Among the pack of reporters at the base of the main steps to the hospital was Étienne Brix, Le Monde’s newly promoted bureau chief for Brittany. He had driven down from Rennes on pure instinct, sharing a car with a three-man television crew from France 3, a station always on its toes for regional news.
Étienne, the man who had first cracked the story of the Val André killer and his relentless pursuit of Henri Foche, knew more about the background to the killing than any of his journalistic cohorts. Most of them knew only what he had written in this morning’s edition of his newspaper. None of them knew about the missing car or the police manhunt that had gone so severely wrong.
When the scribes began to write their hastily assembled stories for the news media all over France, Étienne would again be way out in front, because he alone, thanks to the distant Inspector Varonne back in Rennes, understood the catastrophic failure of the security forces. And right now there were no further restrictions on what he could and could not use.
He called the news editor in Paris instantly and alerted everyone to the story. The wire agencies would probably be on the case, but he would file personally in one hour. He needed to make three more calls. Étienne’s epic, which landed on the news desk of Le Monde, bylined by Étienne Brix, read:
Henri Foche, the front-running leader of the Gaullist Party and almost certainly the next president of France, was gunned down by an assassin’s bullet in a Saint-Nazaire shipyard late yesterday afternoon.
Monsieur Foche was pronounced dead on arrival at the city’s Central Hospital. He had been shot twice, in the head and chest. His wife, Claudette, who had accompanied him on the journey from their home in Rennes, was in the operating room while surgeons fought to revive him. Bravely, she stood on the steps outside the hospital as the announcement was formally made that her husband was dead.
In truth, Henri Foche never had a chance. The first bullet took him in the central area of the forehead, and police say it was a deadly high-velocity projectile that blew his head asunder. The second one did the same to his heart. Henri Foche was almost certainly dead before he hit the ground.
Police have long believed there was an assassin stalking the Gaullist leader, much as the Los Angeles Police Department did during the final hours of Bobby Kennedy’s life in 1968.
Two days ago both of Foche’s personal bodyguards, Marcel Joffre and Raymond Dunant, were murdered on the beach at Val André in North Brittany. Police believed then that their killer was really after Foche himself. And I can now reveal that for the past twenty-four hours there has been a massive nationwide police dragnet spread across France.
Desperately they searched for the killer, watching the hours tick away to the fateful moment when the Gaullist firebrand would take his place on the podium in the shipyard to give what many anticipated would be one of his greatest speeches. They had the assassin’s description: big, black hair, black-bearded. They had his name and address: Gunther Marc Roche, of 18 rue de Basle, Geneva, Switzerland. They had his passport number. They had his Swiss driver’s license number. They had the license-plate number of the car he purchased to make his getaway from Val André. They even found the car, in a public parking garage in Saint-Nazaire.
According to Fox News in the United States, the president of France himself ordered an extra thousand security men into Saint-Nazaire to protect Henri Foche. The entire town swarmed with armed police and national guards.
But the authorities had other information – French military experts, called in to assist in the original investigation, were certain the man who broke the necks of both bodyguards had served as a member of the Special Forces somewhere, either in the French Foreign Legion, Great Britain’s SAS, or the US Navy’s SEAL teams.
The killings bore the hallmarks of a man trained in the most brutal forms of unarmed combat, not to mention the accompanying skills such men have as snipers. With his assassination mission accomplished, the man apparently made a death-defying leap from the high floor of the warehouse into the Loire River. Again, authorities consider this was likely to be the action of a trained Special Forces combatant.
And so it proved. Henri Foche was shot down in what turned out to be a welter of blood. Three security guards were found dead in the empty sixth-floor warehouse room from which Roche fired the shot that killed the king of the Gaullists. Two of them had crushing, murderous wounds to their skulls; the third had had his throat cut.
Sometime in the moments after they were killed, Monsieur Foche’s new head of security, Raul Declerc of Marseille, was hurled out of the same window, presumably by the same man. He died instantly after the sixty-three-foot fall, in full view of the hundreds of shipyard workers who were on the main concourse to hear Henri Foche’s speech.
The remainder of the story was essentially background, though Étienne Brix would spend much of this night interviewing local people and the police.
He ended his front-page lead for Le Monde with these words:
Last night police were warning that the big bearded killer from Geneva was still at large. He should not under any circumstances be approached by members of the public.
Le Monde’s splash headline was:
HENRI FOCHE SLAIN BY ASSASSIN’S BULLETS POLICE CORDON FAILS TO PROTECT GAULLIST LEADER FROM “PREDICTABLE” MURDER
The wire agencies, operating under terrific pressure at 19:20 in the evening, flashed:
Saint-Nazaire, Brittany. Wednesday. Henri Foche assassinated, 16:45 pm in Saint-Nazaire Maritime shipyard. Shot twice, head and chest. Gaullist leader dead on arrival at Central Hospital. Wife Claudette by his side until the end. Assassin still at large.
By 19:30 pm every media newsroom in the world was onto the story. Fox News in New York was quickly into its stride, leaving CNN standing, with most of its staff still trying to find another dozen reasons to criticize the Republican president.
Fox interrupted everything for the news flash. Norman Dixon was yelling instructions, Laxton was on the line from Paris with one of the fastest stories ever written, wrapping up details from every which way with uncanny accuracy and perception.
Things were happening so fast that Dixon pulled “the talent,” removing the girl who looked like the cover of Vogue from the front line of the action. Instead, he installed in front of the camera a very sharp young former sportswriter from London named John Morgan to address the nation.
“We need someone who can hang in there,” growled Norman. “They gotta read fast, adapt, adjust, edit and add stuff, without a break. Sports guys know how to do that – get in there, Morgan, and let’s go.”
Fox was first by a mile. It was 1:30 pm on the East Coast of the United States, just about at the conclusion of the lunchtime bulletin. BREAKING NEWS! flashed on the screen, and John Morgan came on to announce the murder of the next president of France.
Eddie Laxton’s story was packed with detail, mostly gathered and rewritten from Étienne’s galaxy of innuendo, using his time-honored Fleet Street knack of putting two and two together and getting about 390. But Eddie knew what he was doing, and while he was not quite up to speed with on-the-spot Étienne Brix, he was not that far behind, and he was gaining.
The hub of the investigation now swung automatically to the Prefecture de Police in Paris, and by 19:38 Eddie Laxton was in there, talking to officers, chatting to old contacts, and firing back the minutiae on what was now an open cell phone line, direct to Norman Dixon’s assistant in New York.
Of all the reporters in the entire world working on this story, trying to make sense of arched, defensive police statements, Eddie was the first one to conclude, “These bastards haven’t the first clue who the assassin is. They don’t know his name, his address, or his nationality. They don’t know who hired him, or why. I’m not even sure about that black-beard bullshit, either.”
He told the reporter in New York to put him directly on the line to Norman Dixon, to whom he spelled out his doubts. Norman never hesitated. He wrote down on a sheet of copy pape
r, “French police yesterday admitted they had no idea as to the identity of the assassin. They suspected a completely false trail, and they’d heard nothing from al-Qaeda. Worse yet, the man who had killed Henri Foche had vanished.”
The subeditor passing the copy over to John Morgan risked a note of caution. “What if the gendarmes deny this?” he asked.
“Don’t worry about that damned rubbish,” replied Norman. “They’ll only deny it if they have answers. And Eddie says they have none. Hand it to John.”
* * *
Jane Remson was out on the terrace reading a magazine and waiting for Harry to come and join her for lunch. Awaiting him was his favorite combination of food in all the world – a smoked salmon sandwich, with just a light sprinkle of lemon on brown bread and butter, accompanied by a glass of chilled white wine.
There were, however, several provisos for this modest-seeming lunch for the emperor of Remsons Shipbuilding. For starters, the wine had to be French, and it had to be white burgundy, and it had to be from the legendary vineyards of Montrachet on the Côte de Beaune, and it had to be Puligny from the supreme Olivier Leflaive Frères estates. The salmon was even more esoteric. First, it had to be Scottish. It had to be wild, and it had to have been caught in a Scottish river. But the Scottish river had to be the Tay, and the fish had to have been residing in one of the glorious, lonely reaches southeast of Loch Tay, in Kinross.
Harry’s father had taken him there to fish one summer when he was fifteen years old, and the spell the river cast on the future shipyard boss was lifelong. He had never forgotten killing his first salmon, the largest fish that can be taken on a fly in freshwater – the thrill of outwitting the fish on his double-handed twelve-foot-long Scottish fly rod, judging the speed and drift, and all the life-or-death guile brought to bear in this silent, occult art. This was Izaac Walton’s King among Gamefish. Harry had never forgotten his father’s story of the wild salmon’s long and mysterious journey from the depths of the Atlantic, back to the waters of the place where it had been spawned, in the Tay River. And he had never forgotten the taste of the sandwiches packed up in the small hotel where he and his father had stayed.
Harry had been back to fish the Tay several times, but one ritual he never missed. Every year he ordered from a small Scottish smoker, not four miles from the hotel where he had first stayed, twelve full sides of wild salmon from the Tay, one for every month of the year. Today Jane had asked the butler to slice one of the precious fish for Harry’s lunch.
And now the Remsons boss was on his way through the house. The problem was that he spotted the sandwiches at precisely the same moment John Morgan announced on Fox that Monsieur Henri Foche had been assassinated. Harry shouted involuntarily, “Jesus Christ!”
Jane came rushing in and saw him staring at the television screen, transfixed by the account of the death of the Gaullist, the public announcement of the only serious wish for which he had prayed in living memory.
Harry did not speak. Just listened to the trail of havoc that had plainly dogged the soft footsteps of Lt. Cdr. Mack Bedford in France. Neither he nor Jane uttered one word until the opening part of the newscast was complete.
Each of them stood there in their own private space – Harry thanking Christ no one knew who the hell had rubbed out the Gaullist, and glorying in Eddie Laxton’s assessment that there was a pretty good chance they never would. Jane was personally thunderstruck. She had overheard the conversation. She knew as well as anyone that her husband had taken out a contract on this Henri Foche in order to save the shipyard, that a huge sum of money was involved, that Mack Bedford was involved. That whatever foul deeds had taken place in France, they had almost certainly emanated from her little town of Dartford, Maine, courtesy of her own husband.
Jane spoke first. “Harry,” she said, “I think you owe me an explanation, a reasonable account of just how deeply we are both involved in this.”
Harry smiled at her, his normally cheerful face reflecting his personal joy and gratitude. “I think I once told you never to broach the subject again. Henri Foche had many enemies, especially in the military. And while I cannot pretend I am sorry he has died, neither can I shed any light on how it happened.” He walked out onto the terrace, followed by his wife. “Let’s just treat this day as if it were any other,” he said. “The only difference may be that I have an extra glass of that delicious white burgundy with my sandwich.”
* * *
The assassin was still asleep, right there in the back seat of the bus, his left arm resting on the leather bag. They had reached the outskirts of Brittany’s former capital city of Nantes, and the bus was much busier than it had been when Mack first boarded.
He awakened at the first stop inside the city limits when several people left and even more boarded. He checked his watch and saw the time was five minutes past eight, which left him twenty-five minutes to catch the last train running from the South Station in Nantes to the city of Bordeaux.
Mack left the bus at the Gare Central Station and walked the remaining half mile to the trains. In a deserted shop doorway he removed his wig, mustache, and spectacles and slipped them into his bag before purchasing a one-way first-class ticket down to the great capital of France’s most illustrious vineyards. It was the first time he had looked like Mack Bedford since he left the United States almost two weeks previously. Unless you count the view that Loire turbot had of him earlier today.
His general policy was to leave no continuity behind him. Just as Gunther Marc Roche had vanished totally three miles beyond Laporte’s garage, so Jeffery Simpson vanished totally before Mack stepped onto the train for the four-hour, two hundred and forty mile journey to Bordeaux.
The train was not busy, and he slept most of the way, secure in the knowledge that no one was looking for him. No one in France even knew he existed. No one knew his name. And there sure as hell was no record of him entering the country. He awakened when the train stopped at La Rochelle, the old Atlantic seaport that dates back to the fourteenth century. It was dark now, almost ten thirty, and Mack was asleep again before the train pulled out of the station.
The conductor awakened him by calling out, “Bordeaux – cinq minutes. Gare de Saint Jean – cinq minutes.”
Mack grabbed his bag and hoped to high heaven there was a hotel still open near the train station. He disembarked and was pleasantly surprised at the warmth of the night. There was a porter still on duty, and he cheerfully told Mack he should go to the Hotel California, which was a very short distance away.
The Bordeaux railroad station is not in the most ritzy part of the city, and there was a slightly rowdy gang of unpleasant-looking youths loitering on the street. Mack had to walk past them, and as he did so one of them made a feeble attempt to trip him, and another couple shouted something that sounded threatening.
Mack ignored it and kept walking. Generally speaking, he considered he’d killed quite a sufficient number of people for one day. And that particular section of French youth would never know that this was indeed their luckiest of nights. All of them still had their eyesight, no one’s arm had been snapped in half, their noses were still in place, not having been rammed into their brains, and no one’s throat had been cut.
The hotel was still open, and the peace-loving Mack Bedford walked to the front desk, where the receptionist was listening to the radio. He heard only a short part of the newscast before she turned it down…
“The Northwest of France has been brought almost to a standstill following the assassination of Henri Foche. Every major highway north of the Loire has been blockaded by the police. Ferry ports are closed and are not expected to reopen in the morning. All airports are experiencing…”
“Bonsoir, monsieur,” said the girl.
“I’m just glad you’re still open,” replied Mack, speaking in an American accent.
The receptionist was bilingual. “We always wait for that late train from La Rochelle. One single room with a bath?”
“Perfect.”
“May I see your passport, monsieur?”’
Mack handed it over and watched her copy down the number. She glanced up at him, checked the photograph, and said, “Merci, Monsieur O’Grady.”
Mack said he’d pay cash in advance since he was leaving early and would not be using the phone.
“No problem,” said the girl. “That will be 200 euros.”
Mack gave her four 50-euro bills, and she handed over the key to Room 306. She automatically turned up the radio, and the subject had not varied. Shaking his head, Mack said, “Terrible thing, that murder, eh? Have they caught him yet?”
“Oh, non, monsieur. There is nothing else on this channel, and I’ve been listening the whole evening. Some people are saying he is a big Swiss man with a black beard. A couple of people say they saw him in the shipyard. But a policeman was speaking just before you came in – he said they have been able to confirm nothing. They have no idea who he is, or where he is.”
Mack fought back a grin of pure delight. He nodded gravely, saying, “A bad business, a very bad business.” And he walked over to the elevator, assuaging his conscience with one thought – what did Marcel, Raymond, Raul and the three dead guards have in common? Every one of them had been trying to kill him, would have killed him. “Self-defense, Your Honor,” he murmured.
He did not even consider Henri Foche. That had been a military mission, nothing personal, just the elimination of an enemy, an illegal combatant, who had effectively opened fire and killed members of the US armed forces serving in Iraq.
That night he slept the sleep of the just. But he awakened early and flicked on the television, tuning to the satellite channel, BBC World, out of London. The first words he heard were, “It’s been a long night, but we will be staying with the main story throughout the day.” Then the anchor started again with the same lead item Mack had heard on the receptionist’s radio the previous night, about Northwest France being paralyzed while the police combed town, country, seaport, and highway for the mystery assassin who had cut down Henri Foche at the age of forty-eight.
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