The Crowded Grave

by Martin Walker

  Bruno opened the door again and shone the flashlight around, trying to see if Horst had left any scrap of paper or any scratch marks on the stones of the wall. He crouched down beside the bed, shining the light into every seam and each pouch where the metal bars fit to see if some slip of paper had been squeezed into the gap. There was nothing. He was bracing himself to start examining the contents of the bucket when the sergeant called out to him.

  Bruno turned. “See this?” the sergeant asked, pointing to scratches on the inside of the door. The marks were only visible now that Bruno had opened the door wide and folded it back against the outside wall. The sinking sun threw the scratches into relief.

  “ETA = Jan = RAF,” he read aloud, adding to himself, “Red Army Faktion.” Easier to scratch that into the wood than “Baader-Meinhof.”

  It was proof that Jan had been part of Baader-Meinhof and was now working with ETA and the Basques. And further proof that Horst had been kept there, and that whatever protection he’d been prepared to give his brother had been withdrawn. Horst was a victim, rather than an accomplice.

  “Sarge,” came a shout from the lean-to beside the smithy. One of the troopers had emerged and was waving, his face blackened with the coke they had moved, much of it now piled on the bare ground outside. “We got something.”

  The floor of the lean-to was made of a solid sheet of cement, except in the rear corner where coke dust in the cracks revealed a large square. The troops must have swept the floor for the cracks to emerge. Bruno was impressed. The sergeant ran a good unit.

  “Let’s get a spade and lever it up,” said Bruno. “It’s meant to be opened so it shouldn’t be too hard.”

  It took two spades, even though the cement in the square proved to be a thin skim over a wooden trapdoor that opened to reveal a hole about three feet square and half that in depth. There were three bundles inside wrapped in plastic.

  “Careful,” said Bruno. “Take a good look for any wires. It could be booby-trapped.”

  After a thorough search with flashlights, they swept off the coke dust and took the bundles outside. The first contained a well-oiled Heckler & Koch submachine gun with four magazines taped alongside the barrel and a nine-millimeter automatic in a separate plastic wrapping with a box of cartridges, a cleaning kit and a spare magazine. The second bundle contained a wooden box which bore NATO and German markings. It held twelve compartments, four for fragmentation grenades, four for smoke and three for CS gas. The twelfth compartment contained blasting caps wrapped in steel wool. The final bundle was the lightest, and Bruno recognized it as soon as the final layer was unwrapped revealing the familiar waxed paper.

  “Plastic explosive,” he said. “Enough to blow up a château.” He leaned down for a closer look, but the waxed paper was blank. Still, he was pretty sure of the make and so was the sergeant.

  “Semtex?” the sergeant asked. Bruno nodded.

  But for Bruno, the real mystery was why this cache of arms and explosives was still here. If Jan was working with the Basques, this was exactly the kind of malleable and easily controlled explosive they’d need, rather than the crude dynamite that had been stolen. But the trapdoor under the coke had not been disturbed for years. The coke dust on the wrapping testified to that. So why had the Basques not taken the Semtex? Perhaps they had been in too much of a hurry and had to leave it, planning to return for it later. Bruno made a mental note to keep the place guarded, even though he’d take the guns and explosives. But that meant someone must have warned them a search was coming. Or maybe not, thought Bruno. The coke fire of the smithy had been cold, dead for at least a day. They would have had plenty of time to remove the arms cache. That raised another question: Was Jan really working with them? Might he be acting under duress, with his brother as hostage? And where was he now?

  24

  The sergeant had left two men on guard at Jan’s smithy, waiting for the forensics team to arrive. On the unlikely chance that the Basques might return, Bruno had decided against wrapping the place in yellow crime-scene tape. Now in his car, Bruno led the way back to the château, checking his watch to see if he’d be in time for the evening security meeting.

  On his radio, tuned to Radio Périgord, he heard the familiar tones of Montsouris, the only Communist on the town council, defending foie gras as the luxury the working man of France had always been able to afford, and denouncing foreigners and “city-slicker animal rights fanatics” for daring to question France’s culinary heritage. He switched to France Inter and heard the mayor saying much the same, except that he denounced “a biased young magistrate with the ink still wet on her diploma who calls us barbarians for making France’s favorite delicacy.” On Périgord Bleu, Alphonse the Green was explaining why his party supported “the wholesome and organic foie gras of the region.”

  As he turned the corner at the church in St. Chamassy, the clatter of a helicopter, almost certainly the one carrying the brigadier, began to drown out the voices of the council members of St. Denis. He glanced up to see the familiar silhouette of a Fennec, the unarmed model the French army used to transport its top brass. It was time for the brigadier to take charge, Bruno thought. The summit was just two days away. The chopper would certainly beat him to the château.

  When Bruno pushed open the door to the conference room, the brigadier looked coldly at his watch. But then his expression turned to astonishment as Bruno held the door for the sergeant and two troopers, their arms filled with the weapons from the arms cache. The big box of grenades made a satisfying thud as Bruno signaled one of the troopers to put it on the floor rather than damage the grand antique table.

  “You could have called to tell me about this, Bruno,” said Isabelle. “You didn’t have to make an entrance.”

  “You wouldn’t have heard us, mademoiselle,” said Bruno’s new ally, the sergeant. “We were under the flight path of a helicopter.” The sergeant noticed the brigadier, in civilian clothes, but clearly recognized him as a military man and very obviously in charge. He saluted.

  Bruno explained the origin of the weapons and suggested the automatic pistol should be given to the mobile forensics unit to see if there were any matches for the bullets. Isabelle looked at Bruno.

  “Do you have any particular matches in mind?”

  “From the firing pin, it’s been used, and more than once, and cleaned by someone who knew what he was doing. I’d like to know if it could’ve been the gun used to kill our no longer unidentified corpse,” said Bruno. “I don’t think the Heckler and Koch has been fired since it left the factory.”

  “Semtex?” asked Carlos, studying the plastic explosive. “We’d better check it for tags.”

  “It may be too old for tags,” said Bruno. “I think it dates from the 1980s, or even earlier, original Czech stuff, supplied by the Stasi to their allies in the Baader-Meinhof gang. It’s been well stored, but at this age I’m not sure how stable it’s going to be.”

  “Sergeant, take that stuff out to the yard,” said the brigadier. “Better still, take it out well beyond the wall and get an explosives expert to check it over. And now perhaps somebody can fill me in on these developments, starting with this corpse you seem to have identified.”

  Isabelle took over the agenda and went through their discoveries of the day, from Teddy’s Basque connections to Jan’s background in Baader-Meinhof and his relationship to Horst. She confirmed that Bruno had gone through the available mug shots in an effort to identify the young Spaniard who had been seen at Jan’s smithy, but without success. She yielded the floor to the general from the gendarmes, who reported that despite the massive deployment of troops they had not yet located Teddy. Isabelle then said that the Dutch police had visited Kajte’s home, and although her mother had said she had returned, the Dutch police were unable to confirm her statement. The Dutch had then checked that Kajte had used her credit card to buy a ticket from Périgueux to Amsterdam, but the ticket for the Paris-to-Amsterdam leg on the Thalys train had not been
used.

  “So the girl is running loose and so is the young Englishman,” said the brigadier. “Do we presume they are together?”

  “They have both turned off their cell phones, so the last tracking we have of them is Teddy in Bergerac at one p.m. today. We don’t think Kajte even went to Paris.”

  “I thought the first report on this Teddy said he did not board the bus with the other students in St. Denis,” the brigadier said. “How did he get to Bergerac?”

  “It seems he did board the bus,” said the general, looking at his papers, refusing to meet the brigadier’s eyes. “Somehow he slipped out of the back door when the gendarme escort at the front of the bus was distracted.”

  “Distracted how?”

  “One of the young women students. It seems that Teddy was quite popular, and the other students cooperated to help him escape.”

  “We’re not doing very well, are we?” the brigadier said in a way that squashed any attempt to interpret it as a question. “We’ve also lost track of the Basque unit and of these two German brothers. And our two ministers arrive the day after tomorrow. So far, our only achievements have been to establish the identity of a twenty-year-old corpse, to find an arms cache and to help our German friends identify a long-lost terrorist from the Red Army Faktion.”

  “We have canceled all leave, and I’m bringing in more motogendarmes from other départements to help search the roads,” said the general. “We’re also checking out all the rental car companies and garages.”

  “We’ve put a stop on the credit cards of these two students?”

  “The Dutch say they can’t stop the girl’s cards without evidence of criminal behavior,” said Isabelle. “But we have a watch on the cards. If she uses hers to rent a car, we’ll know about it.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Bruno. “Small garages around here will take a credit card imprint as a deposit, but won’t always put the charge through until the car has been returned. That’s why it makes sense to visit all the garages.”

  A silence fell, and after a moment Isabelle broke it to say that the next item on her agenda was a report from Carlos on the Spanish side of the inquiry. He had little to say, and rightly judged that the brigadier only wanted the essentials. Madrid could not yet confirm the identity of the long-dead corpse as Todor Garcia but they were working on it. He had nothing further on the Basques, or anything on Teddy.

  As he paused there was a knock on the door and a member of the forensics team came into the room and handed a file to Isabelle. She read it and looked up, eyes shining.

  “We can now confirm from the DNA evidence on a hairbrush Bruno found that Teddy is Todor’s son. This means he must have known where the grave was located. I don’t know how he knew, but that’s now a further reason we need to find him,” she said. Bruno raised his eyebrows a little at her decision not to mention the map, but remained silent.

  “Anything else on the agenda?” the brigadier asked. Isabelle shook her head.

  “Our priority is clearly the Basque active service unit,” the brigadier said. “They’re the ones who constitute the threat to our ministers. The students are secondary, and I suggest the gendarmes shift their deployments accordingly. Since we don’t know the identity of the Basques, we’d better focus on the two Germans who are with them, willingly or otherwise. Have photos and descriptions of these two Germans been distributed?”

  “Photos are being printed now, sir,” said Isabelle. Every gendarmerie in this and all neighboring départements, all municipal police and all train stations would have them later that evening. The British police were interviewing Teddy’s mother and had promised a verbal briefing later that day.

  “Finally, you may want to bring in a media specialist,” she said. “There’s been a leak. The German police have already had one inquiry about the finding of a Baader-Meinhof militant who was supposed to be dead. They stalled it, but we could have a flood of media arriving just as the summit is supposed to start. If the news about the kidnapped archaeologist brother gets out, it’ll be even worse.”

  “Very well. The minister’s press spokeswoman is traveling here with him, but I’ll arrange for someone to fly down tomorrow. Any questions?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Bruno. “What are the rules of engagement? If these Basques are spotted, I mean.”

  “Shoot them on sight,” said Carlos. Bruno glanced at him. The Spaniard’s face was grim; he wasn’t joking.

  “This has already been agreed to at the ministerial level. We use the standard procedure on terrorist cases,” said Isabelle. “Do not shoot first unless your own or civilian lives are in danger. Use firearms in self-defense. They get one invitation to surrender. All security personnel will be briefed accordingly. Live ammunition is being issued.”

  “Any other business?” asked the brigadier. “No? Then we shall meet again tomorrow morning, when we had better think about canceling or postponing or moving this summit. I don’t like any of those options, but if we fail to make progress, we may have no choice. Thank you, everybody. Bruno, stay behind, please.”

  Bruno recognized that the brigadier was on parade. There was none of the affable informality of their sharing foie gras or fine scotch as at the conclusion of previous cases. And in official mode, even in civilian clothes, Brigadier Lannes could be as demanding as he was imposing. He sat impassively, hands relaxed on the table before him, waiting until all the others had left the room. Even the general of gendarmes, who nominally was the senior officer in the room, went quietly with the rest of the security committee. They were, Bruno thought, like so many chastened schoolboys, departing in silence and with sidelong glances of sympathy at Bruno as the remaining victim for the master’s wrath.

  “It’s your turf,” the brigadier said when they were alone. “So you’ll have a better sense of where these bastards might be holed up than anyone else on this team.”

  “There are over fifteen thousand holiday homes in this département,” said Bruno. “We’d need at least a thousand teams of armed men to have any hope of checking them all in time. The key to this will be access. Either they have their bombs planted somewhere already, or they have to get here at the right time. I’ve drawn up a patrol and checkpoint plan for the surrounding area, as you asked. It means sealing off the châteaux in three belts, one five kilometers out, one at a single kilometer and a final cordon on the perimeter.”

  “Isabelle sent me your plan, and we’re implementing it. But we need to find them and take them, not just block them. And we also want to interrogate them, if only to find out who pulled the trigger that killed Nérin.”

  “They have to be hiding out somewhere. I suppose we could get each of the mairies to telephone all the registered gîte owners and ask them to check on their own properties. We’ll miss those owned by foreigners, and it could be dangerous for them, but I don’t see how else we can get much of a search going.”

  “We can’t have some vacation-home owner getting gunned down when he’s gone calling at our behest,” the brigadier said. “The politicians wouldn’t stand for it. They may even have taken over a farm and be holding the farmer at gunpoint.”

  “Or in a cave,” said Bruno. “We’ve got enough of those.”

  “I need a plan B, an alternative place for the summit. I presume you’ve thought about it. You mentioned it when we met here earlier.”

  “I have a place in mind, just the other side of St. Denis. It’s a small château, now used as a hotel, and it’s also the headquarters of a vineyard. The security is much better—only one road and a couple of paths. The place backs onto a river so sealing it off would be a lot easier.”

  “Are there decent rooms for the summit itself?”

  Bruno described the Domaine that he knew well, with its imposing salon for the formal meeting and a ballroom for the press conference. There were side rooms and various bedrooms upstairs, two of them on the grand side. With hardly anybody working in the vineyard at that time of year and the vines just s
tarting to show green, there’d be little cover for any approach. The owner, Bruno added, was an old friend who made good wine.

  “Right, you can take me there now, but don’t speak of this to anyone else, not even Isabelle or Carlos. I’ll let them know what I have to when I see them for dinner tonight. You aren’t invited, I’m afraid, for operational reasons. I need to talk to those two, and you have enough on your plate drawing up a new perimeter and patrol plan for this alternative place. I want it ready for the morning meeting.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Bruno, sighing inwardly. He’d hoped to invite Isabelle to dinner, to try and make up for their depressing talk of the afternoon.

  The brigadier reached into his briefcase and pulled out a printed form and security pass, making Bruno sign each of them. He gave Bruno an enamel lapel badge in blue and yellow, saying it gave access to all areas and all the security forces would be briefed to recognize it. The pass identified Bruno as a member of the minister’s personal staff. It was only valid until the day after the summit.

  “It gives you authority to tell generals what to do,” the brigadier said. “Don’t misuse it,” he added, seeing Bruno’s instinctive grin.

  A worried-looking Isabelle was standing by the steps as they walked out and asked the brigadier if everything was in order, although Bruno thought from her glance of concern that her question was about him. He winked at her as he pinned the blue-and-yellow security badge to his lapel. Isabelle was wearing one just like it.

  “I have a brief courtesy meeting, pure protocol,” said the brigadier as he strode past her, “and I’ll see you later.”

  “Carlos has kindly invited me to dinner at the Vieux Logis,” she said, carefully avoiding looking at Bruno, who managed to keep his face immobile.

  “Cancel it,” said the brigadier. “Or call them and make the reservation for three. I’ll meet you and Carlos at the hotel bar here at eight sharp. Come, Bruno, no time to waste.”