by Cara Black
“Who’s that?” someone asked.
“Bernard, the bad man, would be my guess,” she said.
Behind her an earnest Sardou spoke into his headset. He motioned her down the hall as the Guittard entourage mounted the stairway. Aimée figured they were going to freeze her out of the action. She had to remedy that.
A RAID worker in a Kevlar suit escorted her to a deserted part of the landing, around the corner, and away from the crowd. She stumbled on purpose and grabbed his vest for balance, pocketing his ID badge.
“Ça va?” he asked, not unkindly.
“Merci, I’m so clumsy,” she said.
He left her there. For the first time she realized that she had no bomb protection, not to mention being the only woman.
Shunted out of the way, Aimée started planning her own route into the school building. Nobody would help her; she’d have to figure one out herself.
Midday Monday
BERNARD BERGE STOOD IN the scurrying sea of police activity. Around him buzzed two-way radio static, the clomp of boots, and the low, meaningful hum of whispered asides. If only he could get his fingers to work and put this headset on, his lifeline, they’d called it, whereby he’d be assured of constant communication with the negotiating team.
“What do I say—I mean to the hostage taker’s demands?” His hands trembled attempting to mount the headset.
“Discuss the ramifications,” Minister Guittard said, snapping his flak jacket closed and turning to his entourage.
“But, Minister, will he understand?”
“Berge has a point,” Sardou said, consulting a printout. “This man, Rachid, twenty-six years old, is a recent immigrant from Oran, Algeria. He’s a dishwasher in the mosque tearoom.”
“Find out what he wants, what the AFL wants,” Guittard turned back to Bernard. “Agree to anything he says.”
Bernard swallowed hard. “You mean, I have the power—”
Guittard cut him off, “Promise him a Swiss bank account, a private jet back to Oran, whatever it takes to get him in front of that window.” He pointed to the window directly in the crosshairs of the crack shot team on the opposite roof. “Do you understand, Directeur Berge?”
Berge nodded uneasily. He noticed Sardou’s hawklike gaze.
“Then I’ve made myself clear, n’est-ce pas?” He grinned and slapped Berge on the back. “The ministry counts itself fortunate to have men such as you!”
A loud clamor of shouting reached their ears. The CRS captain joined them, breathless. He wore plastic gloves and held an envelope.
“Thrown out of the third-floor window, sir,” he said.
Sardou yelled orders to a white-coated technician, who spread plastic over a wood-planked table. A lab crew assembled powders, brushes, and chemicals in assorted colored vials.
“Merci, captain. Put the envelope on the table.”
While one technician treated the envelope to a quick array of powder tests, the others extracted the contents with tweezers.
Guittard, unable to disguise his impatience, appeared ready to grab the contents.
“We must see if this is from Rachid, Minister,” he said. “It could be from one of the hostages, giving us clues to their location.”
Bernard Berge winced.
A crayoned picture of what was clearly a spired church, brown-skinned people inside, and a man with dark bags under his eyes, holding a little navy blue book. A small stick drawing of a man, tubes drawn about his chest was signed in a crude hand, “le Bombe Humain.” The negotiator studied the drawing.
“He’s calling himself the Human Bomb,” he said.
After a few more minutes he turned to Bernard. “That’s you. He knows your face well. I’d guess the navy blue book would be residence permits. He’ll give himself to you if the immigrants are released from prison.” The negotiator turned toward the group. “He’s illiterate also. That’s my interpretation.”
Minister Guittard’s piercing eyes held Bernard’s. “Good,” he said, rubbing his hands. “You know what to do.”
Bernard Berge nodded. “Minister, there’s one issue I want to clarify.”
“Vite,” Guittard said, tapping his fingers on Bernard Berge’s shoulder. “You must go inside now.”
“If he’s wired with dynamite,” Bernard paused, “won’t the building explode if he’s shot?”
Sardou watched Guittard. So did Bernard.
“Not if you disconnect him, talk him out of his plan,” Guittard smiled grimly.
“Excuse me, minister, it’s not quite that simple,” said the bomb squad commander stepping from behind Sardou. “Berge must look for a dead-man switch. It’s something the man would hold all the time. So if he lets go, the circuit completes.”
Bernard’s eyes widened in fear. Sweat beaded his upper lip.
“However, a command detonation is different,” the commander continued. “Usually it’s a pair of wires with a handle, maybe a red button. Like a bike handle, with wires and dangling switch. Something he’d have to signal manually.”
Bernard knew he would die.
He hoped that his underwear was clean and that he’d updated his will. Most of all he hoped his mother would bury him in a Christian cemetery.
“Look on it as a typical ministry meeting,” Guittard said, slapping Bernard’s shoulder in bonhomie. “Like when you have to handle an upstart. It’s the same principle, Directeur Berge. Bonne chance!”
Minister Guittard whisked past the group and down to the waiting crowd of reporters eager for an update.
Monday Early Afternoon
AIMÉE LOOKED DOWN FROM the broad first-floor window, trying to figure out how to get into the school. Scurrying figures entered a mobile truck on the street. They emerged wearing jackets, carrying weapons.
She edged backward; none of Sardou’s men paid the slightest attention to her. But if anyone noticed, she’d say she was trying to find the bathroom. Behind her lay several wood-paneled doors, housing utility closets and garbage chutes. She gripped the brass handle in the door closest to her, pulled it open, and felt cool air. She prayed she’d gotten lucky. Once inside she saw a curving narrow staircase and sighed in relief. She had.
Going down the stairs, she figured Anaïs must have been trying to tell her something—but what?
She didn’t know how to get Simone and the children out—the area teemed with antiterrorist squads, trucks, and equipment.
Worried, all she knew was that Anaïs counted on her.
Again.
The paramilitary RAID was notorious for blazing its way in, fudging the body count later in hostage situations, only intent on neutralizing its target. Judging by Bernard’s appearance, the goose brought in by helicopter, that could make sense. Maybe Anaïs felt that Aimée was the only one who had a real chance. Or, knowing Aimée, would be crazy enough to try.
“Keep moving,” said a helmeted figure, motioning her toward the barricades blocking narrow rue Friedel.
The first step would be to access the building adjoining the ecole maternelle, get inside, and find a way from there into the school. She flashed the CRS badge, then sidestepped through the colonnade to a group of about ten hastily assembled CRS and flks. With any luck the plan she’d started hatching in her brain would trap the terrorist.
“Inform me on the latest—have demands been made in the hostage situation?” she said to a guard.
The guard hesitated, then jerked his head toward several figures bent over a police car’s hood. “Talk to LeMoine, chief of operations.”
Next to them stood the open van lined with black jumpsuits and flak jackets. Inside the van a stocky woman chewing gum ticked off items from her clipboard. She nodded when Aimée flashed her badge, then gestured toward the rack, “One size fits all, Captain. I suggest rolling up the cuffs and sleeves.”
Aimée lifted the light swat suit, which crinkled in her hands.
“Fabric seems flimsy, Lieutenant…?”
“Lieutenant Vedrine.�
� The policewoman winked. “Use the resistant liner.” She handed Aimée an aqua Goretex-type gunny-sack. “You might want to slip off that skirt and shimmy this on.”
“How long has the situation existed?” Aimée asked as she stepped into the outfit, snapped the Kevlar vest, and zipped the black jumpsuit.
“No one briefed you?” Lieutenant Vedrine’s gum popped constantly while she helped Aimée.
Aimée thought quickly.
“They paged me during my anniversary dinner with my husband.”
“C’est dommage! How many years?”
“Five, and it was the first time we’d had a babysitter in ages—give me the quick and dirty.” Aimée inspected the contents of various flaps and panels on the jumpsuit.
Lieutenant Veldrine helped Aimée into the flak jacket. “A disgruntled tearoom employee from the Mosque Paris went ballstique when his sans’papiers sister got bused to prison. He joined the AFL.” She shrugged, intelligence and humor behind her gaze. “Pretty routine operation. If you’re lucky, shouldn’t be long.”
Aimée covered her surprise. What about the children? But maybe everyone figured the units were biding their time until RAID marksmen got their shot. Aimée pointed toward the rack of locked low-light sensor rifles.
“Weapons authorization number?” Lieutenant Vedrine asked opening her weapons log.
Aimée racked her brains for Morbier’s number—what was it? Creature of habit that Morbier was, he usually picked his birth-date for such things, at least he had for his apartment digicode entrance and his office locker. She forgot if he was a year or two years older than her father.
“It’s 21433. Listen, I know one of the hostages.” Aimée took a deep breath. “We were in the lycée together. Her sister’s my closest friend.”
Lieutenant Vedrine paused, her mouth still.
“Who’s that?”
“Anaïs de Froissart, wife of the minister.”
“I’ll check that.” Lieutenant Vedrine bent and talked into her collar radio. “Confirm identity of hostage.”
The static from the radio competed with the sirens from another arriving bomb-squad truck. Blue flashing lights swept the streets.
Lieutenant Vedrine touched the headphone to her ear, straining to hear. Then she nodded to Aimée, chewing again in a deliberate fashion, looking impressed.
“From what command gathers, about twenty children and two teachers could be in either of three classrooms facing south,” she said. “Marksmen are positioned on rooftops lining the street.”
Aimée broke into a sweat. She had to find those children!
Lieutenant Vedrine activated the mobile radio linking Ai-mée’s unit to the others. She handed Aimée earphones and clipped a tiny microphone to her jumpsuit collar.
Aimée’s gut told her that this was her one shot in hell and she’d better take it.
If she didn’t find them, the body count would be higher and the bodies smaller. She joined the others quickly assembled on rue de PErmitage.
“We make a sweep of next door,” the sergeant said. “Make sure of total evacuation before sharpshooters lock these windows in their crosshairs, eh?”
Most nodded or murmured assent. As the group moved for-ward, Aimée sidled near a pillar and melted into the ranks. They entered the older building, an elder-care facility. Private and posh, by the looks of it, much more upscale than a maison de retreat retirement home.
Inside, members fanned out, and Aimée headed across an empty dining room; the tables were set with half-empty glasses of wine and plates of food were still warm. She entered the kitchen, which had stainless-steel counters, a jalousied grille scalloping the window.
Smoke and burning onions filled the stovetop area, making her cough. Copper pots simmered with soup stock on the blackened industrial stove, but the culprit was a large frying pan sizzling with rapidly deteriorating clumps of onion. Careful to avoid the searing-hot handle, she killed the fire, then lifted the frying pan with a towel into the sink of water. The hiss and smoke billowed, but she was already past the sous-chef’s butcher block littered with chopped vegetables and crushed garlic.
She exited into a dark back hall. With the building behind her, she faced what looked like an old theater. Behind her she heard doors shutting, and she realized that the CRS would enter soon.
This theater shared the back half of the elder-care building. Aimée hesitated; the sergeant hadn’t instructed them to climb to the next level. However, she figured the only way to reach the school would be to gain entrance to the theater attic and find the roof.
Her heels clicked on the marble as she wended her way to the mezzanine. The only other sound came from the old sconces, buzzing like insects, lining the grande mezzanine. She mounted the wide marble staircase. Dim, deserted hallways branched off the mezzanine level, barely lit by the central chandelier.
She heard rumbling and then a tinkling of glass. She tiptoed across the marble but stopped when the sound ceased.
Aimée saw the glint in the tall smoky mirror. She turned to feel a machine gun’s cold metal in her temple, and froze.
“Mademoiselle, seems you’re lost,” said a black-jumpsuited RAID figure wearing night-vision goggles and resembling a giant fly. “The CRS forces monitor the the lower quadrant. Not up here.” He stepped back and gestured with the gun toward the staircase.
“Bien sûr,” she said, recovering her composure and stepping ahead. “But since I took a stage class in this theater years ago, and I’m familiar with the layout—”
“We’ll just make sure of that now, won’t we?” he interrupted. “Vite!” He gestured again toward the staircase.
BERNARD BERGE’S heart pounded so loudly that he thought the RAID team flanking him would notice—even with their thick helmets and headgear. A little voice in his head cried, “Why me??!” while Sardou, via a headphone in Bernard’s ear, repeated instructions. Rue Olivier Metra, deserted except for the CRS stationed behind pillars, shone in the weak April sunlight.
“Do you understand, Berge?” Sardou repeated. “Get him by a window.”
Bernard assented, wondering again if his mother would relent and bury him even if his body was unidentifiable after the explosion.
The team melted away as Bernard approached the deserted concierge’s loge by the school entrance. Ahead of him lay the ecole matemelle courtyard, lined with potted red geraniums and filled with tricycles. Shuttered windows and skylights in sloping mansard roofs looked down on him from three sides. The fanatic could be behind any of them! An eerie silence hung over the courtyard. He took a deep breath and a faltering step before clutching the limestone wall. His hands shook.
Bernard Berge prayed for a miracle, as he had as a little boy on the ship leaving Algiers. He prayed that the burning city would be whole and that everything was a dream. Now he prayed he’d wake up and find this was a dream too. But he knew it wasn’t.
“Get moving,” someone hissed from behind. He heard the clicking metal sounds of triggers being cocked. “We’re covering you.”
He made his legs move to the center of the courtyard. He shut his eyes and raised his arms high.
“I’m Bernard Berge,” he said. “From the ministry.”
Silence.
He opened one eye. Something red fluttered behind a ground-floor classroom window. Then a small head popped up briefly.
“Monsieur Rachid, I have authority to reverse the immigration orders.”
A parrot’s squawking erupted from the concierge’s loge, and Bernard jumped. He looked up. The windows stared vacantly back at him.
“In my pocket. I want to show you—may I enter?”
The only answer was the parrot’s shrill cry.
A little hand waved from the window, then disappeared.
“Monsieur Rachid, I’m coming in, and I’m keeping my arms high so you can see them.”
He concentrated on moving his feet toward the window. Before he could reach the door, it opened, and a small red-sweatered b
oy in short pants barreled into Bernard’s legs.
“Run!” Bernard said, keeping his arms raised.
“Loulou,” the little boy sobbed. “I can’t go without Lou-lou.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll get her,” Bernard said.
“Loulou’s a boy!” he said.
“Hurry up,” Bernard said, irritated. He pried the little boy from his legs. “Do as I say!”
The boy ran and tripped over the cobbles. He landed, crying, by the wall. “I can’t leave Loulou!”
“Go on!” Bernard snarled, raising his eyes and scanning the windows.
The little boy stood up and stumbled but made it to the concierge’s loge. From the corner of his eye Bernard saw the RAID man scoop the boy up.
Bernard entered the long classroom, edging past white walls plastered with children’s watercolors, a sand table littered with wooden shovels and an empty rabbit cage with “Loulou” scribbled on a sign in crayon. Merdel Bernard thought. The little boy would put everyone in danger for a rabbit!
He passed through a yellow-tiled bathroom, stools set in front of washbasins and tiny toilets, into a darkened room filled with nap cots. Where should he go now?
He knelt down, feeling his way past the cots toward a double door. Something wet and sticky clung to his fingers, and fear shot up Bernard’s spine. He didn’t want to look.
In the crack of light from the door he saw the blood on his hands. Bernard gasped. A vision of his little brother, André, came to him, his small face floating in the village well. Bernard didn’t try to wipe his hands. Now he knew he’d never get the blood off them.
“NICE LITTLE stunt, Leduc!” Sardou said. “You’re banned from the area.”
The RAID man had escorted her back to the command center. Her grim feeling was highlighted by sobbing parents waiting on the periphery.
“The bomb unit has set procedures,” Sardou said. “We will not put anyone in jeopardy.”
“But look at Berge,” Aimée protested. “Standard procedure wouldn’t put—”
“Him inside?” Sardou interrupted. “Of course not! But the hostage taker set the rules, since Berge was responsible for the deportations.”
