“It’s me, Bruno,” said a woman’s voice. Meghan had taken over the phone and was speaking calmly. “We were listening to the radio when they reported that security meeting at Bergerac airport. Galina said she thought it must be her father, since he’d called to say he’d see her this evening. Then I said something about Galina mentioning the little green men and Bertie hit the roof. He grabbed the shotgun Rod uses for rabbits.”
She paused to catch her breath. Bruno could only admire her self-control.
“You’re doing fine, Meghan,” he said. “Take your time.”
“Bertie dragged Galina to the terrace and said she’d better get her dad here or else. He’s been shouting about the war crimes court at The Hague. Jamie and I have tried talking to him, but he’s threatened to shoot us. So we thought we’d better call you.”
“What’s Galina doing?”
“He’s got her sitting on the floor of the terrace, and he’s on a chair, his back to the wall, the shotgun on his lap. She’s got her phone and she’s tried calling her dad, but his phone is switched off.”
“Keep calm and don’t do anything. I’m on my way,” said Bruno. “Just hold on a second, though.”
He turned to explain to J-J, who simply gaped at him before saying, “Stichkin’s daughter? Held hostage by a Ukrainian nationalist with a shotgun? Are you serious?”
“This guy, Bertie, he’s a friend of the Macraes’ son, Jamie, the one who’s going to marry Galina. He’s called Bertie because he’s from Alberta in Canada, but his real name is Bondarchuk, and Isabelle knows about him.”
“What do you mean, she knows about him?”
“She mentioned him by name when we were talking recently. One of her jobs is to keep tabs on Ukrainian nationalists, and the Brits tipped her off about him. Apparently some cousin of his was killed in the fighting in Ukraine.”
“When you say you were talking recently…”
“Don’t ask. But we have to get a message to her inside that room.” Bruno pulled out his notebook and began to write. When he finished he gave the note to J-J. “Knock and call Isabelle out and give her that, say it’s urgent. And give me your keys so I can take your car.”
“You’re going there yourself?”
“Do you have a better idea? I know them all—Galina, Bertie, the whole family. At least they’ll talk to me. And we need time to set something up. This guy Bertie, he’s on the rear terrace of Château Rock with a shotgun. We need time to get a sniper in place, just in case, and I can win us that time. Come on, J-J, you know it makes sense.”
“Hadn’t you better wait till Isabelle comes out?”
“She’ll want to know that we have a solution in hand. You give her that note and then arrange for a police sniper and a hostage rescue team. She’ll have to decide whether to tell Stichkin.”
Shaking his head, J-J handed over his keys and headed back inside the château. Returning to Meghan, Bruno told her he was on his way. He raced to the car and took off up the drive, past the riding school and onto the back road to Ste. Alvère. At this stage he could use the siren, but first he called the fire station at St. Denis and asked Ahmed to bring an ambulance as quietly as he could to the entrance to Château Rock, and Bruno would meet him there. As soon as he ended that call he saw he had an incoming call from Isabelle.
“What do you plan to do?” she asked.
“Keep things calm until you have a sniper in place and the usual hostage rescue team. I can keep him talking, even promise him I’ll arrange to get Stichkin brought there. Whatever it takes. Are you going to tell Stichkin?”
“Not yet, he’d drop everything and take off for the château. I’d rather present him with a solution than a problem. Be careful, Bruno.”
He made a return call to Rod Macrae’s number to say that a specialist hostage rescue team was being alerted. Macrae began demanding details, so Meghan took the phone again and said they’d hold on.
It was a fast road as far as Ste. Alvère, but then it slowed with traffic, and he was getting too close to use the siren. Trying to remember the long-ago police academy lesson on hostage situations, he could recall only the rule about securing the scene until the experts could arrive. He knew the ground and the people involved. With Jamie doubtless thinking of heroics to rescue his beloved, his mother and all the other young people who would be there, he knew those people might be so many liabilities.
Bruno thought he could probably count on Meghan, Rod and Kirsty. But for all he knew, the French musicians might be filming it on their mobile phones and livestreaming it to the world.
His phone rang. It was Isabelle again.
“Our oligarch is taking a toilet break,” she said. “Thanks for your message. I told Lannes. He says to leave it with you for the moment, but we’re not telling Stichkin. J-J has the hostage rescue team from Bordeaux coming in by chopper, but they’ll land away from the château. They’ll be there in about an hour. I’ll text you rather than phone.”
Ahmed was waiting at the entrance to the drive with a small ambulance and another medic. Bruno briefed them and then led the way up to the entrance where he’d first met Bertie and Sasha and the whole drama had begun to unfold little more than a week ago. One of the double entrance doors was open, and he told the two medics to stand by.
The hallway was empty, but he could hear the sound of female sobbing from the sitting room to the right, and looked in to see Kirsty comforting her mother. Meghan’s face was red and awash with tears. That startled him. He’d thought of Meghan as the rock he could count on. Bruno put his finger to his lips for silence.
“Are Bertie and Galina still on the terrace?” he asked Kirsty in a whisper. She nodded and shushed her mother, who took a great gulp of air as she saw Bruno and tried to rise but then choked and began to hiccup. Bruno patted her shoulder and told her in a whisper that she’d done well. Then he asked Kirsty where he’d find her father and brother.
“Kitchen,” she mouthed. “They’ve been trying to talk to him.”
“Where are the others?” he asked.
“Hippo went out on a bicycle ride before all this began, and I don’t know when he’ll be back,” Kirsty whispered. “Pia tried talking sense into Bertie, but he sent her away. I think she’s in the kitchen, maybe planning to try again. They aren’t getting on well. After that stupid fight Bertie had with Sasha, Pia demanded a separate room.”
He squeezed Kirsty’s shoulder and thanked her before going into the kitchen, his finger still held against his lips as Jamie and Rod rose from the kitchen table when they saw him. Pia was hovering over Jamie with a bottle of antiseptic ointment and some gauze. He had a swollen cheek and jaw.
“What happened?”
“I thought at first it was some stupid joke,” Jamie said. “Then I tried to take the shotgun, and Bertie gave me a punch that knocked me down and damn near knocked me out. He’s as strong as a horse.”
Rod shook his head and led Bruno into the hall. “We tried offering him a drink that we’d loaded with sleeping pills, but he threw it away after the first sip. He was trying to make some calls, but his phone battery is dead. I think he made one, but he was speaking Ukrainian, so I’ve no idea what he said except that he said something that sounded like ‘press conference.’ ”
“How’s Galina?” Bruno asked, thinking that if Bertie had planned this he’d have had a fully charged phone. It sounded as though Bertie had taken a spur-of-the-moment decision rather than planned this operation. Either way, trying to call a press conference would make sense from Bertie’s point of view.
“She cried a bit and asked for Jamie, but Bertie won’t let anyone else onto the terrace. Bertie demanded her phone, but she refused to give him the code to open it. He kept trying and I think it got locked. Anyway, he gave up and he’s furious that we won’t give him our own phones or chargers.”
“Are you
sure the shotgun is loaded?”
Rod nodded grimly. “Both barrels. I loaded it before this began because Bertie said he wanted to shoot some rabbits in the vineyard. He grew up on a farm, so he knows how to use it.”
“Do you have the number of his phone?” Bruno asked, and Jamie read it aloud from his contact list. Bruno called the France Télécom security number and asked for traces on all calls from Bertie’s phone that day. He took off his uniform jacket and his belt with the phone pouch and holster, checking his gun to be sure that the safety catch was on and entrusting it to Jamie. He braced himself and walked out of the kitchen door in his shirtsleeves, his hands in the air.
“Bertie, as you can see I’m unarmed and hoping we can work this out. Hello again, Galina.”
The young woman tried to rise, her face suddenly shining with hope, but Bertie slammed a large foot into her chest to force her back to the floor. Bruno winced to see it. He’d expected Bertie to be under stress, but he was showing real aggression.
“Mon Dieu, Bertie, she’s a friend,” Bruno said. “You know she’s not your enemy.”
“You can let me have your phone, otherwise just go away.” Bertie was now pointing the shotgun at Bruno.
He was sitting on a wooden chair, very solid and rustic, in the far corner of the terrace with the château wall behind him. The place was well chosen, with no windows to overlook him and a thick trellis of ancient vines protecting one flank. He was at least five meters from Bruno, with more of the chairs and the long terrace table between them. Bruno glanced out to the garden, sloping down to the pool, and the tree-covered ridge rising beyond. Snipers would have no trouble getting clear shots from within two hundred meters. There was a window about ten meters above where Bertie was sitting. Maybe he could use that.
“I must have left my phone in the car,” Bruno said. “But that’s not the point. I think all this was a spontaneous decision you took. You haven’t planned this at all, have you?”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Bruno. I want Stichkin himself,” Bertie said, his voice flat and his expression determined. “When he comes here, Galina can go free. And then I want a press conference right here so he can explain what he did in Ukraine, and then he has to face justice at the war crimes court. Ukraine’s parliament voted for that trial. Then I’ll turn myself in and face justice. This isn’t a kidnapping, Bruno. It’s a citizen’s arrest of a war criminal.”
Bruno was trying to work out what was really in Bertie’s mind. He must know he was in trouble. With no phone and no allies, he’d know that he would eventually be outgunned. Whatever his original goal might have been, he must realize his only threat was to kill Galina. But everything else, from his own survival to his own original goal, depended on keeping her alive.
“Legally speaking, you’re a foreign citizen, so you don’t have the right to make a citizen’s arrest here,” Bruno said. “So what we have is a standoff. All you have is the threat to shoot Galina, and I don’t believe you’ll do that. You may shoot me or anyone else who tries to take that shotgun away from you. But your only real weapon is her and your belief that we’re decent people who’ll do what we can to save an innocent young woman.”
“It’s simple. Bring her father here. Him for her. If you don’t know what that bastard did, Bruno, you should. He was Putin’s man in Ukraine, the man pulling the strings in Kiev, pushing those secret policemen to open fire on the protesters in the Maidan. He should face trial.”
“I know about the Maidan, Bertie, the snipers gunning them down, the churches throwing open their doors so the protesters had somewhere to flee. And it’s Europe, Bertie, just as it was Europe in Sarajevo when I was a UN peacekeeper, and I still got shot. As far as the politics are concerned I’m on your side. But not while you have Galina under a gun.”
“This isn’t about Galina,” Bertie snapped back. “It’s about that murderous father of hers.”
“You’ve made it about Galina,” Bruno replied, his arms starting to ache with the effort of keeping them raised. “There’s a difference between what you think should happen and what will happen. Within the next hour there will be a hostage rescue team in place here. At that point you are out of options. You’ll either be shot dead or badly wounded and arrested. When you’re in prison, you will almost certainly be killed. You and I both know Russian intelligence can arrange that.”
“You can live with that, Russians organizing killings in French prisons?” Bertie shouted back. “Russians spreading nerve agents in England? Shooting down airliners? Gunning down innocent young people at Maidan who only wanted freedom? You want to defend those bastards?”
The tighter Bertie was wound, Bruno knew, the more unpredictable he would become. But he was still making sense, still speaking coherently. Bruno told himself to stay calm.
“In the few minutes before the rescue squad gets here, Bertie, you can put down that gun, go outside, take my car and disappear. I suggest you try for Italy or Spain and then make your way to Ukraine from there. Your name and passport number are already on watch lists, so you can’t fly anywhere. That is your only choice.” He turned to Galina.
“Galina, is there anything you need? Water? A blanket?”
“I need to go to the bathroom,” she said quietly, looking at Bruno.
“Piss in your pants if you have to,” said Bertie. “Nobody leaves here until your father arrives and we get the press conference. I’ll want that friend of yours, Gilles, the one writing the book.”
“Bruno, there is something,” said Galina. “Maybe I could have some cigarettes.” She was looking at him so fixedly Bruno thought she was trying to send him a message.
“You don’t smoke,” snapped Bertie.
“This seems a reasonable moment to start,” she replied.
“Let me see if I can find some,” said Bruno and went back to the kitchen. Wordlessly, Rod handed him a pack of Marlboros and a book of matches. Bruno put his mouth close to Rod’s ear and whispered, “That window above his head. If all else fails, or if he shoots me, could you drop something heavy onto him?”
Rod’s eyes widened. Then he nodded and Bruno took his gun from the holster where he’d left it and tucked it into his belt at the back. He heard the sound of furniture being shifted on the terrace, raised his hands in the air again and went back out. Bertie had overturned the heavy terrace table and positioned it to give him and Galina some protection against bullets. He was squatting behind it, the shotgun barrels pointing at Bruno.
“Toss the cigarettes over the table, Bruno,” Bertie said. “Then separately toss the lighter.”
“No lighter, just matches,” Bruno said, tossing the cigarette packet over and then deliberately threw the matches short so they fell at the foot of the table on his side.
“Sorry,” he said, and bent down as if to retrieve them but then dived into the cover of the table and reached up to grab the shotgun barrel. He twisted it to one side and then hauled it down with all his strength and heard the deafening blast as it fired. He rose, still holding the suddenly hot barrel, and slammed the wooden stock into Bertie’s chest and then onto the bridge of his nose. He opened the shotgun’s breech and tossed it aside, vaulted over the table, turned Bertie onto his stomach and brought his full weight down onto Bertie’s back to pump the air out of him. He pulled Bertie’s arms up and crossed his wrists at the back of his neck as he shouted for Rod to bring him his jacket.
Jamie was the first there, scooping the sobbing Galina into his arms. Then Rod arrived with Bruno’s jacket, saying, “You got him? How did you do it?”
“Plastic cuffs in the side pocket,” said Bruno, panting with effort as Bertie squirmed powerfully beneath him. Rod gave him the cuffs, Bruno put them on Bertie’s wrists and it was over.
“How’s Galina?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice muffled as she huddled into Jamie’s ch
est. “But I really need to pee.”
“Get the medics, they’re waiting outside,” Bruno said. He stood up and stared at the gouged terrace floor where the shotgun pellets had blasted a tight circle. “They’ll need to look at the guy, I hit him hard. Please pass me my phone.”
He called J-J to say Galina was safe and the crisis was over. The hostage rescue team could be recalled, but he needed St. Denis gendarmes with their van to take the suspect into custody.
“One last thing,” he said, as Meghan and Kirsty rushed onto the terrace to embrace Galina and lead her off. “Has Stichkin been told of the situation yet?”
“I don’t know,” said J-J. “Isabelle hasn’t come out of that meeting since you left.”
Bruno texted Isabelle’s number: “Crisis over. Girl safe. Suspect in cuffs and alive. Will take him to St. Denis gendarmerie.”
He pocketed his phone, helped Rod put the table back in place and asked him for a big garbage bag into which he placed the shotgun. Then he helped Ahmed turn the semiconscious Bertie over. The Canadian’s face was a mask of blood where the shotgun stock had broken his nose.
“You might want to look at the girl as well,” he said to Ahmed. “She must be in shock. She’s in the bathroom.”
His phone dinged, the signal of an incoming text. From Isabelle, it said simply: “On our way with Papa. General says well done, but whatever you do, don’t arrest anyone yet. And media blackout. That’s an order.”
Epilogue
The secret had been well kept until that morning, four weeks later, when Philippe Delaron had the story in Sud Ouest and on France Bleu local radio. That allowed some heavyweight music critics from Paris and London to reach St. Denis in time for the surprise comeback concert of the legendary rocker Rod Macrae. So instead of the usual concert on the quayside bandstand of St. Denis for three or four hundred people, Bruno and Rod had time to arrange a makeshift stage on the back of the town’s largest truck and the biggest and best sound system in the département. It had been erected on the bank of the river opposite the aquarium, where the parkland offered room for four or five thousand. It was packed by midafternoon, and Rod was not due onstage until twilight that evening.
The Shooting at Chateau Rock Page 27
