The baron gave a short laugh. “The difference between me and them was that I had a transistor radio, and they didn’t. When the generals launched the putsch of ’61, most of the officers wanted to join it, but we conscripts all had our little radios. Usually we listened to pop music, but we all heard de Gaulle’s speech denouncing the coup and demanding the army remain loyal to France. That’s why we stayed in our barracks and the coup d’état failed.”
Bruno said he’d be grateful for any help the baron could give and ended the call. Then he contacted Juliette in Les Eyzies and began by thanking her for patrolling the St. Denis market that morning.
“I remember you saying that your dad was in the First Gulf War in ’91,” he said.
“That’s right, in the signal corps. It was his last tour of duty before he got out. I was just a kid when he came back and I was really excited. We were living in Châlons then, where he’d been based, and then we moved down here when he got a job with France Télécom. Why do you ask?”
“I wanted to ask if he was in the Anciens Combattants?”
“Yes, when he was running for the council seat he thought it would be useful, and then Grandpa really wanted him to join.”
“Why was that?”
“Grandpa was in the Algerian War, so the Anciens Combattants always meant a lot to him. It still does. He goes to all the meetings and parades.”
“How’s your grandfather’s health?”
“Excellent. He’s eighty years old and sharp as a knife.”
“Could you ask if he knows of a pied-noir family who moved here around the time of independence called Cassini?” he asked. “Some of them are in Bergerac, some around here. One of the daughters, Véronique, born in 1959, married a guy in Limeuil.”
“No problem. I’m seeing him at a family lunch tomorrow. I’ll call you back, or do you want his number to ask him yourself?”
“I’ll leave it to you. Thanks.”
Then Bruno sat back, thinking and sketching doodles on a pad, a B for Bourdeille in a circle with an arrow pointing to R for Rebekkah Juin. He added another arrow to MC, for Michel Cagnac, the Vichy cop who had arrested and tortured Bourdeille and raped Rebekkah Juin. Then he drew another circle with a C for Cassini with a question mark above it. He picked up his desk phone again and called the Centre Jean Moulin in Bordeaux, one of the largest of all French archives on the Resistance with a unique collection of taped interviews with old résistants. Alain Tournoux, the research director, had become a friend after Bruno had treated him and his wife to a lavish lunch to thank him for his help in previous cases.
“What can I do for you, Bruno?” Tournoux asked.
“I’m interested in a member of the milice in Périgueux, Michel Cagnac. He was imprisoned after the Liberation, later joined the French army to fight in Indochina and finished up in Algeria where he joined the OAS. Do you have anything on him?”
“That’s interesting. You’re the second inquiry I’ve had about Cagnac this week. A man from Périgueux came in yesterday. That’s why I have Cagnac’s file right here on my desk.”
“Was he a man in his sixties, an ex-cop named Pellier?”
“That’s right. I presume this is police business?”
“Very much so. I’m trying to track down Cagnac’s family history and whatever you have on him. I’m especially interested in what happened after he was freed from prison after World War Two and again after he joined the OAS.”
“Cagnac was a nasty piece of work,” Tournoux replied. “Not just a Vichy loyalist but a real Nazi.”
He went on to explain that Cagnac in 1941, aged eighteen, joined the SOL, the Service d’Ordre Légionnaire, which began as a militant political group supporting the Vichy regime. Viciously anti-Semitic and anti-Communist, they saw themselves as the French version of the Nazi Party. He transferred from that into the milice as soon as they were formed in January 1943. By September of that year he was attached to the office of Michael Hambrecht, the Gestapo chief in Périgueux and an Untersturmführer, or lieutenant, in the SS.
“Wait a minute,” Bruno said. “When he tried to arrest Bourdeille and Paul Juin in 1942, you mean Cagnac wasn’t a cop?”
“No, at the time he was in the elite section of the SOL known as the Avant-Garde, living in barracks and acting as police auxiliaries. They went armed on what were called antiterrorist missions.”
“What was his background?”
“He came from a working-class family in Périgueux. His father died of wounds suffered in the Great War not long after his son’s birth. His mother married again and Cagnac hated his stepfather. He was a Communist and trade unionist in the railway works in Périgueux who used to get drunk and beat up his wife and stepson. So Cagnac went the other way and became a Nazi.”
After the Liberation in August 1944, Tournoux told him, Cagnac joined the retreating German troops, and like a lot of milice members was conscripted into the Charlemagne Division, the Waffen SS unit of French volunteers that fought on the eastern front. By February 1945, only about eight thousand of them remained, and they were thrown into the battle to defend East Prussia, where they suffered heavy casualties. Only about a third of them reached the coast where the German navy evacuated them to Denmark. They were refitted there and then thrown into the Battle of Berlin, fighting on around Hitler’s bunker against overwhelming odds.
“One of them,” Tournoux concluded, “Hauptsturmführer Henri Fenet, another ex-milice man, was awarded one of the last Knight’s Cross medals Hitler presented.”
“And Cagnac?” asked Bruno.
“He served under Fenet, whose squad destroyed fourteen Soviet tanks in the ruins of Berlin. He got out of Berlin with Fenet. They managed to reach the British troops at Wismar, where they were taken prisoner and eventually handed over to the French. Fenet was sentenced to twenty years’ hard labor, and Cagnac got ten. He was allowed to join the French Foreign Legion in 1950 after the Korean War broke out and Ho Chi Minh’s troops launched an offensive that destroyed the French forts along the Chinese border.”
Bruno was hastily taking notes while Tournoux continued speaking.
“Paris was in a panic. The government didn’t want to risk conscripts in that wretched war, but the army was desperate to find volunteers. They trawled through the prisons offering freedom in return for military service in the Foreign Legion. And Cagnac, whatever else we may think of him, was a brave and highly experienced soldier.”
“I thought I knew a bit about history, but all this is new to me,” said Bruno. “I mean, I’d heard of the Charlemagne Division, but not about their fighting in Berlin.”
“Oddly enough, we know more about Cagnac before 1950 than after it. The Legion is very secretive about its troops. We know that Cagnac was wounded at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam and was one of the last casualties to be evacuated by air before the fort was overrun. By 1955 he was in Algeria with the new REP, the Regiment of Foreign Legion Parachutists under Colonel Paul Jeanpierre. Many of those troops were Germans, Wehrmacht and Waffen SS veterans, which is ironic because Colonel Jeanpierre was in the Resistance, captured by the Gestapo and survived fifteen months in Mauthausen.”
“Was Cagnac in the Battle of Algiers and in the putsch of 1961?” Bruno asked, scribbling in his notebook again.
“Yes, he was identified in that famous newsreel film of the paratroops returning to their barracks in trucks after the putsch failed, all singing the Edith Piaf song ‘Je Ne Regrette Rien.’ That’s all we know from the available records, except that he was an adjutant in a company led by Lieutenant Roger Degueldre, a hero of the Indochina War. After the failed coup, Degueldre left the army to form the Delta commandos of the OAS, and Cagnac went with him and took part in at least one attempt to assassinate de Gaulle. Cagnac was killed in a shoot-out in Madrid at the end of 1962.”
“Army records wouldn’t tell you any m
ore about him, whether he listed any marriages or dependents?” Bruno asked.
“No, the Foreign Legion records are kept sealed in a special section. What’s your interest in him?”
Bruno recounted the story of the arrest and rape of Paul Juin’s sister, Rebekkah, and the birth of her daughter.
“Because Bourdeille believes Cagnac was the girl’s father, he’s determined that her descendants won’t inherit his wealth, even though by marrying Rebekkah he became the girl’s legal father,” Bruno explained. “And that question of inheritance may be involved in our murder investigation.”
“A police inquiry might get more out of the Legion records than we can, so good luck. But because of de Gaulle and the Charlemagne Division, anything involving Cagnac will be highly sensitive.”
“Thanks, Alain. I owe you another lunch next time I’m in Bordeaux.”
“I’ll look forward to it.”
Bruno ended the call, read through his notes and shook his head at the extraordinary saga of Cagnac’s life. Would it have turned out differently if his father had not died of wounds or if his stepfather had not been a brute? Or a Communist? And what if he hadn’t served under the charismatic Lieutenant Degueldre?
There was a man who could command intense loyalty. Anyone who served in the French army knew of Degueldre’s sordid death at Fort d’Ivry after he was captured and sentenced to be executed. Three French officers refused to command the firing squad for a man they considered a hero of France. Most of the squad aimed deliberately high. Only one bullet hit him. The young junior officer who had been ordered to command the squad was required to deliver the coup de grâce. Close to hysterics he made a mess of it, emptying one magazine into Degueldre’s wounded body and needing a second to finish the job.
Bruno pulled from his desk drawer a burner phone that he sometimes used when he didn’t want his calls to be traced. He’d bought it for cash in one of the shady shops around Barbès-Rochechouart in Paris, where the staff wasn’t particular about logging the names and addresses of buyers. He called the private number of an elderly man in army records who’d been helpful before, and when he answered, Bruno said, “I hope you recognize my voice.”
“I believe I do, and good to hear from you. Why the precautions?”
“I’m trying to find out about an ex–paratroop légionnaire,” Bruno said, explaining Cagnac’s tangled and politically sensitive history.
“The Foreign Legion records are kept separately. They take very seriously their promise to let a recruit forget his past and start again under a new name. You could go through channels, but in this case because of the OAS connection you’d probably get nowhere. Is there any special aspect of his life that interests you?”
“His time in Algeria. Did he get married? Did he list any dependents for pension rights? Did he have comrades who might still be alive? Does the family name Cassini appear anywhere?”
“Call me back tomorrow and I’ll see what I can do.”
Bruno put away the burner phone and pulled out the special phone that he’d been given by the brigadier. A duty officer answered the phone. Bruno knew there would be no need to identify himself; the phone itself would do that. He asked to speak to the brigadier in person.
“Concerning what?”
“It’s a sensitive matter for his ears alone.”
“I’ll pass on your request.”
Bruno’s phone rang a few minutes later with the flashing green light that signaled someone on the brigadier’s secure network.
“Ah, Bruno, I was wondering if I might hear from you. I was interested to see your name coming up a couple of times this week on the death of that girl whose father has friends in the White House.”
“It has turned into a murder investigation and I need to get into the records of Michel Cagnac, a former member of the Foreign Legion who then joined the OAS. I need to see if he listed any dependents for pension rights,” Bruno said, explaining Cagnac’s background.
“Putain, Bruno—Charlemagne Division, Foreign Legion paras, OAS, Delta commando with Degueldre, de Gaulle. You don’t want much. Those records are very tightly sealed.”
“That’s why I called you, sir.”
“And that’s all you want? His listed dependents?”
“Yes, sir.” Bruno usually found himself reverting to old soldier habits when dealing with the brigadier.
“Are you close to an arrest?”
“I’ll let you know when I’m sure, sir.”
The brigadier ended the call.
The baron returned his call to report that the Cassini family had moved from Algiers to Bergerac, where there were jobs available in the big tobacco factory and in the munitions plant. A large family with three brothers and four sisters, they had prospered and spread across France. The only Cassini who lived near St. Denis was Véronique, in Limeuil, who had arrived in France as an infant. One of her brothers had been a Front National candidate in Bergerac during the last parliamentary elections and had failed to be elected.
Bruno made one more call, to Hodge, to say that Bourdeille wanted to present his condolences to Madame Muller and had invited her and Amélie to his home, where they could see the art collection that had so intrigued Claudia. If Jennifer was at Café Fauquet around ten the next morning, Bruno would lead her there, along with Amélie.
“And there’s something you might be able to help me with,” Bruno added. “During the last case you and I worked on, the FBI was able to get into Facebook pages. Could you do that again for me, for two French citizens? I need to know if they traveled overseas.”
“Give me their names, and it would be helpful to have addresses and their dates of birth.”
Chapter 33
Bruno arrived at the riding school shortly after the others had left with the string of horses for their evening exercise, but Hector was still waiting for him in the stables. Balzac, who had spent the day with his giant equine friend, recognized the sound of Bruno’s Land Rover and was waiting at the stable door to greet him. On the double wooden door was tacked a note saying “Ridge trail, St. Chamassy—P.”
Bruno took a carrot from the bag he kept in the cargo net above the front seats of his vehicle and gave Hector his treat before saddling him and slipping on the bridle. He donned his riding boots and cap, then set out in a threesome that felt as old as history: a man, his horse and his dog.
Hector enjoyed riding alone without other horses to slow him down and set out up the slope at a brisk pace that had Balzac panting to keep up. Bruno slowed his horse when they reached the ridge and reined in, thinking they had maybe another hour of daylight. Balzac was close, but his sensitive nose was entranced by the scent still leaking from the long-disused rabbit warren that he had investigated dozens of times before. And Hector was edging back and forth and from side to side and then pawing at the ground as he saw the great expanse of the ridge opening before him, just made for the run that he craved. Bruno whistled to catch Balzac’s attention, pulled down his cap, bent down in the saddle and flicked the reins to unleash his horse.
Hector sprang forward, leaping with two strides into a canter and then with the third he was springing into a gallop and the wind was in Bruno’s face, forcing him to narrow his eyes and bend lower in the saddle so that his entire world was focused on the gap between his horse’s ears and the open ridge ahead. All he could hear was the drumming of hooves and all he could feel was the surging pace of his horse.
As the ridge narrowed and the belt of woodland neared, Bruno relaxed back into the saddle, and even though he had not touched the reins, Hector began to ease his pace, slowing into a canter and then into a trot and finally a walk as the trees approached. Hector half turned and stopped, still quivering with excitement, his head cocked as if watching for Balzac pounding gallantly along far behind, the long basset ears flapping, his tongue hanging from the side of his mouth.
Bruno was panting even harder than Hector. He leaned forward, patting Hector’s great neck and murmuring, “Merci, mon brave.”
From this vantage point he could see to his right the village of Limeuil clambering up the hill from its grassy beach and the junction of the two rivers. Behind the gray walls of the Moorish castle lay the gardens and the well where Claudia had died six days ago. Bruno felt almost sure of his suspicions. He knew the means, the opportunity, the motive; but he did not have the proof. All his evidence was circumstantial. Could he set some kind of trap to tease out the truth? What might he use as bait?
Hector suddenly tossed his head, eager to be off again, and Bruno looked to his left searching for the short spire of the church of St. Chamassy and, slightly lower, the conical roof of the manor house. Walk-trotting their way up the hill toward these buildings was a chain of mounted horses, some of them familiar by their gait and by the way that Pamela, Gilles and Fabiola rode. At the tail was the figure of Félix. From the pricking of Hector’s ears, it was clear that he’d seen them too. With Bruno’s slight forward urging of his seat, Hector bounded forward to cut them off at the cemetery beyond the village. The horse knew this route at least as well as Bruno, probably better, but Bruno slowed him to a canter so that Balzac could keep up.
“Glad you were able to join us,” said Pamela, waving. “We’re about to head back. Fabiola and Gilles are taking Félix to the cinema at Le Buisson. They’re doing a series of classics and tonight is Jules et Jim.”
“Too bad I’m tied up with the mayor tonight,” said Bruno loudly, for the benefit of the others, falling into step beside Félix. “It’s one of those films I’d like to watch again.”
“And I have a tower of paperwork awaiting me in the office,” echoed Pamela. “Gîte bookings for the new season, cookery-school accounts, new sign-ups for the riding school. And that’s just the start.”
The Body in the Castle Well Page 28
