Come, Barbarians (27 page)

Kruse did not give the driver a tip.

No one answered when he pressed the call button for the apartment. He pressed it again, and then he pressed all of them and waited for someone to buzz him in. A French elevator would never feel right. They were always too small, like mousetraps. At the top of the stairs he crept to the door and listened while he coaxed his heart and his breaths
to slow. The voices of two men and a woman, not Annette. He could not make out what they were saying, not even the tone.

The door was locked. He tucked in his shirt, adjusted his brown tie, and knocked. The footsteps were heavy. One of the fighting systems he and Tzvi had folded into their work was Wing Chun, developed by a Chinese nun in the eighteenth century to circumvent other more aggressive, more masculine arts. The great innovation, in Wing Chun, is deflection: you use an opponent’s brute strength and overconfidence against him. Kruse prepared to deflect whomever or whatever opened the door, and then to attack. He had planned to teach Lily.

It would never end, as Joseph had warned him.

A tan woman in an expensive white dress opened the door, and her perfume blew over him. She was forty and severe, with a head full of blonde hair that was too big for her tiny body, like a Hollywood star. “What do you want?”

Over her shoulder he could see a man in a suit, standing in the front of the room. Others were sitting but he couldn’t make them out in the dim orange lamplight. “Is Annette here?”

“She’s very busy. Are you a neighbour, perhaps?”

No one spoke in the apartment.

The woman closed her eyes for a moment, waiting for an answer. “Monsieur, to be frank, this is not a terrific time for a visit.”

Kruse stepped into the apartment and shoved the woman aside. She squeaked with indignation. He saw Annette but not Anouk. The large man who had been standing, with a communications device in his ear, approached Kruse with his hand straight out, to push him or warn him, something. His grip was strong, on the front of his suit, part lapel and part white shirt. Kruse looked for a moment at Annette; she appeared stunned. Was Anouk sleeping?

“This is a private conversation, Monsieur.” The man began to shove Kruse toward the door.

Kruse allowed himself to be shoved. He looked around the bodyguard. “Are you okay?”

Her eyes were red but no one had hurt her, not yet.

Kruse removed the big hand and torqued it and guided the big man to the floor by his wrist. The man squealed through his teeth. “Shh,” Kruse said, as he locked the man’s face to the white tile floor with his new black shoe. “The baby’s sleeping.”

The woman had backed into the apartment and one of the other men stood up. Whoever they were, they had come with one thug and he was on the floor. They were not accustomed to this, not the guard, not the woman, and not these men. Despite what the hotelier had said about Joseph, that he was an aristocrat, he was a pretender. Joseph vibrated with the business of his family, even if his suit fit perfectly and he spoke like the minister of culture. This woman and these men who stood up, soft around the belly, looked at him as though he had vomited.

“Christophe.” Annette stood up, from the half-shadow she had been sitting in. She lifted her own hands, slowly, and bent her knees as she approached him, as though he were an untamed animal. “They aren’t here to hurt us.”

Kruse released the man on the floor and he rolled away, cussing to himself. Annette put her hands on his chest and looked up at him.

“Who are these people, Annette?”

One man remained sitting, at the window with a sliver of the Eiffel Tower. Finally he stood up, tall and thin, and Kruse recognized him before he spoke. He wore the shiny grey double-breasted suit he had been wearing during his speech. What remained of his hair was combed back over his head.

“Monsieur, allow me to congratulate you.” He extended his hand.

Annette stepped aside and the mayor of Paris lowered his head.

“And to express my sincerest apologies, on behalf of all of us.”

Kruse looked down at his hand but did not take it. “All of us?”

“France.” He folded his rejected right hand into his left and gently rocked on his black shoes. “I will not incriminate myself, Monsieur Kruse, just to do so. I found out about this recently, I assure you. This very night. But I imagine you know, by now, why the men and women who orchestrated this terror—the destruction of your family—were motivated to act. We can go back in time, not long ago, to distrust and hatred, to empires of blood. Or we can move into the future together, with new ideas of what it means to be French, to be European.”

“You killed my daughter, Monsieur. You killed my wife.”

The mayor did not speak. He did not nod. But he did not back away from it. “What has happened here, from the beginning, is shameful and murderous. It is anti-democratic, a stain on the republic. You are correct in that, perfectly so, and the responsibility for making amends rests with me. Your family, Jean-François de Musset and his wife … there is, I realize, no way to give back what we have taken from you. The man you confronted today, at the conference, set all of this in motion on his own.”

“Your senior adviser.”

“Yes.”

“Say his name, Monsieur, for Annette’s story.”

“Philippe Laflamme. He has worked for me since 1962, since the Pompidou years. There is a danger, in politics, of feeling immune. Ideas are like bunkers. You hide in them and you forget, over time, who constructed them, upon whose land they were built. Monsieur Kruse: he has been dismissed in disgrace.”

“That isn’t enough.”

“Of course not.” The mayor gestured at Annette, still standing close enough to touch Kruse. “This is what we have been discussing, Monsieur Kruse. Making amends. The right decisions for the republic. In the spirit of solidarity and for the good of France I do hope you will
speak to us—as Madame Laferrière has spoken to us—of a different sort of future together.”

“Listen, Christophe, to what he is proposing. Not for me or for you, but …” She motioned toward Anouk standing at the opened door of the bedroom, not in pyjamas but in a red flannel nightdress. Her black curly hair was whorled. The bodyguard remained on the floor, sitting with his back to the wall, massaging his right arm and his wrist.

“Monsieur Christophe.”

“Anouk.”

“You came to say good night?”

“I did.”

She realized that a room full of adults was looking at her and retreated shyly into her bedroom. Kruse asked the others to wait, and followed her.

ANNETTE AND ANOUK STOOD ON THE SIDEWALK IN THE WET SNOW,
pointing at the animatronic table of ravens enjoying the Réveillon de Noël. The ravens turned to one another, lifting and lowering glasses of red wine with their wings. A French carol that sounded like a Catholic hymn, only partially lifted by light-toned bells and twinkles, played as the robot birds celebrated. In her free hand Annette carried two large white bags from Printemps. They had taken dinner in the tea room of the department store, under the pretty cupola, and now they moved slowly along the window displays of Galeries Lafayette.

Kruse felt him before he arrived, crossing the street from the old opera house, the Palais Garnier. It was the third time in a week.

“Do they know you’re spying?”

If he did not speak to him, perhaps he would go away. “Spying” was not at all the right word.

“You’re obviously not doing the best job of forgetting about them.”

“Go away, Joseph.”

“You worry about Annette and Anouk. I worry about you.”

Kruse walked out of the light from the opera house and Joseph lit a cigarette, following along.

“One of these days, Christopher, you might invite me to your pretty new apartment for a glass of wine.”

“You drink too much.”

“Only when someone’s being skinned. It almost never happens these days.” They stood together and watched Anouk and Annette across the street, moved in the salt and slush to keep up with them. “How’s the girl?”

Kruse had vowed—and tried—to remove himself from their lives, for their sake. “She’s fine for now, I think. Nightmares.”

“Of course.”

“But she’s never had her own room before. I think she crawls into bed with Annette most nights.”

“She starts at a new school in January, doesn’t she? The mayor’s alma mater.”

“Brigitte Bardot went there as well.”

“And Sartre. From Rue Santeuil to a private school.”

“What do you want, Joseph?”

“It’s not what I want. It’s what they want.”

“These people have what they want: they bought her story. They bought her.”

“And you, Christopher.”

“They bought my silence. They didn’t buy me.”

“For the good of the republic.” Joseph put his hand on his heart, lifted his chin like a veteran on Armistice Day. “You’re deluding yourself, my friend.”

The crowds in front of the Christmas window displays had thickened. A tourist bus had emptied into Boulevard Haussmann and cameras flashed off the glass. The word for “window shopping” in French
is
lèche-vitrine
—”window-licking.” No matter how French he became, that would always be peculiar.

“They don’t have what they want, Christopher. They have what they wanted. And they never stop wanting, which is a business opportunity.”

“For you?”

“And for you. You’ve come up in conversation.”

“At gangster meetings?”

“I’m not talking about gangsters. I’d never involve you in petty gangsterism. As much as I find it charming, it’s not for you.”

“Only one thing matters. If they leave Annette and Anouk alone, they can forget about me.”

“They don’t want to forget about you. You didn’t really think they would. The republic is always a moment away from the next disaster. Men like you. Men like us …”

Annette and Anouk stepped into a moving crowd in front of the next window of ravens.

“This work we’re doing, Christopher, I know you’d like it. And if you want Annette and Anouk to be safe, safe for always, there is one rather perfect way.”

It was so busy in front of the window that some people were moving out onto the boulevard, a dangerous place. Even in the light snow, scooters deked around cars. Buses and slow-moving, top-heavy white vans careened into the lane. Anouk and Annette were in the middle of the mob in black coats and scarves, jostling and flashing in front of the ravens. The birds twirled on a royal floor, under a chandelier, to a creepy, slowed-down version of “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas.” Mother and daughter were separated, no longer holding hands.

Kruse abandoned Joseph to his cigarette and sprinted across the street, shoved his way into the crowd. He picked up Anouk and carried her out, her soft cheek touching his. He kissed her twice before
her mother arrived and put her down and made her promise to be more careful. She complained, not really complaining, that his chin was scratchy. They held hands.

Annette escaped with her bags and met them under the red departmentstore awning. He pretended and Annette pretended it was a coincidence. They pretended not to know what they knew, to have seen what they had seen. Maybe they could step into a brasserie far from this mad sidewalk, for a cup of hot chocolate or a glass of pineau des Charentes, Annette’s favourite. She knew of a place on Rue de la Michodière. He glanced inside the bags: some boxes, an owl
doudou
peeking out of yellow tissue paper. At a store near his own place, he had found a porcelain tea set for Anouk: it was white with delicate violets. He had already bought and assembled a small table with four matching chairs and had set them up in a corner near the fireplace, over lacquered parquet. On a soft floor, a girl can drop as many teacups as she likes. They will not break.

WALTER AND PATRICIA WELLS, OF VAISON-LA-ROMAINE AND PARIS,
were marvellous cultural ambassadors—and friends—as I researched this novel in France. My beautiful wife, Gina Loewen, and my inspiring children, Avia and Esmé, allowed me to drag them around the hexagon for a year.

The Canada Council for the Arts helped make that year possible. So did John McDonald III and Allan Mayer (though they didn’t know it) and my mother and brother, Nola and Kirk Babiak, who watched over my phantom life in Canada.

Thank you to the brilliant Jennifer Lambert and Jane Warren and others at HarperCollins Canada for their intelligence, their hard work, and their patience. Thank you to Randall Klein and Mark Tavani, for their ideas and encouragement.

It feels measly and ridiculous to simply thank Martha Magor Webb, who worked so hard with me on this novel.

Someday I will design and perform an opera for you, Martha. Or something.

TODD BABIAK
is an award-winning author and screenwriter. His second novel,
The Garneau Block
, was a #1 regional bestseller, a longlisted title for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the winner of the City of Edmonton Book Prize. His fourth novel,
Toby: A Man
, was shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal and won the Alberta Literary Award for fiction. Todd Babiak is the co-founder of Story Engine, a consulting company based in Edmonton and Vancouver.

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“With
Come Barbarians
, Todd Babiak stands shoulder-toshoulder with Greene and le Carré but mak es the world his own, infusing it with French New Wave cinema and an emotionally resonant voice to craft a thriller of distinction, and of the heart.”
–ANDREW PYPER, bestselling author of
The Demonologist

“
Come Barbarians
is a heart-wrenching and heart-stopping thriller filled with powerful demonstrations of familial love as well as remarkable, chilling violence. Babiak masterfully negotiates these two extremes in this fast-paced, intelligent novel that had me white-knuckled until the last page.”
–IVY POCHODA, author of
Visitation Street

“Todd has crafted a dark mystery that had me contemplating, ‘What would I do?’ all the while painting a beautiful landscape. Would make Richard Castle proud!”
–NATHAN FILLION, star of
Castle

“A strong, accomplished thriller with a subtle touch of character and a great sense of France and French politics.”
–MARTIN WALKER, author of the internationally bestselling Bruno, Chief of Police series