THE NOSTRADAMUS PROPHECIES
Page 3
‘With what?’
‘Well… My billiard cue.’
‘Where do you keep this offensive weapon?’
‘Where do I keep it? Where do you think I keep it? Behind the bar, of course. This is St-Denis, not the Sacré-Coeur.’
‘Show me.’
‘Look. I didn’t hit anybody with it. I only waved it at the gypsy.’
‘Did the gypsy wave back?’
‘Ah. Merde.’ The barman slit open a pack of Gitanes with the bar ice-pick. ‘I suppose you’ll have me up for smoking in a public place next? You people.’ He blew a cloud of smoke across the counter.
Calque relieved the barman of one of his cigarettes. He tapped the cigarette on the back of the packet and ran it languorously beneath his nose.
‘Aren’t you going to light that?’
‘No.’
‘Putain. Don’t tell me you’ve given up?’
‘I have a heart condition. Each cigarette takes a day off my life.’
‘Worth it though.’
Calque sighed. ‘You’re right. Give me a light.’
The barman offered Calque the tip of his cigarette. ‘Look. I’ve remembered now. About your officer.’
‘What have you remembered?’
‘There was something strange about him. Very strange.’
‘And what was that?’
‘Well. You won’t believe me if I tell you.’
Calque raised an eyebrow. ‘Try me.’
The barman shrugged. ‘He had no whites to his eyes.’
9
‘The man’s name is Sabir. S.A.B.I.R. Adam Sabir. An American. No. I have no more information for you at this time. Look him up on your computer. That should be quite enough. Believe me.’
Achor Bale put down the telephone. He allowed himself a brief smile. That would sort Sabir. By the time the French police were through with questioning him, he would be long gone. Chaos was always a good idea. Chaos and anarchy. Foment those and you forced the established forces of law and order on to the back foot.
Police and public administrators were trained to think in a linear fashion - in terms, of rules and regulations. In computer terms hyper was the opposite of linear. Well then. Bale prided himself on his ability to think in a hyper fashion - skipping and jumping around wherever he fancied. He would do whatever he wanted to do, whenever he wanted to do it.
He reached across for a map of France and spread it neatly out on to the table in front of him.
10
The first Adam Sabir knew of the Surete’s interest in him was when he switched on the television set in his rented fl at on the Ile St-Louis and saw his own face, full-size, staring back at him from the plasma screen.
As a writer and occasional journalist, Sabir needed to keep up with the news. Stories lurked there. Ideas simmered. The state of the world was reflected in the state of his potential market and this concerned him.
In recent years he had got into the habit of living to a very comfortable standard indeed, thanks to a freak one-off bestseller called The Private Life of Nostradamus. The original content had been just about nil - the title a stroke of genius. Now he desperately needed a follow-up or the money tap would turn off, the luxury lifestyle dry up and his public melt away.
Samana’s advertisement in that ludicrous free rag of a newspaper, two days before, had captured his attention, therefore, because it was so incongruous and so entirely unexpected:
Money needed. I have something to sell. Notre Dame’s [sic] lost verses. All written down. Cash sale to first buyer. Genuine.
Sabir had laughed out loud when he first saw the ad - it had so obviously been dictated by an illiterate. But how would an illiterate know about Nostradamus’s lost quatrains?
It was common knowledge that the sixteenth-century seer had written 1,000 indexed four-line verses, published during his lifetime and anticipating, with an almost preternatural accuracy, the future course of world events. Less well known, however, was the fact that fifty-eight of the quatrains had been held back at the very last moment, never to see the light of day. If an individual could find the location of those verses, they would become an instant millionaire - the potential sales were stratospheric.
Sabir knew that his publisher would have no compunction in anteing up whatever sum was needed to cement such a sale. The story of the find alone would bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in newspaper revenue and would guarantee front-page coverage all over the world. And what wouldn’t people give, in this uncertain age, to read the verses and understand their revelations? The mind boggled.
Until the events of today, Sabir had happily fantasised a scenario in which his original manuscript, like the Harry Potter books before him, would be locked up in the literary equivalent of a Fort Knox, only to be revealed to the impatiently slavering hordes on publication day. He was already in Paris. What would it cost him to check the story out? What did he have to lose?
Following the brutal torture and murder of an unknown male, police are seeking the American writer Adam Sabir, who is wanted for questioning in connection with the crime. Sabir is believed to be visiting Paris, but should under no circumstances be approached by members of the public, as he may be dangerous. The quality of the crime is of so serious a nature that the Police Nationale are making it their priority to identify the murderer, who, it is strongly believed, may be preparing to strike again.
‘Oh Jesus.’ Sabir stood in the centre of his living room and stared at the television set as if it might suddenly decide to break free from its moorings and crawl across the floor towards him. An old publicity photo of himself was taking up the full extent of the screen, exaggerating every feature of his face until he, too, could almost believe that it depicted a wanted criminal.
A death-mask ‘Do You Know this Man?’ photograph of Samana followed, its cheek and ear lacerated, its eyes dully opened, as if its owner were sitting in judgement on the millions of couch-potato voyeurs taking fleeting comfort from the fact that it was someone else and not they, depicted over there on the screen.
‘It’s not possible. My blood’s all over him.’ Sabir sat down in an armchair, his mouth hanging open, the throbbing in his hand uncannily echoing the throbbing of the linking electronic music that was even now accompanying the closing headlines of the evening news.
11
It took him ten frenetic minutes to gather all his belongings together - passport, money, maps, clothes and credit cards. At the very last moment he rifled through the desk in case there was anything in there he might use.
He was borrowing the fl at from his English agent, John Tone, who was on holiday in the Caribbean. The car was his agent’s, too and therefo
re unidentifiable - its very anonymity might at least suffice to get him out of Paris. To buy him time to think.
He hastily pocketed an old British driving licence in Tone’s name and some spare euros he found in an empty film canister. No photograph on the driving licence. Might be useful. He took an electricity bill and the car papers, too.
If the police apprehended him he would simply plead ignorance - he was starting on a research trip to St-Remy-de-Provence, Nostradamus’s birthplace. He hadn’t listened to the radio or watched the TV - didn’t know the police were hunting for him.
With luck he could make it as far as the Swiss border - bluster his way through. They didn’t always check passports there. And Switzerland was still outside the European Union. If he could make it as far as the US Embassy in Bern he would be safe. If the Swiss extradited him to anywhere, it would be to the US, not to Paris.
For Sabir had heard tales about the French police from some of his journalist colleagues. Once you got into their hands, your number was up. It could take months or even years for your case to make its way through the bureaucratic nightmare of the French jurisdictional system.
He stopped at the first hole-in-the-wall he could find and left the car engine running. He’d simply have to take the chance and get some cash. He stuffed the first card through the slit and began to pray. So far so good. He’d try for a thousand euros. Then, if the second card failed him, he could at least pay the motorway tolls in untraceable cash and get himself something to eat.
Across the street, a youth in a hoodie was watching him. Christ Jesus. This was hardly the time to get mugged. And with the keys left in a brand-new Audi station wagon, with the engine running.
He pocketed the cash and tried the second card. The youth was moving towards him now, looking about him in that particular way young criminals had. Fifty metres. Thirty. Sabir punched in the numbers.
The machine ate the card. They were closing him down.
Sabir darted back towards the car. The youth had started running and was about five metres off.
Sabir threw himself inside the car and only then remembered that it was British made, with the steering wheel placed on the right. He plunged across the central divider and wasted three precious seconds searching around for the unfamiliar central locking system.
The youth had his hand on the door.
Sabir crunched the automatic shift into reverse and the car lurched backwards, throwing the teenager temporarily off balance. Sabir continued backwards up the street, one foot twisted behind him on to the passenger seat, his free hand clutching the steering wheel.
Ironically he found himself thinking not about the mugger - a definite first, in his experience - but about the fact that, thanks to his forcibly abandoned bank card, the police would now have his fingerprints and a precise location of his whereabouts, at exactly 10.42 p.m., on a clear and starlit Saturday night, in central Paris.
12
Twenty minutes out of Paris and five minutes shy of the Evry autoroute junction, Sabir’s attention was caught by a road sign - thirty kilometres to Fontainebleau. And Fontainebleau was only ten short kilometres downriver from Samois. The pharmacist had told him so. They’d even had a brief, mildly flirtatious discussion about Henri II, Catherine de Medici and Napoleon who had apparently used the place to bid farewell to his Old Guard before leaving for exile on Elba.
Better to forget the autoroute and head for Samois.
Didn’t they have number-plate recognition on the autoroutes? Hadn’t he heard that somewhere? What if they had already traced him to Tone’s fl at? It wouldn’t be long before they connected him with Tone’s Audi, too. And then they’d have him cold. They’d simply station a few more cop cars at the toll booth exit and reel him in like a finnock.
If he could only get the quatrains from this Chris person, he might at least be able to persuade the police that he was, indeed, a bona fide writer and not a psycho on the prowl. And why should the gypsy’s death have had anything to do with the verses anyway? Such people were always engaging in feuds, weren’t they? It was probably only an argument over money or a woman and he, Sabir, had simply got in the way of it. When you looked at it like that, the whole thing took on a far more benevolent aspect.
Anyway, he had an alibi. The pharmacist would remember him, surely? He’d told her all about the gypsy’s behaviour. It simply didn’t make sense for him to have tortured and killed the gypsy with his hand torn to shreds like that. The police would see that, wouldn’t they? Or would they think he’d followed the gypsy and taken revenge on him after the bar fight?
Sabir shook his head. One thing was for certain. He needed rest. If he carried on like this he would begin to hallucinate.
Forcing himself to stop thinking and to start acting, Sabir slewed the car across the road and down a woodland track, just two kilometres short of the village of Samois itself.
13
‘He’s slipped the net.’
‘What do you mean? How do you know that?’
Calque raised an eyebrow. Macron was certainly coming on - no doubt about that. But imagination? Still, what could one expect from a two-metre-tall Marseillais? ‘We’ve checked all the hotels, guest houses and letting agencies. When he arrived here he had no reason to conceal his name. He didn’t know he was going to kill the gypsy. This is an American with a French mother, remember. He speaks our language perfectly. Or at least that’s what the fool claims on his website. Either he’s gone to ground in a friend’s house, or he’s bolted. My guess is that he’s bolted. In my experience it’s a rare friend who’s prepared to harbour a torturer.’
‘And the man who telephoned in his name?’
‘Find Sabir and we’ll find him.’
‘So we stake out Samois? Look for this Chris person?’
Calque smiled. ‘Give the girlie a doll.’
14
The first thing Sabir saw was a solitary deerhound crossing the ride in front of him, lost from the previous day’s exercise. Below him, dissected by trees, the River Seine sparkled in the early-morning sun.
He climbed out of the car and stretched his legs. Five hours’ sleep. Not bad in the circumstances. Last night he’d felt nervous and on edge. Now he felt calmer - less panic-stricken about his predicament. It had been a wise move to take the turning to Samois and even wiser to pull over into the forest to sleep. Perhaps the French police wouldn’t run him to ground so easily after all? Still. Wouldn’t do to take unnecessary risks.
Fifty metres down the track, with the car windows open, he picked up woodsmoke and the unmistakable odour of fried pork fat. At first he was tempted to ignore it and continue on his way, but hunger prevailed. Whatever happened, he had to eat. And why not here? No cameras. No cops.
He instant
ly convinced himself that it would make perfect sense to offer to buy his breakfast direct from whoever happened to be doing the cooking. The mystery campers might even be able to point him towards Chris.
Abandoning the car, Sabir cut through the woods on foot, following his nose. He could feel his stomach expanding towards the smell of the bacon. Crazy to think that he was on the run from the police. Perhaps, being campers, these people wouldn’t have had access to a television or a newspaper?
Sabir stood for some time on the edge of the clearing, watching. It was a gypsy camp. Well. He’d lucked into it, really. He should have realised that no one in their right mind would have been camping out in a northern manorial forest in early May. August was the time for camping - otherwise, if you were French, you stayed in a hotel with your family and dined in comfort.
One of the women saw him and called out to her husband. A bunch of children came running towards him and then stopped, in a gaggle. Two other men broke off from what they were doing and started in his direction. Sabir raised a hand in greeting.
The hand was pulled violently from behind him and forced to the rear of his neck. He felt himself being driven down to his knees.
Just before he lost consciousness he noticed the television mast on one of the caravans.
15
‘You do it, Yola. It’s your right.’
The woman was standing in front of him. An older man placed a knife in her hand and shooed her forward. Sabir tried to say something but he found that his mouth was taped shut.