by Paul Moomaw
Gabriela leaned closer and dropped her voice to a stage whisper. “He is a specialist on contract to the Central Intelligence Agency. Do you understand what that means?”
“Non, Madame.”
“He kills people. For money. And I have found out more about him than he thinks I should know. I am afraid, Monsieur. I am afraid that he will kill me, too.”
Couvier tutted. It distracted Gabriela briefly; she had never heard an actual tut, tut from anybody before.
“You play the role tres bien, Madame. How fortunate for my poor, gullible self that your husband warned me of your histrionic abilities.” He took her arm again. “Come, we will wait for him at the police station. I will arrange a meal for you, and a little wine, to settle your nerves.”
So much for that, Gabriela thought, and fell in beside Couvier again.
* * *
Gabriela dozed, stretched out on a cot. The remains of the promised meal—cold chicken, cold peas, and warm bread, lay on a table next to her. Couvier had escorted her to a cell, and had made a point of demonstrating that the door was not locked and that she was not, therefore, a prisoner.
Bright lights went on overhead. She squeezed her eyes more tightly closed momentarily, then shaded them with her hand and sat up, still groggy from sleep.
“Your husband has arrived, Madame.” Couvier’s voice came from somewhere behind the light.
Gabriela stood up. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the policeman in the door. Behind him, staring at her over the policeman’s shoulder, stood Chet Tarbell, who eased his way past Couvier and strode across the cell to Gabriela. He grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and said in a loud wail, “Ah, Gabriela. How could you do this?” Then he pulled her to him.
“Open your mouth, and I’ll break your neck,” he whispered in her ear. Then he turned to Couvier.
“I will take Madame straight home. Are there papers I need to sign?”
Couvier smiled broadly and stepped to one side with a small bow and flourish.
“Ah, non, Monsieur. We wish always to cooperate with personages of the American embassy.”
Tarbell bowed back. “We’ll be on our way, then.” He wrapped an arm around Gabriela’s shoulders. “Come, dear,” he said, and marched her out of the cell, out of the police station, and into the night.
Chapter 49
The cold sterility of the inner chambers of the reactor at Cattenom would have given Pray the creeps under the most ordinary of circumstances. Now, as he carried steel bottles of plutonium oxide from the van and stacked them, under Delon and Orsine’s watchful eyes, onto a small, battery driven fork lift, he began to feel the first, faint tinges of hopelessness. He and Peter worked side by side in silence—or almost silence. At odd intervals, Peter made funny little noises, and uttered fragmentary remarks in an Austrian dialect too thick for Pray’s command of German to penetrate, except for the frequent references to death and killing.
Susan and Elaine stood against a long glass wall that extended almost from floor to ceiling, and which offered a view, through hazy blue light, of the loading chamber above the main reactor.
Two other men, both wearing the gray and blue coveralls of plant employees, talked and laughed as they stood guard, Uzi machine guns in hand, over a dozen other, bona fide, employees.
Pray glanced at them and shook his head. The skids had been well greased for this one, he realized. The sedan and van had pulled up at the outer gate, and had been passed through immediately. Pray had seen two men in the small gatehouse. A shot, and then one of the men—the one on the left now, bald and wearing thick, horn-rimmed spectacles—had walked out of the guardhouse and joined the motorcade.
The other man, younger, his hair cut so short he resembled a Marine, had already rounded up the rest of the plant’s few employees and had them lined up outside, against the wall of the main building, when Delon and his charges pulled up.
Delon had referred to one of the men as Duval, and the other as Moreaux, but Pray hadn’t been able to decide which was which.
Now everyone was inside. The rear of the van filled large, double delivery doors that led directly into the control complex, which consisted of a circle of rooms like the one they worked in, ringing the reactor chamber, and connected by curved, concrete passageways. The light everywhere was dim, and things blinked, and clucked, and chuckled on the banks of monitoring consoles facing the central chamber. Even without the presence of Delon and his goons, Pray would have liked to have been almost anywhere else. There was simply too much power here.
Power, like a desolating pestilence, pollutes whate’er it touches,” he murmured.
Peter turned to him. “Bitte?”
Shelley,” Pray said. Peter shrugged and grabbed the last bottle from the van.
“Finished,” Delon said. “Good.” He waved toward the two men with Uzis. “Duval,” he called. “Come here.” The older man with spectacles strutted toward them, holding his Uzi in front of him as if it were a dangerous snake, one that might bite him as well as anyone else.
“Go with these two and find a place to store this stuff.”
“What is it?”
“Never mind. Just do it.”
“It’s plutonium,” Pray said.
“Shut up!” Delon spun and waved his pistol at Pray. “Unless you want to die sooner.”
“Is it safe?” Duval asked.
“Perfectly safe in those bottles. That’s the way it’s transported. Don’t worry.”
Duval nodded, but he looked worried anyway. “Let’s go,” he said. “You drive that thing, slowly,” he added to Pray. “This other one can ride with you. I’ll walk.”
“I don’t know how to drive one of these,” Pray said. “I might drive it into a wall and knock the bottles over.”
Duval stood, fidgeting, and stared at Delon, who motioned brusquely to Peter. “You drive it,” he said, and walked away.
Without speaking, Peter jumped to the seat of the forklift and shifted it into forward. Pray pulled himself onto the platform next to the seat. He smiled and waved at Duval, who hadn’t moved.
“Bye,” he said.
Duval blinked, the spectacles making his eyes huge, and trotted after them. “You have to wait for me,” he said. “You have to do what I say.”
“I’m just the passenger,” Pray said. He liked to see the other man flustered; he knew his only hope, however miniscule, lay in creating an imbalance of some kind.
The forklift passed a wide door in the outer wall of the corridor, and Pray peered through it. Three hallways, lit by bright cold fluorescents, split off almost immediately—the center one level, the one to the right curving up along a smooth ramp, and the left one curving down. It would be easy to get lost in here, Pray thought, easy to hide, and wait. He had visions of picking Delon and his men off, one by one, a round-eyed ninja, skulking in dark corridors. Delon would send the others first, of course; he would not come looking himself until everybody else was dead. He would be afraid, and fear makes a man an easy mark.
Then Pray had another vision—Elaine and Susan Tarbell, standing huddled together in the control room, one of them blind, and both of them terrified. As long as Delon had them, he was untouchable.
“Stop here,” Duval said. They had reached another door, this one closed. “Open it up,” Duval said to Pray, who climbed down from the fork lift and pushed at the door. Nothing happened. The only thing approaching a handle appeared to be an indentation in the door. He slipped his fingers into it and pushed to one side, and the door slid open, the weight of its massive steel revealed in the reluctance with which it moved at first. A room, maybe twenty feet by twenty feet, metal-walled, windowless and empty, stood behind the door.
“Parfait,” Duval said. “Put the stuff in there. I’ll wait right here where I can see you, so no funny stuff.”
Peter wheeled the fork-lift sharply toward the door, and Pray grabbed at a rail. Then everything exploded behind his eyes as Peter’s elbow smashed into his tem
ple. Pray flew from the forklift and sprawled into Duval, knocking him over. He felt a moment of terror, and the certainty of impending death, as Duval clutched at the trigger of the Uzi and sent a spray of bullets past Pray’s ear, deafening him momentarily. Then Pray was sitting up, rubbing his head and staring as the heavy steel door slid closed again, with Peter on the other side.
Duval cursed and fired at the door, sending rounds ricocheting around himself and Pray. One slug took a piece of Duval’s shoe, and that appeared to bring him to his senses. He stood up shakily, stepped to the door, and tried to open it.
“Bastard locked it, or something,” he said, stepping back. He stared down at Pray.
“Get up,” he ordered.
Pray rose. “Now what?”
“We go back,” Duval said. He looked terrified.
He needn’t have been, Pray thought. After Duval reported Peter’s disappearance, Delon simply smiled and rubbed his hands.
“You couldn’t have done better if you had meant to,” he said. “We have the stuff locked in a room, and the crazy Austrian is locked up with it. Just one less person to worry about.”
“How about a hand, here?” The call came from the double doors, where Orsine stood next to a large trunk.
“C’est le plastique?” Delon asked. Orsine nodded. Delon motioned to the man he called Moreaux. “Help him with that.”
“We’re getting some attention,” Orsine said. “The grounds outside the fence are filled with cops.”
“I won’t worry,” Delon said. “They’ll have read the little note I left on the gate. They’ll be in no hurry to break in and cause a lot of innocent deaths.” He laughed. “They have never learned to understand true ruthlessness.” He pointed to Moreaux again. “The main control room is all the way around on the other side. Take this stuff there, then stay and give Orsine whatever help he needs.”
“I don’t need help. I know explosives like my mother’s breast.”
“You know them too well,” Delon said. “That’s the trouble. Sometimes you get careless. I think you don’t respect them enough.”
“Don’t worry.”
“I’ll worry a lot less with Moreaux there to provide an extra pair of hands and eyes, and maybe a little caution.”
Orsine growled and motioned to Moreaux to pick up one end of the trunk, and the two men disappeared around the curve of the passageway.
The telephone rang, and everyone froze momentarily. Pray felt a sense of unreality. Telephones didn’t fit here; they belonged to another class of objects, like alarm clocks and ice cream cones, which existed in the normal world beyond the walls of this place. Even Delon looked briefly puzzled. The telephone stopped ringing, and everyone stood where they were, as if waiting for it to ring again.
It did, with a fluttering chuckle that shouldn’t have been loud, but was, in the stillness of the control room. Delon marched to the telephone and picked it up.
“Allo,” he said. Such anticlimax, Pray thought. Delon should somehow have said something more pregnant with the moment.
Delon listened for a moment, then asked, “Are you empowered to make decisions?”
He listened again briefly, an exasperated growing on his face, then said, “Don’t waste my time. Put someone on the line who can deal with me.”
There was another long period of silence, then Delon nodded and smiled.
“Bon jour, mon General,” he said. “Listen to me, now. I wish certain things, and I am not an unreasonable man. I don’t want anything you cannot provide me easily.” He paused and listened, cocking his head and gazing around the control room. His eyes rested briefly on Susan and Elaine Tarbell, and a thin smile played across his lips.
“Don’t waste my time with threats, mon General. We are in here, and you are out there. And you do not need to know my name. That is not an important fact. The important facts are these. We have placed plastique in the places that count. If we are forced to set it off, you can say good-bye to a great many people in this part of the world. You can’t help yourselves by cutting the power off—we have already dealt with that little problem. You will be interested to know that we also have a sizable amount of plutonium oxide. I intend to take that with me when I leave, but the plant itself, and the hostages who are with me, will be unharmed.” He listened again, and nodded. “Yes, several,” he said. “There are the employees of the plant. There are also three Americans. Yes, three. Un instant.”
Delon gestured to Susan Tarbell, who had been watching him the way a squirrel watches a cat—angry and frightened at the same time. “Bring your daughter over here,” he said.
Susan led Elaine across the floor. Delon held the telephone out to Elaine. “This is a telephone, Mademoiselle. Take it and say hello to General Cornuse. I believe he knows your father.”
Elaine held the receiver to her ear and said, “Hello?” She listened briefly. “Me, and my mother, and another American named Adam Pray. I don’t know anybody else.” She listened again, and shook her head. “No, we haven’t been harmed.”
Delon grabbed the telephone back.
“Ca va, mon General. You see how it is.” He motioned to Susan to go away again. “Now, here is what I want. First, one hundred million francs in gold, unwrapped so I can see what I am getting. I want you to bring it here in a helicopter, one big enough to carry the gold, myself, my assistants, and two hostages.” He paused. “Yes, only two. Madame and Mademoiselle Tarbell.” He paused again and nodded with a grin. “Yes, I thought that would be of interest to you. The others, however, will be waiting here unharmed when we leave.”
Delon stopped talking again. He tapped his foot, as if impatient with the man on the other end.
“Non, non, mon General,” he said finally. “You fail to understand. There is not time for you to discuss this with your superiors. There can be no counter offer, you see? I am not negotiating, I am telling you how it will be. One other thing; when the helicopter arrives, it must contain one other person. She is an American, named Mademoiselle Gabriela Villani.” He paused again. “You don’t need to understand. Call it a whim on my part, and a matter of good faith on yours.”
Delon stopped to listen one more time, then shook his head.
“C’est tout, mon General. There is nothing more to be said, except this. You have one hour to give me what I want. There are approximately one dozen hostages in here, not counting Madame and Mademoiselle Tarbell. At the end of one hour, one hostage will be shot. I will continue to shoot one every hour until you have complied. And to demonstrate to you that I am not bluffing, we are going to offer you an example immediately. Good-bye, mon General.”
Delon hung up and turned to Duval. “Line up the employees,” he said. He marched up and down the line, hands locked behind him, like an officer reviewing troops, a tight grin on his face. At each person he stopped and took a long look. Some of the hostages stiffened and looked away. A couple flinched and began to shake. One of them, a mild looking older man with a skinny, wrinkled neck and rimless bifocals, spit in Delon’s face.
Delon wiped the spittle away. Without expression, he hit the man in the face and bloodied his nose. Then Delon resumed his parade, passing each of the hostages a second time.
The bastard is enjoying this, Pray thought, his fists clenching and unclenching with a life of their own.
Finally Delon stopped in front of a young woman, a frail brunette with dark, frightened eyes.
“This one looks Jewish,” he said. He turned to Duval. “Take the rest and lock them up in a room somewhere. We will begin with this one.”
Chapter 50
Gabriela stared through the windshield at the distant cluster of vehicles, lights and uniforms at the gate of Cattenom Number Three, not really hearing Chet Tarbell, until one word broke through. She turned away from the road.
“Parker?”
“Yeah,” Chet said. “I didn’t realize how much weight he has, the son of a bitch. I couldn’t get the time of day from anybody, anywhere. At le
ast two people I talked to had to know that Delon had headed for this place. They had to. But not a word. ‘We don’t know a thing, mon cher ami.’” Tarbell laughed harshly. “Mon cher ami, my ass. You ever notice just how smooth these goddam frogs are at lying? Slit your throat and smile the whole time. It was just dumb luck that you called for Biven while I was there. Parker had just walked out the door. Did you know that? If he’d still been there, that silly bitch on the desk would have patched your call to him.”
“What has Parker got to do with it?”
“The whole goddam thing is his mess.” Tarbell paused and looked appraisingly at Gabriela. “You know how to keep your mouth shut?”
Gabriela nodded. You bet, she thought, because if anything happens to Adam, and that asshole Parker has anything to do with it, I’m going to kill him, and I don’t want him to know I’m coming.
The intensity of her feelings surprised her. She wasn’t sure she wanted Adam Pray, or anybody, to be that important to her.
“Delon is working for Parker, or for whomever Parker reports to. The deal at Cattenom is part of that. Delon is supposed to create trouble here—nothing serious, right? Just an embarrassment for the French government.” He slapped his hand against the steering wheel and then yelped in pain. “Shit,” he said, holding his thumb to his mouth. “I can’t do anything right, can I? But I tried to tell Parker not to deal with Delon. I warned him. But hot shot Mr. Terry Parker wouldn’t listen to me.”
“You mean you knew about Delon in advance?”
Tarbell sagged. “I took him the goddam money for the job.” He stared through the windshield, and tears glistened in the reflected light of the cluster of vehicles ahead. “Now I’ve given him my wife and daughter. God, I’ve been a selfish bastard, so busy trying to hustle a deal for myself I couldn’t see what I was doing to them. Shit, I’m the one that lied, and cheated, and trashed my professional honor. I’m the one kissed ass for the promise of a promotion. Why do they have to pay?”
Tarbell’s pain was a tangible thing, and Gabriela tried to work up a case of sympathy for him. But all she could see was a blind girl and terrified mother, caught up in a disaster they had never asked for, and that couldn’t end well for them. Even if they escaped Delon, they would have to face the reality of what Tarbell had done.
