Empress Bianca

by Lady Colin Campbell

  The nurse pushed the button, and the movie trailers were already flashing past when a smoke alarm started to beep downstairs.

  ‘Don’t tell me Frank is burning toast in the kitchen,’ Bianca said disparagingly.

  Before those words were properly out of her mouth, Frank had burst into the bedroom. ‘Fire! Fire!’ he shouted. ‘There’s a fire!’

  ‘Where?’ Bianca said calmly.

  ‘In the study.’

  ‘In the study?’ Bianca repeated, ostensibly perplexed.

  ‘Have you tried to put it out?’

  ‘I came straight up to warn you as soon as I saw it.’

  ‘I’ll come down with you and have a look,’ she said, jumping off the bed. ‘Agatha, ring for the fire brigade.’

  By the time they reached the study, the whole room was ablaze. Bianca was genuinely shocked by the speed with which the fire had taken hold and slammed the door shut to retard the flames.

  ‘Christ,’ she said. ‘This is quicker than I thought it would be. We must turn off the air-conditioning, otherwise it will spread even faster. Do you know where the controls are?’

  ‘By the security station,’ said Frank.

  ‘Turn them off then wait down here for me. I’ll just run upstairs to reassure Monsieur.’

  She then ran back upstairs to Philippe’s room. Bursting through the door, she said urgently, ‘Quick. You’ve got to get into the bathroom. We’re being attacked. Agatha, help Monsieur while I seal us off.’ With that, she ran to the panel of switches beside the bed and jammed her finger down onto the buttons controlling the shutters throughout the apartment. They all descended as one, sealing every room. She then dashed to help the nurse, who was walking the patient to the bathroom.

  Philippe, having lived for so long in terror of meeting the end that he had contrived for Ferdie, was blubbering uncontrollably as he came face to face with the fact that he would most likely die in a similar way.

  ‘Lock the door from the inside and don’t open it until I let you know it’s safe,’ Bianca said, as she ushered him into the bathroom with Agatha.

  ‘What about you?’ Philippe said.

  ‘Someone has to stay outside to liaise with the police and fire brigade when they come, and I’ve already sealed upstairs off from downstairs. We’re in a steel-and-titanium drum, and there’s no way they’ll reach us now until it’s safe for us to leave.’

  ‘You be careful,’ Philippe said, concerned.

  ‘You too,’ she replied, pecking him on the cheek and whispering: ‘You remember our special code about the shutters?’

  ‘Yes,’ Philippe said equally quietly, so that anyone listening to the monitors downstairs wouldn’t be able to overhear him. ‘Down, stay in: up, get out.’

  ‘That’s my man,’ Bianca said then turned to Agatha. ‘Please see that you do exactly as Monsieur says,’ she admonished. ‘Now lock the door after me.’

  As soon as the door was locked, Bianca crossed the bedroom, heading straight for the telephone. She dialled the police. ‘Operator, operator,’ she said urgently. ‘This is Madame Mahfud from the Banco Imperiale Building. My husband’s male helper has informed me that we’re being attacked by the Russian Mafia. They’re downstairs and have set the apartment on fire. Get here as quickly as possible and please inform Monsieur Etienne Reynaud, your chief of police. He’s a personal friend, as is the president.’

  ‘Madame,’ the Police operator said, ‘I’ll phone you right back to confirm these details.’

  ‘There isn’t time. The building’s on fire.’

  ‘I have to call you back. It’s our procedure.’

  ‘Then do it quickly, before we all get killed,’ Bianca snapped. ‘Trust the Catalans to be so bureaucratic,’ she thought while waiting for the return call. ‘If this were Mexico, they’d be on their way by now, and to hell with procedure.’

  The telephone rang. It was the operator, as she had expected.

  ‘Madame Mahfud?’

  ‘Yes, it’s me.’

  ‘Just confirming the validity of your call.’

  ‘Will you please get the chief of police over here before we’re all massacred?’ Bianca hissed, pressing the release button that had sealed off upstairs from downstairs.

  ‘Yes, Madame, we’ll send in the helicopters as well.’

  ‘You do that,’ Bianca said, thinking how much better than planned this was turning out. Philippe would be sure to think they were under attack from the air when he heard the helicopters. Nothing, but nothing, would then induce him to leave until he was absolutely and completely confident that it was safe to do so. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me,’ she continued, ‘I have things to do to save our lives.’ Then she slammed the telephone receiver back into its cradle.

  Bianca ran back downstairs. Frank was standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking like a little boy lost in the forest.

  ‘Frank, this whole thing has got out of hand. We’re going to have to say that you interrupted some Mafia hitmen and prevented them from setting us all on fire. That’s the only explanation Monsieur will buy.’

  ‘OK, Madame.’

  ‘We’d better do something to make it look good. Do you have a knife on you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Go into the kitchen and get one. Nick yourself slightly and say that you fought one of the assailants off.’

  Frank looked dubious.

  ‘Frank, you’ll lose your job, and I’ll be in hot water with Monsieur if he discovers we concocted this plan between us. You’ve got to do it, and you’ve got to do it quickly, before the fire brigade and police arrive. Come on. I’ll help you get the knife.’

  They dashed into the kitchen, Bianca leading the way. Once there, Frank took out a small knife from the knife drawer.

  ‘No. Make it bigger but not too big. It’s got to be convincing. The size of a hunting knife,’ she said.

  As receptive to orders as he had claimed to be, the former Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman replaced the knife with another. He put the tip towards his gut and grimaced. ‘I don’t think I can do this, Madame,’ he said, clearly terrified.

  ‘Yes, you can, Frank. Now, come on, be brave. You were a Mountie, after all.’

  ‘But I wasn’t a field officer. I was a lowly constable.’

  In the distance, they could hear the screams of the sirens.

  ‘Don’t be such a sissy,’ Bianca said as if she were speaking to a recalcitrant child of six and, without touching the knife herself, drove it into his gut by slapping his fist with stunning force.

  ‘Fuck,’ Frank said, the shock making him grimace.

  ‘Sorry, Frank, I didn’t mean to…but we’ve got to get our act together. Help is on the way.’ Outside, the sirens were now blaring, and there was the sound of helicopters in the distance. ‘Play the hero, Frank. Monsieur will reward you handsomely, and so will I. Don’t let me down and I’ll have a million dollars paid into any bank anywhere in the world you want. You’ve been loyal and helpful, so I want to reward you. Remember, Frank,’ she said so intently that he knew she was giving him a very important message, ‘I’ll support you financially as long as you support me. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, Madame,’ Frank said, the pain starting to hit him.

  ‘Good. Now I must rush back upstairs to see how Monsieur is doing.’

  Left alone, Frank washed off the knife, dried it and replaced it in its rightful place in the kitchen drawer. He grabbed a bundle of clean kitchen towels to staunch the flow of blood then dragged himself to the front door to let in the firemen, who were immediately followed by police and ambulance crews.

  In seconds, bedlam reigned as the professionals swung into action. The fire fighters ran to the study, trailing hoses, while, in the living room, the ambulance crew tended Frank’s wound and set up a drip for him.

  Before the paramedic had even set up the drip properly, however, a policeman started to interview Frank. ‘Je ne parle pas française,’ Frank said in a heavy North American accen
t, using one of the few stock expressions he had learned since arriving in Andorra.

  This had the farcical effect of inducing the officer to question him further in French. ‘Je ne parle pas française,’ Frank then said over and over again until the officer finally realized that the injured Canadian really meant it.

  This being Andorra, where most officials spoke Spanish and English as well as French, the policeman then switched to Frank’s native tongue and once more asked for an explanation as to what had happened.

  ‘I went downstairs to get something for Monsieur,’ Frank said. ‘I heard sounds coming from the study. I knew no one except the four of us…that is, Monsieur, Madame, Agatha the nurse and myself…was supposed to be in the apartment. So I opened the door to investigate. There were two hooded men there, and I tried to fight them off, but one of them stabbed me in the gut. I fell to the ground in agony, and the other assailant set the wastepaper basket on fire. Then they ran out of the study. I don’t know if they’re still in the apartment, or if they left.’

  As several officers fanned out to find out whether the assailants were still on the premises, the policeman interviewing the injured man probed deeper, asking him question after question. Meanwhile, the paramedics were tending to his injuries.

  Upstairs Bianca was also surrounded by a throng of policemen, ambulance men and fire fighters, none of whom could gain access to the bathroom where Philippe and Agatha had sought refuge.

  ‘Isn’t there a code to neutralize the system?’ one of the officers asked her.

  ‘There is, but I can’t remember it,’ she replied. ‘I’ll have to call our head of security. He knows it. I’ll get him to come and give it to us.’

  In an apparent gesture of cooperation, Bianca picked up the telephone and rang Erhud Blum at his apartment in Andorra de Vella. ‘We’ve been attacked by the Mafia. You’ve got to return immediately. They’ve got into the apartment and set it on fire. Hurry. We need you to release Monsieur,’ she said in Arabic, a language the former Mossad operative spoke fluently, but none of the emergency workers surrounding her understood.

  She had pointedly failed to ask for the code.

  She then hung up the telephone before Erhud had a chance to ask her any questions, turned to the policeman standing beside her and said: ‘He’ll be right over.’

  ‘How long will he take? Your husband and his nurse don’t have much time before the air gives out in there,’ the policeman asked, surmising that she had asked for the code and the head of security had not had it on his person.

  ‘He’s coming right over. He’ll be here as soon as he can.’

  While Bianca was speaking to the officer, a fireman ran into the room. ‘The injured man says someone up here knows how to raise the shutters,’ he said. ‘They must be raised. We can’t fight a fire with metal shutters sealing off the place. It’s a firetrap, and we’ll all burn to death.’

  ‘I know how to raise them,’ Bianca volunteered helpfully and immediately crossed to the control panel, pressed the appropriate buttons, and all the shutters retracted as one, save those in Philippe’s bathroom.

  ‘Are they all up?’ the fireman asked.

  ‘All except the ones in my husband’s bathroom. He’s very old and very ill and he’ll have a heart attack from fright if we raise them before you have this situation under control. I will not do anything to hasten his death, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to either,’ she said sweetly.

  Then, looking at the policeman beside her, and remembering what a good alibi the wife of the Mexican interior minister had been at the time of Ferdie’s death, she said imperiously: ‘Come with me, young man. I need to reassure my husband, and I might need your help.’

  Knowing the importance of this moment, Bianca allowed the policeman to lead the way to the door. Once they had reached it, she shouted to Philippe, making sure to do so in Spanish so that the policeman could bear witness to what she had said. ‘Darling,’ she yelled. ‘It’s me, Bianca. The police and the fire brigade and the ambulance are all here. You can come out. It’s OK. The attack’s over.’

  ‘Monsieur says he’s not coming out until he’s absolutely positive that it’s safe to do so,’ Agatha said from behind the door.

  ‘Are you both OK?’ Bianca asked, her voice a testament to concern.

  Agatha once more spoke on behalf of her weak-voiced patient. ‘Madame, we’re fine. Monsieur says to tell you he’ll stay here till the danger’s past.’

  ‘Darling, there’s no danger. You don’t need to worry. I know you want to be cautious, and we understand. But there really is no danger. You can come out now. Here’s a policeman. He’ll tell you.’

  ‘What your wife says is true, Monsieur. There is no danger. You can come out without fear for your safety. If you’re worried, I’ll give you my name and number and you can telephone the chief of police, and he’ll confirm my identity.’

  The occupants of the bathroom, however, had not taken a mobile telephone in with them, and there was no landline in there. But even if they had, Philippe would never have fallen back on such an obvious option as checking the identity of a policeman with the chief of police of any state. Not when he knew, from personal experience, how easily authorities were bought and sold when the price was right. And, he had no doubt, the Russians - or anyone else for that matter - who were capable of mounting such a sophisticated and concerted assassination attempt as to include armed gunmen breaking into his attack-proof apartment and helicopters flying overhead, could easily buy a chief of police. Looking at the titanium shutters sealing him off safely from harm and remembering the code he and Bianca had devised regarding the raising and lowering of them as a warning of whether it was safe to come out of his bunker, Philippe concluded that the assassins must be forcing Bianca to pretend that they were his rescuers, so that he could be induced to walk into a death trap. As images of stepping out into a hail of machine gunfire played vividly before his eyes, and he remembered the fate of Boris Budokovsky and his wife and child, Philippe decided that he would wait until the Andorran authorities forced open the door. In this situation, he reasoned, there was safety in numbers. Time was on his side.

  Downstairs, meanwhile, Frank was still recounting his story when the chief of police, Etienne Reynaud, arrived. Amidst protests from the ambulance men, who wanted the injured man moved to the Hôpital Occitan without further delay, Monsieur Reynaud insisted on hearing a brief account from Frank himself. As soon as he had heard it, he rushed upstairs to see Bianca.

  After a personable but perfunctory greeting, Etienne Raynaud recounted Frank’s story to her. ‘I’d be careful what you believe,’ Bianca replied smoothly. ‘This could be an inside job that has backfired. The security guards are away for the first time ever. Philippe insisted they take the Sabbath off from now on. Have you checked the surveillance tapes to see who’s been recorded coming and going from the apartment? Check. You might well see something helpful. Everyone who enters this building is photographed entering and exiting. Every room, except our bathrooms, has video cameras making tapes of what happens there. Before you take anyone’s word for anything, I’d suggest you go into the security control room and have a look at those tapes. A picture, after all, is worth a thousand words.’

  Seeing the sense of Bianca’s remarks, and still unsure whether Russian hitmen were lurking in the vast apartment, Reynaud headed downstairs just as the fire fighters were gaining control of the blaze in the study. It was at a cost, however. Black acrid smoke, caused by a combination of fire and water, had started to fill the apartment, and the ambulance men were now handing out portable oxygen masks to assist everyone with their breathing. Everyone, that is, except Philippe and Agatha, who were beyond reach.

  Erhud Blum arrived at this crucial time. ‘I’m the chief of security,’ he announced to the policeman on the front door. ‘What’s going on here?’

  The policeman radioed to his inspector, who in turn informed Reynaud of this latest development. ‘Hold him fo
r questioning,’ Reynaud said, aware that if this were an inside job, even the head of security - especially the head of security, perhaps - should be treated as a suspect.

  ‘Don’t let him go upstairs. And make sure he doesn’t escape,’ he concluded, before returning to the task of checking the tapes. To his astonishment, they clearly showed that no one had entered or exited the Banco Imperiale Building between the departure of Alvaro and Olympia at 18.20 and their own arrival some time later. Moreover, monitors which Bianca had claimed should have been on had been turned off. This was ominous.

  ‘Where’s Frank Alderman?’ Reynaud said.

  ‘He’s been taken to the Hôpital Occitan. He has a deep abdominal knife-wound and is scheduled to be operated upon imminently.’

  ‘Go to the Hôpital Occitan,’ Reynaud ordered. ‘Find out what room Frank Alderman has been assigned. Post guards. And when he wakes up from surgery, question him again. I want to know how it is possible that he could’ve seen two hitmen in the study, when no one came in or left this apartment…unless, of course, they came in before the security guards left at six o’clock and left through another exit than the street door.’

  By this time, the whole of the apartment had started to fill with fumes.

  In the bathroom, Agatha and Philippe were having trouble breathing, and their coughing could be clearly heard through the door. Bianca, in a show of wifely concern, was standing with her cheek pushed up against it, two policemen and three paramedics beside her. Between gulps of oxygen, she implored Philippe to allow Agatha to open the door.

  ‘Darling, I promise you: you’ll be perfectly safe. The police are here standing right beside me and their chief is downstairs speaking to Erhud. Just let Agatha open the door. Do you hear me, Philippe? Open the door.’

  ‘Madame, Monsieur says he’s not opening the door until he’s sure that the hitmen haven’t captured you and forced you to lure him out,’ Agatha replied, her voice a study in worry.