Black Diamond

by Martin Walker

  He bundled Bruno and Isabelle into the backseat as soon as his car arrived. Then with a curt “I’m sure you have your own arrangements” to the two Vietnamese, he climbed into the front passenger seat and told the driver to head for the place des Quinconces.

  “You’re at the Hôtel des Quatre Soeurs?” he asked Isabelle. She nodded, and he turned to the driver. “Drop them off at the corner of Trente Juillet and Esprit des Lois.” He pulled out another phone from the car’s dashboard and began scanning e-mails.

  Bruno and Isabelle looked at each other, and then at the same moment each looked away. They drove on in silence.

  “My bag is in the back of the car,” Bruno told the driver as the car pulled up. A button was pressed and the trunk opened.

  He and Isabelle were left standing on the pavement. She lit a cigarette and drew in the smoke hungrily. She had stopped smoking when they had been together. He made no comment.

  “Where were you planning to stay?” Isabelle asked, not looking him in the eye. There were few areas of etiquette more difficult to handle than an evening with an old flame, Bruno thought. If you don’t suggest a burning desire to rekindle the ashes, any woman would be offended. But if you do, her pride would require refusal. Bruno avoided even contemplating the possibility that Isabelle might invite him to her bed, knowing that the more he thought about it the more the prospect would entice him.

  “I’d originally planned to stay with Tran. But I think he’s in for a long night with J-J and police statements. So it’s best that I get a hotel.”

  “I need a drink,” she said. “Get yourself a room here and tell them to put it on my bill, room three-three-four. I imagine we get better expenses than St. Denis might offer. I’ll be in the bar. What shall I order you?”

  “Armagnac, please,” he said, and followed her into the hotel, suddenly remembering for some reason the weight of her gun in his hand and the casual way she held it, as if she used it daily. His own weapon lived in his safe at the mairie and was usually only ever taken out for his compulsory refresher course each year at the gendarmerie range in Périgueux. He drew a clear distinction between weapons, which he had used all too often in the military and which included his police firearm, and guns, which for Bruno meant the shotguns he took when hunting. These he saw as essentially civilian companions.

  He checked in, taking the cheapest room available, a single on the top floor. It was still eighty-five euros, and he knew he could have had two nights in a St. Denis hotel for the same price. He took the elevator to the top floor, tossed his bag and coat on the bed, washed his hands and brushed his teeth and headed down to the half-full bar. Isabelle was sitting at a small table in a corner, two glasses on the table before her.

  “Well, here we are,” she said brightly, pushing his glass of Armagnac toward him as he sat.

  “Leaving a nice mess behind us for J-J to clear up and wondering if our phones are tapped,” he said. He felt a strange need to laugh. It was probably caused by the tension of the evening, and now the added tension of Isabelle’s presence.

  “Mine will be fine. They have some technology that secures it automatically, or so they tell me,” she said, carefully not quite looking at him.

  “I don’t think we’re quite at that technical level in St. Denis,” he said. “I got my phone at Intermarché. I saw yours had maps on it.”

  “And GPS,” she said. “God, I want another cigarette. This isn’t how I expected this conversation to go.”

  “They never work out as you expect,” he said.

  “Sometimes I think that’s a good thing. Not that I had any particular plans,” she said. Bruno nodded, waiting. She raised her eyes to his. “Funny how fate keeps throwing us together.”

  “Fate or perhaps duty,” he said, and paused before speaking again. “Talking of duty, Hercule had a safety-deposit box and as his executor I’m responsible for it. The key seems to have disappeared with your archives people. Is there anything you can tell me about it, or anything left that I should see?”

  “I know there were some papers the office took. You’ll have to ask the brigadier about them. Or get the notaire to write to him formally, then he’d have to respond.”

  “Any idea what the papers were about?”

  “Algerian War, that’s all I know. Memoirs, but sometimes the old stuff is the most sensitive.”

  “Was there anything else?”

  “I heard there were some fake passports for Hercule, different nationalities, a few blanks,” she said. “The usual spook cache. I didn’t hear anything about money, but a man usually keeps some ready cash where he stashes his passports.”

  “And I’m still looking for that journal of Hercule’s, his truffle diary. Could that have been in the safe deposit?”

  “No, I’d have heard if they’d found that,” she said with a small smile. “It’s the kind of thing people gossip about in the canteen. Truffles in Périgord.”

  “Are you enjoying this new work?”

  “Sometimes. Like this evening, when somebody remembers that I need to eat too. That was sweet of you, Bruno, always the gentleman.”

  “Your new assignment on illegal immigrants, liaising with the navy and the British, I presume it’s dangerous.”

  “Why on earth would you think that?” she asked, studying him.

  “I presume you’ll be boarding the ship.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You’re not supposed to know that.”

  “It wasn’t hard to work out. You told me you were liaising with the British navy on illegal immigrants, and then you show up with Fusiliers Marins.”

  “Worried about me, Bruno?” Her laughter was a little forced. “Surely we’re beyond that. Anyway, I’ll be the last one up the ladder or down from the helicopter, whichever it is.”

  “I don’t think you ever stop caring for someone you’ve loved.”

  “No,” she said slowly. “I don’t think you do. So what are your plans tomorrow?” With the speed that only a woman can manage, she had thrown off one mood and assumed another. Voice, carriage, gesture, tilt of head and the look in her eye had all been transformed. For Bruno, it was one of the fascinating marvels of her sex.

  “I’ll have to check in with J-J, and I’ll want to see Tran before I catch the train back to St. Denis. I’ve got a busy day. There’s a Christmas party for the children that I’ve got to arrange,” he said, starting to grin as her smile widened. “And that reminds me that I’m supposed to have a new Father Christmas costume waiting for me at the mairie. And at some point I have to pick up my new police van and then drive it up to Périgueux to pick up my new uniforms, since the old ones were damaged in the line of duty.”

  She laughed, a genuine one this time. “This is real police work. Do explain, Father Christmas.”

  So he told her everything that had happened, from the attack on Vinh’s stall and the theft and crash of his police van to the ruin of his uniform in the manure pit.

  “I saw that in the paper, when you pulled that little boy out.”

  “They made too much of it. Just that fool Pons, who invited all the schoolkids but didn’t secure his pool of dung …” He sipped at his drink. “What are your plans tomorrow?”

  “We both have a meeting with the brigadier and the prefect at nine, and then I have to be at Merignac airport at eleven for another liaison session with the navy and the British. You’re right, there’s a ship we’re monitoring. And then in the afternoon I thought I’d better take a discreet look at this campsite near Arcachon the Viets told us about.”

  “Be careful,” he said.

  “We might not be boarding the ship at all, if the campsite is where they’re planning to bring them ashore. We could seal the place off and round them up there. I suppose that’s what tomorrow’s meetings will be about.”

  “Sounds like an early start for both of us.” He began to push back his chair.

  “Give me a minute to go up first, Bruno,” she said. “It would be too embarrassi
ng to stand with you in the elevator, wondering if you were going to escort me to my door and pounce.”

  “I’m not the pouncing type.” He grinned at her.

  “No, but sometimes I am,” she said, rising, and leaned forward to kiss him on the mouth. “Good night, dear Bruno.”

  Isabelle left with that proud and straight-backed stride of hers, and Bruno sighed and turned to the bar to pay for the drinks. As he headed through the foyer, he saw she hadn’t taken the elevator at all. She was standing on the pavement outside the revolving door, smoking another cigarette. He paused, tempted to go out to her.

  He pressed the UP button and rose alone to his room, telling himself he should have joined her on the pavement and held her close. He shook his head. It would simply have forced them to decide all over again whether to revive an affair that had run its course. But he went to bed asking himself just what it was about his relationship with Pamela that he was being faithful to. With her new interest in politics she seemed to be spending as much time with Bill Pons as with him. He drifted off to sleep until the hotel phone woke him just after 4:00 a.m. It was J-J, telling him to get dressed fast because he was coming to pick him up.

  22

  “It’s the breakthrough we need,” said J-J as the unmarked car from the Bordeaux police pool raced up the deserted rue de Pessac. J-J had turned down the volume on the radio, but Bruno could still hear the constant chatter of the dispatchers and other cars reporting in. “Thanks to the bank card, and a security man who became unusually cooperative once we said this was about a terrorist bombing, we got the little bastard’s address. Apparently it’s a small apartment house above a cinema and another of their Chinese restaurants, owned by one of the holding companies linked to the treizième.”

  “Bordeaux police are running the show?” asked Bruno, looking at his watch. It was not yet four-thirty. Dawn was more than three hours away.

  “They’ll make any arrests, but the brigadier runs the show.”

  “Does Bordeaux know that?” Bruno asked.

  “The brigadier’s in the ops center, and he’s cleared it with the prefect. For once, Bordeaux will do what they’re told,” J-J said.

  “How many cars are they sending?”

  “We’re promised four, and they’re supposed to wait for my order before moving in. They’re led by an Inspector Verneuil. He’s supposed to be good. He’d better be. This has all been set up at the last minute.”

  J-J slowed as the cinema and restaurant came into view. At the next side street, Bruno saw two police cars, displaying only parking lights, stopped with their engines running. An unmarked police car waited at the corner, a tall man wearing a Russian fur hat stood beside it, a radio in his hand. J-J pulled up alongside him.

  “Inspector Verneuil?” Bruno asked. The fur hat nodded.

  “You got my message?” asked J-J, leaning across Bruno to speak through the open window. The fur hat nodded again.

  “Can we get a dedicated channel on these things?” J-J asked, gesturing at Verneuil’s radio.

  “Not without setting it up earlier,” Verneuil replied.

  “Well, if you hear me refer to Operation Deutschland, that’s you. If I say Operation Deutschland Now, bring your guys at the double. If I don’t, sit tight.”

  “Got it,” said Verneuil. “Why Deutschland?”

  “Because nothing else sounds like it, and it has no obvious connection to the target. I wouldn’t put it past these bastards to be monitoring our radio. Understand?”

  Verneuil nodded again, the fur hat exaggerating the gesture.

  “We’re going to take a quick look around on foot,” J-J went on.

  “The radio is attached to the car,” Bruno said.

  “Putain de merde. We’ll get closer in the car, then Bruno here will take a look on foot, and I’ll stay close to him.”

  “And I’ll wait for the words Operation Deutschland Now,” said Verneuil.

  All lights switched off, J-J crept ahead slowly, cruising past the target building at just under the speed limit. All the lights were off. J-J turned left at the second corner and then left again, to find the way ahead blocked by a high wire fence surrounding a parking lot.

  “You take a quick look around,” said J-J. “I’ll go back to the main road so there’ll be no interference if I have to use the radio. If there’s an emergency, whistle and I’ll call in the troops. Otherwise I’ll wait till you get back, and I’ll keep the window open so I can hear you.”

  Bruno reached up to turn off the master switch for the overhead light. The last thing he needed now was a flare of a courtesy light as he opened the door. He got out of the car, leaning against the door to close it with minimum noise, and headed for the fence. There was little light, but the parking lot seemed huge, probably for the cinema patrons, and now mainly empty. He turned right, following the fence for another ninety feet, and then turned left until he recognized the looming hulk of the target building.

  Two large commercial trucks were parked at strange angles close to the building’s rear. Bruno followed the fence farther until he came to a double gate, chained and padlocked. He moved on, trying to get closer to the trucks. They seemed to have been positioned in a way that hid something else. He crept on, trying to make out what lay behind them. It was too tall for a car, too small for a truck, in a pale color, perhaps white. Then Bruno saw the dark shape of a large window and the outline of a narrow stepladder, and he realized it was a camper. Now that his eyes were attuned to the shape, he saw that there were three, no, four of the campers parked closely against the rear wall of the building.

  Campers, Isabelle, the campsite by the beach at Arcachon and the company recently bought in the north; the connections snapped together in his brain. He began jogging toward the main street, taking the risk of running past the front of the building to alert J-J that Operation Deutschland would have to be aborted.

  “Cancel it. Close it down,” he gasped into J-J’s window when he reached the car. He made an effort to calm his breathing. “Four campers are parked at the back. It’s the connection to Isabelle’s operation, the illegal immigrants and the campsite at Arcachon. If we raid them now, they’ll abort the landing.”

  “I get you,” said J-J, reaching back for the radio. Then he stopped. “On second thought, I won’t transmit. It could be misunderstood. I’ll drive back quietly, and we’ll tell Verneuil in person.”

  “Bordeaux won’t like it. They want the arrests.”

  “They’ll have to live with it,” J-J said. Bruno slipped into the passenger seat of the car, holding the door closed rather than slamming it.

  “Do you think you’d better call the brigadier?” Bruno asked. “If they have the campers assembled here already, it’s my guess they’ll be bringing the people ashore tonight. It must be pretty close.”

  “We wouldn’t want to ruin Isabelle’s big operation,” said J-J. Then he turned and grinned and elbowed Bruno in the ribs. “Mind you, if it does go wrong, she’ll probably be booted out of the minister’s office and sent back here to us. That wouldn’t be so bad.”

  “A humiliated Isabelle kicked back down here in disgrace wouldn’t be the same Isabelle,” said Bruno, wondering how J-J could have been married for so many years and not understand the first thing about women. “She probably wouldn’t even want to see us.”

  An unmarked police car was parked along the street, and a cheerful Vietnamese was humming to himself in the weak December sunlight as he repainted the door to Tran’s restaurant. Bruno saw no other sign of the previous evening’s attack as he stepped inside and saw waiters laying the tables for lunch and a trail of deliveries of chickens and vegetables coming from the rear alley. Tran was receiving the goods, squeezing the cabbages and poking the breasts of the chickens as he ticked off the deliveries on the invoices. He signaled to one of the chefs to take over when he saw Bruno.

  “Did you get any sleep?” Bruno asked.

  “They let me go about two with Bao Le, after
giving our statements. J-J was helpful. How about you?”

  “I gave my statement this morning,” Bruno said. “I just wanted to say hello before heading back to St. Denis and see if you needed anything. I can’t be here to help with security, but I have some advice, starting with those deliveries.”

  “Don’t worry. I have a guy in the alley checking every box before it comes in the back door. Come up to the office. Bao Le is there, and he said he needed to talk to you.” Tran turned to the kitchen and called for coffee before he led Bruno upstairs.

  Bao Le was working on a laptop at the wrong side of the desk. A pleasant courtesy, thought Bruno, to leave the main chair for Tran. He looked up, quickly closed a program and rose to shake Bruno’s hand.

  “Sorry,” he said. “But I have to keep up with my real job.”

  “What’s that?” Bruno asked.

  “I’m a partner in an international consultancy, but I wanted to follow up on your question about Hercule’s daughter. You know Hercule had been pressing us for information on this for years?”

  “I’d be surprised if he hadn’t,” Bruno said. “Is she still alive?”

  “No, and Hercule knew it, but it gets complicated. You know she ran away from home as a teenager?”

  “I know nothing, not about his wife, his daughter, anything. In this area he was a very private man.”

  “Maybe I should start by saying I’m involved in this too. Hercule’s wife was my aunt, so his daughter was my cousin.”

  “Both members of the royal family.”

  “Very distant and junior members. My great-grandfather was a cousin of the father of Emperor Bao Dai. Our family was never rich but they were courtiers, mostly living and working in the palace. When Bao Dai fled to France, almost the entire family left with him. By then my aunt had married Hercule, but she died giving birth to Linh. Because Hercule was in Algeria, Linh lived with us. She and I grew up together in Paris, with her as my big sister. I adored her—I say this to let you know that I was as committed to finding her as Hercule was.”