The Seven Turns of the Snail's Shell: A Novel (2 page)

“Yes, well, I understand. It’s going to be dangerous. I am counting on you to carry this off.”

The caller’s question took her by surprise.

“No. I have no idea whether we’ll see each other again. I suppose it is unlikely. So, good-bye then.
Adieu
.”

“It’s not like we were ever friends, anyway,” she said coldly as she hung up the phone. “I’ve got to do this, so I can have what I’ve always wanted. In two days’ time, I will be gone from the world. I told them to just wait and see what I would do next. I told them. If only it didn’t have to end this way. But I can still change my mind—or can I? What good would it do? No, it has to be carried out…as I planned it. Even if we all end up dead.”

She picked up the phone and dialed. “Make sure this looks good. Give them the pictures. It’s our only chance for happiness, darling.”

The male voice on the other end was softly reassuring.

“Yes, well, I hope so. If all goes well, then we’ll be together again shortly. I love you, too.”

She tugged at her barren earlobes as she hung up, her face drained but radiant from the sun she had enjoyed on the Côte d’Azur.

“My work will live on,” Diana said to herself, “and so shall I.”

Then she laughed out loud, her laugh filling the empty room as she recalled the time she had leapt from the balcony into the snow for a night of freedom, but this time the freedom would be guaranteed…forever.

CHAPTER 1

August 31, 1997

T
he phone rang in the residence above a restaurant on the rue du Gros-Horloge in Rouen. Still half asleep, Jacques Gérard looked at the clock on his nightstand. It was four o’clock in the morning. “Who could be calling at this hour?” he grumbled.

“Listen,” the hoarse voice said in the familiar Corsican dialect. Jacques recognized it immediately. It was Diamanté. He felt a sudden apprehension. They had known each other for a very long time.

“We have to get someone out of France…
vite
.” Diamanté’s voice was gruff. “No one can know about it.”

“What are you saying,
mon ami
?” Jacques felt like he was back in the war.

“The situation is very grave,” Diamanté explained in hushed tones. He sounded tense and on edge. Jacques heard him take a deep breath. “We will require
Les Amis
and your son.”

Jacques froze.

“But what is going on? Why Charlie?”

“I am on my way to Paris,” Diamanté continued. “Alert your son that I will be stopping shortly at La P-S to pick him up. The support of
Les Amis
will be needed for the last part of the journey. I will call with details later.
À bientôt
.”

“
Salut
.” Jacques hung up the phone. He had many questions, but it was not the Corsican’s way to question intentions. He scratched his head. What was Diamanté involved in this time? Why was a group of former Résistance fighters needed and for what role? Why was his son needed? And how did Diamanté know that his son was at the hospital, anyway? What would be required of him in all of this?

“Diamanté will have his way,” Jacques said aloud, shaking his head. Diamanté always had his way. He was stealth itself, quick, tireless, and clever. That’s why they called him
le loup
, the wolf. During the second war of the twentieth century in Europe, he and Jacques had been part of the French underground network known as the Résistance. The local group in Rouen called themselves
Les Amis Clandestins
. There were still some of them around. Jacques knew that Diamanté was counting on it.

Jacques Gérard faced a personal dilemma. He had not spoken to his son, Charles-Christian, since his wife, Nathalie, had passed away two years ago. Before that, he had not seen him for several years. They had had a falling out over that girl Charlie was in love with—that American. What was her name? Anna? Jacques spat at the thought. “
Merde
.” His brows furled. He turned on the television in his bedroom and picked up the phone to call Diamanté back. His son must be left out of this.

A live news report was being broadcast from Paris. Jacques watched intently. A serious car accident had happened around midnight in the tunnel near the place de l’Alma. An ambulance of the state-run emergency medical service SAMU (
Service d’Aide Médicale Urgente
) was on the scene.

“Charlie must be left out of whatever this is. Find someone else,” Jacques protested.

“You are my friend, the only one who I can trust,” Diamanté explained in a calm, low voice. “It will be a difficult trip. We will be in desperate need of someone with your son’s skills and experience.” Diamanté knew of the gag rule that all French doctors lived under. It would be against French law, rigorously prohibited by the
Ordre des Médecins
, for Jacques’ son to discuss any details afterward. That would be of utmost importance.

Jacques put down the receiver and let out a heavy sigh. He was getting old. Charles-Christian was all the family he had in the world. He wanted desperately to resolve their differences. He turned up the volume on the television. Channel TF1 was broadcasting live from the Alma Tunnel. The SAMU ambulance had left the tunnel and arrived, according to the broadcast, at La Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital sometime around two o’clock in the morning. Jacques’ eyes grew wide. Charles-Christian would be in the middle of the event. He was one of the emergency room doctors. They had identified the victims as the Princess of Wales, her bodyguard, the chauffeur, and another man thought to be her current love interest.

“
Nom de Dieu!”
he said over and over as he dialed the hospital’s main number.

CHAPTER 2

T
he sirens of the SAMUs bleated like distressed donkeys in the night. All of Paris seemed to be awake. At La Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, the press was everywhere. The emergency room, pitifully understaffed, was in chaos.

Dr. Charles-Christian Gérard felt the vibration of his beeper just as he finished stabilizing a head trauma victim on an emergency room gurney. He picked up a nearby phone and heard the sound of his father’s voice.

“Charlie, do you remember, when you were a boy, the bizarre man, the one in the beret with the scar on his forehead, who would show up from time to time at the restaurant? The one you always asked about?” Jacques was speaking too fast; his voice sounded nervous and tense.

“Papa,
écoute
, listen.
Zut.
I am not at liberty to have a conversation with you now. We are extremely busy here tonight. I need to go back to my work.”

“
Mais
…but, there is something I…”

“Not now. I…I will call you later.
Salut
, Papa.”

As he hung up, the beeper went off again.

Nurse Florence Le Blanc could not help looking at the man who was waiting for Dr. Gérard at the ER desk. His lips were tightly pinched together, and he was obviously in a hurry. His face was furrowed with the years. His black, beady eyes were close to each other and delimited by dark circles and bags. A deep crevice, from an old wound, coiled its way from his right temple and disappeared under a black beret. He stared keenly down the hospital corridor at the doctor walking briskly toward them.

Nurse Le Blanc came forward and put her hand on Dr. Gérard’s arm. “
Monsieur le Docteur
, this gentleman insisted on speaking with you. He said it’s extremely urgent.”

Diamanté stepped forward. He had recognized Charles-Christian Gérard at once: Nathalie’s gray eyes, Jacques’ swagger.

“
Bonsoir, Monsieur le Docteur
. Loupré-Tigre,” he introduced himself, quickly offering his hand. “Did your father reach you?”

Charles-Christian did not know the man immediately, though something about him set off a danger signal in his head. He wished now that he had allowed his father to tell him more on the phone. He took the man’s hand, noting that it was bony, and the veins on the back stood out distinctly with age.

“
Oui
,
Monsieur
, he called just a few minutes ago.” Charles-Christian was weary from working through the night, and he intended to get rid of this strange person in the next few minutes. “
Monsieur
, as you can see, we are extremely occupied here in the ER at this hour. I’m afraid this will have to be brief.”

“I need to talk to you in private. Is there a room,
s’il vous plaît
? It is most urgent.”

Charles-Christian heard the man’s distinct Corsican accent, an accent that reminded him of his father’s. It had been a long time since he had seen that strange man in his father’s restaurant. The man he remembered had dark black hair and black eyebrows that seemed to meet in the middle of his forehead. He rarely smiled. There was something familiar about this older man’s wolf-like gaze, though, that reminded him of the mysterious visitor of his youth.

“Are you injured,
Monsieur
?” He had to shout because of the noise in the corridor and sirens “he-hawing” in the street outside the hospital.

“
Non, non
. It is not for me.
Il est nécessaire
, of the utmost importance,
Monsieur le Docteur
, that I talk to you confidentially. Now.”

“
Très bien
.” Charles-Christian nodded. “
Par ici
.” He led him down the frenzied corridor into a small, blue-walled room.

Nurse Le Blanc stared after them.

As Dr. Gérard closed the heavy door, he glared directly at the man. “What is this about,
Monsieur
Loupré-Tigre?”

An hour later, in the same arrondissement as the Pont de l’Alma, an unmarked vehicle left the British Embassy on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Inside the small, white truck were five people: Diamanté Loupré-Tigre and an armed British guard in front, and in the back, the patient, the emergency room doctor Charles-Christian Gérard, and Nurse Florence Le Blanc. The inside of the vehicle had been made into a makeshift ambulance, an ER on wheels.

As the vehicle sped through the back streets of Paris, Charles-Christian wiped his brow and stared at the face of his trauma patient. Ever since he and Nurse Le Blanc had made a decision, just an hour before, to walk out of La Pitié-Salpêtrière, he had been sweating profusely.

Diamanté had explained to them the gravity of the situation and the need especially for the doctor’s help.

“Why me?” Dr. Gérard had asked.

“Simple,” was the only response from Diamanté. “You are Jacques Gérard’s son,
hein
?”

“But I must have at least a nurse to assist me,” Dr. Gérard had insisted.

“Very well. But the choice must be made quickly. We have no time to waste.”

In the chaos of loading the patient under armed security and the departure of the unmarked vehicle, Nurse Le Blanc had been the only choice. She was young, but willing.

“What else do I have to do but come to this ER every night of my life, anyway? It will be an adventure,” she had said to Dr. Gérard with a sort of excited grin.

Inside the makeshift SAMU, the air was stale and smelled strongly of diesel exhaust. It occurred to the doctor that the three of them might die of asphyxiation.

“Give her more oxygen,” he directed as he adjusted tubes and checked vital signs. “Her condition is very grave.” The patient’s blood pressure was dangerously low. She had massive injuries. They were working against time. He looked intently at the young woman’s face as Nurse LeBlanc carefully adjusted the oxygen mask. It was not disfigured from the accident. There was a wound on her forehead and a small cut over her lip. One delicate pearl earring hung from her earlobe. She was very beautiful, like a china doll. He sat back and wiped his brow again.

In the cab, an uneasy Diamanté sat staring out the passenger seat window. He caught a quick glimpse of the Eiffel Tower in the early morning light as the vehicle followed the Seine onto the A13 highway which would take them northwest to their final destination, the port of Le Havre, via the city of Rouen, where the next part of the plan would be carried out. He thought about the massive numbers of reporters in front of La Pitié-Salpêtrière, where he guessed a press conference was being held at this very moment.