THEY drove for twenty minutes, wipers working steadily against the rain, heater roaring. The lights of central Paris faded, and soon they were in a gloomy industrial quarter bathed in yellow sodium lamps. Debré sang along with the American music on the radio. The Englishman had a headache. He lowered his window and the damp air sawed at his cheek.
He wished Debré would shut up. The Englishman knew all about Pascal Debré. He was a man who had failed to live up to his own expectations of himself. He had wanted to be an assassin, like the Englishman, but he had botched an important hit on a member of a rival criminal group. The mistake cost him two fingers and seriously impacted the course of his career. He was exiled to the extortion side of the business, where he was known for his crude but effective pitch-Give us money, or we will burn down your business. If you try to get the police involved, we’ll rape your daughter and then cut her into a hundred pieces.
They passed through a gate in a chain-link fence, then entered a soot-stained brick warehouse. The air was heavy with the stench of oil and the river. Debré led the way into a small office and switched on a light. A moment later he emerged, a large suitcase hanging from his good hand.
He swung the bag onto the hood of the car and popped the latches. “It’s a simple device,” Debré said, using his maimed hand as a pointer. “Here’s the timer. You can set it for one minute, one hour, one week. Whatever you want. Here’s the detonator, here’s the small explosive charge. These canisters contain the fuel. The bag is completely untraceable. Even if it happens to survive the fire-which is extremely unlikely-there’s nothing about it that will lead the police to you or to us.”
Debré closed the lid. The Englishman pulled out an envelope filled with francs and dropped it on the car next to the bag. He reached for the suitcase, but Debré put the two-fingered hand on his arm.
“I’m afraid the price has gone up, my friend.”
“Why?”
“Blame it on an unforeseeable market fluctuation.” Debré took out a gun and pointed it at the Englishman’s chest. The driver moved into position behind him. The Englishman assumed he had drawn his weapon too.
Debré smiled. “You know how these things go, my friend.”
“No, I don’t, actually. Why don’t you explain it to me?”
“After we spoke, I started to think.”
“That must have been a new experience for you.”
“Shut your fucking mouth!”
“Excuse me for interrupting, Pascal. Please continue.”
“I asked myself a simple question. Why does a man like my friend need a device like this? He always kills with a knife. Sometimes a pistol but usually a knife. Then the answer came to me. He needs a device like this because his employers have requested it. If I raise my price, it will make no difference to him, because he will simply pass the cost on to his employer.”
“How much do you want?”
“Two hundred.”
“We had a deal at one hundred.”
“The deal changed.”
“And if I refuse?”
“You’ll have to get your package somewhere else. If you do that, I might be tempted to call one of our friends on the police force, one of the ones we keep in wine and whores. I might tell this friend that you’re in town working.”
“Fine, I’ll pay your new price, but after I use this device, I’m going to place an anonymous call to the Paris police and tell them who gave it to me. Thanks to your stupidity, I’ll even be able to tell them where I got it. They’ll raid the place, you’ll be arrested, and your employers will take the rest of your fingers.”
Debré was nervous now, eyes wide, licking his lips, the gun trembling in his left hand. He was used to people reacting with fear when he made threats. He didn’t often deal with someone like the Englishman.
“All right, you win,” said Debré. “We go back to the original price. One hundred thousand francs. Take the damned thing and get out of here.”
The Englishman decided to push him some more. “How will I get back to Paris?”
“That’s your problem.”
“It’s a long ride. The taxi fare will be expensive.” He reached out and picked up the envelope. “Probably about one hundred thousand francs.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m taking the device and my money. If you try to stop me, I’ll tell the police about your warehouse, and this time your boss in Marseilles certainly won’t stop with your hand.”
Debré raised the gun. The Englishman had let the game go on long enough. Time to end things. His training took over. He grabbed Debré’s arm in a lightning-fast movement that caught the Frenchman off-guard. He twisted the arm violently, breaking it in several places. Debré screamed in agony, and the gun clattered to the warehouse floor.
Debré’s partner made his move. The Englishman calculated he wouldn’t fire his weapon because of Debré’s proximity, which left only one option: to try to disable the Englishman with a blow to the back of the head. The Englishman ducked, and the punch sailed over his head. Then he grabbed Debré’s gun and came up firing. Two shots struck the big man in the chest. He fell to the floor, blood pumping between his fingers. The Englishman fired two more rounds into his skull.
Debré was leaning against the hood of the car, clutching his arm, utterly defeated. “Take the damned money! Take the package! Just leave here!”
“You shouldn’t have tried to cross me, Pascal.”
“You’re right. Just take everything and leave.”
“You were right about one thing,” the Englishman said as the heavy trench knife with the serrated blade slipped from his forearm sheath into his palm. A moment later Pascal Debré was lying on the floor next to his partner, his face white as a sheet, his throat slashed nearly to the spine.
THE keys to Debré’s car were still in the ignition. The Englishman used them to open the trunk. Inside was another suitcase. He lifted the lid. A second bomb, a duplicate of the one resting on the hood of the car. He supposed the Frenchman had scheduled another job later that night. The Englishman had probably saved someone’s shop. He closed the lid of the suitcase, then softly lowered the trunk.
The floor was covered in blood. The Englishman walked around the corpses and stood over the hood of the car. He opened the suitcase and set the time for three minutes, then closed the lid and placed the case between the bodies.
He walked deliberately across the warehouse and opened the door. Then he went back to the car and climbed behind the wheel. When he turned the key, the engine coughed and died.Dear God, no-Pascal’s revenge. He turned it a second time, and the engine roared into life.
He backed out, turned around in the drive, and sped through the gate in the chain-link fence. When the bomb went off, the flash in his rearview mirror was so bright that for a moment he was blinded. He followed the river road back toward Paris, purple spots floating in his vision.
Ten minutes later, he parked Debré’s car in a tow zone near a Métro stop and got out. He removed the suitcase from the trunk and dropped the keys into a rubbish bin. Then he walked downstairs and boarded a train.
He thought about the oldsignadora back in his village on Corsica -her warning abut the mysterious man whom he should avoid. He wondered if Pascal Debré had been that man.
He got out at the Luxembourg stop and walked through the wet streets of the fifth, back to his hotel on the rue St-Jacques. Upstairs in his room it occurred to him that he hadn’t seen a single policeman during the trip home. Debré had definitely been lying about the checkpoints.