“What type of agent?”
The monster who was after Matilde was loose in Paris with a battery of chemical weapons as impressive as those created by any army. Who was Udo Jürkens? Was that his real name? Blahetter had suggested it was a false name. Unfortunately, Al-Saud hadn’t had time to ask for a physical description; when he got back to the Georges Pompidou the next day, Blahetter was already dying. But he didn’t really need it; it was clear to him that the man who had broken into the apartment on Rue Toullier and the man who had tortured Blahetter were one and the same. And that man, he was sure, had tried to kidnap him when he was a teenager.
After the kidnapping attempt in 1981, the police hadn’t been able to establish the identity of the man who had led the operation. They only had a suspicion: that he belonged to the Red Army Faction terrorist organization. The suspicion was based on Eliah’s own statement: the kidnapper had insulted him in German. In the seventies, one of the chief targets of organizations such as the Red Army Faction and the Palestinian Black September group was Israel. Who better than Mossad to supply him with the true identity of this monster?
“They still haven’t determined what kind of gas it was,” Dussollier admitted. “They’ll have to analyze its individual components to find out. What I’m trying to tell you is that this time it will be impossible to stop the information leaking to the press. The thing with the Argentinean, Roy Blahetter,” he went on, “will end up coming to light as well, and journalists will connect the two cases. There were only a few days between one event and the next, not to mention the fact that they happened within a radius of a few miles.”
“What do you think, Olivier? Are they related?”
“I would guess that they were. Now we have to establish if there is a link with the attack on the young lady in the chapel today. As she’s Blahetter’s widow, this looks worse all the time.”
“I understand that Miss Martínez testified last week that she didn’t know anything about Blahetter’s businesses. In fact, they were separated.”
“Yes, that’s right. She swore that she didn’t know anything. And yet someone tried to kidnap her today, less than fifteen days after the demise of her husband. It’s too much of a coincidence. Basically, we’ll have to keep investigating. If the nurse from the Georges Pompidou had seen Blahetter’s attacker better and been able to provide us with better information to draw up the Identi-Kit, maybe we could compare that with the one we’ll make now from the testimonies of the witnesses at the chapel. But the truth is, the nurse didn’t see a damn thing. Experts are already at the Médaille Miraculeuse chapel trying to get prints.
“He was probably wearing gloves.”
“I think so too. He’s definitely a professional.”
The wait was going to destroy her nerves. Yasmín jumped out of her seat when the doctor came into the waiting room and asked for the relatives of Sándor Huseinovic. Eliah, Leila and Diana rushed over to him, and she shuffled into the second row, a little intimidated by the way her mother was looking at her. This was also why she bit the inside of her lip to hold in her happiness when the doctor said that Sándor was out of danger and that, in spite the severe trauma, he was breathing on his own. The electrocardiogram didn’t show any anomalies and the neurological tests didn’t reveal any brain damage caused by the lack of oxygen.
“The quick emergency help the patient received was crucial in that regard,” the doctor added, and Yasmín turned to seek out Matilde and Juana and give them a smile of appreciation.
The doctor explained that Sándor would be sedated for the rest of the day and night in the intensive care unit and then, if things were looking better, they would transfer him to a room. Yasmín would have gladly collapsed into a chair in the waiting room and spent the day and night in the Hôtel-Dieu, near Sándor. But she had to be realistic; her mother’s glances were weighing on her and so she allowed André to drive her to the house on Avenue Foch.
They left the hospital at three in the afternoon, starving and exhausted from the tension. Going to the institute was out of the question. On the other hand, Al-Saud had to find a replacement for Sándor and, in the meantime, Matilde had to stay in the safety of the house on Avenue Elisée Reclus. They climbed into the Aston Martin in silence, their spirits low. Al-Saud smiled at Leila in the rearview mirror and said, “In the end, you became Matilde’s bodyguard.”
“She saved me. She was very brave.”
“What kind of reward should we give her?” Al-Saud looked for her again in the mirror, and her bleak look made an impression on him; he didn’t recognize her. Suddenly, he had the impression that she had cast off the last childish vestige, as if her sanity had been restored in a second in the chapel.
They spent about an hour at thirty-six Quai des Orfèvres, where Matilde and Juana worked on the Identi-Kit of the attacker with a portraitist. When they got back to the house on Avenue Elisée Reclus, all Matilde could think of was taking a bath.
Al-Saud left her getting undressed in the bedroom and went back to the kitchen to talk to Leila. He found her coming up with an improvised lunch. They hugged in silence.
“Thank you for protecting her,” he whispered.
“Thank you, Eliah,” Leila pronounced, and Al-Saud squeezed his eyes shut in an effort to keep his emotions under control.
Matilde, sitting on the edge of the Jacuzzi, stared at the jet of water. She started when Eliah put his hand on her shoulder. She stood up quickly and pressed herself to his body, looking for shelter. She was still having trouble understanding what had happened. Since her arrival in Paris, it seemed as though a tornado had been unleashed bearing winds of evil as well as love, as if some of the gods were enraged with her while others showered blessings upon her. Both currents were powerful, and the effects turned out to be devastating.
“I’m scared,” she confessed to Al-Saud, though she had promised herself that she wouldn’t.
“I know. Being attacked twice in such a short period isn’t easy to take in.”
“And Roy’s murder, and the break-in at my aunt’s apartment, the attack at the George V…what’s going on, Eliah? If I were superstitious, I would think that someone had put a curse on me.” She suddenly looked up, as if she had just remembered something important. “Do you have to go back to the office?”
Yes, it was urgent that he go back, but he couldn’t abandon her at that moment.
“I’m going to call Thérèse to cancel some commitments I have this afternoon and we’ll take a bath together. How does that sound?”
Matilde urged herself to refuse; she hated to be a burden.
“I love the idea,” she admitted finally, incapable of doing without him in her desperate state.
After the bath, they shared a lunch in the flower room with Juana and Leila. Nobody mentioned what they were all thinking about. Juana and Al-Saud tried to joke around, without much success. In the afternoon, Matilde was rereading Rendezvous in Paris in bed when Al-Saud came into the bedroom with something in his hand; it looked like a photograph.
“I don’t want to talk about what happened today,” he said. “I don’t want you to remember, but it’s important that I ask you a question. It’s important.”
“Ask me anything.”
Al-Saud handed her the photograph.
“Is this the man who attacked you?”
The photo trembled in Matilde’s hands. Though it was low quality and had a greenish tone, the man’s face was unmistakable at first glance.
“Yes, that’s him. Where did you get this from?”
“From the security cameras at the Hospital Georges Pompidou,” he lied, because, really, it was an image from the recording in the apartment on Rue Toullier. Alamán had enlarged the face of the robber so that it was impossible to see his surroundings; Matilde had no way of knowing that it was her aunt Enriqueta’s house.
“How did you know that this was the man who attacked me today in the chapel?”
“I didn’t know. I wanted to e
liminate the possibility.”
Matilde studied the photograph again.
“This photo was taken in the hospital where Roy was staying?” Al-Saud nodded. “Then, is there a link between his death and today’s attack?”
“I think so. Blahetter was the one who got you into this mess by giving you the key and putting who knows what behind the painting. The assault outside the institute, Blahetter’s death and today’s attack are all related, I think.” He didn’t add the attack at the George V to the list, because he still hadn’t found any logical connection.
Matilde dropped the photograph, got on her knees on the bed and threw her arms around Al-Saud’s neck.
“I don’t know anything, Eliah! He never talked to me about anything! I have no idea what they want! I don’t know what was behind the painting!”
“I know, I know.”
“I’m scared,” she sobbed. “I don’t know what’s going on and I’m very scared.”
“If I hold you like this,” Al-Saud whispered to her, stretching his arms around her back, “are you still scared?”
“No,” Matilde whimpered, “I’m not scared like this.”
Udo Jürkens didn’t dare to go back to the house on Île Saint-Louis. His failure in the kidnapping attempt was deplorable and he was ashamed to present himself to his boss looking like this, with cuts on his arms and legs, a bullet under his ass and without Al-Saud’s woman. It hadn’t been easy to get to her when she traveled with a swarm of guards surrounding her. He had followed her to the chapel with the intention of observing her, studying her movements, learning what she was like, but when he saw her heading toward the tabernacle unprotected, temptation won over his better judgment. Who would have imagined that the girl with the stupid face would be so determined?
He had to do something about this bullet; the wound was bleeding a lot. He was starting to grow weak. He didn’t dare to leave the seedy hotel where he was hiding because at midnight the major news bulletins had shown his Identi-Kit. The concierge wasn’t a threat, as he had tossed a bunch of francs his way. However, his adventures in Paris were over. Professor Moses would be furious. This thought seemed to worsen the pain in his leg and he bit his lip to prevent a groan from slipping out. He threw his coat on and put the up the hood. He concealed his limp as he crossed the lobby of the seedy hotel and went out onto Rue Paradís. He looked for a phone to get in touch with Fauzi Dahlan, the only friend he had left. They had been through a lot together, having made up part of the terrorist organization led by Abu Nidal. It had been Fauzi who had thrown him into the car and driven him to Professor Gérard Moses’s house while his neck spurted blood from the shot through the nape of his neck, the bullet exiting through his throat. “I’m sure that Professor Orville Wright,” Fauzi had said in a quavering voice, as he drove like a madman, “will know what to do.” He’d known what to do. Moses’s contacts in the highest spheres of the Iraqi government had agreed to lend him the sayid rais’s surgeon to treat Jürkens and save his life, and months later, he had given him the costly device, of his own design, and arranged for the operation that had returned his speech. Jürkens owed him everything, and he had failed him.
He went into a bar on Rue Paradís on the corner of Hauteville. He knew that he was leaving a trail of tiny drops of blood that the fabric of his pants could no longer absorb. He leaned against the bar; he felt weak and his vision was clouding over. He asked for the phone. The bartender looked at him, disconcerted, but Jürkens was used to his voice having that effect. He charged him a fortune up front, enough to call China ten times. What time was it in Iraq? He checked the bar clock: twelve thirty-five. Two thirty-five in Baghdad, he calculated.
“Fauzi, it’s Ulrich.” Udo used his real name, Ulrich Wendorff. “I’m in a tight spot, friend. Help me,” he begged in Arabic.
“What happened? Where are you?”
“In Paris. I need a doctor, a discreet one, as you can imagine. And I need him urgently.”
“Give me a few minutes. Where can I call you?”
Jürkens found the number of the bar written on the back of the phone and read it out to him. He ordered a beer and drank it slowly to help pass the time. When the phone rang, he hurried to grab the receiver before the bartender picked it up. He shot him a frightening look.
“C’est pour moi.” He answered the call, and, in a different tone, asked, “Fauzi?”
“It’s me. Do you have something to write with? Dr. Salim bin Qater is waiting for you at his house. It’s number twenty-three Rue de Meaux, on the third floor, apartment fifteen.”
“Rue de Meaux,” Jürkens repeated, ignoring the tremor in his hand as he wrote. “Shukran, sadik.” He said, “Thanks, friend,” and hung up, not wanting to prolong the communication and risk global wiretaps recording a word that might catch their attention.
Gérard Moses pointed the remote control at the television and turned it off. He stared fixedly at the black screen. The Identi-Kit that had been splashed across the news all evening had a surprising similarity to Udo. He stood up and hurled the remote, which ricocheted off a wall and fell to the floor. He shouldn’t get worked up or his heart rate would shoot up and he would get an attack. He walked through the empty, dark, cold and silent house. In the kitchen, he rummaged in the cupboards looking for something to eat; he hadn’t eaten for three hours. He found some dry biscuits that tasted of dust and a small tin of pâté de foie, which he washed down with a cup of coffee. It didn’t take him more than fifteen minutes to eat this meager meal.
He needed to sleep. It was four in the morning, and Udo hadn’t shown up. In the morning he would travel to Hamburg to acquire some special parts for the prototype of the centrifuge. This mess would complicate things. Damn the moment I sent him after that bitch!
The service door opened, and Udo Jürkens limped in. He stopped dead when he saw Moses sitting at the kitchen table.
“The Identi-Kit I just saw on television isn’t very flattering.”
“Boss…”
“What the hell happened?” Moses exploded and jumped to his feet, which made him dizzy.
“Boss! Do you feel all right?”
“Of course not! Your Identi-Kit—very lifelike, I have to admit—has appeared on every television channel since this afternoon. It’s four in the morning and they’re still showing it on the cable channels.”
“I know. I saw it. Let me explain.”
“Oh, you’ll be doing that, believe me. But now it’s urgent for you to leave the city. All the highways are probably being watched, as are the train stations and airports. We’ll have to change the way you look.” He remembered Anuar Al-Muzara’s suggestion that he get Jürkens to have plastic surgery. “Later, we’ll send Antoine out for a box of hair dye. You’ll put cotton between your gums and your cheeks to make them bulkier. And you’ll wear glasses as though you’re shortsighted. There’s nothing else we can do right now. The best thing would be for you to take a train and meet up with Al-Muzara at the coordinates he sent you.”
“I’m not in a fit state to do that now, boss. I was shot in the leg. I’ll need a few days to recover.”
“Fine, but you won’t do that here. You’ll have to leave. I think Herstal would be best.”
“Did you decipher Al-Muzara’s instructions?”
“Yes, La Valeta again.”
“What’s going to happen with Al-Saud’s woman?”
The expression “Al-Saud’s woman” grated in Moses’s ears, and worsened his bad mood.
“Al-Saud’s whore, you mean! Thanks to your incompetence, we’ll have to leave that matter for now. The truth is that we have more important matters at hand. We’ll take care of her, don’t worry about that.”
At eight in the morning, Yasmín asked at the reception of the Hôtel-Dieu hospital where she could find the patient Sándor Huseinovic. She waited on tenterhooks, because she was afraid they would say he was still in the intensive care unit.
“Room one thirty-four, miss,” the employee
informed her, and showed her how to get there.
She walked quickly, coming up with explanations for her visit as she went, giving some to herself, rehearsing others for Sándor. She spun on her heels and retraced her footsteps, heading toward the exit. This is insane, she reproached herself. What was she looking for? She stopped, did a U-turn and went back. She wanted to see him, she was sure of that. She wanted to make sure that he was all right. She hesitated in front of the door. She didn’t dare to face him. She was afraid that he would treat her as coldly as he had the day before. She knocked on the door. She repeated the quiet knock a little harder. Then she poked her head in. From there she could only see the foot of the bed. She went in.
Her pulse started racing, and a feeling of tenderness filled her eyes with tears when she saw him sleeping, half upright in the orthopedic bed, covered in blankets to the waist and with his torso wrapped with a white bandage to support his broken ribs. She tiptoed over to him, because the heels of her Louboutins sounded like gunshots in the silent room. As the heating in the room was set very high, she took off her coat. This reassured her—it was cold outside, and Sándor was half-naked. Standing without moving at the head of the bed, she looked down at him, almost in fear. Her jugular was throbbing almost painfully in her throat. What would it have been like if Sándor had died? She clenched her hands into fists, trying to repress her anxiety. She inhaled deeply and let the air out of her mouth. Calmer, she studied his physiognomy; he had guarded her for months, but she hadn’t often allowed herself to observe him.
Unlike his sisters, Sándor had dark skin and dark-brown hair that wasn’t as black as hers. Her friends said that the Bosnian’s features were crude and revealed his Slavic origins. Still, they were always staring and flirting with him, which he had responded to with sensual smiles and the manners of an English lord, even though he knew that his behavior drove her crazy. It was the first time that she had seen his hairy arms and chest. His left shoulder was swollen and bruised, but she could see the shape of his well-defined muscles under the skin, even in repose. She was overcome by an urge to tangle her fingers in the mat of hair peeking out from under the bandage. She stretched her arm out as she debated whether to leave or give in to the impulse. She was accustomed to the latter. Eliah said that their father had spoiled her until she became a brattish, selfish person who hurt people without compassion. Maybe he was right. She had hurt Sándor by treating him indifferently and sometimes disdainfully, and making herself a difficult person to protect. How she regretted it! What if Sándor had died? She continued to torment herself.