by Rob Swigart
His eyes sparkled like fragments of ice, but the smile that broke over his face was the warmest thing she’d ever seen. “You’re not going to be a cheerleader.” He shook his head, and his long, wispy white hair floated like an exotic pale seaweed. “That’s not for you, empty posturing for ephemeral sport.”
She was polite. “What do you suggest?”
He laid a finger alongside his nose. “Ah.” He lowered it to point at her, and looking suddenly serious said, “You can study with me.”
“And you will teach me what, exactly?”
“Life!” He gestured expansively. “I will teach you life. Plato, of course, and Homer, and Thucydides. And Hesiod. But above all, life. How could you go wrong?”
“You can’t be serious,” she said, pulling the door open.
“You had both chicken pox and delayed menarche, possibly from excessive sports. As a child and adolescent you sang contralto in a choral group. You like Indian food, crossword puzzles and dry white wine. You don’t believe in astrology. You have a destiny and it is not on some sports field, marriage to a handsome but bland man, charity. That’s your mother’s life, not yours.”
She let go of the door. He was right; she could do better.
She had never looked back.
She had always suspected it, but only at that moment, at six minutes past eight on a Friday morning in June, when the unmarked police car started to pull away from the metro station and the horn began squawking, did she know with certainty that her first encounter with Raimond Foix had not happened by chance.
2.
Under a morning sky heavy with swollen gray clouds, a dark panel truck wound up a narrow dirt road through a tunnel of dense forest. On the side of the truck in darker gray were the letters A G O N.
A stone cabin appeared in a constricted clearing. The van stopped in front. The engine switched off and the driver climbed out with a grunt. His thick neck sloped up to a close-cropped gray head, which he rolled back and forth a couple of times, as though to relieve tension.
He went to the passenger door and opened it. The assassin crossed the gravel to the cabin door, which swung open. She paused at the threshold before walking inside. The door swung closed, shutting out the night.
It was more cell than room: walls of gray stone, flagstone floor, dark, heavy beams supporting the ceiling. There were no windows. There was a toilet and sink in one corner, a cot bolted to the wall, a table, a mirror, and a chair. A large crucifix on the west wall depicted a skeletal, tormented Jesus in exquisite, if macabre, detail. His lips were pulled back in agony as if He were straining to take one more labored breath. The bare, low-wattage bulb cast deep shadow beneath the table.
She leaned against the table for a moment before turning to the cross. The van’s engine started up. The sound was faint through the thick stone of the walls. Tires ground on the gravel and quickly faded away, leaving silence.
After several minutes in meditation, she removed the watch cap and let her dark blond hair shot with gray cascade over her back. Hairless, deeply puckered scar tissue surrounded the dark hole which was all that remained of the ear. She stared unflinching at the mirror. She was only thirty-nine, but could be taken for older. Her reflection no longer frightened her.
She glanced restlessly around the room, returning finally to rest her dark eyes on the cross.
Her wide face might have been carved of the same stone as the walls. In the dim artificial light it carried the same gray hue, the same flinty impassivity.
She let out a deep, shuddering breath and with calm determination removed her gloves and stowed them away as well. The deep tan on her hands set off the complex web of white lines that covered them. A Taliban improvised explosive device along a dusty road in Southern Afghanistan in 2002 had put her in a hospital for the better part of two years. That explosion might now be far in the past and buried in memory, but it had changed her life forever.
Once, early in her convalescence, that strange Frenchman Raimond Foix had come to visit. He had been kindly and interested, and at first she had felt a surge of hope that he was bringing to her, the broken remains of a woman, a purpose, a reason to live. He had asked her questions, strange questions. Had she known before the bomb went off it was going to happen? Had she seen things in her dreams, things that came true? Could she sing?
She was bitter, though, and gave the wrong answers. She had known nothing but a grinding fear before the deafening shock. No, she said, she could not sing, she hated music almost as much as she hated the Taliban.
The faintest trace of disappointment passed over his face. He left shortly after and took away her hope.
Fortunately, she had met Brother Defago soon after, and he had brought her to the Mission and showed her she could still be useful. This fight had been going on since before the birth of the Church.
She turned the chair around to face the cross, folded her hands in her lap, bowed her head and spoke for a long time, as if engaged in a one-sided conversation. The language was Latin.
When she was done she leaned down and removed her soft leather slippers and socks and set them on the floor by the cot.
From her shoulder bag she carefully removed a leather-bound folio and set it on the table. The book was titled De civitate dei by Aurelius Augustinus, known to the world as Saint Augustine, published in Venice by Nicolaus Jenson in 1475, printed on vellum with an opening illumination by Girolamo of Cremona. It was worth a small fortune. She carefully pushed it to one side, reverently placing her palm on its cover for a moment as if drawing from it some sustenance more spiritual than physical.
With a sigh she withdrew the Glock from the holster under her coat and set it beside the book. The silencer and extra clips of ammunition followed. She shrugged out of the coat and hung it on a hook beside the door. She removed her shirt, folded it and placed it on the table. She was now naked to the waist. Her breasts were small mounds over a well-muscled chest. A wide, jagged red scar ran from the back of her head down the left side of her torso, front and back. The shoulder on that side was lumpy and misshapen, laced with scar tissue, but she moved the titanium joint with the ease of long practice, though the lines of pain and suffering alongside her mouth tightened.
With another shuddering breath she pushed herself to her feet, undid her belt and let the trousers fall. Her legs, like her hands and arms, were webs of scar tissue. In places the muscle was deeply dented where gangrene had been removed. The right foot was prosthetic, a heavy metallic parody of a real foot, marginally functional. Lifting the leg, she rotated her artificial ankle several times, producing a clicking sound.
Finally, wearing only a pair of olive drab underpants, she took two steps and sat on the rough gray wool blanket of the cot. Her legs may have been shattered, but her upper body was highly developed and moved as if her clearly defined muscles were sunk in oil. She gripped the edge and did a series of lifts, raising her body, still in the seated position, a half a foot or so from the cot and lowering it slowly, over and over. Sweat stood out on her forehead and her arms began to tremble, but she continued lifting and lowering herself. She counted fifty and settled onto the cot. The lines along her mouth were deeper, and crimson as if lit by hidden fire behind them.
At the table once more she began tearing down the Glock. She was in the middle of cleaning it when she set it aside and turned on her cell phone. She speed dialed a number.
“Tisiphone,” she said, speaking slowly and without pause. “It’s done. No problem.” She let out a low, rasping laugh. “I literally took his breath away, can you imagine? It went as planned. It was good we anticipated he would lock his study even though he thought he was alone. He didn’t have much time to react: ninety seconds at his study door until I blew it open. When I entered he was just sitting at his desk. No doubt he trusted the door and all his security devices. Trust misplaced, of course.” Again she uttered that unpleasant rasp. Once it was under control she took a deep breath and continued. “I left some book
s on the floor. There were two things on the desk: a book called Greek Papyri, closed, and a list of names and dates, nothing relevant. Nothing else was out of place and the police were on their way. Too soon, in my opinion, but that’s your problem; I thought it best to leave. For God and Saint Dominic.”
The thought that she had failed to mention the Augustine she had purloined on her way out provoked a fit of that barking rasp. She ended the call, and her expression of tortured mirth vanished.
3.
The gray unmarked sedan hurtled along the boulevard Auguste-Blanqui, picked up speed as it approached the big intersection at Denfert-Rochereau, swerved around a bus, and took the turn onto Raspail on two wheels.
Lisa, seated in the back beside Captain Hugo, clutched the door handle. She was still in shock. Professor Foix – dear, kind Raimond – was gone. As they slowed for traffic to allow them through the intersection with boulevard Montparnasse, she said, “How did you find me?”
The car lurched forward.
“Dr. Foix had left instructions with his bank you were to be contacted in case of his death.”
“Banks aren’t open this early, Captain Hugo.”
“Some banks never close, Mademoiselle. But that’s not all. He also left something that pointed to you.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“A list of names and dates on his desk.”
“And mine was one of the names?”
“Not exactly. They were from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” He took a notebook from his inside jacket pocket, tore out a sheet and handed it to her. “Here is my copy.”
She unfolded it and read in the policeman’s elegant, well-trained hand:
Jean-Baptiste Lully, (1632-1687)
William Inglot, (1554 - 1621)
Alessandro Scarlatti (1659 - 1725)
Tomaso Albinoni (1671 - 1751)
Michael East (c.1580 - 1648)
Claudio Monteverdi (1567 - 1643)
Thomas Morley (c. 1557 - 1602)
Richard Edwards (ca. 1522 - 1566)
Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683 - 1764)
“These are composers of early music, Captain Hugo. Raimond was very fond of early music, but I don’t see how they relate to me. They’re random. The order is neither alphabetical nor chronological.”
“I didn’t see the connection with you either, at first. It was the banker…”
“What banker?”
“I told you, Mademoiselle, Dr. Foix’s banker. His name is not important at the moment. He was the one who notified us of Dr. Foix’s problem.”
“He knew something had happened before the police?”
“He is not a suspect, Mademoiselle Emmer, if that is what you are thinking. There was some kind of communication between Dr. Foix or his apartment and the banker. Something electronic. We have many puzzles, but this much is not in doubt. The banker is an important personage and quite above suspicion. As I was saying, he suggested there would be a list on the desk. He said…”
She held up her hand. “Wait a minute.”
Foix had a sly smile when he hid things from her. The corners of his eyes would tighten and he would look at her sideways, waiting. How often had she stopped whatever she was talking about, looked at him and said, “I know what you’re doing, Professor Foix”? Later, when she knew him better, it was, “You’re doing it again, aren’t you, Raimond?” She would shake her head and set to work uncovering whatever trick he was playing. Sometimes he wanted her to come up with just the right quote from Plato or Hesiod; sometimes he had created a hideous bilingual pun in Greek and English or French and Latin and had slipped it into the conversation so casually that at first she hadn’t noticed. Once he created an elaborate sentence in all three languages that could be taken two ways.
Now it was as if he were in the front seat, half turned to look at her. She said, “There is a kind of order. The first letters of the last names, they spell out L-I-S-A-E-M-M-E-R.”
The policeman smiled. “That is correct. It is an acrostic, I believe.”
“Typical. But what do you think it means, Captain Hugo? Why would Raimond hide my name in this list? Why not just write it down?”
“Perhaps he wanted to conceal your name from whoever shot him. He left the list in plain sight. Sometimes that’s the best place to hide things, isn’t it so?”
They crossed the rue du Cherche Midi, turned right on the rue de Sèvre and left onto the rue du Dragon. A policeman saluted and hastily moved aside a barrier. Halfway down the block they pulled to a stop.
A small group of the curious had gathered at the far end by the boulevard Saint Germain, but there was little for them to see. Another barrier kept them from coming closer. A few residents glanced at them curiously then hurried away. No one wanted to stay too close to the police.
She knew the place well. Up on the fourth floor was that warm, comfortable duplex where she had passed so much of her time since she had moved to Paris to work with old papyrus. Though Foix had encouraged her to become one, he himself was not a papyrologist. Nonetheless his fund of knowledge was wide and deep. Everything Greek, and most things Latin, concerned him, as well as modern geopolitics, the science of climate change, the origins of the human species, philosophy, art, prehistory, Eastern meditation, the best way to prepare mi-cuit chocolate cake with crème anglaise, the proper way to equip the horse for a knight on crusade. He was no ivory tower egghead. He was prodigious, intelligent, and kind. Above all, he was harmless. It must have been a burglar.
But if a burglar had killed him, why would he leave that acrostic of her name?
Unless it wasn’t her name – perhaps those letters meant something else? She quickly realized they could be combined in many ways. Within a minute she had thought of more than twenty that made some sense.
A policeman was on guard at the front door to the building. The door was open. The entry, with its three mailboxes on the left, and the stairs and elevator on the right, was unchanged. The mailboxes for the premier and deuxième étages were still labeled with the names of the businesses that occupied those floors, a trading company and a lawyer. She realized suddenly how strange it was that she had never seen anyone collect mail for these tenants. In fact the boxes should be stuffed with junk, but they had always been empty.
The third mailbox was unlabeled. The post office knew Raimond Foix and had no need for a label.
There was more here than she had thought: it struck her that these offices were fakes, that the two floors between the street level and Raimond Foix’s apartment had always been empty. The tabac on the ground floor really did sell cigarettes and Metro tickets. What else did it sell? she wondered.
It made no sense. Raimond Foix was an old man with a deep, playful voice and a hypnotic way of speaking. He was affectionate and kind. He never raised his voice, yet people paid attention to him; he was as clear as the waters of the Castalian spring, completely transparent, without a hint of deception.
The emptiness in her heart opened onto darkness. Shadows pooled in the corners. Someone had killed him, and this building now hinted at secrets.
She closed her heart and looked away. These were not things she could solve, not now.
Hugo called for the elevator. A light under the button began to flash. She heard the elevator start up three floors above. The weights lifted away as the machine descended. When it arrived and the door opened, questions followed her into the small box. The policeman pressed for the third floor (the French third floor, she thought, the American fourth). The door closed. She was pressed against Hugo’s side in the tiny space. They rose in silence. The questions rose with them.
4.
To the west, the remains of the crumbling thirteenth century Abbey of St. Théophile presented a vast, brooding pile under low, dark skies. Its once-ornate Gothic façade was chipped and rotten. Several of the pointed windows were boarded up, awaiting replacement of their stained glass. Of i
ts northern wing only a few remnants of foundation, like rotting teeth in blackened gums, remained. It was a restoration project stalled for more decades than Brother Armand Defago’s seven and would remain forever stalled. This out-of-the-way ruin was not on the nation’s list of historic monuments, and had no visitors. Neither did the town nearly dead of neglect across the river.
To its east a modern warehouse surrounded by a rusted wire fence turned its blind face toward the scattered buildings on the other side of the gray waters. Here the yard was filled with decaying plastic bottles, shreds of Styrofoam and plastic bags, cigarette cartons, usually American, and countless empty wine bottles, barely visible in the early dawn light. Everything spoke of desolation and the despair of those who had fallen through the bottom of the welfare state. There was no fresh trash, however, and even Brother Defago thought perhaps the effect was a little staged.
Ancient graffiti sprayed on the only smooth part of the low stone wall surrounding the abbey spelled something that looked like “SPIKE.” The faded paint caught a random ray of sun through a break in the cloud. The boy who had put the graffiti there had quickly discovered that this was an unfavorable place for spray cans. Word must have gotten out, because no rivals had appeared since to outdo him.
Uncomfortable as it made him, often the circumstances of his mission forced Brother Defago to give up the traditional white habit and black cloak of the preaching friars. Today he wore a somber, ill-fitting suit, white shirt and black tie. He knew it made him look like a petty bureaucrat. Because of this, it served him better than a more elaborate disguise. Gone were the days when an inquisitor’s uniform could inspire dread and instant obedience. These days they had to work behind the scenes.
He smoked a cigarette. As the light increased, flax fields in full bloom tinted the earth a pale blue. Low hills, broken by small copses of trees he could not identify from this distance, undulated toward a hazy horizon. Clouds scudded in from the west. In the distance he could hear the early high-speed train to Rouen. Otherwise there was no human sound.