Coming and going from the kitchen to the laboratory, Haim realized he had even developed a certain fascination with Countess Chloé’s dry humor. Talking about the countless fumbling and frustration their quest for the Ark had faced from the very beginning, she had told him: “You see, Monsieur Haim, practice makes perfect. For example, in 1431, Philippe le Bon, duke of Burgundy, fired 412 cannon balls into the town of Lagny, and succeeded only in killing a chicken. In 1945, your country dropped two bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 225,000 upfront and who knows how many ‘hibakusha’ in installments; and my country bombed Muroroa like crazy from 1966 to 1996—only, we did it to create Godzilla. For that, they embargoed our wines—so we French don’t make giant monsters anymore.”
At first, such dryness and darkness had scandalized Haim, then baffled him; but, eventually, it had so fascinated him he even began having romantic thoughts about the Countess. That odd reaction he had ascribed to living again in ‘warlike’ stressful circumstances, but his own ‘frailty’ distressed him even more. So, after deciding he would neither ever mention these feelings to anyone nor act on them, he also chose to hope that neither Conrad nor the other vampires would read them from his mind—or, if they ever had, they would choose discretion rather than public scorn.
Having dealt with this for what seemed an eternity, when Pierre, the Countess’ butler, came to tell him there was plenty of coffee at the castle if he needed it, since she had left the kitchen to take a business call at her apartments, almost instinctively, Haim had asked him what, in his expert opinion, made French women so fascinating. Pierre had thought barely a split second, then replied: “I think it is their independence, Monsieur Haim. You see: we’ve been invaded so many times during our very long history we’ve lost count; and women have been fighting, side by side with men, since the times of the Gauls, if not before them—perhaps with an interlude during the days of chivalry for the rich, aristocratic ladies. True, we men have bigger muscles, ‘brawn’ as you say; they have brains, cunning, and determination, to compensate for the lesser musculature. And that has earned them their independence. If anyone tries to take that back—as some did when the Boches were defeated and gone at the end of World War II—they do what’s required to put those men in their place. Such independence allows them to be themselves, to ‘shine’ as you say.
Irène, for example—he briefly stopped, as if what he was going to say burned his throat, and then, with tearful eyes, mumbled, more than said—was pregnant; and I, although we performed no genetic testing—and hence had no clue as to who the father might be—offered to marry her and be that baby’s father.
She replied that incest—her father—and rape—one church ‘father’—had made her an emotionally unstable whore, so she wouldn’t imagine how could she possibly become a good mother. And then added that, if I cared for the baby, I should adopt it instead; and, if I needed one, I should get a good wife.
But I couldn’t imagine myself as a single father in this castle, which is my life and my family, but leaves me no time to myself, outside my days off. So I spoke to the Countess, and she offered adopting Irène’s baby as hers. Because of that, when Irène died, Sa Grâce and I became two people dead inside. Yet, I’m now a human shadow, a body that perambulates these halls, a ghost of flesh, dragging a soulless mind, forcing muscles to do, mechanically, what I’m supposed to do. The Countess, on the other hand, has gone back to being the nuclear reactor that keeps everyone here energized—not once relenting in the eyes of anyone, except her mirror, and me. That, in my view, seems to confirm that the special charm French women have—aside from many, if not most, being beautiful, elegant, superb cooks, cultivated, incredibly creative making love, or flying jets, or designing bridges, heiresses of Vercingétorix—is that they are independent.
And now, Monsieur, unless you need anything else, I should go back to keep the castle running smoothly. We shall soon have a small army of vampires stationed at the nearby forest, and, they too, would need lodging and nourishment. The Countess is inflexible as regards keeping her guests impeccably served.”
Choosing not to ask him what he was going to serve to these new ‘guests’, Haim then thanked Pierre, and, for a short while, sat at a small canapé, sweating cold pondering the prospect of being surrounded by vampires, probably under attack by Odessatron’s neo-Nazis, hence forced to rely on those vampires for survival—and now, absolutely mesmerized by the Countess.
Just in case his fascination could reach untoward proportions, instead of going back to the kitchen, he opted for working hard on surveillance at the Comm room. That should keep his mind busy, and his body away from Chloé’s overpowering pheromones.
By so doing, that same evening Haim discovered a group of Odessatron neo-Nazis on the dark web, communicating in poorly encrypted Hebrew—a form of cruel mockery that had helped him detect the conversation, perhaps proving the Countess right in a number of ways—preparing a new trap for them in Chartres—a real problem, since this could suggest a mole inside Tony’s Order. So, as fast as he could, he went to see Tony and alerted him. On the strength of that lead, he and Tony began collaborating, both surveying other possible threads branching off from that one, without disrupting any of them.
When David found out about this, he told the others: “Nobody better that Haim to watch our backs from above.” And that had almost made Haim’s day. His mind whirring with joy, overlooking how outrageously pasul David’s joke had been, he was finally able to rest his head against the pillow, and sleep soundly, during the morning of the next day, despite the feverish atmosphere gripping the castle and its surroundings.
At mid-afternoon, the helicopters would take David, Siegfried and Tony to the farm in Beauce, and the Countess to Chartres, where each of them would do their part. Then Haim would try to sleep some more. He’d better: the next few nights and days there would be at least eight screens he would have to watch like a hawk.
Aside from surveying the work artificial intelligence units would do at the castle helping Mircea, he would have to: make sure the direct link to the Vatican remained fully functional, in case of an extreme emergency; keep an eye on the feeds from all the drones and cameras hacked by Tony and his Order (the same one Tony no longer bothered pretending did not exist); and, be ready to activate an extraction team—one Severian had recruited, in case all else should fail, ‘assets of last resort’; an extraction team composed not only of humans and robots, but of vampires as well.
Images of the hotel in Bucharest still freshly etched in his mind, that afternoon, Haim went to bed exhausted—and also hoping and praying that those freelancing ‘assets of last resort’ would like whatever Pierre had planned to serve them; at least, well enough to stay at the ecological preserve. Right before falling asleep, he wondered aloud: “If things turn sour, would they then change sides and come to the castle for ‘dessert’?” and fell asleep, clutching a string of garlic he had brought from the kitchen.
28—Bonsoir Saint-Pierre
The big night, problems started much earlier than anticipated. Minutes after he arrived at the castle, one of Conrad’s much younger blood-children brought worrisome news: soon after Conrad left his residence, it had been ransacked. Conrad told her to take precautions, but refused to leave. Severian arrived a bit late, saying he had been ambushed, attacked when he went to feed. Although Conrad was already in a very foul mood, this news seemed to exacerbate it. But it was now high time to get the operation started.
One of the decoy trucks departing from Roissy was attacked near Ablis. An RPG missed it by a short, providential, swerve—one perfectly executed by a very skilled driver—but it made a royal mess of a forested area. Needless to say, the decoy trucks didn’t wait for the police to arrive. However, since the attackers did neither pursue the decoys nor try to attack them again, when notified Tony surmised the whole ambush was a nothing but some sort of ruse. Perhaps if they wanted to make it look like they would approach Chartres from Paris, they were simply
going to do from anywhere but Paris. Not really useful. An antenna on the truck to monitor conventional radio transmissions had been destroyed. Maybe that was why one of the periodic status reports at the farm was missing.
But then the digital signal from the farm in Beauce did arrive over the Internet—however, without the proper modification half an hour before the group’s estimated arrival there. Given that, Tony ordered the two helicopters land on the alternative heliport
When Severian and Conrad went to investigate, they found fourteen Odessatron operatives, armed with RPGs and substantial additional land-air weaponry at the farm—and quickly neutralized them.
The trucks showed no visible damage or despoliation. Otherwise unharmed, the truck drivers at the farm were gagged and handcuffed using quick-release restraints, without head or eye covers—possibly to force them to fake normalcy, should Tony’s group contact them by videophone before approaching the farm. Precisely because of this, one of the drivers had been able to follow the assaulters’ shenanigans step by step. Being an expert in explosives, booby traps and the like, he surmised the purpose of Odessatron’s assault could have been to plant tracking devices or explosives to later detonate—the operatives sent to take over the farm being deemed expendable.
Even using the driver’s demolitions expert skills, it would have taken the group another hour or so to go over every square inch of the trucks. But luckily, since one of the enemies in question was still alive, Severian could fry his brain and find out exactly what the attackers had planted, where—and how to best deactivate it. Nonetheless, either Severian was too eager to get this precious information or the man more seriously wounded than he first seemed: he died shortly before the full information could be extracted—and, sensing his death, Severian had to break the mind link, to avoid getting trapped in limbo.
Waiting for the demolitions expert to finish removing booby traps ‘the hard way’ forced another delay, and also set Tony’s mind off trying to figure out where the leak might be coming from. The farmer, his family and the house hands were quite terrified, but quite safe in a barn, tied up and down, not so unlike hay bundles. Severian had to operate on their minds to clean up this mess—and, incidentally, while so doing, discovered he had been overcharged for the flour he used at his patisserie, for the last five months. What he would do about this, he told no one. While the trucks were readied for departure, everyone at the farm would remain unconscious until the trucks left and all wake up having forgotten the entire incident. To make sure all signs of violence would be gone before anyone regained consciousness, a cleaning crew on standby—a group of vampires specializing in cleaning large feeding scenes—was promptly dispatched by one of Severian’s contacts.
After a final verification that tracking bugs and bombs removals were complete, the group started on their way to Chartres already half an hour late. Nonetheless, a couple of gridlocks and ill-tempered drivers on the other routes allowed them to arrive, relative to the decoys, as originally planned.
When they eventually made it to Saint-Pierre, even if under more unwanted attention than expected, trucks were able to offload at the parking lot, and take the containers into the building through a little red door on the left side of the church, relatively unhindered.
By then, all around Saint Pierre, aside from summer revelers and tourists visiting Chartres, a silent, rather discreet, war was being fought: French services were seemingly aware—military men in civilian clothing walk differently when they’re not on assignment; Nazis pretending to be tourists are often pathetically bad actors; the Order’s operatives obsessively insist in wearing sunglasses at night. “Might as well wear matching color T-shirts”, scoffed David. Tony just shrugged.
Perhaps convinced they owned the building, like sharks circling around a bleeding overweight surfer, carrying local TV crews as remora fish, church historians almost assaulted the group with questions when the newcomers had barely begun unloading the first truck. Fortunately, although Church representatives—in both the particular building and institutional sense—look different when vampires glamorize them, they can, all the same, be made to push back unwanted onlookers very effectively.
Minor hiccups aside, things were going relatively well when, suddenly, Conrad started to look stiffer than a newlywed overdosing on ED medication. That made wholesale onlooker glamorization inevitable—if the mission was to have a chance to not be on national TV news. When David asked why he had started acting so obviously undead, Conrad did not reply. It was Severian who explained that Conrad had sensed something unusual; and, to concentrate exclusively in trying to detect his blood-son—to sniff him, as it were—didn’t leave him much room for an Oscar-worthy performance.
The false alarm passed, once again Conrad started—convincingly—looking like a strongman offloading heavy equipment. Although he didn’t sense Geoffroy around, he had detected some ‘drifters’ under the bridges—one where they used to dredge the river Eure, and one under Saint-Père Bridge, named after the church when it was a Benedictine abbey.
Even though a far larger crowd than expected—or, for that matter, wanted—came to survey each trip to and from the trucks, the people in sunglasses and the hypnotized/glamorized clergy somehow managed to keep them at bay long enough for the process to be completed quickly. Crucially, nobody was allowed to interfere much, or, even less, to get so close they could notice how the offloading ramps wobbled and bent under the weight of items Conrad and Severian lifted as if they were oversized Styrofoam boxes.
Eventually, the trucks left—escorted, if only for a few blocks, by a not-so-subtle cloud of people from all the aforementioned groups—peacefully, at least in appearance. Out of sight from innocent bystanders some battles took place—a few of which would have convinced the French public Astérix might be real—but, thanks largely to Tony’s people in sunglasses, the most ferocious ones were fought in the shadows.
Unbeknownst to even Tony, Siegfried’s contacts at the DGSI hade also taken care of many subtler problems, with exemplary discretion. Moreover, they would stay on, unobtrusively; ready to act, until David’s (or Siegfried’s, if claustrophobia were to get on David’s way) mission was complete.
Back at Saint-Pierre, following the mandatory welcomes and blessings, once representatives of the Patrimoine had their piles of forms signed, and after church personnel made clear their ‘entreaties’ meant to be interdictions, the crowd inside the building gradually thinned out, until finally, only a couple of glamorized priests and a bishop’s representative remained.
All this time, what any of them thought they were seeing, and what was actually happening, had preciously little to do with one another. After less than half an hour, Conrad had them all ‘persuaded’ they were bored to death, and the night was, oh, so beautifully enticing outside. Since everyone could contact Tony’s group, they would, of course, all be kept abreast of the restoration’s progress, and anything not listed in the painfully detailed sheaves of paper would be punctiliously and promptly cleared with each of them before lifting a trowel or burying a shovel or painting a wall. Moreover, the excruciatingly tedious prep work would take most of that splendid summer night. Why waste it at the church?
After profusely apologizing, one after another, eventually left. The moment the priests and the bishop’s representative did, Severian and Conrad finally buried themselves in the underground, as if the soil wasn’t there, to carry out ‘mole prospecting’ in earnest.
Following such preliminary ‘prospecting’, the real excavation would finally begin and continue until David and the equipment could be ‘comfortably’ buried underground. Only then Siegfried and Tony would seal the entry point leading to the underground chamber, and relocated the soil—removed by the ‘undies’ and placed into a colossal tarp container supported by a wheeled platform—out of the congregants’ view.
Whether serendipitously or not, next morning, the church had one of it largest Sunday attendances in recent memory. Mass would only start a
t 10:30 AM, but people were already circling the entrance—some quite like vultures—at 8:00AM, which surprised even some of the most regular local churchgoers. The attending crowd included quite a few very muscular young men with arms the size of legs, backs the size of desks—what the French used to call ‘des hommes bien barraqués’—all wearing sunglasses, a host of rather obviously military men in civilian clothing, plus mostly Viking-looking men—and a couple of women, dressed, as well, almost like Valkyries—in addition to the usual faithful, and a number of tourists asking everyone else to move so they can take pictures to upload into their travel blog. In the parking lot by the building there were a few skirmishes: a particularly vociferous one— involving a muscled Valkyrie telling a blue-haired American tourist wearing purple snickers and matching nerdy glasses she would rather have sex with a sewer rat than with him—got some of the people in sunglasses to the hand-and-middle-finger-sign stage. Fortunately, a benevolent visiting deacon—who left the scene physically unharmed but red as a very ripe tomato—was eventually able to calm things down.
In the meantime, at sewer level, Conrad and Severian kept ‘prospecting’ and checking and correcting the drilling pattern to match the layout of this thousand-year-old tunnel system. Following some compaction and strategic rearrangement—achieved with some trepidation under the busy nearby public toilets—the cave that used to exist between Saint-Père-en-Vallée and Saint-Hilaire was now providing a reasonably ‘comfortable’ working space for David, Conrad and Severian.
From their hotel, Tony and Siegfried had managed to reestablish contact with them, using a special antenna inserted through one of the intact ventilation lead tubes. Using it, they were also relaying encrypted news from the ‘mole team’ to the castle and vice versa.
Quest for the Ark Page 30