Даниэла Стил - Turning Point

The atmosphere was warm and friendly, and Paul had fun playing with her sons. He was as big a child as they were playing video games. The Team of Eight was there, Gabriel had skipped Sunday dinner with his children to be there, and Bruno Perliot was happy in their midst. He helped Marie-Laure in the kitchen, mostly as an excuse to be with her. She was wearing tight jeans and high heels, and a white sweater that showed off her figure. She looked younger and much less serious than she did in the office, and Bruno was bowled over when he saw her. Everyone was in good spirits. Gabriel, Paul, and Bill had brought the wine, Stephanie and Wendy had brought dessert from Lenôtre, and Tom and Valérie brought the box of chocolates they had bought at Le Bon Marché the day before. Bruno had brought her an enormous bouquet of red roses.

Marie-Laure had fed the boys before the guests came and she put a movie on the TV in her bedroom for them after they roughhoused with Paul for a while and she introduced them to everyone. The children were a lively bunch, but they shook hands with everyone politely before they disappeared into her bedroom to watch the movie. Bruno could easily imagine how busy they kept her, as he remembered his own three boys when they were young. They’d been a handful for two parents, not just one. And Marie-Laure had said before that their father hardly ever saw them. He had taken a job at a hotel in Morocco and rarely came to Paris, only about once a year, and he had no time to have them visit him, so she managed on her own.

She had bought several roast chickens, and made pasta. There was bread and cheese and wine, and a casserole she had made. The food was plentiful and simple, less sophisticated than Valérie’s hachis parmentier, but everyone had second helpings and the conversation was lively. Bill and Bruno spent some time talking while Bill told him about the hospital where he worked, and the problems they had with the gangs, which wasn’t a phenomenon they encountered in Paris. But they had other problems. At regular intervals, Bruno went to check on Marie-Laure to see what he could do to help her.

Stephanie and Gabriel were glued to each other for most of the evening, and Wendy, Valérie, and Marie-Laure were worried about her. She had gotten very deep into the relationship, and they had each warned her of the dangers with married men in France who never got divorced. She would be giving up a marriage and radically relocating her career, and bringing two children with her, if she moved to France for him, as they both said she was going to. And custody of the boys might be complicated if Andy opposed their moving to France.

“Think it through carefully,” Valérie warned her, as they put the cakes and pastries on platters. None of them wanted her to get hurt, or to dive into it blindly.

“I haven’t said anything to my husband yet,” she admitted. “I’m not going to until after Gabriel leaves San Francisco. I don’t want any major drama while he’s there.” Valérie told her she thought it was a good decision. No one commented on the aura of intimacy between her and Tom. They were both single adults with no kids, and no commitment to anyone else, which was very different from Gabriel and Stephanie’s situation, with spouses on both sides, two little boys on hers, Gabriel’s four children and however they would react to it even though they were older, and Stephanie’s medical career and all that practicing in France would entail. They were playing Russian roulette and inevitably someone would get hurt, even if only the spouses they were leaving. There was the potential for some real damage there, although they both seemed to be in denial about it. In Tom and Valérie’s case they were free agents and the only people involved, with no great risks, although they had careers six thousand miles apart.

Paul and Wendy spent a long time talking that night about Doctors Without Borders, and it was obvious how much Paul had loved his time with them. Wendy found the stories fascinating. Bruno only had eyes for Marie-Laure that night, although he was very polite and talked to everyone, but it was obvious that she was the reason he had come.

The evening ended at midnight. They all had to work the next day. Bruno carried the two youngest boys to their beds for Marie-Laure before he left. Tom went home with Valérie. He was staying with her for the rest of the week. That afternoon he had invited her to stay with him in Oakland when she came to San Francisco, and she accepted. He warned her that the apartment was a little beaten up and not what she was used to, but she decided to take her chances. She liked the idea of being at his home with him for the month.

Their three weeks in Paris had brought all of them together with the speed and intensity of shipboard romances. Strong friendships had been formed, great passions and deep affections. Most of them hadn’t known each other three weeks before, and now they were either lovers or fast friends. And surviving a tragedy together had forged memories and bonds they would never forget.

Chapter Twelve

Everyone was in good spirits the day after Marie-Laure’s dinner party. It was two weeks after the school shooting, all the victims had been buried, and the press had finally shifted their focus to other things, although the city and the world would never forget.

There were administrative meetings at the COZ that morning, and a new training film for hostage situations that they wanted to evaluate. But it looked like it was going to be an easy day, until eleven o’clock that morning, when Bruno called Marie-Laure on her cellphone and told her that there was a hostage situation in another school. It was exactly what they’d been afraid of, a copycat situation inspired by the first one. He told her the school and the address. The CRS and the SWAT teams were already on their way.

She reported it to the others, and two minutes later they were out the door and in the van. The school was in the fifteenth arrondissement, in an ordinary neighborhood, part commercial and part residential. All eight of them looked grim, thinking of the losses of two weeks ago, and now it was happening again. The wounds of the first one were still fresh.

They left the van a block away, walked to the scene, and stopped at a cluster of police who told them that Captain Perliot was waiting for them in the bus he used as a command post. Marie-Laure knew now that it was armored, and the windows were bulletproof. Bruno was somber as they hurried up the steps into the bus.

“We got a call telling us it was happening, and the phone lines are cut in the school. No one has heard gunshots, and we haven’t been contacted again by the hostage taker. He said he has a bomb and he’ll blow up the school if we go in. We don’t have enough information yet to risk it.” He was dreading another slaughter like two weeks before. They had brought even more troops this time. The street was already filling with ambulances and rescue vehicles when a call came in, patched through from the central police line. The caller sounded young and cocky, and Bill had the odd impression that he was drunk.

“Nice response, guys. I’m impressed. You had everybody out there in nine minutes. The kids are all okay. They’re having a dance party in the gym. I scared the shit out of the teachers, but no one got hurt. I used to go to school here. The teachers are all jerks.” And with that, he laughed and hung up. Someone waved from a window they believed to be in the gym, and suddenly they could hear music blaring as the face disappeared. Bruno looked like he was about to kill someone.

He sent the SWAT teams in with orders to hold their fire until they saw evidence of weapons or a shooter aiming at them, and then shoot to kill. In less than a minute, the building was swarming with police, the riot squad, and SWAT teams, as all the children and teachers were brought out unharmed, looking mystified. They had no knowledge of what had gone on, except that someone had announced over the PA system that there was no school today, and there was a dance party in the gym. And they’d discovered the phone lines were down. Loud music had gone on, there had been no evidence of guns or bombs. There were no hostages, and no one was harmed.