Suspects(55)
Chapter 14
Guy Thomas called Mike the day after Christmas to tell him that they had found the fifth kidnapper hiding in the barn of a farm a few miles from the chateau. They had discovered the abandoned moving truck hidden in a clump of trees and made an intense search of the area, until they located him cold and hungry in the barn, with a horse blanket to keep him warm. The farmer and his wife were away for the holidays and their son was caring for their livestock, but he hadn’t discovered the intruder in the barn. Two local policemen had found him. He had fired a round of shots at them and missed, and no one had been injured. They had overpowered him, and he was in custody now with a DGSE agent and an interpreter interrogating him.
So far, he said that he didn’t know who the employer was, but he admitted to kidnapping Matthieu and her son. It made Theo realize that this investigation wasn’t just about protecting her, it was about finding Matthieu and Axel’s killers and putting them in prison for what they’d done. He confessed to both crimes, and to attempting to kidnap Theo. He admitted that they were going to take her and demand a ransom of fifty million for her since they had gotten shortchanged last time, and the man who had hired them had been very angry about it. He had said that Matthieu owed him the money and refused to pay him, and this was the only way he could get it, by kidnapping him and his son. It seemed to make sense to them in a convoluted, twisted way.
The kidnapper in custody told the Russian translator that the man who had hired them had said the widow would pay, and if they weren’t paid in full this time, they should kill her too. It was her last chance to pay her husband’s debt. It was a sick way of thinking, but it explained the motivation and how the kidnappers expected to resolve it. He didn’t seem too sorry to be in custody, he said that their boss would be very angry at them if they failed again in their mission to recoup his money, and he would kill them. And since it hadn’t gone as planned, he felt safer in jail than at the mercy of the man who had paid them for a job they hadn’t done.
He said he didn’t know where the other kidnapper had gone. He knew he had a friend in England, and was going to try and go there, but this man hadn’t heard from him, and he didn’t know what part of England the friend was in.
“It’s almost over,” Guy told Mike. “We only have one more man on the loose.” Mike had been right. The hundred-million-euro investor in Matthieu’s two stores in Russia had decided to collect or kill him, and he wanted the rest of the money from Theo after killing her husband and son. “It’s very complicated and Russian. I don’t think he’ll come after her again if they don’t succeed this time. It’s too much trouble—he’s lost too many men, and paid them for nothing. I want to put the last one away. We can’t get to the man who hired them, but four people have died, and he got half his money back with the first ransom. That should be enough, even for a Russian,” Guy Thomas said. It had taken an enormous amount of money and manpower just to get this far, and two people had been poisoned, which could have meant two more victims.
“Do you think he killed Matthieu’s young actress too?” Mike asked, fascinated by how sick and how wrong the whole thing was.
“He might have, as a warning to him. Or she was killed by the FSB or SVR. She was double-crossing everyone, so it could have been them or Matthieu Pasquier’s disgruntled investor. She was dispensable for them, a meaningless pawn in the game who probably betrayed too many people too many times. She was young and foolish and no match for the people she was cheating. Pasquier lost twice as much money as his investor on that deal, but he had a more pragmatic attitude about it, and he could afford it. So could his Russian associate, but he’s known to be a hothead, according to one informant. Hopefully he’ll let it go now. We’ve put the word out that we know who he is, and we’ll make trouble for him with the SVR if he doesn’t stop. I’m not sure they’d care, but it’s one thing killing their own, and another coming here and killing respectable people and a child. We can make a request for extradition, but they’ll never give him to us. They protect their own, no matter how bad they are.”
“Robert says that too. They don’t seem to hesitate to poison the people they’re unhappy with. Theo is damn lucky they didn’t use a more powerful nerve agent on her. Maybe de Vaumont is a casualty in this too. He took a lot of risks with the people he’s been working for recently. Any news of him, by the way?”
“Nothing. He’ll turn up one of these days, maybe he’s on to some big deal. Or he’s dead. He was playing with fire with the people he was dealing with. Very few people get away with that for long. Tell Mrs. Pasquier she has one less Russian criminal to worry about. We’re going to prosecute the guys we have in custody, and not send them back to Russia. It sends the right message. We’re going to charge all three of the men we have with kidnap and murder. They’ll be in prison here for a very long time. And hopefully, we’ll find the last man soon. When we do, it will be over this time, and justice will have been served. It won’t bring her husband and boy back, or keep her out of danger in future. But for now, and for a while, she’ll be safe—as much as she can be.”
“Thanks, Guy. And her DGSE detail?”
“Will stay in place until it’s over, and maybe a while after that to make sure that it’s really finished, and Dmitri Aleksandr will leave her alone. If he hires a new team, we’ll do everything we can to stop him from here. This isn’t the dark ages where you can go around killing anyone you want to. Even the Russian authorities won’t approve.”