by Ward Larsen
“Has it been verified there are no secondary devices?”
“Yes, that was our first priority once the shooters had been dealt with.”
“How many were there?”
“Three, sir, aside from the bomber. All had AK-47s and multiple magazines. They waited long enough for the response to begin, then began shooting indiscriminately. Our officers responded, of course, but it took twenty minutes for a special tactics team to arrive and deal with all three.”
“Did any of the attackers survive?”
“No.”
“Where are we on the casualty count?” the inspector from Paris asked.
“Thirty-three dead and forty-nine wounded. At least five are in critical condition at the hospital.”
“Bastards!” Baland spat, more to himself than Baptiste.
“Indeed.”
They exited the station, and a patrol car was waiting, another uniformed officer inside serving as driver.
“Tell me,” said Baland as the two slid in back together, “where has the command post been set up?”
“At the station, of course.”
“In that case, I would like to go to the scene first.”
“But Commissaire, my orders are very specific—”
“If you please,” Baland interrupted. “It is important for me to see things firsthand.”
Baptiste caught the eye of the driver, who shrugged. The car shot ahead toward the center of town.
* * *
It was a drive Baland had made too many times. In the falling light he looked out over a midsized city that had until today been largely untouched by the troubles sourced so many thousands of miles away. He recalled his assessment to the interior minister only last week: Those corners of France unaffected are only waiting their turn. The minister had concurred.
When they arrived at the scene, Baland saw a perimeter cordoned off by yellow tape, at least half a city block altogether. All around were fire trucks and police cars, and as light snow continued to fall uniformed officers groomed the streets for evidence, everyone wearing gloves and protective footwear as they turned over debris.
The car came to a stop near the controlled entry point, near Place Victor Hugo, and Baland got out and walked straight to the yellow-taped border. He could easily discern the seat of the explosion, a distinctive crater, although it wasn’t as deep as some he’d seen. Truck bombs were the worst, leaving what looked like debris-filled swimming pools in the middle of a street. This one was more akin to the hole his daughters had helped him dig in his garden last weekend, into which they’d plugged a sapling chestnut tree. Next to the crater was the twisted frame of a car, its ashen body scorched from a fire that was certainly a secondary effect. It occurred to Baland that the car had absorbed much of the blast, and he wondered why the bomber had stood so close to it in the moment of truth.
Why do any of these men and women do what they do?
Even so blunted, the explosion had blown out the windows of buildings all along the street. Baland saw pockmarks in the façade of a hotel where either shrapnel or 7.62mm semiautomatic rounds had chipped into centuries-old stone. Telltale stains were evident on the nearby sidewalk, already going dark, and Baland saw a number of blanketed bodies. There were also coverlets with markers where smaller bits of biological evidence had been located.
He noticed Baptiste engaged in a conversation with a sergeant near the entrance—the man was holding something in his gloved hand. Both men looked toward Baland, then approached him together.
“We thought you might like to see this,” said Baptiste.
The evidence technician held out his hand to display the remains of a passport. It was ragged, and a hole the size of a one-euro coin had been blown clear through its pages. There were also clear traces of organic matter.
The evidence man offered up a latex glove to Baland, and said, “Would you like to have a look?”
“Certainly not! Bag that right away—we mustn’t contaminate any findings.”
The chastened policeman slid his find carefully into a bag and walked away.
“Do you think it could be the bomber’s?” Baptiste asked.
“Not his real one. If he was carrying it, then it could only be a false lead meant to confuse us.”
Baland noticed an ambulance fifty meters away, just outside the cordoned area, where a middle-aged woman was being attended to by an EMT. Baland walked over, and saw that she was being treated for a small wound on one arm. For the first time since arriving he produced his credentials, introducing himself to both the woman and the EMT, before asking, “Why are you only now being treated?”
“I was busy helping,” said the woman. “I work at the hotel across the street.” He could see her fighting to keep a steady voice. “It was terrible—I’ve never seen anything like this. There were bodies everywhere.”
“You were here when it happened?” Baland asked.
“Yes, I work at the front desk. I was just arriving for my shift.”
She was wearing her hotel uniform, but it was filthy, stained with blood and grime. The EMT removed a reddened bandage that had been hastily wrapped, probably something done in the immediate aftermath using a hotel first-aid kit. He cleaned the wound, and was about to apply a fresh bandage when Baland said, “Wait!”
The man looked at him, perplexed, and watched as Baland studied her wound more closely. It was a small gash, no longer than a pencil eraser, but the edges were ragged and inflamed. “Is there something in the wound, perhaps a piece of shrapnel?” he asked, not caring which of the two answered.
The woman said, “Yes, I think I can feel something inside. It’s sore, but it can wait. The hospital is besieged with people who need help far more than I do.”
The EMT nodded in agreement.
“The skin around the wound,” Baland said, this time looking directly at the EMT. “Does it not look more like a burn to you?”
“A burn?”
“I wasn’t near any fire,” the woman said.
The EMT reasoned, “I agree, it looks inflamed. Infection is always possible, but only a few hours after such an injury I doubt that—”
Baland cut him off by rising and walking away. He canvassed the aid station, inspected two more patients, then set off briskly toward the car. Halfway there he stopped suddenly, noticing a hex bolt on the sidewalk. Baland bent down and looked at it closely. He didn’t try to pick it up.
“What is it?” Baptiste asked, catching up with him.
Baland didn’t answer. He stood and looked again at the patients being treated, then regarded the terrible scene inside the tape.
“We must expand our perimeter immediately,” Baland said. “Push everything back—another hundred meters in every direction.”
“But why?” said Baptiste, looking at the tiny bolt on the ground.
“Just do it!”
THREE
It took less than an hour for Baland to be proved right: traces of some unidentified radiological contaminant were evident. The perimeter was moved back, and then doubled again after consultations with the minister of the interior. The president himself ordered that no resource should be spared in the investigation, and teams of experts were dispatched by air from Paris. The president too used the term “bastards,” albeit in private, and gave instructions that he was to be informed of every development.
Of these there arose but one of significance. Within the hour municipal CCTV footage was analyzed, and it took only minutes to isolate the two cars that had been involved. The men with rifles had bundled out of an old Peugeot, and it was right where they’d left it. Specialists had been crawling over that vehicle for hours. More of interest was the car that had delivered the bomber, which turned out to be a dark blue Citroën. Two occupants could clearly be seen in front, and as the video ran everyone saw a nervous young man get out of the backseat and begin to walk away. Then, curiously, the bomber returned to the passenger-side window. The person he conversed with could not be
seen clearly, owing to the camera angle, but everyone in the screening room saw what appeared to be an exchange of some kind as their hands met. Then the car departed and the bomber walked away.
The authorities followed up this discovery in the most practical manner. They ignored the bomber for the time being—his was a fait accompli—and focused their efforts on the car and the two individuals inside, who might still be a threat. They followed the Citroën through the footage of two traffic cameras, then lost track when it turned onto a heavily wooded road that ran into the rising Chartreuse Mountains. Cars were immediately dispatched to the area, and after less than an hour the Citroën was discovered abandoned along the siding of a small and thickly wooded secondary road. At a glance, the officer who found the car reported one extraordinary bit of evidence inside—a large man wearing jeans and a dark hooded jacket, very possibly of Middle Eastern extraction, who was poised serenely behind the steering wheel. He was quite dead, with a single bullet wound evident on his right temple. More forensic teams were sent in.
Though none of the investigators would ever know it, in those early minutes, as they sat poring over hours-old CCTV footage, the very same cameras were recording the passage of a young woman along Rue Molière. She was heavy, though not obese, and wore clothing that was two sizes larger than necessary. She carried a small bag of groceries, and expressed the same curiosity a hundred other passersby had at the scene before her, even asking one of the officers standing guard at the perimeter what all the fuss was about. She otherwise did not pause before turning in to a nearby block of apartments and disappearing from sight.
She was weary from the exertions of a long and trying day, and by the time she reached the two-person elevator she had gum on her shoe and snow on her shoulders. She trundled down the vacant fourth-floor hallway, and at the halfway point stopped at the door marked 20. Were anyone to inquire, they would find that the small flat was operated as a vacation rental. It had been booked for the next week through an online site, a key provided through the post. Most of the residences in the building were similarly rented out, something the woman had researched thoroughly.
She entered the flat but did not turn on a light, leaving the main room cast in gloom as night took hold. It was the first time she’d been to the place, and she vaguely recalled the online photos: modernist décor, sterile and angular, the only warmth being a few stock photographs of the Alps on one wall. Yet there had been one critical point, and that was where her eyes went. Indeed, it was the reason she’d selected this unit—the view from the fourth-floor window.
She walked carefully across the dim room, barking her shin once on a table and cursing under her breath, until she reached the big window. There she surveyed the scene outside. She saw the perimeter of the blast scene fifty meters away, at least a dozen policemen and investigators milling about. An evidence van and two fire trucks were inside the tape, and a crowd of media—obvious by their shouldered cameras and microphones, and the credentials hanging round their necks—were gathered at an access control point where a hapless junior patrolman ignored their questions. Just behind him was a huddle of what had to be detectives—some likely from the national police, others local. She wished she could hear what they were saying, but in time everything would become clear.
She went to the television, selected a news channel, and set the volume very low. Next she pushed a chair from the dining room table toward the window, staying clear of a shaft of light that leaned in from a nearby streetlight. She sat down thinking she’d chosen well. There was no better place to watch the response unfold.
Earlier she had cursed the bomber, whom she knew to be hapless, for getting too close to a car—it had taken the brunt of the blast in one hemisphere. But now she realized his small error had turned fortuitous. The authorities had expanded the perimeter beyond what she’d expected, and if the blast had carried any farther, the building in which she sat might have been evacuated.
She settled in for the night, putting her bag of groceries on the floor and making sure her phone was turned off. It had been a long day, and her feet hurt from so much walking.
Malika took off her shoes and rubbed her feet, then pulled out a bag of potato chips and twisted the top off a bottle of Coke. She put her naked feet up on the window box and leaned back, knowing there was not a safer place in all of France.
FOUR
It was the first time the stonemason had ever worked with coral. Porous and light, it had reasonably good strength, and was easier to shape than Virginia granite or the great marble slabs he’d battled in Malta. David Slaton had become something of a connoisseur of the world’s stone, although not by choice.
He used the last of his joint mixture—an aggregate of cement, lime, and sand—on the edges of the shell-shaped entryway steps. He stood back with a critical eye, and was satisfied. Slaton began cleaning up, knowing that tomorrow he would have to come back and haul his debris to the nearest dump site, half a mile away. If there was a downside to this job, it had more to do with the local practices than materials. He’d been forced to make every cut by hand because there were no power tools available—and rarely any power if there had been. The raw blocks of coral limestone from the quarry had been delivered via handcart by a man who kept no particular schedule.
And then there was the sun.
If Palawan, in the Philippines, was not on the equator, it had to be within spitting distance. The heat was constant and unrelenting, and today conspired with a cloudless sky to mock Christmas lights that had been strung across the chapel roof two months ago. It was a tiny house of worship, three rows of wood-plank benches on either side of the central aisle, but it was full every Sunday, and the guiding father, an agreeable white-haired man, undertook his mandate with a faith no less ardent than what existed under the domes of St. Peter’s.
Slaton had just finished gathering his tools, and was wiping his hands on a rag, when he saw his family a hundred yards distant. They were walking up a dirt path, what passed for a street here, and in no particular hurry. His son was out front—as he invariably was—with Christine herding him to stay on the path.
It was hard to say what gifts or deficiencies his son, not quite two years old, might possess, but he and Christine were unanimous in one regard: Davy had inherited his father’s uncommonly sharp eyesight. His son’s eyes locked on to him, and his choppy pace quickened. Slaton walked toward them to close the gap. He noticed they were both burnished by the sun, probably more than they should have been, but it was hopeless to expect otherwise living so near zero latitude. Christine’s auburn hair had lightened, and her long limbs were reiterated in their son, evident in spite of his residual toddler’s pudginess.
They met halfway, and Slaton swept Davy into his arms.
“So did you finish?” she asked.
“Pretty much. I’ll come back tomorrow after everything has set, but I think it’s good to go.”
“Is the owner happy with it?”
Slaton shrugged, but didn’t answer.
“David … tell me this is a real job.”
“Father Michael gives what he can.”
“He’s not paying you in one of those seashell currencies, is he?”
“Where do you think the fish I’ve been bringing home every night is coming from? Besides, you’re not one to talk. You worked at the clinic every morning this week, and they don’t pay a dime … or a limpet or a flounder.”
“It’s not a big deal. Their only real doctor visits every other Saturday—that’s not the kind of schedule people get sick on. Anyway, I like keeping a hand in medicine.”
“Is your license valid to practice in the Philippines?”
“Probably not. But that skateboarder with a broken arm yesterday didn’t ask to see it.”
He pulled Davy up onto his shoulders, and got a grunting laugh in return. He seemed to be getting heavier by the day. “I hope you’re not implying that I’m a less than adequate provider.”
She smiled
a smile that warmed Slaton to his depths. She still had that effect on him, even after a year of sailing the Seven Seas. Or at least three of the seven.
She took a long step back and regarded his work. The limestone building was designed as a residence for the father himself, one main room and a shaded lanai in front. “It’s good—I like it. Was the arch over the doorway difficult?”
“Not really, a lot of cutting and chipping. It just takes a little time.”
“You built it pretty fast.”
“Just under a month. But then, I didn’t have to worry about plumbing, electric, or insetting windows. And there’s definitely no air-conditioning ductwork. It’s basically a nicely crafted cave.”
“Sort of Flintstones tropical?”
He grinned. “Right—a new architectural style.”
Slaton picked up his tool bag, and as he did he saw Christine’s humor dissipate a bit too quickly.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
She hesitated, then began swatting at Davy’s legs. He kicked back at her, his heels thumping into Slaton’s chest. “It’s nothing. I’ll tell you later.”
Slaton straightened and locked eyes with his wife.
“Really,” she said, “no big deal. Let’s go home.”
* * *
Home was an Antares 44, a custom-fit catamaran rigged to sail the world. She’d been christened Windsom II, after the original boat owned by Christine’s father. The new boat was rigged for blue-water cruising with heavy-duty electric winches, an extensive navigation suite, and solar panels.
They put together an early dinner, fish with rice and kamote, a local variant of sweet potato. Slaton did the cooking—fish had become his specialty—and while they ate, Christine made a stab at conversation. He typically enjoyed exchanges with his wife. There was something in the manner of her speech, a rich tone with precise elocution, that he found warm and pleasing. He’d mentioned it once, and she had laughed it off, saying he was probably the only man in the world who wished his wife would talk more. But at that moment, some part of it was missing.