Murder Without Pity by Steve Haberman Page A

who insisted viewers take her seriously. Unlike the morning talk shows, no coffee mugs and fruit bowl warmed her expanse of desk in this face to face, Stanislas noticed. Just two glasses of water, one for her, another for her guest.
    The moderator turned to a youngish woman opposite in a tubular chair. “Mademoiselle Le Brune, you’re the spokeswoman for the Pan-European Council. The governing body of three prominent extreme-right parties in Western Europe, whose founder is Monsieur Franz Streible. Can—”
    “I must correct your implication, Madame Chantel, before we proceed. We are extreme in the sense of having high standards. Not in any violent sense, I assure you.”
    “Very well. For the moment, in the sense of having high standards. Your comments on this latest outbreak of lawlessness.”
    “Incredible,” Le Brune muttered. Then louder: “The shame of this turmoil in our Paris. You may very well wonder, will the rest of Europe be next?” A tricolor in her double-breasted jacket’s lapel glinted from the studio lights as she paused dramatically and half-turned toward the moderator. She tossed across a note of thanks for inviting her onto this special edition of Perspectives . The necessary gesture made, she shifted to the camera. “Our France,” she said. “Our Europe. This banditism is happening everywhere.”
    Hands relaxed in front of her, she explained the need for corrective measures to rebalance society, the urgency for tougher laws to deal with the turbulence infesting Western Europe, and Stanislas wanted to flee her filthy talk. But Anna stood there, arms folded, fixed to the moment as she gazed, and he knew he couldn’t coax her away.
    Now a sympathetic smile from Mademoiselle Le Brune at the plight of the unemployed, their tragic numbers deliberately undercounted by governments, she stressed. Now a shake of her head at the mounting violence that defaced some of the most beautiful countries in the world: France, Austria, and Germany. Now a shrug in a show of humility for the men she represented, unlike the corrupt elitists in Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, didn’t have every answer. But they did know what they disliked: invaders onto the sacred soil of Europe.
    “No more, you Judas.” The bartender snapped to a soccer game.
    “Yes, enough of that perfumed traitor,” Anna said.
    The three drinkers swiveled to stare at her. The bartender glanced over. “Ah, good day, Madame Attali. You’ll cheer up François when he returns. He had to go with the police to the station to give his account of what happened. We had a fight here earlier. A Franz Streible supporter said some ugly things. Those gentlemen”—he gestured to the two men in blazers—“showed him the door, only he wouldn’t leave. The guys are from a private security firm. We had to take them on because hooligans are marauding around in this fog, beating up patrons.” He turned away to place the tumbler upside down on the shelf under rows of liquors.
    The large dining room held merely two other diners, an elderly couple, eating silently, Stanislas noticed as he and Anna followed the maître d’. The icy scraping of knives on the couple’s plates made the atmosphere cold and hollow.
    The waiter presented their menus with a slight bow and left them alone. Anna flipped hers open and brushed aside a length of gold tassel. “Something to drink first?” He said he would.
    “An excellent lunch.” Stanislas pushed away his plate. “I’m curious. That old man at the Center and that guard, Eli, did your decision to be with me, a collaborator’s grandson, cause problems?”
    “You must understand some suffered greatly during the war. From French hands, as well as from the Germans.”
    “Are you bitter about those years?” he asked.
    She took another sip of Chablis. “No, not like others. I was just a few months old when I lost my family in the Great Raid here. I remember nothing. You wouldn’t believe the hundreds of books I’ve