by Paul Moomaw
“Fuck you and my career, Parker. I met that son of a bitch, remember? And I’ve met men like him before. He likes to kill people. And he likes to frighten them first, tease them with it, make sure they see it coming.” A violent shiver ran through Tarbell. He grabbed his head between his hands, trying to steady himself, trying to dampen the fear.
“Jesus Christ! What have I done to my family? You think I give a damn about you, or my career, compared to them?”
Parker stood up. “I’m leaving, Chet. You stay put, and don’t do anything stupid. Let me take care of this.”
“I’ve let you take care of too much, already.”
“Just do what I say.”
Tarbell stepped between Parker and the door.
“Where does he have them, Parker?”
“I said I don’t know.”
“You said you don’t know exactly. But you have an idea, don’t you?”
Parker hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, I have an idea.”
“A pretty good idea, I bet.”
“You’d win.”
“But you’re not going to tell me.”
“No. For your sake, and for theirs, you have to stay out of this. Now get out of my way.”
“If anything happens to them, Terry, I’m going to kill you. I can. You know that, don’t you?”
“I know you can.”
Tarbell stepped to one side and opened the door. His eyes followed Parker into the hallway and to the top of the stairs.
Parker paused and looked back.
“I wouldn’t blame you if you tried,” he said.
“It won’t be a case of just trying, Terry. When it comes to killing, I’m a whole lot better than you.”
“I know. But you can’t kill us all.”
“It won’t matter, just so I get you.”
Tarbell closed the door and stood staring around the room. The Company couldn’t handle this one alone, he thought. Parker would have to ask for help, and to get it, he’d have to go outside the agency, share his knowledge. Tarbell knew at least two people at Interpol who owed him favors, and who were in a position to find out whatever there was to find out.
He headed for the telephone, then veered toward the liquor cabinet. He pulled out the bourbon, reached for a glass, and paused.
“No,” he said. He screwed the cap back on and put the bottle back on the shelf. Then he sat down and picked up the telephone.
Chapter 47
“I ask you. How was I supposed to know?” Gabriela, in the front passenger seat, pointed to Delon, who sat, pistol in lap, next to the left rear window of Meissner’s large, black Mercedes sedan, which Delon had liberated from its garage. Pray sat against the other rear window, and Elaine Tarbell, gazing at whatever internal landscape her blind eyes afforded her, sat between them.
“How?” Gabriela repeated. “Who would have thought this creep owned a customs official?”
“Good try, anyway,” Pray said.
“Your problem is that you underestimate us,” Delon said. “You Americans don’t take Europeans seriously to begin with. And as for members of the New European Order, I am aware that you think we are only a few misfits, running around making speeches and throwing bombs. Now, perhaps, you will begin to understand the power, and the extent, of our movement. Some day, when enough governments fall, everyone will understand.”
“What really burns me,” Gabriela went on, ignoring Delon, “Is the way the bastard let me make my play, let me get my hopes up, standing there listening, and nodding, and looking serious. And then he just smiles and says ‘You’ll have to keep an eye on this one, Monsieur Delon,’ and waves us through. What a creep.”
“We were lucky that was all that happened,” Susan Tarbell said. She was driving, her eyes flickering constantly from the road to the rear view mirror. “You could have gotten us killed.”
They lapsed into silence again as the car drifted sedately down the mountainous road west of the Col du Bonhomme. Orsine had filled the van and the trunk of the Mercedes with gerrycans of gasoline and they had driven straight through, without stopping, the sedan in the lead and the van a constant two car lengths behind, passing from Austria into Switzerland, through Zurich, and then into France. It had been at that border, just beyond Basel, that Gabriela had made her move, and had been fuming ever since.
“What a lousy break,” she muttered again.
“Maybe it’s your moon,” Pray said. “Makes you too much of an optimist.”
“Very funny.” The car was approaching another town. “What place is this?”
Susan glared at her.
“Why do you need to know the name of every damned little town we pass through?”
“That’s what kidnap victims are supposed to do, isn’t it, so they can tell the police where they went, or something?”
Delon laughed. “I enjoy your sense of humor, Mademoiselle. I will be sorry to have to kill you. The name of the town is Fraize.”
They were approaching what appeared to be the town’s main intersection. A traffic policeman, a vision of arrogance and white gloves, faced them as he waved traffic from the other road across their path. Susan braked the car.
Gabriela reached across and honked the horn.
“Don’t do that,” Delon said.
“Why not? I think he’s cute, standing up there on his little stool.” She honked again.
Delon lashed out with the barrel of the pistol.
“Watch out!” Pray shouted, but Gabriela had already ducked, and the blow glanced off the top of her head.
“Ow, you bastard,” she said.
“Do not do that again, or I will kill you,” Delon said.
“You’ll have to kill me first,” Pray said.
Delon glanced quickly at Pray. As he did, Gabriela reached over and honked again. The policeman frowned in their direction, shook his head slightly, and looked away.
Gabriela honked a third time, and held her hand on the horn ring. Delon reached out to hit her again.
As he raised his arm, Pray jabbed his pointed knuckle, as hard as he could, into the sweat gland at the base of Delon’s arm pit.
Delon screeched and pulled his arm back in, his teeth bared in a snarl of pain and anger. He reached into his coat pocket with his other hand, pulled out a switchblade, and flicked it open.
“Any more of this, from anyone, and the girl dies.” He pressed the point of the knife into Elaine’s ribs. She flinched, but didn’t make a sound.
“I don’t think so,” Gabriela said. “Look who’s coming to visit.”
The policeman, his Gallic hauteur bristling from every pore, paced menacingly toward the car. He stopped at the driver’s side of the car and motioned for Susan to roll down her window.
“What should I do?” Susan asked.
“I will take care of this,” Delon said. “And if anyone does anything more than smile politely, I will use this knife. Understood?” He rolled his own window down.
“Bon jour,” he said.
“What seems to be your problem, Messieurs-Dames?” the policeman asked in French. The tone of his voice said that the explanation had better be good.
“Just a minor problem with the horn,” Delon said. “A thousand apologies for the noise.” The policeman looked over everyone in the car.
“Exactly,” Gabriela said. “I was pointing that lovely building out to my friends, and stupidly kept brushing up against the horn ring. It seems unusually sensitive.”
“You are American, Mademoiselle?”
“Oui.” Gabriela fluttered her eyelids and smiled sweetly.
“Please to remember then,” he switched to thickly accented English, “That in the city of Fraize, we have the ordinance against unnecessary noises.” He waved a thick index finger officiously from side to side. “The horn is not permitted. Only for emergency.”
“You speak English marvelously,” Gabriela said, her eyes widening more than Pray would have thought possible.
“You are too am
iable,” the policeman said, with a broad smile. He wagged his finger at the steering wheel once more. “No horn, please.” Then he straightened up and began walking back to his post.
“Good,” Delon said. “You are getting smarter.” He put the knife away. Gabriela turned a dazzling smile on him, and reached for the steering wheel at the same time. She honked again. The policeman’s back stiffened, and he pivoted stiffly back to the car, a look of amazement on his face that turned to outrage when Gabriela lifted her hand in a universally obscene gesture.
The policeman began to march toward the car again, thunder and lightning in his eyes.
“Bitch!” Delon’s face had gone white. “Drive,” he said to Susan. She gave him a terrified look over his shoulder.
“Go on,” he snarled. “Step on it.”
“I’m afraid,” she said.
“Go, or I’ll kill you right now.” He started to raise the pistol. Pray slammed a fist into his elbow, knocking the gun to one side. Susan accelerated the car. At the same instant, Gabriela rolled her own window down and dove through.
Slick as a snake, Pray thought irrelevantly as the gun went off, sending a bullet through the roof.
An answering shot echoed from behind them. Pray looked back. The van had pulled up behind them, and Orsine had a rifle pointed through the window in Gabriela’s direction. He fired again, and concrete puffed less than a yard from Gabriela’s running feet. Then she was around a corner and gone.
The policeman ducked to one side as the car hurtled toward him, the van close on its rear bumper. Then they were flying down the road, the intersection, and finally the town, behind them.
Pray slumped back in his seat. Whatever happened now, Gabriela was out of it. Orsine was a lousy shot.
He looked at Delon, and recoiled from the venomous stare he got in return.
“I was careless,” Delon said. “I won’t be again.”
“Why don’t you give it up, Delon? You know you’re going to have the police on your tail now.”
“But I still hold the trump, don’t I?” Delon waved the pistol toward Susan and Elaine. “I don’t think anyone will try anything rash. And I don’t want to hurt them, either. In fact, I intend to offer a trade.”
Pray waited. He didn’t like the tone in Delon’s voice.
“I intend to trade Madame and Mademoiselle Tarbell for your red-headed bitch. Then I intend to kill you both.”
Chapter 48
“Look, Maman, that woman has only one shoe.”
Gabriela tucked her shoeless foot behind the shod one as she stood at the telephone kiosk, trying to recall her telephone credit card number for the operator who had the attention of her other ear. She smiled at the young boy who had called attention to her feet, and then shrugged helplessly at his mother, who in her turn looked Gabriela up and down, tossed in a shrug of her own, and walked off, son in tow, muttering something about les Americaines.
“I must have the number you wish to call, Madame,” the operator said.
“I don’t know the number. It’s the American Embassy in Vienna. I don’t have it written down.”
“Perhaps Madame could look it up in a directory.”
“There is no directory at this phone.”
“Perhaps Madame could try another telephone.”
Gabriela clamped her teeth together to stifle a cry of frustration. “I don’t believe there are any Viennese telephone books in Fraize.”
“Ah, you are in Fraize, and you wish to call Vienna.”
“Oui, s’il vous plait!”
“Fraize is in France, and Vienna is in Austria. There would be no Austrian telephone books in a small French town such as Fraize.”
“Exactly.”
“Un instant. I will connect you with Vienna.”
Gabriela fidgeted and fumed, only half attending to the voices on the other end as the local operator did whatever she had to do to create a connection to Vienna. I’ll never slam good old Ma Bell again, she thought. She wondered what was happening to the others, and watched the street continuously and nervously, expecting to see Delon again, ready to drop the telephone and run, and not knowing where she would run if he did show up.
Then someone from the embassy was on the line.
“I need to reach Larry Biven,” she said.
“I’m afraid we don’t have anyone by that name,” the voice on the other end said.
“I know. He’s not on the staff there. He’s . . .” Gabriela paused and thought. Do I just say, he’s a spook, so I need to talk to your spook section?
“Is there someone else you can speak to?” the voice asked.
What the hell, Gabriela thought. “He’s with Central Intelligence Agency,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” the voice said. “I think you must have a wrong number.”
“Look, this is urgent.” How do you sound desperate without sounding like a nut, she thought? This is a matter of life and death? This is a matter of national security? They’re about to blow up half of France? “Mr. Biven was very clear that if I needed to contact him, I should call the embassy.” A little more frost. “I assume you are supposed to know what to do from this point.”
“I’m not authorized to . . .”
“Then I suggest you find somebody who is,” Gabriela snapped, trying to turn the frost to ice, and not waiting to find out what it was the voice wasn’t authorized to do.
“Just a moment.” The voice put Gabriela on hold. No canned Muzak, at least, she thought. She surveyed the street again, and shrank.
There, in the middle of the next block, stood two policemen, one gesturing grandly at the other, with an air of anger visible even from Gabriela’s distance. The gesticulator was her traffic cop, the one she had honked at, and whom Susan Tarbell had nearly run down in her panicky exit from town.
“Whom am I speaking to?” A new, male, voice had come on the line, one that sounded vaguely familiar, but which she couldn’t place.
“Who’s this?”
“I think I just asked you that.”
“I need to speak to Larry Biven, or get a message to him.”
“First, you need to tell me who you are.”
“Look, I don’t have time to play games. This is urgent.”
“I don’t have time to play games either, Miss. Either you tell me who you are, and what your business is, or I’m going to hang up.”
“I can’t tell you. He wouldn’t want me to.”
“Very well. Good-bye.”
“Wait!” She understood, all at once, why drowning people clutch at straws.
“Please tell Larry that Gabriela needs to talk to him.”
“Gabriela? Gabriela Villani? Where are you?”
“Look, Maman! That lady is still there. And she has blood on her, too. Perhaps she is a murderess.”
The mother and son walked past again, the mother dragging on the boy, who hung back, pointing.
Blood? Gabriela looked down. Her jacket was open, exposing a white blouse beneath, and on the blouse a large smear, rusty and dried, but definitely blood.
“It’s only . . .” How the hell did you say catsup in French? Gabriela sagged back into the booth.
Suddenly the boy broke loose from his mother and dashed down the street toward the policeman. He tugged at the representative of French might, and pointed back at the telephone booth.
“Where are you, Gabriela?” The voice drew her attention back to the telephone.
“I can’t tell you,” she said. “Who is this?”
“You have to tell me where you are, so Larry will know how to reach you.”
Gabriela was chillingly certain that would be a mistake. “Just tell him to go to Cattenom,” she said. “Tell him that.”
“Are you at Cattenom?”
“Never mind.” It occurred to her suddenly that she had no idea if it was possible to trace her call. She started to hang up, and a hand closed over hers.
She jumped and shrieked in spite of herself, then
struggled for control of the telephone.
“Enough!” Gabriela turned to see the policeman. “Let go of the telephone, Mademoiselle,” he said.
She let go, and he put it to his mouth.
“This is Police Lieutenant Alphonse Couvier,” he said in loud French, as if he didn’t trust the telephone wires to carry his voice unassisted. “To whom do I have the honor of speaking?” A silence ensued, which Police Lieutenant Alphonse Couvier punctuated with nods as the party on the other end spoke.
“Very well, Monsieur,” he said finally. “It will be as you say.” He glanced at Gabriela, whose exit from the booth he blocked with his body as he spoke. “You must not worry about that,” he said with a smile. “She will be quite secure.” He nodded again. “You will of course have the proper documents of identification with you, Monsieur? Bon. Ca va.” He hung up and looked at Gabriela, managing to look as if he were smirking even though his mouth didn’t move.
“You must come with me, Madame.”
“Where?”
“To the station.”
“Look, I’m sorry if I upset you back in the car, but . . .”
“A nothing,” he said grandly, with a wave of his hand. “I am above such things. And at any rate, after speaking with your husband I understand many things.” He gave her a knowing, owlish look. “Many things,” he repeated.
“My who?”
“Your husband, who has assured me he will arrive by late tonight.”
“I don’t have a husband.”
Police Lieutenant Couvier nodded solemnly. “Of course, Madame.” He took her arm, gently but firmly enough for Gabriela to understand that she would break free only if she were willing to use violence. That, she decided, wouldn’t be a good idea. She made no effort to pull away, and in fact sidled up closer to him as they walked along the pavement.
“He beats me,” she said.
Couvier stopped and stared at her. “He beats you, Madame?”
Gabriela nodded, then dropped her eyes to the sidewalk, trying to look demure. It wasn’t easy; being demure had never been a strong point with her.
Couvier sighed dramatically and shook his head. “Then he is a fool, Madame.”
“He’s a dangerous man, Monsieur.”
