The Hanged Man's Tale, page 27
The prisoners scattered in every direction. The yelling came in a dozen different dialects, each one pure panic. Men, women, all in the central courtyard, slammed their fists up against the bars and the plexiglass windows. Screaming louder and louder at Vachère to let them out.
He watched and thought for a long minute. Then picked up a metal shovel, and barred the inner door.
* * *
—
Outside, the pair from Défense Nationale watched the expanding fire with a grim satisfaction. “We wanted to send a message. Now that’s a message,” the taller one said. “Otherwise they’ll just keep coming.”
His partner grinned. “They’ll get the word: they should go home.”
Inside, the sound of screams, and cracking glass as the temperatures mounted.
* * *
—
With the fire growing, Vachère came flying back toward the control room to alert his fellow guards. But he didn’t quite make it.
At the other end of the corridor stood a young couple, Algerians from the look of them, panting with exhaustion. The young man must have found his girlfriend in the chaos and dragged her out through the cracked glass. And now they were trying to escape.
Looking up in surprise and irritation, Vachère’s first thoughts were in his native Romanian. Pula mea! he swore to himself.
He leaped up, and came sprinting, heading right at them.
“Qu’est-ce qui se passe ici?” he shouted.
The young immigrant couple didn’t have time to think. They took off on a dead run.
“Stop right there!”
Fear fueled their steps. They had no idea where they were heading. They were just going as fast as they could. Around a corner. Slamming into the door. The door popping open. Outside at last. And Vachère gaining on them all the time.
“Stop!”
Now they could see the fence, and the crowd of demonstrators beyond. They put on an extra burst of speed. If they could just get to the crowd, maybe they could hide. Escape.
The gate was coming up fast. They were almost there.
BOOM—BOOM!
The twin explosions ripped the afternoon sky.
The young man lurched forward, falling onto his chest. The young woman stumbled…reeled…and toppled over.
* * *
—
At the fence, the crowd of demonstrators was stunned into silence. They had seen it all. The flames. The tall figure with the hatchet face. The gun in his hand. A nine millimeter semiautomatic. Two shots. Two hits. The slow pool that spread out under the young woman’s head. It looked like she was resting her cheek on a crimson pillow. Just resting in the afternoon sun. But she wasn’t moving. The young man rolled over, and slowly started to crawl toward the gate, dragging his shattered leg behind him. The crowd gave a low moan. They had seen it all.
Mazarelle too.
* * *
—
Across the pavement, Vachère looked at the two figures. He didn’t seem to have much of any expression on his face. He holstered the pistol, then looked up, slowly taking in the crowd, actually noticing them for the first time, realizing that everyone had seen what he’d done.
He shook his head.
“They’re illegals. They don’t even belong here.”
And then from the crowd, the moan changed to something else. Something darker. More primitive. And the crowd as one began to smash through the fencing. Smashing through to release the prisoners from the flames inside. Smashing through to come after him.
Vachère didn’t hesitate. He had no feeling about humans. But he knew the sounds of animals. And the crowd’s roar—that was the sound of danger. He understood danger. He had spent his whole life living with it. Dashing across the pavement, he jumped into his Jeep, the engine howling as he kicked it into top gear. Hurtling full speed toward the back gates, he slammed on through, the metal shattered on the ground behind him. Heading east to the one place he could count as safe. The old Legion base at Aubagne. His brothers would protect him.
68
Outside the detention center, the demonstrators and the prisoners were scattering, shouting, sprinting in all directions. They had come here today to save the world—to put their lives on the line, maybe even get arrested. But fire and gunshots? Actual bullets? That was a little too much.
The crowd spread and hurtled—banners dropped and trampled under foot, bodies slamming into each other as the protesters tried to flee the scene. It wasn’t easy to save the planet when someone was shooting. Shaggy young men and earnest young women were tripping over each other as they looked for the shortest route out of the chaos.
Jeannot came running up, an astonished expression on his face. “Putain de merde!” he shouted. “Is that our guy?”
In the midst of the crowd in motion, Mazarelle was the one still point, a boulder in a surging ocean. Only his eyes moved, his gaze focused hard on the direction in which the shooter had run. He had never gotten a clean look at his assailant in the darkness outside his apartment. But he’d seen the way he moved. That man had moved like a leopard. Lithe, efficient, no wasted motion. Just like this guard. Mazarelle wasn’t a gambling man, but he would bet big money that this was his attacker. That the hunch about the tattoo had paid off. They had tracked down the ripoux’s enforcer—the man with the garrote. Now they had to find him again.
Maurice was at Mazarelle’s elbow.
“Chef—we should call it in,” he said. “Get the local police here working with us.”
“They’ll be here soon enough,” said Mazarelle, pointing at the two bodies by the fence. “We can’t afford to wait for them. We’ve got to get going.”
“Going—going where?” asked Jeannot. “Where do you think he’s heading?”
“Well,” said Mazarelle, tapping his nose, “I’ve got an idea.”
He opened the door to the little rental car and, with the three of them squeezed inside, they sped off, heading east.
* * *
—
The highway stretched out in front of them, winding and shimmering in the summer sun. It was the A50, plowing through the heart of the Mediterranean coast, on its way to the Côte d’Azur.
As Mazarelle drove, his foot nailed to the floor, he filled Jeannot and Maurice in on his plan. If he had to guess, Jacques Vachère was heading back to the one place that had always sheltered and sustained him—the Foreign Legion headquarters.
The little Peugeot was cranked up to its top-end speed, doing one hundred miles an hour down the empty highway. They were making good time. Mazarelle felt sure they had to be gaining on Vachère. The miles flew by on the road to Aubagne.
Until suddenly, they weren’t alone.
All around them, cars started to slow, and crawl. Station wagons, vans, cars piled high with suitcases and bikes, all heading to the Riviera on the A50.
“Merde!” fumed Jeannot. “What’s going on?”
“It’s August,” said Maurice. “And you know what that means—”
“Les vacances,” the three said simultaneously.
It seemed as if the whole country was on this one road, all heading off for the beaches. The traffic had ground to a halt now—a long ribbon of metal under the Mediterranean sun. They rolled to a stop by an underpass splattered with graffiti: Les Arabes Dehors! Immigrés Rentrez Chez Vous! Vive la Défense Nationale!
“We don’t even have our siren,” Maurice muttered. “I told you we should have done it the official way and taken a squad car.”
“No time for that.” Mazarelle swatted the idea away like an annoying fly. “No time for this either.”
Yanking the wheel over hard to the right, he pulled the little car onto the shoulder and took off at an alarming speed, slamming his hand onto the horn. Pushed back in their seats by the acceleration, Maurice and Jeannot could only watch in astonishment as the honking cleared a path in front of them.
* * *
—
Less than an hour later, they pulled up on the gravel driveway in front of Legion headquarters in Aubagne. Mazarelle hopped out, energized, sure that this was where Vachère’s path had led.
But inside, no one had seen him.
“Why don’t you try Puyloubier—the Invalides—our retirement home,” recommended the guard. “It’s not far. You could ask the staff sergeant there. I’ll get you a map and instructions on how to find it.”
“Thanks,” said Mazarelle. “I’ve been there before. I know where it is.”
* * *
—
On the back roads to Puyloubier, Mazarelle told his team about the retirement home—an ornate château set on five hundred acres of forest land, all for former members of the French Foreign Legion. He described the hall of heroes and the catalog of strange weapons. If Vachère was really hiding there, it would be a formidable fortress.
Their road wound through vast woods and rocky landscapes, and through the pastures leading up to the craggy Montagne Sainte-Victoire, one of Cézanne’s favorite subjects. Soon, they were driving into the little town of Puyloubier, home to Saint Servin de Puyloubier, a fifth-century hermit whose claim to fame was being massacred by marauding Visigoths. The legionnaires’ home was a few minutes down the road.
Pulling into the parking lot, Mazarelle asked if the guard could tell him whether Staff Sergeant Delapierre was there today.
“Yes—tell me who you are and I’ll call him.”
A few minutes later, the burly Delapierre was at the entrance, his one good eye gleaming, his wide smile welcoming back Mazarelle. He cast a curious look at Jeannot and Maurice.
Settled inside Delapierre’s office, Mazarelle hemmed and hawed for a moment, then finally confessed: he might not have been telling the full truth the last time they talked. He and his team were actually detectives from the Brigade Criminelle in Paris.
Before Mazarelle could start his questioning, Delapierre broke in.
“So—you’re no longer an ace reporter these days,” he said with a laugh.
Mazarelle flashed a quick grin. “Guilty! It was an investigative necessity. But this”—he stopped to underline the point—“this is serious.”
“Understood,” said the staff sergeant. “So what can I do for you?”
Mazarelle explained that they were on the trail of a dangerous man, perhaps responsible for multiple homicides.
“The man we’re looking for. The man we’ve been tracking. He’s one of your own.”
“Ours? What do you mean?”
“He’s from the Second REP. We think his name is Jacques—Jacques Vachère.”
Delapierre’s face had turned somber.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Mazarelle waited to see if the sergeant had something else to add. He didn’t.
But if Mazarelle’s experience of questioning witnesses had taught him anything, it was not to give up too easily. Not to stop too soon. And also, the advantages of a sudden change of direction.
“He’s here, then?”
Delapierre leaned back quickly, as if stung.
“We don’t talk about our brothers,” the sergeant said. “That’s the code.”
Jeannot had been watching the exchange quietly, deferring to his boss and mentor. But patience was never his long suit, and now he had run out.
“The code?” Jeannot blew air out of his cheeks. “That’s all well and good, but we saw the guy shoot down two people in front of us. Where’s the honor in that?”
Mazarelle quieted the young lieutenant with a wave of the hand, and turned back to Delapierre, focusing in hard now.
“Sergeant, is he here?”
Delapierre looked at each of the detectives in front of him in turn, and then back to Mazarelle. Seconds ticked by. He took a deep breath. And slowly shook his head.
“No, he’s not here.”
Maurice and Jeannot sank back in their chairs, deflated.
Not Mazarelle. He had read something else in Delapierre’s expression. Something that told him a little more of the story. He leaned forward, looking harder into the staff sergeant’s eyes.
“But he was here, right?”
Delapierre nodded. One brief nod. As if even that cost him.
Still Mazarelle prodded.
“Today?”
Delapierre sighed and nodded again.
“Just a few hours ago.”
Now Mazarelle settled back in his chair, spreading his hands to Delapierre, showing him the floor was now his.
The stocky sergeant ran his fingers through his beard. And, in time, he started to talk, slowly and haltingly.
“We usually help out our brothers when they come here. But Jacques Vachère…?” Delapierre shuddered. “He has a dark history.”
“So, you had been hearing about him?”
“We’d heard a couple of stories. Really, more like rumors. But they were enough. That’s not what the Legion is about.”
“What happened when he showed up today?”
“He wanted us to shelter him.” Delapierre seemed to be reliving the moment in his mind. “We refused.”
“How’d he take it?”
“It wasn’t pretty,” said Delapierre. “He took a swing at one of the guards. And then…Then he just took off.”
Maurice jumped in. “Took off where? Do you know where he would have gone?”
The interruption had broken the rhythm of Mazarelle’s questioning. He looked over at his colleague, annoyed. Then tried to pick up the rhythm of the conversation with the now-silent Delapierre.
“That must have been hard for you—having to turn him away like that.”
Delapierre wasn’t the type to wallow in emotions. But he did appreciate Mazarelle’s gesture.
“We protect our own.”
Mazarelle nodded. And picked his way forward, slowly and carefully.
“Sergeant, we want you to understand. This is not just any soldier. This is a man who is now wanted for multiple homicides. A man who I believe attacked me. And tried to kill me. With his garrote—the loupe. We don’t make this request lightly. But can you tell us where he might have gone?”
Now Delapierre was working his beard with both hands. He ran his fingers through the streaks of gray, twisting the hairs around between thumb and forefinger. The activity seemed to take all of his concentration. He blew out a long stream of air.
“It’s possible…” He seemed to run out of words.
Maurice cleared his throat to jump in.
Out of Delapierre’s eyeline, Mazarelle reached over to clamp his hand down on Maurice’s leg and dug in his fingers. The sergeant needed to come to this in his own time.
Maurice looked over at his boss, startled. But he kept his mouth shut.
Finally, Mazarelle’s instinct was borne out, when Delapierre picked up the thread again.
“It’s possible…that he went back into the woods. Back to one of the old hiking trails. Over in the woods by the Luberon.”
Delapierre seemed to have stopped again. But still Mazarelle waited.
“There’s…there’s an old abandoned campground down along the Rhône.”
The sergeant nodded, almost to himself. “He might have been heading there. We’ve heard rumors that he was occasionally spotted around there.”
Delapierre suddenly looked up, and turned to Mazarelle. “Do you remember the story of that hike from the hell week?”
“The one in the rain?”
“Yes, the cadet training session. The one where Vachère nearly died.”
“I do,” said Mazarelle. “It was quite a story. I could hardly forget.”
“Well, that campground was where they were staged when it all happened. It seems to have some meaning to him.” Abruptly, Delapierre came to a full stop. He seemed exhausted by the effort.
Mazarelle gave the moment its due. And then he reached out his hand.
“Thank you.”
Delapierre took in the large meaty hand in front of him. And reached out to shake.
“Be careful. He was lethal before. Now, he’s angry.”
* * *
—
Piling back into the car, the team headed out, at first driving west toward the nature preserves of the Camargue, the marshy forest and swamp lands below Arles, where the Rhône ran down to the Mediterranean Sea. But they soon realized that they were in unlikely territory for an abandoned campground. The area was too marshy, too open. If they were looking for a hideout near the Rhône river, close to where Vachère had hiked years ago, they’d surely have to try a little farther north, where the tree line filled in.
After a half-hour drive, they reached the natural parklands known as the Alpilles. Wild and savage, it was a landscape of great craggy outcroppings of trees and jagged limestone, a rugged, Provençal terrain in the shadow of the Luberon mountains. With its dense woods, this landscape surely offered better possibilities for campsites—abandoned or otherwise. And it seemed to fit Delapierre’s description. They followed a series of dirt roads that edged the forest, and soon got their first break.
There, tucked away and covered with foliage, in a small grove of pines and kermes oak trees, was a battered Jeep. Vachère’s Jeep. Mazarelle pulled over alongside and parked.
“Okay,” he said. “He’s got to be somewhere in there. The trail starts here.”
He got out of the car and looked around.
“We’ve got two cracks at him. One is to try to find his campground in there. The other is out here by his Jeep.”
Jeannot tumbled out of the car, ready to get going. “What’s the plan, chef?”
