The Shooting at Chateau Rock

by Martin Walker

  “I remember the photo of the little boy, dead on a beach,” said Bruno. “I don’t know how the Greeks coped. Their economy was in bad trouble at the time.”

  “It still is, and now the EU is investigating administrative fraud. Greece received one and a half billion euros from the EU for refugee assistance, and not much of it came to Lesbos. There were several suicides while I was there, and a lot of young people just disappeared, some of the girls onto visiting yachts. We asked the Greek police to investigate what we thought was sex trafficking, but they were overwhelmed just trying to keep order. Hang on, I’m checking the computer for that name and the date she was registered. Was she born in Antioch?”

  “Yes,” said Bruno and gave Sandrine the date of birth on the form.

  “That’s her. We have her listed in the computer, but she disappeared soon after, along with seven others on the same day. I remember it because it was such an obvious case. There was a big Russian yacht in the harbor, and we found witnesses seeing the girls taken on board by crew members after they’d been bought a meal at one of the tourist beach bars.”

  “Do you have the name of the yacht and the date this happened?”

  “Yes, it was June seventh, just a week after Leilah was registered, and the yacht was called Galina.”

  Bruno closed his eyes when he heard the name. That could hardly be a coincidence.

  “It was registered in Cyprus, and we made some inquiries,” Sandrine went on. “It was owned by a rich Russian, but the Cypriot police did nothing. We suspected they might have been paid off. You have to realize this was happening all the time, attractive young girls and boys, given a way out of those dreadful camps, wined and dined and given new clothes and a promise of a new life in Europe. In their shoes, I’d have taken that chance, even if I had to screw some fat old lech.”

  Bruno took down the names of the other girls who went on board the Galina. But Lara Saatchi’s name was not among them, nor could Sandrine find it on her computer.

  “Saatchi is quite a common name, Ottoman origin, it means ‘watchmaker,’ ” she said.

  “Thanks for your help. May I come back to you if I have more questions?”

  “Please do, and I’m sorry that Leilah died, and sorry that she’s just a name to me. She didn’t stand out among all those heartbreaking faces, fleeing from war and finding themselves in something almost as bad. It made me feel ashamed to be European, how little we did, how little our politicians cared.”

  “Except for Angela Merkel,” said Bruno.

  “I suppose so, except for her.”

  Then France Télécom called back. The SIM card of the phone he had asked about was currently at Bergerac airport.

  Chapter 28

  Bruno found the Macraes and Galina at Chez Monique, the wine bar on the rue de Paris. The place had just opened, and Macrae, Jamie and Kirsty were being served glasses of Les Verdots by Monique herself. Meghan and Galina were having coffee.

  “Congratulations on your engagement, Galina!” he said, pulling up a chair to join them. “I’m looking for Sasha. Do you know where he is?”

  “Moi malenkyi zhelonyi chelovechek,” she said mockingly, and shrugged. “Ne znayu. I don’t know. I thought he might have been at Brosseil’s this morning.”

  “ ‘My little green man’?” asked Meghan. “Is that what you called him? Was that what Sasha was? One of Putin’s secret soldiers in Ukraine?” She looked alarmed.

  “Sasha worked for my father in Donetsk, and before that he was in Crimea when Putin took it,” Galina said and shrugged again. “Little green men is what they were called—green uniforms, no rank, no identification, just green, with Russian weapons and special flak vests that were only issued to spetsnaz, special forces.”

  “I thought you said he was a distant cousin,” said Jamie.

  “My father told me so and maybe he is. But he’s really my watchdog, my security man,” Galina said casually, as though this were not unusual. “My father worries about me. He sent the plane for Sasha on Friday and said he would be back today. I thought it was to arrange the deposit money for the sale, but my father told me some other people in his company had to bring a car back, so he’d send it with them.”

  “What plane is that?” Bruno asked.

  “My father has a business jet, usually based in Cyprus, but my mother thought he’d probably send it from Nice to Bergerac. Then he told her the money would come by car.”

  “It must get confusing, keeping track,” said Rod, dryly.

  “Have you heard from Sasha today or yesterday?”

  Galina shook her head and then looked at Jamie. “I am so sorry. I am sure it will all be settled. I tried to call Sasha from the notaire, but there’s no reply. Maybe his phone is on mute. I will try again, or call my father.”

  “I’m sure he’ll turn up,” said Bruno. “Maybe he sent it with the other man who works for him, Alexander Fallin. Do you know him?”

  “Yes, the other Sasha. ‘Sasha’ is short for ‘Alexander.’ Fallin is some business friend of my father, usually in Malta, so I think of him as Malta Sasha. The one who came with us is Cyprus Sasha. How do you know Fallin?”

  “And Leilah, Leilah Soliman,” Bruno went on. “Do you know her?”

  Galina looked uninterested, as though this had nothing to do with her. “Yes, I think so, from the yacht. She was Malta Sasha’s girlfriend.”

  “What’s this about, Bruno? All these names of people, who are they?” asked Jamie.

  “There was a car crash near here last night, a bad one, and two of the dead were Alexander Fallin and Leilah Soliman. They had a briefcase that contained a cashier’s check for your deposit.”

  Galina clapped her hands like a child, then reached out and squeezed Jamie’s hand. “You see, Jamie, I told you it would work out.”

  “Two people are dead, Galina,” Jamie replied coldly, and at that moment Bruno began to wonder whether this marriage would take place. And if it did, would it last?

  “I should call my father,” Galina said, abashed. “Yes, I’m sorry. I did not think. This is very sad.” She reached for her phone.

  “Not just yet,” said Bruno. “I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me to the mairie where there’s a senior detective who needs to talk to you and see if you can identify the bodies. I’m sorry, but it’s the law to identify the dead as soon as possible.”

  “I am sorry, I could not,” she said, shaking her head. “I could not stand it, dead people. And they must have horrible injuries.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll come with you,” said Jamie, taking her hand. “Bruno’s right. You have to identify them.”

  Bruno led the way to the mairie and left them in his office before going to the council chamber to brief J-J on the boars, on Contamine’s conclusion that the crash was no accident and on the link with Stichkin.

  “We have no grounds to arrest Galina, J-J, but I said you’d need her to identify Fallin and maybe the girl. She knows them both. One of the dead women is Leilah Soliman, a Syrian refugee from some grim camp on Lesbos who was spirited away on Daddy’s yacht. Galina is in my office with her boyfriend.”

  “She can’t see the bodies now,” said J-J, rising to his feet. “Yves is at the funeral parlor doing the forensics with Fabiola. Still, I’d better see her, get some details on Fallin and the girl. What about you? How do we get some kind of confirmation that this car crash was no accident?”

  “I asked Juliette to start looking for places that lease or sell hydraulic jacks. I thought I’d better check on a private plane that might have brought Sasha here. He’s the ex-spetsnaz bodyguard. If anybody in all this is a killer, he’s the likely candidate.”

  “You and your hunches.” J-J sighed. “Where will you be?”

  “I’ll stay here. You may want to bring Galina in, see if she recognizes any clothes, get a stat
ement from her about the cashier’s check and her own movements. But as soon as you can, we need her to identify the bodies.”

  Once J-J had taken Galina and Jamie from Bruno’s office, Bruno checked his computer for the special security number of air traffic control. He used his desk phone to call the number, identified himself and gave his identification code. He was told to wait while this was checked and then a brisk voice asked for his birth date and army number. Bruno gave them and was then asked what he needed. He asked whether a Cyprus-registered private jet had flown from Malta or Cyprus to Nice and Bergerac in the last three or four days.

  “Cyprus? That’s a VC-Q registration. Let me check.”

  Bruno heard the clicking of computer keys, but within a minute, the voice was back.

  “We had one incoming, one of the new Embraer Phenom business jets, into Nice on Friday afternoon, refueled, then to Bergerac at nineteen hundred hours and back to Nice forty minutes later. It came back to Bergerac again late yesterday and it’s still there.”

  “Is there any way you can ensure it stays there? This is a murder inquiry and I think our suspect may be trying to take that plane.”

  “Delay it? Is this a formal police request?”

  “Yes, on my authority as a member of the special task force of the interior ministry. You can call the minister’s office and ask for General Lannes.”

  “We can block any flight plan and ask the airport manager to have that aircraft held, but he’ll probably want to see a warrant unless you want to invoke the emergency regulations.”

  “I’ll do exactly that, thank you.”

  Bruno then phoned a friend, Jean-Max, a businessman who owned and ran half a dozen prehistoric caves as commercial tourist sites. Jean-Max used his own helicopter to get from one site to another.

  “Jean-Max, I’m in St. Denis and need to get to Bergerac airport as soon as possible. It’s a murder inquiry, and there’s a suspect about to board a private jet.”

  “Okay, Bruno,” he replied. “I’m at the Roque St. Christophe and can be with you at that landing place behind the medical center in fifteen minutes, then another fifteen to Bergerac. Will that do?”

  “Perfect, I’ll be waiting. Thanks.”

  Bruno called Yveline at the gendarmerie, explained briefly and asked if she’d come along, armed, and to get Sergeant Jules to inform the security chief at Bergerac airport of their arrival to investigate the private jet from Cyprus. What’s more, they might need support from the detachment of armed troops now on call for security duties at all commercial airports. Bruno picked up his personal weapon and two spare magazines, called J-J out from the council chamber and briefed him quickly.

  “Putain, Bruno. This is thin. It had better be on your own head.”

  “Do me a favor, J-J, and call the brigadier to let him know what’s happening. Commandante Yveline of the gendarmes will be with me, both of us armed. This is a special forces veteran we’re dealing with.”

  “Merde, Bruno, take care. I hope you’re right about this.”

  “So do I,” Bruno called as he ran down the stairs and across the bridge to the medical center and the landing pad behind it. People were already looking up at Jean-Max’s descending helicopter, whose sound was almost drowning out the siren of the gendarme van. Bruno and Yveline reached the pad at the same moment, each holding on to their caps against the prop wash.

  “It’s not meant for three,” called Jean-Max as he landed, keeping the engine running. Then he saw Yveline’s assault rifle and waved them in. She was wearing a flak vest and carried a second in her free hand, which she tossed to Bruno. He donned it, clambered in and inserted himself to crouch behind the two seats while Yveline took the passenger seat. Bruno reached up and grabbed the spare headphones to speak to Jean-Max.

  “Many thanks for this, Jean-Max. If you could put us down really close to the Embraer business jet, as near as possible to block it from moving.”

  “Putain, Bruno,” came the thin, crackling voice through the headphones. “Are we going to get shot at?”

  “I hope not,” Bruno replied. Jean-Max let out a low whistle and then increased the throttle, adjusted the collective for full lift, and as the helicopter left the ground he gently brought in the cyclic to put the nose down so that they could get forward motion as they rose. Within less than a minute they were cruising at a hundred and twenty knots over Limeuil and then headed almost due west, above the lazy bends of the Dordogne River, the vineyards of the Pécharmant unfolding to their right.

  Yveline gestured to Jean-Max that she needed the headphones, and once they were on she asked Bruno, “Do we have rules of engagement?”

  “I’m seconded to General Lannes’s staff again, so we’re under state-of-emergency rules. We’re looking for a Russian, spetsnaz trained, and I think he set up that car crash this morning that killed three people. I need him held under garde à vue and to get a forensic check while we interrogate him. I would guess he’s trained not to talk, but the forensics will get him.”

  Yveline nodded and was about to return the headphones to Jean-Max when Bruno shook his finger and said, “He might not be alone. I’ve asked Jean-Max to take the chopper down to block the takeoff of a private jet that’s supposed to take them away. I’ve arranged with air traffic control to delay the flight.”

  “Is he—are they—armed?” she asked.

  “Probably.”

  The helicopter passed over the Poudrerie, the huge old ammunition plant that was built in 1916 to feed the hungry guns of the western front and is now a placid business estate. They were almost there. Jean-Max gestured for the headphones, and Yveline handed them back. Bruno heard Jean-Max saying he was a civilian flight carrying two armed police officers on security duty for an emergency.

  “Permission to land granted. We are aware of the emergency situation. Repeat, we are aware,” said the control tower. “Security forces standing by.”

  Merde, thought Bruno, hoping that message had been sent on a closed channel. The last thing he wanted was for Sasha to know that the net was closing in. As Jean-Max came in to land, heading for the parking area for small aircraft by the flying school hangar, Bruno saw the steps of an executive jet start to rise to fold back into the fuselage.

  “Get down fast, they’re going to try to take off,” he said to Jean-Max, pointing urgently. Jean-Max nodded but continued dropping slowly and under complete control and heading for the space in front of the jet. Its door still not fully closed, the jet began to move, its nosewheel at an angle to turn it away from the incoming chopper. Three French soldiers, armed and in uniform, were shifting their eyes from the chopper to the jet but making no effort to intervene. They must be waiting for orders, Bruno thought.

  “Jump out and roll, as soon as you can,” he shouted into Yveline’s ear. “You move right and I’ll go left.”

  She nodded, checked the safety catch on her gun, and when they were still a good meter from the ground she jumped out and rolled to her right. Bruno squeezed himself out from behind the seats and followed, rolling left, in the direction the Embraer was taking. He stopped, lying flat on the ground and drawing his SIG Sauer automatic as the jet’s engines howled and it crept toward him. He took aim, and fired double taps, two shots at a time, into the nosewheel.

  It took three bursts, but then the nose of the jet dropped as the tire shredded and the metal struts of the nosewheel began grinding into the tarmac. The aircraft stopped. The engine noise faded as the pilot throttled back and cut the engines.

  Only then did Bruno see the red cross on the nose of the aircraft and on each side of the fuselage beneath the cockpit, along with the logo MEDICAIR TRANS-MED SERVICE. Could he have made a terrible mistake?

  Chapter 29

  What now? Bruno asked himself. He had to push the doubt from his mind and assume there would be aircrew aboard as well as Sasha, so he might be f
acing a hostage situation. There was a drill for that. The airport would be closed, the public evacuated and a specialist team of Gendarmes Mobiles brought in along with negotiators and ambulances. Bruno realized that he was a sitting duck for anyone in the cockpit with a gun. He crawled forward until he was by the broken nosewheel, in the cover of the jet’s fuselage, and gestured to Yveline to get under cover.

  Then he heard the sound of jet engines and turned to see another executive jet on its final approach to the runway. He recognized it at once from the two engines at the rear and the third on top of the fuselage: a Dassault Falcon 900 with its distinctive high tail. It was the standard transport for military top brass and high government officials. Mon Dieu, he thought, that was all he needed, some French politician flying into this mess.

  The door of the Embraer jet above him began to open and the steps were unfolding automatically. An angry-looking man in a pilot’s uniform leaned out from the doorway and in strongly accented French demanded to know what the hell Bruno thought he was doing.

  “Preventing you from taking off,” Bruno said, introducing himself. “Air traffic control had ordered your aircraft to be held here, and I want everybody out now and on the tarmac, starting with you. Are you the pilot?”

  “I’m the copilot and the owner of this aircraft and I’m staying aboard.”

  “Are you Monsieur Stichkin?” Bruno asked.

  “I am.” He was a burly man of about sixty, tanned and healthy with iron-gray hair cut short, pale blue eyes and improbably white teeth. “What’s this about?”

  “We are searching for a suspect named Sasha Kozak who works for you. Is he still aboard?”

  “No, he left two hours ago on a commercial flight to Paris.”

  “In that case, you won’t mind if I check,” said Bruno climbing the stairs and pushing his way past Stichkin. The interior of the aircraft was evidently designed for dual use, part executive jet, part emergency medical station. He noted four luxurious lounge chairs at the rear while the compartment he had entered was fitted with two bunk beds, one above the other. On the walls were the kinds of monitors he usually saw only in hospitals.