Chapter 8

Breach

"What do you mean he's not there any more?" Tréville had repeated the same sentence three times but Athos could still not grasp the meaning of it. "I don't understand. Not there. Have they released him already?"

"Listen, I've absolutely no time at all, but I'll be in the office in ten minutes. Wait till I'm there and I'll explain it to you."

Before Athos could reply, Tréville had hung up. Slowly, Athos put the receiver back down. He had heard what Tréville had said, had understood it, word for word, but somehow his mind refused to string the words together to form a coherent, logical message. Was not there any more?

Maybe, Athos thought, it was just the lack of sleep that made his mind sluggish and non-perceptive. Two painkillers certainly hadn't helped. He had slept three hours at the most, the task of finding proof to get Aramis out of custody the driving force behind his return to the office before dawn. When Athos had arrived, Porthos had already been there, obviously driven by the same unrest and concern for their brother. Athos wondered if Porthos had slept at all. Shortly after, an overtired-looking d'Artagnan had joined them and they had worked in complete silence until Constance and Charlène had arrived and handed out croissants and more coffee a couple of hours later.

Athos rose and walked over to Porthos. "Tréville just called to inform me Aramis is not in custody any more, but he says Aramis was not released. I'm not sure what he means. Have you spoken with him this morning? With Aramis, I mean."

Porthos shook his head. "No, but I talked to Anne on the phone. She's trying to see Aramis today together with her lawyer. Maybe the police will let her be with him for the consultation. She didn't mention he might get released today." Porthos took a look at the watch. "She had agreed to meet her lawyer at the police station at ten, so it's unlikely her lawyer has already pushed through a petition for release." It was shortly after nine now.

D'Artagnan, who had heard the other two talking, came over. "Any news on Aramis?"

Athos repeated what he had just told Porthos.

"Oh my God, do you think he tried to escape?" D'Artagnan asked in alarm. "Tréville would have said it, wouldn't he?" A whiff of panic rang through d'Artagnan's rapid words. "Aramis wouldn't do that, right? Do you think he's injured? Maybe taken to a hospital, that's why Tréville said he's not there any more, yes?"

Athos gripped d'Artagnan's shoulder, trying to calm the young man down. "He would not be that stupid." He glanced at Porthos, taking in the other's expression and added, a tad less convinced, "He wouldn't, would he?"

Porthos stared back. He wasn't sure any more if he could judge his friend's behaviour the way he used to. Who knew how Aramis reacted nowadays under great pressure, fearing for Anne and the child? After all, the marksman had been prone to making rash decisions before.

"I've not thought about it, but you could be right," Athos went on. "Maybe he felt sick and they had to take him to hospital?" Athos looked at Porthos again, his thoughts spinning. "His blood results are still not back to normal, and I'm sure he didn't take with him the pills Dr. Bellamy prescribed. Did Anne take the pills to the station? Maybe his health deteriorated?"

"Damn!" Porthos squeezed by Athos and walked over to Aramis' room. Once there, he opened the drawers until he found what he was looking for. "Here they are!" He held up the opened blister pack.

"Did Tréville tell you which hospital they've taken Aramis to?" asked d'Artagnan.

"No, he simply said he wasn't in his cell any more. Tréville's coming by, he should be here any minute."

Porthos joined the others again, the blister pack still in his hand. "Maybe we can drive to the hospital together, though I'm not sure if we'll be allowed in. I wonder if Anne has been informed?"

The buzzer in the reception area sounded and Charlène answered the bell. A moment later Tréville stepped through the door. He saw the Musketeers gathered in front of Porthos' room and walked over.

"Is Aramis okay? Is he in hospital?" d'Artagnan asked before Tréville had reached them.

"Can we visit him?" asked Porthos.

Tréville briefly closed his eyes and exhaled. "No. What I've been trying to explain to Athos is that Aramis is not in custody any more and we have no idea where he has been taken."

Uncomprehending eyes stared at Tréville.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Porthos asked finally.

"I'm not yet sure what it means, but it seems Aramis has been taken somewhere else without direct order. None of the police departments, police officers or the prosecutor involved in this case ordered him to be moved. Nevertheless, at two o'clock in the morning two police officers produced an order, marched down to the cells and left the police department together with Aramis. An unresponsive Aramis, as it seems from what we see on the CCTV footage. Coincidentally, the monitoring cameras in the basement didn't work so we've no idea what happened in the cells."

"What?" Athos rasped. "How can this happen? How can the night duty officers let someone take Aramis away?"

Simultaneously, Porthos growled, "Who took him away? Grimaud? He what? Simply walks into a police station unhindered, freeing prisoners as he pleases?"

"Didn't Aramis put up a fight?" d'Artagnan asked doubtfully, quietly.

"They produced a valid, signed order, so the officers on duty had no reason to believe it wasn't genuine. Which it possibly even was. We're still trying to find out who signed the order and if the signature is faked. The officer's name who handed out the order and signed the log book reads Marcheaux," Tréville added, grinding his teeth.

Now Athos stepped back to the visitor chairs and slumped down, shaking his head. "This can only be a bad joke."

At the same time Porthos shouted, furiously, anxiously, "How could you have let his happen?"

D'Artagnan looked to and fro between Tréville, Porthos and Athos.

"I didn't let this happen, Porthos. I had no influence on it. How should I have known something like this would happen?"

"Do you suggest it's really that easy to get a prisoner out of police custody?" Athos mumbled, staring at a point on the floor between his feet.

"No. As it is, Marcheaux and his partner are indeed working for the police force. The Paris Police Prefecture has nearly 20,000 officers on active service, a third of them working for the Police Municipale. I can't know every officer who is working in greater Paris." Tréville rubbed his brow. "I've already got men checking on Marcheaux."

Athos raised his head, eyeing Tréville. "I'm convinced it's our old friend Marcheaux and it will soon turn out he has neglected to report for duty this morning. You already suspected this summer that someone from within the agency was giving away confidential information. There you have him."

"Putain de merde!" Porthos shouted, starting to pace up and down in the reception area. The worst sort of swearing echoed through the room until Porthos ended his outburst with a kick to the armchair.

"What now?" Athos asked into the sudden silence. "What do we do now?"

Tréville walked over to the seating area and collapsed into the armchair next to Athos. "We wait until we have further information on who ordered the move and where Aramis has been taken to. It won't be long before we have found Marcheaux' department and private address. As soon as we have Marcheaux or his partner we'll decide what to do next."

Porthos strolled over, planting himself in front of the captain. "Do you really think Marcheaux is waiting until one of your people come to arrest him? By now he will be up and away with Aramis. The scent is getting cold while we sit here and talk."

Porthos looked every bit like he was ready to punch someone, and Athos hoped it would not be Tréville who had to serve as scapegoat. "Porthos is right. I'm sure they are not in Paris any longer."

"True, but as soon as we know more about Marcheaux we can start the search. Besides, there's still a tiny chance that Aramis really has been moved to another police department, though I can't imagine why."

With an angry snort, Porthos snarled at Tréville, "I'm not going to sit here and wait until you and your department have sorted out this mess!"

"Fine," Athos replied instead of Tréville, a tad more aggressive than he meant to. "Let's go searching for him. Where do you want to start? Paris? France? Spain? Marcheaux could have taken him anywhere." Athos checked his watch. "It's been eight hours since Aramis was abducted, they could be as far as the Spanish border by now. And with a valid warrant and genuine police badge Marcheaux can easily cross any European border without trouble." Athos rose. "Tell me, Porthos, where should we start?"

The two men glowered at each other.

"Messieurs," Tréville intervened, rising from his seat. "Bickering won't help Aramis. I'm not suggesting you sit down and do nothing. We still need to find one clear proof that Rochefort abducted Monsieur Autriche and Grimaud helped him. Continue with this. As soon as I have material on Marcheaux I'll let you know and we can pick up there. D'Artagnan, didn't you say you have access to the public CCTV system?"

"Yes, but so have you. Haven't your men already checked?"

"The administrative mills grind slowly. We have checked the footage of the police department's cameras covering the immediate area, but getting the order to access the public CCTV takes some time."

D'Artagnan grinned despite the serious situation. Getting Tréville's approval for illegal action was new. "I'll start right away with it and Constance can continue with the footage from Courville-sur-Eure. Constance!" he shouted, belatedly realizing that both secretaries stood directly behind the reception counter within earshot, tensely listening to the men's conversation.

Constance nodded. "I'll start right away." She followed d'Artagnan to his office for further details.

Simultaneously, Tréville's mobile and the telephone on Charlène's desk started ringing.

Tréville answered the call with a shouted "Do you have him?" by way of greeting, impatiently awaiting his deputy's answer.

Charlène had taken the call, too, cradling the receiver in one hand while mouthing the word 'Anne' to Athos.

With a glance towards Tréville, Athos stepped up to the counter, taking the receiver from Charlène. "Anne," he muttered, waiting for his counterpart to speak.

Tréville, intently listening to what the officer on the other hand had to report, gestured to Porthos to follow him to the bigger man's office. "Wait a moment, I'll put you on speaker," he ordered his deputy, closing the door behind him. He placed his mobile on the desk and took a seat opposite Porthos, both men following the policeman's report with knitted brows.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

The day passed without news of Aramis' whereabouts. Neither the police nor any of the Inseparables found any trace of where their friend had been taken. Marcheaux, too, remained undetected as did the police officer who had accompanied him in the night.

Tréville, with the help of Athos, had urged a devastated Anne to go into hiding. He had personally taken her and Henri to an address known only to Tréville and which Athos suspected of being a private hideout rather than a police safe-house. However, he unconditionally trusted the erstwhile First Minister of France with the former queen's safety and didn't ask where she had been taken to.

Outside, the lights of Paris had lit up hours ago, again illuminating the lavish Christmas decorations in the streets, and the clock was nearing midnight. Aramis had been missing for almost 24 hours now, as Athos noted with a glance at his watch. "Maybe you're right," Athos said tiredly to an equally exhausted-looking Porthos. "Maybe we should just start searching him. Hop into the car and head... somewhere." He rubbed his eyes. "Where would you turn to if you were Grimaud? Have we checked Éparcy? Where's his place of birth in this century?"

Before Porthos could reply, d'Artagnan rushed into the office without knocking, bumping into Porthos. "I have him!" the young man shouted excitedly, ignoring Porthos rubbing his shoulder and glowering at him.

"Who? Aramis?" Porthos asked hopefully.

"No, Rochefort. Sorry," the young man offered belatedly. "I have the proof we need. On footage. Rochefort and Grimaud." D'Artagnan spread some print outs on Athos' desk. "Both of them together in one car, talking to each other. Even the police can't doubt Rochefort's involvement now. Look!"

Constance, who was still in the office and had followed d'Artagnan, closed the door and joined the men stooping over Athos' desk to study the pictures.

"Where is this? Where did you find it?" The photos showed Rochefort as well as Grimaud, on a few of the print-outs they could be seen together, driving in a car, standing in front of a car, talking and smoking. They seemed to be very familiar with each other. Athos looked expectantly at the young Gascon.

"Constance spotted them. So far I have only downloaded the CCTV footage I could get from the Département Eure-et-Loir, concentrating on the arrondissement Chartres. While going through the footage here in Paris in search of Aramis I suddenly remembered a conversation I had with a friend from Canada a while ago. That with all the discussions going on about surveillance cameras, data protection, privacy protection and so on there's often one fact being neglected." D'Artagnan looked from one to the other. "So-called weather cams, local webcams. Most villages and cities have them nowadays, tourist areas anyway. I started to check which of the villages and hamlets around Friaize operate such weather cams and I found a few. Among others, there's one in Saint Éliph, about ten kilometres west of Friaize, though between both villages there's a forest you have to drive around if you don't want to use private roads or rough forest tracks. Anyway, Saint Éliph is small but they have a beautiful old church and the local priest managed to persuade the local council-" D'Artagnan was interrupted in his lengthy report.

"Less detail, more information, d'Artagnan," Athos said, perking his eyebrows up.

"Right. Well, anyway, there's a weather cam and it's putting a picture online every quarter of an hour. There are two viewing directions, one facing the churchyard and the surrounding vicinity, one shows the small market place and the road leading out of town, towards the forest, into direction of Friaize. Usually, these cameras upload live pictures and each shot is replaced with the next uploaded picture. It would use up too much storage space to keep every single shot, so most official providers, local authorities and so on use this technique. But in this case, we were lucky. Since it's such a small village-"

"D'Artagnan, get to the point."

"I would, if you'd let me speak!" The young man glowered at Athos. "They save and file every single picture the weather cam takes and I could go as far back as the beginning of the year. That's why we're in the lucky position of having pictures of Rochefort and Grimaud for the period from February to November, in Rochefort's case naturally only until July. Instead of using official roads from Courville-sur-Eure or Pontgouin, they used back roads, coming west from Saint-Éliph, through the forest. That's why we couldn't spot them on any CCTV footage. Or in Grimaud's case, only rarely."

"You are a genius, pup," Porthos said.

"I know." D'Artagnan grinned back. "I cropped some of the photos so Rochefort and Grimaud are unambiguously identifiable. This must be enough to convince the prosecutor. It unmistakably ties Rochefort to Grimaud and therefore to the abduction."

Athos leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath. "That's at least some good news. Very well done, d'Artagnan and Constance. It's already past midnight, so Tréville won't get hold of the prosecutor now. I think we can wait until tomorrow morning before presenting these facts to the police. I'll just let Tréville know what we have."

Porthos mumbled his consent. "I'll finish my current research and then try to get some sleep."

"We all need some sleep. You two go home now and get some rest." Athos addressed the young couple. "Come back tomorrow morning. I'll let you know when Tréville has news."

Reluctantly, d'Artagnan left the office with Constance. The two older men returned to their tasks and worked well into the early morning hours, despite their earlier instructions to try to get some sleep.

However, they had no success in finding where Aramis might have been taken.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Aramis woke to a throbbing head, a dull pain in his body and the feel of icy coldness crawling up from the soil beneath.

He could feel the damp earth under his cheek; he was definitively not lying on a bed or mattress. A shudder ran through him. Finally, he forced his eyes open to locate where he was. It took him a moment to find his bearings; the light was dim and his mind was blank, devoid of any memory. He realized that he could move neither his hands nor feet; they were bound, his hands behind his back and his feet so tight it hurt. His eyes settled on the only spot not hidden in darkness, a rectangle of light not far from his head. It was a hole in a wall, not big enough to be called a window, and far too low for one, but it allowed him to look through and see what was outside his confinement. He took in black soil, glistening with moisture and frost, and behind, snow-covered slopes climbing up a hill until it merged with the landscape of forest and hills and grey sky. He blinked to clear his vision. Staring at the scene outside, his mind betrayed him for a brief, shocking moment, mingling memories of old and new. Savoy! He was in Savoy, he remembered those snow-covered hills!

Marsac had left him behind and now he lay here, unable to move, surrounded by his dead comrades, injured and dying. Ripples of fear ran through him. He could feel his heart beating, quickly and hard against the ribcage, cold claws slowly suffocating him. It is not real! He knew it couldn't be real, yet his body refused to acknowledge what his brain had already sorted out. He could smell the snow, the damp soil and the waft of metallic scent two dozen dead Musketeers would leave behind on a killing field. He could smell it! He drew a shallow breath. And then another, and another, suppressing the bile that threatened to rise in his throat. The image faded, until it was again no more than a stale memory. He must have been brought to Savoy, but this was not a training excursion and he had not been left behind to die. Or maybe he was going to die, but not because Marsac had left him nor because soldiers from Savoy had ambushed them. Savoy was in the past. Probably this wasn't even Savoy.

Aramis craned his neck to see if there was more outside but the rolling hills, but he couldn't detect anything of interest. His eyes returned to his quarters, taking in the damp stone walls barely visible in the poor light, and he tried to sit up. An impossible task, as he very soon found out. With his hands and feet bound so tight, the attempt only brought him further pain. Slowly, the memory came back. Grimaud. The Autriche case. The prison cell...