Murder in Belleville

Monday Early Afternoon

AIMÉE LOOKED DOWN FROM the broad first-floor window, trying to figure out how to get into the school. Scurrying figures entered a mobile truck on the street. They emerged wearing jackets, carrying weapons.

She edged backward; none of Sardou’s men paid the slightest attention to her. But if anyone noticed, she’d say she was trying to find the bathroom. Behind her lay several wood-paneled doors, housing utility closets and garbage chutes. She gripped the brass handle in the door closest to her, pulled it open, and felt cool air. She prayed she’d gotten lucky. Once inside she saw a curving narrow staircase and sighed in relief. She had.

Going down the stairs, she figured Anaïs must have been trying to tell her something—but what?

She didn’t know how to get Simone and the children out—the area teemed with antiterrorist squads, trucks, and equipment.

Worried, all she knew was that Anaïs counted on her.

Again.

The paramilitary RAID was notorious for blazing its way in, fudging the body count later in hostage situations, only intent on neutralizing its target. Judging by Bernard’s appearance, the goose brought in by helicopter, that could make sense. Maybe Anaïs felt that Aimée was the only one who had a real chance. Or, knowing Aimée, would be crazy enough to try.

“Keep moving,” said a helmeted figure, motioning her toward the barricades blocking narrow rue Friedel.

The first step would be to access the building adjoining the ecole maternelle, get inside, and find a way from there into the school. She flashed the CRS badge, then sidestepped through the colonnade to a group of about ten hastily assembled CRS and flks. With any luck the plan she’d started hatching in her brain would trap the terrorist.

“Inform me on the latest—have demands been made in the hostage situation?” she said to a guard.

The guard hesitated, then jerked his head toward several figures bent over a police car’s hood. “Talk to LeMoine, chief of operations.”

Next to them stood the open van lined with black jumpsuits and flak jackets. Inside the van a stocky woman chewing gum ticked off items from her clipboard. She nodded when Aimée flashed her badge, then gestured toward the rack, “One size fits all, Captain. I suggest rolling up the cuffs and sleeves.”

Aimée lifted the light swat suit, which crinkled in her hands.

“Fabric seems flimsy, Lieutenant…?”

“Lieutenant Vedrine.” The policewoman winked. “Use the resistant liner.” She handed Aimée an aqua Goretex-type gunny-sack. “You might want to slip off that skirt and shimmy this on.”

“How long has the situation existed?” Aimée asked as she stepped into the outfit, snapped the Kevlar vest, and zipped the black jumpsuit.

“No one briefed you?” Lieutenant Vedrine’s gum popped constantly while she helped Aimée.

Aimée thought quickly.

“They paged me during my anniversary dinner with my husband.”

“C’est dommage! How many years?”

“Five, and it was the first time we’d had a babysitter in ages—give me the quick and dirty.” Aimée inspected the contents of various flaps and panels on the jumpsuit.

Lieutenant Veldrine helped Aimée into the flak jacket. “A disgruntled tearoom employee from the Mosque Paris went ballstique when his sans’papiers sister got bused to prison. He joined the AFL.” She shrugged, intelligence and humor behind her gaze. “Pretty routine operation. If you’re lucky, shouldn’t be long.”

Aimée covered her surprise. What about the children? But maybe everyone figured the units were biding their time until RAID marksmen got their shot. Aimée pointed toward the rack of locked low-light sensor rifles.

“Weapons authorization number?” Lieutenant Vedrine asked opening her weapons log.

Aimée racked her brains for Morbier’s number—what was it? Creature of habit that Morbier was, he usually picked his birth-date for such things, at least he had for his apartment digicode entrance and his office locker. She forgot if he was a year or two years older than her father.

“It’s 21433. Listen, I know one of the hostages.” Aimée took a deep breath. “We were in the lycée together. Her sister’s my closest friend.”

Lieutenant Vedrine paused, her mouth still.

“Who’s that?”

“Anaïs de Froissart, wife of the minister.”

“I’ll check that.” Lieutenant Vedrine bent and talked into her collar radio. “Confirm identity of hostage.”

The static from the radio competed with the sirens from another arriving bomb-squad truck. Blue flashing lights swept the streets.

Lieutenant Vedrine touched the headphone to her ear, straining to hear. Then she nodded to Aimée, chewing again in a deliberate fashion, looking impressed.

“From what command gathers, about twenty children and two teachers could be in either of three classrooms facing south,” she said. “Marksmen are positioned on rooftops lining the street.”

Aimée broke into a sweat. She had to find those children!

Lieutenant Vedrine activated the mobile radio linking Ai-mée’s unit to the others. She handed Aimée earphones and clipped a tiny microphone to her jumpsuit collar.

Aimée’s gut told her that this was her one shot in hell and she’d better take it.

If she didn’t find them, the body count would be higher and the bodies smaller. She joined the others quickly assembled on rue de PErmitage.

“We make a sweep of next door,” the sergeant said. “Make sure of total evacuation before sharpshooters lock these windows in their crosshairs, eh?”

Most nodded or murmured assent. As the group moved for-ward, Aimée sidled near a pillar and melted into the ranks. They entered the older building, an elder-care facility. Private and posh, by the looks of it, much more upscale than a maison de retreat retirement home.

Inside, members fanned out, and Aimée headed across an empty dining room; the tables were set with half-empty glasses of wine and plates of food were still warm. She entered the kitchen, which had stainless-steel counters, a jalousied grille scalloping the window.

Smoke and burning onions filled the stovetop area, making her cough. Copper pots simmered with soup stock on the blackened industrial stove, but the culprit was a large frying pan sizzling with rapidly deteriorating clumps of onion. Careful to avoid the searing-hot handle, she killed the fire, then lifted the frying pan with a towel into the sink of water. The hiss and smoke billowed, but she was already past the sous-chef’s butcher block littered with chopped vegetables and crushed garlic.

She exited into a dark back hall. With the building behind her, she faced what looked like an old theater. Behind her she heard doors shutting, and she realized that the CRS would enter soon.

This theater shared the back half of the elder-care building. Aimée hesitated; the sergeant hadn’t instructed them to climb to the next level. However, she figured the only way to reach the school would be to gain entrance to the theater attic and find the roof.

Her heels clicked on the marble as she wended her way to the mezzanine. The only other sound came from the old sconces, buzzing like insects, lining the grande mezzanine. She mounted the wide marble staircase. Dim, deserted hallways branched off the mezzanine level, barely lit by the central chandelier.

She heard rumbling and then a tinkling of glass. She tiptoed across the marble but stopped when the sound ceased.

Aimée saw the glint in the tall smoky mirror. She turned to feel a machine gun’s cold metal in her temple, and froze.

“Mademoiselle, seems you’re lost,” said a black-jumpsuited RAID figure wearing night-vision goggles and resembling a giant fly. “The CRS forces monitor the the lower quadrant. Not up here.” He stepped back and gestured with the gun toward the staircase.

“Bien sûr,” she said, recovering her composure and stepping ahead. “But since I took a stage class in this theater years ago, and I’m familiar with the layout—”

“We’ll just make sure of that now, won’t we?” he interrupted. “Vite!” He gestured again toward the staircase.

BERNARD BERGE’S heart pounded so loudly that he thought the RAID team flanking him would notice—even with their thick helmets and headgear. A little voice in his head cried, “Why me??!” while Sardou, via a headphone in Bernard’s ear, repeated instructions. Rue Olivier Metra, deserted except for the CRS stationed behind pillars, shone in the weak April sunlight.

“Do you understand, Berge?” Sardou repeated. “Get him by a window.”

Bernard assented, wondering again if his mother would relent and bury him even if his body was unidentifiable after the explosion.

The team melted away as Bernard approached the deserted concierge’s loge by the school entrance. Ahead of him lay the ecole matemelle courtyard, lined with potted red geraniums and filled with tricycles. Shuttered windows and skylights in sloping mansard roofs looked down on him from three sides. The fanatic could be behind any of them! An eerie silence hung over the courtyard. He took a deep breath and a faltering step before clutching the limestone wall. His hands shook.

Bernard Berge prayed for a miracle, as he had as a little boy on the ship leaving Algiers. He prayed that the burning city would be whole and that everything was a dream. Now he prayed he’d wake up and find this was a dream too. But he knew it wasn’t.

“Get moving,” someone hissed from behind. He heard the clicking metal sounds of triggers being cocked. “We’re covering you.”

He made his legs move to the center of the courtyard. He shut his eyes and raised his arms high.

“I’m Bernard Berge,” he said. “From the ministry.”

Silence.

He opened one eye. Something red fluttered behind a ground-floor classroom window. Then a small head popped up briefly.

“Monsieur Rachid, I have authority to reverse the immigration orders.”

A parrot’s squawking erupted from the concierge’s loge, and Bernard jumped. He looked up. The windows stared vacantly back at him.

“In my pocket. I want to show you—may I enter?”

The only answer was the parrot’s shrill cry.

A little hand waved from the window, then disappeared.

“Monsieur Rachid, I’m coming in, and I’m keeping my arms high so you can see them.”

He concentrated on moving his feet toward the window. Before he could reach the door, it opened, and a small red-sweatered boy in short pants barreled into Bernard’s legs.

“Run!” Bernard said, keeping his arms raised.

“Loulou,” the little boy sobbed. “I can’t go without Lou-lou.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get her,” Bernard said.

“Loulou’s a boy!” he said.

“Hurry up,” Bernard said, irritated. He pried the little boy from his legs. “Do as I say!”

The boy ran and tripped over the cobbles. He landed, crying, by the wall. “I can’t leave Loulou!”

“Go on!” Bernard snarled, raising his eyes and scanning the windows.

The little boy stood up and stumbled but made it to the concierge’s loge. From the corner of his eye Bernard saw the RAID man scoop the boy up.

Bernard entered the long classroom, edging past white walls plastered with children’s watercolors, a sand table littered with wooden shovels and an empty rabbit cage with “Loulou” scribbled on a sign in crayon. Merdel Bernard thought. The little boy would put everyone in danger for a rabbit!

He passed through a yellow-tiled bathroom, stools set in front of washbasins and tiny toilets, into a darkened room filled with nap cots. Where should he go now?

He knelt down, feeling his way past the cots toward a double door. Something wet and sticky clung to his fingers, and fear shot up Bernard’s spine. He didn’t want to look.

In the crack of light from the door he saw the blood on his hands. Bernard gasped. A vision of his little brother, André, came to him, his small face floating in the village well. Bernard didn’t try to wipe his hands. Now he knew he’d never get the blood off them.

“NICE LITTLE stunt, Leduc!” Sardou said. “You’re banned from the area.”

The RAID man had escorted her back to the command center. Her grim feeling was highlighted by sobbing parents waiting on the periphery.

“The bomb unit has set procedures,” Sardou said. “We will not put anyone in jeopardy.”

“But look at Berge,” Aimée protested. “Standard procedure wouldn’t put—”

“Him inside?” Sardou interrupted. “Of course not! But the hostage taker set the rules, since Berge was responsible for the deportations.”

She struggled to make Sardou understand. “The AFL wouldn’t do this,” she said. “A radical faction took over. The real reason is the funding loss for the humanitarian mission.”

“You’re banned from this area,” Sardou said again, nodding to a nearby CRS, who escorted her to the barricade.

Her heart sank. How could she get them out? She didn’t trust RAID, Guittard, or the sharpshooters. ‘Trigger-happy’ took on a new meaning with highly trained marksmen who ached to take out suspects quickly. Bombs and hostage situations had become too common in Paris.

Defeated, she walked down rue de l’Ermitage. She slumped on the curb, oblivious to the stares of passersby. If something happened and she did nothing, she’d never forgive herself. Anaïs had said she knew how to do it… but how to do what?

She had to get them out.

Aimée noticed the pearly pink oil rivulets snaking through the cobble cracks, pooling in slick puddles. She glanced at her watch from force of habit. Her dead Tintin watch.

She stood up, called René from the nearest phone, asking him to gather equipment and meet her at Gaston’s café, four blocks away. Then she started running.

“MAY WE use your café as headquarters, so to speak, Gaston?” she said. “I’ve got a plan to disarm the bomb.”

“If you let me watch you use one of those,” Gaston said, pointing to the laptops René began unpacking on the glass-ring-stained tables.

“I’ll even teach you,” René said, his smile widening. He looked around. “First we need an outlet so you can see how surge protectors work. I’ll show you in a moment.”

Aimée stuck the new cell phone René had given her on her waistband.

Something didn’t add up.

“I have a terrible feeling,” she said, explaining about her conversation with Philippe. “He denied nothing, just looked beaten.”

“So you think this is another blackmail route?” René asked.

“His daughter’s in there, René,” she said. “And his wife.”

“But how?” asked Gaston. “Haven’t the AFL claimed credit?”

“Mafoud and the AFL are grassroots, cranking out leaflets, organizing soup kitchens and child care for strikers,” she said. “Hostage seizure isn’t their style. Even though this Rachid claims it is.”

René clicked Save on his laptop and looked up. “Rachid could be a loose cannon. What if his baguette’s sliced a little thin and he decided to carry the cause further?”

“Sliced a little thin …?” Gaston winced.

She could see Gaston didn’t like the implication. She didn’t either.

“Quite possible, René,” she said. “But I’d say he’s smart and with some kind of explosives training.” She paused. “He’s got about two hundred police, including sharpshooters and the RAID squad, in a holding pattern, so his baguette can’t be sliced too thin.”

“You’ve got a point, Aimée,” Gaston said. He leaned against the zinc counter, wiping it with a wet rag. “Perhaps he trained in the army.”

Outside the café windows rain glistened on a grime-encrusted banner with BIERE FORMENT in block letters rustling in the wind. The Arab trio moved into another doorway to conduct business as a postman cycled by.

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 Paris 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.”

“So enarques move around the government?” she asked, surprised.

“Bien sûr,” he said. “They’re all friends, like to keep the jobs inside the family, so to say. Keep them exclusive. They all live near one another, fancy flats in the Seventh Arrondissement so they can walk together to the ministry.”

But to her mind Bernard hadn’t seemed to fit that crowd. Remembering his haunted look, she became lost in thought. If he’d had some balls, he would have had everything.

The fading afternoon light hit and sparkled in Gaston’s glass. He looked up again; this time his lined eyes were serious. “His father served under Soustelle in Algérie. For a pied-noir, Bernard Berge has attained the top.”

Maybe what she’d mistaken for Bernard’s cowardice was a conscience. How had he felt to be part of this rarefied echelon? What had it cost him to perform this mission?

“Rumors had it he’d taken a leave earlier this year to avoid a nervous breakdown,” Gaston said. “He holed up in his flat and wouldn’t come out. Until they snagged him for this job.”

BERNARD WATCHED the hands edge toward the 4 on the large wall clock. Around him little snores in the nap room kept time to the Mozart tape that had lulled many to sleep. The teacher, whom he’d heard called Dominique, sat in the middle, writing down Rachid’s whispered dictation, as she rubbed a child’s back.

“In order to escape,” Rachid said, “we demand that the police announce our deaths. Once sure of our safety, we will release the last of the children.”

Dominique held up the paper, written in red crayon, for him to see. Dark circles ringed her eyes.

“Sign it ‘the Human Bomb,'” Rachid said. “Then stay with the children.”

She complied and lay down on a cot.

Rachid stuffed the note in a biscuit tin and crawled over to Bernard. “Go with him,” he said jerking his head towards the other terrorist. “Throw it out of the attic window facing the square.”

“Why not call Guittard?” Bernard asked. “You can explain your demands to the minister.”

Rachid slammed his fist on the counter. The fish tank shuddered. “When I want suggestions, bureaucrat, I’ll ask for them.”

Bernard flinched. He took the note and crept past the sleeping children. Rachid’s accomplice nudged him with the machine gun up the staircase, poking him in the ribs every time he paused.

Bernard was sweating as they reached the fourth floor. All the way up, his mind fixed on how to get the terrorist near a window. A creaking sound on the wooden stairs alerted him… a rat, another escaped school pet, or a hiding child? The terrorist paused, he’d heard it, too.

“Wait here,” the man barked.

Bernard stood on the worn steps, breathing hard. This pampered childhood world felt foreign to him.

The hungry postwar years he remembered were in rented rooms with a toilet shared by two floors. And that, his mother had considered a luxury. His real father had died in a desert skirmish with rebel fellagha when he was little.

His stepfather, Roman, also a pied’tioir, said little. But when he spoke everyone listened. Bernard had always likened Roman’s speech to the tools of his butcher’s trade—sharp and cutting.

He’d once asked his mother, before he’d learned better, why his Papi’s words cut like a knife. She’d sighed, then pulled him close, something she’d rarely had time for. She told him his Papi bottled everything inside and that some people showed their love in different ways. His Papi, she continued, showed it by working hard. They had a home now, she’d said. She’d gestured toward the room around them. Peeling plaster in two narrow, high-ceilinged rooms, the only water source a pump in the courtyard.

But when Roman spoke, he used language as a weapon. Whereas Bernard learned to use language as a shield, living in the ether of ideas.

His mother said she was sure one day he’d make his Papi proud and show him how smart he was. She’d run her hand down his cheek, smooth down his hair and the stubborn cowlick that never took orders. Her tone had been wistful when she’d asked him if he’d take care of his Papi when he got older.

But he never had. Roman died broken and tubercular seven years later. Before Bernard earned entrance to Ecole Nationale Administratif, and his brother passed the entrance exam for medical school. However, Roman’s fierce silences and cutting words were imprinted on his pysche.

These children would never know his deprivations. And for once, bypassing the envy that lived in his heart, he experienced gratitude. Gratitude that no child would know those days… but then he thought of the Balkans, the blank-eyed orphans. War never stopped, it just took different forms. And these children, weren’t they victims forged from battles of the long-lost Algerian war?

There was a loud shattering of glass ahead of him.

“In here, bureaucrat!” the man yelled. “Now!”

Bernard fought the impulse to flee, ducked his head, and entered the doorway. The terrorist had broken the window. Glass shards blanketed the attic floor, giving off a bluish tinge. Used, musty air and waist-high wooden storefront letters filled the narrow attic. Weak sunlight flashed off the glass, creating a diamond carpet. What if the sharpshooters thought he was signaling? Bernard felt panic, his breathing coming in short gasps.

No, they’d wait—they wouldn’t shoot at anything that sparkled—he felt sure. The bands of tension in Bernard’s head relaxed a fraction. Until he saw the disheveled woman in the corner, tied to a chair, struggling to kick at the terrorist’s shins. She sent him a look that Bernard couldn’t read.

“Take me to the bathroom,” she yelled. “Or I’ll do it on the floor.”

The terrorist whacked her across the face with the back of his gloved hand. “Suit yourself, infidele, just shut up!”

Bernard saw her hands clutch the splindly chair back behind her and realized her wrists were untied. She was signaling him. There were two of them and just one big semiautomatic-toting terrorist.

“Look,” Bernard said, edging toward the terrorist, “I’d suggest—”

“Cut the small talk.”

Bernard gestured toward her. “Can’t you at least let her go to the bathroom?”

Bernard wondered who she was.

The terrorist pointed to a window, jagged splinters of glass peeking from the corners.

“Hurry up,” he said. “Throw it from here! Bureaucrat, I’m losing patience,” the terrorist growled. He hawked and spit, coming over and nudging the machine gun into Bernard’s ribs. “Didn’t you hear me? Throw the box out the window.”

Bernard winced as the cold metal barrel poked through his thin suit jacket. He took a step. Shattered glass crackled under his shoes. He froze.

He looked over at the woman for help, but her heavy-lidded eyes stared vacantly. Her nose bled bright red down her chin, spattering on her once white silk blouse.

Bernard knew he was a coward. Schoolyard fights and taunt-ings had proved that. The idea of standing as a window target for RAID sharpshooters was not appealing. Right now he wanted to get on his knees under the skylight, in the chill air among the skewed letters, and beg the man for mercy.

“The police will shoot me,” he said, his veined hands shaking. “I can’t—”

“Makes no difference,” the terrorist yawned. “I’ll use her.”

Bernard’s legs wobbled; they didn’t support him any more. Lightheaded and dizzy, he reached to steady himself against the woman’s chair. He missed. Around him the angle of light spun and shifted. He hit the ground heavy and hard. What must have been moments later, he grew aware of myriad sharp splinters in his arms.

The woman erupted from her chair screaming, kicking at the terrorist’s legs. He tripped over the dazed Bernard and let out a roar. He landed headfirst against the wall and crumpled onto his machine gun. Deafening shots erupted into his chest. His black torso twitched as the round drilled into him. His body fell sideways.

Bernard realized the woman had gone. He was alone. Alone with a dead terrorist oozing guts onto the pebble-like plaster. What should he do? Wouldn’t Rachid have heard the bullets?

He rolled the stocky corpse over and slid out the machine gun, sticky with blood.

Bernard pulled off the man’s black mask. He saw the stubbled slack] aw and vacancy of death. For the first time in Bernard’s life, he felt no fear at death. A curious relief flooded him.

And then Bernard decided. He would no doubt join little André, who had beckoned him at night for so long. But first he would save the children, since he hadn’t been able to save his brother.

He would make up for the past.

Bernard unzipped and removed the terrorist’s jumpsuit, a laborious process, rolling down the sleeves, then shimmying the cloth over shoulders and thick, lifeless hips. Then the heavy boots, which he wiped off, then put on. He put on the ski mask. In the zippered side pocket he found a fresh bullet cartridge.

By the time he trailed down two flights of stairs wearing the black mask, his fingers had clamped rock steady on the trigger. He liked the way the solid curve molded to his finger. A creaking on the narrow landing caused him to stop.

Light from a wall sconce illuminated a trail of greasy fingerprints. Wedged under the metal-railed staircase, almost unotice-able, was the outline of a small door. He tiptoed across the floor, cocked his ear to the door, and listened. From time to time, he heard childlike whispers and strident beeping.

“Stay calm, I’m a friend,” he said, opening the door slowly. A figure crouched behind cleansers and dust mops. “Let me help you, little boy.”

“My name’s Simone,” said a glaring little face. She emerged slowly, holding a cell phone and cradling a worn brown-furred teddy bear in her arms. “This game is boring,” she coughed and choked back sniffles. “I want to go home!”

Bernard knelt down, stiff and awkward in the jumpsuit, his arms full with the gun. “So do I,” he said.

“You’re not allowed to!” she said wiping her runny nose with her sleeve.

“My name’s Bernard.”

“You’re the bad man.”

“Let me explain—” he began.

“Where’s my maman?” she lisped.

Was this the woman upstairs? “Tell me what she looks like.”

“You pushed her,” Simone said, her voice climbing higher. “I saw you. Not fair. Everyone knows you’re not supposed to push people.”

“But it wasn’t me.”

“Liar!”

As Bernard reached to brace himself, Simone shut the door on his fingers. He lurched in pain, pulled his hand out, and stumbled backward. With a sharp crack his head hit the railing and he crumpled. The machine gun slid from his grasp, and the cartridge round clattered from his pocket onto the parquetry.

Crouched on her knees, Simone peered out of the door. The bad man looked asleep. She’d hurt him. Good—that would teach him not to push people! Rules were rules, but sometimes you had to learn the hard way, like Papa said, give people doses of medicine…. What had he said? Anyway, something like that.

Her stomach growled, and it was too hot in that closet. Time to find her maman and a buttered tartine. She’d won over the bad man. They could go home now.

Just in case no one believed her she lifted the gun. So heavy and ugly. Too bad; it would never fit in her Tintin bookbag. She slung the strap over her shoulder but the gun scraped the floor. Looping it three times around her neck did the trick. She picked up the smooth black cartridge filled with bullets and shoved it in the empty gun slot, like they did on the télé. She sighed. So heavy, and what a lot to carry!

And teddy bear, he didn’t like all this bumping. She stuck him between the gun straps and hoped he wouldn’t mind such tight quarters. After taking the stairs one at a time and holding the rail with her free hand, she remembered the phone and trudged back. Teddy would get cross with all this to-ing and fro-ing. She grabbed the phone from the metal mop pail in the closet and a green light flashed. Maybe it worked now. She hit the button Maman had showed her, the one with the big letter she couldn’t remember.

AIMÉE’s NEW cell phone, connected to her previous number, rang. Even though she’d told Yves to get lost, she hoped it might be him. Get ahold of yourself. No time to be waylaid by visions of Yves’s sideburns.

“Aimée Leduc speaking,” she said, making her tone businesslike.

“A flic’s picking you up!” Sardou barked. “Get over here now!”

She started to speak, but a siren announced a motorcycle policeman outside the café.

When she arrived at the temporary headquarters, Sardou looked ready to spit bullets.

“Simone will only talk with you,” he said thrusting the cell phone at her.

Aimée took a deep breath.

“Simone?” Aimée said, her knuckles white as she clutched the phone.

“Tell everybody I won, Aimie,” the tired child’s voice said.

Something clacked in the background, heavy and metallic sounding. A brief series of clicks, and Aimée realized that Sardou was monitoring the call. What a primitive tracing system these flics had—René’ would laugh, but this wasn’t funny.

“You can talk to me, Simone, I’m a policeman and want to help you,” Sardou said.

“That’s what the bad man told me,” Simone said, sounding more tired. “But I took care of him. So stop talking.”

“Simone, tell me what’s happened, okay?” Aimée coaxed, keeping her voice light. “Just a little. You’ll tell me more over hot chocolate in the café, eh?”

Simone yawned. Sardou kept silent.

“Aha, you must be the Orangina type, eh?” Aimée giggled, hoping her giggle sounded real.

“Do I get a grande Orangina even though Maman says I get a stomachache from cold drinks?”

“How about a double?” Aimée asked.

“I put a bad man to sleep and took his gun,” Simone said.

“Where are you?” Sardou interrupted.

“But Aimée,” Simone sobbed, tears caught in her throat. “Where’s Maman?”

“Look Simone, my name is Sardou. I can help—”

“You’re with the bad man, I know,” Simone said. She hung up with a loud click.

Here was four-year-old Simone wandering around with a gun, and Sardou had pissed her off! And no contact from Anaïs. Aimée shuddered, she pushed possible scenarios from her mind.

Sardou muttered over the buzzing line. Her hands tensed around the phone. She must remain calm and collected. She took a deep breath.

“Sardou, when I hit the Return Call button, let me do the talking. Don’t you agree it’s called for in this situation?”

That sounded diplomatic, she thought. For what seemed a minute all she heard was the buzz and click of the other line. Sardou must be conferring with others.

“Make sure she gets Rachid by the window,” he finally said.

Flustered, Aimée measured her words. “How do you propose a little girl would do that? Rachid isn’t stupid.”

“Sounds like she got rid of one terrorist.”

Sardou could have a point.

“Would a courtyard window suffice?”

“Facing south,” Minister Guittard said, cutting in on the line.

She punched the Return Call button on her cell phone. A recording came on: “The party is unable to answer your call momentarily or has stepped out of range. France Telecom thanks you for your patience and requests you try again momentarily.”

Great.

“She trusted me, Sardou; you blew it,” Aimée said. Sardou and Guittard’s conversation had wasted time and proved useless. Until Simone answered they hovered in a holding pattern.

“Call again. Keep trying, Mademoiselle Leduc,” Guittard said and hung up.

She’d pretty much figured that out.

And then she looked at her new cell phone with the battery … her dead Tintin watch … her mind raced. When she’d dropped the proposal off at the EDF site, the manager had warned her to turn off her cell phone since the electromagnetic rays from the HERF generator interfered with systems. Flattened them, he’d said. The electromagnetic fields were quite high due to all the unshielded equipment and the heavy iron reinforcement in the station walls. No reason it couldn’t do so now.

“Sardou,” she said, her voice certain and calm. “I know how to dismantle the bomb without touching the computer.”

BERNARD AIMED for the staircase, which tilted dizzily as he crawled toward it. His hand throbbed. Where had the little girl gone? Where was the gun?

The terrorist’s overalls clung to him. He shivered. If he could just get downstairs he’d pretend to be the other terrorist, wounded and unable to talk. He’d get Rachid by the window. With that thought, Bernard almost tumbled down the stairs headfirst.

And then the sun blazed for a brief moment as the clouds parted. Bernard smiled. The sun at last. He heard a zinging crack as a fine tinkle of windowglass powdered him. And then Bernard felt warmth on his face. The wonderful warmth, the heat from his childhood. Everything danced before him; his nounou, the slim grinning mother he knew as a child, his papa driving a jeep. Little teething Andre beckoned, and Bernard joined him.

RENÉ WALKED into the command center with a small shopping bag. He set the bag down and started pulling items out.

“Everything’s here,” he said, strapping on the Walkman-size HERF generator in his waist bag. With the power emanating from this he could knock out communications systems in the surrounding buildings.

Aimée helped adjust the antenna up his left sleeve so he could easily slide it out.

“From Simone’s conversation, we know one of the terrorists was knocked out,” Aimée said. “René resembles a child from this distance. If the doors Berge entered are closed, René can go to the window. Aiming the HERF gun at the device controlling the bomb, he shoots high-energy radio frequencies. He interferes with the detonation device, defusing the—”

Aimée never finished.

Sardou and every man wearing headsets rushed to the window.

“Green light,” someone muttered.

She saw a black-suited tactics team pause at the door, simultaneously heard the crack of rifles.

“Don’t do it!” she yelled. “The building will blow up.”

“They’ve got three to five seconds before the reaction time sets in,” Sardou muttered. “They better make it count.”

In stunned disbelief she watched the team enter the building. No explosion. More cracks from the rifles. She could see bullet holes pepper and shatter the glass.

Aimée gasped, “Please God keep the children and Anaïs away from the windows! What happened?” she asked, turning to Sardou.

“Three minutes ago Rachid agreed to the demands,” Sardou said. “We recorded him dismantling the wires. Your plan was backup.”

“Then why shoot him?”

Aimée’s knuckles whitened as her fingers clutched the win-dowsill; she still braced herself for an explosion.

“We’d taken out the other one,” Sardou said. “RAID doesn’t like taking prisoners.”

Sixteen children with their teacher and a shaking Anaïs holding Simone were led out through the courtyard. Relief flooded Aimée until she remembered.

“What about Bernard Berge?”

Aimée’s answer came as three bodies were rolled out into the cobbled courtyard: one burly man in his underwear, and two men in black jumpsuits.

Three terrorists?

The tactics team stripped off the ski masks of the other two.

One was a bearded man, a small black hole over his cranial vault. Dead instantly, she figured. A surgical shot to the skull, which wouldn’t have affected his nervous system and prevented him from tripping the wire. Bernard was the other, in a stained jumpsuit. A dark red spot, like a third eye, dripped down his forehead. His features were relaxed, and he looked at peace. Aimée felt the oddest sensation, as if Bernard’s soul fluttered on wings above the cobbled courtyard and toward the weak sun.

“Nom de Dieu!” Sardou snorted, looking at Berge. “Berge will go from sinner to saint all in one day!”

“Berge was expendable, wasn’t he?” she said, angry. “Guittard always planned to shovel him in the dirt, one way or the other.”

Sardou’s eyes glazed. He turned and walked into the courtyard. As the stretcher lifted Bernard’s corpse, Aimée whispered a prayer. Poor Bernard had been terrorist fodder.

Outside, Guittard was holding a press conference, so jammed with media that she and René had to wait near the SAMU vans where tearful relieved parents were hugging their children. Mar-tine had arrived, joining Simone, and was helping Anaïs to a temporary first-aid station at the rear of a fire truck.

Disheveled, Anaïs sat on the truck’s fender, her wounds receiving attention.

“We were going to dismantle the system, Anaïs,” Aimée said. “We’d figured it out.”

“I knew you could, why didn’t you?” Anaïs said, her blond hair matted to her scratched and swollen face. “My suit’s mined.”

Aimée saw Kaseem Nwar. He stood smiling, rocking on his heels, as Philippe hugged Simone.

And then Aimée knew.

Everything fit together. Philippe had made a deal with the grinning devil. Seething inside, she stared at Kaseem Nwar, who bent down and patted Simone’s head.

“Philippe gave in to Kaseem,” Aimée said, turning to wide-eyed Martine and Anaïs. “He funded the mission, didn’t he?”

Anaïs shrugged, then winced with pain as a paramedic swabbed her face.

Aimée shook with fury. For the second time she’d been about to save Philippe’s family but he’d dealt with the devil. The smiling devil who sold out his own brother, Hamid.

“The DNS knew the terrorist defused the bomb,” she said. “But they killed them anyway, even Bernard.”

Anaïs bit her lip as the paramedic treated her.

“What do you mean?”

“Kaseem held you and your daughter hostage until Philippe caved in,” she said.

Anger flashed in Anaïs’s eyes. Then she softened as she looked at Simone and her husband. “I didn’t know it was Kaseem, Aimée. I’m sorry. I just wanted you to find out who was blackmailing Philippe.”

“Maybe you could have helped me more, Anaïs.”

Aimée strode over to Kaseem and Philippe. Philippe ignored her, holding Simone tightly.

“I owe you an Orangina, Simone,” she said, keeping her voice even.

Simone nodded, her eyes serious. “A big one.”

“Let’s take Maman home, Simone,” Philippe said.

He didn’t look Aimée in the eye.

Simone pulled her father’s hand.

“It’s not over, Philippe,” Aimée said, through her clenched teeth. “I’m seeing to that.”

But Philippe and Simone threaded their way past the emergency crew toward Anaïs. Philippe enveloped Anaïs in his arms. For a moment the de Froissarts huddled. Then Philippe led them to the debriefing area.

“Let things go, Mademoiselle Leduc,” Kaseem said.

“You risked little children,” she said. “Before that you tried to have me killed at the cirque. You sabotaged the AFL and your own brother Hamid’s cause!”

Kaseem shook his head. “No one believed in him anyway.”

Aimée felt pity for poor Hamid, starving himself for a cause to help immigrants. The irony being that Kaseem, his brother, supplied arms and assisted the massacres the immigrants had tried to avoid.

“The ‘ST196’photos—”

“Tell nothing,” Kaseem interrupted. “They’re just photos.”

Aimée shuddered. His cruel arrogance unnerved her.

“Piles of bodies in the desert,” he said. “So what. That’s been happening for years. Since the eighties. No one cares about Algerian infighting.”

“There’s a difference when surplus French weapons are responsible and French taxpayers foot the bill,” she said. “At least, the French might think so.”

Kaseem buttoned his wool coat; he snapped his fingers at a man leaning against a car. “The ministers turn a blind eye. So should you. You know, I enjoyed being with you. We could—”

“This whole thing was a hoax,” Aimée interrupted. “Sylvie discovered what ‘ST 196’ meant so you killed her, meanwhile Philippe cut the funding. Philippe hid Anaïs, so you used your brother Hamid. You engineered a hostage situation blaming the AFL. All this to pressure Philippe so he’d give in, fund the mission because his daughter was inside. Then Anaïs checked herself out of the clinic, a bonus for you. And no one would know. No one would put it together. But I did.”

“I’ll take that for a no to dinner.” Kaseem smiled and didn’t blink once. “Theorize all you want. You can’t prove it.”

Powerless, she wanted to nail him there on the spot. His patronizing smile got to her.

“You’re a wannabe general, aren’t you, playing with the big military boys,” she said. “As long as you supply the weapons, you get to play. Without toys from Philippe’s funding you’re just a maghour holding up the dusty wall!”

His eyes flashed.

She knew she’d hit home.

“Say what you like,” he said. “I’ve got what I want.”

And then he was gone.

The cobbles glistened below her, slick and gummy, as the panier á saktde, the van to carry out the dead, pulled up. Kaseem was right, and he made her sick. The bad guys had won. And she’d thought she could stop them.

As they loaded Bernard’s corpse onto the stretcher, she whispered a prayer.

There had to be some way to get Kaseem. Discredit him.

By the time Martine had joined her, she’d figured out a way.

“Kaseem’s not your favorite, I see,” Martine said. “What are you going to do about him?”

“Make him very uncomfortable,” she said. “With your help I can do some damage.”

“How?”

“Let’s go back to your office for a start,” Aimée said. “I’ll fill you in on the way.”

“Not if this involves Anaïs,” Martine said.

“Don’t worry,” Aimée said, pulling out her laptop. “The big fish will get caught, hook, line, and sinker. Not only that, you’ll sell more papers with my insider report. I’ve got the negatives to prove it.”

“Point me to the newsroom,” Martine said, flipping open her cell phone. “I’ve got a firsthand hostage report to write.”