by Fred Vargas
‘Tallien.’
‘Nasty piece of work,’ said Veyrenc.
‘Yes indeed, citizen. Tonight, we’ll be seated with the Mountain, at the higher level. My wheelchair would be too conspicuous in the centrist Plain, and you’d be spotted too easily. Don’t forget that this is when Robespierre launches his accusations at Danton. Even if you are alarmed and frightened, you don’t dare oppose him, you must cravenly applaud. Fear starts to spread among you. If they dare attack Danton, where will it end? But nevertheless, everyone carries on trying to keep on the right side of Robespierre. That’s your role, understood?’
‘Perfectly,’ said Danglard, laughing at Lebrun’s imitation of the worried deputies of the Mountain.
Adamsberg was starting to realise that Lebrun was amusing. Because people who are frightened make a comical impression.
And now a man with a long thin face, his eyes half closed under very prominent eyelids, like a frog, with dry lips, came in silently and unobtrusively.
‘Ah, I almost failed to recognise you,’ Adamsberg said to Leblond. ‘What a striking disguise.’
‘Citizen Fouché, I presume,’ said Danglard. ‘This is a good evening for you, isn’t it? You’ll be observing from the shadows, without saying a word.’
‘Yes, it’s a good get-up, isn’t it?’ said Leblond, with a slight bow. ‘But it’s actually impossible to imitate Fouché’s lantern jaws and his reptilian expression.’
‘Still, you do look like a disturbing person,’ said Adamsberg, addressing Leblond as ‘vous’, despite Danglard’s whisper that it was customary to use the familiar ‘tu’ during the Revolution, to show that everyone was equal.
‘Not disturbing enough,’ said Leblond/Fouché, pulling a face. ‘What you should know, commissaire, is that Fouché is the most repulsive character in all the Revolution. A thoroughgoing cynic, devilishly cunning, twisted but smarmy, a bootlicker, who watches everyone, and moves this way and that with events, a snake in the grass compared to the idealist Robespierre, who gets carried away by his unworldly purity. Fouché is ferocious, and he’s terribly bloodthirsty. He has just – I have just – come back from Lyon, where I deemed it more efficient to massacre suspects by lining them up and firing cannon at them. I came back on orders from Robespierre, who was furious and told me that “nothing could justify the cruelty of which I was guilty”. That’s me, this evening, fellow citizens, in the hot seat,’ Leblond concluded, giving a sly and self-satisfied grin. ‘I’m pretending to bow down to the Incorruptible, in order that my excesses should be pardoned.’
His smile made Adamsberg feel suddenly uneasy.
‘And were you guillotined along with Robespierre, Citizen Fouché?’ Adamsberg asked him.
‘Me?’ replied Leblond, exaggerating his treacherous expression. ‘Me, the man nobody can lay a glove on? Oh no, on the contrary, I will already be plotting his fall, visiting deputies at night and persuading them that they are next on the list of those to be guillotined. False, but effective. I’ll sweep Robespierre away: in four months, he’s a dead man. And now, citizens, time for me to go onstage.’
‘He’s very good, isn’t he?’ said Lebrun, watching his friend disappear.
‘Almost too good, he sends shivers down the spine,’ said Adamsberg.
‘But that’s Fouché for you,’ Lebrun said. ‘He does send shivers down your spine.’ He punctuated his words by banging the floor with his cane. ‘And now Citizen Lieutenant, if you would be so good as to push my chair, we need to move.
Adamsberg let the other three go ahead of him and made a quick call to the office before leaving his phone in the cloakroom.
‘Kernorkian? Put two more men on duty tonight. I’d like someone to keep an eye on the treasurer, the man we’re calling Leblond.’
‘That’s impossible, sir. He and Lebrun just seem to melt magically away when they’ve accompanied Robespierre home.’
‘That’s what I mean. Check out the cellars, the roofs, the courtyards, see if there are back doors, other discreet escape routes.’
There was a large attendance that night for the 11–16 Germinal session. The deputies crowded together, in their dark or brightly coloured coats, each looking for a place to sit in the cool, dimly lit hall. Lebrun sat near Adamsberg and his colleagues, sliding the wheelchair between two benches, while Leblond/Fouché was surveying the assembly from his perch high up in the Mountain.
‘See up there,’ whispered Lebrun, ‘the right-hand public gallery, a man in black with a red scarf, next to a woman waving a flag.’
‘The fat man?’
‘That’s right, he’s got a hat pulled down over his eyes. That’s him.’
‘The descendant of Sanson?’
‘How do you know I’m not pointing to Desmoulins?’
‘Because that man looks as if he’s trying very hard to project the character of an executioner.’
‘He’s just playing a part. Everyone here is playing a part. You saw Leblond just now, one could almost think he was really dangerous.’
‘Whereas he spends his life solving equations?’
‘More or less. Please be discreet. Couthon is so recognisable that everyone looks hard at him, so as to work out how to follow his lead.’
‘Understood.’
Adamsberg switched on the microphone behind his ear, perfectly disguised by his long black wig.
‘Sanson’s present,’ he whispered.
‘Roger.’
Robespierre, having been called by the president of the session, Tallien, was now walking down the steps from his seat in order to climb to the rostrum. As before, the room fell silent, a silence made up of veneration and fear. True or false?
Adamsberg watched the participants: it was hard to make out whether their expressions – concentrating, fawning or nervous – were part of their play-acting, or prompted by genuine feelings that had overcome them for the evening. And he understood the interest of the study undertaken by Lebrun–Leblond on the frontier between truth and fiction, when people are readier to chase after an illusion than after reality. The illusion cast that night was a great and dark one, arising from the feverish and bloodstained days of the Terror. It was enough to make one lose one’s bearings entirely, and he could see that it was affecting Danglard and Veyrenc, who were absorbing Robespierre’s rhetoric open-mouthed, and seemed to have entirely forgotten their mission. Robespierre was very intense this evening, at this difficult session when he had to convince the deputies to put to death the great bull Danton, the very image of vital revolutionary power. In a near-mystical silence, Robespierre’s creaky voice could be heard even in the furthest seats:
‘We shall see this day whether the Convention will be able to shatter its so-called idol, corrupt for so long, or whether in its fall that mighty idol will crush the Convention and the French people!’
Applause came from the ranks of the Mountain, though some deputies kept their fists clenched on their knees. The Plain meanwhile hesitated, whispering in excitement and alarm. Adamsberg remembered what he was supposed to be doing and clapped prudently, imitating his colleagues for the evening. At his side, Lebrun/Couthon was banging his stick on the floor to orchestrate and accompany the applause. The atmosphere was tense, edgy and emotional, the disturbance palpable in the combined scents of face powder and sweat, condensed by the cool air. Everyone knew what the event was that they were re-enacting this evening, but they were all experiencing it with anxiety, as if they did not know in advance how it would end. Adamsberg himself, despite his ignorance of the historical facts, wondered how Robespierre, such a weak and stiff-looking individual, with about as much vitality as a wooden plank, dared to attack Danton, a figure bursting with energy.
‘In what way is he superior to his fellow citizens? Is it because some mistaken individuals have rallied round him?’
Adamsberg watched as Danglard, in his purple jacket, looked on tensely: familiar with these famous speeches, he was following the crescendo of rhetoric. Well, at leas
t it would distract him from Iceland. Even thinking about his departure tomorrow seemed to Adamsberg incongruous, inappropriate, almost trivial, in this hall. Why Iceland, and where the devil was Iceland anyway?
‘Look out,’ Lebrun whispered, ‘listen carefully to the next bit.’
Robespierre had paused briefly to finger his jabot.
‘I tell you that anyone who is trembling at this moment is guilty. Because innocence never fears the public gaze.’
‘That’s atrocious,’ Adamsberg whispered back.
‘The most terrible of all, in my view.’
Robespierre was continuing with his speech, taking care over the rhythms of his interminable sentences, fixing his blank gaze on one or another deputy, attentive to the least tremors within the assembly, taking off his spectacles now and then, and adjusting them with a gesture that was always delicate. He was forcing his weak voice, making calculated appeals to emotion, yet this impulse brought no colour to his own pale cheeks.
‘The second target has appeared now,’ said Lebrun. ‘Right-hand gallery, last but one seat. Between two men wearing brown. Long auburn hair, girlish mouth, grey coat.’
Adamsberg alerted Danglard, who was still concentrating on the orator, since he would be coordinating any further action concerning the descendant of Desmoulins. The commandant took about ten seconds to respond and, looking embarrassed, switched on his mike.
‘Yes, the Desmoulins descendant, I’ve got him in sight.’
‘Roger, commandant.’
‘My life is dedicated to the fatherland, my heart is free from fear, and if I were to die, it would be without reproach and without ignominy.’
The assembly rose as one man, and clapped feverishly, though with various degrees of enthusiasm. Once more, Couthon’s cane beat the ground, punctuating the applause.
‘There’s going to be a break now,’ Lebrun explained. ‘As I told you, we’ll have a suspension before moving to the session of the 16 Germinal.’
Hundreds of deputies now crowded round the buffet, but the presence of food and drink did not turn the atmosphere into one of a convivial gathering in the twenty-first century. No, the roles they were playing had penetrated them to the bone, in the cold air and candlelight. The conversations and gestures continued to refer to the revolutionary period.
‘Amazing, don’t you think?’ said Lebrun, approaching Adamsberg in his wheelchair, which was being pushed by the subtle Fouché, the latter currying favour with Couthon in order to make up for the massacres in Lyon. ‘Even Leblond/Fouché, as you see, is still playing his part of a traitor to every cause but his own. He’ll end up one of Napoleon’s ministers, in charge of the police, of course, and will be made a duke.’
‘The least they could do for so much service to the state,’ remarked Leblond caustically.
‘Sanson’s moving,’ Adamsberg reported suddenly.
‘Desmoulins is eight metres behind him,’ said Danglard.
‘They’re making for the exit,’ said Lebrun. ‘You’d better hurry.’
Voisenet, Justin, Noël and Mordent moved into position. The receiver crackled four minutes later.
‘Got them in sight,’ said Mordent. ‘They came out together but they’re going in opposite directions now.’
‘The big one is Sanson,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Voisenet and Noël, you take him. The baby-faced one is Desmoulins, go after him yourself and take Justin.’
‘Sanson’s on a motorbike, Desmoulins in a car.’
‘Get the registrations. In fact,’ said Adamsberg, turning to Lebrun, ‘those two seem to know each other. Which might make the situation more serious.’
Twenty minutes later, Sanson had been followed to the rue du Moulin-Vieux. Fifteen minutes later again, they had Desmoulins localised in the elegant rue Guynemer, near the river. The two men were to be told to report to the squad next day. Adamsberg was regretting not being there to hear what they had to say. But he had arranged with Mordent to be able to listen in to the interrogations next day from Iceland, if that proved possible.
Rebellion was simmering among members of the squad.
Adamsberg wondered once more what he was doing, setting off on this distant trip.
‘Iceland seems a long way off,’ he said to Veyrenc.
‘Well, it is a long way off,’ Veyrenc replied.
‘I mean far away in thought, in time, two centuries away. This living assembly can make your brain spin. Talking to you now, I’m not sure I can imagine what air transport is.’
‘Yes, I understand. You have to admit Robespierre was exceptional tonight. Blood-curdling.’
‘Less than Fouché though.’
‘Did you notice that too? He seemed quite at home in his ghastly role.’
‘What the devil are we going to do in Iceland? If it exists?’
‘Sow the seeds of Revolution.’
‘That would be an idea,’ Adamsberg agreed. ‘Bring along some eighteenth-century speeches. They can keep us company when we’re stuck on the island in the fog.’
‘Then we can declaim them.’
‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. As we freeze to death.’
‘Precisely.’
XXXIII
‘SEEMS YOU’RE OFF to the North Pole,’ Lucio challenged him from his usual position in the garden.
The street lamp had lost its bulb, and Adamsberg hadn’t seen his neighbour in the gloom.
‘Not the North Pole, Iceland.’
‘Same thing.’
‘But I don’t know now why I’m going.’
‘To finish scratching the itch. The one you picked up at Le Creux. Simple as that.’
‘But it’s all wrong, Lucio,’ said Adamsberg, reaching out to take a bottle of beer.
‘It’s already open. That way you won’t demolish the tree.’
‘It’s all wrong, I’m abandoning the investigation and my team, just to go and scratch an itch in the land of ice.’
‘You’ve got no choice.’
‘Right now, I’ve no idea where Iceland is, or the aeroplane either. It’s because of these assemblies, I told you about them. I’m still back in April 1794. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
‘No.’
‘What do you understand then?’
‘That it must have been some pretty damn tough insect that bit you.’
‘I’ve still got time to cancel.’
‘No.’
‘Nearly all my officers are against this. Tomorrow, when they see that I’ve really gone, there’ll be a rebellion. They don’t understand.’
‘It’s never possible to understand someone else’s itch, hombre.’
‘I’m going to cancel,’ said Adamsberg, standing up.
‘No,’ said Lucio again, gripping his wrist in his remaining hand, which, because it had to do the work of two, had become almost as strong as both hands together. ‘If you cancel now, it’ll get infected. And end in tears. When the trunk is packed, the traveller has to go. Want me to tell you something?’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Adamsberg, irritated at the old man’s display of superpowers.
‘Drink up your beer. In one go.’
Wearily, Adamsberg obeyed, under the stern gaze of his Spanish neighbour.
‘And now, hombre, ’ said Lucio firmly, ‘go to bed.’
He had never said that before.
Then he heard the old man clear his throat and spit on the ground. Lucio had never done that before either.
XXXIV
ADAMSBERG JOINED VEYRENC at the check-in for the 14.30 flight to Reykjavik. Not much of a queue, since April was not a popular month for tourists. Several businessmen and many blond heads, hair that was almost white it was so fair – Icelanders evidently, going home for Easter. They were travelling light, unlike Veyrenc and Adamsberg, who were weighed down with their heavy backpacks, in preparation for the ice and snow. But then the island where they were going was not like the other ones.
There was an empty seat alongside them, R
etancourt’s, which Veyrenc had refused to cancel.
‘I saw her back in the queue,’ he said, as he settled down. ‘She didn’t try to join us, her face is as closed as an oyster. One of those oysters, you know, that you just can’t open, and you end up throwing it away or banging it with a hammer to finish it off.’
‘I see.’
‘Which means she’s saying, “Don’t ask me why I’m here, whatever you do.”’
‘And why is she here then, in your opinion?’
‘Either because she thinks two guys like you and me will never survive this expedition, and that she has a duty to protect us from the hostile elements . . .’
‘Or because, in spite of everything, she’s interested in the mysterious warm island.’
‘The stone. Do you think she wants to get some strength from the stone?’
‘No, no, certainly not,’ said Adamsberg. ‘That would make her too strong by half. She’d explode. She’d better go nowhere near it.’
‘Or maybe it’s because she’s not actually joining the rebels – although she has taken their side – because she wants to tone down the revolt. Without her, the opposition’s going to lack solid backing. Right now, back at headquarters, they must be baffled and confused: “Why has Retancourt followed them to Iceland?” “Who’s right, who’s wrong?” ’
The last passengers were now boarding the plane, and Retancourt was approaching, but without looking at them. Adamsberg pushed up the armrests and moved closer to Veyrenc, so as to leave room for the large lieutenant, the narrow seat being ill-suited to her muscular bulk. None of the three uttered a word during take-off, Retancourt having thrust her nose in a magazine, without reading it.
‘Blue skies over Iceland, I read in the paper,’ said Veyrenc.
‘Yes, but it only takes a sneeze to make the weather change there,’ Adamsberg replied.
‘You’re right.’
‘We won’t even get to see Rejkavik.’
‘Reykjavik, you mean.’
‘I can’t even pronounce it.’
‘Seems the houses there are painted all colours, red, blue, white, pink, yellow . . .’ Veyrenc went on. ‘There are masses of lakes and cliffs, and mountains either pitch-black or covered with snow.’