Bruno was dialing Crimson’s number when a shot came from inside the house followed by the piercing note of a woman shrieking.
“I’m sorry I had to do that,” Paul said as he answered Crimson’s phone. “I warned you this would happen.”
“I have no news and no official response from Paris on your conditions, but a superior officer is now here, Commissaire Jalipeau, head of detectives for the département. The juge d’instruction is with him, and he wants to talk to you.”
Bruno handed the phone to J-J and went back to Sergeant Jules.
“Since nobody else will do anything, I’m going to try,” he said. “I’ll need your people to break a window on the upper floor and pull down the bike that’s leaning against the front door, both at the same time. Ten seconds after that, I want the bike leaning against the back door to be pulled away. There’s an alarm rigged to each one, and it will distract them. And I’ll need those bolt cutters you have for traffic accidents.”
“All right, do you want me to come with you?”
“I’m not sure you’d squeeze through the gap I’m planning to use, but thanks for offering. Who are the best people on your team?”
“Françoise, no question. She’s also the best shot. By the way, Yveline’s back and calling every few minutes to ask if anything’s happened. She told me somebody left a cardboard box on the steps of the gendarmerie with an old silver coffeepot inside. It must have happened just after I left. She says it looks like the American one that was stolen. What do you want her to do?”
“Tell her to call the owner and see if she can identify it,” Bruno replied. “But first, let’s talk to Françoise.”
Jules beckoned Françoise to join them. He asked her if she was ready to volunteer to go in with Bruno.
“About time somebody did something,” she said. “If he’s shot Florence…”
Bruno explained his plan. He went to his Land Rover, pulled out his spare roll of fishing line and measured out two lengths of twenty yards each. He gave one to Françoise. She crept to the front door and tied the line to the bike while he did the same at the rear.
They rejoined Jules, who had collected a handful of fist-sized stones and positioned himself below the window that looked onto the garage. Each of them gave the sergeant an end of the fishing line.
“Pull on that, and the bike topples, and the alarm goes off,” said Bruno. “When you hear the click of the bolt cutters, count to twenty and then pull the back-door bike.”
Jules repeated the instructions.
“Then count to ten and break that window and start shouting. Stay tucked up against the wall so they can’t see you or shoot you, but keep on throwing stones until that glass breaks.”
“Count to ten, window,” Jules said.
“I’ll go in first and try to get up the stairs to the landing to get the high ground, and Françoise will stay at the top of the cellar stairs.”
“What’s this?” J-J demanded, joining them. “What are you up to, Bruno?”
“Since you people won’t do anything, the mayor has told me to do something.”
“You’re not doing anything.”
“You’re not my boss.”
“No, you fool, I’m your friend. What have you got in mind?”
Bruno explained his plan. J-J nodded. “It might help if I were to call him when I hear your bolt cutters and say we just heard from Paris.”
“It would help a lot. If I can open the front door on the way up, I’ll try it.”
Bolt cutters in hand, with Françoise carrying an aerosol can of lubricant, they crept around to the rear of the house, to the edge of the terrace and the access for the fuel oil. Françoise sprayed the lubricant onto the hinges and then held the padlock so Bruno could get some purchase. With a powerful heave of his shoulders he closed the long handles of the cutters and heard a loud snap. Françoise dislodged the broken padlock, and then Bruno took a deep breath, seized the edges of the two metal plates and in a swift move pulled them up and open. The entry to the cellar, not much wider than his shoulders, loomed dark at his feet.
He let himself into the hole, counting under his breath, and lowered himself until his feet touched the floor, and the count was ten. He whispered to Françoise to follow, helped her down and then took out his gun. He released the safety catch. Fifteen.
He opened the door to find the cellar in darkness. He groped his way to the stairs and began climbing at the count of eighteen. He had just reached the top of the stairs when he heard glass break and then a noisy clatter as a bike fell. He opened the door, the light suddenly very bright, and heard a woman’s voice shout, “Back door.” Footsteps ran down the stairs from the upper floor. He had reached a new count of three, now four.
To get to the back door, Yvonne would have to come past him. He had never hit a woman, but it would be better than shooting her. As Yvonne jumped down the last stairs and turned to face the back door Bruno put his entire weight into a punch that started at his knees and ended in the center of her stomach, just below the rib cage. There was a great whoosh of air being expelled from her lungs, and then she bent over double and fell as if she’d been poleaxed. The automatic pistol fell from her hand.
The count was seven as he grabbed her gun and tucked it into the back of his waistband, so there was no time to open the front door. The count was ten as he began leaping up the stairs as the first rock came in through the landing window.
Bruno lay flat on the landing, pointing his gun down the stairs and planning to shoot Paul somewhere around his waist, to stop him but with luck not kill him. He would have one clean shot at a moving target before Paul’s Sten began hosing the stairs with bullets.
Then he heard the sound of a blow, a grunt and something clattering as it fell. There were confused voices, shouting, protesting. Then came a burst of automatic fire from inside the study, shockingly loud.
Then silence.
“C’est fini, c’est fini,” came a shout. “It’s over. I got him. Here’s the gun.”
The study door was opened and the Sten gun, minus its magazine, was pushed out into the hall.
“Can we come out now? This is Brian Fullerton. Murcoing is dead, and we are all safe.”
At that point Sergeant Jules pulled the second length of fishing line, and a new clattering came as the bike toppled and the glass jug filled with teaspoons that had been resting on a chair was pulled down by the falling bike to tinkle against the door.
“Françoise, secure the prisoner on the floor,” Bruno called. “Then go out and get J-J and the sergeant, the doctor and a stretcher.”
“She’s choking, it sounds very bad,” Françoise said. “I’ve cuffed her.” Her gun poised, she went to the front door, clambered over the bike and shouted for the others to come.
“Come out one at a time with your hands up,” Bruno called.
Brian came first, looking defiantly around him, then Florence, her face drained and her hands and lips trembling, though she looked unhurt. There were no bullet wounds in her hands or feet. Paul had been bluffing with that shot. Crimson came last, looking back into the study, from which drifted whiffs of cordite.
“It’s clear,” said Crimson.
“What happened in there?” Bruno asked.
“I tripped him, grabbed the Sten and shot him,” said Brian. “It was him or us.”
“There was a shot earlier and a woman’s scream,” said Bruno. “We thought he might have shot Florence.”
“He fired into the ceiling, and his sister did the screams,” said Crimson. “It was a bit of theater.”
J-J was the first in the door, Fabiola on his heels, and then Sergeant Jules and the juge. Bruno pointed Fabiola to Yvonne, still straining for breath, rocking back and forward from her waist, her eyes wide with terror. The three hostages dropped their hands, and Florence turned accusingly to Brian Fullerton.
“You didn’t have to shoot him,” she said. “He was helpless, spread-eagled on the floor. He’d dropped t
he gun.”
“We’ll sort this out later,” Bruno said, and told them all to get back as he looked into the study.
Paul Murcoing lay in a spreading lake of blood. His handsome face was unmarked, but a trail of bullet holes rose from his left hip, across his stomach and up the right side of his chest. His eyes and mouth were open, with a look that might have been surprise.
“Good result,” said J-J, coming into the room, the others following. “Hostages all saved, the bad guy dead, the girl lives to go on trial. We charge her with kidnapping, resisting arrest.”
“I think there might be another trial,” said Bruno. He turned to Crimson. “Tell us what happened in there.”
“They panicked when the first bike fell. Paul had sent his sister upstairs; he was worried about the window up there. Then he took a phone call. As he was speaking we heard her shouting and running downstairs and then nothing until the windows started breaking. That’s when Paul dropped the phone and ran out.”
“I tripped him,” Brian interrupted. “That’s when I grabbed the Sten and shot him. I thought he might have another gun.”
“How convenient for you that he’s dead,” Bruno said. “Paul can take the blame for all of it, the thefts and the murder of your brother.”
“You didn’t have to kill him,” Florence repeated. “He’d fallen, lost the gun, and you had him covered. I couldn’t believe it when you opened fire.”
“He killed my brother, and he would have killed us too,” Brian retorted angrily. “I was saving our lives.”
“It didn’t look like that to me,” said Crimson. “Florence is right. I won’t mourn for him, but there was no need to shoot the man.”
Brian ignored him and lifted his head defiantly. Bruno stared at him a moment, remembering what he’d learned about Brian’s flight times, and then addressed him.
“When we met last Friday you told me you had just flown into Bergerac, hired a car and come straight to St. Denis. Is that right?”
“That’s right. I changed the flight the consulate had booked.”
Now Bruno knew he was lying, and everything fell into place—Brian’s attempt to sanitize his brother’s laptop, his false arrival date, his shooting of Paul. He felt he even understood Paul Murcoing’s phrase, “what he was doing to us.”
“When did your brother tell you he was intending to marry Yves Valentoux?” Bruno asked.
“What, my brother marry?” Brian scoffed. “He was gay.”
“But he wanted a family. He wanted a child, and he had found a partner he loved and wanted to live with. He told you that, didn’t he?”
“My brother had all sorts of wild ideas: adoption, fatherhood. His enthusiasms never lasted more than a week or two.”
“This one did. Francis told you he was going to father a child and have it brought up by two friends of Yves who were already raising Yves’s daughter. And you realized that he would thereby disinherit you and your children and leave the control of his company to strangers.”
Brian glared at him, his fingers curling into fists, but Bruno carried on.
“So with Paul and Édouard Marty, your fellow directors in Arch-Inter, you decided to take steps to ensure the company, not to mention the house in Chelsea and the Porsche, stayed in your hands.”
“This is all bullshit, Bruno…”
“Édouard Marty was arrested yesterday and is telling us everything. How he picked you up at Bordeaux airport last Monday, drove you out to confront your brother.”
Bruno was making it up as he went along but had never been more certain of anything.
“You hated him because he was your mother’s favorite, because of all the money they spent on his debts and his rehabilitation, while you were the dutiful son, the hard worker. He was gay, and you were straight. You gave them the grandchildren, but he had all the love. He goes to prison, but his old sugar daddy dies and leaves him the house and the business. As your wife said, not bad for two years inside. Then his business took off, and he had all the money. And all you had was a token share and the hope that your children might inherit something, and then you learned that even that was going to be taken away from you.”
Brian stared coldly at Bruno and said nothing.
“We have Édouard’s testimony, we have your flight details, we have a speed camera that took your photo as you drove back in Édouard’s Jaguar, and we’ll have your clothes, where I think we will find microscopic specks of your brother’s blood from when you beat him to death. And now you killed Paul so that he conveniently takes the blame for it all.”
“Brian Fullerton,” said J-J, and Bruno turned to listen. “You are under arrest for the murder of your brother, Francis…”
Bruno felt a punch on his back, stumbled forward, and the pistol that Yvonne had dropped and that he had stuffed into his waistband was wrenched from its place. For the second time that day the adrenaline flooded his body. Brian was pointing the weapon at him.
“You think you’re so bloody clever, but you’ve no idea what it was like. He was a monster. My parents had to sell their house to pay for the little queer’s treatment, and what do you think there was left for me? I’m glad I did it…”
There was a great clunk, and Brian’s eyes went glassy, his knees buckled, and he fell as Florence completed her follow-through after the forehand drive had slammed her precious laptop into his temple. The sheer metallic case cracked open, and components and letters from the keyboard tinkled to the floor.
“Thank you,” Bruno said, his legs still trembling and his mouth dry. Painfully, he swallowed and bent to grab the pistol that had fallen from Brian’s hand. “We’ll get you a new computer.”
Florence let out a great sob, threw down the wrecked computer, put her hands to her face and crumpled into Bruno’s arms.
“Can you please take me home to my children?” she asked him as J-J handcuffed the unconscious man.
Bruno led her out, leaving J-J and the rest of them to clear up, complete the paperwork and file the charges. He settled Florence in the passenger seat of his Land Rover and called the mayor.
“It’s over. Paul is dead, shot by Brian Fullerton, who has now been charged with the murder of his brother. No hostages hurt. I’m taking Florence home to her children. If Paris calls, tell them it’s all ended well. If Pamela calls, tell her I’m on my way. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Bruno hung up, feeling a great wave of tiredness that slowed him as he climbed behind the wheel and set off back to St. Denis. He thought of Yves and the way he’d spoken of his daughter, Odile. He thought of the murdered Francis Fullerton and his yearning to be a father. He felt himself awed as he contemplated these deep and potent tides of parenthood and family, the waves of ancestry and succession that tied past and present together.
He looked at Florence, aching to be back with her children, and he thought of the risks he had taken that evening. And he wondered if he’d ever have stepped into such danger if Isabelle had still been carrying his child.
Acknowledgments
This is a work of fiction, and all characters, places and institutions are inventions, except for the historical facts cited below.
The Resistance train robbery at Neuvic in July 1944 took place exactly as described here, and the haul was 2,280 million francs. The final months of the war were a period of sharp inflation, so comparative values are difficult to establish, but the exchange rate calculated for the U.S. Federal Reserve by the U.S. Embassy in Paris in 1945 suggests that the sum taken was around 300 million euros in today’s money, or $400 million. See http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/rfd/1946/47/rfd47.pdf.
In financial terms, it was by far the greatest train robbery of all time. In suggesting that this was five times the national budget for education, I used the best detailed analysis of the French state budget for 1946, which can be found online at http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/pop_0032-4663_1947_num_2_4_1873.
I am grateful to my friend Jean-Jacques Gillot, an
eminent local historian and coauthor of the Résistants du Périgord, an authoritative encyclopedia of the Resistance in Périgord, for his invaluable research into the Neuvic affair. He generously shared his archives with me, including those of the Paix et Liberté movement, a shadowy anti-Communist group with access to police archives, which was set up after the war to monitor the French left, apparently with clandestine U.S. support. M. Gillot is also the author of the best account of the fate of the Neuvic money, Le partage des milliards de la Résistance, and of Doublemètre, an enthralling account of the Resistance leader Orlov, almost certainly a Soviet spy, who suddenly became exceedingly wealthy after the war. So did many others, including André Malraux. Despite repeated official inquiries, the fate of much of the Neuvic money remains unknown.
The use of the Marshall Plan slush funds to finance U.S. intelligence operations in Europe after the war is a matter of historical record. My own book, The Cold War: A History, covers much of the ground. Preventing a Communist takeover in France and Italy after 1945, when the Communists were the largest and best organized of all political parties, was a top priority for the United States and Britain. George F. Kennan, the career U.S. diplomat whose famous “Long Telegram” from Moscow in 1946 sketched out the grand strategy of containment that was to guide U.S. policy throughout the Cold War, argued for U.S. military intervention if the Communists looked like they would win power through elections.
My account of Jacqueline’s research into secret U.S. assistance to the French nuclear program after 1970 is historically accurate, thanks to the work of my colleagues at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Their Cold War research center has assembled an extraordinary archive of documents and astute analysis that illuminates much of the secret history of modern times. Some of the documents I cite on French dependence on U.S. nuclear technology may be consulted at:
http://legacy.wilsoncenter.org/va2/docs/doc%2016a%203-10-70%20k%20to%20Nixon%20%2092253.pdf
http://legacy.wilsoncenter.org/va2/docs/doc%2052%20%206-23-75%20underground%20testing%20coop%20%20111968.pdf
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