Something had gone terribly wrong.
Where was Simard?
‘Pelay!’ he screamed. ‘Pelay!’
Luc carried Sara up the dark stairs. At the top there was an unlocked door.
They were in a kitchen, an ordinary cottage kitchen.
He carried her through into a hall and a sitting room, dark and unoccupied, the layout similar to Odile’s house. He placed Sara onto a couch and adjusted the sheet to cover her properly.
He parted the curtains.
It was the main street of Ruac.
Isaak’s car was parked across the street in front of Odile’s house.
All the houses were connected. The underground hall was, as he suspected, an excavation under the road.
He quickly checked Jacques’ phone. There was a good signal. He punched up the recent call list.
Father – mobile.
Good, he thought, but no time now.
The keys to Isaak’s car were long gone.
He had a quick rummage; he tried to be as quiet as he could, assuming the occupant of the house was somewhere underground, but he couldn’t be sure of that.
In the hall he found two useful items; a set of car keys and an old single-barrelled shotgun. He broke the gun open. There was a shell in the barrel and a few more rounds in a pouch.
Bonnet waddled through the underground complex, screaming for Pelay. In the clutches of the tea, none of the other men would be functional for a good hour or more. The fate of his village was riding on him.
I’m the mayor, he thought.
So be it.
Then he found Pelay in one of the corridors, slipping out of one of the rooms.
‘Where the hell were you?’ Bonnet screamed.
‘Checking. Watching. Keeping the peace,’ Pelay answered. ‘Like I’m supposed to be doing. What’s the matter?’
Bonnet yelled for Pelay to follow him then told him what had happened through breathless gasps as the two old men began to run.
Bonnet found the light switch for the corridor.
Nothing.
At the next corridor he again switched on the lights.
He pointed. ‘There!’
There was a streak of red marking the floor where Sara’s bloody bedsheet had dragged. The corridor led to the baker’s house. He drew his pistol and both men made for the stairs.
Luc awkwardly bundled Sara into the cramped back seat of the baker’s Peugeot 206 parked in front of the cottage. The car had obligingly chirped and given itself up when Luc pressed the unlock button from inside the sitting room.
He started it, put it in gear and sped off.
In his rear-view mirror he saw Bonnet and Pelay emerging from the baker’s front door. He heard a shot ring out. He shoved the Peugeot into second and floored it.
Bonnet ran back to his cafe to get his own car keys.
They had to be stopped.
They had to be killed.
He screamed these mandates at Pelay.
Luc was talking fast and loud and pushing the little Peugeot to its limits on the dark empty country road. He was brow-beating a low-level emergency services operator to push his call higher. He needed to speak to Colonel Toucas in Perigueux.
The colonel had to be wakened!
He was Professor Simard from Bordeaux, goddamn it!
He had the Ruac Abbey murderers in sight!
Bonnet had his keys in hand and was about to shut the cafe door when his mobile rang.
Luc was shouting at him. ‘It’s over, Bonnet. It’s done. The gendarmes are on the way to Ruac. You’re finished.’
Bonnet’s rage spouted like lava. ‘You think it’s done? You think it’s done? It’s done when I say it’s done! Go to hell and say goodbye to your goddamned cave! Come on, try to stop me! Come on! Try!’
Bonnet’s car was at the kerb in front of the cafe. He folded himself into the driver’s seat and Pelay climbed in beside him as fast as an old man could.
‘My rifle is in the boot,’ Bonnet said.
‘I’m still a good shot,’ Pelay grunted.
Bonnet pulled the car over to the side of the road at a point he knew, closest to the cliffs. Pelay retrieved the rifle and gave it a perfunctory check. It was an M1 carbine with a sniper scope, liberated from a dead US soldier in 1944. Pelay had been there. He remembered the day. He and Bonnet also took the young man’s wallet and boots. It was a good gun that they’d used to kill a lot of boche. Bonnet kept it clean and oiled.
The two men ran into the woods, the branches whipping their faces.
After a while, they separated.
Bonnet made straight for the cliffs. Pelay took an oblique path through the dark.
Luc drove to the dirt road leading to the parking area above the cave. He didn’t want to run the car all the way. Whatever happened, Sara had to be safe, so he parked a quarter mile away and leaned over the seat.
She was gradually coming out of it.
‘I’m leaving you here, Sara. You’ll be safe. I’ve got to save the cave. Do you understand?’
She opened her eyes, nodded, and drifted off again.
He wasn’t at all sure she did understand but it didn’t matter. Hopefully he’d be around to explain it to her later.
Bonnet could hear his feet pounding and rustling on the forest floor and the wheezy bellows sound his heaving chest was making. There was a clearing ahead, the gravel parking area which the archaeologists had laid down. He was close.
The big oak tree was across the gravel lot, the landmark he’d chosen, and he was glad he’d picked an easy one to spot in the dark.
The gravel sprayed under his heavy fire brigade boots.
Luc wished he had a torch to light his way. It was pitch black but he kept to the lane. It was a chore running with the shotgun. Sara had felt lighter in his arms.
Ahead was a band of grey, the horizon over the cliffs.
Something was silhouetted in the grey, moving.
Bonnet.
Bonnet was at the base of the tree. A metre away from the trunk was the pile of rocks which he and Jacques had piled up to mark the spot.
Bonnet fell to his knees and began to remove and scatter the rocks. The leather case was just below the ground in a shallow hole.
He slowly lifted the case out, careful not to disturb the copper wires that ran to its terminals. It was a Waffen-SS M39 detonator, liberated from a division of combat engineers in 1943. It was pristine and efficient- looking, a heavy brick of cast alloy and bakelite. Bonnet was confident it would work perfectly.
It had been a tough job but he was confident his old demo men had done it properly, auguring into the cliffs in a half-dozen spots, stuffing picratol, lots of it, deep into the ground. A huge swathe of the cliffs would crumble into the river taking the cave with it.
The cave that had brought his village to life and threatened it with death would be dust. If Pelay did his job, Simard would be dust. He’d find Sara and she’d be dust.
He cranked the wooden handle and heard it ratcheting. When he couldn’t turn it anymore he would put his
