Thrillers in Paradise

by Rob Swigart

  “Henri!”

  Lisa looked from one to the other as they embraced, kissing both cheeks. Steve, his arm around Henri’s shoulders, introduced them. “Henri and I were in the same class in high school.”

  “You must have been very close,” Lisa observed dryly.

  Steve laughed. “Henri’s an AIDS researcher.”

  “This is research?” Lisa asked.

  Henri said, “Not really. I head the Quebec delegation.” He swept his hand, taking in the truck, randomly painted with flowers. “This is our float. Not much, I agree, but it will do. We don’t have a big budget, and this was all we could afford to rent.”

  “Shouldn’t it be a maple leaf?” she asked. “This is a fleur-de-lys.”

  Steve made a rude gesture. “Maple leaf for Canada. Fleur-de-lys for Quebec!”

  “How does the rental company feel about you painting their truck?”

  “Oh, they’ll never know; it’s water-based paint. I just hope it doesn’t rain.”

  Daylight increased along with the good-natured banter. Lisa squinted up at a clear sky. “It looks to me like you’re in luck.”

  Henri grinned. “Hope so.”

  “We do have to catch a train,” Steve said.

  “Of course, of course. Climb through the cab.”

  The street on the other side was dense with people, some already in makeup and costume, most in ordinary street clothes. Three women in blue workmen’s jackets were bent over a huge Paris map on the hood of a truck, tracing the route all the way to the Bastille. “We’re going to really mess up the traffic this year,” one of them said.

  They found the south entrance to the station. There were few people out this early, and it was only a short walk to the high-speed trains.

  Lisa looked around before boarding, but didn’t see anyone suspicious.

  They settled at the back of the car where they could keep an eye on the rest of the passengers. Three women came aboard carrying large suitcases and settled into facing seats, chatting amiably. A family of five sat near the front. A stocky, expressionless man got on at the last minute and took a seat on the opposite side three seats ahead of them. He opened Le Monde and began to read. The signal sounded and the train began to move. Soon they were speeding through open countryside.

  “How long’s the trip?” Lisa asked.

  “A little over five hours.” Steve had tilted his head back and closed his eyes.

  She whispered, “What about that man up there, reading the paper?”

  He opened his eyes without moving his head. “What about him?”

  “He could be following us.”

  “He is following us.”

  She nudged him. “What are you not telling me?”

  “Alain. Don’t worry, he’s watching our backs. I talked to him last night.”

  “And who is Alain?”

  He opened his eyes and smiled. “Rossignol’s… personal assistant, I guess you could say. He handled the emergency instructions.”

  “And why are we going to Toulouse?”

  “To meet some people I don’t know. That’s all I can tell you. I don’t know who they are or why we have to meet them, but those are the instructions. I was to talk to whoever was at that number that called yesterday and follow orders. So I’m following orders.”

  “Do you always follow orders?”

  “When I’m with a beautiful woman and we’re being chased by killers, yes.”

  “Very well.” She flipped down the tray table, pulled the Procroft 506 from her bag and began taking notes. The TGV raced on through vast forests and fields green with wheat in almost perfect silence.

  It was just past twelve thirty in the afternoon when a Toulouse taxi stopped in the small picturesque village of Mirepoix. Lisa and Steve walked up the wide cart road into the enclosed main square and its central covered market.

  An arcade supported by wooden columns surrounded the square. The exposed joists of the colorful half-timbered facades were often carved into fanciful forms: women's faces, bearded heads, mythical animals. Wind-driven clouds raced overhead. Under the arcade the tourist shops and restaurants were mobbed. Mirepoix, in the heart of Cathar country, was a popular summer destination.

  Lisa studied the crowd but again saw no one threatening. After a rapid meal eaten in silence, Steve led them through a series of back streets to a half-timbered home at one end of a row of similar houses. It was nearly concealed behind a flagrant display of red, blue and yellow flowers, shrubs and vines.

  At the thick oak door Lisa remarked, “Lunch was lovely, wasn’t it? Almost like being married.”

  “Married? Oh, the silence.” Steve smiled grimly. “We do have to be careful.”

  “You’re right. Please excuse the sarcasm.”

  “Excused.”

  “Thanks. Now what’s happened to our guardian angel? He got off the train in Toulouse ahead of us and disappeared. I thought I’d see him hovering about, watching our backs, as you said.”

  “He was there. Still is.” He rang the bell.

  A man inside, clearly British, shouted, “All right, all right, hold on.”

  Footsteps approached the door. It flew open to reveal a stocky couple in identical dark blue smocks standing side by side, square heads surmounted by dark brown hair hanging to their shoulders and bangs cut straight across just above their brows like twin Prince Valiants. One wore a dress under the smock and the other wore pants and had a beard.

  The beard had an operatic flair. “You must be the Rossignol’s assistant, Viginaire, and you would be Dr. Emmer, wouldn’t you, dear? Come in. Yes, yes, very good, don’t stand there.” They turned as one and disappeared inside.

  Although the interior was surprisingly large, the entry was so crammed with books that it seemed small. Books were three and four deep on the shelves, piled in towers, scattered in fans across a broad leather couch. They threatened to fall from high surfaces. There were modern paperbacks in French, Italian, English and Greek, and older, leather-bound volumes in Latin. Lisa recognized one pile that appeared to be in Turkish, a large section in Arabic, and several Japanese paperbacks.

  They passed through an arch into the next room. It may at one time have been a salon but books piled nearly to the beamed ceiling forced them to walk single file through narrow, twisting passages. The path forked and since their hosts had disappeared, they picked a direction at random, were stopped by a dead end and had to retrace their steps.

  The next room, more open than the previous, had, besides the ubiquitous bookcases, a small but serviceable dining table and a desk with a computer monitor, the only modern element. Next came the kitchen, strangely free of books, where a door onto the garden was invitingly open. They went outside.

  The couple was waiting by a white wrought iron table with a bottle of Calvados and four glasses. The wrought iron chairs were almost lost in the confusion of the floral background, beyond which they could see a high wall enclosing the garden, completely isolating them, at least visually, from the outside. The man gestured for them to sit.

  He poured apple brandy for everyone and sat down, holding his glass. “We are Edward and Marianne Maintenon. The name’s French but we’re from England, which you may already have surmised. Most people call me Ted. Alain warned us that the Rossignol is dead and you would be coming. The death of the Rossignol we regret, don’t we, Marianne?”

  “We do regret it, Mr. Maintenon,” his wife replied. Her voice was surprisingly low and sensual. She sipped slowly, looking at her visitors over her glass with glittering eyes.

  “The Rossignol was a good man,” Ted continued. “Since he is dead, something worse must have happened to the Pythos, though Alain did not say.”

  “Pythos?” Lisa asked.

  “Perhaps you’re familiar with a symbol, a letter Phi inside a Delta: triangle, circle, line?”

  “Yes. Raimond drew it in his own blood.”

  Ted squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, as if to blot out an unple
asant sight. “That is the sign of the Delphi Agenda, Dr. Emmer. Dr. Foix was the Pythos.”

  Lisa looked at Steve. “I’m sorry? The Delphic oracle was a woman, a Pythia.”

  Marianne shook her head. “There have been many men with that job description, Dr. Emmer.”

  Steve interrupted. “Raimond Foix was assassinated in his apartment early yesterday morning.”

  Ted nodded slowly. “Yes, it would be something like that. We hope at least the Rossignol managed to let Dr. Emmer know about the Alberti disk before his mishap.”

  “Disk?” Lisa said.

  Steve said, “Mishap?” at the same moment.

  “Oh, dear,” Ted scratched his beard thoughtfully. “Well, no matter. It’s not difficult to reconstruct…”

  “Excuse me,” Lisa interrupted. “I don’t want to be rude, but the last day and a half has been pretty strange. First of all, please call me Lisa. Dr. Emmer sounds silly. And second, I know nothing about a disk. What I do know is that the police seem to think I had something to do with Raimond’s death. Whoever killed him is after me, too. So, if you don’t mind, who are you people and why are we here?”

  “Ah, of course, we’re being rude. Please forgive us.” Ted touched his forehead with the tip of his finger as if pushing something through the bone. “Librarians. We’re librarians. We keep records, do such research as may be needed.”

  “That’s right, Ted,” Marianne said. “We’re librarians.”

  Lisa leaned forward. “You’re going to have to start at the beginning. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Records of what? Research for whom?”

  The couple looked at Steve, who lifted his eyebrows. “I don’t know any more than she does, so perhaps you could explain to both of us. Now M. Rossignol is… gone, it appears I’m responsible to Miss Emmer.”

  Ted nodded. “Right, right, of course. In fact, we are all responsible to Dr. Emmer, and we will of course continue to do our best, though this particular transition is unusual. Not unheard of, though. No, not unheard of. There was the matter of Giordano Bruno, for instance.”

  “Please,” Lisa interrupted. “Start from the beginning.”

  “Of course. Well, Miss Emmer – Lisa – we work for the Pythos. Well, for the Delphi Agenda, which for all practical purposes is the Pythos, who for the past forty-two years has been Raimond Foix. Of course we haven’t been the librarians all that time, no, no. We’re not that old.” He chuckled. “However, twenty six years ago…”

  “Twenty-seven,” Marianne said primly.

  “Yes, of course, of course, I stand corrected, it’s June now, isn’t it? So, twenty-seven years ago, just a bit over, we answered an ad. It was that simple, really. Two librarians needed, and there we were, young graduates in library science looking for jobs. Hired us together, he did, he being the Rossignol. We never met Dr. Foix, only the Rossignol. We believe for security reasons we shouldn’t have known the name of the Pythos. What if the Order captured us? But in our business it’s difficult to avoid knowing things. Librarians are simply curious, you see, and when the information comes along, as it does, well, it’s awfully hard to avoid.”

  “Why do you keep calling him the Rossignol?” Lisa demanded.

  Ted was taken aback. “Well, my dear, that’s what he is, isn’t he? The Rossignol, the one who sings, and oh, he had a lovely voice, didn’t he, Marianne? Lovely. He passes along the responses.”

  “Responses?”

  Ted massaged the puzzled crease between his eyebrows with his thumb. “Well, it’s like this, they ask, you see, and sometimes the Pythos answers. It’s been that way for three thousand years. When the Pythos does answer, it’s the Rossignol who sings. In the old days the Rossignol would have been a priest attending to Apollo. You see, don’t you, it couldn’t be the Pythos himself who speaks, certainly not. It wouldn’t do, no one can know who he is. Or she, though then she would be a Pythia as you said, Lisa, but no matter, the Rossignol sings, like a telegram, I suppose you could say, though I don’t suppose they have those any more, do they, Marianne?”

  “No, Ted, some specialty companies do still offer singing telegrams, but it isn’t easy and they are quite expensive.”

  “I see. Thank you, Marianne.”

  “These people who ask, they’re clients? Who are they, exactly?” Lisa persisted.

  “Ah, well, we can’t tell you that, only the Pythos knows, and, of course, the Rossignol, and they are both dead. We guess they are governments, corporations, social movements, but not ordinary people, who want to know the future, and don’t we all? They get to ask because they’re important and can afford it. It wasn’t like that before the Oracle was closed. Then anyone could go, pay the fee and ask a question.”

  “Pythos. You’re really talking about the Oracle of Delphi?”

  Ted laughed. “Well, it’s not quite the same, of course, but essentially yes, the Pythos is the heir to that institution.”

  “I find this hard to swallow,” she said slowly. “But Raimond did leave a lot of clues. The books, the riddles.” She sighed. “All right, go on, there has to be a way to uncover what this is all about… No, wait: gnothi seauton, ‘know thyself,’ was inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi! He was telling me this was about the Oracle, and I didn’t see it. I’m a fool.”

  “Well, now, don’t blame yourself. With the Opposition it’s all much more difficult and the Pythos must be cautious.”

  “Opposition?”

  “The Order of Theodosius.”

  “Theodosius the First? The Roman emperor who closed the pagan temples for good?”

  “So it would seem. In 392, yes, the last of both Eastern and Western Empires, and a Christian. The struggle has been going on ever since. But the Oracle had already been around a thousand years by then, and an institution like that doesn’t just vanish. Today it’s hidden, this conflict between the Church and the so-called pagan ways, and doesn’t make it into the history books or the news. Sometimes it’s come close to being public, as with Hypatia and Bruno, but it’s been called heresy and dismissed. The secret remains a secret.”

  “Why?” Steve asked.

  “It’s about power, isn’t it?” Ted said grimly. “The Oracle had power because it could give people – the clients, as you say – foresight, hints of what was likely to happen. Often the answers came in the form of a riddle or an ambiguity. This does not mean the Pythia, or Pythos, could not see the future. It’s clear that there was a powerful method behind what they did, combined with deep knowledge and analytical skills. But knowing the future changes it, so the Oracle would have to know what giving that knowledge to others would do to the future.”

  “That could give anyone a headache,” Steve laughed, but Lisa was frowning thoughtfully.

  Ted continued, “There have been other oracles, like the Sphinx, but they weren’t really reliable, were they. Which may explain why if you didn’t solve the Sphinx’s riddle she killed you. The Pythos never did that.” He gave a short laugh. “Didn’t have to. Those who misinterpreted usually did that to themselves.”

  “That may explain why he put out his copy of the Histoire de Théodose le Grand, but what does all this have to do with me?” Lisa wondered, though her expression revealed that deep down she knew the answer.

  Ted stared at her. “Why, my dear, don’t you know? You’re the Pythia now.”

  23.

  The gray van pulled up in front of the Cathedral of St. Maurice in Mirepoix. The sign on the side read: La Lutte Contre La Pauvreté in muted orange letters, just another Catholic charity parking in front of the church.

  “Wait here,” Defago said.

  The driver, staring straight ahead, tipped his cropped gray head; his chin disappeared into the collar of his shirt. Without looking at Defago he lit a cigarette and exhaled a long streamer at the windshield.

  No one paid attention to a monk walking slowly beside a nun, eyes glittering behind the yellow-tinted glasses. Defago’s hand rested on her shoulder protecti
vely. Tourists flowed around them, as if they were rocks in a stream. They made two circuits of the square under the arcade in this manner.

  “Where are they?” Teresa muttered, more to herself than her companion. She spoke in Latin. “Dupond said they were here. He was following them. He heard them hire the taxi. He was supposed to call. Where is he? Where did they go? We should have gotten here earlier.”

  Defago patted her shoulder gently. “Don’t fret so, my dove. We broke all speed records. Don’t worry, we’re close, I can smell them. We have the van and its equipment, we have our driver, and Dupond is here somewhere. Brother Cedric will be here soon. When we track them down we’ll solve this once and for all. Then we will be free to follow up on Rossignol’s confession. We’re doing fine.”

  “We’re not doing that fine,” she complained, glancing up at him. “The Prior General’s impatient. He’s going to chase off to Istanbul and if he fails he’s going to be angry. On whom do you think his anger will fall, my priest?”

  “Let me worry about him,” Defago snapped. The old needle of fear stabbed through him and though he tried he couldn’t conceal his irritation.

  They saw Dupond approaching and the nun squeezed his hand.

  * * *

  “The evidence is inconclusive,” Hugo was saying irritably. “So we’re tentatively listing Rossignol’s death as accidental.”

  He put down the phone and rubbed his eyes. When he opened them Mathieu was standing before him. “What do you want?”

  “Does that seem likely, sir?”

  “Likely? Rossignol? Of course not! I don’t like it, but what am I going to tell the Prefect? It feels like the whole government is breathing down my neck. They want results. Rossignol was kidnapped, but we have no real leads except the van and so far that’s nothing. I’m just trying to buy us some time. True, the body was so badly burned we don’t know for sure it was foul play, not yet, anyway. Médico-Légal is still working. Anything about the wheelchair tracks?”

  “You were right, it’s very high tech, weighs over a hundred and thirty kilograms plus the weight of the occupant, enough to make those tracks in the carpet,” Mathieu added with some satisfaction. “We’ve asked Interpol and the manufacturer to help collect a list of owners, but it’s Saturday and will take some time. We should know more by early next week. They do say it takes an assistant to get it up stairs, which means there were at least two other people in the apartment besides Foix.”