by John Brooke
Margot smiled. ‘It fits perfectly.’
Her brash certainty gave both Sergio and Nabi pause. They sipped coffee.
It was for Commander Jules Pellau to lean forward, pen poised, and enquire, ‘How?’
‘It fits with what she asked for. And more perfectly, with what she wants.’
‘This Stephanie McLeod?’ She nodded. He added, ‘I admit we were more interested in the tracking coordinates you sent along than in what he was actually saying. Our mandate was — ’
‘Commander, when Stephanie McLeod asked for more from Prince, she did not mean kisses, she meant revolutionary action, as it were. This is logged, loud and clear. And she hated Roland Bousquet. That is less explicit, but it is definitely there in the material we’ve gathered. With yesterday’s action, Prince has fulfilled her deepest wish. Poor girl.’
Pellau reacted to Margot’s footnote. ‘Poor girl? But you just said — ’ He shrugged.
Aliette yanked herself from the daze induced by Margot’s tunnel vision. ‘It’s not really what she wanted. She’s playing a strange game. Revenge, mostly.’
OK, merci, Jules Pellau nodded as if that might make sense.
As did Margot Tessier. But she had to add, ‘But he is living in a very dangerous fantasy — as is now grotesquely obvious.’ A gesture to the gory crime scene pictures that were part of the meeting’s materials.
Commander Pellau wanted to make a note. But couldn’t. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t follow.’
‘Commander…’ Margot’s sigh conveyed impatience. ‘Stephanie McLeod is his Ulrike. This boy called Prince responded to his belle Ulrike’s wish and — ’
‘Ulrike?’
‘Ulrike Meinhof. German radical of some note, twenty years or so ago?’
‘Ah, yes…She is? How so?’
‘B’eh, as his source of inspiration.’ As if that settled that. ‘This Prince has killed a man and set off two bombs for her and — ’
Pellau let his pen fall. ‘Sounds medieval.’ He was bemused.
‘Let’s just call it childish. Suffice to say, this boy’s fantasy is far more problematic than her little need for revenge. And we will act accordingly. Clear, Commander? Can we move on?’
‘I suppose.’
Margot instructed Jules Pellau, ‘We approach this from two directions. One: Locating her and then keeping her within view. Two: What he might do as he tries to reach her. Because he will try and we have a public to protect. It’s a miracle no bystanders were seriously injured — or worse — yesterday. When that happens, we establish her general position, and your people will act as moving barriers to ensure she stays there — but very passive, a man here, a man there, all she has to do is see them. In the meantime, you should also be defining and establishing security at certain likely targets he might use to force the issue.’
‘But where are they?’ asked Magistrate Regarri.
‘You mean “where were they?”’ corrected Agent Tessier. And she introduced Antonin, the fresh-faced young man waiting in the corner.
Obediently turning to his keyboard, Antonin produced a map of Prince’s calls since Wednesday. Glowing dots described a wide circle. Margot translated. ‘Poilhes. Saint-Brin. Capestang. Maraussan... He goes to where there are plenty of people before exposing a position. New phone each time. As the commander will confirm, he’s gone before any gendarme can respond to an alert. Obviously he has access to a vehicle. That would be those local volunteers I was mentioning… may well be the same car from Monday.’
‘We haven’t seen it,’ said Pellau. Yes, his gendarmes were late to the approximate source of each call. They’d canvassed intensely in each instance. They’d inspected hundreds of garages seeking a grey, green or perhaps blue late-model Citroën or Renault.
A call from Saint-Brin had no meaning in itself. But… Aliette asked, ‘Maraussan? When?’
Antonin glanced at a log. ‘Wednesday morning — around ten.’
When she’d been down the road at Domaine Clorres. ‘And yesterday? I was tied up. I didn’t really think to check…uh…’ Making excuses to Margot Tessier was humiliating. Margot nodded, Antonin complied… Beep. Morning, luv. Remember. The spirit of Ulrike, Steph. And you and me. This is fate, Steph. It has to be. Please call. Beep.
‘Where?’
‘Near Cazouls…the plateau.’
Sergio Regarri asked, ‘And Stephanie McLeod. Where has she been?’
‘In the hills,’ said Margot, gesturing again to her technician.
They looked at a topological satellite view: grey rock, dark green forest, lighter green acres of vines, roads a white web connnecting clusters of brown, denoting villages and towns, the Orb a thin blue north-south central axis through the valley to where it turned westward on the plain. Indicating tiny red-lit markers, Antonin said, ‘We have reads across this swath. Seems she checks her phone at least twice a day. Then moves to the next place.’
Stephanie McLeod was hiding in her own backyard. She hadn’t stomped on her phone… To the contrary, twice a day she dared to check and listen. She wanted to hear what Prince had to say. Aliette’s mind was going around in useless circles… It occurred to her that, given this ability to see, Margot Tessier could have effected a search through those hills and run Stephanie to ground by now. Surely. If she’d wanted. It appeared Margot’s ‘sharing’ was strategically selective.
Perhaps Commander Pellau was realizing the same thing. Increasingly dubious, he wanted something more concrete, specific to his assigned mandate. ‘When you say secure likely targets, are you talking about hostages?’
‘There’s that,’ agreed Margot. ‘I’m thinking more along the lines of another bomb, whether as distraction or threat. But he could take someone. Or kill again, if he feels it’s what she wants.’
Aliette moaned, ‘Oh mon dieu…Margot, stop it!’
In response, Margot ordered Antonin, ‘Play the sequence. Clean…From Monday afternoon.
A flourish of typing. The thread was seamless; no beeps:
Hey, Steph. Where are you? I hope they haven’t grabbed you already. If yes, I have complete faith in your ability to withstand torture for the greater good. Otherwise, I recommend lying low till we can connect. You know we couldn’t’ve done it without you, darlin’. I can see a wonderful, if possibly short, future awaiting the two of us…Ma belle Ulrike! Talk to you soon. Love ya, and you know it. Ta.
She answered, I love you but can’t there be more than this? There has to be…I’ll be in touch.
Then it was all Prince… His last words: This is fate, Steph. It has to be. Please call…
While presumably, Stephanie sat and listened.
Margot said, ‘I hear a wheedling man turning into a boy in need — in a big way. No?’
Hard to deny. Heard separately, from one day to the next, the man called Prince was cautiously trying to coax a frightened Stephanie out of hiding. But if silence speaks volumes, the conversation was definitely evolving. Four days later you could hear a lighter, less calculating voice emerging. The smarmy, impish self-assurance so apparent Monday was nowhere.
The inspector wondered if Stephanie McLeod could hear it: Prince’s need.
Of course she could…
Aliette heard the ladies at Vieussan, Stephanie’s friends and their wise mothers, all describing a manipulative girl wanting to control the game.
Margot Tessier turned back to Commander Pellau, picking up where she’d left off. ‘So yes, we have to consider that he is ready and capable of doing more and worse before this ends. As long as he continues to call her, we’ll have a basic area. You will be informed and move your teams as need be. We have to assume they’re both aware of our ability to track their calls. I doubt she’ll even answer till she’s good and ready to effect a rendezvous. But any messages he feels the need to leave will be sitting there and we can place them. And he
will feel the need, I guarantee. He’ll move, of course…he knows the game. But we — ’
But something remarkable happened.
Seeing a light on his map suddenly pop on, Antonin blurted, ‘Wow!’ and punched a series of keys. They heard the end of the computer-generated voice — leave a message…and, Beep: Steph, I keep thinking of Ulrike … I know she’s looking down from heaven and hoping like crazy for the next person to pick up where she left off. I know she’s looking at you, Steph. You got it all, luv. You and me — we can lead the next march for some real justice. I — oh fuck! —
The high-pitched scream of an engine. The line went dead.
Commander Pellau broke the silence. ‘Sounds like a bike. One of those motocross things?’
Margot snapped at Antonin. ‘Where?’
‘There.’ He touched the screen. ‘Still on the plateau… moving north and west now.’
‘And her?’
‘Same. More or less… up the river, eastern side.’ Adding, ‘Last night.’
Jules Pellau finally said what he’d probably been thinking for some time. ‘Well, why don’t we go in and get him? A net, a hundred men or so.’ It seemed cut and dried to him.
Margot Tessier signalled negative. ‘Not till he’s joined her. He’s a slippery one. He’s the one we really want.’ She sipped her coffee. Glancing back at Antonin’s sceen, Margot advised, ‘There’s no big rush. Looks like he’s headed her way now. It looks pretty inevitable to me. And as I say — quiet is best.’ She nibbled at a chocolatine. ‘No, we let him play phone tag with his lady for a few more days.’
More silence. As if they expected the machines to continue with their miracles.
Pellau said, ‘Why don’t we call her? Talk sense into her. She could do the same for him.’
‘It’s long past talking sense, Commander,’ Margot declared, restraining herself now, visibly so, not liking this resistance. ‘We don’t want her frantic. And we don’t want him to run.’
Pellau put his large hands on the table. He was searching Margot’s eyes. Then everyone’s. Something was not right here. He was about to speak —
Margot Tessier said, ‘We let them meet. They will. And we will let them.’
Pellau persisted. ‘I’m assuming he’s got the means to be very dangerous.’
Margot shrugged — this was obvious.
He had to ask, ‘But why put her at risk?’
Agent Margot Tessier repeated, ‘We let them meet.’
Aliette pushed the Commander’s point. ‘We have no right to put her in such danger.’
Margot said, ‘He probably won’t have a gun. If he’s holding her hand, he won’t throw a bomb. She won’t let him. This is all about Stephanie McLeod. We both know that… She is drawing him in and she knows we’re watching. It’s more than revenge now. With what happened yesterday, she has to do something to separate herself from Prince. To right the balance.’
‘What balance?’
‘The balance of her life. Her good name…or what’s left of it. She will do something to prove to herself and to the world she is not part of his world. That she is her own person and not the object of another’s fantasy.’
Aliette began to protest — but couldn’t. Margot’s logic left her flummoxed. She merely asked, ‘What is it she will she do?’
‘B’eh, give us Prince.’ Grey eyes twinkling with bizarre complicity, she bit into her pastry. She wiped her lips with a not so dainty finger. ‘We just have to let her.’
‘Why? Why will she do this? I mean for us? She hates us.’
Margot pondered it, at once steely ironic and honestly rueful, ‘Because her mother helped murder a postman in Canada? ...History. That poor girl, she hates it more than she hates us, and she wants out.’ Margot leaned across the table, eager, her strange certainty exuding like bad perfume. ‘It’s another one of our big issues, Inspector, yes?’ Margot wanted to share.
How to escape your mother’s shadow? Aliette felt the men watching her squirm.
DST Agent Margot Tessier knew Stephanie McLeod — every inch of her badly programmed heart, and she had no qualms about using her, whatever the price.
· 31 ·
GIANT SIGNALLING THE WAY
I love you but can’t there be more than this? There has to be…I’ll be in touch.
Prince had struggled with it on the way to the catch the bus in Pezenas.
By the time they arrived at the bus station, he’d made a decision and instructed their ride to wait. When they got to the ticket counter, he told Liz and Chris, ‘Go on without me. I have unfinished business. I’ll be along.’
Liz understood in a second. She scoffed at the notion of going back for Stephanie McLeod.
Prince tried to hide his feelings behind strategy. ‘She’s a risk. I’ll bring her in.’
‘She knows nothing. You’re the risk!’
‘Leave him! Let’s go.’ Chris was antsy. Their Canadian couldn’t wait to board a bus to Sommières, the slow route via the mountain roads north of Pic Saint-Loup, thence to Nimes...bus by bus, regional trams, the plan was to do a slow arc up the eastern side of France to Strasbourg and walk across the bridge to Germany.
Liz remained cool. She wanted Prince to know his actions were dangerous, stupid, and totally selfish. She had no problem telling him she was sick of his ego trip and well shot of him, but if he actually cared about the cause, he would split now with them and leave poor, confused Stephanie to sort out her silly life for herself.
To Prince’s claim of the cause being exactly the reason he needed to stay and get Stephanie to safety, Liz said, ‘It’s really fucking sad how you allow yourself to sink in your own bullshit.’
He’d turned and walked back to the waiting car, leaving her standing there.
So long, Liz. Happy trails. Stephanie McLeod was the next thing in Prince’s righteous life.
·
The local contact was another fervent bourgeoise. She installed him in an unnoticed place. He’d been kept well hidden, well fed, provided with clean linen, a book to read. And a gun. A pistol. Prince despised guns. But upon further consideration, he’d stowed it in his pack. Once Stephanie made contact, he would use it if he had to as they made their way to safety.
Stephanie filled his mind. She was miles ahead of Liz. Or any of them. A class by herself. Prince knew it was his job to help her see her proper role in the larger scheme. He did not say a word about his passion; rather, he talked strategy, the dire importance of getting Stephanie McLeod safely out of the area. She knew too much, she needed to be thoroughly re-educated. Or silenced. ‘It’s the half-measures that’ll kill you,’ said Prince. He requested a supply of disposable phones. Each day he was driven to a different place and he tried to contact Stephanie.
A slow process: in the open for precarious seconds, gently coaxing Stephanie toward confidence, a rendezvous, and escape. Then waiting.
Left alone for long periods, he dreamed of love in the big picture. Destiny. Circles of history. Baader and Meinhof were alive. Stephanie and Prince were respected guests, the next generation, the two special ones trusted to move it forward — four giants at a table in a garden, enjoying the breeze and wine. The battle was not over, it would never be over, but the day was warm and life was fine. A beautiful dream. Prince would tell his dream to Stephanie.
The week passed quietly. Then the contact left him with his lunch on Thursday and did not return. No supper. No breakfast next morning. Prince grew hungry, thirsty. Had he been abandoned? He needed to send another communication to his beloved.
But he was afraid.
Fuck off, fear. He’d walked for an hour and done it anyway, careless, feeling fateful, fate like stigmata burning through his skin, then walked back to his secret bed.
Friday had dragged on. Lying there, needing to make a next decision, growing desperate for some food.
The afternoon turned into evening. It was just getting dark when his host burst in, distraught, livid, shrieking blame, convinced it was him, accusing him of going against everything he claimed he stood for.
Prince backed away from her flailing, hysterical fists.
When he finally coaxed it out of her, it made no sense. A bomb? What bomb? The Friends had scattered, there were no further operations planned. She made him listen to the radio bulletins coming from Maraussan, the town they’d stopped at Wednesday.
It was true. A bomb. That politician? ‘But not mine…I mean, ours. Please!’
But she wailed, incoherent, desolate. And whether she believed him or not was soon moot. When the implications seeped through, Prince had grabbed his things and fled.
On foot: a terrified sprint through darkness, enveloped in vine leaves, then into a forest. Where he’d tripped and landed on a soft spot.
He lay where he fell, exhausted and disoriented, square in the frame for political assassination. He’d drifted into fitful sleep, fully expecting to wake up surrounded by faceless, dead-souled Special Forces pointing machine guns at his head.
·
This morning there she was, the Reposing Woman, massive on the skyline. His direction.
He walked. The man called Prince was hungry, scared to a degree he’d never been. But not lost. That way. Keep going! Stephanie is over there. He had to believe his love had provided a sense of direction, guiding him through a mindless, panicky flight into the night. Instinctual. Further proof of destiny, surely — destiny despite his own best attempt to shoot it straight to hell. He knew Monday’s message was a shitty trick.
But Stephanie was stronger, bigger than that.
I love you but can’t there be more than this? There has to be…I’ll be in touch.
Eyes focused on the distance, heart on the future, Prince marched toward the giantess in rock defining the sky behind Stephanie’s village. She was part of Stephanie’s destiny too. She had told him this, that beautiful first night, making love on a blanket in the abandoned tower.
