Private Paris Page 19

“What company?” I asked.

  “We don’t know yet,” Petitjean said, sighing. “And we don’t know what kind of business they’re involved in, or who they’re doing business with, because they’re using an alphanumeric code that we haven’t been able to crack.”

  “Drugs,” Louis said. “Has to be.”

  “If so, they’re highly disciplined drug dealers,” Petitjean said.

  I poured a cup of coffee and said, “Give me a copy of the memory stick. I want to lend a hand.”

  “We can do better than that,” Vans said. “Louis’s canine friend uploaded it all into our virtual office. Files that have already been examined are flagged.”

  After getting my laptop from the bedroom, I took a seat on the sofa and followed Vans’s instructions to get access to the memory stick files.

  I opened a few of the spreadsheets and studied them enough to see that the code made it a waste of time to search them further. I found several Microsoft Word documents that hadn’t been flagged and started opening them. Some did seem like random notes, ideas jotted down, but others were lists of orders to be given to certain initials along with various snippets of that code.

  Because I wasn’t sure of my French-to-English translating skills with even the noncoded stuff, I exited those documents as well and did not flag them. Feeling kind of useless, I wondered how Sci would handle this kind of situation. I was about to give him a call, ask him for advice, when it dawned on me that he might try to take an inventory first.

  “Can you get me a list of files filtered by type?” I asked. “A directory?”

  “Sure. By format or extension?” Vans asked.

  “I don’t know. What’s easier?”

  She took my computer, gave it a few instructions, and then nodded and returned it to me.

  I scrolled down the list, scanning past all Microsoft Excel and Word files, finding more than twenty files in a format—RCP—that neither I nor my computer seemed to recognize.

  I dragged the RCP files into a new folder that I intended to e-mail over to Sci, and continued on with my scroll.

  Five minutes later, I saw another three of the RCP-type files, but my attention shot below them on the list to two JPEG files. They’d been flagged as examined, but for some reason I highlighted both and double-clicked.

  My laptop seemed to grind a moment before two pictures popped up, splitting the screen. I studied them, both offhand shots, and felt confused by the odd sense that the subjects of the photographs were familiar to me, but I didn’t know how. Then it struck me, and I stared at the pictures long enough to consider alternatives before the unarguable meaning of them became clear.

  “I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch,” I said.

  “What?” Louis said.

  “The guy behind all this—the lighter, Kim, everything. He was right under our nose, Louis, and we let him walk away.”

  Chapter 68

  14th Arrondissement

  7:40 p.m.

  A COLD DRIZZLE fell over Paris as Louis and I left the taxi and hurried toward a blue gate in the dark stone fortress walls of La Santé prison.

  For decades, and through the turn of this century, La Santé regularly made the list of the world’s worst places to be incarcerated.

  “A hellhole, Jack,” Louis said angrily. “It’s supposed to be closed now, which makes the fact that they’re keeping Farad and the others in here an absolute outrage as far as I’m concerned.”

  At the gate, Louis called someone on his cell phone. Ten minutes later, the gate was unlocked by a uniformed police captain, Alain Grande, a burly guy with pocked skin. He scowled and said, “You owe me on this one, Louis. He’s not supposed to have visitors beyond counsel.”

  “We are working on his behalf and his counsel’s behalf,” Louis said.

  “Ten minutes,” Grande said begrudgingly, and let us pass through.

  Erected in the 1860s, La Santé was built like spokes on a wheel, with a central hub and four multistory wings jutting off it. A modern maximum-security wing was added later, and it was there that Grande led us.

  “I can’t believe they have them in here,” Louis said.

  The police captain shrugged. “It’s still the highest-security facility in Paris, and intelligence and anti-terror wanted quick and easy access to them.”

  We passed construction debris and supplies for the prison’s renovations and at least twenty officers wearing bulletproof vests and carrying submachine guns.

  “They think AB-16 is going to attack the prison? Free their leaders?”

  “They killed a cabinet minister, didn’t they, Louis?” Grande snapped. “What makes you think they wouldn’t try?”

  That shut Louis up, and we walked the rest of the way in silence. Captain Grande brought us into a room with two doors, a steel table bolted to the bare cement floor, and four metal folding chairs.

  A few minutes later, the other door opened, and Farad was brought in wearing the same clothes from the other night, and leg-irons and shackles. His eyes were sunken and bloodshot. His hair was greasy, and he had two days’ growth of beard on his face.

  He glared at us and at Captain Grande as officers ran a chain from his handcuffs through a steel eyebolt welded to the table. When they were done, Farad said in a hostile tone, “Nice of you to visit, Louis. Jack.”

  “They wouldn’t let us see you before,” Louis explained. “It is only this past hour that we even knew where they were holding you.”

  “It’s true, Ali,” I said.

  Farad set his jaw before looking to Grande. “Can we have some privacy?”

  “No,” the captain said.

  “Ali was a decorated officer of the judiciaire,” Louis complained.

  “I don’t care,” the captain replied. “I’m not moving.”

  Looking as though he was on the edge of a meltdown, Farad said, “They think I’m part of the AB-16 conspiracy because I attend the imam’s mosque. They have him here too, and Firmus Massi. Both men are like me: moderate, and absolutely opposed to radicalism. We are being framed.”

  “If so, we’ll prove it,” Louis said. “I promise you that, Ali. But right now we need your help on the Kopchinski case. It now involves, we believe, certain people you might know.”

  Farad shook his head in weary disbelief. “You think I’m involved on the wrong side of this case too?”

  “No,” I said. “Nothing like that.”

  He puffed out his lips and blew out. “What can I do for you?”

  Louis slid his cell phone across the table and showed him the two pictures I’d found on the memory stick. He tapped the face of the only person in either photograph. “Recognize him?”

  Farad leaned over and studied the picture, and his head retreated. “Really? You’ve got actual evidence that he’s involved?”

  Before I could reply, we heard a man and a woman shouting outside, demanding to know where we were, and how the hell we’d gotten inside.

  Chapter 69

  CAPTAIN GRANDE LOST several shades of color. “Time’s up, Louis.”

  Louis ignored him and said, “Tell us what you know about—”

  “I said enough!” Grande roared just before the door flew open, and Investigateur Hoskins and Juge Fromme stormed in.

  The crippled magistrate pointed his cane at Farad and said, “Take that man back to his cell. Now. And put these two under arrest for obstruction.”

  “Obstruction?” I said, getting to my feet. “We’re part of his defense team. We have the right to—”

  “What do you know of rights in France?” Fromme thundered. “You, Monsieur Morgan, have no rights here. And I’m going to make sure you’re deported in the morning.”

  “You let them in here?” Hoskins asked Grande.

  “They said they were working on another case,” the captain sputtered. “Nothing to do with AB-16.”

  I expected Louis to jump in, but then I glanced back and saw him talking fast and low to Farad, and I knew I had to stall.

/>   “That is one hundred percent true,” I said. “It’s a missing persons case involving the granddaughter of one of my oldest clients back in California.”

  Completely unconvinced, Fromme said, “Her name?”

  “Kim Kopchinski,” Louis said, standing up from the table with a nod to Farad. “She’s a U.S. citizen, and we believe she is being held by someone involved in a murder here in Paris a few days ago—someone who is also of great interest to the judicial police in the south of France. Isn’t that right, Ali?”

  Farad nodded. “You can call my former partner, Christoph Le Clerc, if you don’t believe me. He’s been working to put this guy away for years. It would be a great coup if he were taken down.”

  The magistrate looked as though he wanted to break his cane over his knee, but then said, “Out with it. Everything.”

  It took us about fifteen minutes to explain to the judge about Kopchinski, the lighter, the memory stick, and the connection to Marseille. When we were done, you could tell he didn’t like it, but he said, “You have this memory stick?”

  “We have the data on it,” Louis said.

  “We just want to make sure Ms. Kopchinski is returned safe and sound to her grandfather,” I said. “That’s all this discussion was about.”

  The magistrate glanced at Hoskins, who shrugged.

  “Fine,” Fromme said. “You are not under arrest. But you are leaving, right now, and Monsieur Farad is going back to his cell.”

  “Keep the faith,” I said to Farad as officers led him out. “Private Paris is behind you one hundred percent.”

  “This is a miscarriage of justice,” Louis told Fromme and Hoskins after Farad had gone. “There is nothing concrete that I know of that links Farad or the imam or Firmus Massi to the AB-16 murders.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Louis,” Hoskins said sadly. “We do have such evidence.”

  Fromme nodded grimly. “When we searched the mosque we found crucifixes taken from Henri Richard, René Pincus, and Lourdes Latrelle.”

  I said, “How can you be sure that—”

  “They’ve all been positively identified by next of kin, Monsieur Morgan,” Hoskins said firmly. “There is also preliminary DNA evidence that puts the imam and Firmus Massi at the scene of Guy LaFont’s murder last night, and other DNA material that puts your employee, Monsieur Farad, inside the restaurant the night Chef Pincus was murdered.”

  Chapter 70

  Montfermeil, eastern suburbs of Paris

  10 p.m.

  MONITORING A PARIS news station and the police scanner, Émile Sauvage remained in disguise and waited patiently in the dark apartment, looking out the window and monitoring the street and sidewalks around Les Bosquets.

  In the past two hours, the bands of immigrant youth roaming the area had been getting larger and angrier. The stolen van was brought out and lit on fire in the middle of the boulevard. When police arrived, rocks and bottles had flown in their direction.

  That had prompted the cops to retreat two blocks from the housing project and call for reinforcements. Satellite news trucks were already on the scene, and the major was pleased when several rioters responded by spray-painting a crude version of the AB-16 symbol on the road near the burning van.

  Based on radio reports and the scanner, in response to the arrests and riots in Barbès, similar mobs were forming and causing destruction in other Parisian suburbs with large immigrant populations. Surprisingly, there had been no reports of shots fired.

  That’s about to change, the major thought coldly as the scanner lit up with word of riot police heading toward the housing project.

  Sauvage got out a pocketknife and cut the strings that bound the rug. Grasping the fringe, he unrolled the cheap Oriental slowly, until he saw the edge of a five-by-seven-foot silver fire blanket wrapped inside.

  He kept on unrolling the rug until he’d freed the fire blanket and a loaded Swedish-made AT4 shoulder-mount rocket grenade launcher.

  “Alert,” Epée said into his earbud’s microphone.

  “Confirmed,” Mfune said.

  “Confirmed,” Sauvage said, and picked up the fire blanket, which he draped over his head and about his shoulders like a hooded robe.

  At sixty inches long and eighty-four inches wide, the blanket more than covered him from the back when he took a knee so he could see further down the boulevard.

  Two white Mercedes-Benz Unimog police trucks pulled behind the patrol cars. The Unimogs were equipped with antiriot gear, including water cannons and a front blade used as a battering ram. Riot police poured out the backs of the trucks. Wearing helmets, visors, body armor, and carrying Plexiglas shields, they quickly assembled in a tight line that spanned the boulevard.

  An officer used a bullhorn to tell the rioters to disperse and return to their homes or face arrest. That only seemed to incense the mob. Molotov cocktails spun through the air, burst, and burned on the street.

  Sauvage smiled when some in the crowd of immigrant youth began to chant, “AB-16! AB-16!”

  On a shouted order, the riot police raised their shields and began to advance down the boulevard. The major waited until they were half a block closer before he pushed up the window and reached for the rocket launcher.

  The AT4 was green, forty inches long, and fourteen pounds when loaded. A single-shot, recoilless weapon, it featured a hollow fiberglass barrel that was open at both ends. Sauvage pulled out a cotter pin, which unblocked the firing rod. Then he pushed the cocking mechanism up and over the barrel, locking it on safe with a red lever.

  The major put silicone plugs in his ears before shouldering the weapon and settling in behind the simple iron sights, gloved left hand resting on the red safety lever, and gloved right thumb on the button trigger. Watching the police march steadily forward, he noted that the antiriot trucks were trailing them closely.

  Thud. Thud.

  Canisters of tear gas flew from behind the shields and burst in the street.

  “On my mark,” he muttered into the mic.

  When he was positive that the police and armored trucks were well within the launcher’s three-hundred-yard effective range, he whispered, “Now.”

  Mfune cut all power to the apartment building.

  Shouts and curses echoed out the windows of the housing project. Sauvage released the rocket launcher’s safety lever, swung the sights over the heads of the advancing police, and steadied his aim.

  He punched the trigger.

  There was an initial thumping sound like a bass drum being struck. The rocket blew a plume of intense pressure and fire out the rear of the launcher. The flames and blast waves bounced off the apartment walls and pummeled the blanket and Sauvage from behind like a crashing wave of fire.

  Despite the heat and force of the backblast, the major never lost sight of the contrail of the 86-millimeter rocket, the warhead of which contained 440 grams of Octol, a substance so volatile that it’s also called HEAT, for high-explosive anti-tank.

  Many of the riot police threw themselves to the ground just before the HEAT rocket struck the blade of one of the antiriot trucks and detonated in a thunderclap that spawned a brilliant red mushroom cloud.

  Chapter 71

  SAUVAGE DROPPED THE spent rocket launcher on the floor and threw off the singed fire blanket. He tried to stand but felt unbalanced by the backblast that had ruptured the air pressure in the apartment and upset his equilibrium.

  On this second try, however, the major was up and yanking out the ear protectors in time to hear chaos in the streets below as the riot police shouted to one another, and bands of immigrant youth cheered the attack.

  Sauvage did not pause to savor the havoc he’d caused. Instead, he pocketed the police scanner, threw the rolled rug over his shoulder, and went to the door, ignoring the charred and smoking apartment walls.

  He pulled open the door. The dark hallway was filled with people panicking at the explosions and trying to get out of the building. Stepping in
to the hallway, he got out a pen flashlight and turned it on, saying into the jaw mic, “Joiners?”

  “Not yet,” Epée said.

  “Encourage them,” Sauvage said, head down, focused on the light beam, moving fast and straight toward the stairwell, using the rug as a soft battering ram to push people aside.

  Through the open door by the stairway, the major heard Epée squeeze off three short bursts of automatic rifle fire. That caused pandemonium and shrieking in the hallway, which the major used to his advantage.

  While most of the immigrants went to the ground, Sauvage went over the top of them, and shouldered his way through the staircase door. Holding tight to the rug, he started leaping down the stairs, taking them two or three at a time.

  Behind and above him, Sauvage heard more shots, quick and erratic—not the disciplined bursts of fire that Epée employed.

  Amateurs!

  They had the AK-47 assault rifles and 7.62mm ammunition!

  And they were fighting for AB-16!

  The major barreled down the stairs like a wild man now, using the rug to knock the people below him aside and roaring out, “Allahu akbar! God is great!”

  When he reached the first floor and burst out the rear entrance, Mfune was waiting. The captain took the rug, and they hurried with a knot of people fleeing pistol shots and submachine gun fire.

  It wasn’t until they were well south of the housing project and crossing the Rue du Général de Gaulle that Sauvage felt comfortable enough to get out his real phone and call Amé, who answered on the first ring.

  “It’s live!” she cried. “They’ve broken into programming!”

  “Claim it,” he said, and hung up.

  On the Avenue des Rossignols, Epée was waiting with the car. They put the rug in the trunk and got in. The tagger pulled out and drove away at an untroubled speed.

  Feeling safe behind the tinted glass, Sauvage stripped off the beard, wig, and fake eyebrows before rolling the window down.

  When they stopped at an intersection, he heard police sirens wailing north toward Les Bosquets. To his ears, it sounded like a triumphant symphony.