The Prone Gunman (11 page)

“You're no chatterbox,” he observed. “Hurry up—I've got the shakes, my friend.”

As Terrier was starting down the cellar stairs, Stanley swore with surprise, and then the mine exploded. It was a powerful mine. The weekend house was fragile. The whole interior was blown up and all the windows shattered. The bearing walls and the roof then began to collapse piece by piece, just as matter collapses, or so they say, in the hearts of distant stars.

The shock had flung Terrier to the bottom of the cellar stairs—he landed flat on his hands and knees on the irregular ground strewn with coal dust. Grains of coal were embedded in his palms. An avalanche of debris came tumbling after him down the stairs. Kilos of broken boards and pieces of brick struck Terrier's back and head. Terrier got right back up. With debris falling all around him, he energetically climbed up the steps, slipping in the rubble and the fragments of laths, in the midst of a thick cloud of smoke and diverse particulate matter. His lips moved and uttered a sort of low squeak. He rapidly traversed what remained of the dining room. Around him, sections of the roof and walls solemnly collapsed and struck the ground with dull thuds and rebounded. Terrier stepped over the twisted, useless Valmet, almost trod on Stanley's red-and-white thoracic cage, and left the house by way of the back wall. He must have run back to the Estafette in a matter of seconds. He started the vehicle, backed up, and then set off again toward the highway.

19

Shortly after three in the morning, Martin Terrier entered Paris via the Porte d'Italie at the wheel of a stolen car, a white Peugeot 504. He had gotten rid of Maubert's body by leaving it under a truck parked on a street in Fresnes. Before doing so, he had gone through Maubert's pockets because he needed a little money. As for the various cards decorated with the French flag—they bore Maubert's photo and the name François Guénaud, along with the information that he belonged to the DST and other, less official services—Terrier had left them, after a moment's hesitation, in the dead man's wallet.

He had left the Estafette in Bagneux, where he had stolen the 504. He kept Maubert's .38 and the transceiver that communicated nothing. The 504 was equipped with a radio and cassette player, but the three o'clock news said nothing more than the one o'clock news, stating only that the assassination attempt against Sheik Hakim would make the headlines of all the morning papers—except for the sports paper,
L'Equipe.

Traffic was light in Paris at that hour. Terrier headed toward Montparnasse. He noticed no unusual police activity.

A bar was open in Rue du Départ. Terrier entered around three-thirty. He went to the counter and handed the bartender a scrap of paper. The bartender frowned, then read what was written in pencil on the scrap of paper. He nodded and gave Terrier a grimace of sympathy. While the man bustled about, Terrier glanced around the room, but there was nothing to see except two men in a drunken stupor, a haggard semi-professional whore, and, on the tile floor, a layer of sawdust and cigarette butts.

In Rue La Boétie, in the offices of Impex Films International, men in dark clothing waited in the darkness with their revolvers.

In Rue du Départ, the bartender set before Terrier a small draft beer and a snifter containing vodka, two ice cubes, and a few drops of lemon juice.

“Careful with the mix,” he said. “It can do you in.” And since Terrier didn't react, the bartender added: “You're not deaf, too, are you? Don't tell me you're a deaf-mute!”

Terrier shook his head.

“Just mute, huh?” said the other man, wagging his head in a wise but pathetic way. “Maybe you just don't feel like having people talk to you?”

Terrier shrugged. He picked up the beer glass, knocked it lightly against the glass of vodka next to it, and took a swallow of beer. It was rather good but too cold.

“There are nights,” said the bartender, “when I would love to be deaf myself.” He sighed. “Well, that's how it is.” And he went to sit down on a stool behind the cash register.

In Rue de Varenne, the doorbell resounded in the vast gray-and-white duplex full of ultramodern furniture and Pop, Op, and kinetic art. In the courtyard, the name “Lionel Perdrix” appeared on a framed visiting card above the doorbell.

“I don't believe it!” exclaimed Lionel Perdrix's bedmate in a tone of disgust.

On the night table, the digital clock read “3:46.” Perdrix interrupted his movements. Someone rang the doorbell again. Perdrix disengaged, got out of bed, and left the bedroom, pulling on a white terry-cloth bathrobe. He was a short, pudgy man in his forties, with incipient baldness and bloodshot eyes. He was out of breath. While he was hurrying to the door, the bell rang again.

“Okay! Okay! What is it?”

Through the peephole in the white-lacquered door, he saw Cox and other silhouettes in coats or raincoats. His face took on a worried look. He hastened to unlock the door. Cox and three other men came right in, almost knocking into him. One man closed the door. The two others climbed the short flight of stairs to the duplex.

“Is there someone with you?” asked Cox.

“Yes, but. . . . ”

“A girl?”

“Yes. Hey, what's going on? You told me it was all over. You told me that you would never use my apartment again. And, anyway, why didn't you call first?”

Cox didn't answer. He was looking toward the upstairs, whence a feminine voice cried out in protest. Perdrix started to go up, but the man who had closed the door held him by the arm.

“Look, I demand to know what's going on!”

Cox didn't answer. He pulled a Nuts bar from his pocket, tore away half the wrapping, and bit into the candy. The two scouts reappeared.

“There's a young woman in the bedroom, that's all,” one of them reported.

Cox went up the stairs, and Perdrix followed, grumbling that it was all crazy, with the last guy still holding him by the arm; in the other hand the guy carried a case. Once they were upstairs, he released Perdrix's arm, put the case on the painted floor, and opened it: it contained three Ingram M11 machine pistols with silencers and night-vision sights. Perdrix's teeth began chattering. He was looking at the weapons. He automatically brought one hand to his jaw to arrest the trembling. “But what are you doing?” he asked in a shrill voice.

“The bathroom is the only room without windows,” said one of the scouts.

“Take the mattress from the bedroom and put it in the bathroom,” Cox ordered. He turned to Perdrix. “Stop trembling. These weapons aren't for killing you. They're for your protection. You and your girlfriend have to stay in the bathroom the rest of the night. My men will stay here to protect you.”

“I don't need protection. I'm not in danger,” protested Perdrix through chattering teeth.

“Yes, you are,” said Cox. “You know that I use your apartment for meetings. . . . ”

“I don't know anything. I don't want to know anything. Go away, I beg you.” Perdrix put his head in his hands. He may have been trying to block his ears with his palms.

“Someone dangerous is trying to find me,” Cox explained reassuringly. “He doesn't know how to find me. But he knows where you live. Now you're going to shut yourself in the bathroom with your girlfriend, and my men will protect you.”

“Who are these madmen?” shouted Perdrix's bedmate who had rushed out onto the balcony, wrapped in a sheet. (Meanwhile, the two scouts were dutifully carrying the mattress into the bathroom.)

“I'm calling the police,” Perdrix told Cox.

“No,” said Cox. “You're going to give me a radio so I can listen to the four o'clock news. And then you'll go upstairs and shut yourself in.”

“Fine,” said Perdrix. He went reluctantly toward the staircase that led to the balcony. He waved in the general direction of a hi-fi system and its tuner on the shelves of one wall. “There's the radio,” he said weakly.

He went up and shut himself in the bathroom with his girlfriend. Through the door, one could vaguely hear the girl protesting vociferously and the man responding in a spineless way. Cox's three men took their Ingram M11s and posted themselves at the windows. Cox turned on the radio.

“I'll listen to the news, then I'll go,” he announced. “If he shows up here, don't miss.”

He waited for four o'clock, finishing his Nuts bar.

In Rue du Départ, Martin clinked glasses once more with the untouched glass of vodka, then he downed his beer, collected his change, and left. After a minute or two, the bartender picked up the glass of vodka, shrugged, and drank it. Then he summarily washed the beer glass and the snifter. Meanwhile, Terrier had reached the 504. He turned on the radio and listened to the four o'clock news. The police had now identified the author of the failed assassination attempt against Sheik Hakim: he was a person known in international terrorist circles, one Martin Terrier, alias “Monsieur Christian.” This killer, of French nationality, but in possession of several foreign passports, had been trained by the KGB in its special school in Odessa, then in the Palestinian camps and by the Cuban DGI. He had left his tracks in Africa, Italy, and South America. Many assassinations could be attributed to him, notably the killing of Luigi Rossi, an arms dealer identified as a “traitor” by the Red Brigades and, most recently, the execution in England of Marshall Dubofsky, likewise denounced by the Provisional IRA. Interviewed by telephone, Principal Commissioner Poilphard had declared: “He's big game, very big game.”

Seated in the darkness of the 504, Martin Terrier listened attentively to this news. His haggard face at first registered great perplexity; then it registered worry, thoughtfulness, or whatever other movements of consciousness that might cause his face to look as it did. Once the news was over, the man started his engine.

20

Rue de Varenne is quiet at four o'clock in the morning, especially in cold weather, and right then the temperature was no more than one or two degrees above freezing. The porte cocheres of the large town houses were shut. The security guards and doormen to be seen there during the day, in the entrances to ministerial buildings and government offices, had disappeared. The odd car or two sped by at rare intervals.

Cox left furtively and quickly at five after four in a black Citroën SM driven by a Eurasian man.

Martin Terrier appeared a quarter of an hour later, hands in pockets, coming around the corner from a side street about two hundred meters from Lionel Perdrix's place. He walked quickly, a little hunched over and with his collar turned up. All kinds of private cars were parked along the sidewalk: they were empty. Near Lionel Perdrix's home was a Volkswagen minibus; curtains hung in its back windows. Terrier came to the entrance of a building about a hundred meters farther down, on the other side of the street. He buzzed the door open, went inside, switched on the timer lights, went into the hall, turned, went through a self-closing door, and started up a staircase with wine-colored carpeting. He climbed up to the top floor and went down a corridor with a sloping ceiling and a row of flimsy doors along one side. His face was haggard. When he arrived at the last door, he took out his Swiss Army knife and silently jimmied the cheap lock. He went in, turned on the lights, and punched the jaw of the young girl in pajamas who had sat bolt upright in her bed and was opening her eyes to see and her mouth to scream. She instantly fell back on her pillow—blonde, short, plump, and knocked unconscious. Terrier closed the door.

The man crossed the small room in two steps and looked out a mansard window with cretonne curtains. He had a view of Rue de Varenne and, notably, of Perdrix's building. With a contented expression, he went back toward the unconscious girl and rummaged through the three drawers of a white wooden chest. He used two pairs of woolen pajama bottoms to tie up the little blonde and a stocking and a third pair of pajama bottoms to gag and blindfold her.

He straightened up and looked around the place. The furniture was very basic: a table, a chair, a hot plate, a sink. On the floor were a record player and a few pop music records. On the wall was a movie poster of Jane Fonda in
Barbarella.
Postcards from distant lands were tacked up around a circular mirror. The clothes in the chest of drawers and the small wardrobe were cheap. Near the bed, the alarm clock was set for seven-fifteen. Terrier picked up the unconscious girl and deposited her on the floor. He took off his shoes and his sheepskin jacket, turned off the lights, and slipped into the warm bed. He quickly fell asleep.

When the alarm went off, the man immediately got up. The girl on the floor wriggled and groaned. She went quiet and rigid when she heard him moving around in the room. Terrier went straight to the mansard window. Aside from the numerous vehicles using Rue de Varenne, nothing was happening in front of Perdrix's building. The minibus was still in the same place. Terrier heated water in a pot. He went and got the Lyman scope from the inside pocket of his jacket and, while the water was heating, watched more carefully.

On the floor, the dumpy blonde began wriggling and groaning again. Terrier looked at her with annoyance. He rummaged through the table drawer and found a nylon-tipped marker and a piece of paper. A short while later, the girl felt someone pulling her up by the hair. The blindfold was removed, and the knee of her aggressor rested against her back. She saw a hand holding up a piece of paper with a hastily written inscription in capital letters: “NO HARM WILL COME TO YOU. BE QUIET. YOU WILL NOT BE ROBBED OR RAPED OR KILLED OR ANYTHING. PLEASE BE NICE AND PATIENT.” Then the blindfold was put back and tightened, and Terrier laid the blonde down and hurried off to the hot plate, because the water was about to boil. He made himself three cups of instant coffee and drank them with jam and bread. He ate and drank standing up, listening to the little radio turned down low and watching Lionel Perdrix's building. News bulletins were frequent at this time of day. That morning there was much talk of the assassination attempt on Sheik Hakim and of an airplane crash and the accidental death of a popular singer. About Martin Terrier, aka Monsieur Christian, there was the same biographical information that had been broadcast at four o'clock in the morning.

“Close collaboration between French and American intelligence services has led to the quick identification of the terrorist,” said the newscaster. He then went on to say that the Soviet Union was seeking to stir up tension in the Persian Gulf, even though one might wonder whether such a policy was in the best interests of the Russians.

Terrier listened and watched.

About eight o'clock, Cox's surveillance team was relieved: six men arrived in two sedans; four of the men went into Lionel Perdrix's building; the other two got into the minibus. Four men left the building and two left the minibus; the night team drove off in the two sedans.

A little after nine o'clock, the dumpy blonde began squirming and groaning again on the floor. Terrier gave her a carefully judged kick in the side, after which she kept still. Half an hour later, Terrier heard her crying indistinctly through the gag, and he noticed that she had urinated. She stopped crying a few minutes later. As if the prisoner had given him an idea, the killer pissed in the sink, then he smoked a Winston from a packet he had found on the table. He continued to watch. Silence had returned to the hallway; between seven-thirty and nine there had been noise, slamming doors, hurrying footsteps.

A black SM arrived in Rue de Varenne and pulled up in front of the porte cochere of Lionel Perdrix's building. The driver got out, leaving the engine running: the exhaust pipe released vapor into the cold air. The man was the Eurasian who had driven Cox the night before and Terrier and Anne another day. Terrier's muscles tensed. The Eurasian knocked on the rear door of the minibus. It half opened. There was talk. Terrier slipped on his jacket. He left the room and hurried to the staircase. On the floor of the cold little room, blondie was again vainly twisting and turning about; she was reflected in the round mirror, between the postcards from distant lands. Lionel Perdrix and his girlfriend appeared on the sidewalk along Rue de Varenne. Both seemed to be in a foul mood; they were flanked by two of Cox's men. The Eurasian signaled to them. The couple got into the SM. The Eurasian took the wheel.

“Where to?”

“To the Maison de la Radio.”

“Hey!” said the girl.

“We'll drop the young lady at the first taxi stand,” Perdrix said to the Eurasian as he was pulling out. The male passenger turned to the female passenger. “Listen, I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm late, thanks to their foolishness.” He looked anxiously at his watch. “Don't you realize that we're on the air in twenty minutes? Do you have money for a taxi?”

“Yes,” the girl said furiously. “That's fine.”

The occupants of the SM remained silent till reaching the Esplanade des Invalides, where the automobile halted and the girl got out. The Eurasian headed west, along the Seine.

“How long is this charade going to continue?” Perdrix asked him.

“What charade?”

“Putting guards in my house and spending an hour arguing about whether to let me go to work and having me driven around and . . . and. . . . ” Perdrix took a deep breath as he tried to find his words. “How long is this going to continue?” he repeated.

“I don't know anything about anything,” said the Eurasian. “I do what I'm told. I have no idea.”

“I'm going to be late,” said Perdrix, sounding shocked. “I work for Radio France Internationale, if you'd care to know, but that probably means nothing to you.” He sniffed with disdain.

“Oh, yes,” said the Eurasian man with a smile. “Broadcasts for niggers and chinks.”

“Shit, you're the one to talk!”

The Eurasian frowned slightly.

“If you want to be on time, I advise you not to insult me.”

Lionel Perdrix's eyes bulged and his mouth moved, but he refrained from speaking and hunched himself up, looking furious. His breathing was noisy, and he sighed ostentatiously. The SM crossed the Seine, reached the Maison de la Radio, and parked.

“I'll wait here to take you back,” said the driver. “How long will you be at it?”

“That's right, wait for me,” sniggered Perdrix, jumping from the SM and running toward the curved, labyrinthine building with his briefcase clutched beneath his arm.

The Eurasian sniggered, too, and lighted a Camel. He picked up the telephone handset that was next to him on the seat, but he didn't put it to his ear right away. A Peugeot 504 was parking some distance away. A silhouette in a sheepskin jacket got out and walked away, with his collar turned up and his hands in his pockets.

“Sammy Chen here,” said the Eurasian. “Everything's fine. Terrier's followed me, probably from Rue de Varenne. He's just parked. He's walking away on foot. I don't see him anymore.” He smiled as he spoke softly, without taking the Camel from his delicate mouth. “He's sure to go around the Maison de la Radio and come up behind me. Make sure nothing nasty happens to me. But don't rush it, either, okay?” He chuckled. “I'm hanging up now,” he said.

He hung up and waited. The rear door was still ajar; Lionel Perdrix hadn't bothered to slam it. Terrier slipped quickly into the SM and immediately put the barrel of the .38 against Sammy Chen's cerebellum. The Eurasian put both hands high on the steering wheel.

“I'm not making a move.”

Terrier thrust a piece of paper in front of Sammy Chen's face. The Eurasian read it and seemed to be thinking.

“I don't know anything,” he said. “I'm just a gofer. They don't tell me about that kind of stuff.”

Terrier pocketed the note. Then with his left hand he seized the auricle of the chauffeur's left ear between his thumb and two fingers and tore it off. Sammy Chen howled. Terrier brought the barrel of his revolver down on Sammy Chen's skull, and the man collapsed onto the steering wheel. Blood spurted from the left side of his head. Pedestrians walked close by without paying attention to what was happening in the SM. Terrier threw the ripped-off ear on the floorboard and impatiently yanked his victim's hair. Sammy Chen moaned and thrashed about. Both back doors of the car opened at the same time. From one side a bearded man with blue eyes used both hands to point a Colt .45 automatic at Terrier's head. From the other side a black man in sunglasses hit him very hard on the biceps with a short iron bar. Terrier grunted, his arm folded, and his revolver fired in the air, making a hole the size of a large strawberry in the roof of the SM. The black man tore the .38 from Terrier and struck him on the knee with the iron bar. Terrier doubled over, grabbing his knee with both hands. The black man sat down to his left, the bearded man to his right. The bearded man jammed his big automatic in Terrier's ribs.

“Okay, let's get the hell out of here!” commanded the black man because a few passersby had stopped on hearing the gunshot and were now looking around for the source of the noise.

“Talk about luck,” said Sammy Chen, sounding irritated. He started the car. “Look on the floor and see if my ear's there—this asshole ripped it off—there may be a way of sewing it back on.”

As the SM was starting off, the black man searched around on the floorboard and came up with the bloody relic. His eyebrows appeared above the frames of his glasses.

“I must be dreaming!” he exclaimed as he examined the red auricle. “Shit!” he added respectfully.

“This guy is really violent,” said Sammy Chen with conviction.

The black man gave him his ear, and the mixed-race man wrapped it in a Kleenex and put it in his pocket as he drove. The SM was making for Neuilly. Terrier was hunched up, grimacing with pain. The black man and the bearded man searched him. They took away his Swiss Army knife and his Opinel knife—they even took his ballpoint pen. The bearded man read the piece of paper that Terrier had shown the Eurasian.

“Well, sure,” he said with a disagreeable smile. “You'll see your bitch again. We're taking you to her now.”

In Neuilly, the car pulled into the underground garage of a small building. They got out. The bearded man kept the barrel of his Colt jammed into Terrier's thorax. Terrier was limping. Sammy Chen tossed the black man the keys to the SM.

“Take the car. And tell them to fix the hole in the roof right away,” he commanded. The black man seemed about to say something unpleasant. “I can't take it there like this,” Chen explained amiably, indicating his torn-off ear and his cheek caked with drying blood.

The black man took the wheel of the SM and left the parking garage as Terrier and the other two men got into an elevator. On the top floor, the doors opened directly into a bright apartment. The furniture was Scandinavian, and the pictures were abstract.

“Go tell Cox,” said Sammy Chen.

The bearded man gave him a doubtful glance, then went through a communicating door. Sammy Chen, his hands empty, remained alone with Terrier. Terrier eyed him.

“If you even try to sneak in a punch,” said the mixed-race man, “I'll give you a
fumitsuki,
a
mae-tobi-geri,
a
hittsui-geri
in the balls, and then I'll really bust your chops and tear off both your ears. And plus . . .” (he suddenly began speaking very softly, between his teeth) “. . . and plus the situation is not what you think. I beg you to be patient.” Terrier looked at him and knit his brow. “Sit down, you stupid jerk,” Sammy Chen concluded in a loud voice.

Terrier sat down in an armchair. He clenched his fists when Anne came into the room. She was wearing a suit and a blouse that were not quite the right size; her face was drawn, and she had circles under her eyes. But otherwise she seemed in good shape. The bearded man held her by the right elbow, still holding the Colt automatic in his other hand. Then Cox, dressed in cotton trousers and a turtleneck sweater, came in, along with a stranger. The stranger was fortyish and well preserved; he was wearing a powder-blue three-piece suit. He had a strong face with a square jaw under rather short and wavy brown hair. He looked like a young senior executive.