By tradition, funeral services for slain Roman Catholic policemen were conducted at the city’s downtown cathedral. A restoration underway there forced Detective Norville Geoffrion’s service to be relocated to Notre-Dame, an historic church in Old Montreal that was frequently chosen for state and celebrity funerals. Underappreciated in life, Nord would be going out with a pomp and grandeur normally reserved for eminent figures.
Tower bells alerted the heavens above and citizens below to his passing.
Police from most American states, every Canadian province and numerous cities arrived to pay homage to a fallen brother. Invited to accompany Nord’s daughter, with her baby in arms, Émile Cinq-Mars observed officers fill the pews in their dress blues, greens and reds. As the coffin passed down the broad aisle under the organ’s fanfare, he whispered, ‘Well done, Nord. Good on you.’
Nobody was calling him Poof-Poof today.
Estranged from her mother, and now her father was gone. Nord’s daughter, Gina, was grateful for Cinq-Mars’s company. She welcomed his assurance whenever she was overwhelmed by the somber pageantry. She extended an invitation to ride in the hearse that would wind through the streets of Montreal, cross the east side of Mount Royal, and ascend the mountain to the cemetery where the Police Brotherhood had provided a plot. In death, Nord was to be remembered, and according to the granite inscription donated by the department, revered forever.
The modest graveside internment service suffered a delay. Officials had been snarled in traffic in the old part of town. Another police embarrassment as they couldn’t handle traffic control. Those who were first to arrive at the cemetery waited by the roadside, prepared to walk a distance in. Among them, Cinq-Mars nodded to the older priest. They’d met. A second priest helped organize an expanding line of dignitaries. Not the mayor but his second-in-command, not the police chief but his first assistant, plus the head of the Police Brotherhood and Captain Delacroix from his poste, were present. Ranking officers from visiting forces and higher-ups in the local bureaucracy mingled together, followed by an official honor guard of constables with long rifles. The older priest attempted to wave these men to the front and seemed annoyed by his junior’s ineptitude.
Bugged by the chaos, Cinq-Mars let it go. He’d stand by Gina.
The next limo carried Captain Armand Touton and Detective Henry Casgrain. His partners past and present were seeing this through to the end, perhaps more for his sake than Nord’s memory. Touton joined the assistants to the mayor and chief of police. Casgrain, a little lost, sidled up to Cinq-Mars.
He had a bone to pick with him. ‘Touton said you called last night. You went out?’
‘Took a meeting, yeah.’
‘You shouldn’t take them alone, Émile.’
‘You had a ball game on. Anyway, no overtime. Did you win or lose?’
‘The game was long over by the time you went out. What’s going on?’
‘I guess you lost. Sorry about that.’
‘Émile—’
‘Me and the Hells, Henri. We’re pals now. Inseparable for life. Why’d you lose?’
‘Couldn’t hit with runners on. Your humor eludes me. Are the gangs at war?’
‘To be determined. What about your pitching?’
‘Not bad for once. Next time we’ll get them.’
‘Henri, do you know anything about whistling?’
‘I can whistle. What’s to know?’
‘I’m told it’s dangerous.’ Cinq-Mars checked that Gina was beyond earshot. Thankfully, her husband and child were keeping her occupied. ‘Word is, I’m a target. Ciampini wants revenge for sending his daughter up the Old Mill Stream.’
‘The Hells told you this? Émile, don’t take it lightly.’
‘I’m not. Why I’m telling you now. So, whistling. Anything?’
‘Nothing. I mean, we’re in a graveyard, there’s that.’
‘There’s what?’
‘You know. A graveyard. Whistling.’
Cinq-Mars returned a blank expression.
‘OK. It’s an English expression. Why should you know it? Can’t recall how I do.’
‘What’s the expression?’
‘Whistling past a graveyard.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Goes back in time. Used to mean bucking up your courage when you walk past graves. Helps to deflect the whistler’s apprehension about dying. Or of ghosts. Since then, it means being cheerful in a crappy situation. Or, ignoring what’s risky to get a job done, hoping for the best outcome by ignoring pitfalls, that sort of thing. What’s this about?’
He blew out a gust of air. ‘I’m supposed to watch my back if I hear whistling. So don’t, I might get jumpy.’
‘Émile. Take it seriously. Look where you are.’
He looked. He got it. ‘Naw.’
‘A French guy warned you? Maybe he didn’t know the English phrase, either.’
‘Irish, actually.’
‘Émile. Irish? They recite a phrase with hidden meaning just to brush their teeth.’
Something to that, perhaps. He’d wanted Casgrain as his partner to have a mind close by capable of perceiving unique angles to any situation. He knew he should listen.
‘Émile, you’re out in the open. Ciampini knew you had to be here today. He’s had time to prepare. The trees, the tombstones, he could hide a dozen shooters on the perimeter. High ground and clear escapes. I’d shoot you here. A walk in the park, so to speak, for a gunman.’
Cinq-Mars resisted the notion. ‘Sharpshooters aren’t a local MO.’
‘This started with KGB in a closet. How is that local MO? The Rabbit has Russians flying in from Vladivostok. Yesterday, Mafioso stepped off a plane from New York. We weren’t informed, of course, until they vanished from view.’
No further convincing necessary. ‘OK,’ Cinq-Mars determined. ‘Eyes peeled. Ears wide. Let Touton know. Warn anybody you trust. Be wise with strangers. Probably pointless, but we’ll take precautions.’
‘Do I tell Delacroix?’
Cinq-Mars sighed. ‘Sure. Ignore him if he barks orders.’
‘You should leave.’
‘Can’t. I’m looking after Nord’s daughter and granddaughter. Go.’
Casgrain briefed Touton on the possible threat. Both had a word with Captain Delacroix; from a distance Cinq-Mars observed their intensity unfold. Obvious that Delacroix proposed something the other two argued against. A second plan was proposed and modified before they nodded in agreement.
Those three moved through the mourners. Anyone not in uniform was asked to identify him- or herself as the pack started moving down the serpentine path to the gravesite. They cleared a knoll where their destination became clear. A hundred yards off, a mound of earth stood out as available backfill. There, the hearse took position on a crest against an azure sky.
Gina trembled, seeing it again, and gave her wee daughter a kiss.
One priest walked ahead of the honor guard, the other right behind, followed by Cinq-Mars and the Geoffrion family. Then came a mishmash of dignitaries. Delacroix fell into step, while Casgrain and Touton continued to wade through the gathering, checking ID.
They reached the gravesite.
Armand Touton flashed the OK sign. A long shot to think that an assassin strolled among a gathering of police, many armed. Whistling, then, did not pertain to the cemetery, although Casgrain’s notion of a sharpshooter in the woods could prevail. Impossible to guard against that contingency now.
The mourners steeled themselves for the imminent emotional slurry. Pallbearers adjusted the casket on a mechanism to lower it tenderly into the earth. Gina broke up then, muffling her sobs on her husband’s shoulder. A final commemoration was spoken, followed by prayer. The older priest made the sign of the cross. The younger hesitated, then did likewise. His vacillation was of no consequence, and might have gone unnoticed, had he not decided to redo his error. Cinq-Mars’s antennae alerted him. He nudged Touton. The sign of the cross did not catch the retired detective’s attention, the priest reversing his mistake did. In correcting himself, the cleric shot a glance at Touton. No stopwatch could calculate how briefly they locked eyes, a fraction of an instant. Breaking off that connection, it took another split-second for recognition to fully dawn on the older man. His attention riveted back to the young priest. Cinq-Mars and Touton both took a step simultaneous to the priest reaching under his cassock, which ill fit him. Too loose. Cinq-Mars and Touton bounded ahead. The younger of the two was quicker, the elder closer; they assailed the second priest as a conjoined unit.
The priest’s right hand fumbled under his robe. The same right hand that had done the sign of the cross from right to left, not the Western custom of left shoulder to right. A faithful Roman Catholic priest from Quebec would not do it that way, the motion instinctive through prolonged habit. This one probably taught himself that morning and only well enough to notice his gaffe.
Long strides forward. Acting on instinct, not verifiable evidence, until the pistol came out, then Cinq-Mars and Touton charged. They were on him as the gun was upraised, Touton taking the body, Cinq-Mars frantic for the shooter’s arm. He clutched the man’s wrist and swung it upward, thrust the arm high and back, nearly dislocating his shoulder. The gun fired. Stunned mourners shouted now and cried out. Cops spun on their heels. The man went down under the two warring detectives. Casgrain next, then Delacroix joined the kerfuffle, pinning the squirming body to the ground, and two burly officers in plainclothes identified earlier as FBI kneeled on the priest’s calves.
Constables in the honor guard stood stock still, their mouths agape.
Handcuffs appeared, more than enough, and the priest was formally restrained. He coughed under the weight of bodies, the wind knocked out of him. They stood him up while he tried to stay bent over, his lungs frantic for air.
Casgrain and Cinq-Mars pinioned the priest’s arms between them.
The funeral abruptly on hold. Gina Malinger looking as though she was living through an earthquake. Nord’s coffin, and in a way his life and death, held in suspension.
‘I swear,’ their captive protested, ‘I wasn’t going to shoot. You know that, right? Making it look good. We have to make it look good.’
Delacroix ordered a uniform to take care of the pistol, but Touton, on top of that, brushed the young man off and seized the weapon himself.
The now defrocked priest suddenly struggled and kicked.
‘Calm down, Coalface. It’s over for you,’ Cinq-Mars said, and pulled his hair back hard.
‘Coalface?’
‘My nickname for you, Willy,’ Touton told him.
‘Cool. I like that.’ He stayed half-bent at the waist.
‘Glad you approve. What name do we book you under?’
‘Book me?’
‘Attempted murder.’
‘OK, right, I get it. Make it look good. Book me. My fake name. We don’t want the bad guys to think they’ve been had.’
‘Who’s been had?’ Casgrain asked. Not a sincere question.
‘You’re not serious? You can’t be. I wasn’t going to shoot anybody. I was making it look good, believe me.’
‘If you don’t mind, I won’t. We’re overdue for a chat,’ Cinq-Mars said.
‘I’ll enjoy that.’
‘Less than me.’
‘Of course. Of course. I get it. No! Don’t pull me up!’ He’d been hunched over, catching his breath. Cinq-Mars and Casgrain straightened him and turned him to face the way out. ‘You don’t get it! It looks friendly if I’m just walking along. Come on, it has to look good. Don’t stand me up!’
He tried to stay bent at the waist. When that didn’t work, he let his knees give out, slumping down.
‘We can carry.’ A suggestion from a burly FBI guy. He looked strong enough to tuck him under one arm and haul him away like that.
Cinq-Mars declined. ‘I think we got this. Come on, Willy. First you walk. Then we talk.’
‘Hit me. Make it look good. Better yet, let me make a run for it.’
Casgrain had had enough and put a knee in his gluteus. Willy didn’t expect the blow.
‘Good one!’ he said. ‘Now let me run. Shoot at me.’
‘Damn,’ Cinq-Mars murmured. ‘These Americans will go home thinking we’re into police brutality.’
‘Aren’t we?’ Casgrain asked.
‘I’d call it kid gloves,’ the FBI guy chimed in.
They lugged Willy to his feet and started marching him down the winding path from the gravesite. Behind them, people were relaxing enough to commiserate with each other. Touton walked a stride behind carrying Willy’s Glock, having emptied the chambers.
Willy kept squirming and being a pest.
‘We need a cattle prod,’ Cinq-Mars said.
‘How’d you know it was him?’ Casgrain asked, then grunted from the effort of holding on to their prisoner. ‘Cut it out!’ he warned Willy.
‘Between him and me, I make the better priest.’
‘I screwed up the sign of the cross, all right?’ Willy barked. ‘Fuck you! Sue me. I did it on purpose, you idiots, to tip you off.’
‘Sure you did,’ Cinq-Mars said. ‘You counted on us noticing. That was clever.’
‘Not my final move.’
‘We’ll never know that now.’
‘Doesn’t matter. The way you rushed me. Looked good. Arresting me, good move. Hauling me out like this, almost perfect. It’ll work better if you let me loose. I make a break for it. You shoot me on the run.’
He made no sense to them. Cinq-Mars was thinking that Willy and Moira Ellibee were two peas in a pod.
‘You can miss,’ Willy let them know. ‘I’ll fall anyway.’
‘How did you know, Captain Touton?’ Casgrain asked over his shoulder. ‘Same?’
Willy answered on his behalf. ‘That one recognized my eyes. Fucking amazing. I knew he did. I saw it. Had to draw my weapon then. Before that I was going to wait. I wanted to catch Cinq-Mars alone. Fewer people, anyway. I had another scenario in mind. This works, too. But seriously, guys, let me make a break for it. Then shoot in my direction. You don’t have to aim.’
Touton had his own version of events. ‘I didn’t recognize your eyes. Are you nuts? What I recognized was a man trapped in his own game. Seen that look before. It’s called panic.’
‘I didn’t panic!’
‘You’re saying you planned to shoot me,’ Cinq-Mars summarized, ‘when I was alone.’
‘Wait. How did you know I was here to shoot you?’
‘Thanks for the admission of guilt. That’s refreshing. We’re making progress.’
‘No. Listen. Making it look good is all. Keep myself from being shot for real, maybe.’
‘Who by?’
‘We have choices. The Hells. The Mafia. The Russians.’
‘You’re popular.’
‘Very.’
‘Why would you do that, Willy? Shoot me when you get me alone but warn me first that you’re planning to shoot me, then only pretend to do it. Strange behavior. Not a story that gets you off.’
‘You’re not cooperating! We’re being watched.’
‘Excuse me?’ They stopped walking.
‘We’re being watched. This has to look right, guys. Hit me again. Beat the shit out of me.’
‘I can’t tell you how tempting that is,’ Casgrain said.
‘Not going to happen. At least, not out here in the open,’ Cinq-Mars told him.
‘This’ll work, this’ll work. Let me make a break for it. I’ll run. Then you shoot me. In the leg. Maybe you don’t miss. If you miss, I still go down. Then haul me out of here.’
‘How nuts are you, Willy?’
‘We need a war! What’s wrong with you? It’s the only way. We need war. Let me escape. Come on. Trust me. Shoot me. Or shoot at me if you don’t have the balls. I’ll fall, then—’
Willy did not assume he was being watched through a sharpshooter’s scope until a bullet whizzed past them. It went above or between Émile Cinq-Mars and Coalface Willy and chipped a corner off a tombstone. They sensed its velocity in the air then heard the retort from the woods ahead.
‘Gunshot!’ Cinq-Mars bellowed, and others did, too. He and Casgrain gripped Coalface between them and for a moment pulled in opposite directions. Then went left, to seek shelter when a second shot fired. Willy was hit. He yelped and went down. Blood and flesh flitted into the air. Shouting and bedlam around them now. Cops and citizens scattered, hollering. Willy’s wound looked bloody and painful, but it wouldn’t kill him. The detectives jerked him to his feet, he yelped again, ducked low and ran. A third bullet struck the ground behind them, kicking up a divot. A fourth caused Coalface Willy to crumple onto his face when Cinq-Mars and Casgrain both stumbled to the ground. That was close. The detectives hoisted him up again and a burly FBI guy helped out by grabbing his feet. They trotted him across the grass then threw themselves behind low upright slabs of granite gravestones. The detectives gathered themselves and peered over the stones, as other officers across the cemetery were doing.
Civilians kept their heads down.
Nothing to see. Distant woods provided cover for any assassin.
Cops lacked a legitimate response. They stayed down. Delacroix suddenly shouted commands to the honor guard, and they scampered forward to take up secure positions amid the graves with their long rifles. On command they aimed at the woods from where the shots had been fired. At trees and boulders. Then at the sky when Delacroix commanded them to shoot high. No telling how many people were wandering around up there.
‘Volley one!’ Delacroix called. ‘Aim high! Fire!’
A bullet from each weapon in the hands of eight young men.
Then the cemetery and the mountain turned perfectly still.
Silent, save for the receptive echo of gunfire.
No call for volley two. Little point.
One of the riflemen said, ‘You know we only shoot blanks, right?’
Irritated, Delacroix swore that he knew that and told him to shut his yap.
Touton crawled over from one hiding spot to another. He pulled himself up against a grave marker and checked it out. ‘I got Osmond Jenkins. What kind of name is that? Died in 1929. Wonder if he was a jumper. A market crash type.’
‘I got Francine LeClair,’ Casgrain chipped in. ‘Died in 1941. At eighty-two. Long life.’
Cinq-Mars said, ‘Avelino Maltais. Nineteen years old. 1951. Car crash, I bet.’
‘Rest in peace, the bunch,’ Touton summed up. ‘You must be happy, Cinq-Mars.’
He knew the man had a quip on his tongue. Reluctantly, he asked, ‘OK. Why am I happy?’
‘For the last minute or so, you’re not the only one saying a prayer. For sixty seconds, we all got religion. We’re still down on our knees.’
Cinq-Mars cracked a smile. Casgrain enjoyed a chuckle. Then asked his partner, ‘Was that meant for you, you think?’
‘The bullets? Could be,’ Cinq-Mars said. ‘But they hit Coalface. Maybe no coincidence.’
‘No coincidence,’ the man replied. ‘They want me dead.’
‘Who?’
‘Half the world. My one way out was to kill you, Cinq-Mars.’
‘I now have motive. You’re really helping yourself. How’s the wound?’
He’d been hit under his left shoulder. The bullet had gone through flesh and there’d been blood loss. He was doing OK but required attention.
A tall, barrel-chested man in uniform with a marine-type haircut, pistol upraised, ran up, then sank alongside them. ‘Special Agent Franklin,’ he said. ‘FBI. We just commandeered the hearse. Let’s put the wounded man into the rear, then out to the parking lot.’
‘Straight to a hospital,’ Cinq-Mars said.
‘You got it.’
The hearse maneuvered among the headstones. The driver didn’t plan his turn well.
Lying on his side, Touton was ten feet away. ‘FBI, huh?’ he asked. ‘ID?’
The question seemed totally unnecessary to Cinq-Mars and Casgrain. Touton didn’t think so, and neither did the Special Agent. He showed his badge. Closest to him, Cinq-Mars accepted its validity. He looked over his shoulder at his old partner crossly.
‘Was Coalface really a priest?’ Touton asked, dismissing their unspoken criticism.
Point taken.
The black hearse peeled onto the twisting driveway and sped down toward them. The driver braked. Coalface Willy was hoisted up by the four men, each taking a corner, and they awkwardly shuffled him toward the vehicle. They were exposed in the open air again. But no shot was fired.
The driver, an FBI agent unaccustomed to the vehicle, had difficulty figuring out how to lift the tailgate, but did so finally. The injured man was slid into the space usually reserved for the dead. Two more FBI guys joined him.
‘Let’s go!’ Special Agent Franklin leveraged himself into the front seat, the driver leapt in behind the wheel, and the hearse took flight like a winged chariot. Cinq-Mars, Casgrain and Touton stood on the path with the shock of the day’s events hitting home.
‘Cinq-Mars!’ Delacroix cried out. ‘Take cover! Casgrain! Touton! Take cover!’
They didn’t.
No bullets were flying, despite the men being fully exposed, freestanding targets. That obliged Captain Delacroix, reluctantly, to get to his feet as well, although he enjoined others to stay down.
‘The Hells, you think?’ Casgrain asked.
‘Not their style,’ Touton opined. ‘Their two weapons of choice are bombs on timers and chainsaws. They prefer the drama. They’ve never had a sharpshooter.’
‘Ciampini?’ Cinq-Mars wondered.
‘Up close to the back of the head,’ Casgrain noted.
‘Yeah,’ Cinq-Mars agreed. ‘And The Rabbit prefers beating his victims to a pulp. If they don’t die easily, he pulls out a shiv. His friends? These KGB or ex-KGB, whatever they are? They might have brought a sharpshooter in. Not that he was all that sharp.’
‘Willy got hit. Or was he aiming at you?’ Casgrain probed that one possibility again.
Cinq-Mars pursed his lips. ‘This is Russian, possibly under the Mafia’s direction, with The Rabbit as the go-between and the Hells’ approval. Could be I was the target. Could be Willy. They miss me, they shoot him. Not impossible. Until we track the shooter, we won’t know.’
Assuming he was on the run, with a mile head start, they weren’t tracking the shooter immediately. With a forest to conceal himself, he had undoubtedly fled the mountain and probably not on foot.
‘Heard you’re in trouble,’ Touton commented, scarcely above a whisper. ‘Henri said.’
‘The Hells let me know,’ Cinq-Mars admitted. ‘Ciampini’s chewing his cud.’
‘I’ll take care of Ciampini.’
‘Don’t shoot him, Armand. I’ll have to arrest you.’
‘Your bleeding heart. I’ll let him know that anything happens to you, his daughter’s safety in prison cannot be guaranteed. You tell him that, he’ll laugh his ass off, a priest like you. I tell him, he’ll get the message.’
They looked over the shambles of the funeral gathering. Most people remained down. A few were dusting themselves off and coming to their knees. Fewer still were standing. Cinq-Mars spotted Gina Malinger cooing to her child. She was on her knees, her husband providing coverage between her and the woods. Other policemen in the vicinity were doing their best to offer a word of comfort.
Cinq-Mars looked back to where the hearse raced off with Coalface Willy. It had already left the parking lot. The vehicle tore down the road leading off the mountain. Hospital-bound, but that was not the only possibility. A penny dropped.
‘What just happened here?’ he asked. He looked at Touton to answer.
Touton shrugged, smiled. ‘I told you. He was not my man. Coalface has finally come in. Not to us. Now it can be said. He was an FBI plant from the get-go.’
Cinq-Mars did a complete 360-degree spin and looked set to paste him. ‘What are you telling me? He was FBI? How? Why didn’t you say so?’
‘Not for you to know, Émile. I wasn’t allowed to say.’
Cinq-Mars folded his arms over his chest, trying to contain himself. He and Touton were glued on each other now, wholly in each other’s orbit; a kind of kinesis, where each motion by one caused the other to feint, or hunch, or react with a reciprocal physical reflex. Like a pair of heavyweights preparing to spar.
Henri Casgrain noticed and held his peace. Waiting.
‘What was this about then?’ Cinq-Mars asked.
‘What? This? Or—’
‘This! This! If he wanted to come in out of the rain to the FBI, why come here to do it? Dressed as a priest? With a gun in his hand? He could just go home with them.’
Touton nodded. He understood the quagmire, the mud they were stepping in. ‘Two choices,’ he acknowledged. ‘One, he wants to come in, but also wants his gang war. He lived among them too long. My guess? He built up personal grievance, his own animosity. He wanted to take them down and figured out a way. He might have shot you, Cinq-Mars, to accomplish that. In the head or in the hip – to make it look good, like he claimed – I can’t say. His second choice was not to shoot you. I don’t know how he could work that one. His secrets have a longer shelf-life if the gangs don’t realize they’ve been compromised, and don’t know by who or for how long. My guess is no better than anybody’s.’
Casgrain shuffled, his head and neck slightly more stooped than usual. Then lifted his gaze. ‘How did this come about, sir?’ he inquired.
Touton brought his shoulders up, then let them drop. A weight released. ‘Back in the day, my old boss, Pax Plante – you heard of him, famous man – he signed on for it. The FBI knew Pax as an Eliot Ness-type. They trusted him. He had a reformer captain – that would be me. The Americans found Pax easy to convince. Me, not so much. In the end, I had no choice, and swore to keep the mission quiet. Their plan was to embed an informant in the local Mafia to keep tabs on how they supported their American cousins. Willy gave them steady dope – good dope, I hear. Us? A few crumbs from the table. We provided limited cover. If he got arrested, he might contact me to clear the decks, that sort of thing. He did his job. He disappeared down a dark rathole and stayed there. The locals didn’t know they had a spy in-house because he was tipping off G-men on stuff south of the border, letting the locals get away with murder, literally. My guess, we won’t see him again. Nobody will.’
They stood amid the gravestones, aware that their quarry had been snatched from their hands at the last moment, as if lifted into thin air, into flight.
Cinq-Mars tried to manage being both furious and stunned. He tried to revert to being philosophical, if only to ease his upset. ‘I’ll never know why he did it. I wanted to ask him that. Why go under? For what?’
Touton did not favor the question. He asked, ‘Why do you?’
‘I’m not under.’
‘Aren’t you? In your own way you are.’
He deflected the subject. ‘I also wanted to find out what he knows.’
‘Some folks are against that. I could name a slew of people.’ He extended the word slew as he spoke it. ‘I have my connections, Émile. If anything comes back from Coalface that we can use, they should contact you. That connection becomes yours.’
Delacroix was walking up behind them.
‘I suggest we proceed, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Lower Norville Geoffrion to his rest. Toss in a little dirt. Complete that formality. Then let’s get the family members out of here. We’ll deal with this sorry mess later.’
As if he still had authority, Touton concurred. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Let’s do that.’
Cinq-Mars gazed across the field of grass and tombs and caught a glance from Gina Malinger. Her child was now in her husband’s arms. Nord had enjoyed his pomp and ceremony, and also a fight on his last day above ground. Disregarded in life, he was going to be remembered in death by everyone present.
‘Yeah,’ Cinq-Mars agreed. ‘Let’s bury him properly. Our best behavior, gentlemen. Send him on his way with dignity. I insist.’
Not necessary. No one had any inclination to say or do otherwise.