Central Park by Guillaume Musso (ebook reader macos .TXT) 📕

What the hell is he talking about?

Through the rain, behind Vaughn, her gaze fell on the hospital’s electronic sign.

Hello, today is Tuesday, October 15, 2013

It’s 11:59 p.m.

There was a mistake on this sign. Today was Tuesday, but it was the eighth, not the fifteenth. She wiped the rain from her face. Her ears were buzzing. The red flame of a distress flare burst in her mind like a warning. From the beginning, she had been hunting down not only Vaughn but a more insidious and tenacious enemy: herself.

A succession of moments flashed through her mind, like a montage from a movie.

First she saw the young pawnbroker from Chinatown, fiddling with the push button on Paul’s watch. “I’m adjusting the time and date,” he’d explained.

Then the front page of the newspaper she’d seen by Caleb Dunn’s door. That, too, had been dated October 15. As had Franck Maréchal’s e-mail. All these details she’d paid no attention to…

But how was it possible?

Suddenly, she understood. The gap in her memory was not just one night long, as she’d thought. It stretched over at least a week.

Tears of sadness and anger mingled with the rain on Alice’s face. She was still pointing the gun at Vaughn, but her whole body was trembling. She swayed, then struggled fiercely against the possibility of collapsing, gripping her gun with all her might.

Again, the iridescent veil appeared in her mind, but this time her arm was long enough for her to seize it. Finally, she could tear it away, allowing the memories to resurface. Fragments began slowly reforming.

Lightning split the darkness. Alice turned away for a fraction of a second. That instant of inattention was fatal. Gabriel rushed at her and shoved her violently onto the hood of the Shelby. Alice pulled the trigger, but the shot missed.

Her enemy pressed down on her with all his weight, immobilizing her with his left hand. Again, lightning flashed in the sky and set the horizon ablaze. Alice looked up and saw the syringe that the man was holding in his right hand. Her vision blurred. A taste of iron in her mouth. She watched, powerless, as the shining needle came down as if in slow motion and stabbed her neck. She could do nothing to stop it.

Gabriel pressed down on the plunger to inject the liquid. The serum burned inside her body like an electric shock. Pain seared through her, abruptly unlocking the gates of her memory. She had the impression that her entire being was on fire and that her heart had been replaced by a grenade with its pin removed.

There was a blinding flash of white light, and she caught a glimpse of something.

It terrified her.

Then she lost consciousness.

I remember…Three months agoJuly 12, 2013

An atmosphere of fear reigns in the capital.

One week earlier, just as people were going home from work, there was a terrorist attack that left Paris dazed and bloodied. A suicide bomber with explosives attached to his belt blew himself up on a bus on Rue Saint-Lazare. The effect was devastating: eight dead, eleven injured.

The same day, a backpack containing a propane cylinder filled with nails was found on line 4 at the Montparnasse-Bienvenue Métro station. Thankfully, the bomb-disposal team managed to defuse it before it could do any damage, but the discovery caused mass panic.

The specter of the 1995 attacks is on everyone’s mind. More and more tourist sites are evacuated every day. “The return of terrorism” is all over the papers and headline news on TV every evening. The SAT, the Criminal Division’s anti-terrorism unit, is under pressure and constantly swooping down on enclaves of Islamists, anarchists, and extreme-left activists to check ID papers and make arrests.

In principle, their investigations have nothing to do with me. Not until Antoine de Foucaud, the deputy head of the SAT, asks me to take part in interrogating suspects who have already been in custody for the maximum period allowed and are about to be released. In the 1970s, at the start of his career, Foucaud worked for several years with my father before their paths diverged. He was also one of my instructors at the police academy. He has a high opinion of me and of my abilities as an interrogator—maybe too high.

“We need you on this, Alice.”

“What do you want me to do, exactly?”

“We’ve been trying to make this guy talk for more than three days, but he’s not saying a word. I think you can break him.”

“Why? Because I’m a woman?”

“No, because you have a talent for it.”

I would normally be excited by such an offer. This time, though, to my amazement, I feel no rush of adrenaline, only an immense fatigue and the desire to go home. My head has been screaming with a violent migraine since this morning. Now it’s evening—a heavy, oppressive summer evening. The air in Paris is thick with pollution and it has been a mercilessly hot day. With the air-conditioning not working, the Criminal Division’s headquarters has been transformed into a furnace. My blouse is sticky with sweat, and I would kill for a cold can of Diet Coke, but the vending machine is out of order.

“Listen, if your guys haven’t gotten anything out of him, I don’t see what I’ll be able to do.”

“Please just give it a try,” Foucaud begs. “I’ve seen you do it before.”

“I’m just going to waste your time. I don’t know anything about the case.”

“We’ll bring you up to speed on that. Taillandier’s already agreed to let you do it. Just get in there and make him give us a name. After that, we’ll take over again.”

I hesitate, but do I really have a choice in the matter?

We sit in an upper-floor room with two fans blowing warm air at us, and for an hour I am briefed about the suspect by two SAT officers. The man, Brahim Rahmani—aka the “cannon dealer” and the “powder monkey”—has been under close surveillance by the