The Empire Of The Wolves

by Jean-Christophe Grangé

  She spun around. "This affair could go above and beyond the interests of a single killer."

  "Gozar, explain yourself!"

  "I have nothing to explain. The whole neighborhood's scared, and I'm no exception. No one will help you."

  Paul shivered. The Moloch in his nightmare, with the quarter in his clutches, seemed more real than ever. A god of stone looking for its prey in the cellars and hovels of Little Turkey.

  The teyze concluded, "This conversation's over, Schiffer."

  The cop pocketed his notepad and, without trying to insist, walked away. Paul took a last look at the negotiations downstairs.

  It was then that he spotted him.

  A deliveryman-black mustache and blue Adidas jacket-had just arrived in the warehouse, his arms laden with a box. He automatically looked up at the mezzanine. When he saw Paul. his face froze.

  He put down his load, said something to one of the laborers by the coat hangers, then withdrew toward the door. His final glance up at the platform confirmed what Paul had sensed. He was frightened.

  The two officers went down to the lower floor. Schiffer spat: "That stubborn bitch really pisses me off with her subtle hints. Fucking Turks. Warped, every one of them…"

  Paul sped up and leapt out of the door. He peered down the stairwell. A brown hand was skidding along the banister. The man was running away. He muttered to Schiffer as he arrived on the landing, "Come on. Quick."

  36

  Paul ran as far as the car. He got in and turned the ignition key in one movement.

  Schiffer just had time to get in beside him. "'What's going on?" he grumbled.

  Without answering, Paul pulled off. The figure had just swerved right at the end of Rue Sainte-Cécile. Paul accelerated and turned into Rue du Faubourg-Poissonière, once again coming up against the crowds and chaos.

  The man was walking quickly, slipping between the deliverymen, the passersby, the smoke of the pancake and pita sellers, glancing around nervously over his shoulder. He was heading toward Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle.

  Schiffer said moodily, "Are you going to explain yourself, or what?" Paul shifted into third gear and murmured, "There was a man at Gozar's place. When he spotted us, he ran away"

  "So what?"

  "He smelled us out. He's afraid of being questioned. Maybe he knows something about our business."

  Their customer now turned left, into Rue d'Enghien. Luckily for them, he was walking in the direction of the traffic.

  "Or he doesn't have a work permit," Schiffer muttered.

  At Gozar's? Who does? No, this guy's got a special reason to be afraid. I can just sense it."

  The Cipher stuck his knees up against the dashboard. He asked gloomily, "Where is he?"

  "Left pavement. The Adidas jacket."

  The Turk was still heading up the street. Paul tried to follow him as discreetly as possible. A red light. The silvery blue form grew more distant. Paul felt that Schiffer's stare was following him, too. The silence in the car was marked by a particular depth: they had understood each other; they now shared the same calm, the same attention, concentrating on their target.

  Green.

  Paul pulled off, gently pressing on the pedals, feeling an intense heat rising up his legs. He accelerated, just in time to see the Turk swerve right, into Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, still in the direction of the traffic.

  Paul followed, but the street was jammed, blocked, suffocating in a mass that was casting up into the gray air its din of cries and hooting horns.

  He bent his neck and squinted. Above the cars and the heads were rows of shop signs-wholesale, retail, retail-wholesale… The Adidas jacket had disappeared. Paul looked farther. The façades of the buildings were fading away in the mist of pollution. At the far end, the arch of Porte Saint-Denis was glimmering in the smoky light.

  "I can't see him anymore."

  Schiffer opened his window. The din burst into the car. He pushed his head outside. "Farther up," he said. "To the right."

  The traffic started moving. The blue patch stood out against a group of pedestrians. Another stop. Paul said to himself that the jam was playing into their hands, by letting them drive at walking pace and so keep tabs on him…

  The Turk vanished again, then reappeared between two delivery trucks, just in front of Le Sully café. He kept glancing around. Had he spotted them?

  "He's shitting himself" Paul commented. "He knows something.”

  “That doesn't mean a thing. There's not an icicle's chance in hell-”

  “Trust me. Just this once." Paul shifted to first gear again. His neck was burning and the collar of his parka was damp with sweat. He accelerated and caught up with the Turk at the end of Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis.

  Suddenly, at the foot of the arch, the man crossed the road, practically in front of them, but without noticing them. He started heading down Boulevard Saint-Denis.

  "Shit," Paul said. "It's one-way."

  Schiffer sat up. "Park. We'll continue on-fuck it, he's taking the metro!"

  The figure had trotted across the boulevard, then disappeared down the steps of Strasbourg-Saint-Denis station. Paul swerved the car violently and pulled it to a halt just in front of a bar called L'Arcade, on the off-road alongside the arch.

  Schiffer was already out.

  Paul lowered the sun visor marked POLICE and leapt out of the Golf. The Cipher's raincoat was flapping between the cars like a banner. Paul felt a surge of fever. In a second, he drank it all in, the excitement in the air, Schiffer's rapidity the determination that united them for once.

  He, too, zigzagged between the traffic on the boulevard and caught up with his partner just as he was heading downstairs.

  The two officers rushed into the station entrance. A crowd was hurrying along beneath the orange vault. Paul stared around: to the left, the glass fronts of the ticket offices; to the right, the blue metro map; in front, the automatic doors.

  No Turk.

  Schiffer dived into the mass, performing an extraordinary slalom in the direction of the doors. Paul stood up on tiptoe and caught sight of the man, who was turning right.

  "Line four!" he yelled to his partner, who was now invisible among the passengers.

  Already, at the end of the ceramic corridor, the swishing sound of opening metro doors could be heard. A wave of panic ran through the crowd. What was happening? Who was shouting? Who was shoving? Suddenly, a roar broke through the din.

  "Open the fucking gates!" It was Schiffer's voice.

  Paul dashed toward the ticket office, just to his left. He leaned over to the window and yelled, "Open the gates!"

  The metro employee froze. "What?"

  Far off, the siren marked the departure of the train.

  Paul shoved his card up against the glass. "Fucking hurry up and open the fucking gates!"

  The doors opened.

  Paul elbowed his way though, stumbled, then managed to force himself past. Schiffer was running beneath the red vault, which now seemed to be palpitating like a living organ.

  He caught up with him by the stairs. He took them four at a time. They had not even covered half the distance when the train doors clicked shut.

  Schiffer bellowed as he ran. He was about to reach the platform when Paul grabbed his collar, forcing him to stay back. The Cipher was speechless. The lights of the train passed before his staring eyes. He looked like a madman.

  "He mustn't see us!" Paul shouted into his face.

  Schiffer kept staring at him, stunned, unable to get his breath back. Paul then added, more softly as the whistling of the metro faded away, "We've got forty seconds to get to the next station. We'll bag him at Chateau d'Eau."

  They glanced at each other in mutual understanding, then ran back up the stairs, dodged through the traffic and leapt into the car.

  Twenty seconds had already gone by.

  Paul drove around the arch and swerved right, while lowering his window. He stuck the magnetic light on the roof and
shot off down Boulevard de Strasbourg with the siren blaring.

  They covered the five hundred yards in seven seconds. When they reached the junction with Rue du Chateau d'Eau, Schiffer motioned to get out. Once again. Paul held him back.

  "We'll wait for him on the surface. There are only two exits, on either side of the boulevard."

  "What makes you think he'll get out here?"

  "Well let twenty seconds go by. If he stays in the train, then we'll have another twenty seconds to grab him at Gare de l'Est."

  "And what if he doesn't get out there?"

  "He won't leave the Turkish quarter. Either he'll hide somewhere or else he'll go and warn someone. Either way, it will be here on our turf. We'll have to follow him all the way. To see where he goes."

  The Cipher looked at his watch. "Let's go."

  Paul peered around one last time, right, left, then shot the car off again. In his veins, he could feel the vibrations of the metro as it passed beneath the car's wheels. Seventeen seconds later, he stopped in front of the grating of the courtyard of Gare de l'Est, stopped the siren and the flashing light.

  Once more, Schiffer went to leap out, but Paul said, "We're staying here. We can see just about all the exits. The main one's on the courtyard. There's another to the right on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin. Then to the left on Rue du 8 Mai 1945. That gives us three chances out of five."

  "Where are the other two?"

  "On either side of the train station. On Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin and Rue & Alsace."

  "What if he takes one of them?"

  "They're farther away from the platform. It'll take him over a minute to get there. We'll wait for thirty seconds. If he doesn't materialize. I'll drop you off on Rue d'Alsace, and I'll take Saint-Martin. We can stay in contact using our cell phones. He can't escape us."

  Schiffer remained silent. Wrinkles of thought were furrowing his brow "How do you know where all the exits are?"

  Despite his fever. Paul grinned. "I learned them by heart, in case of pursuit."

  The face of gray scales smiled back at him. "If our boy doesn't reappear, I'll have your balls for breakfast."

  Ten, twelve, fifteen seconds. The longest ones in his existence. Paul observed the figures emerging from the each metro exit, shaken by the wind. No Adidas jacket.

  Twenty, twenty-two seconds.

  The flow of passengers became more staccato, beating to the rhythm of his heart.

  Thirty seconds.

  He shifted into first and said, "I drop you on Rue &Alsace." The car screeched away, turned left down Rue du 8 Mai 1945 and let the Cipher out at the beginning of Rue d'Alsace, without giving him a moment to say anything. Then Paul spun it around and, with his foot flat down, reached Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin.

  Ten more seconds had ticked by.

  This part of Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin was very different from its lower reaches, in the Turkish quarter. All that could be seen here were empty sidewalks, warehouses and administrative buildings. An ideal exit route.

  Paul watched the second hand on his watch. Each click dug into his flesh. The anonymous crowd broke up, scattering into the excessively large street. He stared toward the interior of the train station. He saw its huge glass roof, which made him think of a greenhouse. full of noxious shoots and carnivorous plants.

  Ten seconds.

  The chances of seeing the Adidas jacket reappear were now practically nil. He thought of the metro trains passing beneath the earth, of the departures of main-line and suburban trains, dispersing beneath the open sky, of the thousands of faces and minds dashing below the gray girders.

  He could not have been mistaken. It just was not possible. Thirty seconds. Still nothing.

  His cell phone rang. He heard Schiffer's guttural voice: "Useless fucker."

  Paul joined him at the foot of the staircase that cut Rue d'Alsace in the middle, thus raising it above the immense gulf of rail lines. The policeman climbed into the car and repeated, "Dickhead.”

  “We can always try Gare du Nord. You never know. We-”

  “Shut your trap. We've lost him. It's over."

  Paul nevertheless accelerated the car toward Gare du Nord.

  "I should never have listened to you," Schiffer went on. "You've got no experience. You know nothing. You-'

  "There he is."

  To the right. at the end of Rue des Deux-Gams, Paul had just spotted the Adidas jacket. The man was now trotting along the upper part of Rue d'Alsace, just over the railway.

  "The ass," the Cipher said. "He used the outside staircase in the main-line station. He went out via the platforms." He pointed up. "Drive straight on. No siren. No speeding. We'll grab him in the next street. Nice and easy."

  Paul shifted down to second and kept to the twenty kilometer-perhour speed limit, with his hands trembling. They were crossing Rue La Fayette when the Turk suddenly surged out a hundred yards farther on. He stared, then froze.

  "Shit!" Paul yelled, remembering that he had left the magnetic light on the roof of the car.

  The man started to run as though the sidewalk were on fire. Paul stepped on the accelerator. The massive bridge that appeared in front of them seemed to him like a symbol. A stone giant opening its black arms beneath a stormy sky.

  He accelerated again and passed the Turk halfway along the bridge. Schiffer leapt out before the car had stopped. Paul braked and in his rearview mirror saw Schiffer tackling the Turk like a rugby halfback.

  He swore, turned off the ignition and got out of the Golf. The cop had already grabbed the runaway by his hair and was ramming him against the railings of the bridge. In a flash, Paul pictured Marius's hand in the guillotine. Never again.

  He took out his Glock as he ran toward the two men. "Stop!"

  Schiffer was now pushing his victim over the edge. His strength and speed were astonishing. The man in the jacket was stuck between two metal spikes, feebly kicking his legs.

  Paul felt certain that he was going to throw him into midair. But the Cipher clambered up beside him, grabbed the first stone crossbeam, then immediately yanked the Turk up there with him.

  This maneuver had taken just a few seconds, and the physical feat added even more to Schiffer's diabolical standing. When Paul arrived, the two men were already out of reach, perched in the crook of those concrete arms. The runaway was screaming while his torturer, back to the void, was raining blows on him and yelling at him in Turkish.

  Paul clambered up the metal spikes, then froze halfway up.

  “Bozkurt! Bozkurt! Bozkurt!"

  The Turk's cries echoed in the damp air. Paul first thought that it was a cry for help, but he saw Schiffer release his victim, then push him toward the sidewalk, as though he had now obtained what he wanted.

  By the time Paul had grabbed his handcuffs, the man was limping away hastily.

  "Let him go!"

  "Wh-what?"

  Schiffer dropped down in turn onto the sidewalk. He fell on his left side, grimaced, then pulled himself up onto his knee. "He told me what he knew," he spat out, between coughs.

  "What? What did he say?"

  Schiffer stood up. Out of breath, he was clutching the top of his left thigh. His skin was purplish, marked with white spots. "He lives in the same building as Ruya. He saw them take the girl away, on the stairs. On January 8, at eight PM."

  "Them?"

  "The Bozkurt."

  Paul did not understand. He stared back into Schiffer's chrome blue eyes and thought of his second nickname: Mr. Steel.

  "The Grey Wolves."

  "The what?"

  "The Grey Wolves. An extreme right-wing group. The killers of the Turkish mafia. We got it all wrong. They're the ones who are killing the girls."

  37

  The tracks spread out, unbroken, into the distance. It was a hard, frozen network, imprisoning the mind and senses. Lines of steel that engraved the eyes like barbed wire, points designating new directions without ever becoming free from their rivets or iron.
Turnings that disappeared over the horizon, but still evoked the same feeling of ineluctable rigidity. And the bridges of filthy stone or dark metal, with their ladders, gantries and turrets, topped off the whole.

  Schiffer had taken an unauthorized route down to the tracks. Paul had then caught up with him, twisting his ankle on the sleepers.

  "Who are the Grey Wolves?"

  Schiffer walked on without replying, breathing in short gasps. The black stones rolled beneath his feet. "It would take too long to explain," he said at last. "It's all part of Turkish history."

  "Tell me, for Christ's sake! You owe me an explanation!"

  The Cipher kept walking, still holding his left side. Then, in a hollow voice, he began. "It was during the 1970s. There was the same overheated atmosphere in Turkey as in Europe. Leftist ideas were universally accepted. There was about to be a sort of May '68… But over there, tradition always wins. A resistance group was set up. Men of the extreme right, led by a real Nazi called Alpaslan Türkes. They started out by forming little units in the universities, then they recruited young peasants in the countryside. These recruits called themselves the Grey Wolves or Bozkurt. Or else Ülkü Ocaklari, the Young Idealists. Right from the start, their main argument was violence."

  Despite the heat of his body, Paul's teeth were chattering so hard that the noise echoed around his skull.

  "At the end of the 1970s," Schiffer went on, "the extreme right-wingers and the extreme left-wingers took up arms. There were bombings, pillage and murder. At the time, about thirty people were killed a day. It was a real civil war. The Grey Wolves were trained in special camps. The recruits became younger and younger. They were indoctrinated and transformed into killing machines."

  Schiffer was still swaying along the rails. His breathing became more regular. He kept his eyes on the gleaming lines as though they were dictating the direction of his thoughts.

  "Finally, in 1980, the Turkish army seized power. Everything returned to order. The fighters on both sides were arrested. But the Grey Wolves were soon released. Their ideas were the same as the soldiers'. But now they had become idle. As for those kids who had been trained in camps, all they knew how to do was to kill. So, logically enough, they were employed by people who needed hit men-first the government, always pleased to find boys ready to discreetly assassinate Armenian leaders or Kurdish terrorists, then the mafia, which was beginning to control the opium market of the Golden Crescent. For the Mafiosi, the Grey Wolves were a godsend. A force that was strong, armed, experienced and above all had links with the powers that be. Ever since, the Grey Wolves have been carrying out their contracts. Mehmet Ali Aga, the man who shot the pope in 1981, was a Bozkurt. Today, most of them have become mercenaries and have left their political ideals behind them. But the most dangerous ones still remain fanatics, terrorists who are capable of anything. Lunatics who believe in the supremacy of the Turkish race and the return of the Ottoman Empire."