“I think so,” I said cautiously. “Listen, Margery—”
She interrupted me. “Don’t think I don’t know what we’re asking of you,” she said. “We do. Well, I do. I know it will mean changing your whole life. I’ve been struggling with—this—for over a year. I didn’t know if you’d be willing to take it on.”
“I wish you’d told me,” I said. “It’s just, the suddenness of it…”
“I know.” She nodded. “I couldn’t come to terms with it myself. Feeling so frustrated, every day, but reminding myself that I’d made my choices and I should see them through. Then last year, when I was in the hospital—well, I had to face up to it all. So it was a slow process. I’d have talked about it sooner if I’d been sure.”
“And you’re sure now?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, and her whole face lightened. “I kept thinking it made me a bad mother, allowing someone else to raise my kids. But this is the best place for them right now. I’ve been seriously unhappy, and it’s made them unhappy, too, and that can’t be a good thing. Well, they’re both insecure, and they didn’t used to be like that.”
I thought of Lukas and his obsessive lists and calendars. “They’re finding ways of coping,” I said.
“Maybe.” She drank some wine, looking away from me, someplace that wasn’t happy. “Claudia may be cutting herself,” she said suddenly.
“What?” I put my glass down on the coffee table. “Why? Did you see it?”
“No. And I made her show me her arms last week.”
I thought of the oversized sweaters, of the sleeves that Claudia kept pulling down over her knuckles. I’d thought it was a grunge fashion statement. “Should she see a therapist?”
“She is, already.” I hadn’t known that. “She should probably keep seeing someone, too. What happened is, one of her friends texted another of her friends, who—thankfully—told her mother, who called me. The girls say they don’t know for sure, but they thought she might be. I didn’t see any evidence—nothing recent, no scars—but it brought it home to me, what I’ve been putting them through.”
It had been so far off my radar to worry about something like that, that I was shocked into silence. Loud, assertive, combative Claudia? I associated cutting with Ophelia-type girls, not someone as present as my stepdaughter. I clearly had a lot to learn about this parenting thing.
Better learn it fast, LeDuc.
Dinner was boisterous, to say the least, but it suddenly felt fine. Lukas came out of his sulks and told some hilarious story he’d cribbed from the tour guide. Claudia was permitted a half glass of wine and took selfies all night with various adults in the pictures with her. Over their heads, Ivan and I smiled at each other. And Margery talked about us all planning a vacation together next summer.
I loved where I was. Being part of this circle of people. Seeing them all relaxed and enjoying each other. It balanced out the darkness, somehow.
Julian called me while the kids were still arguing over who had to clear the plates and who had to fill the dishwasher. The police in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu were on the lookout for Avner, but he hadn’t yet turned up. “I think we just need to be there,” he said. “I don’t know what it is exactly that we’re trying to stop, but we can’t do it from here, whatever it is.”
“The jewel is exactly what we thought it was,” I said, taking my phone upstairs and into the bedroom for privacy. “It’s got stored vibes from centuries of magical goings-on, and is cursed on top of it, by the Templars of all people. It’s perfect for Aleister.”
“Okay.” I could tell that Julian was skeptical about the magical goings-on, but he at least understood that we had to stop whatever it was. And, of course, find Avner. “They’re keeping an eye on the warehouse, checking it on the overnight tours. I’m gonna owe them for this.”
“If it comes off, they’ll be owing you,” I said. “Tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” he said resignedly. “Pick you up at ten. Maybe by then we’ll have some news. Magicians work at night, right?”
“How do I know?”
“Well, who knows. If I hear anything overnight I’ll give you a call. Pray they don’t start it at midnight tonight when all we’ll have out there is a couple of constables on a graveyard tour.”
“There’s that,” I agreed. But somehow I thought we were looking at tomorrow. The sentencing at Nuremberg was during the day; they’d want to replicate that.
Probably. We hoped. Unless it was Nuremberg time, which made it … I couldn’t do the math. What time zone was Nuremberg in?
There were just too many variables, and every time I tried to catch at one of them it disappeared, a will-o’-the-wisp, tantalizingly out of my grasp. Too much to think about. But the one thing was that they had to be stopped. All of us—Gabrielle, Marcus, Avner, Julian, even Élodie in her own way—seemed to be in agreement at least about that.
Julian sounded cheerful. “Anyway, I got us some new recruits,” he said. “Been talking with the RMCP.”
“Really.” None of the police forces were particularly known for their easy entente.
“They’re joining us tomorrow,” Julian said. “Seems they’re hot to get this last diamond back. They’re the ones who got them stolen in the first place.”
“The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were guarding the vault?”
“Yes indeedy. And probably one of their own—long gone now, of course—was responsible for the hatboxes moving down to the other vault, where Patricia found them.”
“Wow,” I said. “Talk about needing to make up for something.” I hesitated. “But I thought all you guys didn’t play that well together.”
“LeDuc, I’m still not even close to being sure that any laws are going to be broken tomorrow. Not sure who’s getting arrested for what. If we can get any kind of clarity from anybody, I’m open to it.”
“Okay,” I said. But I was envisioning a full-blown raid, American-style, and I had a feeling that Aleister Brand was too smart to allow something like that to happen.
And just as I was falling asleep, something was tickling the edge of my consciousness and pulled me back from the brink. Something that knotted my stomach and jarred me wide-awake. But I still had no idea what it was.
* * *
It was unthinkable. It was impossible.
Numb, Hans walked down the street, through the park, by the bench they’d called theirs, laughing and silly together. There was too much loss to assimilate. Too much … too many … he couldn’t even tell how he felt. The world had shifted impossibly in an instant, and people passed him by, acting as though nothing had changed, oblivious to the darkness pressing in on all sides. Without her, without Livia, there would be no point. In anything.
And now not just Livia. Livia and their—child. The concept so new he couldn’t articulate it.
But surely she couldn’t mean it. She was a young woman alone, alone and pregnant. She could not survive as an unwed mother. She needed help; she must know that she needed help. She had to change her mind. She had to realize how much he loved her, her—and their unborn child.
She would realize. She would come.
He would do what he had to do at the vault, and then he would take the jewels and wait for her in her room. He would pack the candlesticks. She would change her mind; he knew she would change her mind.
And he was right.
He stepped out his front entrance the next morning and a shadow detached itself from the bagel shop next door. “Hans.”
“Livia!” He looked around, desperate that Kurt wasn’t coming down after him, shaken at the thought that he might. Livia in danger was unthinkable. “What are you doing here?”
Her smile was a little shaky and, he thought, very brave. “I am ready,” she said. “I am ready to go wherever you want to go. You are right; you are the one I know, you are the one I love. The past does not matter. What matters is our future.”
“Come with me.” Quickly, now, quickly, around the corner; Kur
t could come downstairs at any moment. “Listen to me, darling. Go to the bus station,” he said. “Here are the tickets. Wait for me there. I will be there, my love, I promise.”
She was crying again, but smiling through the tears. “And where are we going?”
He put his arms around her. “Ottawa, to start. And then west, as far west as we can go. Someplace where they will never find us.”
“Hans. I love you.”
“I love you.” He kissed her. “Now go quickly. Do you have a bag packed?” She nodded. “Then go. I will be there before three o’clock. Yes?”
She nodded again. “Yes.”
And, just like that, the world was right again.
Maurice was waiting at the side door. “Come on,” he said. “You’re late, eh?”
Hans grinned. “No,” he said; “I’m right on time.”
“Come on.” In through a narrow passageway, and then down the stairs, two flights of them, deep underground.
The vault was a huge dark creature, lurking, waiting. “Stay here,” Hans instructed Maurice, taking the flashlight from him. Kurt had gotten the vault combination, God only knew how; Hans concentrated on it, turning the tumblers slowly. Every nerve told him to hurry; his brain counseled caution.
It was fast; it had to be fast—Livia was waiting. He grabbed the hatbox and pulled out the diamonds, slipping the substitutes Kurt had given him inside. He’d give the real ones to Kurt, but keep just enough out to pay for their new life. Three ought to do it, he thought, looking at their size, and held on to them tightly, sharp against his palm.
Kurt was going to be waiting outside; that was the plan. There wasn’t time for much subterfuge. “There,” he said to himself, backing out and closing the vault, the diamonds in his hand.
“This way,” Maurice hissed, pulling him away from the passageway they’d come in through. “This is the way out.”
It was a locked room with a steel door—some other kind of vault, looked like—and as Hans stepped into the doorway, Maurice said, “That will do.”
Hans turned and his flashlight picked up the gun in Maurice’s hand.
No. No, this wasn’t happening. Not when everything was going to work out. Not when … He held the bag out to Maurice. “Take them,” he said, and with the other man’s eyes on the bag and dazzled by the flashlight, he slipped the three diamonds into his mouth, swallowed hard. “Take the diamonds, and we’re even,” he said.
“Drop the bag,” said Maurice, “and turn around.”
Hans obeyed. Maurice would take the jewels and leave him, and then all he’d have to do was get away, away from Maurice, away from Kurt, on to the bus station and his new life. To Livia, and their new life together.
He never even heard the shot.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
October 1.
Fitting, in a way: October is, after all, an important month in Québec’s history. If Gabrielle Brand was correct, the October Crisis had been the start of Aleister’s disenfranchisement. And now perhaps he wanted to end it altogether.
Or perhaps it had started earlier, decades earlier, when a rotund man with deep-set eyes sat in an international court and heard the judges pronounce that he should die.
There was a note on the kitchen table from Ivan.
Have to run out to the casino for a few hours. Be back by noon at the latest. Claudia and Lukas, why don’t you show your mom the Underground City?
No one else in the house seemed to be up. It was unfortunate: I could use a shot of ordinary life this morning.
Stop it, Martine. The world wasn’t going to blow up. None of this “high-on-drugs astral-planing I just saved the universe” stuff. It was a police matter.
Right.
I dressed without thinking about my clothes: jeans, a pullover sweater, a warm scarf knotted around my neck, boots. Jean-Luc and his dress code could go to hell.
I called Richard while waiting for my coffee to steep in the French press. “I won’t be in today,” I said.
“Bien.” He was never ruffled, my deputy. I could have said, I’m taking the shuttle to Mars today, and he’d just give me that same “very well” and carry on beautifully without me. “Jean-Luc will not be happy,” I predicted, “but you can tell him—”
“Yes?”
I took a deep breath. “Tell him that I am working on something, something that will help solve who planted the bombs at City Hall.” Best to leave it at that. Though I knew already who had planted the bombs, I wasn’t about to go into that now. Not until we had him in custody, under whatever pretext we could manage.
“He will be pleased to hear it. He will be very pleased that it was not you.”
“He thinks it was me?” Momentarily distracted at the idea, I frowned. There were probably days when he wanted it to be me. Focus, Martine. “I’ll—I’ll call you later, Richard. And—Richard?”
“Oui?”
“Thank you. Thanks for thinking so quickly the other day. Thanks for—well, for everything.”
He sounded surprised. “It is nothing. It is my job.”
“Yes, well, thank you for that. I’ll call you later.”
I would, too, I promised myself. No more taking Richard for granted. Or, I added as I took a last look at my husband’s note, Ivan, either.
I pulled on my jacket, grabbed my bag, and five minutes later was risking my life yet another time in Julian’s TT. He had the radio on and was tapping the steering wheel in time to it; nervous energy. “Is the RCMP there?”
He nodded. “And Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu local police, too. And,” he glanced at me to catch my reaction, “we’ve got military backup, too.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not a bit of it. Remember, there’s a military barracks at Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. And the military school’s back there? Seems JTF East wants to make sure there’s no spillover from what’s happening at the warehouse.”
“Aren’t they stationed in Montréal?” He was talking about the military’s Joint Task Force, Canadian Armed Forces’ response to any request for military intervention to provide emergency assistance or support in critical incidents. I wondered if part of Aleister’s plan was to take over the military school and barracks. “We should’ve thought of that.”
“We did; who do you think called them in?” He sounded irritated.
“Okay, sorry.” I looked out the window; we were crossing the Jacques-Cartier Bridge now, massive over the St. Lawrence Seaway.
“No, it’s me. Nerves.”
As we got closer, the atmosphere changed tangibly; I glanced across at Julian and saw that I wasn’t imagining it. The barometer had to be plummeting. Air thick and somehow contaminated, a faint ringing in my ears.
Approaching the epicenter.
“It’s going to happen,” said Julian. I didn’t think that he really believed it until that moment. “It’s going to happen.”
“Yes.” I wondered if we should have been better prepared: brought a Bible, or holy water, or—an exorcist. I thought back to my convent-school days, searching for the right prayer, I must have heard it sometime. But there was only cotton-ball opaqueness: something clogging the channels.
Two blocks from the warehouse, Julian pulled the TT over and cut the engine. “Here we are,” he said unnecessarily.
“Yes.” What did soldiers say when preparing for battle? What did the dying say when they saw the stairway of light? “Do you have a gun?” I asked.
“Yes.” He wasn’t looking at me, his eyes moving restlessly around the car, the sidewalk, the street, cops’ eyes are never still. I’d forgotten that about him. “Did you bring anything?”
Like what, I wanted to ask. Lukas’s confiscated water pistol, the one I’d never gotten rid of even though I’d taken it from him nearly four years ago? “Only my wits,” I said, a lame attempt at humor.
It fell on stony ground, all right. “Stay behind me,” said Julian.
“Fine with me.”
The building its
elf looked no different from the last time we’d been there, two days and a lifetime ago. No Ghostbusters green slime emanating from it, no spaceship hovering overhead. Cars parked nearby. “Where’s all your police presence?”
“Here somewhere,” he said.
We were at an angle to the orange door, on the canal side of the building. A car engine was running someplace close; Julian caught it. “Wait here,” he said, and scurried off to talk to the guy who’d just driven up. There was a van behind him.
Breathe, I reminded myself. Best if you breathe.
Julian was back in a moment. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said, and he wasn’t keeping his voice down anymore.
“What?”
“Come on.” He marched across to the door. This wasn’t the approach I’d envisioned, but what the hell; I stayed close behind him. “What is it?” I hissed.
The door was ajar; he pushed it the rest of the way open. Down the corridor there was light. Voices. “They’re doing it!” I exclaimed.
“Not what you think,” Julian said.
I followed him down and into the doorway of a large space—the main warehouse floor, no doubt. Big, echoing area, perfect for drama. The place where the ritual was to take place, where the skinhead magicians were practicing chaos magic, were summoning Hitler back from the dead.
Except that the body lying in the middle of the floor surrounded by people wearing protective clothing wasn’t Hitler’s.
It was Aleister Brand.
* * *
“Not the same gun used on Patricia,” said Julian.
I was staring out at the canal. “Do you think it was Marcus?” I asked.
“It was a larger caliber than the other.” He sounded tired, and he wasn’t answering my question.
I was feeling completely disoriented. It had never occurred to me that I could be wrong. Everything had pointed to Aleister being the one. Even his mother had pointed to him being the one. “Where’s everyone else?” I asked.
“Who?”
“The boys in the band,” I said flippantly. “All those testosterone-driven skinheads who were going to play séance with Aleister. Where’d they go?”
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