Obsession (Year of Fire) (52 page)

With surprise on his side, getting rid of the first one turned out to be child’s play. He took the boy by the shoulder and as he turned around gave him a sharp punch in the throat. Al-Saud buried his knuckles in the sensitive point below the Adam’s apple, knocking him out in seconds. The boy collapsed, unconscious. Al-Saud took advantage of the shock of the other two to grab Juana by the wrist and wrench her to the sidewalk behind him. He heard the girl’s heels clicking as she ran away to the corner of Rue Orteaux.

The one who held Matilde shouted out orders in Arabic to his colleague, who was edging forward with his knife pointed at this wannabe hero. Al-Saud saw that the kid knew what he was doing. He held his weapon firmly and maneuvered the steel blade skillfully. He must have been trained in hand-to-hand combat.

Out of the corner of his eye, Eliah saw that the fourth attacker, the one driving the Renault Laguna, was joining his colleagues. He was also brandishing a knife and placed himself behind Al-Saud. He addressed them in Arabic, unnerving them.

“I’m giving you the opportunity to get out of this with all your bones intact. Give me the girl unharmed and I’ll let you go. Take your unconscious colleague with you.”

“Come and get her!” the one holding Matilde challenged him, putting his hand around her neck.

Matilde didn’t take her eyes off Eliah and dug her fingers into the delinquent’s forearms. Although she was struggling not to cry or fall to pieces, a few uncontrollable sobs slipped from between her lips.

Seeing the boy’s hands touching his woman’s skin, the soft, translucent skin on her neck, where he loved to kiss and smell her, sent Al-Saud mad. When he sensed the attack coming from behind, he reacted almost instantaneously. He kicked backward without turning around, as if he had eyes in the back of his head. The heel of Al-Saud’s boot drove into the attacker’s sternum; the man grunted and fell to his knees. At the same time, Al-Saud parried the knife thrust the third man aimed at his stomach. He bent at the waist to avoid the blade and seized the attacker’s hand by the wrist, then twisted it into an unnatural position behind the boy’s back, pinning him to the ground with his face pressed into the sidewalk. Al-Saud squeezed his tendons and the attacker dropped the knife with a scream of pain. A blow from Eliah’s elbow to the back of the head quieted him; he lay next to his unconscious friend.

The one holding Matilde was amazed to see his opponent crouch down before leaping to spin through the air with the poise of a dancer to finish off the only other one left standing, the boy who was recovering from the blow in the chest. The flying kick struck him in the neck and left him passed out just a few feet away from the other two.

Al-Saud fixed an implacable stare on the boy holding Matilde hostage. He was dragging her toward the Renault Laguna.

“Don’t take another step,” Eliah ordered in Arabic, and drew the Colt M1911. The criminal’s eyes grew wide when he saw the large gun. “Let the girl go.”

“I’ll slit her throat if you don’t put the weapon down. I’ll do it, here, right in front of you!”

Matilde saw that Al-Saud was holding the weapon firmly. Though he was a little disheveled—locks of gel-stiffened hair fell like straw over his face—and his suit jacket was a little wrinkled, he seemed composed and calm. She even thought she saw a sinister smile unfurling on his face.

“Has anyone ever told you that you have big ears?” The bullet from the .45-caliber burst through the boy’s ear, and he instinctively let go of Matilde to grab the side of his head. He looked at his blood-soaked hands and then at Al-Saud with an expression somewhere between supplication and terror.

“The next one goes here,” said Eliah, pointing between his eyebrows.

As he became aware of the fact that he had lost his ear, the young Arab broke into screams that echoed around Rue Vitruve.

Al-Saud ran forward to catch Matilde, who was staggering toward him. Matilde put her hands on Eliah’s chest and looked up at him with wide eyes before she turned white and collapsed.

“Matilde!”

The criminal got ahold of himself and fled toward the Renault Laguna, trying to hold together what was left of his ear and trailing blood behind him. He crawled into the van on the passenger side and sped off with the doors open. The brakes squealed as he turned right onto Rue Pyrénées. Al-Saud, busy with Matilde, didn’t notice that a car, parked near the corner, turned and followed the Renault.

The shot had attracted local residents, who were flipping on lights and leaning out over balconies. The doorman from the institute opened the door and stared at the scene on the sidewalk: three guys were lying dead or unconscious on the concrete while a fourth man held a young lady in his arms. She was also out cold, judging by the position of her head, her hair almost hanging down to the sidewalk.

Juana stopped the Aston Martin and got out to open the passenger door and help Al-Saud put Matilde inside.

“Get in here,” Eliah indicated, putting the driver’s seat down so Juana could get in the back.

“Stud…” she sobbed, but Al-Saud wasn’t paying attention. He was focused on removing Matilde’s bag and coat, which were splattered with the Arab’s blood, to look for possible wounds.

“Did they hit her?” he asked Juana, without pausing his inspection.

“No, I don’t think so. Let me take her pulse. Her pulse is a little low, but stable. She must have fainted out of fright.”

Having checked that Matilde had no injuries, he made a call to Chevrikov.

“Lefortovo, it’s Horse of Fire. It’s an emergency,” he said in Russian. “I need the services of your friend Inspector Olivier Dussollier, from the Criminal Brigade at thirty-six Quai des Orfèvres,” otherwise known as the Direction Régionale de la Police Judiciaire.

“What do you want with him?”

“I have three unconscious Arabs at eighteen Rue Vitruve. I want him to take them into custody and interrogate them. They attacked me.”

“I hope he’s on duty,” came the reply.

“Tell them to alert the hospitals. One fled and is wounded. I shot him in the ear.”

“Always a blast with you, eh, Horse of Fire?”

If there hadn’t been any witnesses to the event, Al-Saud would have ordered his men to remove the three Arabs and take them to the base for interrogation. He got out of the Aston Martin and walked to the door of the institute, where he picked up Matilde’s notebooks. He went back to the car. Juana was on top of her friend. She was alternating between softly slapping her on the cheek and massaging her hands, which were cold.

“Are you okay, Juana?”

“Yes, stud. They hit me harder than anyone else has ever dared. I’m going to have a bruise for days. Fucking bastards! Poor little thing…” she lamented. “Mat got the worst part. They were screaming at us in French, but we didn’t understand. I don’t know what they wanted.”

Al-Saud was switching anxious glances between Matilde and the three bodies sprawled on the sidewalk. A group of onlookers was crowding around them.

Matilde shook her head against the reclined seat and whimpered without opening her eyes. Al-Saud took her in his arms and drew her to his chest. He urged her to be quiet and kissed her temple.

“It’s all over, my love. You’re okay.”

“I feel sick.”

“Breathe deep, Mat, to relax your diaphragm. Stud, raise Mat’s seat a bit.”

Al-Saud did as he was told. Then he turned on the engine and switched on the heat because Matilde was shivering. It was hard to keep away from her, but Juana was right: she needed air. He fanned her with a notebook. As soon as he heard the sirens of the Criminal Brigade, he handed the notebook to Juana and screeched off toward Rue Pyrénées. He would catch up with them later at the Quai des Orfèvres offices.

When he got to the house on Avenue Elisée Reclus, he took Matilde in his arms and pulled her out of the Aston Martin. Her freezing hands closed around his neck.

“Eliah,” she whispered weakly.

“What, my love?”

“I want to take a bath. I feel dirty.”

They went in through the kitchen. Leila started to fuss like a broody hen and didn’t calm down until Matilde smiled at her. The girls, Marie and Agneska, put themselves at their boss’s disposal.

“Marie, run the Jacuzzi in my room. Agneska, tend to Juana. Give her a bedroom.”

“Stud, Mat showed me your amazing pool the other day. Could I go to swim for a while? I think that would be the best way for me to calm down.”

“Of course,” he said, and ordered Agneska to show her the way and help her.

In Al-Saud’s bedroom, Matilde burst into tears like a child when she saw that her butter-colored jacket was ruined by the bloodstains. This opened the floodgates to the anxiety and panic caught in her chest, gushing out in hysterical tears. Leila, cowering in the flower-shaped room, watched her and cried too. Soon the tears were joined by recriminations.

“You shot him when he was holding me!” Al-Saud struggled to hold her but she wouldn’t stop. “You could have killed me! You could have killed me!”

How could he explain that he had perfect aim? How to explain that there was no risk in shooting the assailant’s ear? How could he reveal to her that he was an excellent sniper, able to put a bullet between a man’s eyes from five hundred yards? His kept his arms relentlessly around Matilde’s small frame. She shook until, defeated, she pressed her forehead against his heart and cried quietly; the violence of her anger dissipated. Al-Saud chose that moment to whisper into her ear.

“You’re the most valuable thing in my life. Did you really think I was putting you at risk when I shot him?”

“Yes,” she sobbed.

“No! You were never at risk. Ever. That guy wanted to take you away. Did you think that I was going to let him take you away from me?” Matilde shook her head, her face still buried in his chest. Al-Saud kissed her on the top of her head and continued to talk to her in French. “Matilde, you don’t know what it meant to me see you in danger. You don’t know what it meant to me when I saw him touch you.”

“They took my chain with the Médaille Miraculeuse. My medallion…”

But the Médaille Miraculeuse was still with her. It had fallen off the chain when the assailant had yanked it off and caught inside her bra. She found it when she took it off in the bathroom, and burst into tears again. Al-Saud ended up taking his clothes off and guiding her into the Jacuzzi, where he washed her back with a sponge until the crying passed and she went limp.

“I didn’t know that you had a gun,” she murmured. Al-Saud could barely hear her over the burbling of the water. “Why do you have it?”

“To defend myself and protect what’s mine.”

“I don’t like guns.”

“I know.”

“I think they took the key that I had on my chain.”

Al-Saud remembered seeing it on the estate in Rouen.

“Where did that key come from?”

“Roy gave it to me at Jean-Paul’s party.

She told him what Blahetter had said and Al-Saud didn’t like what he heard. The situation took on another perspective in the light of this revelation. What shady businesses was Blahetter involved in? He would have to have another conversation with him and, if he found out that he had exposed Matilde to danger, he would strangle him right there in the hospital bed. He wouldn’t make allowances for his vulnerable state anymore. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply to calm himself down. She mustn’t sense his concern.

A little while later he took advantage of Juana’s excitement at having found the movie theater and left Matilde with her friend watching a Gérard Depardieu comedy. He went down to his study in his dressing gown and closed the door to call Chevrikov.

“I’m in Quai des Orfèvres,” the Russian informed him. “Your attackers are being treated at the Hospital Hôtel-Dieu.” This was one of the oldest hospitals in Paris, a few blocks from the Police Judiciaire. “Your beating almost killed them. They’re actually wondering who attacked who. They’ll bring them here later. I’ll call you when they’re ready to be interrogated.”

“Did you find out anything about the one that fled?”

“Nothing. The hospitals have been alerted.”

He hung up. He tapped the phone against his mouth as he turned the matter over in his mind. He dialed again.

“Thérèse, it’s Al-Saud.”

“Good evening, sir.”

“I’m sorry to bother you at this hour.”

“No problem, sir.”

“First thing tomorrow I want you to go back to Emporio Armani and buy another coat like the one you bought for Matilde the first time. The same color. Do you remember it?”

“Perfectly, sir.”

“Offer them triple if you have to, but it must be exactly the same.”

The last call he made was to his friend Edmé de Florian, whom he filled in on the events and asked to come with him to the police station on Île de la Cité. He came out of the office and went to the kitchen. He told Leila to bring a light dinner up to his bedroom. Medes dropped the newspaper and jumped to his feet when he saw his boss, who told him to get ready, they would be going out in an hour. The Arab’s accent had reminded him of his chauffeur, an Iraqi Kurd.

“How could you tell off the stud for shooting that son of a bitch?” Juana said, annoyed. “Are you crazy, Matilde? What is it that you don’t understand about what just happened? If the stud hadn’t arrived, those psychos would have raped us and slit our throats.”

“He never told me he had a gun,” she interjected, but contritely as she looked at her own portrait, the one she had given to Eliah. She had found it on his bedside table.

“Oh, that’s rich! There are some very important things that you haven’t told the stud, much more important than having a gun! So don’t play the victim here.”

“What’s happening?” Al-Saud asked, coming into the room.

“Nothing, stud. I’m sorry for invading your room. Mat wanted to show me the flower-shaped room. Your house is the best, stud! I didn’t tell you the other day, but I’ve never seen such a strange, beautiful house. The pool is best of all. Thank you for lending me this robe.”

“
De rien
,” he said, glancing at Matilde, who was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, wrapped in a robe from the George V that was enormous on her, with her portrait in hand. “I thought you might like to eat here. What do you think, my love? We’ll put the table in the flower room and, while we eat, we can look out over the Andalusian patio.” Over the intercom he ordered Marie to turn on the patio lights.