Murder Without Pity (10 page)

In keeping with security regulations, she asked for his passport number. This, he gave quickly, as though he had had it for years. She next asked for his city of birth. Here, he almost stumbled. He started to say
Berlin
, but caught himself and uttered “Munich,” which was the place listed on his fresh passport. Still the near-mistake alarmed him, and he worried his nerves were failing him.

Apparently, she detected nothing. He didn’t hear her whisper any concern to a supervisor. He heard only her typing away on her computer. After checking, she said nothing had changed and that his flight would leave as scheduled.

When he hung up, he coughed violently. He blinked tears because of the pain in his chest and had to grip both sides of the telephone counter to steady himself. He wiped spittle on his raincoat’s sleeve, too weak to care about the crudeness, when he heard a young woman ask if he needed help. He looked up into the darkly luminous eyes of a teenager as she placed a caring hand on his arm. Should I call the police over? she wanted to know.

Call the police, with that false passport on me? he thought. They might examine it too closely, he feared. And then their questions. Why had he, a retiree, booked a flight on a businessman’s shuttle? Why had he scheduled to leave Paris? Why Milan? Why a flight on the thirtieth? He might have to explain and explain, and he wondered how long he could keep his composure under their questioning.

He swept the passport off the counter into his raincoat pocket and shook his head with as much energy as he could rally. No, no, he was fine, he insisted. Brushing away her arm to her surprise, he made his way past her to the escalator that led down to the floor below.

Coming into his view ahead, a woman in overalls pasted a warning on one of the pillars. SECURITY IS THE AFFAIR OF EVERYONE unfurled into sight as the escalator carried him lower.

Everything should work like routine, he hoped. The same efficient Swiss hospitality at my check-in. And the same waiting for that knock at my door. But suppose, just suppose, he reflected, the man finally snaps and shouts, “
Enough is enough
!” and pulls a gun and kills me. The police will find me out for sure, expose my past, and where will Annie be? Scandalized. The Center probably closed. I’m getting too old for danger, he told himself. But what choice do I have?

The escalator reached the second floor. He wobbled from the jolt and had to steady himself, gripping a luggage cart some traveler had left, before he made his way to the Café-Bar Lorraine. He needed a drink to calm himself.

As he pulled back a wicker chair, he heard an ugly sound. An elderly couple, seated across from him, had just ordered two Becks in German. He changed his mind. He wouldn’t have a Schweppes. Instead, why not also a Beck?

He ordered it, speaking their language in a loud voice that drew their attention. They smiled at him, acknowledging their kinship. He returned their smiles as the waitress left. I was once as German as you, he thought, and what did that get me? Forgive and forget? Jew and German reconciled? A fool’s fairy tale.

The waitress dropped the two beers at their table. She had the gall, he noticed, to laugh at something the man said before crossing over to him.

You’re too young to remember what those people did, he thought, smiling up at her as he paid. What do you care? “
Danke schön
,” he said loudly, and when the couple glanced at him again he raised his stein in a toast. So many years, he thought, so many lies. I’m burning up with hate and can’t stop myself.

ANNA’S STORY

The next morning, 11:30. Dense fog everywhere as usual, much to Stanislas’s chagrin. With his cane, he poked his way along the sidewalk, his security detail of two men, trailing some distance back. He had a luncheon date with Anna Attali. Their too-close presence, reminding him of the danger he faced with the Pincus dossier, might very well ruin, he feared, an afternoon with her.

When he at last reached her street, he could make out halfway down the block the bumper of a van parked against the curb. When he neared the Center where she worked, the van’s side door rolled back. Three police, gripping machine guns, hopped out. As they flicked their eyes over him, they didn’t hide their suspicions. They itched to confirm him as a threat to a charity that had become a bunker in a fortress some still called Paris.

The Center’s front held a window of opaque glass, protected by bars. Through them, he could see the form of a man with curly hair peer at him in an obvious show of surveillance. A camera enmeshed in protective wire above the entrance focused down at him. He pressed a button flush with the wall.

“Yes?” a man’s voice answered.

“I’m Monsieur Examining Magistrate Stanislas Cassel. I’ve an appointment with Madame Anna Attali.”

“One moment.” The speaker box went silent as the guard flipped off the switch. The massive front door buzzed open. The curly haired man emerged from his security cubicle and instructed him to wait behind the red line.

A conveyer belt jutted into the foyer. At the end sat a woman, studying a screen. The only other visitor, a man in a frock coat and wide-brimmed hat, lifted his briefcase onto the belt, emptied coins and keys into a tray, and moved through a metal detector that looped around the doorway. The guard pushed the tray along; the valise disappeared through flaps into the x-ray machine.

A statuette stood in the middle of the hall, Stanislas noticed as he waited. It was a mother in rags with her head bent back as she howled silent pain. Across her outstretched hands sagged the body of a child. At her feet was an inscription: TO THOSE WHO NEVER RETURNED. An old man with a tumble of gray hair stood staring at her, mumbling something.

“Empty your pockets into the tray,” the guard said.

Stanislas fumbled inside a trouser pocket as he gazed at the elderly man.

“Now step forward.”

The old man roused himself from his thoughts. Suddenly he jerked around. His expression darkened from inquisitive to accusatory, and he jabbed a finger at Stanislas. “Why?”

“Monsieur.”

“What did they ever do to you?” the old man demanded.

“Monsieur, step forward.”

“What?” Stanislas asked, unnerved by the old man’s glare as he tossed his keys into the tray.

“It’s okay, Eli. I know him.”

Stanislas shifted his eyes across. Anna approached from the corridor off to his right as she pressed the top button of her tweed cape into its slit.

“You’re right, Monsieur Levaux,” she said. “Those rounded up never hurt anyone.” She put her arm around the old man, like a daughter caring for an elderly father, as she looked at the security guard. “Eli, help him to the kitchen. There’s some strudel for him.”

“They never hurt anyone, Anna,” the old man insisted.

Eli pitched Cassel’s keys onto the table without looking at him and crossed to the old man.

Anna slipped her arm through Stanislas’s and pulled him out the doorway as he pocketed his keys. Her sudden intimacy made his face flush. “What was that about with that elderly man?” he asked.

“It was nothing really,” she said. “At last, finally, we’re together for our luncheon. I get to thank you for helping Jules at our benefit. With our busy schedules, I wondered if we’d ever meet again or confine our friendship to the telephone. Uncle Jules can’t join us by the way. I had to take him to the doctor.”

“Anything serious?”

“According to him, a cough that calls for a few days away from Paris. I have my doubts, though.”

They reached the sidewalk, and the police greeted her with smiles. She withdrew her arm and slowed her pace as though they had just escaped some threat and could relax. “The restaurant’s near Place des Vosges, if we can find it in this fog. The switchboard operator said you called two other times while I was out.”

“I wanted to make sure you could make it.”

“You’ve lived up to your reputation. You’re thorough.”

“Oh my. What else have you heard?”

“You fuss over your cases like they’re your children. You call them your Little Miseries. And rarely call in sick.”

“That’s me, getting old before my time.”

“A little reckless, according to some. Pushy, according to others.”

He had expected flattery and received a bluntness that annoyed him. He turned to her as they walked. “Your source is impeccable?”

“My source is Jules. I trust him implicitly. We go back a long way. He’s the only one of his family who survived the World War II death camps. He’s very shrewd at gauging people. It’s a question of image, you see. We must be sure friends are really friends. We don’t need scandal that might dry up contributions or volunteers for the Center.”

He stopped abruptly. “I assume Jules told you about my grandfather?” He stiffened for her accusations about the man’s betrayals. Better to discover her real motive. He wouldn’t tolerate humiliation now or in the restaurant.

“Monsieur Marcel Cassel,” she said. “Founder of the journal
Phalanx
that boasted during the Occupation it listed more names of supposed traitors than any other magazine. Wrote
Why Not Hitler
? Jules said he discussed the so-called Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy many times in its chapters. Tried for intelligence with the enemy after the war. Convicted. Hauled off to prison. Yes, I know something about him.”

He glared across. The nerve of her to throw this much of that past at him. He’d push away anyone who’d dare tie him to that pariah. He’d match anger with anger, he thought, until he realized there was sympathy in her voice, that of a Jew of all people, and he was momentarily silent. Then: “For one of the few times in my life, I’m almost without words.”

“Let me tell you something else. It might help. ‘A criminal investigator without an agenda.’ That’s what Jules basically heard from those he checked with. You sound apolitical. I disagree with that stance, but that’s your right. At least we know you’re clean. Look, you appear tired. I am tired. This lunch will do us both good.” She laughed, and her face brightened into girlish sweetness. “Now can we please, please get to
Chez François
? I’m famished. We can talk about serious matters later, if you want.”

She glanced behind her. They must have missed the street that led to the restaurant, she said. The fog had thickened like dense smoke.

He, too, felt disoriented and squinted for anything solid to grasp for a guide. Only white ghosts of structures loomed out, and they had to feel their way forward like the blind until at last they reached the restaurant. Two police vans with revolving blue lights were just pulling away. He held the door open for her, glancing back, not glimpsing, yet knowing his body guards were somewhere not far behind.

In front of them, a stocky man in a blazer wiped blood from his lips with his kerchief. Another with a similar build and jacket swept a pile of glass into a corner. From the counter a Siamese cat sprang down and over to Anna. She ignored it and the two men and stared at the large-screen TV ahead, mounted behind the bar. Three customers in the middle of the bar ignored their drinks, Stanislas saw, while they also remained gripped to the chaotic images, like the bartender, drying a tumbler.

A brilliance flashed on a Renault’s hood.

A necklace of fire flamed around the car’s middle.

The car exploded.

A policeman wrestled a youth to the ground, while he fumbled to cuff.

Mist swirled around them as in a surreal ballet.

Whistles shrilled from a riot controller.

Spectators shouted about a stop-and-search turned bloody.

The montage fuzzed white and darkened. The studio camera swung into view a moderator in turtleneck sweater, jacket, and dark-framed glasses, the look of a woman journalist who insisted viewers take her seriously. Unlike the morning talk shows, no coffee mugs and fruit bowl warmed her expanse of desk in this face to face, Stanislas noticed. Just two glasses of water, one for her, another for her guest.

The moderator turned to a youngish woman opposite in a tubular chair. “Mademoiselle Le Brune, you’re the spokeswoman for the Pan-European Council. The governing body of three prominent extreme-right parties in Western Europe, whose founder is Monsieur Franz Streible. Can—”

“I must correct your implication, Madame Chantel, before we proceed. We are extreme in the sense of having high standards. Not in any violent sense, I assure you.”

“Very well. For the moment, in the sense of having high standards. Your comments on this latest outbreak of lawlessness.”

“Incredible,” Le Brune muttered. Then louder: “The shame of this turmoil in our Paris. You may very well wonder, will the rest of Europe be next?” A tricolor in her double-breasted jacket’s lapel glinted from the studio lights as she paused dramatically and half-turned toward the moderator. She tossed across a note of thanks for inviting her onto this special edition of
Perspectives
. The necessary gesture made, she shifted to the camera. “Our France,” she said. “Our Europe. This banditism is happening everywhere.”

Hands relaxed in front of her, she explained the need for corrective measures to rebalance society, the urgency for tougher laws to deal with the turbulence infesting Western Europe, and Stanislas wanted to flee her filthy talk. But Anna stood there, arms folded, fixed to the moment as she gazed, and he knew he couldn’t coax her away.

Now a sympathetic smile from Mademoiselle Le Brune at the plight of the unemployed, their tragic numbers deliberately undercounted by governments, she stressed. Now a shake of her head at the mounting violence that defaced some of the most beautiful countries in the world: France, Austria, and Germany. Now a shrug in a show of humility for the men she represented, unlike the corrupt elitists in Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, didn’t have every answer. But they did know what they disliked: invaders onto the sacred soil of Europe.

“No more, you Judas.” The bartender snapped to a soccer game.

“Yes, enough of that perfumed traitor,” Anna said.

The three drinkers swiveled to stare at her. The bartender glanced over. “Ah, good day, Madame Attali. You’ll cheer up François when he returns. He had to go with the police to the station to give his account of what happened. We had a fight here earlier. A Franz Streible supporter said some ugly things. Those gentlemen”—he gestured to the two men in blazers—“showed him the door, only he wouldn’t leave. The guys are from a private security firm. We had to take them on because hooligans are marauding around in this fog, beating up patrons.” He turned away to place the tumbler upside down on the shelf under rows of liquors.