charges.’
‘You can’t do that!’ Luc screamed. ‘This is the most important cave in the history of France! It’s a crime of immense proportions!’
‘I can do it,’ Gatinois said evenly. ‘And I will do it. We’ll blame it on Bonnet. By the time the sun rises we’ll have a credible story for everything that happened tonight. Bonnet, the dealer in stolen Nazi loot. Bonnet, the protector of Ruac’s war crimes. Bonnet, willing to murder to keep the archaeologists and tourists out of his hair. Bonnet, the hoarder of huge quantities of old unstable wartime picratol. It will be fantastic, but partially true and the truth makes for the best stories.’
Luc challenged him. ‘What about me? What about Sara? You think we’re going to go along with this?’
‘No, probably not, but it won’t matter, I’m sorry to tell you. But you knew that already, didn’t you? We’ve got to finish the job Bonnet started. That was always going to be the way this ended.’
Luc lunged forward, determined to try to smash the man with his fist. He wouldn’t let them do this to Sara. Or to him. Not without a fight.
A rifle butt struck his back. He felt a rib snap and he collapsed in agony, struggling to catch his breath. When he was able to speak again, he felt the edge of the manuscript through his shirt, the silver corners biting into his skin. ‘And what about the Ruac Abbey manuscript?’ he asked, wincing through the pain.
‘I wanted to ask about that,’ Gatinois said. ‘We looked for that in Pineau’s factory but never found it. What was it?’
‘Nothing important,’ Luc grimaced. ‘Only the entire history of the tea and its recipe, written by a monk in 1307. It makes for fascinating reading.’
Gatinois’s confident expression sloughed off his face. ‘Marolles! Why don’t we know about this?’
Marolles was tongue-tied. He wilted under Gatinois’s withering gaze. ‘I’m at a loss. We monitored, of course, all the communications between Pineau and Simard, between Mallory and Simard. Nothing. We saw nothing about this.’
Luc smiled through the lancinating pain. ‘The manuscript was in code. Hugo had it broken. If you’d been looking at his incoming emails you’d have seen that.’
There were sirens in the distance.
They all heard them.
‘I called the gendarmes,’ Luc said. ‘They’re coming. Colonel Toucas from Perigueux is coming. It’s over for you.’
‘I’m sorry, you’re wrong,’ Gatinois said with some strain in his voice. ‘Marolles will have a word with them. We’re on the same team as the gendarmes, but somewhat higher on the feeding chain. They’ll stand down.’
Pelay, who had been quiet for a time, began loudly moaning again, as if he’d lost, then regained consciousness.
‘My God!’ Gatinois said. ‘I can’t even think with this noise! Marolles, go and finish him. Maybe you can do that properly.’
As Luc propped himself onto his knees, he saw Marolles march over to Pelay, and without a second of hesitation fire a single round into his head. When the percussive sound of the shot faded, the circle was quiet again – except for the sirens in the distance.
‘You’re nothing but a murderer,’ Luc hissed at Gatinois.
‘Think what you like. I know I’m a patriot.’
Luc got himself upright and used the solidity of the hidden book to splint his chest by pressing it against his ribcage with his elbow. ‘I’m not going to debate you, you son of a bitch. I’m only going to tell you that you’re not going to kill Sara and you’re not going to kill me.’
‘And why not?’ Gatinois asked defensively as if sensing Luc’s confidence.
‘Because if something happens to me, the press will get a letter. Maybe it won’t have anything in it about you, but everything else is there. Ruac. The tea. The murders. And a copy of the Ruac manuscript with its translation.’
The sirens were getting closer, piercing the air.
‘Marolles,’ Gatinois ordered. ‘Go and deal with the gendarmes. Intercept them. Keep them well away from the village. Go, and don’t screw up.’ Gatinois slowly walked to Luc, close enough for either man to strike each other. He stared at him for a full fifteen seconds without uttering a word. ‘You know, I’ve read your profile, Professor. You’re an honest man and I can always tell when an honest man is lying. I believe you’re telling me the truth.’
‘I believe I am,’ Luc replied.
Gatinois shook his head and looked skyward. ‘Then I suggest we find a solution. One that works for me, works for you but most importantly, works for France. Are you willing to do a deal, Professor?’
Luc stared back into the man’s cold eyes.
Gatinois’s phone rang. He pulled it from his trouser pocket. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, on my authority, proceed.’ He pocketed the phone and addressed Luc again. ‘Just wait a moment, Professor.’
First there was a flash.
It was so bright it was as if day had come to night, a premature sunrise, blazing and incandescent.
Then came the sound. And the rumbling sensation.
The shock-wave travelled through the ground, rattled the gravel and for a second made everyone sway.
Gatinois said simply, ‘It’s always been a contingency. Now was the time to end it. Our work continues, but Ruac is gone.’
THIRTY-EIGHT
In the morning drizzle, the crater that had been Ruac village reminded Luc of pictures he’d seen of Lockerbie after the Pan Am crash.
There was no main street. There were no cottages, no cafe, only a vast black, rubble-strewn, car-filled chasm, weeping charcoal-coloured smoke. The firemen were spraying their hoses down onto flaming spots along the length of the trench but due to fears of instability, they weren’t permitted to get close enough to be effective. The fires would have to burn out on their own.
A good proportion of the emergency services capability within the Dordogne was at the site. Access points into the village were choked with gendarmerie vehicles, police cars, ambulances, TV vans and fire brigade equipment. Ordinarily, Bonnet would have been there, tramping around in his heavy boots and tight-fitting uniform ordering his men about, but they had to make do without him.
Colonel Toucas was in charge of the operation, growling at the news helicopters which were thumping overhead and making it difficult to use his mobile phone.
At the dawn’s first light he had told Luc he reckoned that some of the Second World War-era explosives, picratol, more than likely, stored in a cellar by Bonnet and his fellow scoundrels, must have accidentally gone off and started a chain reaction with other caches of explosives hidden in other cellars.
He added in a hushed voice, that he had it under good authority that Bonnet was a trafficker in old stolen goods, that certain clandestine government agencies had him under surveillance. There was talk of hundreds of millions of euros of gold and Nazi spoils that might be found under the rubble.
Luc looked at him blankly, wondering if he fully believed the story that Gatinois had fed him.
Toucas couldn’t imagine there’d be any survivors; the mangled and charred state of the corpses that were readily retrievable seemed to bear this out. But it would be days before they could reasonably change the mission from rescue to recovery.
Toucas framed the catastrophe with his own point of view. ‘This will be my entire existence for the next year, maybe two,’ he told Luc. ‘You and I will be spending a lot of time together. Of course, by your own admission you killed two men last night, but I shouldn’t worry. You’ll come out clean. These men were trying to keep the outside world out of Ruac, out of their business. They resorted to murder. They intended to eliminate your cave. You were protecting yourself, protecting a national treasure.’
Abbot Menaud arrived at mid-morning to offer up the abbey grounds for whatever purpose the authorities saw fit but Toucas didn’t have much time for him.
