Murder in Passy (18 page)

French and Spanish police seek to reduce ETA’s capability by banning the political wing of the movement, which seeks an independent, autonomous Basque state. The logic to banning the political wing, which has operated for the last decade under different names— Euskadi Action the most recent—is that both wings are inextricably linked.

Banning the political branch, authorities hope, would reduce the flow of funds and support to the militant units or
ettaras
of Euskadi Action. Yet other authorities disagree, arguing a ban would stimulate robberies used to fund ETA operations along with “revolutionary taxes” exacted on local businesses under the guise of protection.

No one knows just how far the covert organization extends. Authorities estimate the
ettara
active in France using false passports and identities—members who are trained to kill and who work in cells of four people— could number a hundred youths.

Not a comforting thought. Her mind went to the
Imprimerie Nationale
heist, figuring it was connected. After all, to travel, to operate, one needed ID. Hard to find hundreds of clean passports for an activist group any other way. And profit by selling the surplus to fund operations.

She scanned the next article, from January 1992, focused on GAL, the dirty war. The article gave background on France’s vaunted tradition of a haven, an asylum for political dissidents, citing Lenin, Trotsky, and the Ayatollah Khomeini. Notably, since the Spanish Civil War in the thirties, it had been a sanctuary for refugees from Franco’s dictatorship, and the tradition continued into the eighties of providing political-refugee status for ETA militants, even refusing Spanish extradition demands.

But things changed, she noted, with the “dirty war.”

From 1983 through 1987 forty attacks on French soil by GAL, Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación, mercenaries hired by high Spanish officials, shot, kidnapped and blew up ETA members and innocent French bystanders. Responsibility extended to the highest offices in Madrid’s ministry. GAL mercenaries crossed the French border to wage war on refugee ETA members, and on French civilians thought to collude.

More than ten years later, with new disclosures and impending GAL trials of high military officials, ETA violence renewed with
ettaras
enlisted from disaffected youths. Known activities include sabotaging rail lines for a new high speed train from France to Spain. The planned route, a Y shape with 80% of the rail lines underground, runs aboveground the rest of the way through the Basque countryside. Authorities dismiss the sabotage as tactics by local business, under the cloak of ETA, to reroute commerce to their area.

The next article, dated the previous week, a stilted translation, led further:

This year in continuing reverberations from the revelations of high-placed security officials on trial suspected of organized vigilantism under the auspices of GAL, the dirty war, ETA’s attacks have escalated.

The airing of the state-sponsored GAL, “dirty war,” scheme in the early 1990s led to a political scandal in Spain.

Reactions to those attacks have caused an ideological split within ETA between those who refuse to condone violence and those who support armed struggle. The shift from general support for ETA showed during the election of former ETA sympathizing with Goikoetxea, a French Basque assemblyman from Navarre, who engineered the referendum recently passed by a narrow margin.

So Goikoetxea’s formal announcement tonight of the referendum agreement had faced dissent in broken ranks. Serious enough to spur the
ettaras
?

If Martine had had the time to read this, her tune would have changed.

Still, what did that have to do with Xavierre’s murder? Why now, on the eve of her daughter’s wedding?

But Irati’s connection, slim if anything, existed. Covert operations required money. A network needed funds to operate safe houses, to purchase arms. Irati, with the town house in the 16th and her inheritance from a successful, rich father, represented a small fortune.

Could Irati have sympathized with Euskadi Action, attended meetings, even donated, been put on the mailing list? An unwitting accomplice? Forced by … by what?

“In the next room, we see Balzac’s genealogical chart of
La Comédie Humaine
,” said a guide leading a group of middle-aged couples, educated retirees by the look of their culture-vulture guidebooks and high-end anoraks. Part of a culture tour, so popular with active retirees who boned up on history for educational dinners with their grandchildren or to impress their belote playing partners.

“On this chart, illustrated by Balzac himself, he outlines the saga’s chronology, with an amazing and detailed fictional character family tree. The interrelatedness by marriage, dalliances, friendships, village and clan ties, love triangles, tied by oaths, connecting …” the guide droned on.

Aimée looked up. Tied by oath. Agustino’s words.

Her cell vibrated in her pocket.
“Allô?”

“Irati’s on the phone,” Léo said. “She’s on the move, too.”

At last. Aimée scooped up the printouts and slipped them in her bag.

“No cell phones allowed,
shhh.
” Poking her head around the corner, the guide, a white-haired, pert-nosed woman with frameless designer glasses, frowned. She pointed to the sign. “You’re disturbing our tour.”

Aimée nodded, rushing to the stairs. “Can I listen, Léo?”

“My equipment’s not hooked up for second-party relay,” Léo said. “But I’d say she’s in a car.”

“What’s she saying, Léo?”

“Too much interference, fading in and out of dead zones. Doesn’t sound French.”

Aimée stiffened. “Basque?”

“Sounds Greek to me. But I can give you her geographic coordinates.”

High-pitched bleeping noises punctuated by intermittent blips sounded in the background.

“Hold on, Léo.”

With the phone to her ear, she took the narrow stairs two at time, crossed the tree-lined courtyard, and went up more stairs to rue Raynouard. Not two blocks from Xavierre’s, yet still several blocks from her parked scooter.

“Her tracking signal’s emitting on rue de Passy.”

“Cross street?”

“Looks like Boulainvilliers Métro.”

Merde!
Blocks away.

“Keep talking, Léo.” A biting wind hit her cheekbones. She wrapped her scarf tighter around her neck, plugged in her earbuds, stuck the phone in her pocket, and ran.

By the time she reached her scooter, she was out of breath. She pulled the scooter off its kickstand and keyed the ignition.

“I’m at Passy Métro. Which way?”

“Go north to Trocadéro.”

She gunned the scooter, the wheels bumping over the cobbled street.

After climbing the Trocadéro hill, she saw the bland white wall of the Passy cemetery. “I’m at Trocadéro … the Passy cemetery?”

“The signal’s moving down rue de la Pompe.”

Aimée turned left, shifted into second gear. She wove among the buses, faster now, flying over the zebra-striped crosswalks.

“She’s passing Lycée Janson de Sailly.”

The elite Catholic high school was several blocks ahead. Aimée swerved to avoid a sweeping street cleaner. Aimée tried to think where she was headed: Shop? A market? “What’s nearby, Léo?” A gust of leaves swirled by her feet from the gutter. Horns blared.

“On the map, Marché Saint-Didier,” Léo said.

“Can’t you pinpoint her caller’s location, the number?” Aimée asked, breathless.

“If she stays on long enough,” Léo said. “All my other scanners are monitoring work-related contracts right now.”

In other words, the military. And Léo needed another scanner to pinpoint Irati’s caller’s number and location.

Irati would be driving a Mercedes, the other dark-colored one from the driveway. But that described every other car in this neighborhood. Straining now, her breath vaporous in the chill mid-morning air, she veered right onto rue Saint-Didier.

A block down, she saw the rose-brick—covered Marché Saint-Didier. Locals with string bags clogged the pavement. A Mercedes was backing up into a crosswalk. Aimée braked, hopped off, and pulled her scooter near the lamp post.

A gray Renault came to an abrupt stop on her left. Two men jumped out. From the look of their short hair, nondescript dark blue windbreakers, and thick-soled black shoes, undercover
flics
. Or a special forces terrorist branch.

Aimée didn’t have time to figure this out, much less to speculate about how they’d known and gotten here so fast. She had to warn Irati, use this chance to get information from her.

Irati, wearing a long dark chocolate wool coat and boots, carrying a full Printemps shopping bag, hurried across the narrow street and into the crowd. Morning shoppers thronged the entrance.

Aimée followed her; she had to reach Irati before these men got to her. The playing field had shifted, but she didn’t know how.

“No signal, Aimée.”

“Got her, Léo.
Merci.
”

Aimée lowered her head and followed. The two men split up, and Aimée reached for the phone in her pocket.

She hit Irati’s number.

“Two men followed you, Irati,” Aimée said. “They’re entering the market.”

“You again? Leave me alone.” Pause. “You’re lying.”

“Turn around. See the one in the blue windbreaker?”

A gasp of air. She’d seen him. “You had me followed … why?”

“No, not me,” she said. “You’re being watched.”

“But who are they?” Irati’s voice quavered.

“
Flics
, special forces, who knows? But before you find out,” she said, “tell me where you’re meeting the Basques.”

“But you.… ” Irati stumbled. “How in the world … ?” she caught herself.

But not in time. She hadn’t denied she was meeting the Basques.

“Trust me, Irati,” she said. “I’m trying to help you, to find out who murdered your mother. What do they want?”

The line buzzed. Irati had hung up.

Aimée ran past counters of hanging red string sausages, lifeless beady-eyed rabbits suspended upside down, and displays of winter melons. Milling shoppers lined the aisles in the cavernous iron-strutted market hall. Shouts of “fresh Bresse chicken” came from a butcher in a bloodstained apron, along with scents of rosemary and fennel from the herb counter.

No Irati.

Think. Given the phone call, a “meet” set up in a crowded market, Irati’s options narrowed. Damned if she didn’t meet their demands, damned if she led the
flics
to them. In Irati’s position, she’d get the hell out.

One of the blue windbreakers stood by the cheese counter, the other near the sample segments of glistening orange clementines behind an iron column. They were ignoring the first rule of shadowing, the rules her father had taught her: never attempt to hide. No doubt they’d break the others too: keep behind the suspect, act naturally no matter what, and never meet the suspect’s eye. But she wasn’t going to wait to find out.

Aimée walked backward in the crowd, mingling in the stream to avoid attention. At the entrance, she turned and hurried like everyone else. A rear side entrance exited on rue Mesnil. In the distance she saw the back of Irati’s coat, already three quarters of the way to Place Victor Hugo. Almost a block ahead.

Aimée took off, her boot heels echoing off the tall limestone buildings lining the street. The sharp wind made tears form in her eyes. And then Irati had turned the corner.

Aimée pumped her legs. Ran as fast as she could. A minute later, she rounded the corner. Place Victor Hugo shone in the weak sunlight, a roundabout with ten streets radiating from it like the spokes of bicycle wheels. And no Irati.

Wednesday Midday

I
N THE HUMID
vaulted visiting room, Morbier wiped his neck with a stained handkerchief.

“Life’s a tightwire, high above the circus crowd: any moment, you risk falling,” said Lucard, the
juge d’instruction
. “But I don’t need to tell you that, Morbier.”

Lucard tented his slim fingers, trained his beady black eyes on the ceiling, and emitted a sigh.

Lucard had always reminded Morbier of a crow, scanning for shiny bright things in the gutter. After all, that was his job, so why shouldn’t he resemble a scavenger?

“The IGS insists on extending your time in the
garde à vue.
They asked for my opinion,” Lucard said. “A formality, of course.”

Another twenty-four hours in this hellhole. No chance of reaching Laguardiere, or finding Xavierre’s killer. A shame, too, since he’d worked with Lucard, a tough, thorough examining magistrate despite his youth, stylishly tousled hair, and Grandes Écoles bearing. He’d turned out to be just another lackey, a pinstripe suit in the system.

“Think I’m a flight risk, Lucard?”