Paris Ransom

by Charles Rosenberg

  We said that we understood.

  For a while, there was just chit-chat about not very much. Finally, I decided to ask Oscar what everyone wanted to know. If he didn’t want to talk about it, he could always decline to answer. He’d never been a shy, retiring flower.

  “So what was it like, Oscar? What happened?” I asked. “If you don’t want to talk about it, we’ll understand.”

  “No, that’s okay. The psychologist I met with told me it’s good to talk about it.”

  “Okay, but if we press you in a way that make you uncomfortable, just say so.”

  “Well, you saw the kidnapping, or you and Robert did anyway. Right after they shoved me into the car, the two thugs in the back seat blindfolded me. And they shoved a gun in my neck and told me they would use it if I resisted.”

  “Did they speak English?”

  “Yeah, but they had what I thought were Russian accents. Not long after that—maybe ten or fifteen minutes—they pulled into a garage and put me in the trunk.”

  “Did they tie you up?”

  “No.”

  I looked around and realized that everyone was held rapt by what he was saying. On some level, I felt like a voyeur. I mean, really, it didn’t matter to us exactly what had happened. Or at least it didn’t matter a lot. But those thoughts didn’t keep me from continuing.

  “What happened then?”

  “I don’t know exactly where we went because I was either blindfolded or in the trunk. We ended up that first night and for a night or two more in a house somewhere near Paris. I know it was nearby because we drove for only about an hour after they put me in the trunk. They didn’t take my watch.” He grinned. “It really was amateur hour.”

  Robert broke in. “Did they say why they had kidnapped you?”

  “Oh yeah. Right away. Even before they put me in the trunk, they said ‘If you tell us where the book is, we’ll let you go right now.’”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “One reason was that they had just stuck a gun in my neck and for all I knew they would kill me right after I told them where it was. So it seemed as if not revealing the location of the book might be the key to staying alive.”

  “That makes sense,” Robert said.

  “Yeah. And after that, I refused to tell them because I’m stubborn.”

  “That’s certainly true,” I said. “Stubborn as a mule sometimes.”

  “After a while,” he continued, “I got the idea that if I told them where it was, they would probably let me go. Not kill me. But I’ve been having a lot of financial problems lately—I’ve hidden that from you guys, I know—and I had a prospective buyer who’d offered five hundred thousand dollars for the book. And I thought there might be other buyers who’d offer more. That kind of money would solve all of my problems and then some.”

  There was a silence in the room. Finally, Tess said, “Oscar, I can lend you money you need, or just give it to you.”

  “Tess, that is very generous, but I don’t like to take charity.”

  Tess didn’t respond. In truth, there wasn’t a lot you could say in response to what Oscar had said, except to repeat your offer and say it’s no problem, and it’s not charity. But she chose to remain silent.

  “There is something I want from you, though, Tess,” Oscar said.

  “What?”

  “Another of these pastries.”

  That broke the tension. Tess went to get the pastry, and we all talked again for a moment about nothing at all. Finally, when the pastry had been delivered, we got back to it.

  Robert took up the questioning. “But, Oscar, you did eventually tell them where it was.”

  “Yeah, but first I tried to bargain with them, and offered them a one-third share of the profits. That would still have left me with enough money to get out of difficulty.”

  “Didn’t work?” Robert asked.

  “No. They responded to that by letting me watch them take target practice with the gun, with me standing to the side of the target.”

  “That wasn’t smart if they wanted to keep you alive.”

  “Like I said, it was total amateur hour, which is probably the thing that scared me the most.”

  “Because they weren’t professional kidnappers?” Robert asked.

  “Because they seemed to have no plan. Finally, after they put me back in the dark room, I was getting really cold and really hungry, and I just wanted to get it over with, whether they’d let me go or would kill me. Or as you’d say, Jenna”—he looked over at me—“whatever. So I told them where I’d hidden the book. But not where the authenticator was, or even that it existed.”

  “Where did you find the authenticating letter and how do you know it’s real?” Robert asked.

  “First I found the book in Digne and bought it. Then I went looking for something to authenticate it. I originally found the letter in a private archive on the Island of Guernsey, where Victor Hugo and most of his family went into exile after Napoleon III became emperor. I bought it from the owner. As for its legitimacy, there was no reason for anyone to have faked that letter—it has very little value on its own—and I have had the handwriting confirmed and the ink and the paper authenticated as to age. Once I’d done all that, I began to talk it up enough to establish a market for the book and the letter as a pair.”

  “Talk it up to whom?” Robert asked.

  “To rich people in China, Japan, Brazil and Russia.”

  “Not England?”

  “There aren’t all that many truly rich people left in England, Robert, and most of them have no interest in French authors. But to change the topic, Captain Bonpere tells me you and Jenna found the authenticator. How the hell did you find it? I thought it was unfindable where I hid it.”

  “After Jenna was arrested for breaking into your room, I went in there and looked in the wastebasket,” Robert said. “I found your torn-up map of Père Lachaise and a metrobus ticket with ‘69’ written on the back.”

  “And from that you deduced that there was something at Père Lachaise? Really?”

  “Jenna is the one who actually figured it out,” Robert said. “And we had something of an adventure there. She also figured out your real name, Monsieur Brioche. But, Oscar, what I really want to ask you about is what you learned when you were in the barn about who all Olga worked with to put this plot together. And was it really all just for college money? I mean, I know college is expensive, but—”

  Captain Bonpere, who had been silent until then, interrupted. “I would really rather you did not ask him any more about that right now. What happened in the barn will be an important part of the criminal prosecution. The things they did and said there will make this more than just a mere kidnapping. It will enhance the charges. But I’m afraid you will have to wait to find out the details.”

  “May I tell them about the funny medical thing?” Oscar asked.

  “Certainly.”

  “They were medical students and every day they came into my dark room and took my vital signs—blood pressure, pulse, temperature, and listened to my heart with a stethoscope. It was almost like they were doing a study on an old person who is being starved.”

  “That does sound odd,” Robert said. “Why do you think they were starving you?”

  “I think they had assumed it would all be over in a day or two and didn’t bring enough food. Then they were afraid to go out to buy more for fear of being caught. But that’s just a guess.”

  “May I ask him about Digne?” Robert said, looking at Captain Bonpere.

  “Yes, some,” Bonpere said. “But only because the hat store owner has died, so we don’t need to prosecute him.”

  “Okay,” Robert said, “we know you bought the book from the guy in Digne. Did you go back after that?”

  “Yeah. He called me a couple days before Chris
tmas and asked me to come back. He said he had a buyer who wanted to buy it from me for a lot of money, and he’d be the middleman. He wanted to do the meet in person.”

  “That’s not the way he told the story to us,” Robert said.

  “Well, that’s the way it happened. Anyway I went back to Digne, but without the book because I didn’t think it was smart to take it. Even then the whole thing sounded weird.”

  “You hid it in your hotel room?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he really have a buyer?” Robert asked.

  “Yeah. It was this Russian guy, Igor Bukov. We had a conference call with Igor, made from the back room of a café, using someone else’s phone.”

  “Did Igor make an offer?”

  “Yeah, not for much at first—he was still treating it as an interesting fake—but after I told him I had an authenticator and described it, he said if he could validate that, he’d pay two hundred fifty thousand.”

  “And then?”

  “I told him I already had an offer for five hundred from a man in China, and he said that was too rich for him.”

  “In those words?” Robert asked.

  Oscar laughed. “Yeah, but after that he said, ‘Russian billionaires are not what they used to be. Or at least this one is not.’”

  “But,” Robert said, “you seemed afraid of him on Christmas Eve, when you were here.”

  “Indeed I was. Because it just seemed like too much of a coincidence that his daughter—as she was said to be then—would show up here when the box with the book was in the back room. I assumed he had not been honest in saying he was dropping out, and that I was about to be strong-armed in some fashion.”

  “You now think he really did drop out?” I asked. “You don’t think Igor was behind the kidnapping at all?”

  Captain Bonpere spoke up again. “I would prefer he not answer that. I will tell you that we believe that Olga learned from Igor about the book and its value and that after he dropped out of the bidding, she organized the kidnapping herself, to make money for herself. And got her father, the general, to help her out for a cut.”

  “I think we already know most of that,” Robert said. “But how did Olga arrange to be with us for Christmas dinner?”

  “It was luck,” Captain Bonpere said. “She was by then following Oscar, and she saw him come here with the big box. And when she told her father the address, he by chance knew Madame Devrais and invited himself and Olga to dinner.”

  I had, at that point, just been following along, but finally I asked something that I’d been wondering about for days. “So,” I said, “Olga really did go back and look at the book when she was supposedly using the bathroom?”

  “That is our guess,” Captain Bonpere said, “and we are told she put a tiny GPS tracker on the book. We also think she was probably the ‘young man’ that Monsieur Quesana said tried to mug him in front of your building. To confirm this we will have to interview her when she regains consciousness. If she ever does.”

  “There’s something that doesn’t make sense, though,” Robert said, looking at Oscar. “Oscar, Olga was at the hat store after New Year’s, when we found her there, and you just told us you went there to buy the book before Christmas and then went back, again before Christmas.”

  “Yeah, but I went to Digne a third time, too, toward the end of the week after Christmas, a couple days before I was kidnapped. The hat store owner had called to say he had a second signed Victor Hugo book that might interest me. One that others had rejected as fake. So I went back to look at it.”

  “You didn’t buy it?”

  “No, when I got there I looked in through the window and saw that Olga was there—which was a big surprise—and the two of them were clearly having a huge fight about something, yelling at each other and waving their hands around. I saw that and decided not to go in. I turned around and went back to Paris. Looking back on it, they may have been planning to kidnap me right then.”

  “Well,” Robert said, “sounds as if Olga developed some continuing relationship with the hat store guy. But they must have had a falling out that eventually caused him to stick her in the basement.”

  “So it seems the pieces came together a bit differently than we thought,” I said.

  “Actually, I have one more question,” Robert said.

  “What is it, my friend?” Oscar said.

  “Do you recall folding your umbrella when you were shoved into the car by the kidnappers?”

  “Ah, that,” he said. “I have been shown that video by Captain Bonpere. There is a simple explanation. That umbrella, you see, which was very expensive, has a button that not only opens the umbrella but, when pressed, pushes it closed, too, with a snap. The action of opening it loads the spring to close it. So I must have bumped that button accidentally. I certainly didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “I see,” I said. Although I really didn’t. I’d never seen such an umbrella.

  “I am sure you all have many more questions, my friends, but I am very tired.”

  “We should go then,” Bonpere said.

  “You are most welcome to stay here,” Tess said.

  Bonpere replied that that was very kind, but that Oscar was staying at a nice guest house owned by the judicial police, and that they needed to debrief him for another day and get him further checked out medically. Then he could return to Tess’s.

  Oscar struggled to his feet and said, “Tess, if you have some glasses and an alcoholic beverage, I’d like to propose a toast.”

  Tess went into the kitchen and came back with five glasses. “Instead of wine, let’s use this wonderful bottle of cassis that I just got,” she said, casting a sly glance at me.

  After the glasses were filled, Oscar raised his and said, “My friends, I do not know how to thank you for all you have done—and all the risks you took—to rescue me. But I am working on it. And”—he turned to Captain Bonpere—“I must also especially thank you, ma capitaine, for your role in securing my release, and how kind you have been to me since. A votre santé!”

  We raised our glasses, voiced santé! with a mutual shout, and clinked all around.

  At that point, there was a knock on the door. Tess opened it. It was Marie, the judge’s greffier. She commenced to hand each of us a sheet of paper with an official-looking seal on it and said, as she handed them out: “Bonsoir, Mesdames et Messieurs. J’ai ici pour Monsieur Tarza, Madame Devrais, le Professeur James et Monsieur Quesana une convocation à comparaître devant le Juge d’Instruction Roland de Fournis. Le Procureur de la République poursuit en justice les personnes qui ont enlevé Monsieur Quesana, et le Juge d’Instruction Roland de Fournis a été désigné pour instruire ce dossier. La date et l’heure de vos convocations à comparaître sont indiquées sur la convocation elle-même que je vous remets.”

  “What did she say, Robert?” I asked. “What is this?”

  “She said the judge has been appointed to investigate possible charges against the men who kidnapped Oscar, and we are invited to testify under oath.”

  “Invited?”

  “Well, compelled.”

  “When?”

  He looked over the paper that had been handed to me.

  “Two weeks from today.”

  “I have to get back to UCLA to teach my classes before then.”

  “Maybe,” Robert said, “you can work something out. But there are lots of things to see in Paris while you’re here. Have you seen the Père Lachaise cemetery?”

  “Very funny, Robert.”

  EPILOGUE

  In the end, I was able to testify two days after the summons was served, so I didn’t have to miss the start of classes at UCLA.

  I had begun to find the French criminal justice system fascinating, and I resolved to talk to the dean about teaching a course on international criminal law. It woul
d give me the chance to explore something new. Not to mention the opportunity to go to a lot of cool conferences in other countries.

  It turned out that the general was indeed very dead, but that his daughter, Olga, was not. She recovered fully after many weeks in the hospital and, for reasons that are obscure to me but have something to do with her father’s long, meritorious service to the French state, she was permitted to serve her prison term in Russia. But a few days after she arrived in Russia, she was released under mysterious circumstances.

  She was, of course, no longer welcome in France or the United States and was unable to obtain a visa to attend university in any other member country of the European Union. She is now continuing her acting studies at a small school in a suburb of Perm, Russia, which is near the Ural Mountains.

  The medical students who kidnapped Oscar were sentenced to fifteen years in prison, and the hotel owner was given a reduced sentence of two years in exchange for his testimony against the others.

  Igor Bukov, Olga’s uncle, had in fact been interested in purchasing the book from Oscar, but lost interest because the price was too high. It turned out, upon investigation by the judge, that Igor had been totally ignorant of the general and Olga’s attempts to acquire it on their own after he dropped out of the bidding.

  Judge Roland de Fournis married his greffier, Marie, and they now visit Provence more regularly. Tess and Robert were guests at their wedding. I was also invited, but was unable to attend. I sent them, as a wedding gift, two UCLA hoodies. The French are nuts about that Bruin stuff.

  Pierre Martin was given a small raise by the building owners’ council, effective July 1, in recognition of his meritorious service to the building. He was also given a minor medal for courage by the Mayor of Paris, which was delivered to him by mail. Tess tells me that he has still not installed the automatically-recording front door security camera. He claims it was damaged when he hit the general with it.

  I’m planning to go back to Paris in April. Tess and Robert are getting married. The fact that Tess had a long-ago affair with the general but failed to mention it to Robert has apparently not gotten in the way.