As we finished, I noticed that two men at a nearby table were watching us, or maybe they were eyeing Maud, with her lustrous red hair.
I told her about the men, and she shrugged it off as “the way men are in Paris. Pigs.”
“Let’s see if they follow,” she said as we got up and left the restaurant. “I doubt that they will. I don’t know them. I know everybody here. Not your Wolf, though.”
“They’re leaving right behind us,” I told her.
“Good for them. It is the exit after all.”
The short rue Daru ended at rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, which Maud told me was a window-shopping experience that continued all the way to the place Vendôme. We had walked only a block when a white Lincoln limousine pulled up alongside us.
A dark-bearded man opened the rear door and looked out. “Please get in the car. Don’t make a scene,” he said in English with a Russian accent. “Get in, now. I’m not fooling around.”
“No,” said Maud. “We don’t get in your car. You come out here and talk to us. Who the hell are you? Who do you think you are?”
The bearded man pulled a gun and fired twice. I couldn’t believe what had just happened right in the middle of a Paris street.
Maud Boulard was down on the sidewalk, and I was certain she was dead. Blood seeped from a horrible, jagged wound near the center of her forehead. Her red hair was splayed in a hundred directions. Her eyes were open wide, staring up into the blue sky. In the fall, one of her shoes had been thrown off and lay out in the middle of the street.
“Get in the car, Dr. Cross. I won’t ask you again. I’m tired of being polite,” said the Russian, whose gun was pointed at my face. “Get in, or I’ll shoot you in the head, too. With pleasure.”
Chapter 79
“NOW COMES SHOW-AND-TELL time,” the black-bearded Russian man said once I was inside the limousine with him. “Isn’t that how they say it in American schools? You have two children in school, don’t you? So, I’m showing you things that are important, and I’m telling you what they mean. I told the detective to get in the car and she didn’t do it. Maud Boulard was her name, no? Maud Boulard wanted to act like the tough cop. Now she’s the dead cop, not so tough after all.”
The car sped away from the murder scene, leaving the French detective dead in the street. We changed cars a few blocks from the shooting, getting into a much less obtrusive gray Peugeot. For what it was worth, I memorized both license plates.
“Now we go for a little ride in the country,” said the Russian man, who seemed to be having a good time so far.
“Who are you? What do you want from me?” I asked him. He was tall, maybe six-five, and muscular. Very much the way I had heard the Wolf described. He was holding a Beretta pointed at the side of my head. His hand was rock steady, and he was no stranger to guns and how to use them.
“It doesn’t matter who I am, not in the least. You’re looking for the Wolf, aren’t you? I’m taking you to meet him now.”
He threw me a dark look, then handed me a cloth sack. “Put this over your head. And do exactly as I say from now on. Remember, show-and-tell.”
“I remember.” I put on the hood. I would never forget the cold-blooded murder of Detective Boulard. The Wolf and his people killed easily, didn’t they? What did that mean for the four cities under threat? Would they kill thousands and thousands so easily? Was that their plan to demonstrate power and control? To get revenge for some mysterious crime in the past?
I don’t know how long we rode around in the Peugeot, but it was well over an hour: slow city driving at first, then an hour or so on the open highway.
Then we were slowing again, possibly traveling on a dirt road. Hard bounces and bumps shocked and twisted my spine.
“You can take off the hood now,” Black Beard spoke to me again. “We’re almost there, Dr. Cross. Nothing much to see out here, anyway.”
I took off the hood and saw that we were in the French countryside somewhere, riding down an unpaved road with tall grass waving on either side. No markers or signs anywhere that I could see.
“He’s staying out here?” I asked. I wondered if I was really being taken to the Wolf. For what possible reason?
“For the moment, Dr. Cross. But then he’ll be gone again. As you know, he moves around a lot. He is like a ghost, an apparition. You’ll see what I mean in a moment.”
The Peugeot pulled up in front of a small stone farmhouse. Two armed men immediately came out the front door to meet us. Both held automatic weapons aimed at my upper body and face.
“Inside,” said one of them. He had a white beard but was nearly as large and muscular as the man who had accompanied me thus far.
It was obvious that he had seniority over Black Beard, who had seemed in control until now. “Inside!” he repeated to me. “Hurry up! Can’t you hear, Dr. Cross?”
“He is an animal,” White Beard then said to me. “He shouldn’t have killed the woman. I am the Wolf, Dr. Cross. It’s good to meet you at last.”
Chapter 80
“DON’T TRY TO do anything heroic, by the way. Because then I’ll have to kill you and find a new messenger,” he said as we walked inside the farmhouse.
“I’m a messenger now? For what?” I asked.
The Russian waved off my question as if it were a pesky fly buzzing around his hairy face.
“Time is flying. Weren’t you thinking that with the French detective? They were just keeping you out of the way, the French. Didn’t you think as much?”
“The thought crossed my mind,” I said. Meanwhile, I couldn’t believe that this was the Wolf. I didn’t believe it. But who was he? Why had I been brought there?
“Of course it did. You’re not a stupid man,” he said.
We had entered a small, dark room with a fieldstone fireplace, but no fire. The room was cluttered with heavy wooden furniture, old magazines, yellowing newspapers. The windows were tightly shuttered. The place was airless. The only light came from a single standing lamp.
“Why am I here? Why show yourself to me now?” I finally asked him.
“Sit down,” said the Russian.
“All right. I’m a messenger,” I said, and lowered myself into a chair.
He nodded. “Yes. A messenger. It’s important that everyone fully understand the seriousness of the situation. This is your last chance.”
“We understand,” I said.
Almost before I had finished speaking, he lunged forward and hit me in the jaw.
My chair went over backward, I was in free fall, then my head struck the stone floor. I might have gone out for a couple of seconds.
But then I was being dragged back up by a couple of the other men in the room. My head was spinning and there was blood in my mouth.
“I want to be clear about this,” the Russian continued. It was as if hitting me had been a necessary pause in his speech. “You are a messenger. And none of you fools understand the seriousness now. Just as no one seems to understand, really understand, that they are going to die, and what that means, until the moment it happens. . . . The stupid woman in Paris today? Do you think she understood before a speeding bullet blew open her brain? The money must be paid this time, Dr. Cross. In full. In all four cities. The prisoners must be released.”
“Why the prisoners?” I asked.
He hit me again, but this time I didn’t go down. Then he turned and left the room. “Because I say so!”
He came back a moment later, with a heavy black valise. He set it on the floor right in front of me.
“This is the dark side of the moon,” he said. Then he opened it for me to see inside.
“It’s called a tactical nuclear explosive device. More simply, a ‘suitcase nuke.’ Produces a horrific explosion. Unlike conventional warheads, it operates at ground level. Easy to conceal, easy to transport. No mess, no fuss. You’ve seen pictures of Hiroshima, of course. Everyone has.”
“What about Hiroshima?”
“This
suitcase has approximately the same yield. Devastating. We, the old Soviet Union, used to manufacture these bombs by the truckload.
“Want to know where some of the others are right now? Well, there is one or more in Washington, D.C., Tel Aviv, Paris, London. So, as you see, we have a new member in the exclusive ‘nuclear community.’ We are the new members.”
I was starting to feel cold all over. Was there really a nuclear bomb in the suitcase?
“That’s the message you want me to deliver?”
“The other reactors are in place. And to show my good faith, you can take this reactor back with you. Let the boys in the shop look it over. But tell them to look very quickly.
“Now, maybe, maybe, you understand. Get out of here. To me, you are a gnat, but at least you are a gnat. Take the nuclear weapon with you. Consider it a gift. Don’t say I didn’t warn you about what was going to happen. Now, go. Hurry, Dr. Cross.”
Chapter 81
EVERYTHING WAS A blur from there on that afternoon. The dark cloth hood had just been for show, I figured, since I wore nothing over my eyes on the ride back to Paris, which seemed a lot shorter than the ride out.
I kept asking my captors where I was being taken with the suitcase bomb, but neither man in the car would give me an answer. Not a word. They spoke nothing but Russian on the ride.
To me, you are a gnat. . . . Take the nuclear weapon with you. . . .
Soon after we entered Paris, the Peugeot stopped in the crowded parking lot of a shopping center. A gun was held in my face, and then I was handcuffed to the suitcase. “What’s this about?” I asked my captors but received no answer.
Moments later the Peugeot stopped again, at place Igor Stravinsky, one of the more populated areas of Paris, though mostly deserted now.
“Get out!” I was told—the first English words I’d heard in close to an hour.
Slowly, carefully, I emerged from the sedan with the bomb. I felt a little dizzy. The Peugeot roared off.
I was aware of a certain liquidity in the air, particles, a real sense of atoms. I stood motionless near the huge plaza of the Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, handcuffed to a black valise that weighed at least fifty pounds, probably more.
Supposedly it carried a nuclear bomb, the full equivalent of the ones Harry Truman had ordered dropped on Japan. My body was already covered with cold sweat, and I felt as if I were watching myself in a dream. Could it all end like this? Of course it could. All bets were off, but especially any bets on my life. Was I about to be blown up? Would I suffer radiation sickness if I wasn’t?
I spotted two policemen near a Virgin record store and made my way up to them. I explained who I was, and then told them to please call the directeur de la sécurité publique.
I didn’t tell the cops what was in the black valise, but I quickly revealed the contents to the director when he came on the line. “Is the threat real, Dr. Cross?” he wanted to know. “Is the bomb live?”
“I don’t know. How could I? Please respond as if it is. That’s what I’m doing.” Get your bomb squad over here. Now! Get off the phone!
Within a few minutes, the whole of the Beaubourg district had been evacuated, except for a dozen or so patrolmen, the military police, and several bomb-squad experts. At least I hoped they were experts, the best France had to offer.
I was told to sit on the ground, which I did. Right alongside the black valise, of course. I did everything I was told to do, because I had no choice in the matter. I was feeling sick to my stomach, and sitting made it a little better, though not much. At least the initial dizziness I’d felt was starting to pass.
First, a bomb-sniffing dog was brought in to smell me and the suitcase. A handsome, young German shepherd, the chien explo, approached very cautiously, eyeing the suitcase as if it were a rival dog, an enemy.
When the shepherd got within five yards, she completely froze. A low growl rumbled up from her chest. The hair on her neck rose. Oh shit. Oh God, I thought.
The dog continued to growl until she was certain of radioactive contents, then she quickly retreated to her handlers. Very wise of the shepherd. I was left alone again. I’d never been more frightened in my life, nothing had come even close. The thought of being blown apart, possibly vaporized, isn’t pleasant. It’s a tough one to wrap your mind around.
After what seemed like an eternity, though it was only a few minutes, two bomb-squad technicians in moon suits cautiously headed my way. I saw that one of them was clutching bolt cutters. God bless him! This was such an incredibly surreal moment.
The man with the cutters knelt down beside me. “It’s okay, you’re okay,” he whispered. Then he carefully sliced through the handcuffs.
“You can leave. Get up slowly,” he said. I rose cautiously, rubbing my wrist, but already backing away from the suitcase.
My alien-looking escorts and I hurried out of the designated “hot zone” to where two black bomb-squad vans were parked. Of course, the van was still in the “hot zone” as well. If a nuclear bomb went off, at least a square mile of Paris would be vaporized instantly.
From inside one of the vans I watched the team of technicians work to deactivate the bomb. If they could. I never considered leaving the scene, and the next few minutes were the longest of my life. No one in the van spoke, and we were all holding our breath. The idea of dying like this, so suddenly, was almost impossible to conceive.
Word came back from the French bomb technicians: “The suitcase is open.”
Then, less than a minute later, “The fissile material is there. It’s real. It seems to be in working order, unfortunately.”
The bomb was real. It wasn’t a fake threat. The Wolf was still keeping his promises, wasn’t he? The sadistic bastard was everything he said he was.
Then I saw one of the technicians pump his arm in the air. A cheer went up around the console in the van. I didn’t understand exactly what had happened at first, but it seemed like good news. No one explained anything to me.
“What just happened?” I finally asked in French.
One of the techs turned to me. “There’s no trigger! It couldn’t blow up. They didn’t want it to explode, thank God. They only wanted to scare the shit out of us.”
“It worked,” I told him. “I shit you not.”
Chapter 82
OVER THE NEXT couple of hours it was revealed that the suitcase bomb had everything necessary for a nuclear explosion except a single part, a pulsed neutron emitter, a trigger. All the difficult elements were there. I couldn’t eat that night, couldn’t keep anything down, couldn’t concentrate at all. I’d been tested, but I couldn’t get the idea of radiation poisoning to leave my brain.
I also couldn’t get Maud Boulard out of my mind: her face, the tenor of her voice, our absurd lunch together, the detective’s stubbornness and naïveté, her red hair splayed out on the sidewalk. The casual brutality of the Wolf and his people.
I kept flashing back to the Russian who had struck me in the farmhouse. Had it been the Wolf? Why would he let me see him? And then, why not?
I went back to the Relais and suddenly wished that I hadn’t asked for a room facing the street. My body felt numb all over, exhausted, but my mind wouldn’t stop racing at warp speed. The noise rising from the street was a disturbance that I couldn’t handle right now. They have nuclear weapons. This isn’t a bluff. It’s going to happen. A holocaust.
I decided to call the kids at about six o’clock, their time. I talked to them about all the things in Paris that I didn’t see that day—everything except what had really happened to me. So far, the media had none of it, but that wouldn’t last.
Then I called Nana. I told her the truth about how it had felt sitting on the pavement with a bomb attached to my wrist. She was the one I always told about my worst days, and this was probably the worst of them all.
Chapter 83
WHEN I ARRIVED at my small office at the Préfecture I got another surprise. Martin Lodge wa
s waiting there for me. It was 7:15: ten hours and forty-five minutes to doomsday.
I shook Martin’s hand, and told him how glad I was that he was there. “Not much time left. Why are you here?”
“Last words, I suppose. I have to give the final update on the situation in London. As well as Tel Aviv. From our vantage point, anyway.”
“And?”
Martin shook his head. “You don’t want to hear the same rotten story twice.”
“Yeah. I do.”
“Not this story, you don’t. Oh hell, it’s all cocked up, Alex. I think he might have to blow up a city to get them to act. That’s how bad it is. The worst is Tel Aviv. I think it’s basically hopeless there. They don’t make deals with terrorists. You asked.”
The morning briefing started at eight sharp and included a quick summary on the briefcase bomb from the technicians who had taken it apart. They reported that the bomb was authentic in design, but there was no neutron emitter, no trigger, and possibly not enough radioactive material inside.
An army general spoke about the current situation in Paris: the people were frightened and staying off the streets, but only a small percentage had actually fled the city. The army was prepared to move in and declare martial law about the time of the deadline, which was six P.M.
Then it was time for Martin. He strode to the front of the room and spoke in French. “Good morning. Isn’t it incredible what can happen once we adapt ourselves to a new reality? The people of London have been splendid, for the most part. Some rioting. Not too much in terms of what could have happened. I suspect that those who might have given us the most trouble got out of London early. As for Tel Aviv, they’re so accustomed to crisis and living under threatening scenarios—let’s just say that they’re handling this very well.
“Anyway, that’s the good news. The bad is that we’ve raised most of the money, but not all of it. That’s in London. And Tel Aviv? As best we can tell, they’re not going to make a deal. The Israelis hold their cards very close to the vest, so we’re not sure what’s transpired there.