Suspects(3)

Negotiations for ransom of a hundred million euros began the next day. It was clumsily handled by police who were trying to stall the kidnappers so the various authorities could discover their identities, but they failed to do so. The authorities delayed payment while frantically trying to find where father and son were being held. Theo begged the police to allow her to pay the ransom, which she could have done through her own business and Matthieu’s, and they finally allowed her to make a half payment of fifty million, hoping to buy time to find Matthieu, Axel, and the kidnappers in the area. The half payment enraged the kidnappers and caused them to panic. During the negotiations, they proved to be nervous, erratic, and unprofessional, arguing among themselves and with the police. The negotiations went on for seventeen agonizing days, the longest in Theo’s life.

The police informed her that most kidnappings were handled in a businesslike way and were all about obtaining money for some political or personal motive, and the victims were rapidly returned when the ransom was delivered. But given the kidnappers’ lack of professionalism, the police convinced Theo that she would jeopardize Matthieu’s and Axel’s lives if she stepped in with the full ransom. She trusted the authorities and later wished she hadn’t. There were too many agencies involved and too many opinions. The police delivered half the ransom money, fifty million euro, to the kidnappers in a remote location, as a further stalling tactic, while gathering more information. The kidnappers panicked, killed the two policemen who delivered it, took the money and ran. Before they left the area, they killed Matthieu and Axel, and buried them in a mound of fresh dirt in a wooded area a few miles from the chateau, to be sure that they’d be found. The police were able to deduce from the bullet wounds, the threads of Axel’s clothing on his father’s, time of death, that Axel had been shot and killed in his father’s arms, Matthieu a short time later. After they were killed, they were found fairly quickly, as were the two dead policemen at the location of the drop. Theo remembered the days afterwards as a blur of grief and despair. She had gone into seclusion for a year, running her business from home, seeing no one except the CEOs of both companies, hers and Matthieu’s. She was trying to decide whether or not to sell everything. Nothing had any meaning for her after she lost her husband and son.

The ransom money had turned up nowhere in Europe for the past year. The DGSE had no more evidence than they did the day that Matthieu and Axel died. They had suspicions but no hard facts, and the marked bills of the ransom money had disappeared. Despite appearing to behave like amateurs, the kidnappers had gotten away with committing a seemingly perfect crime. And Theo was left to live with the heartbreaking results.

She hadn’t left her Paris home in months, and her CEO, Jacques Ferrier, had finally convinced her to come back to work to solve some problems that no one else could handle as effectively. She had reluctantly agreed, and was surprised that working grounded her. It was something she knew and was good at—problem solving at Theo.com and at Matthieu’s company came naturally to her. It distracted her from thinking about her devastating losses, at least for the hours she was in the office. After that she had to go home to her empty apartment and face the ghosts there.

Her CEO’s intention in bringing her back to work was his way of getting her back in the human race. He directed her attention to the pop-up stores they were setting up in Dallas, L.A., and New York. Organizing the installations was a lot of work, but they had proved to be a highly efficient tool to attract new customers and increase sales and brand recognition globally. Theo had a magic touch with them. Even not at her best, her creative ideas were infallible, and a year after the tragedy, she was slowly returning to herself and hard at work setting up the opening of the three upcoming concept stores in the States. She was going to travel herself to oversee the openings and execution of her designs for the three temporary stores. They were expensive to create, but it was always worth it.

Although she was American, and had grown up in New York, she had lived in France for almost half her life now, and she combined both a European and an American perspective. She had shifted her thriving operation from New York to Paris when she married Matthieu. This also gave her access to his much bigger organization, and it had worked well. Matthieu had given her office space in a building he owned, and warehouse facilities, but she had never given him a share in her business, which amused him. He had liked to brag about how tough she was in business, and how smart. Her father had been an investment banker who had advised her well about the principles of good business and entrepreneurship. She’d been an economics major at Harvard, and graduated magna cum laude. She had planned to go on to business school, but had started her business first and it took off at an astounding rate. She had a natural head for business, despite a gentle demeanor and feminine style that fooled people, particularly European men, into thinking they could take advantage of her. Matthieu knew better and had enjoyed watching her operate with an iron hand. He had often asked her advice about his major luxury fashion brands, and the counsel she gave him was always excellent. She had exquisite taste and a definite style, and their marriage had been based on mutual admiration and respect.

Theo had lived in a vacuum, in a lonely, silent world, for the past year. She rarely left their Paris home now and hadn’t set foot in their chateau since the kidnapping. It was empty and closed, and too full of terrible memories for her now. She had met with Jacques, her CEO, to continue to keep track of her business, and Matthieu’s CEO too, to keep an eye on his affairs and enormous enterprise. The rest of the time, she wandered her home like a ghost, playing over and over again in her mind everything that had happened, and thinking how it could have been different. The French authorities had made all the wrong assumptions, with disastrous results.