The Paris Directive (7 page)

The next morning at breakfast Ann Marie was full of their previous evening’s adventure with the bats in the tower. She explained to Judy and Ben, who had a nasty hangover, how they had finally gotten to sleep after being shaken out of bed by the weird noises of the bats.

“Owls,” Ben corrected irritably.

Ann Marie didn’t think so.

Judy noted her husband’s badly bloodshot eyes and, intent on keeping the peace, recounted what Monsieur Chambouvard, the farmer across the road, had told them about the famous owls of Taziac.

Ann Marie looked at Schuyler. They both had to admit they could be wrong. Under the circumstances, Schuyler said nothing about the phantom poacher he’d seen. In the muted dove-gray morning light, he seemed as gossamer as dreamland.

The weatherman predicted rain and clouds for that day, and the map on the small television screen showed ominous black thunderheads and flashing bolts of lightning hovering over Périgueux, Bergerac, Agen, and Cahors. No rain yet, thought Reiner, glancing out the kitchen window, but a thunderstorm sounded promising. The ideal weather for an accident. He stirred the pot on the stove and lowered the flame.

The guy being interviewed was Dr. Claude Roehn of the Institut Pasteur. He seemed to know all about bovine spongiform encephalopathy and a new form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease transmitted to humans from infected cows. Roehn said it caused spongy holes in the brain and was invariably fatal. The next person to appear was a young farmer from Fougères who had been accused of selling his herd and concealing the fact that one of his animals may have died of BSE. He claimed he knew nothing about mad cows. He was no scientist. He insisted that the loss of his entire herd would have put him out of business.

The woman interviewing the farmer felt no sympathy for him.
Reiner, on the other hand, recognized a soul brother. True, the guy was a selfish son of a bitch, but it was either that or the poorhouse. Enlightened self-interest. Wasn’t that what capitalism was all about? People had to survive somehow. Speaking of which … perhaps it was time for him to cut back on steak and other red meat. In pursuit of better health, he’d already eliminated such favorites from his diet as coffee, eggs, butter, heavy cream, and sauerkraut. Turning the burner off before the milk boiled, Reiner poured his cocoa into a mug, shut off the TV, and went upstairs.

The window in the upstairs hallway was the only one in the house that had an unobstructed view of the property next door. He sipped his cocoa and contemplated the red tile roof of L’Ermitage, less than fifty meters away. Putting down his mug, he picked up the Zeiss binoculars from the table and trained them on the back of the house. He had seen the blue Peugeot leave earlier that morning with the two women. So far so good. With any luck they’d be gone all day. The other two cars—Ali’s VW and the Phillipses’ big, wine red Mercedes—were exactly where they’d been when last he looked. It was merely a matter of patience now. Even though he knew how the drama would end, it was always exciting to watch a live performance. As usual, the hard part was waiting for the curtain to rise.

First came the drizzle and then the wind. Next the low, rumbling thunder, hinting at the drenching downpour to follow. The trees shook and the sky darkened. He could barely make out Ali as he ran to his VW and jumped in. Reiner quickly adjusted the binoculars and watched the little white car disappear down the road. Though he wasn’t counting on the Arab going home for lunch, as he occasionally did, it was high on Reiner’s wish list. The fewer spectators the better.

Not long afterward, the threatening sky opened and a deluge cascaded down. Reiner pulled on his rain parka. He was about to leave for the Total station to call L’Ermitage to report Madame Phillips’s accident to her husband, when he thought he heard a car door slam. He ran back to the window. The Mercedes was revving up. Phillips hadn’t moved his car since he arrived. Reiner couldn’t believe it. Most of his victims went to their deaths, kicking and screaming, but this Phillips couldn’t wait to lay his head on the block. Reiner
snatched up the binoculars. It was impossible to see through the car’s tinted windows. As the Mercedes, gathering speed, splashed through the mud, and plunged down the hill, Reiner watched with a fixed intensity to see that everything worked smoothly, confident that it would. The streaking car suddenly was swallowed up behind the green hillside, dense with ferns and trees. If the Mercedes hit a linden or fir head-on at that speed, his job was done.

Reiner would have much preferred a simple fall onto a hard surface from a height of at least twenty-two meters. The police barely noticed such accidents. All that was needed was a rooftop, a balcony, an elevator shaft, an open window. But this was the country. Fortunately for Reiner, it was a German car.

The Mercedes was still going when he caught sight of it again. Speeding out of control and racing faster and faster like a toboggan down a chute. It had occurred to him that the car might get all the way down to the bottom of the hill without slamming into anything, but it seemed very unlikely. And the faster it went, the better. He could hear the horn blowing frantically as if the panic-stricken driver were pressing it with all his might. Moving his binoculars a little to the right, Reiner saw the oncoming gravel truck on the road below. There was so little traffic past their house that, despite the quarry, this sort of coincidental stroke of luck had seemed one in a million.

The truck driver slammed on his brakes. The timing of the collision would be so perfect there’d be no one left to tell the tale. Reiner held his breath as the eighteen-wheeler skidded on the rain-slick tarmac and began to jackknife, sending up an ear-piercing, jagged shriek as the Mercedes, horn still blaring, hurtled across the road in front of the truck and flew into the wheat field on the other side. Barreling into one huge wheel of hay after another, it knocked them down like tenpins until the slowing car flipped over on its side and came quietly to rest, the two upended tires spinning like roulette wheels.

The trucker jumped out of his cab and raced into the muddy field. He ran to the car and, climbing on top, pulled open the door to see if anybody was still alive. The face of the man behind the wheel was chalky white.

“Ça va?”
called the trucker.

His hands shaking, the driver fumbled with his seat belt, trying unsuccessfully to unbuckle it. The trucker reached in to help him. Rattled and confused, Ben babbled that he didn’t know, that he’d no idea what the hell had happened. Maybe he did something wrong. It wasn’t his car, he said. He had borrowed his friend’s to go buy some Scotch. All he knew was the brakes didn’t work.

Struggling to free him, the trucker was amazed the damn fool was still alive. Lucky for him the car was built like a bulldozer. Even so, this guy must have been born under a lucky star. Strange, he thought, that an expensive car like this had no air bags. With the trucker’s help, Ben crawled out with barely a scratch and stood up shakily, the rain pouring down on his head. It felt wonderful.

Reiner, who’d been at the window watching everything, slammed down his binoculars in disgust. He loathed surprises. Picking up his cocoa, he saw he’d nothing left and let out a furious howl.
“Verdammte Scheisse!”
he shouted, hurling the mug with all his might against the wall, where it shattered.

10

CAFÉ LE RICHE, BERGERAC

M
azarelle, when the call came two days later, wasn’t expecting it, though he was not without hope. He’d notified banks throughout the region of the stolen credit card, and it had turned up right under his nose in Bergerac. The way things often do in police work. Goyard, the bank manager at the local BNP branch on the rue Neuve d’Argenson, reported that he had Monsieur Reece’s missing Visa in his hand. The inspector said, “I’ll be right over.”

Before entering the bank, Mazarelle followed the arrow around to the side of the building where the ATM was located. He peered through the locked glass door and was pleased to see a surveillance camera high on the wall.

Goyard rose from his desk to shake the inspector’s hand when he came in, clearly impressed by how quickly he’d arrived. Mazarelle took the proffered Visa card by the edges as if it were one of his cherished Fats Waller records and examined it, then, carefully turning it over, studied Benjamin Reece’s signature. The extravagant swirling loops of the American’s capital letters fit the man he’d met to a T.

In reply to the inspector’s question, Goyard said that their ATM had seized the card late the previous evening when someone had tried several times and failed to enter the correct PIN. Mazarelle placed the plastic card into a cellophane envelope he’d brought. Then he asked the manager to drop by the commissariat that afternoon for fingerprinting. The banker turned pale. “A formality,” Mazarelle explained. “Merely a way to eliminate your prints from any others on the card.”

Before leaving, he mentioned the surveillance camera. Goyard said, “Yes, yes, of course you can have any pictures. Take the tape.” If it contained what he needed, Mazarelle would call it a good day’s work.

On the Place Gambetta in Bergerac the sidewalk tables in front of the Café le Riche were crowded with couples drinking. PMU—short for Pari Mutuel Urbain, the French state-controlled sports betting system—on the green front door promised the excitement of live thoroughbred racing from Paris. Inside the smoke-filled café, the long communal tables were occupied largely by sullen dark-skinned men who looked Spanish or North African. They spoke softly among themselves, shifted their weight uneasily on the creaky wooden chairs, their dark eyes always returning to the raised television screens on the side walls as they waited for the next race.

Ali sat talking intently to his round-faced, unshaven, ponytailed pal Rabo, who had enough gaudy rings on his fingers to be a pimp. Suddenly Ali wheeled around. “What do you say, Grandma?” he asked the elderly woman seated behind them, scanning a racing form. “Who do you pick in the fifth?”

The old lady took her glasses off and stared at him. Tied to a cord around her neck, the glasses hung down on her large, matronly bosom.

“Métronome. At five to one, it’s a steal.”

“That’s good enough for me.”

He had seen her and her dyke friend—the tight little gray-haired package in dungarees standing over by the bar who, with the sleeves of her blue work shirt rolled to the elbows, resembled Popeye the sailor—clean up on the last three races, while all his stiffs ran out of the money. Ali hurried up to place a bet on Métronome before it was too late.

The PMU booth was painted a bright, hopeful green. The middle-aged woman inside wore a jockey hat in an identical shade of green. She handled all the bets and, for the lucky few, the instant payoffs afterward. Métronome was number 7.

Ali sensed a good omen. Didn’t Al Borak race through the seven
heavens of the Koran
?
Feeling like a winner, he upped his bet to two hundred and put down the third of his five-hundred-franc notes. The good news was he still had two left. Back at the table, Ali waved his ticket at the old girl in appreciation. Lifting the glass of cognac her friend had just brought her, she toasted their success.

From the start it was a tight race. The ten horses jockeying for position, the speedster Bernadette taking the early lead. Ali, along with almost everyone else in the café, had his eyes nailed to the screens. At the halfway pole, Bernadette was still out front but pressed by a trio of horses coming up out of the pack. Spotting number 7 among them, Ali silently urged on the big black mount. By the three-quarter mark, Bernadette, fading fast, had run out of steam, and Métronome, with Chez Nous and Séducteur hot on his heels, had vaulted into the lead. The track announcer’s voice throbbed with excitement as number 2, a pale gray with legs flying, suddenly came up on the outside, and side by side the quadriga thundered down the stretch. As their mounts reached for the finish line, the riders beat away on them like tom-toms and Ali, battling the other jocks, pounded the table.

Eldorado was first, Métronome second, and Chez Nous third.

“Eldorado,” Rabo groaned. He wondered aloud if the winning horse was owned by Johnny Hallyday and named after his big hit. Offering Ali his condolences, Rabo told him he had something to cheer him up outside in his car.

Ali, muttering as he tore his ticket in two, was about to leave when he noticed Popeye coming back from the payout counter with a fistful of francs. He stared, incredulous, as she split the money with her girlfriend.

“You told me Métronome,” he fumed at the old bitch, a scowl like a dueling scar marking his face.

“Sure. Didn’t you bet him to place?”

“Putain!”
Snatching up her racing form, he was shredding it into bits and pieces when Popeye, cursing the
bicot,
launched herself at his head. Ali, neatly sidestepping her flailing fists, knocked her to the floor. The woman behind the counter came running out with a club in her hand. Rabo grabbed his friend and pulled him away. It was time to go. He’d no wish to wait for the flics to show up.

11

L’ERMITAGE, TAZIAC

T
he morning sun turned the lawn, still damp from the night’s rain, into a molten lake that stretched from the cool green shadows of the bushes below the high terrace wall all the way down the hill. It was going to be a steamy summer day. Up above on the terrace, the four friends sat outside, leisurely finishing breakfast, chatting and enjoying their buttery brioches and coffee. Somewhere in the distance a dog was barking. Then they heard the car coming up the hill. Although Ali hadn’t yet arrived for work—unpredictable, as usual—it didn’t sound like his old VW.

Next door, Reiner heard the laboring engine too. He didn’t need binoculars to see the police markings on the car’s hood and trunk, the blue light on its roof. He supposed it had something to do with the accident. Eager to find out what the cops knew, he made his way over to the neighboring property under cover of the trees. It was dangerous, of course, but a calculated risk never troubled Reiner. Darting across the open dirt road, he slipped soundlessly into the shadows between the terrace wall and the bushes, and, placing himself directly beneath where they were sitting, he waited, still as a lizard.