Murder in Belleville

the contents of various flaps and panels on the jumpsuit.

Lieutenant Veldrine helped Aimee into the flak jacket. “A disgruntled tearoom employee from the Mosque Paris went ballstique when his sans’papiers sister got bused to prison. He joined the AFL.” She shrugged, intelligence and humor behind her gaze. “Pretty routine operation. If you’re lucky, shouldn’t be long.”

Aimee covered her surprise. What about the children? But maybe everyone figured the units were biding their time until RAID marksmen got their shot. Aimee pointed toward the rack of locked low-light sensor rifles.

“Weapons authorization number?” Lieutenant Vedrine asked opening her weapons log.

Aimee racked her brains for Morbier’s number—what was it? Creature of habit that Morbier was, he usually picked his birth-date for such things, at least he had for his apartment digicode entrance and his office locker. She forgot if he was a year or two years older than her father.

“It’s 21433. Listen, I know one of the hostages.” Aimee took a deep breath. “We were in the lycee together. Her sister’s my closest friend.”

Lieutenant Vedrine paused, her mouth still.

“Who’s that?”

“Anais de Froissart, wife of the minister.”

“I’ll check that.” Lieutenant Vedrine bent and talked into her collar radio. “Confirm identity of hostage.”

The static from the radio competed with the sirens from another arriving bomb-squad truck. Blue flashing lights swept the streets.

Lieutenant Vedrine touched the headphone to her ear, straining to hear. Then she nodded to Aimee, chewing again in a deliberate fashion, looking impressed.

“From what command gathers, about twenty children and two teachers could be in either of three classrooms facing south,” she said. “Marksmen are positioned on rooftops lining the street.”

Aimee broke into a sweat. She had to find those children!

Lieutenant Vedrine activated the mobile radio linking Ai-mee’s unit to the others. She handed Aimee earphones and clipped a tiny microphone to her jumpsuit collar.

Aimee’s gut told her that this was her one shot in hell and she’d better take it.

If she didn’t find them, the body count would be higher and the bodies smaller. She joined the others quickly assembled on rue de PErmitage.

“We make a sweep of next door,” the sergeant said. “Make sure of total evacuation before sharpshooters lock these windows in their crosshairs, eh?”

Most nodded or murmured assent. As the group moved for-ward, Aimee sidled near a pillar and melted into the ranks. They entered the older building, an elder-care facility. Private and posh, by the looks of it, much more upscale than a maison de retreat retirement home.

Inside, members fanned out, and Aimee headed across an empty dining room; the tables were set with half- empty glasses of wine and plates of food were still warm. She entered the kitchen, which had stainless-steel counters, a jalousied grille scalloping the window.

Smoke and burning onions filled the stovetop area, making her cough. Copper pots simmered with soup stock on the blackened industrial stove, but the culprit was a large frying pan sizzling with rapidly deteriorating clumps of onion. Careful to avoid the searing-hot handle, she killed the fire, then lifted the frying pan with a towel into the sink of water. The hiss and smoke billowed, but she was already past the sous-chef’s butcher block littered with chopped vegetables and crushed garlic.

She exited into a dark back hall. With the building behind her, she faced what looked like an old theater. Behind her she heard doors shutting, and she realized that the CRS would enter soon.

This theater shared the back half of the elder-care building. Aimee hesitated; the sergeant hadn’t instructed them to climb to the next level. However, she figured the only way to reach the school would be to gain entrance to the theater attic and find the roof.

Her heels clicked on the marble as she wended her way to the mezzanine. The only other sound came from the old sconces, buzzing like insects, lining the grande mezzanine. She mounted the wide marble staircase. Dim, deserted hallways branched off the mezzanine level, barely lit by the central chandelier.

She heard rumbling and then a tinkling of glass. She tiptoed across the marble but stopped when the sound ceased.

Aimee saw the glint in the tall smoky mirror. She turned to feel a machine gun’s cold metal in her temple, and froze.

“Mademoiselle, seems you’re lost,” said a black-jumpsuited RAID figure wearing night-vision goggles and resembling a giant fly. “The CRS forces monitor the the lower quadrant. Not up here.” He stepped back and gestured with the gun toward the staircase.

“Bien sur,” she said, recovering her composure and stepping ahead. “But since I took a stage class in this theater years ago, and I’m familiar with the layout—”

“We’ll just make sure of that now, won’t we?” he interrupted. “Vite!” He gestured again toward the staircase.

BERNARD BERGE’S heart pounded so loudly that he thought the RAID team flanking him would notice—even with their thick helmets and headgear. A little voice in his head cried, “Why me??!” while Sardou, via a headphone in Bernard’s ear, repeated instructions. Rue Olivier Metra, deserted except for the CRS stationed behind pillars, shone in the weak April sunlight.

“Do you understand, Berge?” Sardou repeated. “Get him by a window.”

Bernard assented, wondering again if his mother would relent and bury him even if his body was unidentifiable after the explosion.

The team melted away as Bernard approached the deserted concierge’s loge by the school entrance. Ahead of him lay the ecole matemelle courtyard, lined with potted red geraniums and filled with tricycles. Shuttered windows and skylights in sloping mansard roofs looked down on him from three sides. The fanatic could be behind any of them! An eerie silence hung over the courtyard. He took a deep breath and a faltering step before clutching the limestone wall. His hands shook.

Bernard Berge prayed for a miracle, as he had as a little boy on the ship leaving Algiers. He prayed that the burning city would be whole and that everything was a dream. Now he prayed he’d wake up and find this was a dream too. But he knew it wasn’t.

“Get moving,” someone hissed from behind. He heard the clicking metal sounds of triggers being cocked. “We’re covering you.”

He made his legs move to the center of the courtyard. He shut his eyes and raised his arms high.

“I’m Bernard Berge,” he said. “From the ministry.”

Silence.

He opened one eye. Something red fluttered behind a ground-floor classroom window. Then a small head popped up briefly.

“Monsieur Rachid, I have authority to reverse the immigration orders.”

A parrot’s squawking erupted from the concierge’s loge, and Bernard jumped. He looked up. The windows stared vacantly back at him.

“In my pocket. I want to show you—may I enter?”

The only answer was the parrot’s shrill cry.

A little hand waved from the window, then disappeared.

“Monsieur Rachid, I’m coming in, and I’m keeping my arms high so you can see them.”

He concentrated on moving his feet toward the window. Before he could reach the door, it opened, and a small red-sweatered boy in short pants barreled into Bernard’s legs.

“Run!” Bernard said, keeping his arms raised.

“Loulou,” the little boy sobbed. “I can’t go without Lou-lou.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get her,” Bernard said.

“Loulou’s a boy!” he said.

“Hurry up,” Bernard said, irritated. He pried the little boy from his legs. “Do as I say!”

The boy ran and tripped over the cobbles. He landed, crying, by the wall. “I can’t leave Loulou!”