The Lucifer Gospel

by Paul Christopher

  “Bottle?” said Hilts.

  “Courage,” answered Simpson. “What you Yanks generally refer to as balls.” The potbellied man in the tweed jacket pulled the Mercedes to a halt and switched off the engine. He left the headlights on, pointing directly at the rivet-pebbled iron door.

  “Why dump our friend in the trunk here?” asked Hilts.

  “It’s really quite difficult to dispose of a body these days,” said the elderly man. He leaned across the seat and fished a flashlight out of the glove compartment, then got out of the car. Finn and Hilts climbed out after him and went around to the trunk. “Police everywhere, closed-circuit cameras, quality-control officers in the meatpacking plants. Hard to get any kind of privacy.” Simpson opened the trunk and glanced down at Badir. “Your average forensic expert will have a field day with him once he’s discovered. Not like the old days. Bodies floating down the Seine and up the Spree and no one really took a second look.”

  Together Hilts and Finn swung the body out of the car and manhandled it to the big iron door under Simpson’s direction. The door was actually slightly ajar and it was easy enough to get it open. Stepping inside, Hilts swung the flashlight around. Except for the concrete floor the entire vestibule was sheathed in the same studded iron as the door, walls, ceiling, and floor. It was like being in the belly of an old battleship.

  “Down the stairs,” instructed Simpson, pointing with the flashlight. At the far end of the twenty-by-twenty-foot room was a massive cage elevator, like something out of a coal mine. Beside it was a circular staircase. Simpson went down first to light the way while Finn and Hilts followed with Badir, grunting under the deadweight.

  “You really think he’s going to be found in a place like this?” Hilts panted. “I mean, who the hell even knows this place exists?”

  “Oh, good Lord! Thousands of people. Bunker freaks, military types, engineers.”

  “Bunker freaks?”

  “Rather like people who play video games or chart the lives of serial killers on the Internet, then chat about it. Obsessive. There’s a whole raft of them who make pilgrimages to old underground installations all over the world. They organize tours.”

  “How did you know about it?” Finn asked. “Are you, ah, a bunker freak by any chance?”

  “I’ve been here before, actually,” Simpson answered. They reached the next level. It was a long, low-ceilinged tunnel that led off left and right. Like the room upstairs, this one was sheathed in iron plate. A set of miniature railway tracks ran down the center of the concrete floor. There was garbage everywhere, fast-food containers, beer cans, and broken bottles. Someone had made a makeshift bar in one corner and there was a rotting old mattress against the far wall. “I came here with Bernal and Solly Zuckerman before the war.”

  “Bernal?” said Hilts. “Solly Zuckerman?” He and Finn swung Badir onto the mattress with a thump. Finn shuddered and wiped her hands against her jeans. The iron room was cold and drafty, a fitting tomb.

  “John Bernal. He was the man who started me spying at Cambridge. He was also my physics tutor. Solly Zuckerman was an expert in primate anatomy at Oxford. Strange pair.”

  “What were a primate anatomist from Oxford and a Cambridge physicist doing in an old bunker in France?” Finn asked.

  “Blowing up monkeys to see what happened,” said Simpson. He slipped on a pair of thin leather gloves and started covering Badir with a layer of rubbish. “It was 1938. They were in charge of designing air-raid shelters for the War Office. I think Bernal was talking to agents from Moscow as well. Topping the local birds as well, sly old fox he was. I was their assistant. Their young red acolyte, you might say.”

  “What did you do for them?” said Hilts.

  “I was the one who actually blew up the monkeys,” Simpson replied, tossing an old square of cardboard over the dead man’s ruined face. “Set the charges and all of that. Messy business. Monkey brains all over everything.” He looked down at Badir. The man was almost completely covered with litter. Simpson nodded. “He’ll keep well enough. Hopefully the rats will do some damage, delay identification for a bit.” The white-haired man glanced at his two companions. “Presumably you didn’t think to pick up your passports when you flitted from Milan.”

  “No,” said Hilts. “We were in a bit of a rush.”

  “Never mind, young fellow. I know a man down the road in Aix-les-Bains who can fix you up with new ones.”

  24

  The first person to see Aix-les-Bains for what it was worth was probably a Roman centurion on his way into Gaul from Italy to conquer the unruly barbarians. When he mustered out of the army he returned to the pretty lakeside spot, built a pool over the hot springs, called it Aquae Grantianae, and a tradition was born.

  Located under the shadow of Mount Revard by the shores of Lake Bourget, the largest body of fresh water in France, the little town of Aix-les-Bains has been soothing the arthritic joints of its wealthy patrons for the last two thousand years. It came into particular favor in the 1880s after a visit from Queen Victoria of England. She decided she liked it so much Her Royal Majesty attempted to buy it from the French government. They graciously declined, then built a casino and a racetrack to further fleece the charming resort’s guests, renaming the hot springs Royale-les-Bains.

  Special trains arrived from Paris full of high society who came to paddle on the plage. Steamers churned their way across the English Channel, filled with the straw hat and tennis set intent on wiling away the hot summer months in the refreshing alpine air as wives cheated on husbands, husbands on wives, and best friends on each other while Clara Butt sang “The Keys of Heaven” on the gramophone. It was La Belle Epoque and as with all Époques it faded away like an old soldier, the gilt in the ceilings beginning to peel, the marble floors cracking, and the pipes carrying the hot-spring water making a terrible clanking noise and sounding much like the joints of the patrons it had once serviced. The small and ancient town hidden away in the mountains was virtually forgotten, which was exactly why Mr. Liam Alexander Pyx, the document provider, lived there; that and the town’s proximity to his numbered bank accounts less than a hundred miles away in Geneva, Switzerland.

  Finn Ryan awoke as the first pink rays of the sun rose over the mountains and craggy hills that marked the edge of the French Alps of the Haute Savoie. Somehow she had made her way to the backseat of the Mercedes somewhere along the way, and Hilts was now sitting in the front with Simpson, who was still behind the wheel.

  “Good morning,” the elderly man said brightly as she sat up, blinking and looking around. “Almost there.”

  “Where are we?” Finn yawned. She stared out the window. They were on a high mountain road. To the left, banks of heavy forest tilted upward; below, in the reaching light, she could see the geometric outlines of a town nestled at the far end of a long, wide lake.

  “Aix-les-Bains,” answered Simpson. A narrow gravel road appeared on the left and Simpson took it, guiding the old Mercedes up between the scruffy pines, the road winding around outcroppings of rock until they reached a broad, flat meadow on a small plateau. Directly ahead of them was a classic French country house right out of Toujours Provence: a rectangular building of old whitewashed stone, a few deep windows and a steep-pitched tile roof. At the end of the lane a roughly constructed carport with a green rippled fiberglass roof sagged against the side of the house. Under it, gleaming in deep, dark blue was a very expensive two-seater Mercedes SLK230.

  “Whoever this guy is he must do pretty well for himself,” Hilts said, spotting the car.

  “Pretty well indeed,” Simpson agreed. “The war on terrorism declared by President Bush had much the same effect as Woodrow Wilson declaring war on alcohol. It’s always been the same way: one way or the other, war is good for business. There’s a great deal of demand for Liam’s skills these days.”

  There was a wooden sign over the door, a name chiseled out in neat letters: LE VIEUX FOUR.

  “What does that mean?”<
br />
  “The Old Kiln,” Simpson translated. The old man pulled the Mercedes in behind the sports car and switched off the engine, the old diesel dying with a shudder and a cough. They climbed out into the cool of the early morning. Hilts and Finn both stretched and yawned. Simpson lit a cigarette. Pyx must have had some kind of early-warning system because he was already waiting at the door, a broad smile on his friendly face. He certainly didn’t look like a forger to Finn. In fact, he looked more like a rock star on vacation than anything else. He was tall, slightly stooped, wearing jeans and a white shirt with the tails hanging out. There were sandals on his bare feet. He had thick tousled, dark hair, two days’ growth of beard, and behind round, slightly tinted glasses a pair of extraordinarily intelligent brown eyes. He looked to be somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties. Finn felt something stirring in the pit of her stomach and forced the feeling back where it belonged. A few hours ago she’d dumped a murdered body under a pile of rubbish, and there were police all over Italy searching for her in connection with another brutal killing. Rock star or not, this was no time for romance.

  “Arthur!” Pyx said happily. “Brought me some business, have you? Or just stopping in for a pain au chocolat and a cup of my excellent coffee?” On top of the good looks he had an Irish accent like Colin Farrell.

  “Business actually, but I don’t think we’d turn down pastry and coffee.” He turned to Finn and Hilts. “Would we?” He introduced them, one after the other, and Pyx stood aside and ushered them into his kitchen. It was relentlessly low-tech with the exception of a bright red Gaggia espresso machine making hissing, steaming noises on a simple plank countertop that looked as old as the house. The floor was dark flagstone, the ceiling plaster and exposed oak beams, the walls whitewashed stone. There was an ancient refrigerator, a freestanding pantry, a separate oven and a large, professional-looking set of gas burners. Herbs hung from nails, copper-bottom pots and cast-iron frying pans hung from the beams, and early-morning sunlight poured in through a single, multipaned window with rippled old glass set into the wall beside the grill. Outside Finn could hear birds chirping. At any other time it would have been an idyllic moment in the country; right now it was edged with fear, worry, and terror. Pyx sat them down at a yellow pine kitchen table in the middle of the room, brought out a plate of warm and aromatic chocolate croissants from the pantry, and busied himself at the exotic-looking coffeemaker for a moment, making them each a large foaming cup of cappuccino, which he then brought to the table. He sat down himself, dunked one end of a croissant into his coffee, and took a bite of the soggy pastry. Finn did the same. There was so much butter used in the flaky crust that it really did seem to melt in her mouth.

  “So,” said Pyx, “you don’t look like the kind of people Arthur here usually brings to me, but I’ve learned that appearances can be deceiving.”

  “Passports,” said Simpson. “And all the other paraphernalia.”

  “Talk to me,” said Pyx, turning to Finn.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Say something—Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m trying to see if you have an accent.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Depends on your point of view. In Castleknock I wouldn’t have an accent, but here I do. Speak.”

  Finn did as she was told.

  “Columbus, Ohio,” Pyx said and nodded. Finn stared.

  “How did you know that?”

  “Vast experience,” he said, grinning. “It’s what I do.” Pyx turned to Hilts. “Now you,” he said. “Same thing.” Hilts grudgingly repeated the line of doggerel.

  “Born in Florida, either Tallahassee or St. Petersburg, but you’ve spent a lot of time in New York, right?”

  “Close enough.” The photographer seemed mildly irritated that Pyx had gotten it right. If Finn hadn’t known better she’d have thought Hilts was jealous, but that was ridiculous.

  “Neither of you have an accent that anyone’s going to be able to pick up unless they’re an expert, which most U.S. passport control officers aren’t. We’ll make you Canadians. Either of you done much traveling there?”

  “I’ve been to Toronto a few times, and Montreal,” said Finn.

  Pyx turned to Hilts. “You?”

  “Same.”

  “Ontario then. Easy. They’ve got simple birth certificates and driver’s license. You’ll have to have a health card as well.”

  “Health card?”

  “It’s free. Ontario government. Very efficient about having the cards, and for some sort of privacy act reason they’re not allowed to cross-index the databases between the bureaucracies. Good photo ID. I can do the health card, the driver’s license, and the birth certificate right here.”

  Finn didn’t understand a word of what the man was saying.

  “The passports,” Simpson prodded.

  “Even simpler.” Pyx smiled. “But first the photographs.” He stood up and led the way to the rear of the house. They turned into an L-shaped hallway lined with bookcases leading to the bedroom, but instead of moving on Pyx stopped at the turn of the L and pulled out a volume from the bookcase. There was a faint clicking sound and the bookcase swung open on a completely invisible hinge.

  “Open sesame,” said Pyx, and stood aside to let them enter. He followed and shut the bookcase doorway behind them. Finn looked around the secret room. It was large, fifteen feet on a side and windowless. Work counters ran around three walls with built-in shelves above. There were dozens of neatly labeled binders on the shelves, color-coded, and in one corner was an array of half a dozen large flat-screen monitors. Beneath the monitors on steel racks was a row of featureless black computer servers, each one with a blinking green light on its front surface. The counters were loaded with an array of peripherals, from large flatbed scanners to photo light tables and several very professional-looking color printers and photo printers. Along the far wall was a complex three-screen Lightworks computer editing console for motion pictures.

  “You’re awfully free with your secrets,” said Hilts. “We could have been cops.”

  “You’re not,” said Pyx. “Arthur would have killed you by now if you had been. He also let me know you were coming, and if he hadn’t I would have known about it from the moment you turned off the main road.” He smiled, clearly taking no offense at Hilts’s comment. “And I wouldn’t have greeted you with coffee and croissants, believe me.” He shrugged and nodded toward the Lightworks console. “Besides, I have a perfectly valid film editing enterprise going on. There’s nothing here that’s particularly incriminating except on the drives, and I can dump data faster than any copper could ever get into this room.”

  Hilts frowned. “I didn’t see him call you.”

  “He text messaged me from Modane. I gather you had a little trouble there.”

  “Some.” Hilts’s attention was suddenly drawn to a large camera mounted on a professional tripod against the wall, facing the bookcase doorway. “That’s a Cambo Wide DS with a Schneider 35mm f/5.6 XL Digitar lens, and a Phase One P25 medium format back.” His eyes widened. “That’s what, thirty grand?”

  “More like thirty-five,” said Pyx. “Just about the most expensive point-and-shoot you can buy.”

  “I’d hardly call it point-and-shoot,” said Hilts.

  To Finn it looked like a fat lens attached to a big, flat, square piece of metal. It didn’t really look like a camera at all.

  “It’s in line with the digitizing equipment governments use,” said Pyx. “Which is how they make passports now, at least in the United States and Canada. It’s supposed to be foolproof. Instead of photographs being glued and laminated, they’re digitized, then thermal printed right onto the page.”

  “Must make your job harder,” Hilts said.

  “Much easier, as a matter of fact.” He gestured toward the back of the bookcase door. It was painted a neutral off-white and a pair of low-level lig
hts placed high on either side of the doorway effectively washed out any shadow. “Stand there, would you?” he asked. Hilts positioned himself against the doorway. “Head up, no smile, mouth closed,” he instructed. There was a snapping sound and a bright flash and Finn realized the lights on either side of the door were photographic strobes. “Now step away and let Miss Ryan take your place.” Hilts moved and Finn stood against the door. Pyx adjusted the tripod down to compensate for the difference in their heights and the strobes flared again. “Great,” Pyx said and nodded. He took the flash card out of the camera, slipped it into a special drive unit beside one of the flat screens, then typed a set of instructions into the computer. “Any name preferences?”