Kitabı oku: «Killing Game», sayfa 4

“What are you looking for?” Platinov wanted to know.

Bolan held up one hand to silence her as he continued to sort through the intel reports. A moment later, a hard smile curled the corners of his lips.

“What is it?” Platinov demanded again.

“We had limited time to go over this file during the flight to Paris,” he said. “But one little detail—a detail that seemed insignificant at the time—evidently stuck in my head.”

“What’s that?” Platinov asked.

“Chartres is Rouillan’s home town. He was born and grew up there.”

“Then it is likely he might pick Chartres for whatever that scrap of paper indicates,” Platinov said. “He would be familiar with the area. And know all of the possible escape routes if something went wrong.”

Bolan nodded. He knew the area, too, from past missions. Several roads led in, and out, of the small French village that was famous for the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres. This structure ranked right alongside Notre Dame as an example of the greatest Gothic architecture in the world. The cathedral was particularly noted for its lavish stained-glass windows. “That’s the ‘up’ side of things,” he said almost under his breath.

But Platinov’s hearing was acute. “What is the ‘down’ side you are insinuating with that remark?” she asked.

“Everyone in Chartres will know him,” Bolan said, replacing the file in the briefcase and closing the latches. “And some will be his friends.”

When Bolan hadn’t spoken again for several seconds, Platinov finally said, “So…do we go there or not?” She uncrossed her legs but made no effort to pull down her skirt.

Slowly, Bolan nodded. “We go there,” he said. Staring straight ahead at the wall, he added, “We don’t have much to go on and the odds are stacked highly against us. Chartres isn’t very big. But it’s big enough that we’ll have to find some way of locating Rouillan once we’re there. And as soon as we start asking questions, word will be out all over town that we’re looking for him.” He stuffed the paper into the side pocket of his jacket. “But, the way I see it, it’s all we have at this point.”

Bolan turned to face Platinov now, and saw the same “come hither” smile on her face that he’d seen so many times before. The beautiful Russian woman’s skirt was still hiked up almost to her waist, and the muscles in her Olympic sprinter’s legs all but rippled through her transparent hosiery.

“Whatever this note means,” Platinov purred seductively. “It will not take place until four in the afternoon. We have nearly twelve hours, and Chartres is only a short drive from here.” She cleared her throat with a husky sound. “I wonder how we could pass the time between now and then?”

Bolan stared at her. He was only human, and he and Marynka Platinov had been attracted to each other like magnets since the first time they’d met. For a moment, he was tempted to take the Russian woman up on what was a blatant offer of pleasure.

But then the warrior in the Executioner’s soul took charge of him again.

Bolan stood up next to the bed. “I think the best way to spend that time is to get to Chartres and start snooping around. We need to find out what’s supposed to happen at four o’clock and where it’s supposed to go down.” He cleared his throat and glanced at his watch. “We may not have enough time already.”

Platinov’s smile turned to a slight frown and then a sigh escaped her lips. “You are hard on a woman’s ego, Cooper,” she said as she stood up, lowered her skirt, then smoothed it out again by running the palms of her hands up and down her thighs.

Bolan laughed softly. “Don’t take it as a rejection,” he said. “It’s just that finding Rouillan has got to come first.”

Platinov had taken off her jacket but left the shoulder rig carrying her twin Gold Cup pistols in place. Now, she lifted her Model 1911 from the nightstand where she’d set it earlier, and returned it—along with the inside-the-waistband holster—to the rear of her skirt.

Bolan watched her run her fingers around the waistband, making sure that the Spyderco Military Model folding knife was clipped in place. As she slid her arms into the suit jacket, she said, “Business before pleasure, I believe is the way that you Americans put it.”

The Executioner nodded.

“Then let’s go,” the Russian woman said. One at a time, she pulled out all three of her .45s, checked to make sure a round was in each of the chambers, then returned them to their hiding place. Bolan did the same with the Desert Eagle and Beretta.

The Executioner made one final check at the small of his back. The TOPS Special Assault Weapon, or SAW as it was more commonly called, was clipped in place in its sheath.

They were ready. A moment later they were out of the door.

And a moment after that, they were on their way to Chartres.

CHAPTER FOUR

It was just as the Executioner had feared it would be as he guided the Nissan down Chartre’s main street. As he and Platinov passed, everyone on both sides of the street looked up to take note of them.

They were strangers. And just as it was in small towns all over the world, strangers were duly noted by the locals, which meant that he and Platinov stood out.

Mentally, Bolan shrugged. There was no sense worrying about it because there was nothing he could do to change that fact. All he could hope for was that they could pass themselves off as tourists. The problem with that was the majority of such visitors arrived on tour buses or by train. Driving a car put them in a whole new minority of what was already a minority.

Bolan lifted his satellite phone from his lap and tapped in the number to Stony Man Farm. When Barbara Price answered with, “Yes, Striker?” he said simply, “Put the Bear on.”

A moment later, the call had been transferred to Aaron Kurtzman in the Computer Room. “What can I do for you, big guy?” the computer wizard asked.

“You can hack your way into the French police files,” Bolan said. “I need anything you can get on Achille LeForce from Chartres.”

“Easy enough,” Kurtzman said. “Hang on. I’ll put you on the speakerphone while I search.”

A moment later, Bolan heard a click. Then the tapping of fingertips on a computer keyboard. Thirty seconds later, Kurtzman was back. “Found him,” he said.

“Never dreamed you wouldn’t.”

“Achille LeForce,” Kurtzman said. “Five feet ten inches tall, two hundred and forty pounds. Brown curly hair, and a scar on the left side of his forehead. Quick summary—small-time criminal. Arrests for burglary, drug dealing, firearms and parole violations. Never served more than three months on any of them.” The wheelchair-bound computer genius paused to take a breath. “But the part that’ll interest you is his known associates. Any idea who tops the list?”

“Pierre Rouillan.”

“Well, if you smoked cigars I’d buy you an Arturo Fuente Gran Reserva,” Kurtzman said.

Bolan chuckled. “Give it to Hal,” he said, referring to Stony Man Farm’s director, who usually had a stubble of cigar in his mouth.

“He’d just chew it up,” Kurtzman said. “That’s about it on LeForce. Anything else I can get for you?”

“You find an address for him?” the Executioner asked.

“Got more than two dozen,” Kurtzman replied. “Most current is six months ago. You know how it is—small-time crooks are the same the world over. They never stay in one place very long.”

“I hear you, Bear.” Bolan had known that a current address was improbable but it had been worth a try. “Talk to you later.” He hung up.

As they had driven down the street, both Bolan and Platinov had looked at the faces they passed. Men, women and children glanced up, frowned slightly, then returned to whatever they’d been doing before. The frowns told the Executioner that these citizens were noting that something was different about the two people in the Nissan. They didn’t know exactly what. But they knew.

Bolan knew it was going to get worse. As soon as he and Platinov started asking about Rouillan, they’d be branded as police, or intelligence officers, or some other branch of the French or another government looking for the newly infamous terrorist. Word of their inquiries would spread like wildfire and reach Rouillan’s ears if he was anywhere near Chartres.

They were already running against the clock. If Rouillan heard about them, he’d be gone quicker than a flash of lightning.

Platinov stared out of her side window, doing her best to look like a rubber-necking sightseer. They had stopped at Versailles to gas up the automobile, and the Executioner had decided at the last minute that a change of clothing was appropriate. So, within the confines of the gas station’s unisex rest room, he had traded his blue blazer and slacks for a baggy green T-shirt and khaki cargo shorts. With his broad shoulders and narrow waist, he was able to leave the Desert Eagle in the close-fitting holster and jam the sound-suppressed Beretta into his waistband on his other side. The TOPS knife stayed at the small of his back, and he filled the cargo pockets of his shorts with extra magazines for both pistols. The low-cut hiking shoes he’d worn with the blazer and slacks worked just fine with his “new look” as well.

Drawing his pistols and reloading would be slower than if he’d worn the weapons openly, but for their visit to Chartres, blending in as much as they could with the scenery took a much higher priority than speed.

His mission, at this point, was to gather intelligence on Rouillan. He wasn’t expecting to run into a gunfight.

But he was ready if one came running at him.

Bolan turned a corner off the main downtown street. As he began looking for a place to park, the Executioner glanced again at Marynka Platinov. The Russian beauty drew attention no matter where she was, or how she was dressed. He had done his best to keep his eyes to himself while they’d changed clothes back at the gas station. But he couldn’t avoid an occasional glimpse of her naked breasts after she’d shed the suit jacket, white blouse and bra, and replaced it with a blue short-sleeved sweatshirt that read Sorbonne and featured the world-famous French university’s logo. The sweatshirt had been cut off just below her breasts, and what was left of the tail now hung straight down at least three inches from her bare midriff. Platinov, too, now wore khaki cargo shorts. But unlike the Executioner’s, which extended almost to his knees, the Russian woman’s shorts barely covered her posterior. Her hosiery had gone back into a suitcase, and white Puma athletic shoes were tied at the end of her shapely, well-muscled legs. Platinov had threaded a leather belt through the belt loops of her shorts, but the cut-down sweatshirt barely hid her breasts, let alone any weapons. So she had been forced to put her matching Gold Cup .45s and the extra 1911 pistol into a canvas bag. It would be slung over her shoulder, and she could even keep her hand out of sight inside the bag, holding one of the guns, if they sensed danger.

The Executioner turned another corner onto a side street, still looking for a place to leave the car. He knew there were other items in Platinov’s bag as well. He’d watched her drop both Russian-French and English-French language dictionaries in to cover weapons from sight should anyone get close enough to look directly down into the bag. He wondered for a moment what they were for. He had heard Platinov speak French on numerous occasions, and her command of the language was impeccable.

The Executioner’s thoughts were suddenly interrupted when he spotted an empty parking spot along the side street. Pulling up next to the car in front of it, he backed in to parallel park, then turned to Platinov as he twisted the key to kill the engine. “You ready?” he asked.

“Aside from feeling like a complete fool in this ridiculous American-tourist-geek getup, you mean?” she answered. “I feel like I should be wearing mouse ears at Disney World.”

Bolan grinned. “Yeah. Besides that. Any ideas where to start?”

Platinov turned to him and frowned. “We know that something is supposed to take place here at 1600. And we know—or at least think we know—that it involves Rouillan’s friend Achille LeForce. And we hope it involves Rouillan.”

The Executioner nodded. “The trail’s thin, I admit,” he said. “But it’s all we’ve got. We don’t know whose pocket that scrap of paper came out of before we found it, and it probably wouldn’t do us any good if we did. Maybe one of the dead men back at the house was supposed to meet Rouillan and LeForce here. It could be that LeForce is bringing in that cache of weapons or bomb-making materials we speculated about earlier. Or he might have cocaine, or heroin, or ice or crack or any of a number of other drugs, the profit from which Rouillan uses to finance CLODO. Or there could be a bomb set somewhere in town that’ll detonate at 1600 hours. The possibilities are endless.”

Platinov nodded. Twisting in her seat, she reached behind her and grabbed the leather briefcase Bolan had opened back in their room and set it in her lap. Flipping the latches, she opened the file on Rouillan and began shuffling through the pages. Finally, she pulled out a photo of Rouillan. In it, the French terrorist was talking to another man. The picture had obviously been taken with the aid of a long-range, telescopic lens. But it showed Rouillan’s face and the other man’s quite clearly.

Bolan’s brow furrowed. “You think that’s LeForce with Rouillan?” he asked. He had seen the picture before when they’d traded Russian and American files during the flight from Washington. But as far as he could tell, the other man in the picture remained unidentified.

“I don’t know who it is,” Platinov said. “We were never able to ID him. But now, along with what your ‘Bear’ just told us, it’s my guess that this other man is LeForce.”

“It could be,” Bolan said, squinting slightly at the photo. All that could be seen of both men were their heads. But the unidentified man’s curly brown hair and thick, muscular neck fit Kurtzman’s description. “Drop it in your bag and let’s get going. Unless I miss my guess, these French ‘home boys’ are going to have strong feelings about a guy like Rouillan. They’ll either love him or hate him. But there won’t be any in between.”

Platinov nodded, dropped the photograph into her canvas bag along with her third .45 and the other items, then twisted again and returned the briefcase to the backseat. The Executioner got out of the driver’s side and pressed the button on his key chain to lock the doors. Now, he noticed that they had parked directly in front of a small boutique that appeared to sell Christian-related souvenirs.

The soldier looked at his watch. It was almost one o’clock. They had only three hours to find out what the scrap of paper referred to and stop it.

And with luck, kill Pierre Rouillan and his sidekick LeForce during the process.

This Christian souvenir store in front of them was as good a place to begin their search as any other. And Bolan doubted that the proprietors—assuming that they were Christians themselves—were less likely than the average man or woman to lie and shield a terrorist. He glanced at Platinov. Her face told him similar thoughts were going through her head.

Bolan walked to the shop’s glass front door and pulled it open, letting Platinov walk in first just like any other gentleman tourist would have done. But the threshold was where their covers would have to end. He was going to have to ask if the shopkeepers knew Achille LeForce or Pierre Rouillan, using both men’s names. And he might also have to show them the picture.

At that point, there would be no turning back to their “pretend tourists” roles.

The shop was filled with crucifixes of all sizes, statues and wooden carvings of saints, particularly Our Lady of Chartres, medallions and similar items. At the back of the small room the Executioner saw an older man standing behind a counter. Directly behind him, mounted on the wall, was a life-sized crucifix carved out of what looked like cedar.

The little man had a fringe of white hair above his ears and on the back of his head. He smiled pleasantly as Bolan and Platinov walked toward him.

“You take the lead on this one,” Bolan whispered to Platinov as they walked down an aisle toward the counter.

The Russian agent nodded. She knew that the old man was far more likely to open up with a beautiful younger woman than he was with a battle-scarred warrior like the Executioner. He wouldn’t care what Bolan thought about him. But he’d want to impress Platinov. In Bolan’s life-long battle with evil, he had learned that you took advantage of every weapon you had.

And many weapons had absolutely nothing to do with bullets or blades.

Just as he’d guessed, the old man ignored the soldier as Platinov began speaking to him in broken French. Bolan busied himself, pretending to look at a display of medallions next to the counter. He knew now why Platinov had brought the translation dictionaries along. She was pretending to know far less French than she actually did, and as she conversed with the delighted older man she occasionally looked up a word in the book, then held it with one hand for the man to read while she pointed to it with the index finger of the other hand.

Bolan continued to look at nearby souvenirs, busying himself as if he didn’t understand a word of what they were saying. Maybe they would be able to hold on to their assumed identities longer than he’d guessed they would. In any case, it didn’t hurt to try.

Finally, after roughly two minutes of mildly flirtatious small talk, Bolan heard, “LeForce, Achille LeForce,” come out of Platinov’s mouth. Bolan was standing with his back to the counter, trying on different pairs of sunglasses. The stand holding the sunglasses held a small mirror at the top, and all it took for the Executioner to see the fringe-haired man’s reaction to the name was a slight adjustment of that mirror.

What he saw in the reflection was fear.

Suddenly, not even Platinov’s sensuality was enough to get the old man to talk.

Bolan turned and walked toward the counter.

It was now his turn to interrogate.

The white-haired man looked even more afraid when Bolan joined Platinov at the counter. The soldier wished that he didn’t have to scare the man further, but he had to weigh temporarily frightening a kind old gentleman against whatever scheme Pierre Rouillan had underway; a scheme that might take hundreds or thousands of other innocent lives.

“Let’s stop pretending here,” the Executioner said in French. He glanced at Platinov. “Put your dictionary back in the bag.” He turned to look directly into the white-haired man’s near-panicked eyes. “She speaks your language better than you or me.” He paused a moment, then asked, “What’s your name?”

“Geraud,” the little man choked out fearfully.

The old man had stepped away from the counter and now had his back against the wall behind it. Three feet to his side was an open door that appeared to lead into a storage room.

Bolan saw the old man glance toward it. The big American raised his T-shirt with his hands, letting the proprietor see the grips of both the Desert Eagle and Beretta before dropping the shirt again. “Don’t even think about that door, Geraud,” he said. “You’ll never make it.”

“What…what is it you want?” the elderly gentleman squeaked out. “The only money I have is here in the cash register.” He moved toward the machine on the counter top.

Bolan stopped him with an upraised hand. “We’re not here to rob you,” he said.

Geraud froze with his arm still extended toward the cash register. “Then what is it you want?”

“What I want first,” Bolan said, “is for you to understand something. You cooperate with us, you won’t get hurt. And I’ll make sure your name doesn’t get out on the streets for talking.” He paused to clear his throat. “You understand?”

“Oui,” the tiny man said in a tiny little voice.

“Do you know either Achille LeForce or Pierre Rouillan?” Bolan asked.

The white-haired man glanced to Platinov. The expression on his face told the Executioner that Geraud was hoping she might intervene for him now. But in his peripheral vision, Bolan could see that all hints at coquetry had left the Russian woman’s face. Her features were still beautiful, but now they were beautiful in the way they might have looked had Michelangelo carved them out of marble or stone.

“She’s not going to help you,” Bolan said. “And I’m going to ask you only one more time. If I don’t get an answer I believe, things are going to get ugly for you. Now, do you know either LeForce or Rouillan?” he repeated. The Executioner waited, hoping the man was too frightened to call his bluff. He could never really hurt an innocent old man like this.

But the innocent old man didn’t know it.

The little shopkeeper nodded sharply, the white hair around his ears dancing like the fringe on a buckskin jacket. “Both of them,” he said in a squeaky voice. “Since they were young.”

“Are they here now?” Bolan asked. “Do they still live here in Chartres?”

“LeForce does,” the white-haired man said. “Rouillan, I hear, comes in and out. Mostly at night, since he’s wanted by the gendarmes.”

Bolan leaned forward. Had the little man with the white fringe of hair around his head been a criminal or a terrorist, he would have grabbed him by the throat by this time. But since he was simply a poor old man, unfortunately caught up in the middle of things, the soldier simply laid a hand on his shoulder.

That was enough. Bolan didn’t even have to ask any more questions.

“The rumor is that he stays with a woman when he’s in town,” Geraud blurted out. “I do not know her name or address, but I know where she lives. I can take you there. I can point it out.” He had said it all in one breath, and now he stopped, his mouth opening wide to gasp for more oxygen. Geraud’s frail chest expanded and contracted as he tried to catch his breath.

“Close your shop,” Bolan said, removing his hand from Geraud’s shoulder. “You’re a good man, and you’re doing a good thing, Geraud.”

The old man closed his eyes for a moment, perhaps in prayer. When he opened them again, Bolan said, “We’ll go out the back door so no one sees us together.”

The little man nodded, then hurried down the aisle to the front door. He flipped the sign that faced the street, telling his potential customers that the shop was closed, then he twisted a dead-bolt lock bar into the door.

Geraud came scurrying back to Bolan and Platinov just as quickly as he’d run to the door. “I will take you there,” he said again. “It is only right that I do so because both LeForce and Rouillan are criminals. But please do not make me go into the house with you. I am not a fighter.” He lifted his hand and made the sign of the cross on his chest.

Again, Bolan felt sorry for the little old man with the white fringe of hair. Scaring him had been necessary for the greater good. But fear was no longer needed.

The Executioner reached out and placed his hand on Geraud’s shoulder once more. But this time, the little Frenchman could tell it was a reassuring, rather than a threatening, gesture. His face relaxed slightly.

“I’m not going to make you go in,” Bolan said. “In fact, as soon as we get close enough that you can point out the house, I’ll cut you loose.” Now that Geraud was more sure of himself, Bolan dropped his hand to his side again. “You can come back here, reopen your store and forget all about us.” He watched even more of the tension evaporate from the little man’s face. “And you’ll know you did the right thing. Know you did your part to rid the good people of the world of a pair of terrorists.”

The little man nodded animatedly again. Without speaking, he led the way through the open doorway he had looked at earlier when he’d hoped to escape. Bolan and Platinov followed him through a storeroom stacked high with boxes and shelves of Christian-oriented souvenirs. Most were related to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres, only a couple of blocks away.

Twisting the back door, Geraud held it open for both Platinov and Bolan and let them step into the alley behind his shop. Then he turned to lock the door again with a key he produced from his pocket.

“You lead the way,” the Executioner told the little shopkeeper. “We’ll stay about ten yards behind you so it doesn’t appear that we’re with you.”

Geraud’s head bobbed up and down gratefully. “Thank you,” he said. “I will be able to point it out from a corner,” he said. “Then I can go?”

“Then you can go,” Bolan said.

A moment later, Geraud was out of the alley and onto the sidewalk at the end of the block.

And a moment after that, ten yards behind him, just as the Executioner had promised, Bolan and Platinov turned the corner onto the same sidewalk.

PIERRE ROUILLAN KNEW he was vain, but that knowledge didn’t bother the Frenchman one bit.

Rouillan stepped out of the shower and grabbed a dry towel from Colette’s towel rack, briefly rubbed his hair—it would not set right if it was too dry or too damp—then quickly dried the rest of his body before wrapping the towel around his waist and tying it. He hurried toward the mirror above the sink.

Rouillan smiled at his reflection. He was handsome—there was simply no other word for it. An old girlfriend had once told him he reminded her of the famous French film star Jean-Paul Belmondo. Another woman had told him he looked better than Belmondo.

In his opinion, the latter was correct.

Taking a small hand towel from the ring on the wall next to the mirror, Rouillan rubbed his hair a few more times. Then he shook his head vigorously back and forth. When he felt he had achieved the correct balance between wet and dry, he pulled open a drawer to his side and found his comb. Slowly, methodically, he combed his hair. The cowlick in back was in full bloom today, so he twisted the lid off a jar of setting gel and plastered it down. Then, satisfied that it would hold, he opened a cabinet door next to the drawers and pulled out the hair dryer. Setting it on low, he used the comb to section off different areas of his hair, blew them until they were just shy of completely dry, then used the comb to hold each section in place as he set down the dryer and spritzed his head with hairspray.

Rouillan continued to stare into the mirror with a critical eye. But it didn’t take long for the frown of discretion to become a grin. Yes, along with a superior mind he had been gifted with superior looks, not to mention charm, that few women had been able to resist over the years, and he had used all three natural endowments both for sex and in his reorganization of CLODO.

As if acting on stage for an audience, Rouillan lifted his hands, palms up, to the mirror, then said out loud to himself, “Hey, you use what you have, no?”

He chuckled at the words, but it was time to check the rest of his face now, so he squinted critically again at his reflection. The “scruffy” look of two-to-three days growth of beard was still in throughout Europe and America, and it had been three days since his face had last seen the razor. Perfect.

Well, almost perfect.

Rouillan could see that a few more of his facial hairs had turned white, as well as several in his mustache and beard. The sight brought a mild depression to his soul. He might be brilliant, good-looking and engaging, but he was still human. Time stood still for no man. So, pulling out the drawer just above the one where he’d found the comb, the head of CLODO dug through Colette’s makeup until he found the mascara. Still looking at his reflection in the mirror, he twisted the small brush out of its pencillike cover, then blotted it slightly on a tissue from the box next to the sink. He needed to have exactly the right amount of mascara on the brush when he applied it. Too little would not change the color from white to brown. Too much would smear, and give away the fact that he had doctored the stubble.

It took a good five minutes, and washing his face again twice, to get it just right. But when he did, he smiled into the mirror again, quite pleased with himself. A few crow’s feet had begun to form at the corners of his eyes, but Rouillan did not consider them to be a liability. In his opinion, they added maturity and character to his otherwise unblemished skin. Someday, he supposed, he might need to begin using a moistening agent on his skin. And sometime after that, an eye-tuck or even a face-lift might come into play.

But for now, Pierre Rouillan was pleased with his appearance.

Unwrapping the towel from his waist, he dropped it in the middle of the bathroom floor. Colette would pick it up. That was her job, not his. Walking naked from the bathroom to the bedroom, the CLODO leader began dressing in the clean clothing he had laid out on the bed before showering. A white, three-button pullover polo shirt went over his head and he left all three buttons undone to exhibit his chest hair—none of which had yet begun to lose color. His underwear was of the finest silk, and he took note of its smoothness as he stuck his feet through the leg holes. Silk briefs were the only type of undergarments he ever wore—he liked the way they allowed his pants to slide around with every movement he made. And he was reminded of that fact as he donned the gabardine slacks that had rested, still on the hanger, on the bed next to the shirt. They were pleated in front, and in combination with his shirt, looked nothing like the “unofficial uniform” the rest of his CLODO men often wore.

The fact was, few of his own men even knew what he looked like. His orders went through his life-long friend, Achille LeForce, and he stayed in the background most of the time. The real reason he had come up with the short-sleeved tan shirt and dark brown trousers with a blue beret was so they could be readily identified should Rouillan find himself in a position where he had to “throw sheep to the wolves.” The “wolves” in this case, were the police. The “sheep” were his own men. So far nothing like that had happened. But if it ever did, he wanted something to keep those ignorant gendarmes busy while he made his escape.