“Yes, I do.”
“After I had told Tony about the paintings, he decided that he would like to meet the painters and buy a few paintings, assuming that he likes them and that the price is right.”
“I see …” The commissaire looked at Nancy and did not say whether or not he believed her.
Nancy looked at him and said, “What is it that I don’t know?”
Following her question, there was a long silence. It was almost as if two experienced negotiators had reached a point where a decisive position had been arrived at but net yet fully agreed and where the first one who spoke would be the one who had to live with whatever consequences emerged. In this case, the first one to talk had to be the commissaire. But then, he too, just like Nancy earlier, asked another question. “We are talking about four painters, aren’t we? Gaston Bernard, Henri Martin, Jean Simon and Pierre Durand.”
“Yes, we are.”
“Madam, please brace yourself for very bad news.”
“What happened?”
“Three of the painters, Gaston Bernard, Henri Martin and Pierre Durand, were murdered four weeks ago. The fourth of them, Jean Simon, has disappeared. We don’t know if he is in hiding or if he has been kidnapped.”
“My God,” Nancy, genuinely shocked, looked from the commissaire to Tony and back to the commissaire.
15
Christina was a tall woman, almost as tall as Mike. She was strong and athletic and could have become a body builder celebrity. She went to the gym five times a week but had no interest in body building. And why should she? Her body was perfect the way it was: slim, with a natural feminine masculinity and firm breasts of just the right proportions for a woman of her size. Looking at her, especially when she was dressed in light summer clothing, it was hard for most men not to try to imagine how it would be to make love to her.
Christina’s hair was black and her face displayed a beauty that was typical for women from the south of Spain and Italy. Her dark eyes could look piercingly, even threatening, but also tender and lovingly at her world.
Before she became a detective and Mike’s partner, she had worked for five years as a police officer with the Manhattan Drug Enforcement Agency. She was shot at several times, twice she ended up in hospital with gun shot wounds and on four occasions she had to shoot to kill to ensure her own survival. She developed a reputation amongst her colleagues. They called her Indestructible Woman.
She also became rich: very rich. She has three bank accounts of which the IRS knows nothing. One account is with a Swiss bank, the other two accounts are with banks in Panama and the Isle of Man. Each account displays a figure between two and three million US dollars.
It took her less than one year to work out how to benefit financially from drugs and at the same time throw serious spanners into the workings of America’s drug cartels. She made her millions by blackmailing drug dealers.
For Christina to blackmail a dealer there were always three prerequisites that had to be met. Firstly, it was essential that the dealer did not know that she was behind the disaster that was about to make his life difficult; the dealer did not even know whether he was at the mercy of a man or woman. Secondly, it was essential that no other police officer was aware of her dealings with the dealer; she only blackmailed dealers against whom she had been able to secure sufficient evidence without third party involvement. And thirdly it was essential that she was aware of an emotional weakness in the dealer’s life. The best emotional weakness was the existence of family members, ideally of a child, which the dealer was very close to.
Once she had identified a suitable dealer, she commenced the process of negotiating with him via untraceable emails and untraceable text messages. (In some rare cases the dealer was a woman.) First she ensured that the dealer was fully aware of the evidence available against him; it was important that he fully understood his precarious situation; then, often almost concurrently, she made it clear to him that he was being blackmailed and that not all was lost, in other words: that she was willing to negotiate an arrangement.
The arrangement was fair and simple: fair and simple in her opinion; in the dealer’s opinion perhaps not quite as fair and simple, but at least acceptable. For the promise that she would not initiate legal actions against the dealer, the dealer had to agree to three conditions. Firstly, he had to pay her a reasonable amount of money; secondly, he had to discontinue his dealings in drugs and other criminal activities; thirdly, he had to stay at his current place of residency for a minimum of five years. Should he not adhere to any of these conditions, he would be reported to the relevant authorities, which meant that he would be on the FBI’s list of wanted criminals and his loved ones would be on the FBI’s list of wanted persons of interest who may be able to assist in apprehending a wanted criminal.
The drug dealer did not know whether Christina was a man or a woman. He also did not know that she was a police officer. He was in the dark about her identity, but he was left in no doubt that she knew just about everything about him that was worthwhile knowing and that would make it easy for the FBI to find and arrest him.
Except for four drug dealers, all agreed with her conditions and paid the demanded amounts of money. The four who didn’t agree fled and were arrested within two weeks to five months. Of the drug dealers who had agreed with her conditions, all paid the demanded money, but nearly two thirds of them continued their dealings in drugs. Without exception they were all arrested and prosecuted soon afterwards. Some were arrested by Christina and her team and some were arrested as a result of detailed anonymous tip offs which Christina had forwarded to the FBI or local police authorities.
Christina always made sure that the money she demanded for her silence was reasonable. If she concluded that a dealer could pay $200,000, but may find it difficult to arrange a payment of half a million, she demanded $200,000 or less. She was keen to keep things quiet and easy.
After five years as drug enforcement officer, Christina decided that the time had come to call it quits. She had accumulated enough money and she had risked her life more than often enough. It was time to start a new life.
But then two events occurred which made her change her plans.
16
Mike loved New York at night. Most people, when they talk about New York, talk about Manhattan. As far as Mike was concerned, Manhattan was the least important part of the city. Manhattan was hectic and crazy and when Mike looked up to the top of the skyscrapers he often thought that he was looking at an impossibility. He was not impressed by the height and the magnificence of the buildings; to him that was engineering and construction stuff. He was flabbergasted by the fact that people – creatures of the same family to whom he belonged – could come up with the idea of designing and building such structures and then producing them again and again all over New York, in fact, all over America and the world. Couldn’t they do something better with their energy, money, time and emotions?
He had an allocated parking spot at the place where he lived. When he arrived home after his meeting at the elderly lady’s place, it was past midnight. He parked his car, opened the door, got out of the car and a fraction of a second later dropped to the ground. Something wasn’t right. Later he couldn’t say whether he saw a movement, whether he heard something or whether it was his gut feeling that told him to take cover.
Machine gun shots demolished the roof of his car and his neighbour’s car. Glass fell on him. He found himself flat on the ground with his pistol in two hands. It was full moon and he could see a little underneath the cars to his right and his left and he could see a good part of the car park in front of him. He wasn’t particularly concerned about what was behind him. There was a wall and his feet were at the most a few inches from that wall. The shooting, Mike thought, had come from his left. He looked and listened but it was too dark and there seemed no sound. A light in a room in the building went on. A burst of machine gun fire smashed the room window, but did not manage to switch off th
e light. The person who had switched the light on probably ran out of the room in a hurry. Two more lights went on. This time the machine gun remained silent, but by now Mike was certain that his enemy was to his left and at the most ten yards away. He wondered why he couldn’t see feet. There was now enough light in the yard to see whether or not somebody was standing somewhere in Mike’s vicinity.
There was a car in the yard, which was not in a parking spot. Looking underneath his neighbour’s car to his left, Mike could see the tyres of the car. For a moment he was surprised that he hadn’t paid attention to it when he had entered the parking area. He realized that someone was shooting from within that car.
He aimed carefully and his bullet hit one of the tyres. He could hear the sound of air coming out of the hole his bullet had created. A second later an engine started and he could see the flat tire rotating and moving towards his neighbour’s car to his left. Mike twisted himself underneath his car and expected any moment the bang of a collision. Again lying flat on his stomach and looking to his left he noticed that the flat tire no longer rotated. The enemy car had stopped in front of his car and his neighbour’s car. Mike was thinking of shooting at a second tire when he noticed something rolling underneath his neighbour’s car. He recognized at once what he saw. There was no time to crawl to that rolling thing and push or throw it away. Without thinking Mike’s hands changed the direction of his pistol and a bullet hit the hand grenade less than three yards away from him.
After the bullet had hit the grenade, the grenade could have exploded on the spot, or could have rotated around its own axis for a second and then exploded, but neither of these two options eventuated; the grenade was catapulted away from Mike and underneath the car with the flat tyre.
A moment later Mike was showered with bitumen and dirt. He was fortunate that no shrapnel from the exploding grenade hit him. Another moment later there were two more explosions in quick succession. They were above ground level and whatever damage the bullets of the machine gun had not yet done to Mike’s car and his neighbour’s car was now done by the exploding hand grenades inside the enemy Ford Explorer.
After Mike had managed to crawl out from underneath the wreck that used to be his police vehicle, he found two dead men inside the badly damaged enemy car.
Subsequent forensic investigations revealed that it was unlikely that the exploding hand grenade underneath the enemy car had triggered the explosion of two more grenades inside the car, at least not directly. It was more likely that each of the two men held a grenade in his hands and that they either had just pulled the pin of the grenades with the intention of throwing or rolling two more of these nasty weapons towards Mike or that the explosion underneath their car resulted in an accidental activation of the grenades in their hands. Both men had severe injuries which led to their instant deaths. Their heads were almost torn off and their faces unrecognisable.
17
Nancy asked, “Do you know who killed the three painters?”
“We don’t,” replied commissaire Daniel Brice. “All three were killed in their studios. They were killed on the same night. Their studios were searched, but nothing was stolen, as far as we could ascertain. It seemed that the killers were looking for something very special.”
“Any idea what that might have been?” asked Nancy.
“No, we don’t and we don’t know whether or not they found what they were looking for.”
“When you tried to question us at the airport, did you suspect that I may have something to do with the killings?”
“No and yes. I was open-minded about this. In the first instance I wanted to find out if you knew about the killings.”
“Did you find out?”
“Not at the airport, although I had the impression that you had no idea why we tried to question you and that you were genuinely annoyed by our approach.”
“And what do you believe now?”
“After our conversation this evening so far I am inclined to believe you. You are here on holiday and you knew nothing about the murders. Is this correct?” He seemed casual, but Nancy felt that he watched her intensely, as if this were the last test before he finally made up his mind.”
“That’s correct.”
Their conversation stopped. Two waiters served the starters. The waiters explained what they were about to eat. Earlier, when Nancy, Tony and the commissaire had placed their orders, they had asked for a hors d'oeuvre surprise. “It will be an experiment,” they were told by the head waiter, “something the chef loves to cook for himself but has never cooked for anybody else. He told me he is offering it tonight the first time and may be taking a big risk. ‘If our guests don’t like it, what then?’ he asked me. ‘Well, what then?’ I repeated. ‘Then I shall have to go through the rest of my life with an inferiority complex,’ he answered. Of course, he didn’t mean it. He is the last man in the universe who would ever need to have an inferiority complex because of his cooking. He is the best, although I have to add he hates it if we call him the best, but he is definitely one of the ten best chefs in the world.”
“Whether we like his experiment or not,” Nancy replied, “we will swear that it’s the most delicious hors d'oeuvre we ever enjoyed in any restaurant anywhere in the world.”
“That will make him very, very suspicious,” the supervisor laughed. “Just tell him it was all right; he will look in your eyes and see inside your mind and understand.”
Tony asked one of the waiters what it was that he had served. “We don’t know exactly,” the waiter answered. “The boss told us to tell everybody who wants to know what it is, that it is a combination of yoghurt, whey, small marinated pieces of three different types of meat, a sophisticated mix of spices and two more ingredients which he is not willing to reveal.”
“Why did he pick us as guinea pigs?” the commissaire asked suspiciously. Turning towards Nancy he added that when he arrived the boss was in the restaurant and looked at him as if he wanted to say ‘What do you want in my kingdom?’
The two waiters were trying to figure out if the commissaire was serious or joking. But he didn’t help them. His face was a mask of neutrality and indifference mixed with a tiny bit of authority. Tony, when looking at the commissaire, again had the same thought which he had had at the airport: this man can be dangerous.
One of the waiters said, “I could make enquiries.”
“He wouldn’t tell you the truth,” the commissaire replied, now with a smile on his face. “It may be better if you tell him that the lady who sold a copy of an old painting to one of his mates a few years ago is here and that she would be happy to say hello to him.”
The waiter promised to convey the message. Nancy looked surprised and asked, “What was that about?”
“It just occurred to me,” the commissaire said, “that five years ago the man whom the waiter referred to as the boss had lent 50,000 euros to someone who then had bought one of the paintings from you. When the painting turned out to be a copy of the real thing the borrower refused to return the money to the boss. For a while it looked as if there was going to be another court case, but then somehow the two resolved their disagreement.”
“Probably at the expense of their friendship,” Tony commented.
“Probably.”
The waiter returned and said that the boss felt great admiration for the lady who had taught his former mate a lesson and at the same time helped him to see his former mate as the crook he was. The boss would be happy to come to their table as soon as he was able to squeeze in a few minutes. In the meantime he would feel honoured if he could serve one of his best red wines for the main course, courtesy of the house, of course.
The commissaire looked around and said, “I can’t see anybody disagreeing. We look forward to meeting your boss and honouring his wine.”
They enjoyed the hors d'oeuvre and were wondering whether it really contained the ingredients the waiter had mentioned. It tasted like nothing they had tasted before. Even t
he Frenchman looked impressed. “It tastes slightly tangy…,” Nancy made an attempt to describe what she thought she felt in her mouth. At the same time she realised the utter inadequacy of her attempt. Whatever words she used, she would not be able to capture the new experience her taste buds were enjoying. “Tangy, delicious and unique – uniquely delicious.” She left it at that. Judging by the ensuing silence and the slow movements with which the woman and two men ate their starters it was easy to spot that they enjoyed what they were eating very much.
“To come back to the murdered painters,” Tony said, “is there anything, however minor, that your investigations have revealed?”
“There is.”
“Are you in a position to talk about it?”
“It was printed in the papers and shown on TV. If everybody in France knows about it I can’t see why two American tourists should not be allowed to know it.”
A waiter removed the empty bowls, in which the hors d'oeuvre had been served. Another waiter turned up with a dusty bottle of red wine. It was obvious that the bottle had been taken from a shelf and brought into the restaurant in the same condition in which it had been resting, probably for years. He showed the bottle to the commissaire, so that the label was fully visible. The commissaire mumbled something in French, before he said in English, “A German red, year 1959. Are you sure that the boss meant this wine and this year?”
“Yes Monsieur, I am very sure.”
“Well, if you are very sure, who am I to disagree!”
The waiter smiled and replied, “The boss asked me to let you know that there are more of the same bottles where this one came from.”
“Has he committed a crime recently? Is he trying to bribe me?”
“The only crime he commits each day is his cooking.”
“Why? What’s wrong with his cooking?”
“You will find out tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and for the rest of your life.”
An Almighty Conspiracy – A novel, a thriller, four people doing the unexpected Page 6
