City of Ice (55 page)

The bruises that Mathers had suffered in the blast were discoloring quickly and beginning to swell. He constantly moved his hands to his face as if to make sense of his pains. He’d recovered from the shots to his bulletproof vest, but any time he wanted to move his left arm he lifted it first with his right hand.

Cinq-Mars tilted a chair back and rested both feet on a drawer jutting out from a colleague’s desk. The department had opened its war room down the hall—what was really an event room intended to cover demonstrations and riots—but no sign of the young woman or her abductors had been reported, and no one really knew who they were looking for.

All the news was bad. André LaPierre had died. The Russian had called back and, expecting to be taped, had reverted to speaking with an accent. “Third party I want where to me I find him. In exchange, you to get girl. Call me between midnight and two minutes after with decision. You to use André’s number. When I see you come through your end, get girl back. Not until.”

A murderous choice.

The phone rang in Cinq-Mars’s office, and he struggled to his feet. He slouched in the doorway to his
cubicle, studying the black device on his desk. He didn’t like the possibilities. He knew the Wolverines were hunting him down, anxious to be debriefed. Possibly they wanted to skin his hide. He hadn’t slept in twenty-five hours and couldn’t sleep now and wasn’t up to being questioned by cops with a grievance. He’d already been grilled on the biker deaths aboard ship, although in that climate the interview had resembled a celebration rather than an interrogation. In time, he well knew, that would change. His caller could also be Sandra, who phoned regularly to plead him home. He picked up.

“Émile. It’s been a day.” Selwyn Norris.

In his weariness he was breathing into the phone. “I’ve lost her twice,” he admitted.

“I’ve got more bad news.”

He didn’t want to hear it. Émile Cinq-Mars planted a fist on his desk and supported his weight. “Tell me.”

“My doorman spotted a suspicious vehicle leaving the garage—a van that had no business inside. With all that’s gone on today, he thought I should be informed.”

“And?”

“I took your warning to heart, Émile. Checked my Q. Fortunately, I thought to use the passenger door to gain entry. Émile, it’s wired to blow. I now require the services of the Bomb Squad.”

Cinq-Mars covered the mouthpiece with his palm and stretched the phone cord to the edge of his cubicle. He whispered through to Tremblay, “Bomb Squad, at the ready.” The lieutenant-detective jumped into action, and other officers began rising to their feet.

“Seal the garage off until we get there, Mr. Norris. Let nobody in. Make sure everybody’s out.”

“I’ve taken care of that. Émile, do you understand what this means?”

Cinq-Mars listened to dead air awhile. “Yes.” His voice had gone hoarse.

“Émile, I’m going to disappear.”

“All right. Leave your car keys with the doorman. Make sure he doesn’t take the car for a spin.”

“Done. I’m sorry, Émile.”

“Yeah,” Cinq-Mars told him, and he was not feeling particularly vindictive, “I’m sure we’re all very sorry.”

They hung up.

Tremblay had joined him in the cubicle. “Tell me.”

“Mountain Street. Alain and Bill know the address. Inside a garage, there’s an Infiniti Q Forty-five wired to blow.
Wait!
” Everyone froze. “This is a hit by the Angels. They trigger by remote, they do that a lot. That could mean we have to sneak the squad in and scan the street for a bomber.”

Tremblay and Déguire left on the run. Only Mathers hung back with his partner.

“Émile, can’t we turn this in our favor? Now that they know Norris by name and address, they can give us back the woman, or trade for something else.”

Cinq-Mars rose to his feet. His body felt utterly fatigued, his mind bruised and blasted. “That’s not what this means, Bill.”

“Why not?”

“Norris might’ve been important enough to them that they’d be inspired to give us Julia back. That was a genuine hope, Bill, but nothing else rates. They didn’t find him so fast through Lajeunesse. Look how long it took us after we had identified the car. If they fingered Norris, it’s because she gave him up. Who can blame her? She lasted a helluva lot longer than André, and André was a rough boy. She had to have witnessed what happened to him. But the second she gave up Selwyn Norris, that instant, she signed her own death warrant.” He looked to one side, saw his own reflection in the window. “She’s gone, Bill. We lost her. God, I hope it’s swift. I pray we don’t count the pieces.”

As the import of the news dawned on Mathers, he arched his back and neck and let his head drop forward. He wanted to scream, he wanted to tear the walls down. Instead he slumped into the chair again and held his head in his hands. Cinq-Mars merely turned and continued to stare at the window, as though his very soul and not merely his reflection was trapped between the panes. He felt the young woman’s death in his throat and heart, and he couldn’t see a thing outside.

In the common area on the other side of the partitions, they heard the rush of voices and the frantic bray of commands.

“Wait,” Mathers said, reviving. His head remained downcast, but he had raised a hand, letting it waver in the air. “You told me one time that we wouldn’t give up on that woman until we found her in a closet with a meat hook through her heart. That hasn’t happened yet.”

Impatient with him, generally devastated, his anger only beginning to swell, Cinq-Mars wasn’t in the mood for false optimism. “Don’t be naive, Bill.”

“No.” He commenced a chopping motion with the hand, raising his head. “No, Émile, listen. You’re right. She never could have held out against them. When the Russian called you the last time, he already had the name. He asked you for a name he already knew. They never could wire that bomb this fast. They already had Norris.”

Cinq-Mars was interested. “You’re starting to think like me, Bill.”

“When you call back at twelve, you’re free to give him Selwyn Norris, because he has him anyway. He has something else on his mind. He wants something else.”

“Sure. He’ll make me listen to her scream, like he did with André.” He didn’t want to think about André screaming.

“He’s only testing you with Norris. To see if you’ll come across. He has something else in mind, Émile. We still have air.”

He didn’t know if it was fatigue or a pervading sense of despair, but Cinq-Mars didn’t last long with the new wrinkle. He rejected the promise of hope. “I won’t know what he has on his mind until I call back, and when I do I won’t like it.”

Tremblay poked his head in. “The action’s under control. We’ll go in by the street behind.”

“It’s only a car. Don’t get anybody killed.”

“Listen, Émile, I’m sorry, but the Wolverines are here again.”

“Get off it.”

“I can’t hold them back forever.”

Émile Cinq-Mars put one hand on his forehead, covering an eye, as though the next word he intercepted would blow his skull off. He peeked first at Mathers, then at Tremblay, and a way out occurred. “Rémi, Bill has a perspective on the bomb, thinks it might open a door for us. Tell the Wolverines I have to go on-site, top priority. I need an edge before my midnight call.”

Tremblay was happy to accept any viable excuse. Cinq-Mars had saved his life that afternoon, getting the bomb out of his car. As he’d said to him when they were both in the emergency ward awaiting treatment, one out of two isn’t bad. They had never figured on the truck. When that blast had gone off and they’d smashed around in the tumbling car, he had counted himself out. The last thing he remembered was reciting the names of his children. “I’ll tell their captain. Radio silence, Émile. Go in by Drummond. Promise me you won’t stop off—no expeditions. You look like shit cast in lead and cooked in a microwave.”

The detectives didn’t say much on the drive back to Selwyn Norris’s apartment block. Cinq-Mars had
forty-six minutes to kill before his midnight call and didn’t relish spending it talking to Wolverines. They’d want his full report—Norris, Julia, his excuses for invading the ship, for making a deal with the Czar without consulting them. They might want to arrest him for overstepping his authority—to punish him for not joining them. This beat that. They located the path the Bomb Squad was using to get to the rear of the building from the next street over and ran into Déguire there. Somehow, strangely, the three were glad to be reunited, as though what they’d been through required a slower form of separation.

Cinq-Mars slouched on the back steps leading to the parking garage and listened to the news from Déguire. The bomb was unusual. Wired to the driver’s door, it appeared to have no timer, yet the Bomb Squad hadn’t detected an electronic detonator either. Two blow sticks would rip the car but not do significant peripheral damage. They speculated that because the bomb at the racket club had been so easily disposed of, the bikers had rigged this one not to be removed. The squad had been working meticulously to extract the driver’s seat, having already taken off the door. The car was washed in bright lights. Residents in the high-rise, beginning with the bottom floor, had been taken out the back way and bused off-site.

Cinq-Mars checked his watch. Five minutes to midnight.

Mathers showed with coffee. “Where’d you get this?”

“There’s no one upstairs. I found an apartment with the door open and a coffeepot left on.”

“You’re incorrigible, Bill. You should be arrested.”

They drank.

“Will you make the call?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“What’ll you say?”

“Nothing. He’ll kick my teeth in. I’ll beg his pardon.”

Mathers left him alone after that.

Cinq-Mars wanted to punch a wall. He compulsively checked his watch, and time seemed not to move. He counted down the seconds. Every joint in his body ached. He waited. He had to dial between midnight and two after. Déguire and Mathers gathered on the stairs below him. He stabbed the number with his middle finger. He’d split the difference. One minute after midnight. He touched his ring finger to the Send button.

When the blast that afternoon had blown their car off the pavement, Cinq-Mars had lost a shoe. As the car somersaulted end over end, he’d followed the wild progress of the shoe around the vehicle until the flat sole thwacked him across the nose. He remembered yearning to leave his skin before he was actually killed, and after they’d landed, and settled, alive, he felt that he’d betrayed himself, thinking that way, that he’d given up too soon.

Cinq-Mars raised his head. “Alain, did we scan the street?”

“Yes, sir.” He seemed to be breathing easier, settling down.

“No bomber?”

“No sign. We’ve discreetly checked all the parked cars on the street. But he could be in a building.”

“Not their style. What’s the squad saying about the bomb?”

“Can’t be removed without being tripped.”

“Clock?”

“Haven’t found one.”

“Remote receiver?”

“Not found. I told you before.”

“Alain—go fast—check—
now!
Ask if a cell phone is attached to the device.”

Déguire possessed accreditation on-site, in that the Bomb Squad had named him their liaison with detectives. This allowed him to get close to the car without being challenged. He ran on the double, and Mathers watched as Cinq-Mars hit the Power-Off button. At first the two of them seemed hardly to be breathing, then suddenly they were breathing rapidly. They burst down the stairs and together waited for the news. Déguire was at the car standing under the blazing lights. He spun around. “Yes!” he yelled back. “Yes, sir!”

“Everybody out now!”
Cinq-Mars hollered, and he and Mathers went under the cordon ribbon and raced across the basement floor. “Bomb Squad—out now! Who’s got the keys? Where’re the keys?”

Mathers manhandled cops to get them moving out.

“Sir?” The man in charge of defusing the device pulled his head from the vehicle and stood. He extracted keys from his jacket, displayed them in his palm. He was a big curly-headed guy with chubby fingers, and Cinq-Mars wondered how he’d ever gotten into this line of work with those fat hands. “What’s going on?”

“She’s in the trunk! A woman’s in the trunk! Throw me the keys and get the hell out!”

“Émile!” Mathers brayed.

Cinq-Mars hit his chest with his fist. “If I don’t phone, the Czar does!” He checked his watch. Two after twelve. He held out his hands to catch the keys.

“Sir!” the big cop pointed out to him, “the trunk could be wired. We got lines all over. Some are trips, some are decoys. I haven’t run them all down, and this bomb is definitely not defused.”

“Toss me the keys,” Cinq-Mars said calmly. “The bomber’s phoning that cellular any second now, and when he does, the car blows.”

The cop tossed him the keys, peeled off his flak
jacket, and handed that across to him as well. Mathers helped his partner slip it on.

“Out, Bill. Think of your daughter and run.”

“I’m behind the pillar in back of you.”

“Bill!”

“Don’t argue.”

“I’m behind the other one,” Déguire declared.

The rest of the cops scurried.

The instant the last one was gone, Cinq-Mars opened the trunk.

“Bill! Now! Hurry!”
The young man returned on the run. Cinq-Mars pulled the half-conscious young woman partway out of the trunk and Mathers reached in, grabbing her by the legs. She was bound and gagged and sedated. They handled her like a rolled rug and ran and Déguire held open the near door. They reached him just as LaPierre’s cell phone warbled. Déguire pulled the fire door shut behind them, and the Q45 sucked wind and blew.

In the stairwell, the men and the bound young woman collapsed into a pile on the floor. The blast shook the air out of their lungs, seared their minds, and their hearts felt bludgeoned. They scrambled to their knees again, and Cinq-Mars ripped the tape off Julia’s mouth. He bent over her and jerked up straight again. “We need an ambulance here!” he hollered to the cops on the stairs above him. “Get the ambulance down here!”

The three detectives were all on their knees with Julia in the middle, their fists upraised, their mouths wide open, their faces rapt with wild grins.