The Last Witness (59 page)

  Roman made one last call just before Massenat arrived, to Gianni Cacchione. It was a call that he knew one day he’d have to make, but events had brought things forward. Once Georges was hit, the Genie was out of the bottle. He felt strangely empty, morose, after putting down the phone. He’d weighed this from every side so many times that he thought he’d worked the guilt through long ago. Jean-Paul had cast him aside, showed little thought for him while pursuing his foolhardy plans; he’d brought this on himself. Maybe it was just that with Jean-Paul gone, there would be no more challenge, nothing more to strive for; he’d miss the banter and confrontation, playing in the shadows which he did so well. From now on,
he’d
be in the spotlight. 

  ‘You think everything’s going to go okay?’ Massenat asked.

  ‘Yeah, it’s not that.’ Heavy rain slanted against the windscreen, and Roman broke off from the repeated tapping of one finger against the steering wheel as he peered up at the night sky. ‘Just not the best night to be flying. So go easy on the falafel and the hot salsa, I ain’t brought a change of suit.’

  ‘Art. It’s Jean-Paul. I need a favour.’

  Art Giacomelli in Chicago listened thoughtfully as Jean-Paul explained his dilemma. ‘Things got that bad between you, huh?’

‘Well – it’s just I don’t know whether I can trust him with this or not. There’s always been some bad feeling between him and Georges, and I’m afraid that in the heat of the moment he might do something rash. It’s important to me that this is done right.’ Jean-Paul could hear the slow draw and exhalation of a cigar or cigarette being smoked Giacomelli’s end.

Faint smacking of the lips as Giacomelli chewed it over a second longer. ‘I can help, Jean-Paul, no problem there. But it’s very short notice – three and a half hours. I’m not going to be able to send one of my own guys. The closest that could make it is a guy I know works out of Toronto – Dave Santagata – ‘Santa Dave’ as he’s known.’

‘Is he good? Can he handle something like this?’

‘Yeah, one of the best. I’ve used him a lot. Young, keen, but not hot-headed. Cool professional all the way – he ain’t earned the catch-phrase ‘Santa always delivers’ for nothing. Don’t worry, he’ll keep Roman in check.’

  They made the arrangements. ‘Santa Dave’ would catch the next shuttle flight from Toronto and should arrive with half an hour to spare. He’d call Jean-Paul directly from the airport, by which time Jean-Paul said he’d have phoned Roman and told him he had one more along for the ride.

  Jean-Paul looked up at Simone as he hung up. His mouth skewed slightly. ‘Is that okay? Do you feel better now about things?’

  Simone ruffled her hair. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ She thought again of George’s panic that night in the restaurant about Roman, then the abduction; and now it was Roman being sent to get Georges out of the clutches of the RCMP. Perhaps someone else riding shotgun like this would make it okay, but still she felt uneasy. She shook her head. ‘Can’t we use someone else apart from Roman?’

  ‘Who, who?’ Jean-Paul held out both hands. ‘I can’t go myself. Even when the family was more involved with crime, I never get involved with such things – with security. Let alone now. And Massenat on his own without Roman’s direction would be useless. Like sending in a sheepdog without its owner.’

  Simone didn’t answer. She cast her eyes back down, shaking her head again slightly. Jean-Paul could tell that she was distraught, anxious, but he didn’t know what else he could do. She looked better than in the panicky first hours after Georges’ disappearance, but not much. Her hair was tidier but still lank, her mascara smudged where she’d rubbed at her left eye, and her face was tight with tension.

  He wished he could just reach out to her as he used to when she was a young girl, gently stroke her hair and say, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay.’ And she’d look up at him with big eyes and immediately trust, and that would be the end of it. But she was older now, time had moved on and past him without him hardly noticing – or had he just been too busy taking care of business – it seemed only yesterday she was a little girl. Still he might have been able to get away with reaching out to her, but these problems with Roman and Georges seemed to have put an extra barrier between them that was difficult to reach across.

He felt a sudden pang of fear again, a tight constriction in his chest, that he might lose her over this. In a way he had as much to lose as her if it all went wrong.

  Before the call to Art Giacomelli, he’d laid out clearly how he saw everything. They
both
desperately needed Georges back to talk with him: Jean-Paul felt sure that Georges going into the WPP was purely as a result of the abduction. Jean-Paul wanted to reassure that he’d had nothing to do with that, and hopefully then go ahead with his original plans of getting Georges away to Cuba for a while. And Simone no doubt wanted to let Georges know her feelings, whether their relationship had any future – which Jean-Paul sensed Simone hadn’t even got clear yet in her own mind. One area he’d batted on Georges’ behalf: she felt stung at receiving no call, felt that it was a clear indication of how Georges felt – and he’d defended that it was probably more to do with the rigors of the programme.
‘They wouldn’t allow him to call – no matter the excuse.’

  Jean-Paul shook his head in sympathy with her. ‘I don’t think Roman would dare play renegade on this one. He wouldn’t be able to face me if he did. He swears blind that he had nothing to do with the abduction, that it was down to Gianni Cacchione. But even if it was Roman, he was playing under the table where nobody would know and he could get away with blaming Cacchione. Now he’s out in the open with nobody else to blame: he wouldn’t dare take the risk. And with Giacomelli’s man looking over his shoulder, he won’t even get the chance.’

  Simone looked up slowly. ‘I hope so. I hope you’re right.’

  And for a moment with her eyes fixed on his, it was easy to believe she was a child again, blindly trusting. Things hadn’t really changed that much, Jean-Paul reflected: just with each passing year everything became more complex, the explanations longer in order to gain that same trust.

Elena looked down at the street-lamp light-bars playing across her lap as the squad car made its way through the city, and she recalled Uncle Christos in the taxi the day before she flew out. Streetlight and shadow playing alternately across his face as he’d told her only half the truth about her father. And she’d in turn told everyone else only half the truth. Now you see it, now you don’t.

 
Shadow games.
And now Ryall with Lorena.
Close your eyes… trust me.
Elena closed her eyes and bit at her lip. She wished she could be as brave as Lorena. She’d left her at the British embassy over two hours ago, and the parting had been emotional, tearful.

  At first Lorena had been in shock and very hesitant when Elena told her what had been revealed at Lowndes’ last session, then explained Crowley’s plan. She’d agreed with Lowndes and Crowley to spare Lorena from actually hearing the tape, she just told her that some things in the session pointed to her being right about Ryall molesting her. But very quickly their roles became a reversal of what Elena had expected, and it was Lorena telling
her
not to worry, she could handle it. ‘If that’s how it has to be, I can do it. Don’t worry.’ Once again one of those Kodak moments when Lorena was suddenly old beyond her years, drawing from some deep inner resolve that had helped her endure the dark days of the orphanages and sewers. She’d survived a thousand rats down there; this was just one more rat.

  Returning from the embassy after leaving Lorena, Elena nursed a scotch up at the bar with Alphonse in order to steady her nerves, and after a while felt she had everything under control again. But gradually images started to bombard her: baring her soul to Gordon, fainting in the orphanage, Uncle Christos and her mother on the phone turning her world upside down about her father, the Donatiens telling her that they didn’t think she’d be able to see her
son ‘…It was on the news… didn’t you see?’
And it was all going to end here, now, in only a few hours.

Within half an hour of the squad car coming to pick her up, she was in pieces again. A two hour meeting to explain away a lifetime. She was back again to frantically working out what she would say. Where would she even start? Would she open with how sorry she was or just plough into explaining then apologise later? Would she hug him first, or again wait till later and the moment felt right?  Or, if she felt the same as right now, would she just stare at him dumbly with her whole body shaking – too numb to put into words the nightmare she’d been through to finally get to see him – then break down into tears and weep out her catharsis on his shoulder before she could even utter a single word.

Elena kept her eyes closed for a moment and listened to her own breathing as she sunk deeper down into her own private darkness, trying to keep it even, get her nerves steady again. They’d be hitting the city outskirts soon and she’d have to put on the blacked-out headset: she’d have a couple more hours then for her own private contemplation.
Wished she could be so brave.
She thought she might get some images from the chine to guide her, tell her what to do, but there was no longer anything there. Only darkness. She was on her own. 

‘Fuck you! Fuck you!
Fuck you!’
Roman hissed into his mobile. He’d already pressed ‘end call’ from speaking to Jean-Paul. He gave the phone one last clench before tucking it back in his inside pocket.

‘We got company,’ he said in a flat tone to Massenat.

‘Yeah, I gathered. Either it’s Maria’s mother or someone else you’re not to keen on.’

‘Look, Frank – leave the fucking jokes to me, okay?’ Roman was slow in pulling his stare from Massenat to look blankly ahead again through the car windscreen. His temples ached with tension, and he wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead with the back of one hand. ‘Some fucking bright torpedo from Toronto Jean-Paul wants to ride along with us. Santa-fucking-something, one of Giacomelli’s golden boys.’

‘Oh, right.’

The silence following said it all. They had a problem. Roman cursed Jean-Paul: either he suspected something, or just wanted to make doubly sure everything went right. All these years of being pushed deeper into the background, but this was the final insult: when it came to something important, one of Giacomelli’s pet school monitors sent along to keep tabs on him. 

Roman had protested, but not too strongly – that would have made Jean-Paul all the more suspicious. Roman said that he already had one of Roubilliard’s best along to fill the last place on the plane. Jean-Paul fired back that they didn’t come any better than this guy and, besides, they were relying on Roubilliard too much as it was: the pilot plus a few more of his men at the other end when they discovered the plane’s destination. Anyway, it was all cut and dried
. ‘Art has already agreed to send him – and I wouldn’t want to let him down. He’d be upset.’

Let down. Upset.
Roman felt the extra pressure like a leaden shoulder yoke. Giacomelli wasn’t the sort of person you upset.   Jean-Paul probably thought he was being clever, the perfect dilemma to keep him in check:
don’t think of stepping out of line, because now you’ll not only be putting my nose out of joint but Art Giacomelli’s as well.
But Jean-Paul had no idea the extent of that dilemma. Jean-Paul’s death would be bad news as it was to Giacomelli, though he’d put that down to Cacchione. But one of Giacomelli’s own going down was quite another thing, and Giacomelli would no doubt then also link the two and point the finger at Roman.

Roman was careful to shield his worries when forty minutes later he greeted ‘Santa Dave’, but with each passing minute of weighing his options in between his nerves had pulled tauter. One more thing to worry about just when he didn’t need it, and no simple solution that he could see. If he had any remaining doubt or guilt about what he was doing, it went in that moment: once Jean-Paul was gone, he wouldn’t have to worry any more about dancing to his tune.

Thirty-five minutes later they were rolling, following an unmarked RCMP grey Buick Century with Elena Waldren accompanied by two plain-clothed officers Roman didn’t recognize. No Michel Chenouda visible.

  As they took the turn-off for the Pont Victoria, Funicelli realized they were probably heading for St Hubert airport. It took just under thirty minutes to get there. Funicelli was happy that it wasn’t one of the major airports: better and closer access to the perimeter fence, and less aircraft activity. He observed patiently through night-sight binoculars for almost twenty minutes before he saw them emerge and head towards a plane: a Piper Saratoga.

  ‘Okay, gotya. Number is: SXR35467.’

  Roman relayed the number immediately to Guy Campion, waiting the last thirty minutes in a phone kiosk two blocks from Dorchester Boulevard. He made a note of the number and type of aircraft, but had to return to his office to make the enquiry. An access code number had to be given by computer to get the information from the ATC* central computer, but it was generic for the main server at Dorchester Boulevard. Campion was confident that it couldn’t be traced.

  He keyed in the aircraft type, registration number and place and time of departure, and asked for its destination. Two minutes later it came up on screen: Cochrane, Northern Ontario. Campion left the building to make the return call, said only those few words, and hung up. The whole exercise from Roman’s first call had taken only twelve minutes.