Darling, I'm Going to Charlie Read online

  Suddenly they hear screams from below, followed by a burst of gunfire. Virginie, SAGAM’s artistic director, has seen two men dressed in black, and she and another colleague have tried to lock the company’s doors. But the men have still gotten inside, and one of them fires into the air, asking the two women where Charlie Hebdo’s offices are. Chantal and her colleague don’t even have time to answer when one of the two masked men points his Kalashnikov at Chantal’s head. The other man stays at the door. Thinking they are being robbed, her colleague takes off his watch and hands it to the armed man, who angrily pushes him away. “Who are you, at Charlie?” he asks Chantal. She can’t speak. She is convinced she is going to die. She is thinking about her children. She is the loving cornerstone of her family. She imagines them hearing the news that she is dead. She can feel their pain as her fearful eyes never leave the hateful look of the armed man who, for a second, has taken off his balaclava. Despite her terror, Chantal notices that his head is closely shaven. Virginie hears Kouachi’s question and screams down the staircase that Charlie Hebdo isn’t in that building. “You’ve got the wrong place, it’s on the other side, at number ten!” The man looks all around at the strollers and cradles, then turns around, holding his Kalashnikov in front of him, and goes back down the stairs to the ground floor. Petrified, Chantal slumps down onto the table in front of her. She is shaking all over. With great effort, she rushes from the room, followed by her colleague. They go down to the ground floor and try to take refuge in the SAGAM offices. One of the company’s executives immediately calls the police. He gives details over the phone: “The man is wearing a balaclava and he’s carrying an assault weapon and perhaps a Kalashnikov.” Chantal is definite on that point. He adds that the man has an accomplice and they are looking for Charlie Hebdo’s offices. He hangs up, and the seven people who are currently in the office build a strong barricade against the entrance before hiding, as best they can, under the desks, fearing the return of the men, whom they immediately identify as terrorists.

  The Kouachi brothers then go back across 6, allée Verte and head for 10, rue Nicolas-Appert. They continue to calmly walk down the street in their balaclavas, carrying assault weapons. Frédéric Boisseau, a maintenance man from Sodexo, a food services company, is working at number 10, as he does every day. At this moment, he is chatting with one of his colleagues, Claude Boutant, when a man comes in and asks where he can find Charlie Hebdo. Frédéric doesn’t have time to reply: a bullet from the Kalashnikov takes his life. The killers go inside the building while Claude Boutant, after seeing that his colleague is dead, quickly pulls out his phone and calls the police.

  Taking the inside corridor that links 6, allée Verte to 10, rue Nicolas-Appert, the two men get lost, grow angry, and start shouting. When they get to the floor where there is a sewing company, they come across a postwoman who has just delivered a registered letter. She is terrified, staring at the guns pointed at her. “We’re not going to hurt you,” says one of the killers. “Where is Charlie Hebdo?” She does not reply. Still seeking their prey, the two men climb up to the third floor.

  Fang Hui Wang has left his office in the Bayoo company and is smoking a cigarette. It is cold that morning, so he wraps himself up in his jacket. Suddenly he hears shouting behind him. He turns around and finds himself face-to-face with the killers. To impress him, one of them fires into the hallway, toward the offices of another company, the Atelier des Archives. The bullet goes straight through one of the offices and flies out the window. Fang Hui Wang doesn’t know where Charlie’s offices are, so the killers walk up and down the hallway, more and more stirred up. They come across an executive from another company who also doesn’t know, who doesn’t even know the newspaper has offices in the building.

  * * *

  Still crouching beneath a desk, Chantal wants to warn her husband. It is eleven thirty. She doesn’t want him to hear what’s happening on the radio or on television. Another gunshot echoes, making the windows and the thin walls of the building, owned by the city of Paris, shake. This time, they didn’t fire into the air. Someone has just been killed. Where? No one dares move. Chantal’s hand is shaking so hard that it takes her an extremely long time to compose the text message to her husband. She tells him that the police have been warned and will soon arrive. The text is sent at 11:32.

  After they too had barricaded themselves behind their flimsy door that didn’t even have a sturdy lock, the journalists from Premières Lignes took refuge on the roof of the building. From above, Sylvain, one of the members of the agency, has the idea of warning a policeman whom he knows is responsible for protecting Charlie Hebdo. He manages to reach him and explain what is happening. The officer says that he is off duty but that his colleagues will soon be there. Sylvain panics: How can the team at Charlie be warned? Other journalists from Premières Lignes have stayed inside the office. They are listening and watching what is happening across the corridor through their peephole.

  In the Charlie Hebdo offices, the editorial meeting is coming to an end. Around two rectangular tables set up in the narrow room, almost everyone is there, as Charb had requested. But a few of them are away: Patrick Pelloux, an emergency room doctor and journalist, is at a meeting with firemen; Antonio Fischetti is at his uncle’s funeral; Gérard Biard is in London; the illustrator Catherine Meurisse, as well as Zineb, the Moroccan journalist, are on vacation; and Luz has been celebrating his birthday with his sweetheart since dawn.

  Nevertheless, there are many around the table to start the New Year in 2015. As usual, the conversation has been lively. Bernard Maris and Philippe Lançon argue about Michel Houellebecq’s new novel, Submission. That morning, the writer had been interviewed on France Inter on Patrick Cohen’s show Le 7/9. He had mentioned, somewhat ironically, the police surveillance of Charb and the newspaper. A few months after the attack, in an interview for Le Figaro, Houellebecq would say: “When you try not to think irrationally, you start imagining things, wondering how fate relishes so many astonishing configurations of events. This configuration was a tragic one . . . I was caught up in a mechanism of coincidences organized by some unknown intelligence.”

  Arguments and shouting matches are a tradition at Charlie Hebdo, a legacy from its former life as the publication Hara-Kiri. And at the editorial meeting, which started with Houellebecq’s book, they end up talking about the French jihadists, wondering what the French authorities were doing, faced with such a worrying phenomenon. How could terrorism take root in our country? Bloodbaths, beheadings—that’s what led a certain fringe element of the population to become radicalized, especially in the suburbs of Paris.

  The suburbs . . . Tignous knows them well. When he is present, better not talk nonsense. So they cross swords, argue, like the freemen they were. That day, like all the others. But they soon have to stop arguing: it is time to share the Epiphany cake and the marble cake that Sigolène has brought. It is eleven thirty; a drawing by Honoré is posted on Twitter, sending Charlie Hebdo’s best wishes to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS.

  Coco, the illustrator, suggests to Angélique, the receptionist, that they go outside for a cigarette. Wrapped up in their parkas, carrying a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, they leave. Inside, everyone starts collecting his or her things. After a chat with Simon, the newspaper’s webmaster, Georges does the same, according to the surveillance camera in the newspaper’s reception area. Philippe Lançon already has his pea jacket on and is ready to leave when he suddenly changes his mind: he wants to show Cabu a book on jazz, Blue Note, which contains black-and-white photos from the 1950s and ’60s.

  * * *

  Like Georges, Jean Cabu is mad about jazz. I imagine him opening his sparkling eyes wide, fascinated by the photos of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, among others, the people who so successfully played jazz back then. Philippe explains that he is going to write an article on that magnificent book that afternoon. For now, he’s in a hurry, he has to leave. Cabu puts on his duffel coa
t and invites his friend Michel Renaud, the president of the Rendez-vous du carnet de voyage festival held at Clermont-Ferrand, to share the Epiphany cake with them. This is the first time that Michel Renaud has been to one of the editorial meetings. He’d come to return some sketches to Cabu, and he confirmed a date with Georges for a future festival. Philippe then goes to put the book in his bag, which he’d left at the other end of the room. Charb is chatting with his bodyguard, Franck Brinsolaro, who has come to the meeting. Since the fire at the former offices and the fatwa placed on him, sent through the jihadist media, Charb had been given protection: first, three men armed with handguns, then, a few months later, reduced to two. Charb and Franck, his “backup” as they say in police jargon, get along well. They often have lunch together at the Petites Canailles, the restaurant where the Charlies are regulars and where Georges so wanted to take me. At first, I always refused, since I didn’t know the Charlies well. After two years of “living together,” Charb suggested that Franck come to the editorial meetings. And he agreed. He is not around the table, of course, but sitting a bit behind. After seeing one of the front covers Charb has drawn, he often tells his colleagues at the Protection Unit that it will “cause a shit storm.” He knows that the threats are intensifying, which is why Charb is on level two surveillance, a high level on the scale of four. Charb’s second bodyguard has gone out to buy a sandwich on the rue Richard-Lenoir.

  As Coco and Angélique walk down the stairs, they are surprised to hear shouting at the front of the building. They find themselves face-to-face with the two armed men. “You’re Coco, and you’re gonna take us to Charlie Hebdo,” one of them orders. “And you,” the other one says to Angélique, “you stay here.” What is going through Coco’s mind, a Kalashnikov pointed at her head, ordered to take men she understands to be terrorists into the paper’s office, while she is supposed to soon go and pick up her child from the nursery? Without a doubt, she is terribly torn, something only she knows, because, out of decency, no one has asked her that question. She thinks she can stall while taking them to the third floor. Her legs are shaking as she climbs the stairs, the gun still pointed at her head. “Where’s Charlie Hebdo?” the man in black shouts. On the office door, there is no mention of the satirical newspaper, just the name LES EDITIONS ROTATIVE. The men grow impatient, their gestures more violent. On the second floor, Coco stops in front of a door with an electronic entry system. The man tells her to enter the code. At that moment, did she think about her child, like Chantal? About her colleagues and friends who are in the room, about to share the Epiphany cake? Her colleagues and friends who are about to be assassinated. Coco enters the code.

  Édouard, a journalist at Premières Lignes, is still hiding with some of his colleagues. They take turns watching what is happening in the corridor by looking through the peephole. They hear screams. The men in black that Édouard saw are ordering a woman they are calling Coco to enter the code to open the door. Édouard and the others do not know Coco. Édouard has run into Cabu and Georges several times, but he has never really gotten to know the team. The journalists understand what is about to happen. They see the two men in black in the corridor about to go into Charlie Hebdo’s offices. Édouard has the idea of setting off the fire alarm but changes his mind, thinking it might provoke a catastrophe. He calls the police again, repeating his remarks. At that moment, eleven calls have already reached the police, who send the information to all the officers on duty.

  * * *

  Eleven calls, all saying the same thing: Charlie Hebdo, the masked men with assault weapons.

  The first call was made at 11:18 by Claude Boutant, the maintenance man, after the terrorists killed Frédéric Boisseau, his colleague. The second call was made by the manager of SAGAM. Then a call from the manager at the Atelier des Archives, located on the third floor of 6, allée Verte, where the killers got lost before returning to 10, rue Nicolas-Appert. At 11:29, one of the journalists from Premières Lignes tried (in vain) to call the police. The number was busy. Other calls would be sent from the building opposite number 10. Yet nothing stopped the men in black from getting into the newspaper’s offices.

  It appears that at 11:25, a patrol of police officers on bicycles in the 11th arrondissement intercepted a first message and headed for the rue Nicolas-Appert, before receiving a second message. Gunshots were reported heard on the rue Nicolas-Appert, with no other details. The first messages the police received did not mention the name of the newspaper. At about 11:25, the police at the headquarters in the 11th arrondissement received a radio message from BAC, the Anticrime Squad, which was already there and was asking for backup, saying it was an emergency, but without providing further details. At about 11:27, the police informed the emergency services that gunshots were heard at 10, rue Nicolas-Appert. Charlie Hebdo was still not mentioned.

  At 11:33, according to the surveillance camera in the reception area, the front door gives way after being violently forced open. A first man in black, wearing a balaclava and carrying an assault weapon, bursts in shouting “Allahu akbar!” followed by another armed man dressed the same. The first man pushes the distraught Coco against a wall and fires at Simon Fieschi, the newspaper’s webmaster, who had quickly gotten out of his chair; he immediately falls to the floor, fatally wounded. The editorial office is about two yards away. No obstacles, no protection. No doors that need keycards to open them. One of the killers stays in the tiny space that serves as the reception area while the other one kicks open the door, again shouting “Allahu akbar!” Then he moves forward and asks: “Where is Stéphane Charbonnier?” using Charb’s real name. Then he fires, and fires again. One bullet after the other. Everyone, illustrators and journalists, each fall in turn, in silence, without screaming, killed by the terrorists: Charb, Georges, Cabu, Tignous, Honoré, Elsa Cayat, Bernard Maris. Franck Brinsolaro, Charb’s bodyguard, pulls out his gun, in vain. Even though he was always on the alert, he didn’t hear the first gunshots fired at the entrance to the building that killed the maintenance man, Frédéric Boisseau, because the office doors are reinforced. Laurent Léger is at the far end of the conference table. He has the time, and the presence of mind, to throw himself under the little table reserved for Charb’s security detail, and he doesn’t move. Riss and Fabrice Nicolino, other journalists who have been wounded, pretend they’re dead. The smell of gunpowder fills the room. At the back of the office, Philippe Lançon collapses. He is still holding the book on jazz. He is alive, but seriously wounded, a bullet in his jaw. Like his friends, he pretends to be dead. Sigolène, stunned by what has just happened to her, has forgotten about the coffee she had left to make in the alcove next to the editorial room. When the killers burst in, she had thrown herself to the ground and had started crawling, eyes closed. Hidden now behind a little wall that separates the offices, she listens and hears nothing but gunfire. But soon she hears footsteps; one of the killers is getting closer. She sees black legs coming toward her. Mustapha, the copyeditor, who also threw himself to the ground, has just been found. Another gunshot. The man walks forward a little and sees Sigolène. He goes around the wall and aims his gun at her. Seeing the killer’s eyes and the Kalashnikov, she starts shaking and bursts into tears. But it seems that the man with the “gentle expression” is troubled. “Don’t be afraid. Calm down. I’m not going to kill you. Don’t worry, we don’t kill women, but think about what you’re doing, because what you’re doing is bad. I will spare you on condition that you read the Koran.” His voice is hoarse, hesitant. She will hear that voice for a long time after the event, just as she will find it difficult to forget the way he looked at her. The man then turns toward the editorial room, where his accomplice is continuing the massacre. “We don’t kill women!” he shouts, three times. Despite her terror, Sigolène thinks about Jean-Luc, the layout artist, who is hiding behind his desk. Before the Kouachi brothers got inside, Jean-Luc had heard the first gunshots fired, and, thinking it was a bomb, had lain down under his desk on the other side
of the glass panel that separates the conference room from the other spaces reserved for the administrators and editors. Sigolène thinks the killer hasn’t seen him. Meanwhile, the other man continues shooting.

  “Good, we got Charb.” Laurent can hear the voice of the man who calmly, coldly, executed his friends. “We got them all,” replies the second man, who had come as backup. It is 11:35. The killers have completed their mission. They leave the Charlie Hebdo offices.

  Jean-Luc hears the sound of the killers’ footsteps on the staircase. He knows that once he stands up, he will see the horrific scene. They’re all dead, he thinks, then has the faint hope that some of them may be only wounded and that he may be able to help them.

  The impudent pens of the press became the targets of religious fundamentalists. They tried to kill laughter, that powerful force of opposition. But as my daughter, Elsa, wrote in a letter to her father, published in Elle magazine, “they killed the man, but not the ideas.” They killed all that talent, but their ideas will continue to spread. The bicycle patrol that would arrive on the scene after the Anticrime Squad, just before the terrorists left number 10, would again call for backup. It wasn’t until 11:40 that a radio message would state that gunshots had been heard near the Charlie Hebdo offices. At the same time, the local police squad from the 11th arrondissement would be informed as well. But it would be too late.