder moving. Josette turned away to make a call, presumably to start the trace.
“Yes, I have a car, a rental, a white Peugeot, a 207.” Crimson continued speaking in English.
“I’m at a hotel on the autoroute outside Périgueux,” he said, after a pause. “Francis told me he had a place nearby.”<
br />
Another pause.
“Yes, I have a map. Yes, I’ve found Les Eyzies. Okay, the public telephone outside the post office on the main street. How long will it take me to get there?”
Bruno felt frustrated hearing only one side of this conversation. Couldn’t they have rigged up some extra earphones?
“You’ll call me there at one precisely. I understand.”
Another pause.
“Francis promised me two thousand pounds. Let’s say twenty-five hundred euros.”
He waited for a response.
“Very well, at one.” Crimson closed the phone.
“Fifty seconds,” said J-J looking at his watch. “That should be long enough to trace it. Josette?”
She held up a hand to silence him as she listened and scribbled on a notepad.
“It came from a public phone booth outside the mairie in Coux,” she said, and turned back to speak into her phone. “We expect the next call will be at eleven to the public phone outside la poste in Les Eyzies. Can you set the trace up now? Thanks.”
“Call Jofflin, tell him to get to Coux and then call in,” said J-J. “Murcoing won’t still be there, but this looks like the area.”
“He might be watching the phone booth, or Yvonne might be watching,” said Bruno. “He’s not alone.”
“We’ll be careful.” J-J turned to Crimson. “We’ll follow you to Les Eyzies, and we’ll park down the road but in the line of sight. There’s a gas station on the corner we should be able to use. I want Bruno hiding on the floor of your car in the rear. I suspect Murcoing will have a second public phone arranged after Les Eyzies, one he can watch for any funny business. When you’ve fixed the final rendezvous, you hand the car over to Bruno. You’ll have to find a spot which is undercover. When Bruno drives off, stay undercover until you see my car, and we’ll pick you up. Make sure you can recognize my car and keep talking so we can pick you up on the mike.”
“You’ve done this before,” Crimson said to J-J.
“There was a kidnapping case a few years ago. We set up a similar tracking system for the plainclothes guy who carried the ransom.”
“And how did that turn out?”
“The plainclothes guy took one bullet, but he lived to arrest the pickup team. One of them led us to their safe house, and the hostage team did the rest. We saved the kidnap victim.”
“Don’t be so modest, chef,” said Josette. “You were the one that took the bullet.”
“And if I hadn’t been given the ankle holster, I’d be dead. Remember that.” J-J looked at his watch. “Right, let’s run through the checklist. Radios, phones, tracker shoes, ankle gun, pen and notepad. Anything else?”
Josette checked her list. “A folder for the documents he’s supposed to be carrying. Phone cards in case they need them.” She looked at Bruno. “Don’t you need a leash for the dog?”
“You’re not taking the dog along?” J-J said.
“I’ve got the leash in my back pocket. Paul Murcoing loves animals but was never allowed to have one as a kid. His aunt told me. This gives me an edge.”
J-J shook his head and rolled his eyes at Josette. “Let’s go.”
Bruno lay hunched and sweating under a blanket on the floor in the back of the Peugeot. Even with the passenger seat as far forward as it would go, it was a squeeze, particularly with Balzac squirming on his chest. He had an open phone line with J-J as Crimson came back from the phone booth.
“The next call will be to a phone booth in Campagne in fifteen minutes,” he said, and drove back to the small roundabout by the Hôtel Centenaire and turned off toward Campagne.
“Okay, we heard that,” said J-J over the phone that Bruno held to his ear. “We’ll take the lower road past St. Cirq so he won’t see you’re being followed. We can park at the place where they sell foie gras, and we should still be in range.”
Another uncomfortable ride and then a further hot and stuffy wait until Crimson returned from the Campagne phone booth and reported: “He says I have to drive to another phone booth, in Audrix, by the mairie. I take a left on the road to Coux and then a right at the top of the hill. He must have scouted this all out carefully.”
“Putain, he’ll see us coming up that long hill if we follow,” said J-J. “Josette, get Jofflin to drive up from Coux, go past Audrix and then wait at that cheese shop just below the village. We’ll go the long way around through St. Denis and use the parking lot at the big cave. And see if they can get a trace on the Audrix phone booth.”
Crimson drove up a long hill with endless bends. Bruno felt his right leg start to cramp. He braced it against the door and tried to bend himself double at the waist so he could straighten the leg. Realizing something was wrong, Balzac wriggled up Bruno’s trunk to lick his face and then found his way out from under the blanket. Audrix was one of the highest villages in the region, a good place for someone with binoculars to follow the progress of approaching cars.
“Are you all right?” Crimson asked.
“Just a cramp, I’ll be fine.”
“Sorry, we’re almost there. If I’d thought, I’d have rented a bigger car. By the way, I told Paul I have my dog with me. He asked what it was and I said a basset hound puppy. He laughed.”
At Audrix, the wait for Crimson to return was considerably longer, and J-J told Bruno over the phone that he could not hear the mike. J-J’s voice was nervous. He kept asking what the delay was and why Crimson was not returning. Bruno replied that he didn’t know. He could see nothing, and it would be too risky for a head to suddenly appear from the rear seat of the Peugeot.
“It’s probably taking time for Crimson to write down the directions,” Bruno said into his phone. “That would mean we’re on the last lap. Wait, I hear footsteps. That’s probably Crimson coming back to the car.”
The driver’s door opened, and Crimson spoke as he settled himself and attached the safety belt.
“I’m to drive on down the hill, cross the railway line and then take the first road on the left, at a sign marked Tennis,” he reported. “Are you hearing this all right, J-J?”
“You’re faint, but we can hear you. Speak the directions slowly, and, Bruno, could you hold the phone out from under the blanket? We should be able to hear it better.”
Crimson repeated the directions. The terrain was all familiar, and Bruno followed the route in his head.
“We’ll do the switch immediately after you turn left at the sign for the tennis club,” Bruno said. “There’s good cover there from hedges. Leave the engine running and wait for J-J.”
“I heard all that,” said J-J. “But be sure Crimson stays in hiding when he’s out of the car. I’m coming, but I don’t want to arrive there immediately; it would look too suspicious.
“Bruno, the chopper’s on its way. I’ll hold it at Le Buisson until I hear from you.”
“I’m turning now at the sign to the tennis club and stopping,” said Crimson, and Bruno felt the weight shift as he left the car. “Good luck.”
29
Bruno climbed over the seats and took his place behind the wheel, closed the door and drove into the parking area. He turned off the engine, left the key in the ignition, picked up the file on the passenger seat and caught sight of himself in the mirror. His hair was a mess from being beneath the blanket, so he ran his fingers through to straighten it. He climbed out of the Peugeot and freed Balzac to scurry around the car. The dog lifted his leg against a wheel, darted to the tennis club building and sniffed around the door. When Bruno began to walk, certain that binoculars would be watching, Balzac followed.
The shoes he’d been given felt odd, as if one heel was higher than the other, presumably for the tracker. It was a warm day, and the flak vest was already damp under his jacket from his being beneath the blanket. Bruno checked his watch as he passed the small vineyard. He’d been walking five minutes. Another eight minutes took him to a railway crossing, where a pair of Alsatians barked at Balzac when he went up to their fe
nce to make friends.
Bruno smiled wryly to himself as Balzac, looking puzzled at his harsh welcome, scuttled back to his master’s side. They continued to follow the route he’d been given. As he turned up the gravel path that led to the woods where the rendezvous would take place, Bruno wondered whether that might be an omen for his own reception. What might he expect from this encounter? He went through the traditional soldier’s catechism. He either secured his objective of persuading Paul to give himself up, in which case there was nothing to worry about, or he didn’t. If he failed, either he’d walk away free, in which case there was no problem, or he wouldn’t. If he did not walk away free, either he would not take a bullet, in which case, no problem. If he was shot, he’d either recover, which meant no problem, or he wouldn’t, in which case he wouldn’t be able to worry.
The crude fatalism cheered him a little, but that was not the calculus that had sent him trudging up this winding slope in the hot sun. Bruno’s knowledge of Paul Murcoing had gone beyond the crude caricature of a violent psychopath who had butchered his lover. Bruno saw him as a human being, close to his sister and his grandfather, and as an accomplished artist who refused to do cheap sketches for cash and preferred more serious works. Paul possessed an easy charm that worked on women as well as men, and on dogs too, Bruno recalled. He had volunteered at a hospice for the dying. Bruno could not make all this fit with the simplistic category of killer. Paul had to know the game could not go on much longer, and he had his sister to think of.
Up to Bruno’s left was a hill topped by a water tower and a cell-phone transmission tower. Was that a flash of sunlight on binoculars he saw? It would be a perfect location to track Bruno as he walked to the rendezvous and keep watch for any suspicious cars. Ten more minutes took him along a dirt track, and Bruno started the climb through the woods to the enormous clearing that had been turned into a motocross circuit.
As he looked at the plunges and humps and muddied curves of the circuit, he felt certain that Paul would be using one of the motorbikes designed for such tracks. It would take him cross-country and through woods in a way that would evade any pursuit. Why hadn’t he thought of that and advised J-J to have some motards on standby? He checked his watch; he had been walking for twenty-five minutes, and he’d gone at least a mile and a half. That could be beyond the maximum range for the tracker, particularly since trees would cut down reception.
The Resistance Man Page 25