Son of France

by Todd Babiak

  The mayor had avoided eye contact with Kruse until now. “What project?”

  “Khalil al-Faruqi. Réné Chatel. Henri Alibert.”

  “What about them?”

  Kruse had not expected a plea of ignorance. “You asked me to—”

  “I asked nothing.” The mayor turned to Joseph. “What is he talking about?”

  “Monsieur le Maire, our friend has been led by the republic to find the people who blew up Chez Sternbergh.”

  “You mean Khalil al-Faruqi?”

  “It wasn’t him,” said Kruse.

  “Who was it, then?” The mayor looked at Kruse, then at Joseph. “And what does it have to do with me?”

  Kruse didn’t answer the question and neither did Joseph.

  “How is your apartment, Kruse?”

  “It’s a mess, Monsieur le Maire. A group of men and women from the CIA destroyed it.”

  “The CIA. Are you saying the CIA blew up Chez Sternbergh? Why?”

  “I’m not saying that.”

  The mayor touched the knot of his tie, examined it. He asked his assistant, without looking at her, to order an immediate and thorough cleaning and furniture redesign of the apartment.

  “At luncheon on that day, Monsieur Kruse, when you rushed at me with that look in your eye, I thought for a moment you had gone mad. I thought: my life is over. You shoved me out the door and onto the street and I hit my head with such terrible force. The sound of it, the curious kak. I wondered if you would keep coming, perhaps with a knife. I know your reputation, after all.”

  The keeper of his reputation, at least with the mayor, was Joseph.

  “Then you ran back inside, as though I were nothing. I couldn’t think. I didn’t have time to do much else, even to stand, before the restaurant went up. That sound. Your ears must still be ringing with it, in the quiet. I know mine do.”

  Kruse watched him.

  “I have many enemies. I have a few paid defenders, though it seems you’re the only one who’s any good at it. But until that day, sincerely, I never once imagined I was in real danger. Or at least until some appalling malediction strikes me, cancer of the pancreas.” He looked across the street, away from Kruse. “That is to say, thank you. You had only a moment and you might have focused on yourself. Like my chief of security, for instance, whose resignation I accepted that same day. Do you know what he was doing, when he should have been standing at the door? Reading his newspaper in the car.”

  The mayor had no idea. Kruse felt as though he had eaten another ortolan laced with sleeping pills. His legs were hot and unsteady. “You didn’t direct the DPSD to hire me?”

  “They called my office that day. They wanted to know if I knew any freelance men. Men like you. So I phoned Joseph.” The mayor extended a hand of help. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, Monsieur le Maire.”

  He turned to Joseph. “What’s happened here? What’s happened to his face?”

  “Monsieur le Maire. There is much to explain, but someone is working against you in this. Against us both.”

  “How?”

  Joseph looked at Kruse for a moment, and back at the mayor. “The DPSD, on the day of the explosion, sought your help. You sought mine. But—”

  The mayor placed his hand gently on Kruse’s shoulder, as though their roles had shifted. The mayor was the benevolent protector of these lost boys. “I plead ignorance. I certainly carry no love for Khalil al-Faruqi but I’m only the mayor of Paris. I lack those powers.”

  Kruse knew what Tzvi would say at a moment like this: What the fuck are you people talking about? Kruse didn’t think he could say it with authority in French. So for a time he simply stared at them, one and then the other, hoping they would be undone by absurdity.

  “Monsieur Kruse.” The mayor was nearly whispering now, in the quarry. “Why did you want to speak to me today?”

  “I’m here to find out why I was hired to murder your rivals.”

  “What rivals?”

  “Yesterday, Monsieur le Maire, I thought Joseph had done this to me, that he had blown up Chez Sternbergh on your behalf. To get rid of Monsieur Cassin. You hired me to eliminate al-Faruqi, to cleanse the nation’s palate and to lend you a veneer of mysterious strength. Then Réné Chatel. Then Henri Alibert. I assumed you made a pigeon of me.”

  The mayor did not interrupt him. After Kruse spoke, a dust devil moved through the quarry. The men and the woman with the clipboard covered their faces as the dust rose up.

  “Kruse, I have been in this business since 1962.”

  “Yes.”

  “First as our prime minister’s chief of staff. I was still a young man then, filled with passion. Passion inspires the good, clean work of destroying our political enemies. Not with violence, not ever, not in France. But with tact and strategy. Of course, this will not mean much to you. You live in a beautiful apartment—and I vow it will be beautiful again—and you receive a generous stipend because you are the victim of the one instance where my staff, my office, broke this rule. I will be president of the republic very soon. And as president I will be a friend to you. Why would I risk destroying everything to be rid of a few rivals? Men whom I have already defeated?”

  Joseph walked a few steps toward a pile of gravel, looked away from them.

  The mayor continued. “When I spoke at Pierre Cassin’s funeral, every word I said was sincere. Was he an ambitious man? Did we want many of the same things? Was he, in this, my political ally or my enemy? This is irrelevant. My instinct would be to defeat him and reward him at once. And frankly, when he is ready, to make him my successor. I am no longer a young man.”

  Kruse had spent the night in one of Joseph’s guest suites. The wound on his hip and worries about today, confronting the mayor at the gravel quarry, had kept him awake. Dreams with claws and howls came with the sleep he did manage; he had seen far too many dead people since the fourth of April. He could not imagine what was next. “I am sorry to have wasted your time, Monsieur le Maire.”

  “So many people waste my time but so few of them apologize for it.” The mayor smiled. “Thank you, Kruse.”

  “But if I have seen this, surely others will too.”

  The mayor stopped smiling. “What?”

  “If a detective were to unravel it all—”

  “That I have hired you to do away with my rivals, ever so quietly. Yes. Have you spoken to anyone about this?”

  “Only the woman from DPSD. My handler. Zoé Moquin.”

  “I have not heard of her.”

  Kruse led him a few steps away from the others: from Joseph, from anyone with a clipboard. “Monsieur le Maire, I don’t know how careful you have been with me, if our relationship can be traced. Whoever organized this organized it carefully.”

  The mayor looked into the wind.

  From behind him, the woman with the clipboard waved. “The apartment will be back in shape by early this evening, Monsieur Kruse.” She handed him her card. “If there is any trouble, please call.”

  On their way back to the Mercedes, Joseph put his hand on Kruse’s back. “You see?”

  Kruse was beginning to see.

  FIFTEEN

  Rue des Francs-Bourgeois

  THE SMELL OF THE EXPLOSION LINGERED ABOUT CHEZ STERNBERGH, behind paint and freshly cut wood. Men and women in coveralls and masks were removing the final charred guts of the restaurant. Others were on the street and in the little plaza, preparing new window frames and refinishing the exterior. The bright blue awning was already up, protecting the new paint from the light rain. A short strip of police line was tangled in the wet hedges on the corner.

  Kruse called the city museum of Paris, the Carnavalet, from a payphone across the street. Annette worked every second Sunday. He asked if she was in. The receptionist said yes and asked him to hold. He hung up.

  When he arrived at the museum ten minutes later, soaking wet, Annette was standing in the courtyard with a black umbrella. “You should get one of the
se.”

  “I’ve had four since moving to Paris. I keep forgetting them in cafés.”

  “What happened to you? Your face . . .”

  “I’d like to tell you.”

  Annette sighed and rolled her eyes. “But of course you can’t. What do you want?”

  “Help.”

  “A funny thing happened yesterday evening, Christophe. The buzzer rang at the apartment. Étienne had come with dinner. He answered but no one responded. I looked out the window. Who do you think I saw slouching up Rue Valadon?”

  “Can we go for a walk?”

  “I’m at work.”

  “You can say it’s an emergency. It is an emergency. Or perhaps you’re feeling ill. Please.”

  Annette took two steps closer to him. The skepticism she nearly always carried when they spoke melted into something else. Without a word she turned and folded her umbrella and walked back into the museum. Kruse waited in the rain. Five minutes later she returned and they walked out of the quiet courtyard together, turned left on Rue des Francs-Bourgeois. She shifted her umbrella so it would cover him as well. Kruse moved her hand back in place. “Don’t imperil your left side. I’m already wet.”

  “Start talking.”

  It was only a few blocks, along charming boutiques, to Place des Vosges. But it was far enough to tell her things she should not know, beginning with the day of the explosion on Rue des Rosiers, the mayor and Joseph, Tzvi, Pierre Cassin and the terrorist, the communist, the ultra-right-wing industrialist, the CIA. By the time they reached the plaza, she had gone pale.

  “Is that what you were, before we met? An assassin?”

  “No.”

  “Then why did they think you were?”

  “The mayor owns me. They own us. I will be anything he wants. They asked Joseph to say something, something that had seemed benign to him, that your life, your life with Anouk, your protection, your safety, depended on me. On what I might do for them.”

  “Them. I thought they were the mayor and Joseph.”

  “Me too.”

  Annette pulled him out of the rain, under the arcade. A man sat in a well-lit art gallery, in a baby blue suit, reading a newspaper. Kruse had been sleeping so poorly since this began, since before it began, he was beginning to feel paranoid. Everyone was an agent of potential doom.

  “So who are they?”

  “The DPSD.”

  “The Ministry of Defence threatened you again? Us?”

  “Not exactly.” He did not want to say it because it didn’t make sense. “An agency of the ministry.”

  “Why would they not have one of their own agents do all of this ugly work, if it served some national security purpose? Why you?”

  Kruse was midway through explaining why and stopped. The agency had wanted some distance. If he died, they had never heard of him. But of the three assassinations, it only made sense for Khalil al-Faruqi. If he had been caught by the police in Luxembourg Gardens or after the explosion in Nancy he would have told the truth as he saw it. He had been hired by the mayor of Paris. “I don’t know.”

  At the end of the arcade, in front of one of the finest restaurants in the city, two men leaned on a pillar smoking. Annette told them she needed a ride to the National Library. The shorter of the two, who carried a large belly, leaned back and said he was on his break. It was one of those moments Kruse would have liked to share with Evelyn or with Tzvi, maybe even with Joseph: this conversation would never happen in Canada. A taxi driver does not take breaks. The look on the man’s face was of triumph.

  Today, it was something more than a sociological observation. Kruse slapped the cigarette out of his hand. “Get in the car and take us to the library.”

  The taxi driver’s friend laughed nervously and backed away. For a moment it seemed the driver would lift his hands to fight, but only for a moment. He shrunk into obedience and opened the back door. “Of course, Monsieur. Madame.”

  Annette stared at Kruse in the back seat as the driver turned north on Rue de Turenne. The rain had stopped. For a moment the clouds broke and the day turned bright. Most of the shops were open, couples and families were out. In the Marais, Saturdays and Mondays were more likely days off than Sundays. They passed an old stone church that shone wet in the light. He made a promise to himself that if he survived this he would try to notice more of the beauty.

  Every time the driver turned, they leaned in to one another. He tried to close himself to the scent and the heat of her, the slight damp of her clothes and her skin. What had she expected him to do when he rang her buzzer and Étienne answered?

  “I have two theories.” He held on to his door handle with both hands to avoid sliding into her.

  “What’s the first?”

  “There is a group of wealthy men and women who don’t want Maastricht.”

  “The treaty?”

  “Henri Alibert was one of its leaders. I have a feeling they killed him rather than have it exposed.”

  “They’re against European integration? So you mean the currency, open borders . . .”

  “Globalization in general. Men like Alibert have benefited monumentally from trade restrictions.”

  “We can start there, Christophe. But what does it have to do with the Ministry of Defence?”

  “Maybe Alibert’s group has leaders inside the ministry.”

  “What group?”

  Kruse told Annette what he had learned from the professor in Nancy. She was quiet for the rest of the trip. The driver kept an eye on them through the rear-view mirror. Kruse paid him and they entered the courtyard of the library, his library. At the statue of Sartre Annette reached out for his arm. She was about to speak but said nothing. She walked to the door.

  “Annette. What?”

  “Let me show you.”

  • • •

  His librarian wore an off-white dress with a flower in her hair. She was unusually polite and did not allow him any of his usual perks. Today she was far too busy to help, she said, though she appeared only to stand behind the circulation desk watching Annette with her arms crossed and her head tilted to the left. From time to time she twirled her wedding ring.

  In Nancy, Kruse had already researched Henri Alibert. Mysterious and menacing things had happened to other supporters of Maastricht. Alibert may have been part of a secret group with members across Western Europe, but secret groups don’t send out press releases. What was not so secret about Alibert: he supported, financially and otherwise, the Front National and a number of smaller parties and groups that made the Front National look moderate and philosophical. Once they had amassed everything, it did not take long for Annette to place a hand on his arm: “I don’t buy it, Christophe.”

  There had been so few sunny days, but new freckles had already appeared on her nose and under her brown eyes. Her black hair was longer than it had been when they had first met. She carried herself with quiet confidence. Kruse could no longer imagine her as the cowed and miserable copy editor he had met at Le Monde, ashamed of her own ambitions.

  He had wanted her to buy it. “Tell me why.”

  “Alibert was a racist. He encouraged other racists. He abused three wives. He ran his family empire into near bankruptcy. We know all this about him. Why? Like most of us, he lacked discipline. How could a man like this lead a secret conspiracy? He was rich, yes, but it was all inherited. Henri Alibert was a buffoon.”

  “Then why was he killed?”

  “I don’t know him like you do, but if we made a list of everyone he has hurt, over the years . . .”

  “There wouldn’t be enough paper.”

  “I’m sorry, Christophe.”

  Kruse stood up and walked to a wall of periodicals. One of the magazines had a photograph of the mayor of Paris on the glossy cover, his eyes sparkling. He had tremendous poise. Even after the explosion at Chez Sternbergh he had carried himself royally. He had only once seen a slump in the mayor’s shoulders: when he was forced to admit that his chief of sta
ff had orchestrated the ruin of Kruse’s family.

  “I haven’t been paid.”

  “What?”

  “For the ghastly work they forced me to do.”

  “Who are they again?”

  “The agency. The DPSD.”

  “Who are your contacts there?”

  “Zoé Moquin.”

  “One person? You’ve met others in the agency?”

  Kruse sat back down.

  “Tell me about her.”

  Twenty minutes later all of the material on Henri Alibert, Euroskeptics, far-right ultranationalist groups, and unfortunate politicians was in the cart. The librarian arrived with a huff and pushed it away. They had split a list of material on Zoé and Catherine Moquin in half.

  Annette made notes. There were several photographs of Catherine with designers and models. Zoé was in only one of them, in an article from Le Parisien.

  “Your Zoé is very beautiful.”

  Kruse pretended to read when Annette looked over at him.

  “I didn’t know intelligence agents could be so elegant. Don’t they work in dusty, windowless basements surrounded by soda and potato chips?”

  “The American ones, maybe.”

  She continued to watch him. “How old would she be? Zoé?”

  “Our age. Perhaps thirty-five, forty.”

  “Where did you meet her?”

  “At Joseph’s place.”

  “You and Joseph and the agent.” Annette leaned back in her chair. “Have you seen her since?”

  “Yes.”

  “Many times? Always with Joseph?”

  “Alone.”

  “You and Zoé, alone.”

  “In public, usually.”

  “Sometimes it was not in public? Where was it that time?”

  Kruse turned to her finally. “Her apartment.”

  “An intelligence agent invited you into her apartment?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Are you . . . having a relationship with her?”

  “No.”

  “That was unconvincing.”

  “Not really.”

  Now Annette crossed her arms. “I don’t understand.”