Latham's fist smashing into Franqois's mouth. The Frenchman fell back, chair and body crashing to the floor. Drew was instantly over him, grabbing him by his throat and pulling him up, slamming him against the wall, the weapon in the drawer now in Drew's hand.
"We're going to- talk, Wheelman, and your conversation had better be enlightening, or your life is over."
"I have a family, monsieur, a wife and children! How can you do this?"
"Have you any idea how many families-fathers, mothers ' children, and grandchildren-were torn apart in the fucking camps, forced to walk naked into cement compounds only to emerge as corpses, you son of a bitch!"
"I was not even alive then!"
"You never heard of those things? Thousands were French, rounded up and sent to their deaths! That never bothered you?"
"You don't understand, monsieur. They have ways to make you cooperate."
"Such as? And if you lie, I won't bother to use your gun, I'll simply snap the carotid arteries on both sides of your neck and it's finis time. You see, like the radar specialist in Beauvais when he looks at his screen, I can tell by the eyes. I hope I don't make a mistake.. .. Jacques Bergeron is a neo, isn't he?"
"Yes.. .. How could you possibly know?"
"When you're tired and you're lost, you go back over everything.
It had to be someone who had access to all the information, someone who knew where the players were every moment. At first we thought it was Moreau; he was on a list that made us afraid to work with him; hell, I couldn't tell him a damn thing. Then he was cleared by the only man who could clear him, my boss. So who was it? Who knew where I was, whether it was a restaurant in Villejuif with my brother, or one hotel or another when I kept moving? Who knew that Karin and I were in a sidewalk cafe one night with Claude, where we were all nearly killed except the owner got us out of there? Who faked the Metro incident with Dr. Kroeger, the gunshots, the man who claimed he saw "Harry Latham' on the train that sped away? There was no Harry Latham, because I was Harry and I wasn't there! The answer to every one of those queries was a man called Jacques."
"I don't know of these things, I swear by the sight of a bleeding Christ on a cross, I do not know!"
"But you know he's a neo, don't you? A deep-perhaps the deepest Nazi-in France. Am I right?".
"Yes." Franq'ois exhaled his breath until there was none left.
"I had no choice but to keep silent and do his bidding."
"Why?"
"I killed a man and Jacques saw me do it."
"How?"
"I strangled him. Try to understand, monsieur, I work long hours, sometimes I am away for days at a time, my family is neglected-what can I say?"
"A hell of a lot more," said Drew.
"My wife found a lover. I could tell, as every husband can, when darkness envelops the bed. I used the resources of the [email protected] to find out who he was."
"Not exactly official business, right?"
"Certainly not. But what I did not know was that Jacques was monitoring my every inquiry, my every telephone call.. .. I set up a meeting with this individual, a rotten hairdresser with a record of debts and failed salons, and we met in an alley in the Montparnasse. He made obscene references to my wife's behavior, laughing as he did so. I went mad and attacked him, killed him viciously. As I walked out of the alley, Bergeron greeted me."
"So he had you."
"The rest of my life in prison was the alternative. He had taken photographs with an infrared night camera."
"Yet you and your wife are back together, isn't that so?"
"We are French, monsieur. I am not a saint either. We have made peace with each other and our marriage is solid. We have our children."
"But you worked with Bergeron, a Nazi. How can you justi that?
"The rest of my life in prison-how would you justify it? My wife, my children, my family. And, monsieur, I never killed for him, never!
He had others to do that, I refused."
Latham released the man from the wall and gestured for him to sit down.
"Okay, Wheelman, you and I are going to make a deal or we're not. Unless I'm really wrong, and I don't think I am, you and Jacques are the only ncos here, and you are a reluctant one.