Cara Black - Murder in Belleville

“ 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.