Diamondhead (65 page)
Authors: Patrick Robinson
Tags: #Suspense, #Fiction, #Political, #Thrillers, #Weapons industry, #War & Military, #Assassination, #Iraq War; 2003-
He was accompanied on the hospital steps by Claudette Foche, who was still wearing her blood-spattered clothes. The sight of her was a chilling, inevitable reminder of that November day in Dallas, Texas, in 1963, when the devastated Jacqueline Kennedy stepped, blood-spattered, onto the aircraft bearing the body of JFK, her slain husband.
The spokesman had no intention of conducting a press conference, and after the formal announcement, with a barrage of questions being shouted at him from all angles, he led Madame Foche back inside the building.
Among the pack of reporters at the base of the main steps to the hospital was Étienne Brix,
Le Monde
’s newly promoted bureau chief for Brittany. He had driven down from Rennes on pure instinct, sharing a car with a three-man television crew from France 3, a station always on its toes for regional news.
Le Monde
’s newly promoted bureau chief for Brittany. He had driven down from Rennes on pure instinct, sharing a car with a three-man television crew from France 3, a station always on its toes for regional news.
Étienne, the man who had first cracked the story of the Val André killer and his relentless pursuit of Henri Foche, knew more about the background to the killing than any of his journalistic cohorts. Most of them knew only what he had written in this morning’s edition of his newspaper. None of them knew about the missing car or the police manhunt that had gone so severely wrong.
When the scribes began to write their hastily assembled stories for the news media all over France, Étienne would again be way out in front, because he alone, thanks to the distant Inspector Varonne back in Rennes, understood the catastrophic failure of the security forces. And right now there were no further restrictions on what he could and could not use.
He called the news editor in Paris instantly and alerted everyone to the story. The wire agencies would probably be on the case, but he would file personally in one hour. He needed to make three more calls. Étienne’s epic, which landed on the news desk of
Le Monde,
bylined by Étienne Brix, read:
Le Monde,
bylined by Étienne Brix, read:
Henri Foche, the front-running leader of the Gaullist Party and almost certainly the next president of France, was gunned down by an assassin’s bullet in a Saint-Nazaire shipyard late yesterday afternoon.Monsieur Foche was pronounced dead on arrival at the city’s Central Hospital. He had been shot twice, in the head and chest. His wife, Claudette, who had accompanied him on the journey from their home in Rennes, was in the operating room while surgeons fought to revive him. Bravely, she stood on the steps outside the hospital as the announcement was formally made that her husband was dead.In truth, Henri Foche never had a chance. The first bullet took him in the central area of the forehead, and police say it was a deadly high-velocity projectile that blew his head asunder. The second one did the same to his heart. Henri Foche was almost certainly dead before he hit the ground.Police have long believed there was an assassin stalking the Gaullist leader, much as the Los Angeles Police Department did during the final hours of Bobby Kennedy’s life in 1968.Two days ago both of Foche’s personal bodyguards, Marcel Joffre and Raymond Dunant, were murdered on the beach at Val André in North Brittany. Police believed then that their killer was really after Foche himself. And I can now reveal that for the past twenty-four hours there has been a massive nationwide police dragnet spread across France.Desperately they searched for the killer, watching the hours tick away to the fateful moment when the Gaullist firebrand would take his place on the podium in the shipyard to give what many anticipated would be one of his greatest speeches. They had the assassin’s description: big, black hair, black-bearded. They had his name and address: Gunther Marc Roche, of 18 rue de Basle, Geneva, Switzerland. They had his passport number. They had his Swiss driver’s license number. They had the license-plate number of the car he purchased to make his getaway from Val André. They even found the car, in a public parking garage in Saint-Nazaire.According to Fox News in the United States, the president of France himself ordered an extra thousand security men into Saint-Nazaire to protect Henri Foche. The entire town swarmed with armed police and national guards.But the authorities had other information—French military experts, called in to assist in the original investigation, were certain the man who broke the necks of both bodyguards had served as a member of the Special Forces somewhere, either in the French Foreign Legion, Great Britain’s SAS, or the U.S. Navy’s SEAL teams.The killings bore the hallmarks of a man trained in the most brutal forms of unarmed combat, not to mention the accompanying skills such men have as snipers. With his assassination mission accomplished, the man apparently made a death-defying leap from the high floor of the warehouse into the Loire River. Again, authorities consider this was likely to be the action of a trained Special Forces combatant.And so it proved. Henri Foche was shot down in what turned out to be a welter of blood. Three security guards were found dead in the empty sixth-floor warehouse room from which Roche fired the shot that killed the king of the Gaullists. Two of them had crushing, murderous wounds to their skulls; the third had had his throat cut.Sometime in the moments after they were killed, Monsieur Foche’s new head of security, Raul Declerc of Marseille, was hurled out of the same window, presumably by the same man. He died instantly after the sixty-three-foot fall, in full view of the hundreds of shipyard workers who were on the main concourse to hear Henri Foche’s speech.
The remainder of the story was essentially background, though Étienne Brix would spend much of this night interviewing local people and the police.
He ended his front-page lead for
Le Monde
with these words:
Le Monde
with these words:
Last night police were warning that the big bearded killer from Geneva was still at large. He should not under any circumstances be approached by members of the public.
Le Monde
’s splash headline was:
’s splash headline was:
HENRI FOCHE SLAIN BY ASSASSIN’S BULLETS POLICE CORDON FAILS TO PROTECT GAULLIST LEADER FROM “PREDICTABLE” MURDER
The wire agencies, operating under terrific pressure at 7:20 in the evening, flashed:
Saint-Nazaire, Brittany. Wednesday. Henri Foche assassinated, 4:45 P.M. in Saint-Nazaire Maritime shipyard. Shot twice, head and chest. Gaullist leader dead on arrival at Central Hospital. Wife Claudette by his side until the end. Assassin still at large.
By 7:30 P.M. every media newsroom in the world was onto the story. Fox News in New York was quickly into its stride, leaving CNN standing, with most of its staff still trying to find another dozen reasons to criticize the Republican president.
Fox interrupted everything for the news flash. Norman Dixon was yelling instructions, Laxton was on the line from Paris with one of the fastest stories ever written, wrapping up details from every which way with uncanny accuracy and perception.
Things were happening so fast that Dixon pulled “the talent,” removing the girl who looked like the cover of
Vogue
from the front line of the action. Instead, he installed in front of the camera a very sharp young former sportswriter from London named John Morgan to address the nation.
Vogue
from the front line of the action. Instead, he installed in front of the camera a very sharp young former sportswriter from London named John Morgan to address the nation.
“We need someone who can hang in there,” growled Norman. “They gotta read fast, adapt, adjust, edit, and add stuff, without a break. Sports guys know how to do that—get in there, Morgan, and let’s go.”
Fox was first by a mile. It was 1:30 P.M. on the East Coast of the United States, just about at the conclusion of the lunchtime bulletin.
BREAKING NEWS!
flashed on the screen, and John Morgan came on to announce the murder of the next president of France.
BREAKING NEWS!
flashed on the screen, and John Morgan came on to announce the murder of the next president of France.
Eddie Laxton’s story was packed with detail, mostly gathered and rewritten from Étienne’s galaxy of innuendo, using his time-honored Fleet Street knack of putting 2 and 2 together and getting about 390. But Eddie knew what he was doing, and while he was not quite up to speed with on-the-spot Étienne Brix, he was not that far behind, and he was gaining.
The hub of the investigation now swung automatically to the Prefecture de Police in Paris, and by 7:38 Eddie Laxton was in there, talking to officers, chatting to old contacts, and firing back the minutiae on what was now an open cell phone line, direct to Norman Dixon’s assistant in New York.
Of all the reporters in the entire world working on this story, trying to make sense of arched, defensive police statements, Eddie was the first one to conclude, “These bastards haven’t the first clue who the assassin is. They don’t know his name, his address, or his nationality. They don’t know who hired him, or why. I’m not even sure about that black-beard bullshit, either.”
He told the reporter in New York to put him directly on the line to Norman Dixon, to whom he spelled out his doubts. Norman never hesitated. He wrote down on a sheet of copy paper, “French police yesterday admitted they had no idea as to the identity of the assassin. They suspected a completely false trail, and they’d heard nothing from al-Qaeda. Worse yet, the man who had killed Henri Foche had vanished.”
The subeditor passing the copy over to John Morgan risked a note of caution. “What if the gendarmes deny this?” he asked.
“Don’t worry about that damned rubbish,” replied Norman. “They’ll only deny it if they have answers. And Eddie says they have none. Hand it to John.”
Jane Remson was out on the terrace reading a magazine and waiting for Harry to come and join her for lunch. Awaiting him was his favorite combination of food in all the world—a smoked salmon sandwich, with just a light sprinkle of lemon on brown bread and butter, accompanied by a glass of chilled white wine.
There were, however, several provisos for this modest-seeming lunch for the emperor of Remsons Shipbuilding. For starters, the wine had to be French, and it had to be white burgundy, and it had to be from the legendary vineyards of Montrachet on the Côte de Beaune, and it had to be Puligny from the supreme Olivier Leflaive Frères estates. The salmon was even more esoteric. First, it had to be Scottish. It had to be wild, and it had to have been caught in a Scottish river. But the Scottish river had to be the Tay, and the fish had to have been residing in one of the glorious, lonely reaches southeast of Loch Tay, in Kinross.
Harry’s father had taken him there to fish one summer when he was fifteen years old, and the spell the river cast on the future shipyard boss was lifelong. He had never forgotten killing his first salmon, the largest fish that can be taken on a fly in freshwater—the thrill of outwitting the fish on his double-handed twelve-foot-long Scottish fly rod, judging the speed and drift, and all the life-or-death guile brought to bear in this silent, occult art. This was Izaac Walton’s
King among Gamefish
. Harry had never forgotten his father’s story of the wild salmon’s long and mysterious journey from the depths of the Atlantic, back to the waters of the place where it had been spawned, in the Tay River. And he had never forgotten the taste of the sandwiches packed up in the small hotel where he and his father had stayed.
King among Gamefish
. Harry had never forgotten his father’s story of the wild salmon’s long and mysterious journey from the depths of the Atlantic, back to the waters of the place where it had been spawned, in the Tay River. And he had never forgotten the taste of the sandwiches packed up in the small hotel where he and his father had stayed.
Harry had been back to fish the Tay several times, but one ritual he never missed. Every year he ordered from a small Scottish smoker, not four miles from the hotel where he had first stayed, twelve full sides of wild salmon from the Tay, one for every month of the year. Today Jane had asked the butler to slice one of the precious fish for Harry’s lunch.
And now the Remsons boss was on his way through the house. The problem was that he spotted the sandwiches at precisely the same moment John Morgan announced on Fox that Monsieur Henri Foche had been assassinated. Harry shouted involuntarily, “Jesus Christ!”
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