Secrets (14 page)

He stepped back
from the video as if to acknowledge Maurice’s command. “She is not
thinking clearly. This has been very difficult for her. Let me talk
to her, please.”

“
Mon
ami
,” Maurice began with a very soft voice. “You have very good
heart, which have make you so good with your task. You think of
what is best for everyone. Lise is in terrible pain, this I know.
But, we cannot allow her to hurt a civilian. This is not
acceptable!

“Agreed!” BB
replied instantly. “But, let me negotiate with her, we have a lot
of background.”

“No!” Sonya
stepped up. “Let me! We have been simpatico since this all began.
She has no reason to hurt me. She is guilty that Lucien hurt Bryan.
Maybe I can reason with her,” she pleaded both for Mike and for
BB.

“I have another
thought,” Doctor Dumont interjected quietly. “We use her grandson.
No other in
la monde
(
the world
) she love more.”

“I think you
are correct
Mama,
it is good thinking. BB?” Maurice raised
his eyebrows.

BB took a deep
breath, trying not to look at the video of Mike with a gun to his
head. He had only just met his son, and there was that much he
needed and wanted to say to him before one of them died. And until
now, BB believed that he would be the first one that passed
away.

However, he was
and always had been, a very practical and resourceful man. Had he
been in charge, this would have been his choice. He had to stop
thinking that the man in the other room was his son. If this
situation were to be resolved without bloodshed, he had to start
thinking with his head and not his heart. It had never before been
a choice that he had been forced to make, and it was the most
difficult one that he had ever faced.

“Your choice?”
he demanded of Maurice.

“The boy,” was
the immediate reply. “I have send for him.”

Letting out a
deep breath, BB placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Were I
in charge, I would decide the same thing,” he agreed. “We wish for
no one to be hurt, including Lise.”

Nodding,
Maurice picked up the telephone. It rang for what seemed to be an
eternity. Finally, they watched as Madame Lalonde picked up the
receiver.

“
Oui
?”
was all she said.

Maurice spoke
quietly. “Lise, we wish to speak to you quietly and with our
hearts.”

“What heart?”
she asked bitterly. “You throw one of your own in jail? You have no
heart! I speak to Merl, no one else.” And she hung up the receiver
with a slam.

“Set up video,”
Maurice ordered as he answered his cell. He handed it to BB and a
call was placed to the room next door, the room in which
Madame
Lalonde held his son hostage. The price for his
freedom was still unknown.

Taking a deep
breath, BB faced the screen and spoke. “Lise, I understand that you
wish to speak to me.”

A terrible look
of anguish crossed her beautiful face. “You betrayed me, not once
but twice. You do not deserve to be happy.” She poked Mike with the
gun. He stood absolutely still, looking straight ahead.

“Lise,” BB
continued. “Please look at the monitor in your room.” She looked
quickly around, instantly focussing upon the monitor.

“It is blank,”
she sneered, but the sneer turned to a look of horror, for on the
monitor before her stood Sylvain and Mimi, standing in front of the
hospital.

“Why is he
here?” she demanded with hostility. “He is not a part of this. You
promise when you sign papers that you look after him!”

“And I shall,”
BB stated. “But, Lise, if you continue with this and if any harm
comes to Mike, Sylvain will be told the entire story, both of his
father’s traitorous deeds and of his grandmother’s. This I promise
you. And you know very well, lise, that I always keep my
promises.”

Lise’s face
seemed to crumple a little. “You would not hurt a child.”

“But you will
if this continues.”

“He is a child,
an innocent child!” she almost shouted, appearing to become
hysterical.

BB was choosing
his words carefully. “And for him to remain innocent about what
Lucien has become is your choice! He can believe that Lucien died a
hero in the Middle East or he can learn the truth. You have only
these choices. Will you choose to indulge your wish to hurt me, or
hurt your own grandson? It is that simple.”

“
Ce n’est
pas simple! (It is not simple!)”
Lise virtually shouted. Sonya
could hear her shout through the walls from their vantage point in
the room next door. Lise was becoming somewhat hysterical. She
paced to and fro, never allowing her eyes or gun off of Mike.

“Lise,” BB’s
voice could be heard. “Please put down the gun. We can talk this
out between us.”

For some
reason, this angered her and she aimed the gun at the monitor. In a
lightening fast move, Mike body checked her into the wall, her
injured shoulder connecting first. Her scream of pain and the
gunshot pierced the air at the same time. The gunshot went errant
and buried into the wall, sending shards of plaster bursting like
points of starlight over the floor.

Within seconds,
the room was filled with people with guns. Lise was slumped against
the wall holding her shoulder and Doctor Dupont was crouching down
beside her. Someone was rolling up the sleeve on Lise’s shirt and
Doctor Dupont quickly cleaned a spot and inserted a hypodermic
needle, dispensing some medicine. It took a few minutes, but
eventually
Madame
Lalonde became placid, smiling at the room
as if nothing had taken place.

“Are you all
right?” BB asked Mike. “That was a very interesting disarming
move.”

“The body
check? I have never body checked a woman in my life, but then
again, I have never had a woman hold a gun to my head before
either. She’s very fragile, BB. I think that she’s just snapped.
All that she talked about all the way over was how her son was gone
and that she had nothing left. How all of her friends had deserted
her, and that she had no reason to live.”

BB sighed. “She
has so much more! She simply cannot see that right now. She will
have no choice but to explore these feelings with professionals
now. Perhaps this has happened for the best. You are certain that
you are all right? Possibly, sometime, you can describe to me what
a body check is?”

With a smile,
Mike put his arm over BB’s shoulder. “I’m fine, really I am. You do
look a little pale, though” he commented. BB’s laugh was somewhat
hollow.

Once
Madame
Lalonde was placed upon a stretcher and taken away by
people in white lab coats, Sonya approached Doctor Dumont. “What
will happen to her?” she asked.

“We take Lise
for psychiatric testing. After that, it depend on what the
psychiatrists recommend. Perhaps she can be treat, perhaps not.
That is not my
spécialité
.” With a smile and a nod, she
turned and began to walk away.

“Wait!” Sonya
demanded. “Where is Bryan?”

Doctor Dumont
stopped in mid-step. “I was not told,” she admitted honestly, as
she turned. “Need to know! Secret!
Mes enfants
(
my
children
) are both the same, they like little secret!”
Obviously, she was somewhat annoyed with them, and with the entire
incident that had disrupted her hospital.

“Ask Maurice!”
she declared somewhat angrily over her shoulder, as she stomped
down a corridor and through some swinging doors.

Sonya was
beginning to get a little pissed off. She’d had enough of being
shoved into the background while grown men and women played games
with their lives. She marched into the room in which Bryan had been
treated, the room where Madame Lalonde had held Mike at gunpoint.
The first person that she spied was indeed Maurice.

“Where is
Bryan?” she demanded without ceremony. “And don’t simply tell me
that he is safe!”

Maurice raised
his eyebrows a little. “He is safe,” he replied with a Gallic
shrug.

“I have been
patient until now,” Sonya stiffened, her eyes beginning to flash
with the anger that had begun to build within her. “But, I have
become very angry. I am not a chess piece in one of your hide and
seek games! Neither is Bryan! As you French say,
c’est
fini!
” With that, she sliced her arms across each other in the
air with a karate type motion.

Sonya heard
Mike snicker. It was a peculiar sound that he alone made, and had
done so for as long as she could remember. She turned to give him a
piece of her mind as well, when BB came forward to touch her
arm.

“He is at the
house. The sooner we leave here, the sooner we shall see him.”

“Why didn’t you
say so?” she demanded, turned on her heel and walked out of the
room. “Do I take a taxi or are you driving?”

Maurice
motioned his chin towards Mike. “She always have temper like this?”
he asked.

“Only when
she’s really pissed off, and I’d say that she has very good reason,
wouldn’t you?” Mike answered, beginning to follow his cousin out of
the room.

“I wish to
speak to you,” Maurice stepped up to stop him.

“Of course, as
long it’s either at BB’s or in my hotel room. Sonya’s right, this
has gone on long enough!” Mike was already on his way down the
hallway behind Sonya before Maurice was able to bring his jaw back
into place.

“Your relative,
they have no patience,” Maurice sulked. “We were almost
finish.”

BB’s smile was
broad and proud. “I do so enjoy a good bout of anger letting at
times. It is so invigorating! I shall hold off on the round table
until after lunch. No later. Mike is right. This has dragged on for
too long already.” And he was out of the door striding down the
hall before Maurice could reply.

True to his
word, BB marched directly to his car and they proceed to his home,
stepping out of the Mercedes as the garage door closed behind them.
Sonya was first through the door into the hallway and quickly
stepped down the hall into the living room. It was empty.

Turning to
leave, she stopped in her tracks. Walking out of the kitchen was
Bryan. He was walking slowly but walking on his own. His face was
an explosion of greens, purples, yellows and blues, but it was
smiling at her and for her alone.

All of the
anger dissipated instantly, as her arms surrounded her husband. He
winced a bit and she loosened her grip slightly, but never again
would she let go of him, certainly not in France! His arms
surrounded her and he exhaled a long sigh.

“Hey Babe!” he
whispered.

“Hey yourself!”
Sonya replied. “Are you okay?”

“I am now! And
I’m starved! You should smell what’s cooking in the kitchen!” he
smiled his crooked little grin. That sounded much more like the
Bryan that she knew and loved. He was okay.

“Lunch will be
in approximately forty minutes, if you wish to freshen up,” BB
declared.

Within minutes,
the room was empty. BB walked over to a cabinet, opened it, and
poured himself a stiff scotch. He swallowed it in one gulp, closing
his eyes and sighing. He never again wanted to spend another
morning of his life feeling the panic that he had experienced
earlier. Never!

And never
before, had he felt such helplessness. His entire life and career
he had been in charge, the man of action, the one with his finger
on the pulse of what was happening or the one making things
happen.

But today, he
had handed over control to someone else, someone to whom it
rightfully belonged, someone who was impartial and capable of
making decisions based on facts and not on feelings. It had been
the most difficult thing that he had ever done in his many-storied
career. And there had been many stories, most of which he wanted to
share with his son over a glass of beer, or even a coffee. He felt
a primeval need to share every bit of experience and advice that
could be shared.

Just how to
accomplish some time with his son, would be the problem. Mike had a
job that could not be left indefinitely and although his grandsons
were in university, it felt imperative for BB to meet them, to
speak to them and to somehow include them in his life, and he in
theirs.

Thirty minutes
later, Mike sauntered down the stairs towards the kitchen. His mind
was wandering all over the place. Usually, his mind concentrated on
exactly what he dictated that it should. But since the confirmation
that BB was his father, it took the greatest of concentration for
him to keep his mind from wandering where it willed.

Mike liked BB
as a person. He enjoyed and admired his razor sharp mind, his wit
and even his sophisticated sarcasm. He was an accomplished man,
obviously ruthless when need be, but with a very kind heart. He had
seen that this morning, when he knew without a shadow of a doubt,
that BB would have traded places with him in a heartbeat.

Not that Mike
felt that it would have been necessary. He had felt strangely calm
and confident that he could handle the situation. Lise was falling
apart. He was aware that she had been a trained spy, and therefore
probably schooled in the martial arts, but she was hurt physically,
she was hurt emotionally, and she was fighting a war in her mind to
justify her son’s actions. It was easier to blame someone else than
to face actual facts.

That, he got.
These past few months of uncertainty and the trip to meet BB had
been an emotional journey. It relieved his mind that he actually
liked the man. Otherwise, this would have been so very difficult.
The problem was to get to know him, to spend time, even if it was
just to enjoy having a beer over a barbequed steak. He had to get
home sometime soon, and most of the visit had been spent with spy
stuff.