THE LUBéRON, FRANCE
By the time Gabriel breached the outer limits of the light, he could see Keller charging hard and fast across the garden. The Englishman arrived at the open French door first and took up a position along the left side. Gabriel went to the right and looked briefly down at the man who, a few seconds earlier, had stepped into the garden for a breath of fresh air. There was no need to check for a pulse; the .45-caliber round fired by Keller’s gun had entered the skull cleanly and exited in a mess. The man had never known what had hit him and probably had been dead before he fell. It was a decent way to depart this world, thought Gabriel. For a criminal. For a soldier. For anyone.
Gabriel looked at Keller. Their poses were identical: one shoulder against the exterior of the villa, two hands on the gun, the barrel pointed at the ground. After a few seconds Keller gave a terse nod. Then, raising the HK to eye level, he rotated silently inside. Gabriel followed and covered the right side of the room while Keller saw to the left. There was no movement and no sound other than the television, where Jimmy Stewart was pulling Kim Novak from the waters of San Francisco Bay. The room smelled of spoiled food, stale tobacco, and spilled wine. Empty cardboard containers littered every surface. A month in Provence, thought Gabriel, Marseilles underworld style.
Keller inched forward through the flickering light of the television, the HK extended, sweeping back and forth in a ninety-degree arc. Gabriel hovered a half step behind, his gun pointed in the opposite direction but moving in the same arc. They came to an archway separating the sitting room from the dining room. Gabriel pivoted inside, swiveled the gun in all directions, and then pivoted back to Keller’s side. At the entrance to the kitchen, he quickly repeated the movement. Both rooms were unoccupied, but both were piled high with soiled plates and cutlery. The squalor of the place made the back of Gabriel’s neck burn with anger. As a rule, captors who lived like pigs did not treat their hostages well.
At last they came to the entrance hall. It was the one place in the villa that still bore any resemblance to the photographs Gabriel had seen at the offices of L’Immobiliere du Lubéron. The heavy timbered door with iron studs. The small decorative table. The two flights of limestone steps, one rising to the second level of the house, the other sinking into the basement. Both were in total darkness.
Keller took up a post midway between the two as Gabriel drew a Maglite from his pocket. He left the light switched off and descended blindly into the gloom, slowly, one step, two steps, three steps, four. Halfway down, he heard a sound from above, footfalls, muffled and quick. Then came two dull thumps, the sound of an HK45 with a suppressor firing two shots in rapid succession.
Someone had come down the stairs.
Someone had bumped into the man who scored the highest total ever recorded in the killing house at Hereford.
Someone had died.
Gabriel switched on the Maglite and raced down the steps two at a time.
At the bottom was a foyer with a tile floor and doors on each of the three walls. The owner’s storeroom was on the left. Caught by the beam of the Maglite, the padlock sparkled with a brightness that suggested it had not been there long. Gabriel swung the rucksack from his shoulders, removed the bolt cutters, and closed the jaws around the shackle. A few pounds of pressure were all it took to send the padlock clattering to the floor. Gabriel moved aside the latch and pushed open the door. The smell hit him instantly. Heavy and nauseatingly sweet. The smell of a human being in captivity. He played the beam of the Maglite around the interior. A cot. Handcuffs. A hood. A bucket for a toilet. Insulation to muffle the screaming.
But Madeline was gone.
Upstairs there were two more dull thuds from Keller’s muted HK.
Then two more.
The first body was in the entrance hall, at the base of the stairs leading to the second floor. It was one of the guards who hadn’t shown his face outside the villa. Now, thanks to two hollow-nosed .45-caliber rounds, there was little left of it. The same was true for René Brossard, who was sprawled next to him, a gun still in his lifeless hand. The woman was on the second-floor landing. Keller hadn’t wanted to shoot her, but he’d had no choice; she had pointed a gun at him and given every indication that she intended to fire. He had spared her face, though, shooting her twice in the upper torso. As a result, she was the only one of the three still alive. Gabriel knelt next to her and held her hand. It was already cold to his touch.
“Am I going to die?” she asked him.
“No,” he said, squeezing her hand gently. “You’re not going to die.”
“Help me,” she said. “Please help me.”
“I will,” answered Gabriel. “But you have to help me, too. You have to tell me where I can find the girl.”
“She’s not here.”