Franck Thilliez - Syndrome E

“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.

The stranger sitting next to Lucie finally removed his shades and stashed them in the glove compartment, along with the revolver.

“I don’t mean you any harm. Please forgive my rather rude manners, but I needed you to come quietly.”

Keeping her eyes on the road, she managed a glance at her companion. His eyes were a deep blue, protected by bushy gray eyebrows.

“Who are you?”

“Keep driving. We’ll talk later.”

The names of towns paraded by: Terrebonne, Mascouche, Rawdon. The areas they traveled through became less and less populated. They followed an interminably straight road, thickly surrounded by maples and conifers as far as the eye could see. Only rarely did their path cross a truck or car. Night was falling. Now and again they saw points of light in the distance, boats that must have been navigating the rivers and lakes. They had driven about sixty miles when the man told her to turn onto a path. The headlights lit the massive bases of tree trunks. Lucie felt she was on the edge of the abyss; she had seen only two or three houses in the past half hour.

A cabin emerged from the darkness. When the cop stepped onto the ground, feeling feverish, she heard the furious roar of a waterfall. The cool wind lifted her hair. The man waited a few moments, his eyes staring toward the shadows—shadows that were deeper here than anywhere else. He unlocked the cabin door. Lucie went in. The inside of the house smelled like cooked game. A woodstove with two burners squatted at the back of the room before a large bay window that looked out on the lilting sparkles the moon made on the surface of the great lake. In a corner were fishing rods, an old archery bow, woodsman’s saws, as well as wooden molds next to little maple sugar figurines.

Puffing a bit, the man laid his gun on the table and removed his cap, revealing a sparse shock of salt-and-pepper hair. He looked even older and thinner with his jacket off. Just a tired, worn-out man.

“This is the only place where we can talk freely and safely.”

He had abandoned his American accent and now spoke like a Quebecer. Lucie suddenly realized she knew that voice.

“You’re the man I spoke to on the phone when I called from Vlad Szpilman’s cell.”

“Yes. My name’s Philip Rotenberg.”

American accent once more. A true sonic chameleon.

“How—?”

“Did I find you? I have a highly placed and extremely reliable source at the Sûreté. He got in touch the moment he got wind of your request for a letter rogatory. A young French cop who wants to poke around the national archives in Montreal—I immediately made the link with the phone call from a few days ago. I knew when you were coming in and where you’d be staying. I’ve been following you since yesterday. I now believe I can trust you.”

Rotenberg noticed that Lucie looked like she was feeling faint. He moved toward her and helped her to a sofa.

“May I have some water, please,” she said. “I haven’t had anything to drink or much to eat. And it hasn’t exactly been a restful day.”

“Oh, of course. My apologies.”

He walked swiftly to the kitchen and came back with some sausage, bread, water, and two beers. Lucie downed several glasses of water and some sausage slices before feeling a bit more like herself. Rotenberg had uncapped a beer, which he looked at intently, his hands around the small bottle.

“First of all, you need to know who I am. For a long time I worked in a law firm specializing in the defense of civil liberties in Washington, with the great lawyer Joseph Rauth. Does that name mean anything to you?”

Washington… Where Jacques Lacombe had lived.

“Not a thing.”

“Then you know even less than I thought.”

“I’m here in Canada to get answers. To try to… figure out why someone would kill to get their hands on a fifty-year-old movie.”

He took a deep breath.

“You want to know why? Because everything is contained in that film, Lucie Henebelle. Because within it is hidden the proof of the existence of a covert CIA program, which used unfortunate guinea pigs to pursue its experiments. This phantom program, the very existence of which remains unknown even to this day, was developed alongside Project MK-Ultra.”

Lucie ran a hand through her hair, brushing it back. MK-Ultra … She had glimpsed that word in Szpilman’s library, amid his books on espionage.

“I’m sorry, but… I’m completely lost.”

“If that’s true, there’s a lot I have to tell you.”

Philip Rotenberg walked toward the stove and shoved in a few more logs.

“Even in July, the nights are cool in the northern forests.”