by Todd Babiak
He was hugging her again. Kruse told Anouk he loved her and she whispered in his ear that she loved him.
“I’ll protect you.”
“Why are they doing this?”
“Because they’re scared, Anouk.”
“What are they scared of?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“I’m scared of him.”
Lucien clapped his hands. “This is all very touching. Now: Monsieur Kruse. Stand up.”
A final kiss on her salty, soft cheek, and he stood.
“Surrender your weapons.”
He pulled the knife from his back pocket, tossed it on the rug.
“Joseph, pull yourself together and take the girl away from him. Now. The two of you, sit.”
Kruse untucked his shirt. With the bloodless side he wiped the tears and the snot from her face and told her she was going away now, with her mom. Back home.
Joseph laughed.
Lucien walked around his table of silver instruments, his hands folded before him like a professor at the beginning of a lecture. He addressed Anouk. “We’re here to bargain, little girl.”
“There’s no bargain,” said Kruse. “They give nothing.”
“You’ve seen how I like to work.” Lucien pulled an instrument from his tray and approached Annette with it. “There would, no doubt, be some pleasure in watching her punished. Even for you. It lives in all of us. We can’t look away.”
“Why should you punish her, Lucien? Punish her for what?”
Annette looked up at her hands and swung, softly.
“No one is innocent.”
“My daughter was innocent. Anouk is innocent.”
Joseph gave up on Anouk and crossed the room, sat back in his chair. He spoke in English. “Just get on with it, Lucien, you fucking lunatic.”
Lucien looked over at his brother, then back at Kruse. “It’s you or it’s this lovely woman.”
Kruse knelt to whisper in Anouk’s ear but there was nothing to say.
“Maman!”
The girl squeezed his hand with both of hers now, hung from it.
“Christopher, who did you tell?” Joseph put his palms together.
“Oh shut up,” said Lucien.
“It never ends. It’s a virus. The maniac will be chopping people up for years.”
Lucien spun the tool he had taken, a scalpel. “I thought I’d take her eyelids first, so she doesn’t miss a thing.”
Anouk screamed. Annette whispered a prayer.
“Cut her down.”
“And? And?”
“Take me.”
“Oh splendid choice! Joseph, tie his hands.”
Joseph sighed and said, “Jesus Christ almighty,” and stood up with his rope. “Is the gendarme dead?”
“Of course he’s dead,” said Lucien.
There were heavy footsteps outside the door, men’s voices. The stirred fire had a familiar odour about it: grape wood. The night Lily died had smelled of this. Kruse pulled his daughter’s blood and soil out of his pockets and kissed his hands. Joseph tied them behind his back. “It was an accident. You must know that.”
Lucien addressed himself to Annette’s wrists, almost giddily.
Annette stepped out of her leg binds and ran across the room to Anouk. They hugged and wept, both of them, and then Anouk told her to get dressed. Annette fastened a skirt into place, first, and turned around to put on her bra and step into her panties.
Joseph untied and restarted Kruse’s knot. “You heard of flunitrazepam? A marvellous drug. He was drinking Badoit, making such lovely, sincere eye contact with me. I told him I was in shipping. Then, when the drug kicked in, Monsieur de Musset was happy to drink wine. He was happy to do anything.”
“You phoned your contacts in the Gendarmerie nationale.”
“I phoned my contact in Paris, who phoned someone else. It was all very innocent, Christopher, I promise. A racist gets a drunk-driving conviction and his political career is over and everyone is happy.”
“An innocent man is ruined.”
“That depends on your politics and sense of history. My father put the family business on hold to kill Nazis. If he and others like him hadn’t, where would we be today?”
“Jean-François was hardly a Nazi.”
“I put him in a car and told him his wife needed him. He had a lot of women—am I right?—but he did love his wife, deeply. It would have destroyed his political career but not his baking career. It would have weakened a fascist political party.”
“Endeared you to your clients and partners: the government-in-waiting.”
“It’s an easy choice, for me, between Philippe Pétain and Charles de Gaulle.”
“This is different. Jean-François was—”
“All right, all right, all right. Christopher, I mean this: it was the worst night of my life. When I learned the bastard had killed a little girl … there will never be another day I don’t think of it and tear at myself—metaphorically speaking, not really tearing.” Joseph stepped away and walked around, faced him. “All right. You’re done.”
“Hurry up,” said Lucien.
“Who knows what you know? The gendarme, but he’s dead. Anyone else?”
“No.”
Joseph pointed at Annette and Anouk. Both of them were looking out the window now, into the market. Annette held her hand and whispered to her.
“I didn’t let the lunatic torture Evelyn. I made him kill her quicker than he wanted. And she had cuckolded you. That’s no kind of wife. This one over there, now that’s a woman. You know what? She didn’t even complain. Her hands were up there for … what Lucien? Four hours?”
Instead of responding with words, Lucien walked across the room and did a little hop and kicked Kruse in the stomach. Kruse went down on his knees and stood back up, and Lucien slapped him in the face. Then he did it again, with the back of his hand. Blood from the gunshot wound had transferred to the back of Lucien’s hand and he wiped it on Kruse’s shirt. Then he grasped Kruse’s shoulder with his left hand and punched him in the face, twice, the eye and the mouth. The wound on his forehead opened up. After the first kick, Kruse had refused to fall again. Lucien looked in his eyes and Kruse watched him watching. He watched himself, bleeding some more, from his mouth and his forehead, his ear, his right cheekbone. His arm throbbed.
“I’m going to kill you, very slowly, and then I’m going to kill her somewhat less slowly.” He spoke English, softly enough that Annette would not hear. “The girl will watch but we won’t kill her. We’re not barbarians.”
Lucien punched Kruse one last time, in the nose. Broken again. He blinked through the blood in his eyes and staggered and more dripped from his chin now.
“Lord,” said Joseph. “What a mess.”
“You’re familiar with the English phrase ‘hanging, drawing, and quartering’?” Lucien backed away, like a lecturer. “The word ‘drawing,’ I had always thought, referred to the drawing out of entrails—which is an important part of what we’ll do this morning, together. But it’s actually drawing the prisoner to the place of execution, through the streets, as a warning to others, publicity. Did you know that? Like I said when we first met: on an occasion like this, if torture is not a deterrent, what is it? Immoral entertainment. Of course, I have no trouble with singularity of purpose. What does art do, really?”
Lucien stood up on the chair and, with his left hand, fussed with the rope. He knotted it into a noose and continued in French. “We don’t have a horse and obviously this space is too small to drag you around. So we’ll go straight to the hanging. First I’ll cut your clothes off or Joseph will. Unless your girlfriend …”
“Girlfriend.” Annette cleared her throat and ordered Anouk to continue looking out the window, to look out the window no matter what. Annette picked up the knife Kruse had dropped, the knife he had taken from the agent in the hall, and gently cut off his jacket and his shirt. She looked in his eyes when she wasn’t at work. Ther
e was pity in her face and disgust, more. She transferred the knife to his empty hand.
“Remove his pants. And come on. Take the knife back. Throw it up here, you scamp.”
Annette slowly unfastened his belt, his buttons. She lowered his pants to the ground and went down on one knee and removed them leg by leg. She took off his socks and looked up, took the knife and lobbed it toward Lucien.
He couldn’t take any breath in through his nose. “I am sorry, Annette.”
There were tears in her eyes. He knew it would be difficult to look at him now, with a hood of blood over his face. “You came for us, even though you knew …”
“Enough,” said Lucien. “Pull them down.”
Annette slid her fingers into the band of his underwear and squeezed him with her soft hands all the way down. Kruse stepped out of them and looked away from her.
“Christopher: this is not what I want.” Joseph lifted his glass. “To you!”
“Please, can we go? Just wait in the hall?” Annette put her hand out for Anouk and called her. She ran to it. Her eyes were already sick.
“No,” said Lucien.
“Yes,” said Joseph. “Wait in the anteroom. Some men have arrived, I think. You don’t have to watch this.”
“It is like having Wagner himself in the parlour, conducting. You’ll never have an opportunity to see anything like this again, Madame Laferrière. Not that you have much time left for banal entertainments. Onward!”
Annette kissed Kruse on the bloody lips. He tried to hide his nakedness from Anouk, who hugged his leg and said nothing more. Joseph stood up and opened the door to the ruin of the white room, where two guards now stood among the four on the ground. One of the new men appeared wounded.
Yves.
“Watch them for a moment, please, gentlemen.” Joseph took a step into the anteroom. “Where is everyone else?”
There was some mumbling. Joseph escorted Annette and Anouk. The mother and daughter looked back at him as Joseph spoke quietly with his employees. Anouk blew three quick kisses.
“All right, brother.” Joseph returned and closed the door behind him. “Work your magic.”
“Art,” said Lucien.
Joseph pushed him along. “Just do the thing.”
“Was it surprising to you, Monsieur Kruse, to learn you had been cuckolded? It was Monsieur Laflamme’s idea, thinking you might just abandon your wife to us.”
“Us?”
“We have legislative elections in the spring, you see, and not long to prepare for the presidential race.” He turned to Joseph. “But he’s right. It is queer to say ‘us.’ We.”
“A profitable partnership.”
“Joseph didn’t let me have any fun with Madame Kruse. The police were supposed to hand you over to us. Then you disappeared into … what? Our partners were nervous. But I knew you’d come. Didn’t I, Joseph? You’re a simple creature.”
Kruse considered the tray of stainless steel instruments. He had practised this many times, hundreds of times, at the survival camps. But he had not done it in ten years, longer. Fifteen. His arms were long enough, his shoulders flexible enough, or they once were. There was some reason for doing it he had long forgotten: perhaps it was for this very thing. Tzvi had been so moved by the assassinations of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics that he had studied hostage-taking, minute by minute, to be sure his own students would be prepared when the bastards came. Surely they would come.
The waltz played again. Kruse closed his eyes, waited for the right moment, made a pact with his knees. “How did you learn to tie a noose, Lucien?”
“Oh, practice.”
“It’s a fine knot.”
“Yes, you see I studied—” Lucien looked up at his fat knot, and Kruse sprang and jumped. In the air he lifted his knees and shoved his feet backwards through his hands. His feet slid across the rope. Another half centimetre and he would have tripped himself, landed on his back. Lucien opened his mouth to speak, to protest, but the bloody soil was already in the air. It sprayed the torturer in the eyes. Lucien tried to swing, tried to fight, but he was too slow. Kruse used his feet first. Then he chose a scalpel from the table, cut him, and kicked him into the wall. Lucien bled and howled and called out for his brother.
Joseph pointed a revolver at him. “Again, very impressive.”
Kruse cut the rope from his wrists. “Put the gun down.”
“That wouldn’t be a fair fight, Christopher.”
Lucien was on his hands and knees now, spitting the soil that had landed in his mouth. Blood ran onto the floor from his face and neck. “You won’t make it out of here.”
Kruse positioned himself behind Lucien, put his right arm around his neck and secured it.
“Joseph!”
The Corsican pointed his gun.
“Shoot him.”
His finger was on the trigger. Lucien growled and shoved himself backwards on top of Kruse but he couldn’t escape the blood choke. There was enough air for Lucien to speak.
“Don’t forget … who you are, Joseph.”
“Good advice, brother.”
Lucien reached up to pull Kruse’s arm, to create more space to speak. “Wait, wait. If you’re going to do this, make it beautiful. Do something …”
Kruse whispered as he tightened the blood choke. Between seven and ten seconds for unconsciousness. Half a minute would do. “I’m going to put you in a nice, clean facility.”
“Mercy,” he tried to say, and that was it.
Kruse shut off the killer’s carotid artery and watched Joseph’s face. He released Lucien at the right time and hopped to his feet. He caught the faintest glimpse of his own bloody face and his naked body in the shining tray as he passed. The music continued to play.
“How many did you walk through to get up here: five or six? They’re the best we have, you know. And I didn’t even hear you come. One last drink, together.”
“No.”
“Dulls the mind. Slows the reactions.”
Kruse bent down and made a small pile of the holy dirt that remained on the floor next to Lucien, who honked and murmured on his back. He collected it up.
“A professor. That I believed you!”
“A dad. A husband.”
“Tell yourself whatever you like, Christopher.” He aimed for Kruse’s face. “I know what you are.”
“Do it.”
There was a knock on the door. Had Joseph locked it? It would have to be the window.
Joseph caught him looking. “We’re too high. There’s nothing to climb. If you want out of here, you’ll have to walk. And there are men on the other side of that door with guns. You can’t walk out, certainly not with your ladies.”
Lucien was unusually strong. He was on his hands and knees again, buzzing and drooling. The sound rose like an old engine and grew louder. He fell on his side and crawled toward the tray, knocked it over.
“I suppose I can either shoot you or let you go.”
“Those aren’t your options, Joseph.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Put the gun away or die.”
Joseph laughed. “You are quite the fellow. Quite the fellow!” He took a drink and lurched toward the window, righted himself, looked out over the market and mumbled to himself; then he crossed the room again, said something in Corsican, and shot his brother in the back of the head. Then he dropped the gun and opened his arms, palms to the roof.
“I have some cousins who would like my job, but they’re all fairly dim.” Joseph sat back in his chair and picked up his drink, crossed one leg over the other. He loosened his tie.
“Why haven’t they come in?”
“The staff knows not to come in here.”
“Your Russians …”
“Lucien ordered them killed this morning, in case you had spoken to them. No one who works for us, none of our genuine employees, knows a thing about this. Your daughter. If not for your daughter! Sit with me a moment and think about it: y
our daughter changed France.”
“I’m taking them out of here.”
“Christopher, I am sorry but the journalist …”
“I have five copies of the story hidden in various places. Even if we don’t walk out of here, it’s going to come out. I’ve engineered it that way.”
“Have you? How clever.”
“This is about the people who hired you. Make a deal with Annette. Make the story work for you and your family. Then, whatever new line of business—”
“You were hard on us in your version?”
“Brutal.”
Joseph crossed his arms. “Well. Goddamn you.”
Kruse reached for the door handle, his arm and hand covered in blood. He looked over at Lucien one last time. Two men in suits stood in the white room, alert. A third joined them and, before the naked man with a handful of soil, painted with blood, they lifted their weapons.
“He’s one of us.” Joseph cleared his throat and said it again, and the Mediterranean men in suits repeated it to each other and looked away from Kruse, embarrassed. In Corsican, Joseph called out an order and a young man, maybe twenty, draped a white sheet around Kruse and led him into the first lamplit room with the tapestries and the dining room table covered in vegetables and herbs. Joseph followed. “The others had the misfortune of meeting your partner downstairs.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean he shot four of my men. What did you do to the good lieutenant?”
“Do to him?”
“He quit the gendarmerie for you.”
“They forced him to retire.”
“No, Christopher, they asked him to set a trap and arrest you. Instead, he quit. They promoted his partner, the young woman, Madame Boutet. He didn’t tell you?”
Annette and Anouk sat holding hands on a green couch. Drinks in crystal sat before them, on a decorative table. Anouk screamed when she saw him. Later she would tell Kruse she thought he was a ghost, a demon in a white sheet and bloody face. Her mother had told her he was dead. The dragon without a nose had killed the nice foreign man and he was here to haunt France forever.
