brigadier now wore the small red button of the Legion d’Honneur in his lapel. That was new. He wondered if it had been awarded for the operation to intercept a shipload of illegal immigrants when Isabelle’s thigh had been shattered by a bullet from an AK-47.
The man accompanying the brigadier was so tall that he had to stoop unusually low as they scuttled under the slowing rotor blades. As the stranger straightened up, Bruno saw a fit-looking man in his forties with thick and rather long glossy, deep-black hair and the kind of dark shadow on his chin that suggested he would have to shave twice a day. His mouth was thin, and his jaw thrust almost arrogantly forward. It would have been a cruel face, but for the alert way he looked around him and the easy smile he flashed when he saw Bruno.
“Bonjour, Bruno,” said the brigadier. “Meet Carlos Gambara, deputy head of counterterrorism for the Spanish Ministry of the Interior. For this particular job, he’s my counterpart in Madrid, but he’s going to be here for a few days before attending the summit. Carlos, this is the man I told you about, Chief of Police Courreges, but I think you can call him Bruno.”
“Summit?” asked Bruno, sketching a hasty salute despite feeling a little odd doing so while holding a plastic bag in his left hand and very conscious of the silent bodyguard standing behind him with a submachine gun at the ready. They’d probably want to search his bag. “In St. Denis?”
“A little summit,” said the brigadier, lowering his voice as the rotor blades coughed to a halt behind him. “The Spanish interior minister and our own will be signing a new cooperation agreement on Basque terrorism-intelligence sharing, joint staffing of a common office for cross-border liaison, joint firearms permits and rules of engagement. Now that they’ve killed one of our cops here in France, the gloves are off-”
“Sir, I’d rather you all moved inside,” interrupted the bodyguard, whose hand was still inside his jacket, though his eyes were on the hills. “It’s a bit exposed here. Don’t want you falling into bad habits.”
The brigadier nodded and gave a half smile to the man. A sign of a good unit, Bruno thought, when the bodyguard could tease the boss a little.
“Welcome back to St. Denis,” Bruno said, handing the brigadier the bag. “Isabelle told me you were hoping to taste some foie gras, and there’s some Monbazillac to go with it.”
“Very kind, Bruno. It’s been a long time since breakfast.” He handed the bag to one of the bodyguards. “Maybe we can introduce our Spanish friend to a real French casse-croute, once we’ve done the inspection.”
“The brigadier has told me a lot about your shared adventures,” said Gambara, stretching out a large hand for Bruno to shake as they walked into the shadow of the chateau walls. Bruno took that with a grain of salt; nobody could hear themselves speak inside a military helicopter. “In the name of my government, we thank you for your help.”
“Welcome to the commune of St. Denis, or rather Campagne,” Bruno said. “When do the ministers plan to meet?” He scanned the wooded hills around them, seeing any number of places for a sniper to hide. Next week the trees would still be bare enough to give both cover and a decent field of fire. They’d need screens to cover the move from the helicopter to the chateau. But what kind of screens would stand up to a helicopter downdraft?
“Next week, final restoration work permitting,” said the brigadier. “That’s why we’re here, a quick inspection, and I wanted to bring you into the picture early and get to know Carlos. He’ll be staying for a few days, getting the lay of the land and checking the secure communications setup. Bruno, I’d like you to draw up a patrol plan to secure the immediate perimeter and all roads and tracks within a reasonable radius. I can deploy a company of gendarmes and another of CRS, for roadblocks, and a platoon of special forces for patrols, probably from the treizieme paras, your old unit. You know the drill and the terrain, so I’ll leave it to you.”
Bruno pursed his lips at the mention of the CRS; the Compagnies Republicaines de Securite were riot police with a fearsome reputation. He sensed the Spaniard watching him as he cast his eyes around the hills. When he looked back he saw Carlos was grinning at him.
“We think alike, senor. A good place for a rifleman. But the ETA prefers its bombs. And we have good solid screens that don’t blow over. If we’re still worried, we can have the ministers take a limousine into the courtyard direct from the helicopters.” His French was accented but good.
“Who picked this place?” asked Bruno, with a funny feeling that he already knew the answer.
“Isabelle suggested it,” said the brigadier, with a half wink. “And of course she sends you her warmest regards. She’s taken a liking to this area, and when she heard the renovation of the chateau was almost finished, she thought the summit would be a good occasion for the formal opening. And maybe our minister owed the minister of tourism a favor.”
“Why not hold the summit in our own Basque region, down by Biarritz?” Bruno asked. “If you want the symbolism of government cooperation…”
“Security,” said Carlos. “This is as close as you can get to the Basque country without having any Basques.”
“I wouldn’t say there aren’t any,” Bruno said. “There are some second and third generation…”
“I know,” said Carlos. “The ones who came to France in 1939 as refugees after our civil war.”
“Some of them made up the hard core of our Resistance,” said Bruno. “They hated Fascists and Nazis. Most of them moved back to the Basque district near the frontier when the war ended, but one or two married local girls and stayed.”
“We know. Communists most of them, some anarchists. We kept an eye on them, and we’re not worried about them. They’re mostly dead,” said the brigadier. He opened his briefcase, took out an envelope and handed it to Bruno. “Here’s a letter to your mayor from the minister. As of now and until the conference ends, you’re attached to the joint security coordination committee, which Carlos and I run. You’ll treat his orders as my orders.”
“What about my usual duties?” Bruno described the discovery of the body at the archaeological dig.
“An execution? In St. Denis? How recent?”
“From the state of the skeleton, at least ten years old,” Bruno said, and saw the brigadier relax his sudden tension. “But we have to find out who it is. J-J should be at the scene by now.”
“I understand, but this takes priority,” said the brigadier briskly.
“I imagine that keeping an eye out for strangers means doing your usual patrols and inquiries. You can probably combine some of the work, and I’m grateful for your help,” said Carlos. “I’m looking forward to spending some time in the district. I’ve seen our own prehistoric cave paintings at Altamira, so I’m hoping to see some of your famous ones while I’m here.”
Bruno smiled to himself at the transparency of the old routine of hard cop, soft cop. But the Spaniard was playing it the wrong way around. It was the brigadier with whom Bruno had already built a relationship, consisting of a grudging respect on his own part, along with the kind of conditional trust that soldiers give to officers who know what they’re doing. But Bruno was less sure what the brigadier thought of him, beyond being a useful local tool and on occasion a reluctant subordinate. Carlos was a new factor in the mix.
“What’s your own background, monsieur, if I may ask?” he said, with the blend of forthrightness and deference that he knew officers liked.
“I’ve something in common with you,” said Carlos, looking Bruno in the eye. “I believe you’re an orphan, like me. I went into the military early, like you. I was a combat engineer and served a year with the Eurocorps in Strasbourg. That’s where I learned my French. Then I was attached to military intelligence when I was with the Kosovo force back in ’99. So we both served in the Balkans, and I got to know your old commander, Colonel Beauchamp. I transferred into counterterrorism after we were pulled out of Iraq.”
“It sounds as though the brigadier has shown you my file already. So they brought you in after the dirty war?” Bruno asked. There had been a series of scandals followed by a massive purge of Spanish intelligence after state- sponsored death squads had been exposed for assassinating a number of Basque militants. Bruno was vague on the details, but he knew a lot of heads had rolled and a former interior minister had been jailed. He wanted none of that in St. Denis. It was bad enough thinking of that gangland-style killing back at the archaeological dig without contemplating some shadowy state officials plotting unlawful executions.
“Long after,” said Carlos coolly. “Those GAL killings were back in the 1980s, even though the scandal broke later. Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberacion-we’re not like that now.”
“The terrorists haven’t changed. ETA has killed over eight hundred people, half of them civilians,” snapped the brigadier. “If those Basque murder squads think they could take out a French and a Spanish minister with one attack, they’d take it, even if they do claim to be observing a cease-fire. That’s why it’s going to be top security here.”
Bruno said nothing. The brigadier, he knew, was the kind of ruthless operator who would not shrink from
