C'est la Vie (Raja Williams Series) Page 15

  Raja paused to assess his options, knowing that Bruno would not be one to fight his battle on his own. Several men were making their way through the crowd toward him from both sides. Raja knew where the scratch on Bruno’s cheek had come from. When Bruno sneered at him, Raja lost control, bull-rushing the last fifteen feet that separated the two men.

  Raja’s feet stopped moving and his body shook uncontrollably as he realized he had been hit with the electrodes of a taser. Despite willing himself forward toward his enemy, his muscles refused to respond. When he fell to the floor the crowd pulled back from him forming a perfect circle. Raja looked up helplessly as Bruno calmly took the taser from Marcelo’s hand, and bent down toward Raja’s face.

  “You have made a serious mistake,” said Bruno, jamming the device into Raja’s chest. The second jolt from the taser turned out the lights.

  Chapter Twenty-seven: Margaret and Didier

  Margaret had now been in a state of suspended animation from her normal life long enough to realize that her captor was not the evil villain she had first assumed. The many damp English nights of winter she spent curled up in bed with a good suspense thriller had laid the groundwork for her overactive imagination to create and embellish speculative nightmares in the darkness of her subconscious. At first, Margaret’s imagination had run wild. Despite being well past midlife, she had envisioned being forced into some sort of perverted sexual activity, or being tortured to the brink of death.

  Yet, many details had been poking their way out from behind these fantastic scenarios that belied such evil intent. For one, Didier, as she had grown accustomed to calling him, had gone to great lengths to ensure she was fed regularly. While she was still being tied up, since that first day Didier had taken care to ensure her bonds were loose enough to prevent pain or damage.

  Margaret was even starting to admire the house she was being held in. The high ceilings and exposed wood beams reminded her of the church in Exeter where she had grown up. She even began to fantasize that this might be a retirement villa that she and Phillip owned in France, a place where they might winter. Of course, she had read about the Stockholm Syndrome and how captives often begin to lose their proper sense of orientation. She felt strongly that wasn’t the case. At least, for her sake, she hoped not.

  “Who are you working for?” she asked Didier.

  Nothing.

  “You aren’t really a kidnapper, are you, Didier?” Margaret waited but got no response, and the no answers did not do much for Margaret’s peace of mind. Didier ignored her questions and seemed intent on keeping her in the dark about the whys and wherefores of her mysterious and extended captivity. Margaret reasoned that there must be some sort of intense manhunt taking place that kept Didier from carrying out his plan, whatever that was. However, because he left the house every day for long periods of time, he certainly wasn’t hiding out here as she would have expected if he feared being caught. Nothing made any sense. She could not imagine what was really going on. That was worst of all. With no data to go on, she only had her imagination.

  Margaret had tried being disagreeable. Not being mean-spirited by nature, she pretended she was Glynnis Silver, her neighbor back in England. Glynnis bitched about everything. The weather was too cold or too hot, too wet or too dry. The children in the neighborhood were too noisy or too quiet. Every day when Mr. Silver arrived home from the office, Margaret was always bemused to see him park and trudge into their house, only to come back out again to move the car up or back another foot or so in the driveway in order to meet some imagined requirement that his wife demanded. Margaret could sometimes see Glynnis following him around the house, harping to him that he didn’t listen to her. Margaret figured the poor man probably prayed for the day to come when he lost his hearing.

  Playing Glynnis, Margaret tried her best to annoy Didier into telling her something. She complained about the food, saying it was too hot or too cold or too spicy or too bland. She said the bed was too hard, the blankets too scratchy, anything she could think of to exasperate her captor. Didier took it all like a stoic and never said a word.

  Then Margaret tried being nice and agreeable, thanking Didier for his kindnesses and the care he had taken. She told him that she had long since forgiven him and would love nothing more than to invite him and his family for a visit to England when she and Phillip returned there.

  Nothing had worked. The man was a bloody robot.

  Chapter Twenty-eight: Man in Black

  They say that sometimes when a person dreams, he is trying to make sense out of unresolved events that happened while he was awake, a sort of imaginative mental workout of some pressing problem. Raja never bought into the whole dream thing. However, just now he found himself lying face down on a beach towel nearly asleep, the sun’s rays warming him from above. A handful of cold water splashed on his head and back, shocking him awake. He heard a woman laughing, and turned to see Corinne running back toward the water. “Come get me,” she shouted gleefully, pulling the string of her bikini top as she ran into the surf and dove under a wave. Raja got up and walked to the water’s edge, picking up the top and squinting in the bright sun.

  Corinne stood up on a sandbar, shaking her breasts as a tease, and then dove into the water swimming farther from shore.

  Raja smiled for a moment, but the smile left quickly as his eyes caught movement in the water. The sun reflecting from the surface made it hard for Raja to see. He dropped his sunglasses down over his eyes. There was something dark that was moving in the water. Something heading toward Corinne.

  Raja yelled to her as loud as he could, but she was still swimming. Corinne stopped and looked back, treading water.

  Raja waved frantically, pointed and yelled for her to come in. She waved back and laughed, thinking he was playing around. The dark shape was moving fast toward Corinne. The odd thing about the dream was how helpless Raja felt. He was an excellent swimmer, good enough to make the university team at Oxford as an alternate, but something was keeping him from diving in and swimming out to Corinne. No matter how much he wanted to save her, all he could do was watch.

  A hard slap across his face woke Raja up, if you could call the groggy and blurry state he was in awake. The sun, the beach and Corinne were gone. He tried to focus but something wet was in his eyes. Tasting the liquid told him it was blood.

  “Where is the woman?” asked a voice from the blurry figure in front of him.

  The last real thing Raja remembered clearly was looking up at Bruno Laurent’s snarling grin and feeling rage and frustrated helplessness. Raja shook his head, sending pain up the back of his neck, but clearing enough blood from his eyes to see Bruno Laurent, the man who had killed Corinne, standing directly in from of him. Raja strained at his bonds violently with no result. He didn’t know where he was, but apparently his situation hadn’t changed very much.

  “Where is the woman?” repeated Bruno.

  “Even if I knew, do you really think I would tell an ape like you?” said Raja, mustering as much attitude as he could under the circumstances. He needed time to clear his head.

  This time Bruno swung his leather-gloved fist hard into Raja’s jaw. The jolt sent blood splattering and a sky-full of stars flashed all around Raja. He resisted the urge to pass out, instead spitting blood on the floor. For the first time, he noticed the armed men that fanned out behind Bruno. A row of high shelving stood on either side of the entire group. They were in a warehouse.

  “I don’t think you understand the situation you are in here, Bruno. Kill me and I promise, you will die. Don’t kill me and I promise, I will kill you. The whereabouts of Mrs. Browning are the least of your concerns.”

  Bruno laughed. “Is that what you call the American spirit? You are a fool. Take a good look around you, Monsieur Williams. This is the last place you will ever see.” Bruno swung again with his other fist, sending blood flying from Raja’s face in the opposite direction.

  A loud crash echoed from somewhere in the
distant corner of the warehouse. Bruno stopped to listen. There was no further sound, and no sign of anyone else in the building. Bruno pulled a large hunting knife from his belt. “Gerard, go see what that was,” he said to one of the armed men standing beside him. Gerard and a second man cocked their automatic weapons and stomped off into the main aisle, turning toward the source of the sound.

  Bruno turned toward Raja. “I will find your Mrs. Browning whether you help me or not. It is only a matter of time, for her and for you. It would make your death a lot quicker if you talk now. I am getting bored enough, as it is.” He fingered the edge of the knife. “Quick and easy, isn’t that how you say it?”

  “Suit yourself, Bruno. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Bruno cocked his head, listening. The two men he had sent to check out the warehouse had gone completely silent. “Gerard? Max?” His own voice echoed, but there was no response.

  Turning back to Raja, Bruno fingered the knife and said, “Time to end this.” Suddenly three grey canisters sailed up and over the right hand row of shelving and exploded into smoke when they hit the ground.

  The armed thugs whirled in the direction where the smoke grenades had come from and fired blindly. By the time they stopped the area was filling with thick smoke.

  A sharp sound from the opposite direction drew their fire. The roar and confusion of automatic weapon fire and the smoke obscured the appearance of a lone man at the end of the aisle. He strode forward, firing single shots from each of his two handguns that took down the thugs one by one with unerring accuracy and efficiency. The automatic fire stopped, and the smoke began to clear revealing a blond-haired figure dressed in black. Bruno’s men were already down on the ground. Only Bruno was still standing. He had darted behind Raja, and now gripped Raja by the hair with one hand, pressing the large knife to his throat with the other. Still thirty feet away, the blond man never hesitated, striding straight toward Bruno and Raja.

  Although the gleeful look on Bruno’s face said he had fully made the decision to cut Raja’s throat, he never had a chance to move. The blond man fired one shot that drilled through Bruno’s throat and severed his spinal cord, leaving him instantaneously paralyzed and moments away from death. The knife fell harmlessly from his hand, clattering on the concrete floor, and Bruno’s other hand slipped from Raja’s hair. Bruno’s face was expressionless, there being no time for him to mentally register what had already happened, and then his body slumped lifelessly to the floor.

  After confirming that none of the other men would be getting up, the blond man holstered his guns and finished closing the distance between himself and Raja.

  Raja’s smile looked bizarre through all the blood and wounds. “Damn, Claus, that was awesome,” he said. “Is it any wonder why I pay you the big bucks?” Claus was a former Israeli assassin who was indebted to Raja, and who insisted on shadowing Raja on his cases, acting as a sort of dark angel whenever Raja needed help.

  “You don’t pay me any money,” said Claus, without so much as the hint of a smile. The man had absolutely no sense of humor. Claus picked up the hunting knife and cut the ties binding Raja to the chair.

  “Not the point, my friend,” said Raja, rubbing his wrists. “Very true, but really not the point.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine: Last Man Standing

  After Claus released Raja from his bonds, he made sure Raja wasn’t mortally wounded, and that the bad guys all were. Raja turned around for no more than a few seconds, and when he turned back, Claus had disappeared without another word. Raja knew better than to look for him. When Claus disappeared, nobody was going to find him. Raja called him the chameleon savant. Claus had an otherworldly ability to blend into his environment. Raja had asked Claus once if he would teach him the trick, and Claus had simply said, “There is no trick,” and that was the end of it. Whatever it was, it enabled him to stay off the grid since leaving the Mossad years ago.

  Despite knowing Claus for many years, Raja actually knew little about him or his activities. He was a ghost who came and went at his own choosing. Raja never called him, but he would show up in the middle of a case at critical times. How Claus knew when those moments came was another secret he never revealed. Claus made a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma look like a clear glass of water.

  Raja was now alone among the living in the warehouse. After a little exploration, he found a bathroom on the other side of the warehouse with running water and a stack of brown paper towels, and he began cleaning himself up. The damage looked worse than it was, although some stitches and a couple butterfly bandages were going to be required. He checked his teeth with his tongue and fingers, and found none missing or chipped and only a couple that were looser than he remembered them being.

  When Raja heard approaching police sirens, he finished cleaning up and walked out into an open area of the warehouse. There would be no sense surviving what he’d just been through only to get shot by a skittish rookie policeman.

  The sirens got louder and louder, and then stopped. A minute later the place was crawling with armed policemen. “Hold it right there,” said a policeman decked out in full RAID assault gear. Raja put his hands up slowly.

  “Get down on the ground.”

  Raja complied, kneeling and making no sudden moves.

  Two more policemen arrived, keeping their weapons trained on Raja. The first policeman pushed him forward onto the ground and zip-tied Raja’s hands behind his back. When he saw the damage to Raja’s face, he asked, “What happened here? Who did this? Is there anyone else in the warehouse?”

  “Which question do you want me to answer first,” asked Raja, trying to be patient.

  “Is there anyone else here?”

  “Only some dead bad guys.”

  The officer motioned for the others to search the place. “Did you kill them?”

  “No, but I’m sure glad somebody did, or I would be dead, too.”

  Once the assault team had secured the place, two plainclothes policemen approached from the far side of the warehouse. When they got closer, Raja recognized that one of them was Inspector Gilliard.

  The inspector recognized Raja, as well, and when he got closer, said, “I see you have been keeping yourself busy, Monsieur Williams. However, I’m not sure the activity agrees with you.”

  “Very funny. How about cutting me loose, Inspector.”

  “Not so fast. According to the report I have, you are the only person alive in the middle of what looks like a massacre. I think you must answer some questions, yes?”

  “Hey, I’m the victim here.”

  “So you say. Those dead men we found might argue that point.”

  One of the other policemen approached the inspector and whispered in his ear.

  “It seems we have hit the jackpot. Bruno Laurent is among the dead. Along with seven other of his nastiest employees. I thought you didn’t carry a weapon. How did you manage that?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “But you don’t deny going after Bruno. You did exactly what I told you not to.”

  “Yes, I did go after Bruno at his club for killing Corinne Reneau. The bastard. However, things didn’t go so well. I woke up tied to a chair in this warehouse.”

  “Then you admit you wanted to kill him?”

  “Of course I did, but I didn’t kill him.”

  “Who did?”

  “That’s a good question. I couldn’t say.”

  “Yet, you were here.”

  “Sure, but there was a lot of smoke. Oh yeah, and Bruno was using me for a punching bag. Over there somewhere.” Raja pointed to the rows of shelving. “He would have killed me, I’m sure. I must have passed out. When I came to, they were all dead and I was free.”

  “Were you dreaming?”

  “As a matter of fact, I was. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “You must have been dreaming. How else can you explain how the magic fairies sneaked into the warehouse, killed everyone, untied y
ou and flew away? Come on, Monsieur Williams, why don’t you tell me the truth?”

  “I’m sticking with the magic fairies.”

  Inspector Gilliard was angry. “You know a lot more than you are saying. I could lock you up for at least a month just for being in this warehouse.”

  “Do what you need to do. I’m telling you the truth. I didn’t kill anyone. You said it yourself. I don’t carry a gun. Where is the gun I used?”

  The inspector was furious. He pulled out his pocket knife and cut Raja loose. “I promise you, we will search this entire area for a weapon. And perhaps you won’t mind if we do a gunpowder residue test to be sure you haven’t fired a weapon.” He motioned for one of the uniformed officers.

  “Test away,” said Raja. The officer took Raja by the arm.

  “Take him directly to the station. Don’t let him out of your sight until we get results on the gunpowder test. If it’s positive, book him for murder.” The officer dragged Raja toward the door.

  “One more thing,” said the inspector. “Provided you are telling the truth, I recommend that you leave Paris as soon as possible. I am certain it would be the healthy thing for you to do.”

  Raja didn’t answer.

  The officer took Raja back to the station where the gunshot residue test came up negative. After reconfirming with Inspector Gilliard, the officer drove Raja to the hospital emergency room and arranged for him to get patched up.