But to himself, he whispered, “I’ll be back.”
He needed a beer.
Leclerc trotted down the steps of Sûreté headquarters and crossed the street to the Café St.-Martin. He hated the place, if only because its only customers were cops, whom Leclerc did not generally care for, but there wasn’t another café nearby and his head was killing him.
“Pression,” he said, taking a seat at the bar, lighting a cigarette.
The bartender set down a beer. Leclerc drank half in a single draft. He called Gadbois and spoke to the general’s assistant, asking him to get onto Dell and get the sales information. Yes, Leclerc said, he knew Dell was based out of Ireland. Weren’t they all one big happy family now? The vaunted EC? Leclerc stifled a laugh. The lousy micks should be happy to help out their French compatriots. If not, he’d phone the FBI and have them roust Michael Dell out of his bed in Austin, Texas. One way or the other, he meant to learn who had purchased that computer. And within twelve hours. No excuses.
“Another beer,” Leclerc signaled. “And a Calvados, too.” Anything for his head.
It was Gadbois who was bothering him. Not the blast. Not the lack of sleep. Leaving the American Embassy, the old general had cornered him and forced him into one of the police service buses parked in front of the Chancery.
“A big case for us,” he’d said.
Leclerc knew enough to keep quiet. When Gadbois had something to say, he always did it where there were no witnesses.
“Terrible what happened yesterday. You’re lucky to be alive. You know that, don’t you?” A pat on the shoulder. An appreciative glance. “I like you, Leclerc. You’re hard. Iron. Hmm? A tough son of a bitch. We could have used a few more like you in Algeria, more bastards ready to jump into the fire instead of running from it. We almost had it, you know. This close. This close, it was.” Fucking dinosaur had never gotten over having his ass kicked out of North Africa. Forty years later he was still getting fuzzy over it. “Still, you were lucky. A bomb like that. Babtiste, the Americans. What a mess.” It was all bullshit, thought Leclerc. Preliminaries. Gadbois leaned close and he could smell the garlic on his breath. Gadbois was always taking garlic and ginseng and Gingkoba, chasing down the supplements with his morning tonic of brandy and black coffee. “You’re my eyes and ears, Leclerc. You do as I say and everything’s okay. I want you to help the Americans. Whatever they need, you get it. Glendenning’s a friend. One of us. Understood?”
Leclerc nodded, unable to keep a smirk from his face.
“Don’t piss them off,” Gadbois continued. “It’s their show. Our country. But their show.” Gadbois’s rock-hard gut pressed into Leclerc, his eyes narrowing, and for a moment Leclerc saw that, yes, once he’d been a real son of a bitch. “You’re to help,” Gadbois whispered. “But only so much.”
“Pardon?”
“When I say stop, you stop. And don’t you do one thing without telling me. Understood? Now get out of here. Find the bastards who killed Santos Babtiste.”
Tired and disenchanted, Leclerc caught a reflection of himself in the mirror as he sipped his beer. He looked lousy, even for his own low standards. What did he expect after twenty years in his country’s service? Twenty years skulking in the shadows, dreaming up dirty tricks to keep the socialists from succeeding in their plan to make France a second-rate country. Katanga, Senegal, Ivory Coast. How many strongmen had he helped prop up? How many had he knocked down? And why? Oil. Diamonds. Natural gas. National security. Realpolitik. There was always a reason, but lately, he’d stopped caring. He had no say in it, either way. He was a soldier-cum-spy. A dagger to stick into someone’s gut. He wondered if the eyes staring back at him had always been so vacant, and if it was time to start asking why.
Forget it, he said, twirling on his bar stool, staring out at the early evening assembly of notables. The usual gaggle of overweight, ill-shaven plainclothes cops crowded the walls and packed the corner tables. Someone dropped a euro into the jukebox and Jacques Brel sang, “Ne me quitte pas, il faut oublier, tout peut s’oublier…” A few cops joined in, not half-bad, actually, but Leclerc was captivated by other words.
You’re to help. But only so much.
He lit a second cigarette from the end of the first. A small, insistent hammer was tap-tap-tapping at the back of his eyes, driving him crazy. The Calvados arrived. He picked up the snifter, swirled around the burnished liquid, sniffed it, then poured it down the gullet. The burn was to savor.
And if he had helped more yesterday? If he’d been a little quicker, as quick as Chapel, the glorified accountant still wet behind the ears? Leclerc had nothing to blame for his indecision. Not the jitters of a new command or an illness that garlic, Gingkoba, or a half bottle of Rémy Martin between sunset and sundown might cure. Leclerc had a curse. A stain.
Just then, the plump, disheveled form of Sergeant Franc Burckhardt, twenty-two-year veteran of the force, indispensable cog in the fight against crime, waddled down the stairs of Sûreté headquarters and disappeared along the street.
Leclerc paid for his drinks and left.
The length of duct tape was still stretched tight across the lock where he’d left it. Leclerc peeled it off, let the gate to the evidence locker close behind him, then walked through the maze of shelves to the trolley where Taleel’s computer sat like a broken toy. You want courage? Drink a couple beers, down a Calvados, and you’ll have all the courage you need. Need a volunteer? Captain Leclerc is your man.
The hard disk didn’t fit any better this time than it had an hour ago. Opening his jacket, he stuffed it inside, then yanked up the zipper. If anyone asked him what he was hiding, he’d pull a face and say a fuckin’ Uzi, did they want to see it?
It didn’t come to that. By nine o’clock the headquarters of the Sûreté was as empty as any other office-government or otherwise-in a country where thirty-five-hour workweeks were considered the norm. Even if Burckhardt discovered that the hard drive was missing, Leclerc doubted he would say anything. Burckhardt was a survivor. He could be counted on to avoid initiating any actions that might steer trouble his way.
Leclerc stopped at the counter and pulled the evidence log out from the top drawer. Licking a thumb, he reviewed everything that had been accepted into safekeeping during the last twenty-four hours. He stopped when he saw René Montbusson’s name. Montbusson, the evidence man at the Cité Universitaire. Sliding his fingernail across the page, he stopped beneath the word “map.” Zut! No one had told him anything about any map being found in Taleel’s apartment.
It only took a minute to find the shelf where Burckhardt had laid the evidence. The spot was bare. Leclerc looked above and below, to the left and right. The map would be in either a sealed envelope or a plastic slipcover. He saw nothing that fit the bill. Rushing back to the counter, he double-checked to see if someone had signed out the map, but the ledger bore no mark.
Someone had beat Leclerc to the punch.
It was a short ride to Clichy and a run-down apartment house. Leclerc rang the bell next to the name marked “Dupuy, Etienne.”
“Who is it?” a whiskey-soaked voice asked.
“A servant of your government. We need to call you back to the service in the name of the nation’s security.”
“Fuck off.” The buzzer sounded and Leclerc entered the building.