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  “Very well then, fine,” she said. “Come on in.”

  They parted the drapes and went through into a faux Louis XV lobby from which a twisting staircase led upwards. Madame Gabrielle steered the two newcomers through a door on the ground floor into a dimly lit bar, likewise Louis XV, with lilies in vases and a red telephone on the counter. Behind the latter stood a burly bartender in a white jacket with beyond-incipient male-pattern baldness and a bushy mustache. He resembled the saxophonist Guy Lafitte. Perched on a barstool was a tall young man, with fair hair en brosse and a Chartreuse in front of him, reading The Greening of America in a paperback edition. Two minutes had passed since the two got out of the Consul. Madame Gabrielle sized up the Catalan. His scruffiness made her wary.

  “I’m sure you appreciate my protégé’s simplicity,” murmured Épaulard. “His rough-and-readiness, so to speak.”

  The madam shot him a sideways glance. Here was a true man of the world. She relaxed.

  “The first round is on me,” she said, and she was preparing to step behind the bar when Agent Ricardo looked up discreetly from his paperback to scrutinize the new arrivals and, noticing Buenaventura’s bulging pocket, immediately concluded that the young man was armed and reached into his own jacket.

  Épaulard grabbed a barstool by one of its legs and brandished it. Agent Ricardo fired through his pocket. The round buried itself in the ceiling, and the report, muffled by the material of his jacket, might have been mistaken for the popping of a champagne cork. Épaulard pistol-whipped the American, felling him instantly. Simultaneously, Buenaventura had fired his own 7.65, whose barrel was now pointed at the barman.

  “Don’t try ducking behind the bar,” said the Catalan. “Turn around, place your hands against the bottles, fists clenched. Do not move your fingers.”

  The barman obeyed. Madame Gabrielle stood completely still.

  “There’s no money here,” she said.

  “You are a liar, my dear little lady,” Épaulard told her, backing briskly towards the bar entrance, and when the hostess rushed in, attracted by the ruckus, he delivered an uppercut to her jaw, and the girl fell to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

  Two and a half minutes had passed.

  Épaulard continued to back up, exited the bar, reached for the drapes and tore them down, then came back in. He ripped the material into strips. The dark-skinned girl, Agent Ricardo, and the barman (already laid low by a karate chop to the nape of the neck) were swiftly bound and gagged. Épaulard turned to the madam.

  Three and a half minutes.

  “How many people are in your palace at this moment?”

  The madam made no reply. Épaulard grabbed the knife the barman used to slice lemons and went up to her.

  “I’m in a hurry. Answer me, or I’ll widen your mouth with this.”

  “Three clients and three girls,” the madam replied quickly. “It’s still very early,” she explained.

  “Are you expecting anyone else?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  The madam eyed the knife.

  “They’ll be here soon. You’d do better to give up, son.”

  “What room is Ambassador Poindexter in?”

  “You came for him? Are you leftists?”

  “Shut up! What room?”

  “The Blue Room,” she sighed.

  “And where is it, this Blue Room?”

  Four minutes.

  “Upstairs. Second door on the right.”

  “Okay,” said Épaulard, picking up what was left of the drapes.

  “You won’t get away with this,” said the madam. “I have protection. Nobody can do this to me and get away with it. You would do better . . . Oh! Please don’t gag me. I’m very nervous and I’m afraid of not being able to breathe.”

  “Shut up!”

  Épaulard tied the woman up, twisting pieces of fabric around her head and knotting them. She groaned un­intelligibly.

  Five minutes.

  Meyer rang the doorbell of the house of assignation. In the Triumph Dolomite, Agent Bunker leant forward.

  “Another young guy in tennis shoes,” he observed in an urgent tone of voice. “We’d better go and take a look-see. This stinks.”

  “Oh hell!” swore Agent Lewis distractedly as he started the car.

  Up the street, the brothel’s front door opened, and Meyer went inside to be greeted by Épaulard.

  “You come upstairs with me,” said the fifty-year-old. “Buen will stay in the bar to keep an eye.”

  Directly across the street from the brothel, upstairs at No. 2, a pale-faced felon named Bouboune, a supernumerary of an internal faction within the SDECE,* was bored to tears with his Sankyo movie camera and his liter of VDQS Corbières. All the same, he noted with interest that the American Ambassador’s Triumph had pulled out and was slowly edging up to the front of Club Zero.

  Upstairs inside the bordello, through the second door on the right, Épaulard and Meyer, weapons in hand, silently entered the Blue Room. Ambassador Poindexter was very surprised. He had not yet gone into action. Sitting in an armchair fully dressed, flushed, with a brandy in his hand, he was contemplating his favorite call girl, who was almost completely naked, as she slowly removed her stockings. She was a magnificent milky blonde with hollow cheeks and a broadly contemptuous expression. She stifled a little cry and remained calm, her eyebrows raised. Meyer aimed his automatic at Poindexter.

  “Nobody move,” ordered Épaulard in a low voice.

  He stood behind the girl.

  “Don’t worry. We are not gangsters or sadists,” he murmured. “Just relax. I’m going to knock you out, but it will leave no marks.”

  Philosophically, the girl relaxed. Épaulard delivered a swift chop to her neck and caught her as she toppled, touching a firm breast with a tinge of pleasure. He laid her down on the bed, tied her up with her clothing, stuffing one stocking in her mouth and slipping the other over her head.

  “Have a heart,” said Poindexter.

  “Can it! We won’t hurt you so long as you do what we say. Do you understand French?”

  “Yes, yes, of course.”

  The ambassador was quaking.

  “Have a heart,” he repeated. “I have a wife.”

  “Shut up! On your feet! Meyer, you go out ahead of him. Follow him, you. Come on, get going. Obey and everything will be fine. If you don’t, I’ll kill you. Get it?”

  “Yes. Have a heart.”

  “Shut up! Go! Faster!”

  Eight minutes.

  The group reached the ground floor. The front doorbell rang. Épaulard shoved Poindexter into the bar.

  “Watch him, Meyer. Rip out the telephone wires. I’m going to open the door. You stay where you are, Buen.”

  With his automatic in his right hand behind his back, Épaulard went and half opened the front door. Agent Bunker was standing outside. He looked Épaulard up and down.

  “Yes, Monsieur?” asked the fifty-year-old.

  “Would you mind telling Madame Gabrielle that the American has an extremely important message,” said Agent Bunker with a strong American accent.

  “With pleasure,” answered Épaulard. Over the agent’s shoulder he could see the Triumph double-parked, its motor running, and a man at the wheel. “Kindly step inside. You will have to wait for a moment in the bar.”

  Eight minutes and forty seconds.

  D’Arcy was completing his second loop a little early. He pulled up again on the pedestrian crosswalk at the corner of Avenue Kléber. From there he could see the bordello’s front door, open, and the man at the top of the steps. He frowned.

  “No thank you,” said Bunker, taking a step back.

  Taking a chance that his gun might go off, Épaulard jabbed the barrel savagely into the agent’s solar plexus. The man gave a horrid sigh and fell backwards. Épaulard tried to grab him by the lapels and pull him inside as though nothing had happened, but he did not have time and caught hold of only the man’
s striped tie. Bunker continued nevertheless to tumble and hung for a moment at the end of his tie, then Épaulard let go and he landed on his back on the sidewalk and lost his hat.

  D’Arcy urged the Consul station wagon forward.

  The felon Bouboune snatched up his movie camera.

  “Come out here! Come out here! Bring him out here!” yelled Épaulard to his companions, for he could see the Consul approaching. At that moment Agent Lewis got out of the Triumph on the roadway side and took aim at the former Resistance fighter with an S&W Bodyguard Airweight. Épaulard opened fire instantly. The Triumph’s windshield shattered. Agent Lewis dropped flat onto the street. D’Arcy, instead of stopping, stepped on the gas and ran him over.

  “When it comes to discretion, we suck,” he observed as he brought the Consul to a halt.

  The felon Bouboune had his camera working and was filming the street excitedly.

  At the sound of the gunshot, windows overlooking the street opened, two or three of them. And with a great roaring of engines two motorcycle cops burst out from a porte-cochère at the far end of the street and raced down towards the brothel, from which Meyer, Buenaventura and Épaulard were just emerging, dragging with them an ambassador rigid with fear.

  “Get the hell out of here!” yelled Épaulard to D’Arcy, for he had decided to give himself up while there was still time, while there were still (he hoped) no fatalities.

  “Fuck your mother!” retorted D’Arcy, getting out of the Consul and opening fire on the motorcycle cops.

  His first shot went high. The second shattered the shoulder of the leading cop, who crashed noisily to the ground along with his machine. After that D’Arcy’s pistol jammed.

  “Oh well, so be it,” said Épaulard, taking aim with his own weapon.

  “So be it, fire!” added Buenaventura, who was given to quotation, and both men fired at the second cop, who sailed, twirling, from his bike.

  At his window the felon Bouboune was filming ever more gleefully.

  The second cop’s bike bounced back and forth from one side of the street to the other, sideswiping parked cars, until it fell onto its side.

  Nine and a half minutes.

  The cop with the shattered shoulder was twisting and turning in the middle of the street. The other one lay unconscious on the hood of a Peugeot 404. The one on the ground drew his gun. Meyer and Épaulard were unceremoniously loading the ambassador into the back of the Consul. Standing beside the car, which Buenaventura was darting around on his way to the passenger seat, D’Arcy noticed the contortions of the wounded cop, who seemed set on popping one off. Pocketing his jammed gun, the alcoholic produced a Manufrance catapult with an aluminum frame from his jacket, loaded it with a steel ball bearing and stretched back the rubber sling. It’s impossible, thought the motorcycle cop, this guy is aiming at me with a slingshot. Then he heard the rubber violently released and the ball bearing struck the center of his helmet, perforated the helmet, and perforated his skull. The startled motorcycle cop fell flat on his face, dead.

  D’Arcy got back into the Consul. Everyone was now in.

  “Have a heart! Have a heart!” the ambassador continued to groan. This irritated the kidnappers, but not overmuch.

  D’Arcy reversed as fast as he could. Agent Lewis, half-dead under the station wagon, gave a pitiful scream as the front tires ran over him a second time. The car reached the corner and then, shifting into forward gear, swerved off down Avenue Kléber and headed for Place de l’Étoile at a high rate of speed.

  “I’m a murderer,” said D’Arcy.

  “Settle down,” said Épaulard. “You ran down an American agent and knocked out a cop. That’s all.”

  “I killed that cop.”

  “With a slingshot?”

  “I killed him,” D’Arcy repeated calmly. “I want to drink myself to oblivion.”

  “No time for that,” said Buenaventura.

  At a quarter to ten, the Consul entered the Champs-Élysées parking garage. Cars were changed on the third level down. Bound and gagged, with a bag over his head, Ambassador Poindexter was placed in the green Jaguar’s trunk. Meanwhile Épaulard carefully wiped down the steering wheel and controls of the Consul along with its door handles. He then joined the others in the Jag, which left the parking garage through the Avenue George V exit. Taking the Right Bank Expressway, the vehicle reached the ring road not many minutes after ten. It left the city via Porte de Bercy only moments before it was closed by the police, who had now been fully alerted and gone into action combing the night streets.

  Thereafter things were less unpredictable but more complicated. The suburbs were a labyrinth of streets through which Épaulard had meticulously worked out a route. Beyond Chelles, as they came out into the country, small roads proliferated. Law enforcement was hardly equipped to block them all. Soon after midnight, having taken well over two hours to cover less than sixty kilometers as the crow flies (but almost double that on the odometer), the green Jaguar reached the farmhouse near Couzy just as it began to snow.

  *Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage. France’s foreign intelligence agency (1944–82).

  13

  ON FRIDAY, after lunch, the minister of the interior had left for a long weekend at his château in Indre-et-Loire. At ten past ten that night, he was watching a televised debate on abortion with a measure of disgust when he received a telephone call informing him of the abduction of Richard Poindexter. His chief of staff was already summoning representatives of the national police, the army, the gendarmerie, and the police intelligence service (RG) to the ministry on Place Beauvau. He had given the order for the blocking of city streets and highways in accordance with the plan drawn up for dealing with such eventualities. The prime minister, the Élysée Palace, and Foreign Affairs had been alerted. The minister of the interior said that this was all good and called for a helicopter. On the grounds of his château he had the appropriate guidance lights turned on, and it was not long before an SA316 descended from the heavens. At eleven thirty that night the minister was in his ministry, having been apprised in the interim by radio of all developments, of which as of now there were precious few.

  At this same time, Marcel Treuffais, very much on edge, had listened to the eleven o’clock news, which made no mention of a kidnapping, and was smoking his last Gauloise before going out to buy more. He went on foot to the Convention intersection, where he found an open tabac and bought four packs of cigarettes. As he left the shop, two motorcycle cops went through heading west at full throttle. Treuffais got butterflies in his stomach, then became aware by watching the cops that a barrier had been set up a few hundred meters away where Rue de la Convention met Rue Lecourbe. Turning, he saw that there was another one on Rue de Vaugirard about half a kilometer to the north. His throat tightened, his heart beat faster, and he hurried to get home. Once again he turned on his old Radialva, just in time to hear a communiqué from the Ministry of the Interior that interrupted Pop Club: “This evening in Paris, as he was leaving a club where he had dined, Richard Poindexter, the U.S. Ambassador to France, was attacked and abducted by an unknown armed group who fired on the ambassador’s entourage.” The ambassador’s chauffeur had been gravely injured, as had a French police officer, and another police officer had been killed. The government was determined to shine the brightest light on this repellent act and to find its perpetrators in short order so that they might be punished in an exemplary manner and to the full extent of the law. Investigators’ initial inquiries made it possible to say that this attack was the work of individuals who, whether by virtue of insanity or of calculation, were resolved to create disorder at any cost. They should expect no weakness on the part of the State, nor the slightest clemency unless they immediately abandoned their evil scheme, which could inspire nothing but the condemnation and contempt of the French people.

  A reporter calling in directly from Place Beauvau added news concerning the sealing off of the capital and the imminent
dispatch of an envoy by the U.S. government. Treuffais smoked cigarette after cigarette. He tried other stations, all broadcasting classical or popular music, before going back to France Inter, where Gato Barbieri was playing, to be followed by an interview with an explorer about a book he had just written. At midnight the ministerial communiqué was re-aired along with some details about the comings and goings of various officials, but there was nothing concerning the actual commando group itself. On Europe 1 and RTL likewise, the same filler. After listening to the news, Treuffais told himself that all this was no reason to change his habits. He tuned in to the shortwave, found Voice of America, and right away heard the beautiful warm tones of Willis Conover. The jazz hour was to be devoted to Don Cherry. Treuffais decided to sit back comfortably, open a beer and enjoy the music.

  In the farmhouse near Couzy, Buenaventura was listening to the same music with a more distracted ear. Poindexter had been forced to take two Nembutal pills and sixty drops of Nozinan. The man was knocked out. He had been laid down in an upstairs room with two beds. Meyer was on guard alongside him with a piece. Buenaventura was down in the common area with D’Arcy, who was demolishing the bottle of Scotch. Both men were eating big cheese sandwiches.

  Épaulard and Cash had set off in the girl’s Dauphine and were driving towards Paris on Route Nationale 14. They saw a checkpoint with spike strips and all the paraphernalia on the road out of Lagny, but only vehicles coming out of Paris were being stopped. They drove on and came to another barrier at Porte de Vincennes, this one more substantial: a gray police bus and half a dozen cops who were freezing their asses off, for it was getting colder and colder, there was a biting wind, snow was swirling, and traffic was at a crawl.

  “We were lucky earlier,” said Épaulard, “to get back when we did.”

  Cash was driving and made no reply.

  “Aren’t you afraid, now that the deed is done?”

  “I couldn’t give a shit.”

  “You’re a wild thing,” said Épaulard, trying for levity.

  “If that’s all you can say, you might as well keep quiet.”