Cara Black - Murder in Belleville

“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.