Read Online Shadow Ritual by Eric Giacometti, Jacques Ravenne - Free Book Online
Authors: Eric Giacometti, Jacques Ravenne
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15
Bashir was driving a pickup he had borrowed from someone who owed him a favor. He had chosen his cover with care: Jordanian excavation-equipment sales rep. The bed of the truck was filled with rubble from a construction site. Among the rocks was the stone he had stolen from the institute.
When he reached the Allanby Bridge border crossing, a zealous Jewish border guard wanted him to unload the truck.
He’d expected this. At that moment, an associate who was following him in a car pulled out of the line of traffic and started honking. A swarm of Israeli army officers descended on the man, fingers on their triggers.
The border guard turned to see the commotion and then yelled at Bashir. “Get out of here. Go back to your country of dirty nomads.”
One obstacle down. When he arrived in Amman, he’d ditch the truck, change his clothes, and pick up his new identity: Vittorio Cavalcanti, a Milanese tourist going home after seeing the marvels of Jordan. He would have a large suitcase full of souvenirs, including the Tebah Stone.
16
“So, do we agree? Ms. Dawes experienced an unfortunate fall at the embassy in Rome. The administration will not comment on the incident.”
The French diplomatic system was working at full tilt the day after Sophie Dawes’s murder. Zewinski had brought the body back to France. The coroner’s office had contacted the family to come and identify her.
Three witnesses—all members of the embassy security team—had provided signed affidavits stating that Sophie seemed to have had too much to drink. She had lost her balance while going down the marble steps and had hit her head. None of the guests had seen anything, and no reporters had gotten wind of the accident. A life had been erased, a death touched up.
Sophie’s father was an elderly man with Alzheimer’s disease. He did not come to identify the body. A distant cousin was brought in at the last minute to sign the papers and then disappeared as just as quickly.
The body would be buried in two days without any ceremony in a cemetery in the suburbs of Paris.
Meanwhile, intelligence services were piecing together the victim’s short life. At the same time, agents were contacting the Grand Orient de France Freemason Lodge to let them know that one of their archivists had died in an unfortunate accident. The minister of the interior had already scheduled a meeting with a Grand Orient advisor, who was also a high-level civil servant.
The foreign office representative shot Pierre Darsan of the interior ministry a questioning look.
Darsan continued. “We need to make sure everyone keeps this under wraps. The gendarmes who witnessed the accident will be transferred to other embassies tomorrow.”
“What about Zewinski?”
“She did an expert job of handling things. We’ll debrief her and keep her on to investigate what really happened.”
“And the police inspector, Antoine Marcas? What was he doing there?”
“A coincidence,” Darsan said. “Apparently he was taking a few days off in Rome. He and our man Jaigu are friends. Since Marcas was at the reception, Jaigu pulled him in on the preliminary investigation. He could be useful. He’s a Freemason. Marcas should be boarding a plane back to Paris as we speak.”
“Can we count on him staying quiet?”
“I can make that happen.”
“Fine,” the foreign office representative said as he stood up. “Darsan, it’s your investigation now—unofficially, that is.”
As soon as the door closed behind him, Darsan went to the window. The room was silent, except for the muffled sound of traffic outside. He smoothed his mustache, a habit he had picked up in Algeria forty years earlier, and returned to his desk.
He lit a cigarette and opened Antoine Marcas’s file: forty years old, a homicide detective, a short stint in the anti-gang unit, commendations from his superiors, on the fast track toward becoming chief, then an unexpected spell in police intelligence
15
Bashir was driving a pickup he had borrowed from someone who owed him a favor. He had chosen his cover with care: Jordanian excavation-equipment sales rep. The bed of the truck was filled with rubble from a construction site. Among the rocks was the stone he had stolen from the institute.
When he reached the Allanby Bridge border crossing, a zealous Jewish border guard wanted him to unload the truck.
He’d expected this. At that moment, an associate who was following him in a car pulled out of the line of traffic and started honking. A swarm of Israeli army officers descended on the man, fingers on their triggers.
The border guard turned to see the commotion and then yelled at Bashir. “Get out of here. Go back to your country of dirty nomads.”
One obstacle down. When he arrived in Amman, he’d ditch the truck, change his clothes, and pick up his new identity: Vittorio Cavalcanti, a Milanese tourist going home after seeing the marvels of Jordan. He would have a large suitcase full of souvenirs, including the Tebah Stone.
16
“So, do we agree? Ms. Dawes experienced an unfortunate fall at the embassy in Rome. The administration will not comment on the incident.”
The French diplomatic system was working at full tilt the day after Sophie Dawes’s murder. Zewinski had brought the body back to France. The coroner’s office had contacted the family to come and identify her.
Three witnesses—all members of the embassy security team—had provided signed affidavits stating that Sophie seemed to have had too much to drink. She had lost her balance while going down the marble steps and had hit her head. None of the guests had seen anything, and no reporters had gotten wind of the accident. A life had been erased, a death touched up.
Sophie’s father was an elderly man with Alzheimer’s disease. He did not come to identify the body. A distant cousin was brought in at the last minute to sign the papers and then disappeared as just as quickly.
The body would be buried in two days without any ceremony in a cemetery in the suburbs of Paris.
Meanwhile, intelligence services were piecing together the victim’s short life. At the same time, agents were contacting the Grand Orient de France Freemason Lodge to let them know that one of their archivists had died in an unfortunate accident. The minister of the interior had already scheduled a meeting with a Grand Orient advisor, who was also a high-level civil servant.
The foreign office representative shot Pierre Darsan of the interior ministry a questioning look.
Darsan continued. “We need to make sure everyone keeps this under wraps. The gendarmes who witnessed the accident will be transferred to other embassies tomorrow.”
“What about Zewinski?”
“She did an expert job of handling things. We’ll debrief her and keep her on to investigate what really happened.”
“And the police inspector, Antoine Marcas? What was he doing there?”
“A coincidence,” Darsan said. “Apparently he was taking a few days off in Rome. He and our man Jaigu are friends. Since Marcas was at the reception, Jaigu pulled him in on the preliminary investigation. He could be useful. He’s a Freemason. Marcas should be boarding a plane back to Paris as we speak.”
“Can we count on him staying quiet?”
“I can make that happen.”
“Fine,” the foreign office representative said as he stood up. “Darsan, it’s your investigation now—unofficially, that is.”
As soon as the door closed behind him, Darsan went to the window. The room was silent, except for the muffled sound of traffic outside. He smoothed his mustache, a habit he had picked up in Algeria forty years earlier, and returned to his desk.
He lit a cigarette and opened Antoine Marcas’s file: forty years old, a homicide detective, a short stint in the anti-gang unit, commendations from his superiors, on the fast track toward becoming chief, then an unexpected spell in police intelligence
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