La Sante housed the worst of the worst. Murderers, rapists, terrorists. Carlos the Jackal was locked up somewhere inside its walls. Captain Dreyfus himself had spent a year here upon his return from Devil’s Island.
Chapel walked beside Leclerc, with Sarah a step behind, while the Frenchmen called out the particulars of the arrest.
“According to his passport, his name’s Charles François. He had a ticket to Dubai, round trip in the same name.”
“Who paid for it?” Chapel asked.
“Credit card. Claude François.”
François. The same alias for twenty years.
“He hasn’t talked?” asked Sarah.
“Not a peep,” said Leclerc. “He’s well trained, this one. Disciplined. He’s got some scars on him. I’d say he’s been to a camp. We ran the passport through immigration. All we got was a trip to Athens last summer.”
“Athens,” murmured Sarah. “The great jumping-off point for voyages into the unknown.”
“We only keep track of the first leg out of the country,” continued Leclerc. “He probably had a second ticket in a different name. He knows the tricks, this kid.”
Their steps had acquired a marching rhythm. They were an executioner’s party on its way to carry out the sentence.
“The girl’s still out?” Sarah asked.
“She woke an hour ago, but the doctors forbid us from speaking to her. They’ve got her doped up on steroids to stop her brain from swelling.”
“What did you do to her?” Chapel asked.
“The girl fell poorly. Hairline fracture of the skull. Ten stitches above the ear. She’ll have a bad headache for a couple of weeks. Serves her right for hanging out with scum.”
Leclerc stopped in front of a broad, black iron door. Rivets the size of quarters studded the surface. Except for the modern lock winking from inside an ancient keyhole, it might have confined Edmond Dantes in his cell at the Château d’If. Sounds emanated from other floors of the prison. A metal cup ricocheted against the walls. Water coursed through the pipes in unpredictable surges. But most disturbing was an inmate’s brief, excruciating howl, cut off mid-cry, as if the guillotine had done its work.
“You can listen from the next room,” said Leclerc, as he wrapped boxer’s tape around his knuckles.
“You said he was a kid,” protested Chapel.
“That’s no kid in there. Too bad you missed Dr. Bac. She just left. You two could have held hands and said a prayer for the animal. Now it is time for him to talk.”
Chapel put a hand on Leclerc’s chest. “Let me talk to him.”
“How’s your French?”
“He speaks English.”
“How do you know?” Leclerc pushed past Chapel, slipping the key into the lock.
“Call it a hunch.”
“Désolé, mon pote. No more time for hunches.”
Sarah leaned her shoulder against the door, lowering her face to Leclerc’s. Sweat beaded his lip, and in the dim corridor, he looked ashen and ill. “Come now, let Adam have a go.”
“What did you find in Zurich? Tell me that, then maybe I let your boyfriend go.”
Sarah looked at Chapel, then back again, as if choosing sides. “More of the same,” she said. “Another numbered account. Reams of documents. If it’s of any interest, the account in Germany was opened by a Claude François.”
“We were talking about Switzerland. The Bank Menz. That was a quick trip to Zurich for nothing.”
“You know Adam,” she said. “High hopes.”
High hopes. Leclerc’s eyes narrowed in bewilderment. The naive and sentimental tripe of a naive and sentimental country. He considered Chapel, as if measuring him for a suit. “Ten minutes,” he said, unlocking the cell door. “I’m also in a hurry. Santos Babtiste’s funeral begins at five o’clock. I’d like to pay my respects.”
“Is he cuffed?” Chapel asked.
“What do you think?”
Chapel held out his hand. Leclerc dropped a small key into his palm. “Ten minutes. Alors, bonne chance.”
The door slammed shut. Chapel took a step and he was in the center of the room. It was a small, confined, frightening place. The walls were painted a glossy mint green. A naked bulb dangled from the ceiling. It was exceptionally clean, but for a skein of blood that decorated a wall like a furious exclamation point. The young man who had tackled him in the hallways of the Hôpital Salpetitpierre sat at a brutish wooden table, hands cuffed behind him, head lolling on his chest.
“Hello,” said Chapel, taking the opposite chair. “I think we’ve met already. I wanted to say thank you, though. Personally. You know for…” Chapel cleared his throat, searching for the right words. For what? For not killing me? For behaving like a decent human being instead of a butcher with a holy cause? He looked back at the door. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to talk to the kid, after all-Leclerc was right about one thing: This was no kid, he was built like an NFL halfback.
Just then, the prisoner looked up, and Chapel got his first glimpse of his face. The right eye was swollen and purple. The capillaries on one side of the iris had burst, giving him a devilish look. His lip was cracked and bleeding. Chapel didn’t know if the injuries were from the arrest or from Leclerc. It didn’t matter. He felt offended and responsible. He couldn’t allow Leclerc with his taped knuckles and raging inferiority to have a go at him. He held up the key, then circled behind the prisoner and unlocked the cuffs. The young man shook his arms to regain circulation, but offered no thanks, no acknowledgment whatsoever that Chapel was even in the room.
Taking a chair, Chapel put his hands on the table, fingers clasped. A familiar nagging tugged at his shoulders and he sat up straighter. Even inside a prison, he was the one who needed to measure up. “You did a good job knocking the hell out of me. My shoulder’s a complete mess. You did a real number on it.”
The young man shifted. He seemed bored and tense.
Chapel fought for something to say. He felt ill at ease, beyond his competence. “So what’s it all about?” he blurted. “If you want to say anything, this would be a good time.”
It was no good. Chapel had about as much chance of reaching him as he did of finding Claude François. He was overcome with a sudden helplessness, a sinking feeling that made him want to pack it all in. Not just the interrogation, but the whole investigation. Let someone else have it. Maybe Sarah was right: It was too big for them. He studied the prisoner’s shirt with its stencil of a rapper’s leering face, capped teeth, and scornful eyes. Done in by the futility of it all, he was unable to suppress a laugh. “Oh, jeez,” he said. “I bet that T-shirt really pisses off your dad.”
The prisoner’s chin rose from his chest and Chapel saw he’d hit something. He remembered what he’d glimpsed in the hospital. As he lay on the floor with this hulk on top of him, there had been a moment when their eyes had met; a moment wedged between the kid’s surprise at having run into the very man he was supposed to kill and his decision not to kill him; a moment when the curtain dropped, and Chapel was given a clear view into what drove this guy. What he saw was a teenager’s frustration with his lot, a load of self-pity, and a dread resignation that said “I can’t believe this shit.” It was like looking in the mirror when he was nineteen.
“Yeah, my father was a stickler, too,” he said. “In my day it was glam rock and big hair. I was all over it. Whitesnake. Poison. Bon Jovi. You give love a bad name… bad name.” If Leclerc could sing, so could he. “Didn’t have the hair, though. Dad would have knocked the shit out of me. But, I had the T-shirts. You got Mr. Fifty Cent there. I had RATT. Probably ’bout the same talent level. Minimal, if you know what I mean.”