He was glad, at least, that that hadn’t been Jody the satellite saw in the tree. If she’d been here, she’d be seconds from death, along with him.
Herbert wasn’t going to ask the man for his life. He didn’t want to die, but he couldn’t live with himself knowing he’d asked a dirtbag like this for anything. He’d gotten sloppy, and this was the price. At least, he told himself, he wouldn’t have to schlep all the way back to the car.
I wonder if I’ll hear the crack of the gun before the bullet hits, he thought. He was near enough. It would be close.
“Auf Wiedersehen, ” the German said to him.
CHAPTER FORTY Thursday, 6:26 P.M., Toulouse, France
Located just a short ride from the popular Place du Capitole and the Garonne River, the Rue St. Rome is one of the shopping streets in old Toulouse. Many of the two- and three-story medieval structures there sag or slant with age.
The floors are buckled due to their proximity to the river.
But these buildings do not fall. It’s as if they’re telling the brash, new, out-of-place signs for Seiko watches or mopeds, the once-new TV aerials and still-new satellite dishes, “No.
We won’t surrender this street to you.” And so, after centuries of watching ramparts come and go, of bearing silent witness to countless lives and dreams, the facades still look out on the crooked network of narrow roads and hurrying masses.
Situated in a third-floor room of one of those structures, a dilapidated old store called Magasin Vert which he had rented, Colonel Bernard Ballon of the Gendarmerie Nationale was watching the live pictures being broadcast from outside the Demain factory to four small TV monitors.
The plant was located some thirty kilometers north of the city center. But for all the intelligence he was collecting, the plant might just as well have been situated thirty kilometers north of the earth’s center.
Ballon’s men had placed hidden cameras at all four sides of the ancient edifice in the ancient town of Montauban. They videotaped every truck and employee that entered or left. All they needed to see was one known member of the New Jacobins. Once one of the terrorists had been spotted, Ballon and his elite tactical squad would be inside within twenty minutes. The cars were parked nearby, the men were sitting around audio equipment and other video monitors, and the weapons were in duffel bags in the corner. The search warrants, too, were in order provided they had what the courts called “raison de suspicion.” Reason for suspicion. Reasons which would survive a defense assault in court.
But however close Dominique’s “big push” might be, the reclusive tycoon wasn’t getting careless. And Ballon suspected that the push was close indeed. After seventeen long and frustrating years of following the elusive billionaire; after seventeen years of tracking, arresting, and trying to break members of the New Jacobin terrorist organization; after seventeen years of watching his own interest become an obsession, Ballon was certain that Dominique was ready to make something happen. And not just the heralded launch of his new video games. He had launched new games before and they had never required this level of manpower.
Or this level of commitment from Dominique, Ballon thought.
Dominique was staying at the factory more and more at night instead of going home to his red-brick estate in the countryside outside of Mountauban. Employees were working longer shifts. Not just the company’s videogame programmers but also the technicians who worked on Internet projects and hardware. He watched their comings and goings on the monitors.
Jean Goddard… Marie Page… Emile Tourneur.
The Frenchman knew them all by sight. He knew their backgrounds. He knew the names of family members and friends. He’d looked under every rock he could find to learn more about Dominique and his operation. Because he was convinced that twenty-five years ago, when he was a rookie police officer in Paris, this man had gotten away with murder.
The forty-four-year old officer shifted stiffly in the folding wooden chair. He stretched his short legs and looked distractedly around the makeshift command center. His brown eyes were bloodshot, his weathered jaw was covered with stubble, and his small mouth was slack. Like the seven other men in the room, he was dressed in jeans and a flannel workshirt. They were workers, after all, in Toulouse to restore the building they’d rented. Downstairs, three other men were busy sawing wood they’d never be using.
It had been extremely difficult to convince his superiors to let him undertake this month-long stakeout. The Gendarmerie Nationale was supposed to be an entirely independent caste-blind national police force. But they were very much aware of the legal forces and deadly publicity Dominique could muster against them.
“And for what?” Commander Caton had asked him.
“Because you suspect him of a crime that is more than two decades old? We can’t even prosecute him!” That was true. Too much time had passed. But did that make the crime or the person who committed it any less monstrous? Upon investigating the crime scene that night, Ballon had learned that wealthy Gerard Dupre had been seen in the area with another man. He’d discovered that they had left Paris for Toulouse after the murders. And the police hadn’t wished to pursue them. Hadn’t wished to pursue Dupre, Ballon thought bitterly, the upper-class pig.
As a result, he had quite possibly gotten away with murder.
Ballon had resigned from the police force in utter disgust. Then he’d joined the Gendarmerie and studied the Dupre family. Over the years his hobby became a passion.
He learned from sealed files in the government archives in Toulouse about how the elder Dupre had been a collaborator during World War II. How he’d infiltrated the Resistance and informed on many of its members. At least thirty deaths over four years were attributed to that batard. After the war, Dupre founded a successful business manufacturing spare parts for the Aerospatiale Airbus. He established his company using money from the United States. Money which had been earmarked for the rebuilding of Europe.
Gerard, meanwhile, appeared to resent everything about his father. PŠre Dupre had sold information to the Germans to survive the War. So Gerard surrounded himself with young German students who needed his money to get by. PŠre Dupre had stolen money from the Americans after the War. So Gerard designed software to appeal to Americans, to have them give him their money. PŠre Dupre hated the Communists. Which is why, as a student, Gerard was drawn to them. Everything he did was an act of defiance against his father.
But then something happened to the younger Dupre.
After leaving the Sorbonne, he began collecting historical documents. Ballon had talked to some of the autograph dealers from whom Dupre had made purchases. It seemed to amaze Dupre that he could own important letters written by the great figures of the past.
One dealer had told the Gendarmerie officer, “Gerard seemed to feel as if he were looking over the shoulders of great men. Watching history unfold brought fire to his eyes.
” Dupre bought documents from the French Revolution, as well as actual costumes and weapons and memorabilia. He purchased religious letters that were even older. He even bought guillotines.
A psychiatrist who worked for the Gendarmerie said, “It is not uncommon for people disappointed with the real world to cocoon themselves, to create a safe reality with letters or mementos.” “And might he then wish to expand that?” Ballon had asked.
“Very possibly, ” he’d been told. “Enlarge the haven, as it were.” When Dupre changed his name to Dominique, there was no longer any question in Ballon’s mind that he had begun to see himself as a modern-day saint. The patron saint of France. Or else he had gone mad, or perhaps both.
And when the New Jacobins began terrorizing foreigners at the same time, Ballon had little doubt that they were the soldiers guarding Dominique’s spiritual fortress— a France that was pure, as chaste as the original Jacobins had envisioned.
The Gendarmerie had refused to launch an official investigation into Dominique. It wasn’t just because he was a powerful man. As Ballon quickly discovered, the Gendarmerie was only slightly less xenophobic than Dominique. The only reason he didn’t resign was so that he could keep the idea alive that the law was supposed to serve the public— all of it. Regardless of national origin or religion. The son of a Belgian Jewish mother who had been disinherited when she married his poor, French Catholic father, Ballon understood what hate could do. If he quit the force, the bigots would win.
However, as Ballon watched the video of the factory, he wasn’t certain that they hadn’t already won.
Ballon pushed his strong fingers along his cheek. He savored the sandpaper roughness of his face. It was manliness that he felt nowhere else in his life. How could he feel manly as he sat inactive in this stuffy old room? As they reviewed procedure over and over in case they ever got inside. Code words. “Blue” for attack. “Red” for stay where you were. “Yellow” for retreat. “White” for civilians in danger. Light pulses via the radio in case audio would give someone away. One tone to close in. Two to stay where they were. Three to retreat. Emergency contingencies. He was beginning to wonder if Dominque knew about the investigation and was intentionally doing nothing in order to embarrass Ballon and put a stake in the heart of his investigation.