Private Paris (Private 10)

Several soldiers stood aside, and the police detective and the magistrate stepped forward. Hoskins held a cell phone up in the air and pressed her thumb against it.

In one of Major Sauvage’s pants pockets, a phone began to buzz and ring.

“Answer it,” Hoskins said. “I’m looking for Chloe.”

Chapter 109

IN MY LIFE I have encountered men and women whose dark stories were written in every line of twisted emotion that squirmed across their faces. But I had never seen a reaction that spoke novels before.

Disbelief. Defeat. Dread. Honor. Conviction. Anger.

All those feelings flickered on Sauvage’s face before he went stoic.

“Why do you have my phone number?” he asked.

“That’s not your cell,” Juge Fromme said. “We checked. It’s a disposable.”

I said, “After your accomplice Haja Hamid busted her burn phone, she tossed the pieces out her bedroom window. Two pieces landed in a Dumpster. But the SIM card hit the scaffolding and landed in a flower box a story below. Hoskins called the last number Haja called, and we got you. I recognized that phrase you like to use—that some person is ‘either stupid or nuts.’”

“This proves nothing,” Sauvage said firmly. “Since I have owned this phone, I have gotten many wrong numbers. As if the number had been used many times. The fact that this Haja person called me is pure coincidence.”

I laughed in disbelief. “Major, you are without a doubt the most cold-blooded, conniving, lying bastard I have ever met. You, Haja, and Captain Mfune here murdered five of France’s finest people to try to set off a war against Islam.”

“Why in God’s name would I do that?” he said calmly, though the muscles on his neck were stretched as taut as piano wire.

“Because for whatever reason you and Captain Mfune hate Muslims as much as Haja does,” Louis said.

“And because,” I said, “starting a war against them would give you the opportunity to engage in the kind of atrocity I just witnessed. We’ve read up on you. We know you were investigated for brutality in Afghanistan.”

“General,” Sauvage said, “this is slanderous and un—”

“Enough!” General Georges bellowed. “Major Sauvage, Captain Mfune: you are under arrest for murder, conspiracy, and treason against France, a nation you were both sworn to protect.”

The captain hung his head. But not Sauvage. He laughed scornfully. “Treason?” he said, and thumped his chest. “Against France? The country that we love more than life?

“No, General. If anything, the captain and I are France’s greatest patriots. We are the only ones willing to see the obvious: that this nation is already at war, and has been since we started letting Muslim immigrants come here in the sixties. Look at the massacre at Charlie Hebdo last year. They want our culture erased, and their numbers are growing faster than ours. Unless people like Captain Mfune and me and Haja Hamid act, France as we know it will be destroyed, and—”

General Georges cut him off, thundering, “By any definition and despite any intentions you may have had, you, sir, are a dishonor to your uniform, and you will be tried for your crimes against your country, against Paris, and against humanity. What you did tonight? We call that genocide where I come from. Cuff him. Get him the hell out of my sight.”

Four soldiers surrounded Sauvage, who stood with his head held high and defiant, glaring at all of us in turn. They put zip restraints on him and pushed him forward.

From the windows of the immigrant housing towers, people began to cheer and jeer and trill like nomads calling in the desert.

The major went berserk as he and Mfune were led away.

“You hear them!” he shouted at us. “The Muzzies want people like me silenced. They want the great cathedrals and monuments of Paris burned or reduced to rubble and built up again as grand mosques. Our food. Our music. Our free speech. Our culture will be swallowed whole and turned to shit if they’re not stopped!”

Ignoring Sauvage’s rants as they faded, General Georges marched up to me and said in open fury, “Morgan, by rights you should be in a brig along with him. You did exactly what I explicitly ordered you not to do.”

I hung my head. “Yes, General. But I knew you were handcuffed, awaiting your rules of engagement. And, I don’t know, I heard the pace of the shooting, and I thought—well, both Louis and I thought—that someone had to come in here and bear witness. So I did.”

“And it’s a good thing he did,” Hoskins said.

The general stood there fuming. “I don’t know what to do with you.”

I said, “Let me show investigators what I saw and where I saw it from, and then I’ll go home. When I’m needed, I’ll return to testify at my own expense.”

Georges continued to stand there and fume.