The Prone Gunman (8 page)

15

It was an old country house that had been transformed into a sort of hunting lodge. The ground floor consisted of three rooms: a common room that doubled as a kitchen, with stone sinks, a cast-iron stove, and a big table covered with an oilcloth; a bedroom; and, finally, a small room with an uneven tile floor that was part storeroom and part living room, with its logs and armchairs, its hearth and little stone table, and its rifles in a display case. Beneath the tile roof, the attic had been converted into an immense studio whose walls were paneled in varnished fir. There was an ornamental garden enclosed by a low stone wall with suburban-style iron railings on top; the building was situated in the forest, eight hundred meters from a main road across the Allier département. Anne Schrader and Martin Terrier had been brought there in a horse van the night after Terrier and Cox's meeting.

The short guy in the gray overcoat and his
Le Monde diplomatique
–reading acolyte had spelled each other at the wheel. They had arrived around three o'clock in the morning. Three flashes of the headlights had quickly roused the caretakers of the place. Anne and Terrier had been taken upstairs via an interior staircase that was steep and simple like a ladder. The drivers had departed again almost immediately.

“I was just coming to fetch you,” the caretaker said when Terrier left the converted attic by a trap door and descended the staircase around ten-thirty on the morning of the eleventh day.

The caretaker called himself Maubert. He must have been a few years older than Terrier—perhaps thirty-five. He was big and muscular, with a thick head of blond hair parted on the side and a thick blond mustache on a narrow face with a long, thin nose. His eyes were slightly slanted and a little too close together. The skin of his face and hands was tanned and weather-beaten. He always wore wide-wale corduroy trousers and plaid flannel shirts. He looked like an advertisement for American cigarettes. When he went out, he would put on rubber boots and a lumber jacket, but right now he was in shirtsleeves and carpet slippers. Once Terrier was down, Maubert beckoned him into the combination living room and storeroom. The caretaker's girlfriend was cooking something in a pot on the stove and didn't turn around as Terrier went by.

A log fire made a low roar in the fireplace. The house dog, a setter, wasn't there; it must have been roving in the forest. On the surface of the stone table were blue chalk marks, some toy motorcycle police, and three miniature cars: two Citroën SMs and one Citroën Pallas.

“Let's sit down,” said Maubert. “Beer? Coffee? Something else?”

“No.”

They sat down on rustic wooden chairs with cushions. Maubert picked up a miniature Renault van from the uneven tile floor and kept it in his hands, passing it from one palm to the other. Terrier, leaning forward, examined the miniature cars and motorcycle cops. They were not to the same scale. Still, this was clearly a convoy. And the chalk marks were the street plan.

“Here is the Champs-Elysées roundabout,” said Maubert, putting his index finger on the stone table top. “North is that way. So this is the beginning of the Champs-Elysées, which doesn't interest us. And this is Avenue Montaigne.” He pointed to Avenue Montaigne, which was shown in its entirety, from the Champs-Elysées roundabout to Place de l'Alma; the miniature vehicles were positioned on Avenue Montaigne. “Are you familiar with this part of Paris?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know that it's a one-way avenue with a service road on either side, both running in the same direction as the avenue.” He put the Renault van on the edge of the avenue. “You will be inside this, stationed in the left-hand service road, just short of the junction with Rue Bayard.” He looked at Terrier as if expecting him to say something, but Terrier said nothing. “I will be your driver.” Terrier sat up slightly and contemplated Maubert, but he made no comment and turned back to the crude map and the models. “The back of our vehicle,” continued Maubert, “consists of a hatchback for the top half and two doors for the bottom half. The target will come down the avenue. You can choose the position and the field of fire as you please. You can have one door open or two, if you fire from the prone position; or you can have the hatchback open, if you want to fire from a standing position and lean on the closed doors. You can have all three open, if you want, but I don't see the point in that.”

With his elbows on his knees, Terrier leaned forward and dangled a hand over the miniature convoy. With two fingers, he described a vague circle.

“Where is the target?”

“In the back of the Pallas. Four motorcycle cops will lead the way, followed by an SM, then the Pallas, with the second SM behind, just as they are here.”

“It's suicide,” said Terrier.

“No.”

“Yes, it is.” Terrier sat back in his rustic armchair and shook his head. He sniggered disdainfully. “The four motorcycle cops aside, there will be cops in the cars. They will be on us in a flash. If we try to get away, they'll turn us into confetti. It's completely ridiculous. It's suicide.”

“No, not at all,” Maubert said again, smiling. “I belong to the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire.” Terrier raised an eyebrow. “We won't even try to get away,” said the blond man. “There's a false sheet-metal floor. You'll lie down and close the false floor over you, and the van stays put. I'll get out and identify myself. After all, I really have been ordered to mount surveillance on the target.”

“Who is it?”

“An OPEC camel jockey, Sheik Hakim. Does that mean anything to you?”

“I must have seen him on TV.”

“Yeah, me too,” Maubert said distractedly. He smiled again. “My superiors really have charged me with keeping him under surveillance. I have written orders. And there will be a diversion.” He looked at Terrier with a smile, again seeming to expect comments that never came. “There's a guy who will be on the top floor of a building on the other side of the avenue: he will spray the convoy with machine-gun fire. He'll be given tracer bullets. He may have just enough time to go down and get out to Rue de Marignan through the cellars. He believes he will, in any case. I'd be surprised if he makes it. On the other hand, the cops are such idiots.”

“Is your man named Oswald?” asked Terrier.

“Very funny,” said Maubert. He wasn't smiling at all now. “Do you have an idea of what weapon you'll use?”

“I'm thinking.” Terrier closed his eyes. “I need a rapid-fire automatic assault rifle. One that will take a silencer.”

“An Ingram,” suggested Maubert.

“I don't think so. I'd prefer something else. I think I'd like bullets that travel faster than sound, so that the shots seem to come from the other side of the avenue.”

“I don't know if we can have that for you in three days.” Maubert puffed out his cheeks and grimaced. “In any case, the silencer will slow it down.”

“Failing that,” said Terrier, “get me something simple and solid—a Weatherby or something like that. I would also like a revolver.”

“That's not part of the plan.”

“If things go wrong,” said Terrier, “I'd rather have a revolver.” He looked at Maubert candidly. During the past ten days, the caretaker had shown himself to be helpful and efficient. He had quickly and correctly satisfied all of Anne and Terrier's requests in regard to clothing, food, cigarettes, beverages, and other needs. He had even provided Terrier with a compact hi-fi system and a stack of records, for which he must have had to go to Montluçon or Moulins. Only the walks taken by the two guests were subject to pronounced constraints. “I would like a large-caliber revolver with a short barrel,” added Terrier.

“I'll see if that's possible.”

Terrier bent forward again to study the convoy on the stone table.

“It will be at night, I suppose.”

“The camel jockey will eat at the Elysée Palace. Usually, there's an hour and a half of talk with the president after chowing down; the ladies get to listen to chamber music. Usually, the convoy leaves the palace at twelve-thirty in the morning.”

“The later the better,” said Terrier. “Because of the movie theaters letting out and all. So that the streets are clear.” He shook his head, stood up, and looked at his watch. “I'd like to take a little walk before lunch and think it over.”

Maubert stood up, too. He gave Terrier a tense look. Terrier smiled at him. Maubert's cheek twitched. He half-opened the communicating door.

“Cécile!” he called. “Monsieur Christian wants to take a walk.”

A minute or two later, Terrier and Cécile were walking quickly in the biting cold on one of the rudely surfaced straight trails through the Tronçais forest and which the local people call “lines.” On either side of the path clusters of tall oaks and other broad-leaved trees, bare in this season, alternated with young thickets and zones of clear-cutting. At scattered intervals, the environmental agency had painted its symbol on the bark of particular trees. Here and there limbed and bucked logs lay alongside the line. Beneath the thickets, on the thick layer of decomposing leaves, lay remnants of last week's snowfall. Mist hung in the hollows, over the wallows, and over the streams bordered by ice. The air was damp and, because of the direction of the wind that whistled through the bare branches, one could not even hear the engines of the rare vehicles that slipped down the highway, two or three kilometers away.

Before leaving on the walk, Terrier had gone upstairs to tell Anne that he was going out. Naked and disheveled on one of the two beds, the young woman was warming a snifter half full of cognac between her palms. She had smiled mechanically.

“On the blink,” she had said. “Impotent. Go freeze them off, then.”

“I've told you already,” Terrier had said. “It's because I'm on a job. It's my concentration.” He had nodded with conviction. “That's it. That's all it is.”

At present, Terrier was striding along behind Cécile, observing her. Maubert's companion had long bleached hair that floated down her back; it was not very clean, and the dark roots showed. She was tall and obviously thin despite the layered sweaters under her anorak—a plebian skinniness. Arriving at one of the star-shaped crossroads that the local people call “circles,” she came to a stop and turned around to face Terrier. She indicated a line that made an acute angle with the one they had just walked down.

“Shall we go back this way?” she asked. She looked bored.

“I want to go a little farther,” said Terrier.

“Out of the question. Verboten. How many times do I have to say it?”

“Are you sure?” Terrier slipped the fingers of his right hand between the girl's hair and her neck and caressed her under the chin with his thumb.

“Hey,” she said with a smile, without moving. “Hands off!”

Terrier put his left hand on the other side of the girl's neck. He knew exactly where to press with his thumbs, and that's where he pressed. She frowned, then raised her eyebrows and opened her mouth. Terrier pulled her close and blocked her arms with his elbows. His right leg parried the knee that the girl tried to jam in his parts. Seconds later, Cécile did not even have the strength to keep her eyes open, and her lower jaw hung slack. She would soon have been dead if Terrier had not relaxed the pressure, but he did relax the pressure. The setter, which had been gamboling out in front of the walkers for the last quarter of an hour, had now come and planted itself next to the pair. Its bark was worried and threatening. Terrier took the dog's leash from Cécile's pocket and allowed the unconscious girl to slip to the ground. The dog stopped barking and attacked very fast. Terrier coolly buried his left fist in its open muzzle; with his right hand he seized the animal by its collar. As he immobilized the dog, which was trying to fight back as it noisily strangled, the man worked the clasp of the leash. Then he pulled his fist out of the muzzle, the dog's fangs scraping his hand as he did so.

Three minutes later, the unconscious Cécile was seated against the trunk of an isolated Norwegian fir, whose lower branches hung down and hid her from hypothetical passersby. She would regain consciousness in a few minutes. She risked catching a bad cold, even though Terrier had scrupulously put her hands in her pockets after wrapping her head in her scarf. Attached to a branch by its leash, the setter was now calm, licking the girl's face and whining now and then.

Meanwhile, Terrier was running powerfully and steadily down a line in the direction that had always been forbidden on his walks. And almost immediately he reached the edge of the forest and came out on a secondary road. A hundred meters farther on was a village with six or seven stoplights, a bus stop, and a bar and general store that had a news rack. The man went into the shop, mechanically rubbing his left hand, which still had the setter's dried saliva on it, against his thigh. He ordered a muscadet and asked for the telephone. There was a telephone booth. Once more Terrier told Stanley what he thought it judicious to tell him—and asked him for what it seemed possible to ask.

“No problem,” said Stanley.

“Forgive me for not telling you everything,” said Terrier. “It's less dangerous for you if I don't explain everything.”

“Okay,” said Stanley, rather primly.

“Stanley,” Terrier said abruptly, “my name isn't Christian. Did you know that?”

“What's this all about?”

“Did you know that?”

“No.”

“See you soon,” Terrier said as he hung up.

He paid and left the store. He went back into the forest and, at a run, cut straight through the woods to the house. He soundlessly entered the deserted common room, soundlessly ascended the steep staircase, and soundlessly edged his way into the interior of the converted attic, where he saw that Anne was straddling Maubert, who was stretched out on his back, and fucking him.