Murder in Belleville ali-2 Page 28

  She nodded. “Do you remember last year when some young Moroccans with French passports, trained in Afghanistan, were sent first to fight in Bosnia, and then told by their bosses to ‘go to Morocco to kill a few tourists’ because this would destabilize Morocco?”

  René and Gaston both nodded.

  Aimée stared at the frayed photo wedged in the mirror frame and thought about all the things that didn’t add up. Or did they? Hadn’t Berge been dispatched to the site with authority to offer guarantees of residence status to the immigrants?

  “Go on,” René said as they both watched her.

  “Seems similar. Kind of the same off-the-wall rationale,” she said. “I think they’re hired hands.” She shrugged. “Just a feeling.”

  René’s brows furrowed. “I trust your intuition, Aimée.”

  “The Battle of Tlemcen attests to that,” Gaston said, reaching for tissue. Tears slid down his cheeks.

  “What’s the matter, Gaston?” Aimée asked.

  “A medical problem,” he said. “My tear ducts dilate and I spurt at the slightest occasion.” He winked. “Gets me an extra half kilo of melon at the market.”

  “There’s another thing,” she said. “What if he’s not alone?”

  “Of course he’s not alone,” René said. “Teachers, children—”

  “He has to eat and defecate, right?” she said.

  “He’ll make someone test his food,” Gaston said. “Pull one of them to the bathroom with him.”

  “True, Gaston,” she said. “More important, he’ll get tired. Of course it depends on how long he holds them hostage—but he’ll have to sleep.”

  “So what are you saying, Aimée?” René’asked.

  “He’s got an accomplice,” she said. “And unless he’s on a suicide mission, he’s got an escape route.”

  René nodded. “Let’s get to work.”

  BERNARD BERGE stared at his bloody hands—the blood of little children on them. Why? he wondered. Bluebottle flies buzzed over dark red clumps on the marble stairs. Viscous and smeared, emitting the sweet stench of meat gone bad. Bernard gasped and turned away.

  He saw the velvety gray ear stuck between the thick banister. Poor Loulou. But at least the blood belonged to a rabbit, not a child. He wiped his hands on the marble and climbed.

  “Monsieur Rachid, the immigration releases are in my pocket,” he said, his voice cracking. “As soon as the children are released, the CRS will escort everyone to a processing site for residence papers, I promise you!”

  Bernard’s steps echoed off the marble. No other sound reached him but the distant buzzing of the flies.

  “Please, we’re meeting your requests, Rachid.” He kept speaking as he mounted the once grand staircase, now with traces of crayon and signs pointing “Silkworms to Butterflies group every Friday,” “Mademoiselle Mireille’s Gazelles in Motion on Tuesday mornings.”

  Bernard paused on the landing. Where were the children? His arms ached from being raised; blood had trickled down his white sleeves, but he was afraid to let them down. The foyer led down a high-ceilinged hall, narrowing to another wing. He paused. Muffled noises came from behind a door labeled ART ROOM. Should he enter?

  He hesitated before turning the cracked porcelain doorknob. All of a sudden he felt hands grab him from behind.

  “Rachid,” he sputtered. “Talk to me.”

  His shoulders were harnessed in strong arms, his eyes covered, and a loud tearing reached his ears. A sticky band was taped over his mouth. He heard guttural words in Arabic, glottal and harsh.

  His last conscious thought was of an ethery smell as the damp cloth covered his face, reminding him of when he’d had his tonsils out.

  Sometime later, he didn’t know how long, Bernard’s mind unwrinkled, as if each tissue papered layer of consciousness re-linquished its grasp with an effort. His eyes opened, and he became aware of silvery bubbles rising to the surface by his nose. He realized he was eye-to-eye with a gurgling fish tank, his back supported against a wall. He was breathing, but he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs.

  Opposite him on the floor a masked figure in black, with sticks of dynamite ringing his girth, built Legos with a little girl wearing pink tights. The masked face looked up.

  “Welcome to school, Monsieur Berge,” the man said, his black ski mask unmoving. “Merri for these releases. However, new issues have cropped up, and we’d like your help in fixing them.”

  Bernard realized that his short breaths and gasps meant he was hyperventilating. “I can’t breathe!”

  “Calmez-vous; we’d like to request a few concessions when you’re more tranquil,” Rachid said. He barked something in Arabic to another masked man clad in a black jumpsuit emerging from an alcove, a machine gun slung over his chest.

  “We’ll release the three youngest children to show good faith, Monsieur Berge. But you must stay and help work on our demands.”

  Bernard nodded. “I’m authorized—”

  “Right now you’re authorized to listen,” Rachid interrupted.

  OUTSIDE CAFÉ; Tlemcen the drizzle had grown into a downpour, wind whipping the leaves and twigs into a frenzy. They stuck in Aimée’s hair. She set down the radio antenna on the table and spread her wet coat over a clump of chairs. René’ and Gaston huddled over the architectural drawings of the école matemelle on the round café table.

  “Aimée, good news. The icole matemelle has a computer,” René said. “Ready for the bad news?”

  She groaned.

  “The computer’s down,” René said.

  Computers going down weren’t the end of the world; they both knew that.

  “But that’s never stopped us before, René,” she said. “Just a little work and some time.”

  “Time is something we don’t have,” he said, his voice lower.

  She heard the shift in his voice and worried.

  “Tiens, has something else happened?”

  “You could say that,” he said. “The building’s security system has been wired to the human bomb! Check out this map, Aimée.”

  While sheets of rain fogged up the café windows, she stared at the map revealing the building’s structure. The only entrances or exits in the building plans were connected to the main system. How could she get in there?

  Aimée paused and pointed her finger to several XXX’s by the old sewer lines.

  “Can you decipher those, René?” she said.

  He nodded. “Old sinkhole shafts,” he said, peering closely at the plans. “Bricked up.”

  “Sinkhole shafts to where?” she asked.

  “A tributary to the nearby canal,” he said. “Boulevard Richard Lenoir is the paved continuation of Canal Saint Martin.”

  Aimée quelled her rising excitement. “Any idea when these were bricked up?”

  René scanned the plans, “My guess would be when the canal was paved over. Let me check.” He clicked several keys on his nearby laptop. Aimée watched as a nineteenth-century structure grid was superimposed over a modern-day Belleville map on his screen. She stared transfixed. “What kind of magician are you, René?” she said.

  “Just a new program I found.” He chuckled. “The best is yet to come.”

  The crystal-clear resolution highlighted narrow lanes and streets cleared by Baron Haussmann in the nineteenth century to become the broad, clear boulevards and avenues of today’s Belleville.

  “Incredible!”

  His eyes lit up as he hit more keys. “There’s more.”

  A below-ground system of streams and tributaries to the Seine, like branches from a tree, spread in varying colors. “That thick blue line indicates the old tributary to Canal Saint Martin, those green ones are the old springs in Belleville.”

  Aimée’s heart jumped. “If we could get in somehow, how navigable is a sinkhole?”

  René shrugged. “Since it’s porous ground composed of old river silt, who knows? The ground settled, then sank. Old sinkholes exist all over Par
is especially in the Tenth, Eleventh, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Arrondissements. Everybody forgets.”

  Aimée paused. “Belleville is where they all meet, isn’t it?”

  “Looks like there’s a bricked sinkhole in the cellar,” he said. “Leading from the ecole matemelle into the street. The Belleville reservoir and water towers are only a few blocks away.”

  His eyes widened. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “We enter via that sinkhole,” she said, punching the spot on the laptop screen map. “Power up the computer, hook the bomb wiring from the security design to the computer, transfer the connection, and enter the blocking code,” she paused and took a breath. “All that’s left is to shepherd the kids from the sinkhole.”

  “Whoa, Aimée!” he said. “Great logic if the computer functioned. How this theory would play in practice is another story.” He hit Print. “No one knows what it’s really like down there.”

  She pulled out her cell phone from her waistband. She tried to hide her shaking hands from René.

  “Sewer rat isn’t my style. I didn’t like it last time in the Marais, either,” René” said. “Children and unstable underground holes weren’t involved either.”

  She studied the map and kept her shaking hands in her pockets.

  “Think of the concept, René,” she said. “Simulate the computer connection, fool the system, and enter the security-blocking code.”

  René’s brows knit together. “Aimée, I’m worried—there’s no guarantee that way.”

  “No guarantee exists, René. But if we disable the explosive device, Anaïs and those kids have a chance. With RAID’s sharpshooters, I’m afraid they could be machine-gun fodder.”

  René shook his head. “We can’t do it alone.”

  Her heart hammering, she watched the underground plan emerge from René’s printer.

  “The question is do we enlist help or do it ourselves?” she said.

  René rolled his eyes. “I’m too short for those commando outfits. Besides, my plumbing source moved to Valence. We’d need dynamite.”

  “Gaston’s a military man, aren’t you?” she said, turning to Gaston. “And you’re handy with a plunger.”

  “Apprenticed with the Army Corps of Engineers,” he said. “Before I chose intelligence.”

  “Perfect,” she said.

  “Bombs make you nervous, Aimée,” René said, concern in his voice. “Let the big guys get us in. Then we’ll have a better chance.”

  Before she could reply, they heard a gunshot in the distance.

  “You might have a point, René.” She grabbed the wet raincoat and opened the café door.

  Two blocks later she ran into a solemn crowd of women by the barricaded square. One of the anxious mothers, her face mirroring the fear of a silent group around her, had collared a riot-geared policeman.

  “What’s happening?” she asked. “Tell us what’s going on.”

  “Tiens,” he said. “We’ll have them out soon.” He led her and the others further back. “Three more just came out!”

  Loud shouts of “Take the right perimeter!” came from the school courtyard direction.

  “My boy’s asthmatic,” the woman begged. “He needs his inhaler.”

  “Give me his name, Madame,” the uniformed CRS man said, not unkindly. He copied it down, then repeated the name into his collar-clipped microphone.

  Aimée overheard an official pleading to offer himself as a hostage in exchange for the children. Middle-aged and well dressed, he kept insisting to be taken.

  A small group of people, who she figured were child pyschiatrists, stood at alert next to him. She looked up, examining the mansarded roof bordering the theater, when shots ricocheted off the square’s metal guard rail. Everyone hit the cobblestones. Except Aimée. She’d seen a face in the fourth-floor attic window. A flash of blond hair, and then it disappeared. Was it Anaïs?

  “ENCORE!” Bernard’s mouth widened in surprise as the young teacher, wearing a paint-spattered smock, her face flushed, wound the music box, which tinkled a nursery rhyme. Children giggled as they paraded around a line of small chairs. When the music halted abruptly, all made a mad scramble. The lone child without a seat gave up, laughing, and joined the clapping throng circling the remaining chairs as the teacher again cranked up the music.

  A small wooden sword was thrust in Bernard’s lap.

  “En garde, Monsieur!” said a serious-faced boy, his button eyes shining, with a black-and-scarlet cape tied under his chin.

  “Michel, perhaps the monsieur is tired. Slaying dragons and wolves all day can be exhausting,” said a calm voice behind him.

  Bernard turned to see a brunette woman in a denim smock, entering the class room with a tray of biscuits and pitchers of juice, escorted by a man in a black ski mask.

  “A table, mes enfants,” she said. “After that we take our nap, as usual.”

  The first masked man, wired to a pile of dynamite sticks on a basket of wooden blocks, motioned for Bernard to rejoin him. Bernard saw the man’s hands move and realized the explosive device must be a command-detonation type.

  “Are you helping the hunter?” asked the caped young boy.

  “Alors, Michel, it’s a big job to catch the wolf,” the teacher nodded to Bernard. “Our hunter needs some help!”

  Bernard nodded as if he slew wolves and dragons daily. So the teachers made everything a game, he thought. Smart. And a good way to avoid panic and ensure cooperation.

  A redhaired girl, freckles splashed over her face, wore a feather boa twined around her shoulders. She emerged from the dress-up corner and stumbled pigeon-toed in oversize ruby-red high heels.

  “Gigi’s hungry,” she said, a large tortoise in her arms. The tortoise’s mouth snapped.

  Bernard saw wires trailing from the dynamite. Afraid she’d trip over them, he yelled, “Stop!”

  The teacher looked up. “Lise, don’t forget you get three points for your team every time you jump over those wires!”

  Lise nodded, set Gigi down, and calmly jumped over them. Bernard’s heart hammered, and he knew he was hyperventilating again.

  He’d conveyed Rachid’s demands to Guittard, who reiterated that he must remember his “goal”: Get them by a window. However, neither of these men went far from the dynamite. Guittard had agreed to Rachid’s demands for the immigrants’ release and implied that Bernard should play for time.

  “Monsieur Rachid, Minister Guittard agrees to your demands,” Bernard said, parroting Guittard’s commands. “We’re recalling the planes, which stand by on the runway.”

  “Three hours,” he said. “Every hour after that I shoot a teacher.”

  Bernard flinched but kept his countenance firm. “Monsieur Rachid, we’re complying with your demands—”

  “And you lose a limb,” he interrupted.

  “Monsieur Rachid …” Bernard stumbled; he tried to go on.

  “Do you like the sun?” Rachid interrupted. “Because when we leave we might bring you with us.”

  Bernard’s hope sank. He’d been doomed from the start.

  “RENÉ, COULD we disengage the security by a remote source?” Aimée asked, standing at the Café Tlemcen window.

  He shrugged.

  “But you’re right, René,” Aimée said. “It’s time to work with the big boys on this.”

  They had no other choice.

  “Commissaire Sardou, I can help you,” Aimée said into her cell phone.

  “You again?” Sardou snapped.

  “Let me talk with Minister Guittard,” she said. “We can disable the école matemelle security system.”

  “Don’t mess things up. We’re meeting the hostage takers’demands,” Sardou snorted. “You’re not needed.”

  “I suggest we simulate the computer connection,” Aimée said, “fool the system, and enter the security-blocking code.”

  Guittard got on the line.

  “Talk to me, Mademoiselle Leduc,” he
said.

  “No fuss, if my partner and I work with your engineers. The children will walk out alive.”

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  She outlined her plan, sketching in the details after he’d paused and told her to go on. “But the computer must be up to do this.”

  Guittard sounded worried, she thought.

  “Un moment,” Guittard said, putting her on hold.

  “Rachid gave them three hours,” René said. He looked at his watch, shaking his head. “Two hours left.”

  “Forget it. The tactics team run this operation,” Guittard said, coming back on the line. “Their men coordinate this. The terrorists booby-trapped the computer against a simulation like that. There’s no way to defuse the bomb via the security system.”

  Frustrated, she kicked the floor tiles. If their information was true, there was no way around it.

  She’d never been on friendly terms with the gendarmerie’s specialized computer services. This unit, a quietly kept secret of the Defense Ministry, had a large budget. Paradoxically, the government’s red tape never allowed the branch to keep pace with private sector developments; René was always several computer years ahead of them. Every dealing she’d ever had with them had been fraught with resentment and roadblocks.

  “So we wait,” Guittard said. “For every ten sans’papiers they release one child.”

  Frustrated, she wanted to scream at him that terrorists didn’t play by the rules. Instead she said good-bye and paced Gaston’s café.

  “Bernard Berge was a top graduate of ENA,” Gaston said, sipping mineral water. “Have some confidence in him.”

  Crème de la crème, Aimée knew. No other country had an equivalent. The only close comparison had been from a friend of her father’s who’d likened it to Princeton, Harvard, and Yale all rolled into one, only more exclusive.

  Graduates, referred to as enarques, stepped right into ministry posts. Aimée remembered a newspaper comment referring to the government not as socialiste but as enarquiste.

  “Bernard followed the enarque path true to form,” Gaston continued. He took another sip, then set down the glass, careful to place it on the coaster. “Appointed first to the Ministry of Finance, he worked on the budget, then moved to law. He was a judge for a long time.”