Quest for the Ark

by Taggart Rehnn

  “Bon appétit!” David mumbled, and shrugged.

  9—Parisian Interlude

  To be able to return to Paris while avoiding a two and half hours charter flight to Beauvais, Tony was forced to make amends with his bosses for his past rogue moves. Fortunately, this wasn’t the first time Tony had been a bit of a maverick—yet one that usually got things done. So, after having to swallow a few frogs—not just the legs, and not precisely expertly prepared at a snazzy French bistro—he did secure the means for them to return immediately. There were good reasons for this urgency: Severian had called home, as customarily, to check, on the functioning of his croissanterie—only to find, through his assistant, that Philippe had been killed by the same thieves who had robbed his home on the 7ème Arrondissement. That very instant, David, Haim and Tony watched him break the cellphone, with the ease of an angry child crushing a foul tasting cookie and the burning rage of ten thousand suns. His eyes had turned pitch black. His fangs had come out until they gig into his lower lip. For a long moment he stood silent, seething, as blood dripped from his wounded skin, and ran from his welling eyes. And then, fists clenched, he roared, like a wounded animal, his primal scream so loud that many of the glass panes in the room cracked and the heads of the three humans spun so badly that, for a few hours, they kept experiencing excruciating headaches, ear-ringing and outright vertigo.

  Only after a few minutes, marginally calmer, Severian explained what he had just been told to the other three: “Philippe was like a son to me. I rescued him from the streets of Paris. He came from a horrible, abusive, family. To escape it, he had gone to Le Marais, to sell his body. I was going to feed on him in a dark corner, where he was ‘giving me a job’. But I read his mind and saw a beautiful soul, forced into drugs and prostitution, to pay for a rat’s infested attic on a seventh floor by stairs, a youth often living on just stale bread and moldy croissants. So instead of killing him, I gave him a job, a decent, well-paid job. He rebuilt his life and became the most loyal human I ever met. And yes, Tony, in six centuries I’ve met thousands of them.”

  “Sorry, I forgot you read our minds,” Tony mildly apologized.

  “No worries. He was going steady with Vittorio. I was ready to loose him that way. Now, Vittorio is dead—and his killers too. So I won’t rest until Philippe’s pay for what they did to him. I don’t mind the theft: artworks, irreplaceable though they might be, are things; beauty, yes—only, created by others. Philippe was an artwork created by Philippe, with a little help from me. He was the human son I never had. And I’ve argued against my own instincts that his choice to grow old and die was his, not mine to make. So I prepared to watch him bloom, and like a bloom wilt, over decades. But this murder…” he stopped, tapped his own mouth with index and middle finger a few times, then continued: “We undead can kill mercifully, when we desperately must feed; but we can also inflict pain your Inquisition never dreamed possible. So, now I shall avenge Philippe—exemplarily, for both his deserving sake, and to protect my home in the future.

  You may now all go to Los Angeles, if you so wish. But this…this…pula mea! This is very personal. So now I’m going to Paris…and will see you when you get back!”

  “No,” said David, resting his hand firmly on Severian shoulder. “We’re with you on this one!” Haim and Tony looked at them, and both firmly nodded.

  Two hours later, a private jet plane was waiting for them at the airport, and at three AM they were back in Paris.

  Before going to slumber, Severian thank the others, telling them he wouldn’t need them ‘to risk their necks’ for him just yet. He first would need another day to investigate. Then, they would talk.

  As expected, the redundant surveillance records allowed Severian to identify the attackers. When he next met his three human ‘helpers’, he told them that some sort of loosely defined ‘vampire fraternity’ had helped him discover exactly where to find Philippe’s killers. Since David, Tony and Haim once again reiterated their offer to help him get his revenge, he then told them to meet him at his place the next night.

  Next evening, they arrived to Severian’s place, half an hour after sunset, as agreed.

  As coldly, silently, and efficiently as during their previous visit, an automatic mechanism opened the outer fence. The house—minus some small signs of violence, that, the more obstinately the three tried to ignore, the more visible they seemed to become—looked as perfectly stylish and impeccable as the previous time.

  But now there would be no Philippe to receive them or Vittorio to follow after him along the winding corridors once the visitors should go to the one of the two salons. The impression this gave was that of an asphyxiating, manicured, emptiness.

  At the salon, Philippe’s coffin lay open, surrounded by an impossibly high pile of white roses interspersed with peach Juliet Ausgameson roses from England. The colossal waves of white silk and lace inside the gold-inlaid casket had more than a few streaks of what seemed like diluted blood. Philippe was wearing the same hat he had worn the day he cruised Severian thinking he would make a client worth giving a discount to, if only for the looks.

  Moments after they entered the chapelle ardente, Severian’s voice surged in the minds of the three visitors at once: “Please, join me on the second floor library,” thereafter somehow directing them to the exact place as if they had known the building. This time around, they found Severian dressed in outrageously expensive, somber, casual clothing, not at all like someone preparing for a brawl, giving the impression he might had reconsidered. However, Tony just looked at him in the eyes, and saw flames.

  “So where are your assassins now?” asked Tony, right off the bat.

  “Plaine-Monceau,” he answered dryly.

  “Ah, your assassins are not poor,” scoffed Tony, “hence the tenue élégante.”

  “Yes,” replied Severian. “We would need you to hack their surveillance system and unlock three doors, so our assault looks goes unnoticed. We could break a lot of things, instead, overpower all sorts of mechanisms, a bonafide forced entry—but there would be too many questions. Here: we have identified the most discrete attack points. Here they are, on your screen,” he said, showing Tony the plan of a building.

  “So…who is we?” asked Haim.

  “Mircea, a group of other friends and I,” replied Severian.

  “What can we do to help?” asked David.

  “Can you deliver pizza?”

  “Pizza?” scoffed David, “Yes: I did that when I was at school. Why?”

  “This is what here in Paris is called a very “Hausmannien” building: massive walls, lovely doors, no elevators, lots of floors to climb—but also, lots of surveillance. We need you to deliver the pizza two of Philippe’s assassins are going to crave, madly, desperately, precisely at 9:30PM. At that time, the others in the residence will be getting high and comfortable with a bevy of whores, a bevy they have paid with part of what they stole from my home. You know I have a croissanterie, right?” David nodded. “Well, one of my colleagues has a pizza place, a rather popular one, there, in Plaine-Monceau.

  The pizza will be heavily laced with something that makes nerve terminals extremely pain sensitive—in a sense, the opposite of an anesthetic. When they let you in the building, we will ‘accidentally’ be arriving at the same time and help you with the large stack of pizza boxes and the heavy doors at the main entrance. Once we get in,” Severian continued, looking at Tony, “your hack should subtract all images registering our entering the building from the surveillance records. We have prepared the erasure patch-up from imagery extracted from recent surveillance records. This new dynamic program will make David and us invisible not only after we get in, but also, from the moment David gets at the door, rings, and when we ‘accidentally’ bump into him. Since I’ve rented a unit on that building under an assumed name, all should otherwise be fine,” he finished.

  “You are incredibly fast…” mumbled Haim.

  “You have no idea…but this s
uper fast miracles I owe to my secretary. That’s why she gets paid her weight in gold, even though she eats too many bonbons. So, gentlemen, it’s time to go. Are you ready?”

  “Can I help?” asked Haim.

  “Keep Tony company here, help him with screens if you can—and pray no innocent lives are lost tonight. Our targets have plastic explosives, assault rifles, machine guns, plenty of heavy ordnance, katanas and combat knives of every imaginable shape and size in that apartment. If anything goes wrong…it’s going to be a bloodbath,” Severian finished, his face now like that of man possessed, devoured from the inside by a painful fire only vengeance would put out.

  Moments later Tony and Haim were busy with computers and monitors and David on his way to Severian’s friend’s pizzeria. After a nerve wrecking wait, the call came in, pizzas were readied, loaded on the bike, and David, carrying the stack of boxes, was on his way.

  The actual building seem far more massive than what David had seen at Severian’s place, massive its arches, lovely haut-reliefs of giants holding the weight of the imposing structure, superb its small garden with twin lovely fountains, perfectly manicured, yet astonishingly naturally-looking. The sidewalk in front of it was clean and neat, not a broken tile, no discernible smell of cat’s urine. For an instant David got distracted, thinking about how much Deb would have loved staying in that lovely place, were it even for a week; but then, alerted by the triple garlic whiff, he shook his head and concentrated on the immediate.

  The night was clear on a waxing moon, and passersby were a few more than Severian had expected.

  David arrived on his bike, fixed it to a nearby lovely massive solid iron fence, and then rang the bell. As the signal was still buzzing to let him in, he artfully faked clumsiness to prepare for Severian’s act. As planned, the latter and someone else—who was either Mircea or his twin—were entering the building ‘serendipitously’ at the same time, and decided to courteously and convincingly help the poor, overloaded, deliveryman (David). At precisely the same time, Tony started the hacking, by sending a signal to the target building’s security company: a fake breach in progress at a nearby property. That loaded the hacking software onto the security company servers. Once loaded, the software dynamically extrapolated imagery, making all traces of David’s face, and Severian and his ‘helper’s arrival, disappear.

  When he reached the residence the six pizzas were still very hot, so David got a nice, fat tip, even if he had to make an effort to keep smiling while watching a baffling amount of neo-Nazi paraphernalia on display at that place. David thought of Ehud, and the monstrosities he had had to endure, and that rage gave him enough drive to play his part flawlessly. “You will pay, assholes!” he thought. As he was about to leave, a strange wind passed him by. At first, intrigued, he was going to look back, out of curiosity. Perhaps this was somehow related with this anomalous whirlwind they had been chasing for what now seemed like an eternity. But before he could, he heard Severian’s voice inside his head, telling him: “They will pay! Your job is now done. Leave, at normal speed—but leave, now!”

  They had rehearsed this well: David shouldn’t turn back unless the pizza customer wanted to chitchat; and, in that case, he should reply as curtly as possible, then leave, taking the stairs at normal speed. Then, before passing by the concierge, he should signal Tony by straightening his cap; then, exit the building, take his bike, rub his hands as if he were feeling cold, raise his jacket’s hood, and go back through the same route he had taken upon arrival, so that the treetops could cover his tracks for as long as possible. Then, under a particularly thick section of canopy, he’d give the bike to Tony’s decoy, reverse his jacket, let the decoy bike rider go, and, only then, proceed to take the car that awaited him a few blocks away.

  Even though, as he had just started leaving, he heard a few bizarre sounds, loud enough to rise above the rather wall-shaking din of the party, he did exactly as planned. An hour and half later, he was back at Severian’s place, desperate for a shower to get rid of the heavy garlic smell.

  Four hours later, the nightly news mentioned an inexplicable carnage at a luxurious residence on the XVII arrondissement. It seemed drugs had been involved. Some extremely violent right-wing elements might have consumed hallucinogens during a ‘bacchanale’ for the ages, an orgy involving local and foreign prostitutes and criminal gang members. The place had been trashed, and most of the revelers, thrashed. When the GIGN (French SWAT team) arrived, they found people disemboweled, dismembered, impaled on lampposts, many with their eyes plucked and tongues torn. The abundance of bodily fluids all over the place made the forensic team’s entry into the place a true skating ordeal. Aside from such gruesome tidbits, and the predictable “appel à témoins”, French police wouldn’t provide any more details until the investigation so should permit.

  “Philippe, Vittorio, and Pietro have been avenged, I guess,” said Tony watching the news with visible unease.

  At that precise moment, Severian entered the room, perfectly clean, carrying what seemed like an old bejeweled and enameled box, beautiful, and, apparently, rather old. “This little souvenir wasn’t mine. All the same, since I don’t know who they stole it from, I shall keep it, to study it once we come back from Los Angeles. Tomorrow, during the day, you gentlemen go enjoy la Ville Lumière. It’s on me!” he said, extending David an envelope. “Our flights will have to include a couple of stopovers, to let me watch over you gentlemen. Otherwise, you could travel either on a normal airline or Tony’s private jet, and I would then make my own arrangements.”

  “Couldn’t we carry a corpse?” suggested Haim, a bit disingenuously.

  “On one hand, that would not be very discrete—most inadvisable after last night ‘carnage’. On the other, when I slumber in my coffin, past dawn or right before sunset, unless buried deep underground, for me to awaken requires a very draining effort. And, even if I manage, when I can, and I do, I’m far from at my best to protect anyone. In any case, there would be no question of me waking up at or near noon.

  So, I will let you gentlemen decide, while I go take yet another shower, and then go watch over Philippe’s sleep some more, and return him his ring, my birthday gift to him when he turned twenty-one.

  Tomorrow will be his burial. Since I, for obvious reasons cannot attend, I would be in your debt if you should care to accompany him. In any case, you will find me at the chapel of rest when you have your decision on the flight arrangements to go back to L.A.”

  10—Palos Verdes

  Surprisingly enough, what normally should have been a ten and a half hours flight, boring at best, inconsequential business-wise, morphed into an impromptu visit to London—the place where he acquired the use of the word ‘hench’ for men that look like mountains of muscle with backs the shape of settee sails, and sometimes the size of settee couches—where Tony had some business to attend, then a stay in Toronto—to look something up at the Royal Ontario Museum—and only then, finally, a flight to Los Angeles, all three legs, of course, night flights; all, also, requiring Severian go take a feeding excursion, preying on local thugs—which often resulted in him coming back high as a kite, and all-too-affectionate vis-à-vis his travel companions as they took him to his ersatz coffin. (Hotel bathtubs covered with a carpet can hardly be called coffins; and bathtubs sizeable enough for a six foot two man to slumber comfortably also limit the choice of hotels.)Even ‘buzzed’ and exhausted, Severian did not sense any hostiles following—a big relief.

  Five days later, after a rather uneventfully final flight, the four travellers arrived at Los Angeles and went directly to Tony’s place. As they all sat there, in Tony’s condo in Manhattan Beach, before going for his usual snack, Severian immediately began checking statistics. Apparently, a place southeast of downtown L.A., not far—as the vampire flies—from Manhattan Beach, at about 820 incidents per one hundred thousand inhabitants, has more than double the USA violent crime rate, three times the robbery, and so on. Hence Severian pronounced i
t “a perfect place for an invigorating snack”—which did not surprise anyone: he had used the same method to select feeding grounds in London and Toronto.

  What no one expected, however, was he be the one to suggest what everyone was pondering but nobody dared admitting: since their enemies would have no problem finding Haim and David’s families, keeping the latter in the dark no longer made sense—and it might also end their marriages. To best protect them, their wives would have to have some idea of what was going on and the children be play-trained on a few survival tricks.

  In the morning, so as not to alarm everyone, all of them would meet at David’s—minus Severian, of course—and plan how to keep living as ‘normal’ lives as possible in the foreseeable, under ‘un-encroaching protection’. Clearly, neither wife had that kind of life in mind when they tied the knot, but it would have to be either this, living a lie and risk divorce—or worse, kidnappings and such—or David and Haim would have to have their minds wiped off what they had learned since they flew to Paris, and leave the group.

  “That,” Severian had offered, in a rather persuasive tone, facing them both, “can be done, if that is your choice.” Haim had hesitated, but David had been quite adamant: “Forget? This has been my most meaningful pizza delivery since I was in my late teens! When we’re done I can take Deborah to Paris, show her the XVII Arrondissement and tell her I was playing a secret agent on those lovely “Haussmannian” condos! Are you kidding me? Forget? No, I don’t want to forget. I want to know. Also, we owe it to Ehud’s memory, to the memory of six million dead, if any asshole is trying to continue what Himmler and all those butchers began, in a more sinister, surreptitious way, we owe it to our dead and to future generations: we must stop this! And now that I have seen Dracula up close and personal, I’m not so sure witchcraft and all that ‘madness’ is not real. Moreover, the scientist in me could not live a normal life any longer knowing there are atmospheric anomalies creeping up here and there for no reason. An anomaly beggars a model and a model beggars an anomaly hunter. And that, gentlemen, will be me,” David blurted out, almost without taking a breath.