Authors: Thomas Kirkwood
Mesmerized, Steven watched a replay of the Wednesday night search.
The man with the clipboard took up his post by the entrance. The van with the dogs parked in the same spot, and anti-terrorist agents began pouring out the back. The German shepherds, Gandoff and Thatcher, appeared just as Steven was beginning to think they hadn’t returned. Military cops and radio technicians swarmed down from other vehicles lined up across the road.
A palpable energy was building out there as the men organized to conduct the sweep. Someone shouted at Henri to unlock the gate. He shook his finger as if to say, Not yet.
Steven had seen enough to know what was coming next. He shot eight photos with the NTSB camera, catching a good one of Delors in hot conversation with the clipboard man, then retreated to the wine cellar. “They’re here,” he whispered.
“Good,” Warner said. “I was beginning to wonder. How do you feel?”
“Scared shitless. Michelet still hasn’t come. Michelet is the one who ran the dogs off before. You were right. I shouldn’t have assumed he’d be here.”
“We’ve done what we could. Let’s get into position.”
Steven locked the wine cellar door from the inside and studied the wall of crates in front of their bunker. If they had put anything back in the wrong order, he couldn’t tell. “You first,” he said.
Warner squirmed up on the cases that were stacked solidly, avoiding those in the second row that they had stacked to fall if subjected to excessive kneeing – or pawing. He reached the far wall and slid into the gap in the final row of crates where they had left their backpacks, the weird looking recorder, and the cage holding the last rat.
Steven turned off the light and went to join him. In the cavern, they staggered the crates to either side of them inward, buttressing them against each other at the top. Warner checked the rat passage to make sure rodent number 12 could squeeze his plump body through.
None too soon. The trample of footsteps echoed above them in the library; the search for listening devices had begun.
Steven and Warner were squeezed together in the tiny space, breathing and sweating as one. There was a clang in the distance. A narrow band of light appeared under the wine cellar door. The searchers were in the basement. They were coming.
Steven tried not to breathe.
Jackboots on old stone, gruff voices and beer hall laughter.
But no dogs!
Or at least no barking.
The noises gradually faded as the search moved away from the wine cellar. Steven was about to whisper something to Warner when the sound of a key in the lock caused his heart to leap. The wine cellar door opened, the lights came on.
Jesus, it was Henri! Thank God. The old man was talking to himself, mumbling about manners and city folk. The smell of perspiration, garlic and alcohol reached them as he opened the wire mesh gate to the special wines.
Henri mumbled more loudly than most people speak, calling off the names of wines he was looking for. Clos Vougeot, ’seventy-three, Château Brieuc, ’sixty-one, Bâtard Montrachet, ’ninety-five . . .
Glass on glass, the ring ever so delicate, as he stacked the bottles in his carrying basket.
More grumbling, more searching. Everything seemed normal, no indication Henri had noticed their presence.
Then came the exhilarating sound of the wire mesh gate being closed and locked.
Footsteps stopped directly in front of them. Silence, as if the old man had ceased to breathe. Then came a grating sound on the floor as crates were shimmied gently across the concrete.
Steven felt Warner tense.
“Château Lafite Rothshild, ’sixty-four,” Henri mumbled. “Why doesn’t the fool put the rest of these in their proper place before he ruins them?”
It was nothing. He wanted to tell Frank. Henri was not looking for them. He was trying to get to the bottles in one of the crates in the second row, a crate Steven remembered well.
They were safe. There was nothing at all unusual in the way they had reconstructed that row. The irregularities didn’t begin until row three. It would take Henri a little more moving, that’s all, and he would be out of here. Then they could relax and wait for the real show to begin.
Henri got what he wanted after a lot more grumbling, cursing and searching. He started to leave. Steven exhaled and gulped air. He had been holding his breath even though Henri couldn’t hear a thing. It seemed more natural that way.
The old servant had had time to get to the door by now. Why didn’t the light go out? Why didn’t the door close? Why didn’t he leave? What the hell was keeping him?
The answer came like a cruel blow. The search was coming to the wine cellar after all, rumbling through the great labyrinth of the basement.
Everyone in the search party, which Steven guessed consisted of at least a half dozen men, sounded agitated. They came closer, and their words were suddenly comprehensible.
Steven was glad Frank didn’t understand French. Maybe he could stay cool and save the day.
“There could be someone down here,” one of the men announced. “Thatcher won’t chase rodents and small animals if that’s who our someone is. She learned that in school. Gandoff, well that’s another story. He’s thick-headed. When we opened up the crawl space door, she sat there waiting for a command. Gandoff launched like an Exocet missile. Thatcher took one step inside when he blasted off, then stopped and backed out. Nothing in there but rats. But they could’ve been put there, which is why we’re here.”
Henri said, “Talk louder. I’m deaf. I didn’t hear a word you said.”
Someone else said, “Talk with your lips, Guillaume. You could set off dynamite next to his head and he wouldn’t notice.”
A malevolent hiss cut through the room as the man repeated his suspicions with exaggerated enunciation. Steven shut his eyes though he couldn’t see anything with them open. The dogs were here, he could hear them now, whimpering softly. They must have been trained not to bark. The ones that didn’t bark were the ones that bit. They were about to get bitten.
He felt his hand moving to his breast holster. Warner stopped him. Warner didn’t know what was going on. He couldn’t understand French.
“Get those dogs away from the wine!” Henri bellowed. “We have rats down here. Winter is coming and we have rats. They don’t hurt anything. But if you let those dogs rummage around, they’ll destroy a million francs of wine. Take them upstairs. You know what Monsieur thinks of them. Go on. Get out.”
“Sorry, old man. We gotta do our job.”
Steven pictured Henri blocking the doorway. He was old but not someone you bowled over easily. “What?” he shouted.
More hissing as the man enunciated.
“Nonsense!” roared Henri. “You saw that lock up there.”
“Maybe it’s you, old man. Maybe it’s you, I said. How do we know
you
haven’t been paid off by socialists or the unions to let someone sneak in here. Move over or I’ll have to move you.”
Scuffling, pushing, cursing. Steven’s heart pounded as if it would explode.
The dogs burst into the wine cellar. Their whimpering locked on the bunker like canine radar. Steven went for his gun again. This time Warner didn’t stop him. Warner was digging for the rat. He pushed it into the tunnel they had made for it and gave it a poke.
All hell broke loose on the outer perimeter of crates. Paws scraped wildly, heading for the bunker. Voices, loud raw voices, shouted contradictory orders.
And then came the crash, the ugly, sweet crash of a crate of priceless wine tumbling into a crevice, pushing other crates to the side and splintering against the floor.
Steven waited, his automatic pistol trembling in his grasp, while the agents restrained the dogs. There was a long silence before the man who had hissed finally spoke. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “In all these years, I’ve never seen her chase rats. What’s wrong with you, Thatcher? Sorry, old man. We’d like to help you clean up but we’re on a tight schedule. Let us know what’s broken. The government will replace it.”
“Do yourself in the ass,” Henri growled. “Get out of here before you break anything else.
The contingent left, the tension gone from the voices, some of the men laughing.
Steven listened to the fading tatters of their conversation. Someone said, “Last time we were here Gandoff took a shit in his geraniums. This time Thatcher trashes his wine cellar. I say we leave the dogs in the van from now on. This guy is going to be President of France someday. Why risk pissing him off?”
And then there was only grumbling, intimate grumbling nearby, grumbling that reached their ears on fumes of sweat and garlic. Henri worked for a long time. When he left, when the lights went out and the door slammed shut, Steven gave Warner a hug around the neck.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Midnight came and went without a sign of the others. Warner had been holding vigil at the vent for hours, staring out into the fog like a pilot on instrument landing, his camera ready. He cursed the foul weather for stranding him in the eye of the storm. They should have been on their way back to Paris by now, the condemning evidence safely captured on film and tape. Instead they were in a holding pattern, waiting for a break that seemed less and less likely to occur.
His back was killing him. An anxious, bone-weary fatigue replaced the nervous energy generated by the search. It wouldn’t be a bad idea, he thought, to get some rest.
He sat on the concrete floor with his back against the wall and closed his eyes. He was a light sleeper. The first sound of a car engine would jolt him into wakefulness, so he knew that he could doze without risking a missed photo op.
He had drifted off when approaching footsteps ended his rest. “It’s me,” Steven whispered, sitting on the floor beside him. “Our luck seems to be holding. Michelet and Haussmann will be on their way shortly.”
“How do you know?”
“A telephone call. Delors took it in the library. Michelet was at Orly waiting. Haussmann’s plane just landed.”
“In this weather?”
“It’s raining. The fog has lifted. How long since you’ve looked out?”
Warner glanced at his watch. “Twenty minutes. That’s welcome news.”
“It sure is. Listen, I brought you something to eat and the dregs of the coffee. This will probably be your last chance to fuel up.”
The coffee was cold, the pâté had made the baguette soggy. They tasted great. “Thanks,” Warner said. “How long from Orly to here by car?”
“About three quarters of an hour. Now the bad news.”
Warner stood and peeked out the vent. The yellow light on the gate post, which had been softened by fog, now shone brightly. “What is it, Steven?”
“The house must have gotten cold in spite of the fires in the fireplaces. The furnace has started to kick on. When the goddamn thing’s running, I can’t hear anything through the duct but a big whoosh of air. If we don’t figure something out, your tape will sound like a jet taking off.”
Warner said, “We’ll figure something out.”
“I was thinking,” Steven said. “Maybe we could disconnect the wires that come into the furnace from the thermostat. That’ll keep it from coming on.”