Angel City

by Jon Steele

  Harper flashed the kid with Astruc.

  “What did he look like, the one Astruc kidnapped?” Harper said.

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Why do you ask, Mr. Harper?”

  “Because the Astruc I met at Saint-Germain-des-Prés had someone with him. Someone who’d match the timeline you laid out.”

  More silence.

  Harper looked at the judge. “You telling me your boys didn’t see the kid with Astruc?”

  The judge ignored the question.

  “What was the name of the boy with Astruc?” the inspector said.

  “Goose.”

  “Describe him, Mr. Harper.”

  “Not tall, just over five feet. Light build. Astruc said the kid was twenty-six, but he could pass for much younger. Suffers from a form of paedomorphia. His head’s too small for his body and neck, and it’s misshapen. Small ears pinned back to the side of his head. Presents himself as deaf, but he hears well enough. He communicates through sign language. He’s got an IQ of over two hundred according to Astruc. I tend to believe it. He’s fanatically devoted to Astruc.”

  The inspector and the judge stared at him.

  “I get something wrong, gents?” Harper said.

  “The boy you have described is George Muret,” the judge said.

  Harper gave it five.

  “If we’re talking about the same kid, Astruc called him ‘Goose.’”

  The judge turned to the tramp standing behind him. The tramp handed over another photo, it ended up in front of Harper. Black-and-white shot of a small boy sitting on a man’s lap. The man had cruel and bitter eyes; the misshapen boy on the man’s lap was Goose at two or three years old. Like looking at an antique photograph of a ventriloquist holding a grotesque dummy.

  “That’s him. That’s the kid,” Harper said.

  “Are you absolutely sure, Mr. Harper?”

  Harper looked at the inspector.

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  “Did you get a read of his eyes?”

  “No, there’s a milky haze over his irises. I assumed it to be some sort of masking drug.”

  “Anything else that impressed you?”

  Harper flashed back to the kid in the doorway next to Les Deux Magots.

  “He knows how to hide in shadows, as well as you or me. But looking the way he does, I’m not surprised.”

  “Please explain your reasoning.”

  “What’s to explain? The kid was tormented as a freak his entire life. Probably ran for every shadow he could find to avoid being seen.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Know what?”

  “That he was tormented as a child.”

  “The priest, Astruc, he told me. At Les Deux Magots, before we went down into the tunnels.”

  Harper’s explanation was greeted with silence. He looked at the photograph of Goose and the man again. Father and son, had to be. And in the father’s cruel and bitter eyes, Harper saw one part undiluted hate, one part face-slapping truth. He looked up from the photograph, stared at the judge.

  “This is Goose’s father. He’s the man Astruc killed, yeah?”

  The judge nodded.

  “What happened?”

  The judge took a long puff from his pipe.

  “George Muret was born in Toulouse. His mother died at birth. He appeared normal at first, but within the first three months it was obvious the boy was suffering, as you say, from a form of paedomorphosis. As he grew, his deformity became more pronounced and it was discovered he was deaf. Though in some unknown way, he displayed an ability to feel the meaning of words and sounds, as if hearing them. This ability was regarded as one more example of the boy’s . . . strangeness.”

  Harper thought about it. Forget an IQ of over two hundred; how about completely off the bloody chart?

  “What else to you know?”

  The boy’s father, Monsieur Pierre Muret, was a drunkard and suspected of sexually abusing his son. After spotting repeated bruising on the boy’s arms and legs, a local doctor reported the situation to the police. The police investigated and, upon seeing the boy, were quick to accept Monsieur Muret’s explanation that his son was clumsy and an idiot. Attitudes being what they were in that day, the matter was dropped. The boy was rarely allowed outside and had no real social interaction, but by order of the local council, he was enrolled in a school for the deaf near Toulouse Cathedral. The school was run by Dominican nuns. Father Astruc served as chaplain there and said Mass every Friday afternoon. It was at the school that Father Astruc met the boy and took an interest in him. He found the boy to be extremely bright and began to tutor him privately. Within months, the boy was reading with adult comprehension. He also demonstrated proficiency in math and languages, mastering calculus, German, and English by the age of nine. By now, Monsieur Muret was suffering from alcohol-induced paranoia. Seeing such remarkable progress in his son, the man became unhinged. He was known to tell his neighbors that his boy was possessed by the devil, speaking in tongues. He withdrew him from the school. One night, while in a blind rage, Monsieur Muret attacked his son and pulled the boy’s tongue from his mouth with a pair of pliers and cut it off with a carving knife. Monsieur Muret was found walking the streets with the boy’s tongue in his hands, calling it the sign of the devil.”

  Harper filled in the rest. “Astruc finds out about it, kills the father, disappears. Shows up six months later—or someone calling himself Astruc shows up—kidnaps the boy.”

  The judge nodded.

  Harper looked at Inspector Gobet.

  “Interesting tale. But you still haven’t explained how Astruc went from wholesome priest to the bruiser, whiskey-swilling fanatic I had the pleasure of meeting at bloody Saint-Germain-des-Prés.”

  The more Harper thought about it, the more interesting it got.

  “And come to think of it, you have yet to ask me about what happened in the cavern, or what Astruc found down there.”

  Harper scanned the room. All eyes on him.

  “Let me guess: You already know.”

  The inspector nodded.

  Harper wanted to rub the back of his neck, gave it a pass with his hands in bandages.

  “So what the hell are we doing here? What’s the purpose of this debrief? As you already know what there is to know.”

  The judge leaned forward “Are you familiar, in any way, with Bernard de Saint-Martin?”

  Harper ran the name. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Are you sure of that, Mr. Harper?” the inspector said.

  Second time the inspector has gone for the “Are you sure?” line in the name game, Harper thought.

  “Bernard de Saint-Martin? Hard one to forget, even for the likes of me. Who is he?”

  “He is the leader of this cell,” the judge said.

  “He gives you your orders, then?”

  “Oui, monsieur.”

  Harper looked at the two of them. They’d morphed into police asking questions they already knew the answers to. Harper felt like he’d escaped from one trap, only to find himself being dumped into another.

  “So where the hell is he? I’d like to meet him, ask him a few questions. Maybe he can enlighten me as to what the hell this is about. Because I’m telling you, at this rate, my manner of thinking is never going to find its way to whatever timeline it is you two are parked in.”

  The inspector and judge didn’t respond.

  “So, gentlemen, is Bernard de Saint-Martin making the bloody scene or not?”

  The judge folded his hands, his index fingers touching and pointing up like the steeple of a very small church.

  “Monsieur, when I say de Saint-Martin is the leader of this cell, I mean to say we are the latest disciples to carry out the mission laid out by him when he founded t
his cell nearly nine hundred years ago.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Bernard de Saint-Martin appeared in Paris as a homeless beggar at the steps of l’Église de Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the year 1244. It was there that he revealed himself to the first disciples. He showed them the entrance to the cavern and told them the secrets of what had happened at this place in the beginning. He showed them a reliquary box and the ancient sextant inside. He told them it was a sacred treasure from the East, and that he would hide it in the cavern. He charged his disciples to assure the box be kept from the eyes of men, down through the generations, until he returned and was revealed to the world.”

  Bloody hell, Harper thought. He looked at Inspector Gobet. Not a hint of surprise. Harper turned to the judge.

  “You know, human history is chockablock with legends and myths, gov. What’s to say this isn’t one more?”

  “There have only been a handful of disciples at any one time, monsieur. Precisely to prevent the truth from becoming legend. And, of course, there is the undeniable fact that deep beneath l’Église Saint-Germain-des-Prés is the cavern.”

  There was that.

  “All right. But I still don’t get how I’m supposed to know him. Where’s the connection?”

  “That’s what we are trying to determine,” the inspector said.

  Harper shot a look at him. “What’s to determine? If I had come across him at any point in time, I’d see him when you said his name to me. That’s the way it works for our kind.”

  Inspector Gobet looked down at the file, his thick fingers peeling through the pages in delicate moves: shhhwip, shhhhwip. He removed a photograph and laid it on the table for Harper to see. It was the photo of a winged form dropping through the backlit fog that had enveloped Pont des Arts.

  “Mr. Harper, the man you met who claims to be Father Christophe Astruc took this photograph and put it on the Internet.”

  “How did you find that one out?”

  “A tip was left with the judge’s office regarding this address. Upon arriving, the judge’s men found a video camera connected to a desktop computer. The still grab of you jumping from Pont des Arts had been uploaded onto the Internet not ten minutes earlier. Next to the computer was this particular file, the one the judge read to you when you were arrested.”

  Harper looked at the judge.

  “The tip came from Astruc. He wanted you to find this place. He wanted you to know what I am?”

  The judge shrugged. “I believe there is more to it.”

  “Such as?”

  The inspector took over: “Such as the attack on Paris being engineered by Father Astruc in an attempt to confirm your identity.”

  “You’re bloody joking.”

  The expression on the inspector’s face said he was not joking.

  “Our advance intel on the attack, including the last-minute shift of ground zero from Saint-Sulpice to the river Seine, was picked up in pieces. Pieces embedded in hundreds of messages left on certain chat rooms known to be used by the enemy. SX analysis confirms the computer found in this library was the source.”

  Harper thought about it. “Astruc chatted about the cavern online, what was down there. He picked up followers, the enemy. By tracking the followers, he hacked into the enemy grid and learned about their plans to attack Paris.”

  “That seems to be the timeline of events.”

  “So how did we get ahold of attack plans?”

  “Father Astruc e-mailed them, anonymously, to my office in Berne. He was kind enough to include a link to an encrypted website where I was invited to log on for updates.”

  “You couldn’t track him, find out where he was working from?”

  The inspector smiled, approving of the manner of Harper’s thinking . . . for the moment.

  “SX discovered the site was protected by a unique intrusion detection program. Any attempt at tracking the transmission point would cause the site to disappear. We would be in the dark. Our first priority was to assure we were in the loop to intercept enemy operations. Indeed, it was by monitoring Father Astruc’s site that we learned of the last-minute change of target zone.”

  Harper shook his head.

  “Christ, the bloody priest really is insane.”

  “Why do you say that, Mr. Harper?”

  “Tens of thousands would’ve died that night, millions more for the next thousand years. Adds up to barking in the first degree.”

  The inspector turned back through the pages of the file. He stopped, looked at one page. Harper could see it. It was a piece of old parchment, looked like a medieval drawing. The inspector held it delicately and laid it on the table.

  “In fact, Mr. Harper, it would seem that in suspecting what you are, Father Astruc had the utmost confidence that you would manage to save the day.”

  Harper looked at the drawing. An angel descending from the heavens and through the clouds, basking in a celestial light. Below him a river in flames; above him, amid the stars, a comet streaking through the sky. He looked closer. Sword in his right hand, raised to strike. Half-hidden by the curl of a wing, the angel’s left arm braced against his chest, holding the same damn reliquary box Harper had seen in the cavern. The lid was open; inside was the sextant.

  “What the hell is this?” Harper said.

  “It was drawn by one of Bernard de Saint-Martin’s first disciples, a monk working in the scriptorium of the Abbey at Saint-Germain-des-Prés. It refers to a future event that the descendants of this cell were instructed to watch for: specifically, the reincarnation of Bernard de Saint-Martin in the form of an angel, who would save Paris from destruction.”

  Harper’s eyes darted between the photo and the drawing. The similarity between the images was enough to make any set of eyes look twice. Harper gave it three.

  “You’re not actually suggesting this is me.”

  “Why not?” the inspector said.

  “For starters, there’s no way Astruc could know I’d end up jumping from Pont des Arts.”

  “Why not?”

  “We flash back through time, not into the future.”

  “Because?”

  “What do you mean, ‘because’? Because the bloody future hasn’t happened yet.”

  “That would leave coincidence.”

  “No such bloody thing. So what are you getting at?”

  “Some rather curious intersecting lines of causality.”

  “What lines?”

  “The counterattack tactical sent to you in Paris wasn’t ours.”

  Harper added it up. Astruc cracked the enemy’s computer grid, downloaded the attack profile, knew the attack would shift from Saint-Sulpice to the river Seine. Left disclosing that bit of news to the last minute, so there’d be no choice but to jump onto the Manon.

  “Astruc sent you the counterattack plan when he told you the target had shifted; you sent it to me.”

  “Oddly enough, it was the most logical of options. It also made it possible for Father Astruc to confirm the connection between you and Bernard de Saint-Martin.”

  “You’re talking nonsense, inspector.”

  The inspector shoved the drawing closer to Harper. Harper gave the drawing another go.

  Angel with sword. Burning river. Reliquary box and sextant. Comet amid the stars . . . streaks of fire in the comet’s tail forming these words across the sky:

  C’est le guet. Il a sonné l’heure.

  He flashed back to Astruc lifting the ancient sextant from the box: It was you who brought this sacred treasure to his place . . . Harper blinked back to nowtimes. The tramps, Mutt and Jeff, Sergeant Gauer, the inspector and the judge: all eyes on him again.

  He stared at Inspector Gobet. “‘The chosen of the fallen ones.’”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Words carved into the ta
blet in the cavern. That’s the only one who could open the pillar.”

  “Quite.”

  “And you’re telling me I’m him?”

  The inspector glanced around the room, pointed to the bookcases.

  “We’ve only had sixty-seven hours to go through these files. But we’ve covered a lot of ground while waiting for you to emerge from the tunnels. From what we’ve managed to put together, you made an unauthorized apparition in the form of a beggar calling himself Bernard de Saint-Martin in 1244. And that you spent forty days in Paris, forming a cell and engaging in the events as described by the judge.”

  Harper thought about it.

  “Our kind don’t make unauthorized apparitions.”

  “No, we don’t. HQ lists you as in stasis for most of the thirteenth century.”

  “Well?”

  “I’m afraid, at present, I have no comment on the matter.”

  Meaning the cop in the cashmere coat knew the skinny, but wasn’t saying. Harper looked at the judge.

  “Who was he, this de Saint-Martin?”

  “A knight from Languedoc, listed in the rolls of the Inquisition as burned as a heretic with the last of the Cathars at Montségur in March of 1244.”

  “Burned. As a heretic. At Montségur.”

  The judge nodded.

  “Any witnesses?”

  “Ten thousand of them, monsieur, not including the Archbishop of Toulouse and his entourage.”

  Harper smiled, shook his head.

  “I really hate to rain on your parade, gov, but when we die in our forms, we’re dead forever. We’re not like you, we don’t come back. When it ends for us, it bloody ends.”