“Sounds like she got rid of one terrorist.”
Sardou could have a point.
“Would a courtyard window suffice?”
“Facing south,” Minister Guittard said, cutting in on the line.
She punched the Return Call button on her cell phone. A recording came on: “The party is unable to answer your call momentarily or has stepped out of range. France Telecom thanks you for your patience and requests you try again momentarily.”
Great.
“She trusted me, Sardou; you blew it,” Aimée said. Sardou and Guittard’s conversation had wasted time and proved useless. Until Simone answered they hovered in a holding pattern.
“Call again. Keep trying, Mademoiselle Leduc,” Guittard said and hung up.
She’d pretty much figured that out.
And then she looked at her new cell phone with the battery … her dead Tintin watch … her mind raced. When she’d dropped the proposal off at the EDF site, the manager had warned her to turn off her cell phone since the electromagnetic rays from the HERF generator interfered with systems. Flattened them, he’d said. The electromagnetic fields were quite high due to all the unshielded equipment and the heavy iron reinforcement in the station walls. No reason it couldn’t do so now.
“Sardou,” she said, her voice certain and calm. “I know how to dismantle the bomb without touching the computer.”
BERNARD AIMED for the staircase, which tilted dizzily as he crawled toward it. His hand throbbed. Where had the little girl gone? Where was the gun?
The terrorist’s overalls clung to him. He shivered. If he could just get downstairs he’d pretend to be the other terrorist, wounded and unable to talk. He’d get Rachid by the window. With that thought, Bernard almost tumbled down the stairs headfirst.
And then the sun blazed for a brief moment as the clouds parted. Bernard smiled. The sun at last. He heard a zinging crack as a fine tinkle of windowglass powdered him. And then Bernard felt warmth on his face. The wonderful warmth, the heat from his childhood. Everything danced before him; his nounou, the slim grinning mother he knew as a child, his papa driving a jeep. Little teething Andre beckoned, and Bernard joined him.
RENÉ WALKED into the command center with a small shopping bag. He set the bag down and started pulling items out.
“Everything’s here,” he said, strapping on the Walkman-size HERF generator in his waist bag. With the power emanating from this he could knock out communications systems in the surrounding buildings.
Aimée helped adjust the antenna up his left sleeve so he could easily slide it out.
“From Simone’s conversation, we know one of the terrorists was knocked out,” Aimée said. “René resembles a child from this distance. If the doors Berge entered are closed, René can go to the window. Aiming the HERF gun at the device controlling the bomb, he shoots high-energy radio frequencies. He interferes with the detonation device, defusing the—”
Aimée never finished.
Sardou and every man wearing headsets rushed to the window.
“Green light,” someone muttered.
She saw a black-suited tactics team pause at the door, simultaneously heard the crack of rifles.
“Don’t do it!” she yelled. “The building will blow up.”
“They’ve got three to five seconds before the reaction time sets in,” Sardou muttered. “They better make it count.”
In stunned disbelief she watched the team enter the building. No explosion. More cracks from the rifles. She could see bullet holes pepper and shatter the glass.
Aimée gasped, “Please God keep the children and Anaïs away from the windows! What happened?” she asked, turning to Sardou.
“Three minutes ago Rachid agreed to the demands,” Sardou said. “We recorded him dismantling the wires. Your plan was backup.”
“Then why shoot him?”
Aimée’s knuckles whitened as her fingers clutched the win-dowsill; she still braced herself for an explosion.
“We’d taken out the other one,” Sardou said. “RAID doesn’t like taking prisoners.”
Sixteen children with their teacher and a shaking Anaïs holding Simone were led out through the courtyard. Relief flooded Aimée until she remembered.
“What about Bernard Berge?”
Aimée’s answer came as three bodies were rolled out into the cobbled courtyard: one burly man in his underwear, and two men in black jumpsuits.
Three terrorists?
The tactics team stripped off the ski masks of the other two.
One was a bearded man, a small black hole over his cranial vault. Dead instantly, she figured. A surgical shot to the skull, which wouldn’t have affected his nervous system and prevented him from tripping the wire. Bernard was the other, in a stained jumpsuit. A dark red spot, like a third eye, dripped down his forehead. His features were relaxed, and he looked at peace. Aimée felt the oddest sensation, as if Bernard’s soul fluttered on wings above the cobbled courtyard and toward the weak sun.
“Nom de Dieu!” Sardou snorted, looking at Berge. “Berge will go from sinner to saint all in one day!”
“Berge was expendable, wasn’t he?” she said, angry. “Guittard always planned to shovel him in the dirt, one way or the other.”
Sardou’s eyes glazed. He turned and walked into the courtyard. As the stretcher lifted Bernard’s corpse, Aimée whispered a prayer. Poor Bernard had been terrorist fodder.
Outside, Guittard was holding a press conference, so jammed with media that she and René had to wait near the SAMU vans where tearful relieved parents were hugging their children. Mar-tine had arrived, joining Simone, and was helping Anaïs to a temporary first-aid station at the rear of a fire truck.
Disheveled, Anaïs sat on the truck’s fender, her wounds receiving attention.
“We were going to dismantle the system, Anaïs,” Aimée said. “We’d figured it out.”
“I knew you could, why didn’t you?” Anaïs said, her blond hair matted to her scratched and swollen face. “My suit’s mined.”
Aimée saw Kaseem Nwar. He stood smiling, rocking on his heels, as Philippe hugged Simone.
And then Aimée knew.
Everything fit together. Philippe had made a deal with the grinning devil. Seething inside, she stared at Kaseem Nwar, who bent down and patted Simone’s head.
“Philippe gave in to Kaseem,” Aimée said, turning to wide-eyed Martine and Anaïs. “He funded the mission, didn’t he?”
Anaïs shrugged, then winced with pain as a paramedic swabbed her face.
Aimée shook with fury. For the second time she’d been about to save Philippe’s family but he’d dealt with the devil. The smiling devil who sold out his own brother, Hamid.
“The DNS knew the terrorist defused the bomb,” she said. “But they killed them anyway, even Bernard.”
Anaïs bit her lip as the paramedic treated her.
“What do you mean?”
“Kaseem held you and your daughter hostage until Philippe caved in,” she said.
Anger flashed in Anaïs’s eyes. Then she softened as she looked at Simone and her husband. “I didn’t know it was Kaseem, Aimée. I’m sorry. I just wanted you to find out who was blackmailing Philippe.”
“Maybe you could have helped me more, Anaïs.”
Aimée strode over to Kaseem and Philippe. Philippe ignored her, holding Simone tightly.
“I owe you an Orangina, Simone,” she said, keeping her voice even.
Simone nodded, her eyes serious. “A big one.”
“Let’s take Maman home, Simone,” Philippe said.
He didn’t look Aimée in the eye.
Simone pulled her father’s hand.
“It’s not over, Philippe,” Aimée said, through her clenched teeth. “I’m seeing to that.”