corner of a desk illuminated the Army captain arguing with someone, Bessette probably, just out of my view. French was flying fast and furious, and I could tell that Bessette was trying to calm the other guy down, but he wasn't buying. Finally, the captain slowed down. It sounded like he was delivering an ultimatum. I picked up a few words I had heard on occasion from French-Canadians sitting in Boston PD jail cells.
Contrebandier… that was smuggling or smuggler, I was pretty sure.
Droguer… drugs, I knew that one.
Americain… well, that was me.
Bessette got up and moved into view, calling the captain 'Pierre' like they were old chums. From the conversation so far I could guess he was trying to placate Pierre. I watched him as he shook his head 'no' in response to a question. He was a fireplug of a guy, squat but full of muscle. His hair was close-cropped and starting to turn to gray. His nose looked like it had been broken years ago. Maybe he had been a prizefighter once, or a stevedore. His hands were thick and beefy. He turned away from the captain and as he did one of those big hands grabbed a candlestick, and turning faster than I'd have thought he could, brought it down with a powerful swing right to the top of the captain's head. One second they were talking, and the next second Bessette was standing there, flecks of blood on his face, smiling down at the twitching body of his late-night visitor. There were some gurgles and thrashing for a few seconds, and then the only sound was my heart pounding in my chest to beat the band.
I tried to get a grip on myself and figure out what was happening. Who the hell were these people? First Villard shoots Georgie and then Bessette smashes in Pierre's skull. They were doing more damage to each other than to the Germans. My main concern right now was that no damage be done to me, so I glanced around for a quick exit. I looked out the one window, and it wasn't a bad drop, except for the sentry right below. I looked back across the hall and saw Bessette leaning out his window, giving a command and gesturing to someone. Footsteps came clattering up the stairs. I was cornered.
I wanted to shut the door quietly and hide under the desk until things settled down. It would have been the smart thing to do, but if I knew when to do the smart thing I wouldn't have been shoeless and sweating bullets across the hall from a corpse, in the middle of a B 8c E.
I kept my foot jammed against the door and pulled the handle toward me, keeping a quarter inch opening that gave me a view of Pierre's feet and Bessette's desk Two enlisted men trotted down the hallway into the office. They were Army, not sailors like the others who were guarding the place. Bessette barked something at them and they rolled up Pierre in the carpet and hoisted him like two rug merchants. No surprise, no questions. As if they had done it before. They left, grunting under their load. Bessette went out after them, and as he did he looked straight at me. Instead of turning down the hall, he strode across it, and put his hand on the doorknob on his side. I released the knob on my side in the nick of time. He closed the door with a slam. Only inches had separated us and I was sure he had heard me breathe, until I realized I hadn't drawn a breath since I saw him heading for me. I waited until I heard him walk away, and then slowly exhaled. Maybe this hadn't been such a good idea.
After counting to fifty, I opened the door again and stepped into silence. Bessette's office door was still open, the one remaining candle flickering. He'd probably return after they'd removed the body from the building. I went in, stepping around a puddle of blood that had soaked through the carpet. I gave myself two minutes in there, and started counting in my head, one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand… as I checked the wall- map of the Algerian coastline. Bone was circled, but so were six or seven other places. Eleven-one-thousand, twelve-one-thousand…
I inspected the top of Bessette's desk. Green blotter, pack of cigarettes, keys, a fountain pen, and some sealed envelopes that he must have been addressing. No open letters. I glanced at the envelopes. The top one was for Madame Mireille Bessette, Marseilles, stamped and ready to go. Another was to Jules Bessette, Blackpool, England, sealed but no stamp. Was there mail service between Vichy territory and England? So Bessette kept up with his relations and had, what, a brother or cousin in England? Twenty-eight-one-thousand, twenty- nine-one- thousand…
Damn it! I was looking for a password, not evidence that Bessette was a family man. I turned to the filing cabinet, and opened the top drawer. It was too dark to see clearly, but there were so many files, each with a tiny heading in French, I knew I'd never get through them all, much less understand what was in them. I looked in each of the four drawers; more of the same. The French Army runs on paperwork, like ours. I pulled out a few files from each drawer and flipped through them. Lots of reports, charts, numbers, carbon paper. Sixty-six-one- thousand, sixty-seven-one-thousand…
I put the files back, closed the drawers, and sat at the desk. I tried the drawers on the left and found the usual junk: paper clips, rubber bands, dust. The large bottom drawer held a bottle of cognac and a revolver. What a surprise. Eighty-four-one-thousand, eighty-five-one- thousand…
I urged myself to hurry! Were those footsteps?
I checked the middle drawer and rummaged through notepaper, an old newspaper, and a few receipts from a place called Le Bar Bleu. A blue matchbook from the same place. A street map of Algiers: I checked it for notes or marked locations, but there was nothing. Ninety-nine-one-thousand, one-hundred-one-thousand.
The right-hand drawers were all that remained. Blank paper in the first, nothing in the second. I pulled at the large bottom drawer. It was stuck. I pulled again. Locked! There had to be something in there. One-hundred- twenty-one-thousand…
I grabbed the keys and fumbled through them, looking for a small desk key. I found one and tried it. No go. There was another, and it worked. The drawer opened and I saw about a dozen thick file folders piled up. Why keep hundreds in the open file cabinet and lock up these? It had been so long since I saw a clue I almost didn't get it. One- hundred-thirty-five-one-thousand…
Damn! I wished I knew French! I couldn't make heads or tails out of this stuff. Then one file caught my eye. It was labeled 'Ordres de d e placement.' Deplacement? Did that mean travel? Travel orders? I put the file on the desk near the candle and looked through its contents. The forms looked familiar. These were all carbon copies, but they were duplicates of Villard's travel orders that we'd seen at the Gardes Mobiles headquarters. I couldn't make out the order they were filed in, so I just pawed through them. It was right at the bottom. Orders to Captain Luc Villard for the transport of twenty-five prisoners via the Bone supply depot, Captain Gauthier, commanding. Next to his name, there was one handwritten note. Le Carrefour. What was that, the name of a bar? Or the password? Wait a minute-I looked at the matchbook more closely. 'Le Bar Bleu-Bone' was written on the back with a phone number. I stuffed the matchbook in my pocket along with the orders. One-hundred-sixty-one-thousand…
Time to go! I put the files back and shut the drawer, eased around the desk, and listened in the hallway. I heard laughter, then footsteps coming up the stairwell, so I went for the other staircase at the end of the corridor. Then it hit me. I'd left the keys in the lock, but I'd found them on his desk! I turned and tried to get traction on the slippery floor. I almost fell, regained my balance, darted back into the office, grabbed the keys out of the lock and tossed them onto the desk, then ran out into the hallway, not even stopping to listen this time. I had to get out now under my own power or Bessette's office would run out of rugs. I made it to the stairs and turned the corner just as I heard the sound of boots in the hallway and Bessette's loud voice. It was close, but I beat him by a second. And I had a password, or the name of either a good restaurant or a carpet wholesaler.
Ten minutes later I was up on the roof and headed back to friendly territory. The prospect of an army cot actually sounded good to me. Kaz and I didn't have a room, but they had given us beds at the end of a hall where we could sleep and stow our gear. It felt like home, and I was glad to still be in one piece to enjoy it.
Chapter Eight
Dawn wasn't far off and I was torn between getting a couple of hours of shut-eye and waking Kaz to tell him about the murder. There was enough light at our end of the hall for me to see that Kaz was already awake, sitting on his cot, leaning against the wall.
'Billy…' he said, almost in a whisper. He didn't sound right.
'Kaz, you okay?' I asked as I knelt next to him. He didn't answer. He didn't have to. He was drenched in sweat and hot to the touch. His eyes were focused somewhere else.
'Billy, I waited for you.' He was talking to me but looking straight through me.
