Syndrome E

48

Looking disheveled, Martin Leclerc paced nervously across his living room. He held the photo of Lucie with the tips of his fingers.

“God dammit, Shark! What the hell possessed you to go messing with the Legion?”

Sharko was seated on the couch, his head in his hands. The world was coming down around him and his chest felt like it was being crushed. He was suffering for the woman he’d sent straight into the danger zone.

“I don’t know. I wanted—I wanted to draw them out. Stir things up a bit.”

“Well, you succeeded.”

Leclerc also put his hands to his head, his eyes looking at the ceiling. He sighed loudly.

“You know you never get anywhere with just a hunch, especially against guys like that! Proof! We needed proof!”

“What proof? You tell me!”

Desperate, angry, Sharko jumped up and stood in front of his boss.

“You know as well as I do that Colonel Chastel is mixed up in this affair. Begin legal proceedings against him. Mohamed Abane wanted to join the Legion; we find him buried with four other unidentified bodies. It could stick with a judge if you put your weight behind it. A cop’s life is at stake!”

“Why Henebelle? What do they have against her?”

Sharko clenched his jaws. Every second of every minute, he had not stopped thinking of that blonde with her delicate build. And perhaps because of him, she was now going to suffer the torments he himself had known in the Egyptian desert. The torture…

“They want to use her as a bargaining chip. In exchange for information about Syndrome E that I don’t even have. I was bluffing.”

Leclerc shook his head, jaw tight.

“And you’re telling me this Chastel was stupid enough to openly come after you and give himself away so easily? Wasn’t he afraid we’d have a team waiting if he sent people to your place?”

Sharko looked his boss and friend deep in the eyes.

“I killed a man in Egypt, Martin. It was self-defense, but I couldn’t tell anyone. They had me in the crosshairs, and that Noureddine wouldn’t have missed. I gave Chastel the coordinates of where to find his body. He’s got me the same way I’ve got him. It’s our balance of terror.”

Martin Leclerc stood there a moment with his mouth open. Then he turned toward the bar to pour himself a whiskey, half of which he emptied in one gulp.

“Fuck me…”

A long silence.

“Who was it? Who did you kill?”

Sharko’s eyes fogged up. In nearly thirty years, Leclerc had never seen him like this. A guy who had hit the wall, completely drained.

“The brother of the cop who was looking into the murdered girls. He was one of their sentinels. He’d cut his own brother’s throat, and he was this close to finishing me off. I killed him by—by accident.”

Leclerc’s face was a mix of disgust and anger.

“Can the Egyptians trace it to you?”

“First they’d have to find him. And even if they did, nothing connects me to Abd el-Aal.”

The head of Violent Crimes emptied his glass. He grimaced and rubbed his mouth with the palm of his hand. Sharko stood behind him, his shoulders drooping under his rumpled jacket.

“I’m ready to come clean and pay for all my fuckups. But before that, Martin, help me. You’re my friend. I’m begging you.”

Sharko was lost, in a daze. Leclerc walked up to a framed photo sitting on a table in the living room: he and his wife, on a seawall overlooking the ocean. He picked it up and stared at it for a long time.

“I’m about to lose her because I tried to do the right thing, come what may. I thought my job was the most important thing in my life, but I was wrong. What’s that cop done to you to get you so worked up about her?”

“Are you going to help me?”

Leclerc sighed, then took a brown envelope from a drawer. He handed it to Sharko. On the paper was written “Attention: Director, Criminal Investigations Division.”

“You hold on to my resignation for now. I’ll take it back when this is all over. And you take back your photo and everything you’ve said. You were never here tonight. You never told me anything.”

Sharko took the envelope and gripped his friend’s hand with his heavy mitt.