L'Assassin Page 9

  Hakim telephoned his handler and told him everything he had seen, as well as a few things he had not. He said, for instance, that he had seen weapons in the van and more weapons at Lefort’s house. He wanted to make sure that he would be handsomely paid for his information. Hakim’s report quickly found its way up the line, and even before Louis was back in Saint Leon, the report, translated into English and typed, sat beneath a TOP SECRET cover sheet on Hugh Bowes’s desk.

  Hugh was certain there had not been any weapons in the van or in the house, but it did not matter. With or without weapons, there was, as he put it in his own assessment to the president, “strong and compelling evidence of imminent terroristic activity. Louis Morgon can have had only one reason for going to Algeria and meeting with one of his co-conspirators, and that is to plan terroristic acts. We must intensify our surveillance of him and his co-conspirators, and, when the moment is right, terminate their operation.”

  The following morning—it was still the middle of the night in Washington—a man and a woman arrived in Saint Leon sur Dême and took a pair of rooms at the Hôtel de France. The rooms looked out on the square, but the man and woman closed the shutters and drew the curtains. Later that morning two more men arrived and took a pair of rooms. And that evening two pairs of men arrived and took rooms on the floor above. They all parked their cars on the square in front of the hotel.

  “See?” said Penont, the hotel clerk, pointing at the cars. Renard was standing at the hotel bar, having a cup of coffee. He turned and looked. “It is unbelievable,” said Penont. “The hotel is full. We went from empty to full, just like that.”

  “Really?” said Renard. “Who are they? I wonder what brought them to Saint Leon.”

  “I have no idea,” said Penont. “But they have lots of luggage. And whatever brought them, I hope it continues. When business is good, madame is happy.”

  Madame was Madame Chalfont, who had run the hotel ever since her husband’s death. At first, the place had languished under the burden of her loss, for it reminded her too much of her dead husband. After all, it had been their joint project for the last forty years. But then one day she decided she could get beyond her grief only by making the Hôtel de France a sort of monument to him. She hired a new chef and trained him to prepare the Chalfont recipes. She refurbished the lobby and redid the rooms. And she planted so many vines and flowers in the flower beds and window boxes that in spring the hotel all but disappeared in a cascade of blooms and greenery. When guests opened their windows, they were all but overwhelmed by the scent of the flowers and the sound of the bees. “The bees will not hurt you,” Madame Chalfont assured them. “And the flowers … well, I simply cannot help myself. They remind me of him.”

  “It’s summer,” said Renard. “The Le Mans races start soon. It’s a little early, but maybe the guests are here for the races.” The hotel had long been a favorite stopping place for British drivers and their fans. The walls of the bar were covered with signed portraits of generations of drivers, looking handsome in their coveralls, with their helmets tucked under their arms. “Maybe they’re drivers,” said Renard, looking out at the cars in the square. Penont laughed.

  On his way home from the airport Louis stopped to see Renard.

  “What did you learn?” Renard wanted to know.

  “That they—whoever they are—have made me out to be a terrorist,” said Louis. “By playacting for the camera in my kitchen. They are laying some kind of groundwork.”

  “Playacting? Groundwork? For what?”

  “That’s not entirely clear,” said Louis. “But I think it includes my assassination.”

  Renard stared at Louis. “I have decided,” said Louis, before Renard could say anything, “to get rid of the camera and the microphone.”

  “Is that a good idea?” Renard asked. “I mean, as long as the camera and mike remain undisturbed, it allows them to think that you do not know. They can continue to pretend to be gathering evidence.”

  “They can no longer imagine that I don’t know. Besides, if they want evidence,” said Louis, “they’ll find evidence, whether there is any or not. They’ll manufacture it. What is evidence, anyway, but accrued superstition and rumor? If they want to do away with me,” said Louis, “they’ll do away with me. They have that kind of power.”

  “Then we have to take it away from them,” said Renard angrily.

  “That’s exactly what we have to do,” said Louis. “Which is why, when I get back to the house, I’m going to get rid of the camera. I’ve got to get them to reveal themselves. Whether they do anything about it or not could tell us something about what they’re thinking.”

  Louis removed the microphone first, tearing it from the wall beside the stove. Then he stepped up on a chair and removed the camera. He smashed them both with a hammer. In what seemed like the next minute, he heard sirens.

  My God, it’s unbelievable. They were here all the time. Will they arrest me or just shoot me down? Hugh will want me shot down. I thought I had some time. A little time anyway. Louis decided he had the best chance to survive if he waited out in the open. He walked to the top of the driveway and stood there. He would raise his arms to surrender as soon as they appeared. What else could he do?

  The sirens came closer. Then they stopped. Louis could see the blue lights flashing down below. They were at Solesme’s house. “Oh my God,” he said, and ran down the hill. He ran so hard that he stumbled and nearly fell. He arrived in time to see Solesme on a stretcher being loaded into an ambulance. He ran to her side. She was barely conscious. Her eyes were glassy, and her mouth hung open. Her skin was chalk white except for bright red spots on each cheek. Her hair, wet from perspiration, was spread about her head. She had grown so thin lately that her body barely showed beneath the sheet.

  “Monsieur, stop,” said one of the attendants. He raised his hands and stepped in front of the stretcher. “Please, monsieur, she is very ill.”

  “I know,” said Louis. “I am her … Please. I have been taking care of her. Let me go along.”

  Louis was allowed to ride in the back of the ambulance. They placed an oxygen mask over Solesme’s face. A machine monitoring her vital signs whirred and beeped. Her faint heartbeat showed up as a jagged green line on a screen. Louis held her hand. “Forgive me, Solesme,” he said. “Forgive me for going away, for being so absorbed in myself. Please, Solesme, don’t leave. Stay with us. Stay with us. Stay with me.” He spoke to her all the way to the hospital while the attendant watched the monitors and tried not to listen.

  Solesme regained consciousness in the emergency room. She smiled at Louis, but soon lost consciousness again. Later, upstairs in a ward, she regained consciousness again and this time she remained awake. “Tell me about Algeria” were her first words. She smiled weakly.

  “Algeria?” said Louis. He had almost forgotten that he had been there.

  “Is it very beautiful?” she asked. “Tell me.”

  “It was once very beautiful,” said Louis, forcing his mind back there. “Algiers is an old French city. Like Nice or Marseille. But its grandeur is gone. It is run-down; it is dirty. Still …” Louis described the Hôtel de Boufa, the reunion with his friend Samad al Nhouri, the sardine dinner, the trip out to see Pierre Lefort. “You should see the color of the desert,” he said, “against the color of the sky.” He thought that if he could only talk forever, Solesme would have to stay alive.

  “I would like to have gone with you,” she said. “I should have gone with you.” Then: “I am sorry I’m going to miss everything from now on. That is the worst part. The worst part is not knowing how it will all turn out.”

  Louis could only nod numbly and say, “Yes.”

  Later that evening, when the lights in the ward had been dimmed and the curtains had been drawn around the beds, Louis slipped off his shoes and climbed onto the bed beside Solesme. She lay on her back. Her mouth was open, and her breaths were shallow and far apart. Louis lay as close to her as he could
manage without disturbing her. He placed one of his hands on her pillow and stroked her hair.

  When he woke up a few hours later, his arm was asleep, and his back hurt from having lain so awkwardly. While he had slept, Solesme had laid her arm across his chest and her lips were pressed against his forehead. He knew right away that she was dead.

  Solesme’s brother, François, came from Lyon and led the funeral procession from the church to the cemetery. Louis walked in the middle of the large group of mourners. Afterwards, they all went to the town hall. Everyone greeted François and Louis and embraced them sympathetically. Tables of food had been laid out. People stood about in groups, eating from small plates and talking. After a while, Louis sat down on a folding chair beside François.

  “She did not suffer, you know,” said Louis. “I’m sure of that. She was serene to the very end.” His hand went to his forehead involuntarily. He could still feel her lips there, as though they had left a mark.

  “I’m glad she had you,” said François. “So was she. Glad, I mean. Happy really. She told me so. More than once.”

  “Thank you, François. I know she was happy,” said Louis. “And I was too. She made me happy. She knew me and knew how to make me happy. Oh …”

  Once everyone had left, Louis walked home. He turned up the hill past Solesme’s house. Her flowers were in bloom, and her rosebushes had been pruned and tied up to their trellises, as though she had just worked on them. How could she be dead and her garden still be so alive? Her life was still there, still going on, after she was gone. At any moment, he thought, she would open the window and invite him to stop for a cup of tea or a glass of raspberry juice. How can I ever pass this way again?

  Louis went into the barn and leaned a large, blank canvas against the wall. He laid brushes on the table and filled several jars with clean water. On the paper palette, he mixed all the gorgeous colors he could come up with, one after the other. He mixed the colors he remembered from the Algerian desert. He squatted down and brushed paint onto the canvas. He painted as though his life depended on it. But as vibrant as the colors were, as heartfelt the brushstrokes, they did not add up to anything. When his brushes touched the canvas, the color seemed to go flat and turn to mud.

  It was late afternoon when Louis finally gave up. He felt suddenly as though he could not stand up for another minute. He slid the brushes in jars, climbed the stairs in the barn, and collapsed on one of the guest beds.

  When he awoke the next morning, he imagined that he was back in Virginia and it was thirty years earlier. He waited to hear Sarah’s voice telling him he would be late for work. He had to sit up and hear the birds singing before he realized where he was. Louis got a pen and paper, went to the small metal table on his terrace to write.

  Dear Jennifer,

  Solesme died Wednesday night. I was with her. As I wrote in my last letter, her cancer had gotten worse. She knew it would take her, and now it has. I am desolate, and yet I still do not comprehend her absence. I cannot even believe she is dead. I see her walking up the driveway, or I see her sitting across the table from me. It is stronger than imagination. It is like an afterimage, a hallucination, except it is real.

  What is the difference between death and simply being apart? I don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be any difference other than my knowledge that our being apart is irrevocable and absolutely permanent.

  Forgive me. I know these are not the kind of things you want to hear from your father. It must sound morbid to you, or embarrassing. Maybe you think I am really talking about my own death, but I promise you, I’m not.

  As I write this, I realize that, even in this awful moment, my desolation has limits. It will end because it is surrounded by a large measure of good fortune. Not the least because of you. I am so proud of you, and so grateful. Among the long list of good things which are mine, but which I am not entitled to, is your generous treatment of me.

  I hope you are well and happy and that the clinic is going well.

  Love,

  Dad

  Louis wrote a similar letter to Michael. He walked to the post office, then to Renard’s office. Renard rose from behind his desk and embraced Louis awkwardly. Then the two men sat in silence. Sunlight streamed through the front window, and Louis closed his eyes and waited while it warmed his back. But it did not seem to do so.

  Finally Renard lit a cigarette and stepped to the window.

  “Come here and look at this,” he said.

  “What is it?” said Louis without moving.

  “Come look,” said Renard. Louis walked over and stood behind Renard.

  “The cars,” said Renard. “Do you see them?”

  “The blue one?”

  “And the sedan next to it. And there are two more in the parking lot behind the hotel.”

  “What about them?” said Louis.

  “They all belong to hotel guests who all arrived on the same day.”

  “I am not following you.”

  “See the plate numbers?”

  “Paris,” said Louis. He turned away from the windows.

  “They got here the day before … Tuesday was it? And they hardly ever leave.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Louis. He passed his hand in front of his eyes. “I’m too tired for this. I’m still not following you.”

  “Well, it went by me too, at first,” said Renard. “When Penont first told me. But then … well, you tell me. What kind of tourists come to Saint Leon with a lot of baggage and then hardly ever go anywhere?”

  “Baggage?” said Louis.

  “Oddly shaped suitcases,” said Renard.

  “Now who is being overly suspicious?” said Louis. “I’m sorry, Jean, I can’t …”

  “Not suspicious exactly,” said Renard. “But curious. So I checked. The cars are all four rentals. All four from Paris.”

  “What else does Penont say?” said Louis, looking out the window once more.

  “They don’t make any calls on the hotel phones. They act as though they don’t know one another, but they keep similar hours and take their meals at the same time. It’s as though they are waiting for instructions.”

  “So you think they are watching me,” Louis asked.

  “They hardly go out, but who knows?”

  “Maybe they are,” said Louis. He thought for a moment. “But three or four people are enough to watch someone around the clock. This is … how many?”

  “Eight. Eight people. And they mostly stay in the hotel. With a lot of luggage.”

  “So, what are you thinking?” said Louis.

  “You know what I’m thinking,” said Renard. “They’re waiting for orders—or they have orders and are waiting for the right moment—to assault your house. Perhaps they’ll arrest you, or maybe they’ll kill you. Eight people and a lot of odd-looking luggage … containing assault weapons, if I had to guess.”

  Maybe, Louis thought, he was all wrong. Maybe nothing was going on and he had just enlisted poor Renard in his ridiculous fantasy. Or maybe they were assassins and he should just allow them to play out their absurd drama, kill him, and then it would be done. But then he remembered Solesme’s words. “The worst part is not knowing how it will turn out.” I owe her a good ending, he thought.

  “Look,” said Renard. He stepped back from the window and nodded toward the square. A man had walked out of the hotel. He wore khaki slacks, a T-shirt with a picture of a racing car on it, and sunglasses. He unlocked one of the cars and sat down inside. He seemed to be studying something, a map maybe. He spoke on a portable telephone. When he looked in their direction, Renard dodged backward.

  “What if they are planning an assault on your house?” said Renard. “They have proof that you’re a terrorist, and they’re waiting for a moment that will somehow conform to their evidence. They have invented a story that proves your guilt, so sooner or later they can launch their assault and confirm their story.”

  “Then,” said Louis, after a moment’s hesitation,
“we have to begin our assault first.”

  “Our assault?!” said Renard.

  “Well,” said Louis with a faint smile, “perhaps assault is too grand a word for it.” He thought for a moment. “We have to force them to do something to reveal themselves before they want to. I tried ripping out the bugs …”

  “Maybe that is what they are waiting for,” said Renard, “for you to do something … incriminating.”

  “Maybe. But if they’d show their cards, we’d have a better idea of what they’re up to. Maybe they really are just odd tourists … But I think I know how we can find out.”

  A short time later, Louis was sitting under an umbrella on the terrace in front of the Hôtel de France. Penont had just brought him a cup of coffee. Madame Chalfont arrived at the table and offered Louis her condolences, and he invited her to sit down. “Ah, monsieur, it is all so sad.” She recalled how he and Solesme Lefourier had met on that very spot over thirty years earlier.

  “There were lights everywhere,” said Louis. “The town never looked more beautiful.”

  “Remember the gypsy violinist?” said Madame Chalfont.

  “I do,” said Louis. “Henry Kadusco.”

  “And you and I danced,” she said. “Do you remember?” Her eyes shone. “I remember it as though it were yesterday.”

  Louis smiled at the recollection. “It was your hospitality, madame, that changed my life. Yours and Monsieur Chalfont’s.”

  She smiled and took Louis’s hand in hers and squeezed it. At that moment Renard stepped through the door of the police station and marched across the square with such a grim expression on his face that Madame Chalfont let Louis’s hand drop. She rose from her seat and took a small step backward. “Mon dieu!” she said.

  Renard pulled up in front of their table and stood at attention. “Monsieur Louis Morgon,” he said in a loud voice and the most official tone he could manage, “I am placing you under arrest. Will you come with me please?”

  ‘What is the charge, Renard?” said Louis.