The Patriarch: A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel (29 page)

“Are you going to shoot me in the back?” he asked, fighting to keep his voice calm. His only hope was to show no fear, to remain calm and confident. “It’s too late. I’m out of the woods and can see Yevgeny and the Patriarch. Marc and Chantal have just arrived. That means there will be witnesses to the murder of an unarmed policeman.”

Bracing his weak leg with the cane, with his other hand he began to wave at the group on the terrace. Chantal and Marc were carrying trays of food down to the picnic spot. Victor was following slowly, helping his father. Where was Raquelle? Still playing with the controls of her robot?

“Yevgeny just waved back at me,” he said. His throat was dry. “They’re all coming and I’m in plain sight. Marc and Chantal are coming with the food.”

“You won’t live to eat it,” she said, her voice as flat as it was final.

There was more movement ahead. Balzac, who had bounded off to greet Clothilde and to make friends with Chantal, was now trotting down the slope toward Bruno, pausing to investigate the giant mammoth.

“Turn around,” she said. He ignored her and waved again. He saw the Patriarch wave back and heard Chantal’s voice calling something to him, too faint to make out the words.

“That’s your daughter you can hear, telling us to come and eat,” he said. “Do you want her to watch you shoot me in the back? Put the gun down, Madeleine.”

“A tragic hunting accident,” she said. He could hear her moving through the undergrowth to his left. “So easy to lose one’s footing in this brush.”

The familiar bulk of J-J emerged onto the terrace, bustling through the glass doors with a uniformed policeman at his side. He paused to survey the impressive table of food.

“The police are here,” he said. “It’s too late, Madeleine.”

“Too late for you, Bruno.”

He saw Balzac backing away from the mammoth, heard the dog growl defiance even as he retreated. And then from behind the mammoth, the bulk of Raquelle’s robotic bull emerged, moving jerkily forward and sideways, heading closer. Marc and Chantal had put down the food trays and were heading down the slope toward him, Yevgeny starting to run as Bruno’s waving became desperate.

He refused to look at Madeleine, but he heard her, dangerously close, maybe five meters away, almost parallel with him. At this range the gun would blow his head off.

“Are you going to shoot my dog, too?” he asked.

“As I come out from the trees, they’ll see me trip and fall,” she said. “They’ll see the gun hit the ground and fire and see you go down and they’ll think it was a tragic accident.”

He glanced across and found himself facing a leveled shotgun and eyes colder than he’d ever seen, her smile even more chilling than the gun that froze him. How tragic, he thought, that of all the women whose memory he cherished, this murderess should be the last one with whom he had made love, that her face should be the last one he would ever see.

Bruno closed his eyes and summoned memories: Pamela laughing for joy and bending over her horse’s mane as she galloped toward him; Isabelle laughing as she emerged from his bed, her breasts trembling as Balzac licked lovingly at her ear; Katarina reading Baudelaire to him by the riverbank in Bosnia; Nancy’s face just before she kissed him in Bergerac as they were about to climb into the Rolls-Royce that would take them into a firefight.

“Good-bye, Bruno, you interfering fool.” Madeleine stepped out of the trees and then Balzac barked. She glanced at the dog, ignoring the great, artificial bull that was at her shoulder and taking another jerky step forward. In desperation, Bruno hurled himself toward her, his cane outstretched like a rapier. But even as he plunged he knew he’d fall short.

And then she jolted, gasping, her head going back as the robot bull hit her, pushed on with implacable force, and she toppled down through the remains of the fence and into the pit at her feet, her gun still in her hands.

Two gunshots came, so close they sounded almost as one. A scream abruptly ended as the bull plunged into the pit after her.

Bruno crawled forward, smelling the cordite, and peered down to see one arm and hand that were slick with blood, and a leg sticking out at an impossible angle from beneath the jumbled metal of the bull.

Marc was holding Chantal, keeping her back from the sight inside the pit. Victor sank to his knees and let out a long, whining cry of grief. His father ignored him and marched on. Suddenly Yevgeny was there, helping Bruno to his feet and returning his cane. Balzac was at his side, his body pressed for reassurance against Bruno’s leg, peering back and forth from the pit to his master.

“A hunting accident,” said the Patriarch. He gazed impassively at Bruno as if daring him to say anything different.

Bruno pulled his phone from his pocket and pressed the
PLAY
button, just as he had pressed
RECORD
when he put his phone away after taking her photograph.

It was faint and her voice tinny, but the key phrase came out clearly enough, “They’ll see me trip and fall. They’ll see the gun hit the ground and fire and see you go down and they’ll think it was a tragic accident.”

Bruno looked at the Patriarch, thinking of all this legendary pilot had done for France. Memories of his boyhood adulation flooded back and began to merge with the image of Madeleine melting into his arms.
Mon Dieu,
what a gullible fool he’d been! Bruno looked down at his phone, knowing he’d look again and again at the photo of her he had taken, just as Yevgeny looked each day that he awoke at the portrait of her he’d made. Bruno glanced at the Patriarch and then back at the
RECORD
function on his phone. Sighing to himself, he pressed
REWIND
and then
DELETE
.

“As you say, Marco, a hunting accident,” he said.

Like all the Bruno books, this is a work of fiction, and with the exception of some historical figures, all the characters are my inventions, although many are inspired by my friends and neighbors in the Périgord. Their lifestyle is very much as presented in these books, based very firmly on the excellent local food and wines, on rugby and hunting, on market days and feasts. The account of the wild-boar feast is based on my regular attendance at the dinners of our local Association des Chasseurs, and I am honored to have been elected a member of the Confrérie du Pâté de Périgueux. The Périgordins are a convivial and welcoming folk, deeply appreciative of their good fortune in living in such a lovely and historic part of the world, and my family and I count ourselves lucky to have been allowed to share it for the past fifteen years. They are the real stars of the Bruno tales.

The heroic role of the Normandie-Niemen squadron of French fliers on the eastern front is true, and my description of their military exploits is based on historical fact. The character of the Patriarch is, however, a novelist’s creation. While based in the Soviet Union as Moscow correspondent for
The Guardian
in the 1980s, I had the privilege of meeting some of the remaining French veterans of the squadron and the Russians who served with them. I am grateful to several authors for their books on the squadron, notably:

Régiment de Chasse Normandie Niémen,
Alain Vezin, Éditions ETAI, Paris, 2009;

Normandie Niémen. Un temps pour la guerre,
Yves Courrière, Presses de la Cité, Paris, 1979;

French Eagles, Soviet Heroes: The Normandie-Niemen Squadrons on the Eastern Front,
John D. Clarke, Sutton Publishing, U.K., 2005.

The details of the coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev are accurate, and while I have been told by French and British sources that a contingency plan to rescue Gorbachev from his Crimean detention was considered, there was no time for anything beyond the most preliminary planning. I invented the supposed details. I also met Marshal Akhromeyev, who did indeed remember with fondness Spam and Studebaker trucks, and retained a soldier’s appreciation of the Allies’ role in World War II.

Lest any reader think the story of Imogène and her deer to be exaggerated, the Generali insurance group suggests deer and other large animals are responsible for an average forty thousand road accidents a year in France. Bernadette Chirac, wife of the former president, was among those involved in a collision with a deer in 2012. Deer are blamed for some two hundred human deaths a year in road accidents in the United States.

Particular thanks are due to my dear friends Pierre Simonnet and his wife, Francine; to Raymond and Stéphane Bounichou and Francette Bogros; to Jeannot and Claude Picot, Joe and Collette da Cunha. I am also deeply grateful to Patrick and Julien Montfort of my favorite shop in all the world, the legendary wine cave of Julien de Savignac in Le Bugue, which is doing these books the honor of naming a Cuvée Bruno wine for them. Gabrielle Merchez, who translates my books into French, bears along with her husband, Michael, the responsibility of luring us to the Périgord in the first place.

My brilliant editors, Jane Wood in London, Jonathan Segal in New York and Anna von Planta in Zurich, do wonders with my raw drafts, and Caroline Wood of Felicity Bryan Associates is a peerless agent. I owe them a great deal.

No man could be luckier in his family. My wife, Julia, is coauthor of
Bruno’s Cookbook: Tales, Food and Wines of the Périgord.
Our elder daughter, Kate, runs the website
brunochiefofpolice.com
. Fanny keeps track of the characters, places, wines and meals in the Bruno series, a task that becomes more complex with each new Bruno adventure. And our basset hound Benson continues to charm all who meet him and to keep me reasonably healthy by taking me for walks.

Martin Walker, Périgord, 2014

Martin Walker is a senior fellow of the Global Business Policy Council, a private think tank based in Washington, D.C. He is also editor in chief emeritus and international affairs columnist at United Press International. His previous novels in the Bruno series are
Bruno, Chief of Police; The Dark Vineyard; Black Diamond; The Crowded Grave; The Devil’s Cave; The Resistance Man;
and
The Children Return,
all international best sellers. He lives in Washington, D.C., and the Dordogne.