Thaddeus was in danger, that was the reason for her premonition.
She took off her jacket, pressed it on her face and rushed into the opening. She discovered what looked like a loft, or an artist’s studio, but the ceiling was already orange with flames. Shelves fell from walls, objects broke on the ground, liquids in jars burned, and books went up in flames. She thought she heard Thaddeus, but the voices were drowned in the immense noise of the building: the fire began to devour the structure.
If she didn’t find him in the next few seconds, they would all die.
Then finally she saw him, but when she wanted to call out to him, no sound came out.
He was standing in the middle of chaos, in what seemed to be an alcove protected from fire. He was impassive, indifferent to the growing danger. His attention was directed to a woman who stood in front of him.
Sixtine recognized her instantly. It was Sophie Neumann.
Unlike Thaddeus, she was hysterical. Her face was distorted by rage, her eyes exorbitant, her cheeks striped with traces of soot forming patterns. At her feet lay an empty can of gasoline.
“It may have been Seth who killed Elizabeth, but you planned it! Seth was just the hand that finished her off because he had nothing left to lose! You killed her like you killed Yohannes like you killed El-Shamy! Their death was part of your big plan, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, but yours is not one of them.”
“And here I thought you killed Yohannes to save Sixtine. Ha! It was just an excuse! You have deceived us all! Tell me, when did you plan to kill him? When you were twelve years old? When Yohannes took you under his wing as a father? Or once he taught you everything?” she asked, laughing bitterly.
“There is still time to flee,” Thaddeus muttered so low that Sixtine had trouble hearing him.
“No,” Sophie spat. “I want to see you burn in hell even if that’s the last thing I see!”
For the first time, Thaddeus seemed to lose his temper, and stepped towards her, his face threatening.
“It’s my turn now?” she said, a hysterical laugh distorting her face. “You’re going to kill me as well?”
“It is not my vocation to kill you,” Thaddeus exclaimed.
“Your vocation? Ha! Your vocation, Thaddeus, was to be a great artist and to be my friend, my brother! But you ruined everything! And for what? Your obsession with revenge!”
Her tears and the heat made her makeup run, gradually revealing the dark tattoos on her face. Cybelle’s features appeared behind Sophie’s.
“I didn’t want to, Thaddeus,” she whined. “I didn’t want to. I’ve loved you for so long, but I know you’ll kill me like you killed Yohannes. You see, I want my revenge too.”
“It’s too late, Cybelle. Even if you kill me, in a few hours, everything will be revealed. You can’t stop it. But you can run. There is still time.”
She sobbed, coughed, her eyes red with tears and ashes. She was rehearsing, just like he was.
“We could have carried on with everything. You, me and Yohannes. We could have done great things. But you had to be blinded by your sister’s hatred. You threw us to the wolves. And you know what makes me angry? It’s because Yohannes warned me. I didn’t believe him. You betrayed us all.”
“I had to fulfill my destiny,” Thaddeus said with his usual calm demeanor. “If you don’t go now, you’ll die.”
An explosion shook the walls, and Cybelle folded in half, coughing, one half of her face revealing the skeleton tattoo. Thaddeus then turned his head towards Sixtine, as if he knew she was there from the beginning. She then had the impression of splitting herself: a part of herself plunged into Thaddeus’s gray eyes, perceiving in them a deep calm, an intense and resigned presence. He seemed to be whispering things to her, they could understand each other without talking. His message was clear. “Trust me, Sixtine.”
Another part of her was moved by the rage of having discovered Thaddeus’s betrayal. She rushed in and, with unsuspected force, dragged Cybelle’s body down the burning stairs. The face of this one, a skeleton face blurred by make-up, soot and sweat, was nothing more than chaos. Sixtine rushed down the steps, trying to escape the flames, even carrying Cybelle when she had to. Her skeleton face blurred by make-up, soot and sweat, she was only two terrified eyes in the middle of a chaos of skin. Despite the fire burning her nostrils, Sixtine recognized the smell of her skin, and this memory carried her to the chapel in Mexico City, where she had declared her love to Thaddeus.
Thaddeus, the love of her life.
Thaddeus, the cold-blooded murderer.
He was going to die in the fire.
Sixtine was a few feet from the front door when Cybelle’s body suddenly became heavier: she had lost consciousness.
Sixtine burned her hand but managed to open the door. The fire expunged a huge breath that propelled them to the ground. Sixtine straightened up and dragged Cybelle down the steps to the sidewalk. She looked up at the crowd of people who had gathered, and in the distance, she heard the sirens.
It wasn’t the fire department which stopped in the road, but four FBI vehicles. She recognized Franklin standing beside a woman with an Egyptian sand complexion, black eyes and a perfect ponytail.
The DNA analyst, she thought.
“Take care of her,” Sixtine barked to a group of onlookers, who rushed to Cybelle’s side. Sixtine paused for a moment, and despite the cries of the crowd, she rushed back into the burning building.
The flames crawled like red rats on the ceiling as she met Thaddeus on the third floor. The black smoke swallowed entire parts of her vision, the heat stung the pores of her skin and every breath was strangled. Then, as in the blue water, the only kingdom free of visions, she stopped breathing.
She approached Thaddeus, and stood as still as he did. She stopped fighting the fire, as she had done with the cold on top of the Chrysler Building. A great calm then seized her lungs, every part of her being, and the heat left her body. She felt the attack of fire on her skin and yet it was as if this pain didn’t belong to her.
Thaddeus made no effort to escape the fire that ravaged his house. He grabbed a picture between his fingers, which was already stained and softened by the heat.
“You are Oxan Aslanian,” she said to him.
“Yes, I am.” Thaddeus’s voice was still as calm as ever, and rose effortlessly above the noise of the fire.
The swirling fire was reflected in his pale eyes and although he seemed tired, no regrets came to disturb his smooth face. It was as beautiful as the first day she saw him.
“Yohannes De Bok was the first to see that I had a gift. I was twelve years old. It was right after my mother’s death. And mine.” He dropped the picture. It melted in the flames.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Sixtine asked, trembling.
“I was waiting for you to believe me. I don’t know if this is still the time. But there is no time now. They thought I survived the accident that killed my mother, just as they thought you survived the pyramid. But none of us survived. Instead, there’s you and me. You and me, who can stay in this burning house without feeling anything. You and me, who know things without ever having learned them.”
Sixtine’s lips began to tremble.
“You already know Cybelle’s going to survive, don’t you? And if you let go, you already know the name of the paramedic who’s taking care of her.”
Somewhere in Sixtine’s consciousness was the scene in front of the building, with as much clarity as if she had it in front of her eyes. She saw Cybelle, who was being connected to an oxygen mask. The ambulance driver’s name was Jenny, she was blonde and her ears were pierced in several places, but the anger towards Thaddeus swept the vision away with violence.
“I could reproduce any work without even having seen it,” Thaddeus continued. “I knew it as well as if I had created it from scratch three thousand years ago. Yohannes saw this talent, but he never understood where it came from. All he had to do was teach me to
sculpt, and to paint, to gain access to power and fortune. His only wish was to be treated as an equal by my father and all the people who gravitate around these treasures, but power and fortune are like the horizon. There is never an end,” Thaddeus laughed. “They have pushed the horizon to the beyond. That’s why I had to do what I did. I had no choice. You’re the only one, Sixtine, who can understand.”
“Understand what, Thaddeus? That you leave in your wake death and violence, and women in tombs?”
“Because that’s who I am, Sixtine!”
A beam collapsed with a loud noise and burning sparks danced around him.
“And you, Sixtine, have you understood who you are?” Thaddeus took a step towards her. The truth was there, within reach, yet she refused to accept it. Thaddeus lowered his hand. “Only then will you understand why you and I cannot be together until we have fulfilled our destiny.”
His voice had wavered. For the first time in her life, she saw Thaddeus lose his incredible intensity.
“I thought I could protect you from your destiny, but no one should turn you away from it.”
Without taking his eyes off her, he approached the spiral staircase. An explosion shook the building and Sixtine glanced at the ceiling vent above the stairs. Thaddeus was already on the highest steps.
He smiled at her, and said, “Remember the chapel! The secret is in your name, Sixtine!”
At that moment the windows exploded into a glass storm, and Thaddeus’s body was sucked into the void, four floors down, into the red, gaping mouth.
21
“I didn’t pay any attention to it. Florence always had thirty ideas per minute. But it’s right there. She talks about a secret society of the nineteenth century, the founder was her ancestor, Vivant Mornay.”
“It’s the same name,” Travis exclaimed, brandishing one of the documents in the envelope. “Vivant Mornay, that’s it!”
“Gentlemen obsessed with ancient monuments who took orphan girls to the grave when they were too old to have company in death. She said that Seth Pryce had taken inspiration from it in the pyramid case, where he ordered his wife to be buried alive.”
“It fits with what the forger says,” Phoebe pointed out.
“Did she mention Nefertiti?”
“No, she was working on it, but she never mentioned a fake. But remember, she was the one who first told us about the tunnel under the pyramid.”
“Which proved to be true,” Phoebe muttered.
“Yet no one believed in it,” Jane said, entering the silence of the meeting room.
“The Met denies everything, of course. Montecito proposed to have all Nefertiti’s pieces appraised by researchers and historians, in front of the cameras. But he’s not the one I talked to, he’s on a business trip right now. His assistant reminded me that the photos could be manipulated, that it was sabotage, and so on. She was in a total panic.”
“What about the murders?”
“What do you want her to say? Yes, it was my boss who personally murdered these young girls? She obviously had three lawyers behind her, she recited a speech to me saying that it would be the BBC’s downfall if we took the subject out, and it would mean the end of our relationship. And of course, she’s right. What the hell are they doing in the legal department? We should have had someone here twenty minutes ago.”
Travis grabbed one of the phones that was vibrating. He rubbed his hands and smiled with a satisfied smile.
“Officially, the FBI has no comment to make at this stage.”
“Do you have any contacts at the FBI?” the young journalist asked starry-eyed.
“Your satisfied look tells me that’s not the end of the story,” Phoebe said.
“The Art Crime Unit is already at the Met. That’s just for Nefertiti. The Special Victims Unit is also on the case, about the girls. They take the accusations very seriously.”
“Mediapart has just published,” Jane whispered. “But they’re not talking about the murders.”
“The caving association has just confirmed that there is indeed a giant cave in this place,” the red-haired journalist pointed out. “But they’ve explored it very little, it’s very risky to go there. Two speleologists have already died.”
“Jim, you have your checks,” Phoebe suggested.
The tension in the room was palpable.
Jim stood up from his chair, leaned his back against the wall, and sighed. “I think the check I’d like to have is on Oxan Aslanian. Maybe he’s the greatest forger of all time. Maybe it’s just the one pulling the strings, and we’re the fucking puppets.”
The silence set in, thick with adrenaline. Outside, beyond the glass walls, telephones rang, journalists came and went.
“He’s a vigilante,” Gayle murmured.
Jim looked up with a crooked eyebrow, while Jane peered over her gold-banded glasses.
“Oxan Aslanian is a vigilante. He’s not doing this for glory. He spent years setting up this coup to bring down a handful of men so powerful that they are untouchable, and a one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old secret society. What we have on this table is the crusade of his whole life. He’s waiting for us to bring these men down. To do justice to these women.”
Florence’s disappearance convinces me that she had the evidence. She was an outstanding journalist. Who cares about the legal department? It’s for subjects like that that we do this job. It is with subjects like this that we write history, she thought to herself.
She swallowed hard, then said, “We’re broadcasting. Everything. Even the murders. Especially the murders.”
A shiver passed through the room.
Jim nodded imperceptibly, Travis imitated him and Phoebe turned to Jane.
The station manager bit the inside of her cheek, then slowly the corner of her lips relaxed into an imperceptible smile. Her eyes began to shine.
“We’re broadcasting.”
22
Sixtine walked the streets of Manhattan. She had left the building without any burns, just a few traces of soot and heat. No one noticed her on the way out, the firefighters probably thought, given her condition, that she was one of the onlookers.
She had to keep moving. If she stopped, she would collapse. Her and the world with her. She had to walk, follow the line. To follow her shadow, this improbable friend, the only one to show she was still alive. She had spent fifteen minutes in a burning building and left without a trace, or a scratch. She had breathed the burning ash and her breath was still intact. She was alive. Thaddeus was dead.
No, Thaddeus was not dead.
But Thaddeus was dead.
No, Thaddeus couldn’t have been dead.
Her words arguing in her mind drove her to near insanity, and she was unsure of what was real and what was not.
She followed the sidewalk, still staring down at her shadow, did the dead have shadows? Her spirit projected images of Thaddeus into an infernal loop in the middle of the fire. He had nothing either. Yet he was dead. He must have been dead.
You’ve come a long way.
The secret is in your name, Sixtine.
There is no future for us until we fulfill our vocation.
Your twin sister was already dead when you were born.
Sixtine, have you forgotten me?
You are the chosen one.
Voices multiplied in her head and images of her past blinded her pupils. She tried to close her eyes, but her memories were projected on the city’s skyscrapers, in the yellow sky, on the sidewalk. Everything was bigger than her and absolutely nothing made sense.
Apnea in the pool. The mother-of-pearl knife in the middle of the broken glass of the naco store, this sudden and unexpected physical strength in the face of De Bok. Gigi’s last words. The picture of Jessica and her blue eyes. The blue smoke swirls of Thaddeus’s cigar under the No Smoking sign. The bloodthirsty story of the Aztecs she already knew. Her awakening at the Cairo Hospital, the words of the psychiatrists, the terror in the dark and flight to the
neon lights. All the images of the Green River. The weighing of the heart, the beast in Nefertiti’s darkness.
Nothing made sense.
And yet, everything had them.
She accidentally bumped into a man, he swore at her. Seeing that she didn’t react, he insulted her, but Sixtine didn’t feel anything. Apart from a feeling of invincibility, the fire had devastated everything inside her.
How many miles had she walked?
She arrived at her destination, without even thinking about the way.
All roads led here.
She entered an empty hall. All she remembered was her mother-of-pearl knife on the security officer’s neck. This threat and her determination opened doors.
An elevator, dozens of floors.
A broken door, a crossed fence.
An alarm that sounded.
Then the wind in her hair. The city lights below. A few steps above the darkness.
Four hundred feet above the darkness.
She was standing on the eagle of the Chrysler Building and observing New York. A gigantic maze of confused fates, bathed in the promise of dawn beyond the Hudson River. The darkness swarming with millions of tiny lives that illuminated her face.
New York didn’t scare her, because it was never dark in New York.
She heard many screams behind her, but they soon faded into nothing.
All she had to do was take one more step, and life as she knew it would end.
There was not enough space on the head of the metal eagle for her and her shadow. There wasn’t enough light in the sky either. Her shadow had been lost in New York under her feet.
Life, death. The difference escaped her.
In the past, she understood it. She remembered seeing her mother’s body on the cliffs, but was forbidden to approach. She had seen her, Sleeping Beauty on the rocks, her blond hair as golden algae on the black rock, her torn white dress, draped over the landscape, the fabric swelling the water. The rescuers were busy around her beautiful body, it was as if she was alone in the world.
Stones were found in her pockets.
Sixtine- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 59