Thrillers in Paradise

by Rob Swigart

They strapped him back into the chair and he began to talk in a low, exhausted voice, revealing little by little the details of the story that had been so carefully prepared many years before.

  15.

  Steve glanced sideways through the window at the rue Lanneau. The man in the raincoat was huddled under the eaves across the street ostentatiously examining a map. The rain had let up, but still fell lightly on the slick street. The empty outdoor tables of the restaurant were pushed against the ivy.

  They were by the wall opposite the window. Nearby, a flickering orange fire struggled with the gloom from outside. Despite the dark afternoon, the heavy mantle and dark beams supporting the low ceiling seemed to exude a cozy atmosphere of warmth and cheer.

  “That was delicious and I thank you.” Lisa folded her napkin and placed it neatly beside her plate. “Now perhaps we could discuss my problem.”

  “Our problem.” Steve grinned, but a shadow of concern darkened the corners of his eyes.

  She leaned back, considering. She had just met this man, had no idea who he was, or who Rossignol was, for that matter. But the banker had been close to Raimond, who had told her to listen to him.

  Besides, looking into those clear blue eyes, she had a feeling she could count on him. “I’ve been thinking about the messages, the ones I can recognize, anyway: the windows, the books, and especially the skytale. He wrote, ‘The door opens the drawer. Seek the Procroft.’ I remembered when I took my first bite of the duck that Procroft is the name of one of the more obscure collections at the Institute of Papyrology.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Stanley Procroft was a minor British collector in the eighteen-eighties. While working for the British administration in Egypt, he purchased several dubious lots of papyrus from a dealer in Cairo. He couldn’t make sense of them himself and in the end donated the entire collection to the British Museum, which reluctantly accepted: provenance was lost, there was no indication where they came from originally, and at least a few seemed to be forgeries. Then somehow during the late nineteen-twenties one of the first papyrologists at the Institute here heard of it and offered to take the Procroft off their hands. It was a way of building up the collection. It’s been in a drawer at the Institute ever since; I don’t think anyone’s ever really looked at it.”

  Steve was impressed. “Yet you remember this name?”

  “Sure. I haven’t looked at the collection – it has an unsavory reputation – but the name’s fairly unusual. I guess it caught my attention.”

  “Perhaps we should go there.”

  “What for? I don’t see how it would help. Except to make a bad rhyme I have no idea what Raimond meant by ‘the door opens the drawer.’ It makes no more sense than ‘Seek the Procroft.’ Unless you think there might be something in the collection?”

  “Maybe if you were there, in the room, it would come to you.”

  She knitted her brows. “Do you think so?”

  “Foix was pointing you that way, wasn’t he?”

  “I suppose so. But I don’t know what’s going on, why he was killed. Was he involved in something criminal? Drugs, state secrets, guns? It’s ridiculous, Steve. He was a harmless old man, kind and sweet and very, very smart, full of vigor and humor and good will…. I just don’t understand.”

  “All the more reason to follow his lead, don’t you think?”

  “All right, what have we got to lose? What about our man out there? Do we lead him along?”

  The man was looking up the rue Lanneau as if expecting someone. He saw they were looking at him, and lifted his map to hide his face. He was so clumsy the effect was almost comic.

  “The Institute is in the Sorbonne?”

  She nodded.

  “If he’s Hugo’s man, Foix warned us away from the police, so we can’t exactly take him with us. If he isn’t Hugo’s, then we definitely don’t want him following us.”

  “Agreed.”

  “We’re only two streets away from the Sorbonne, but we have to lose him before we go there. Well, nothing says we have to leave through the front door. Take the stairs past the fireplace. There’s an outdoor garden. I’ll follow. That way he may think we’ve just gone to the rest room. If he follows, we’ll improvise.”

  She rose gracefully, touched the back of his hand with a fleeting smile, and slipped past the thick mantle of the fireplace.

  Steve slid his portable phone from his pocket and switched it off. After a few moments he ate a final crumb of his Gratin de Fruits Rouges en Sabayon, wiped his lips with his napkin and, without waiting for the bill, palmed money onto the table and followed.

  * * *

  When the girl got up from the table, Guardian of the Peace Philippe Dupond folded his Friday Le Monde and moved to the corner at the Place Marcelin Berthelot. The rain had let up so he removed his raincoat and slung it over his shoulder. With a soft cap and a pair of glasses he transformed himself into a mid-level fonctionaire of the Republic, out wasting time when he should already have returned from lunch. Loitering in a doorway here he could watch both sides of the restaurant.

  His prudence was rewarded when she came out of the restaurant by the back door. The man followed a few moments later and they turned left up the hill. He followed to the rue du Cimetière Saint-Benoît. The man paused at the corner and looked him directly in the eye. Dupond was sure this would be a long pursuit but they continued on as if nothing had happened. Perhaps he hadn’t been spotted after all.

  By the time he rounded the corner they were almost to St. Jacques. Once there he saw them strolling arm in arm as if sightseeing. They turned on the rue Cujas toward boulevard St. Michel, and left again toward the Luxembourg Gardens.

  He lost them in the crowds, glimpsed them again as they crossed rue Gay Lussac. They started toward the Gardens when an articulated Number 27 bus turning off St. Michel blocked them. A Number 21 came up behind it. Both buses stopped near the corner on Gay Lussac.

  By the time St. Michel was clear the couple had vanished.

  Dupond broke into a run but the light turned against him and he had to dodge traffic.

  The buses were pulling away from the stop. He looked around wildly. The pair was nowhere in sight. He dashed across the street to a taxi stand. On the park fence he caught a glimpse of an exhibit of huge color photographs of desert animals: camels, ostriches, lions, antelopes.

  * * *

  “Merde!” Steve was looking out the back of the bus. “That man back there getting into a taxi is carrying a raincoat like our bloodhound’s. I think he’s still following us.”

  “I thought we lost him at St. Jacques.” Lisa sat primly facing front, her back straight, her knees pressed together.

  “I don’t think so. He took off the coat and put on a hat and glasses, but I’m pretty sure that’s him.”

  “Well, there were two buses. How would he know which one we took?”

  “If he guesses…” Steve squinted out the back. “The taxi is following.”

  “Hugo’s man, or someone else’s?”

  Steve swiveled back. “Well, if someone else’s, it’s possible, even probable, they stayed around Foix’s apartment just to confirm that he didn’t leave a message of some kind. That’s what I’d do… And that puts you right in their sights!”

  “I assumed that, Steve. Hugo suspects me. Raimond warned me off the police. Dr. Foix’s killer would assume Raimond would try to leave a message, even if he had very little time. So Raimond was no simple classicist, he was something much more. These are professionals, Steve. And Hugo brought me there. I didn’t ask for it, but I’m involved.” She lifted her shoulders and he noticed how delicately they moved under the cotton of her dress. Immediately he repressed the thought; this was not the time for distractions. “Raimond wasn’t the kind to waste time. He went to a lot of trouble, and that makes his actions as important to whoever killed him as to us.” A heavyset man standing in the aisle was looking at her curiously and she switched to English. “I just wish I knew w
hat he was up to.”

  “You have no idea, none at all?”

  “I believed he was a retired classics professor and my closest friend. Was he a spy of some kind and I didn’t know?”

  Steve had turned sideways so he could watch the taxi. “That fellow’s a persistent bastard. Hugo’s man or not, I think we’ll have to work a bit harder to get rid of him.”

  “How might we do that?”

  “I have a plan.” He settled comfortably.

  “Don’t they always say that in the movies when they don’t have a plan?” Her playful tone had anxious undertones.

  “True,” Steve admitted. “But I do have a plan, though it includes a fair amount of improvisation.”

  They rumbled down Gay Lussac past galleries and bookstores. The bus stopped, started again. At the Monge-Claude Bernard bus stop he touched her arm. They got off in the middle of a group and dashed across to the short block of Edouard Quenu. At the far end the Church of St. Medard overlooked the open-air market at the foot of the hill. rue Mouffetard was a pedestrian street packed with shops selling everything from wine and cheese to meat and vegetables, olive oil to honey. The smell of fresh fruit and flowers filled the air and the North African merchants were shouting their wares, rolling their R’s: “Et allons y dans la fraise!”

  They stopped once to look back. Their pursuer appeared at the corner of Claude Bernard. “Come on!” Steve dragged her into the dense throng of shoppers and up the hill through the rich aromas of fruit, meat, fish and cheese and the cries of more merchants trying to out-shout one another.

  They climbed toward the Place de la Contrescarpe with its cluster of pubs, but halfway up turned right at l’Épée-de-Bois, raced another block uphill to the Place Monge and descended into the Metro, sliding their Navigo passes over the sensor.

  They were alone on the platform. A minute later a train arrived and they boarded.

  “I think this time we lost him.” Steve watched the entrance. The train pulled out and shot down the tunnel. There was no sign of their pursuer.

  “Fine,” Lisa said. “We’ll take a ride and perhaps you’ll tell me where we’re going.”

  “We keep moving. Just to make sure we’ll change trains at Place d’Italie and again at Denfert-Rochereau where we’ll take the RER, get off at Cité Universitaire, walk to my place.”

  “You live in student housing?”

  He chuckled. “Not far. The Cité Florale,” he said.

  She struggled to keep the incredulity from her face. Only yesterday she had found herself in the Cité Florale in the middle of the night, about the same hour Raimond had been killed, one of her periodic fugue states when she would suddenly find herself somewhere else. At the time she thought it was because she was apprehensive about her meeting at the foundation. This morning it occurred to her maybe she’d had some subconscious inkling about Raimond. But that was absurd. Wasn’t it? What happened to Raimond was unpredictable, surely.

  “We’re nearly neighbors,” she said evenly. “We could go to my place; it’s closer to Place d’Italie.”

  “Chinatown?”

  “The Butte-aux-Cailles.”

  “Nice neighborhood, but we can’t. They’ll probably know your address but they won’t know about my place, at least not yet. It’s unlisted, leased under a corporate name, same as the car and phone.”

  “You sublet?”

  “No, the bank provides discreet housing. We often need anonymity.”

  “You are a wonder,” she said. The train passed the stop at Gobelins and they were approaching the big interchange at Place d’Italie.

  “Yes, I am.”

  She couldn’t tell if he was being ironic or not, but for some reason his humor reassured her.

  “We’ll make a plan, then take my car,” he said. The train screeched to a stop and the passengers poured out. “If Foix was involved in anything like what you suggest, I’ve a feeling we’ll need it.”

  16.

  Clouds hung low over the flax fields, dimming the brilliance of the blue flowers. Tendrils of mist rose off the river, a broad, leaden road between the abbey and the town.

  Gabriel Lacatuchi, Prior General of the Order of Theodosius, turned away from the view with reluctance. The rain had stopped, praise God, and the heavy cloud over the river and the nearly abandoned town on the other side pleased him. He exhaled slowly. Perhaps a walk would do him good.

  In the antechamber Xavier was turning cards as usual. Lacatuchi told him he was going out and was soon walking along the riverbank. The grass was slippery and the footing uncertain so he finally gave up and simply stared at the turgid water, deep in thought.

  Raimond Foix was scion of the House of Foix, descendent of Raimond-Roger, fifth Count of Foix, implacable enemy of the True and Holy Church, insidious protector of heretic Cathars and unrepentant murderer of priests, who had bragged to the pope he only regretted not having murdered more. Well, Foix was dead, and that pleased him. The last of the Pythos, that endless thorn in the side of the body of the church, was no more.

  For that the Prior General crossed himself.

  But the matter of Rossignol and the Alberti disk still troubled him. Loose ends, always loose ends. This never would have happened in Cardinal Santaseverina’s day.

  He wondered suddenly how the interrogation was proceeding. It was already early afternoon. The more time passed without the rest of the disk, the greater the danger. If it was intended for the girl, they must eliminate her. If not, well, Rossignol had been taking it somewhere. Better to deal with it at once.

  He could take the small elevator in the corridor connecting the abbey with his office, but he was impatient, so he continued into the vast ruined hall and started down the winding stone stairway toward the vast subterranean cellars. Before he had descended even half the steps he could hear faint cries and his curiosity died. He would wait. It was more seemly not to be a witness.

  Defago’s methods were necessary, of course, but with age Lacatuchi had grown more fastidious, less tolerant of disturbance. He was continually reminded of stories heard as a child in Rumania under Ceauşescu, stories drenched in blood. And so he retreated, the cries ringing in his ears. Even though he considered himself above the mundane work of extracting confessions, this distaste for pain was a secret shame, a weakness he kept carefully tucked away in his soul. He knew it was childish, a squeamish retreat from the harsher aspects of his job. Fortunately in his position he could indulge it. His presence was unnecessary. Let the monk handle it. They were experts, Defago and his nun.

  He returned to his office and sank down behind his desk. He rubbed his tired eyes, drummed his fingertips on the polished black surface, sucked in his lower lip and let it out with a soft pop. He rubbed his broken nose and gazed at the acoustical tile. He leaned once to smell the bouquet of red roses in a crystal vase on the desk. They seemed to have lost their aroma.

  What if the banker refused to talk? Could they find the rest of the disk? Would it really matter? Rossignol would never return to the world. He was gone, finished, erased. Why not just eliminate the girl? A bit crude, perhaps, but even if it proved unnecessary later, wouldn’t it be more direct, more efficient?

  After a few moments he got up. He couldn’t wait at the empty desk. There was nothing for him to do, not until after the interrogation. He went to the window.

  The fingertips of his left hand, the one with the amethyst ring, stroked his smooth, fat cheek. Xavier had come into the office from the antechamber precisely at noon to give him his second shave of the day. That was shortly before Defago and the nun had arrived with the prisoner. The Prior General hated the feel of whiskers. His skin still smelled faintly of alcohol and musk. He ran his thumb upward, against the grain. The skin was smooth and his sense of wellbeing returned. What could go wrong? After years of studying the evidence and questioning people who might know something, no matter how fleeting or insignificant or unconscious, and no matter how many died under questioning, the Order had fi
nally uncovered the truth about Raimond Foix. Once the evidence he was the Pythos was incontrovertible, they had acted swiftly and decisively.

  Fortunately they had the foresight (the Prior General showed his teeth in an ironic smile at this word) to watch the apartment after Foix was removed. It had paid off, for thus they had discovered Rossignol.

  The Prior General had sometimes doubted. When the invitation came he had eagerly agreed to join the Order, to become a warrior in the silent, underground struggle against the elusive, almost invisible enemy. But then he faltered; he had shown weakness. His confessor assured him his faith needed testing, his doubts were normal.

  “But there’s no evidence the Pythos even exists,” he once cried.

  “There is no evidence Satan exists, either, Gabriel, except such evidence the moral authority of the Church and your senses offer you,” the confessor said. “That is enough, is it not?”

  “Of course.” Lacatuchi remembered bowing his head. It was inevitable. Of course the Pythos existed; he would dedicate his life, as so many had before, to putting an end to its machinations! He, Gabriel Lacatuchi, was only the latest in a long line of Prior Generals.

  The contest had been long and dark. On the surface the shadowy organization of the Pythos against which the Holy Roman Church had struggled interfered in God’s work by claiming to know the future. Not just claiming, he thought: repeatedly the Pythos had proved it knew things, for far too many times over the centuries it had revealed to impure ears the Church’s innermost secrets.

  He sighed. The secrets were many. Sometimes the Pythos had publicly revealed the machinations of the Church’s finances, the sins of avarice, of envy, of pride. At other times the Church had cooperated (colluded, some said) with powerful groups, with emperors and kings, helping them destroy whole civilizations. And how had the world learned so much about the sins of lust, the dark sexual scandals so damaging to the organization he loved? Surely that was the Pythos’ work.

  This struggle had been going on since the fourth century. The Pythos and his collaborators were heretics; that much was certain.