by Jon Steele
“By the cop, Monsieur le Boss.”
“After his initial briefing with you on the jet, he thought it might be easier if you heard things from me while you recover.”
“He’s got that one right.”
Corporal Mai nodded. “Do you have any more questions for me, ma’am?”
“No.”
“I’ll get your tea.”
“Thanks.”
Corporal Mai left the room.
Katherine got up from the chair and pulled aside the curtains and saw the moonrise above the Alps. Fields of high snow looked like clouds in the night. Far below were the lights of cities and . . .
“Wait a sec.”
She looked at the lantern. It continued to glow, but the flame was still, as if the world had come to a stop. It remained that way until Corporal Mai reappeared with a tray in her hands. The tray held a small teapot, a cup and saucer, and two chocolate chip cookies. The corporal rested the tray on a small table next to the chair and poured the tea. Katherine recognized the aroma: Night Clouds blend. Katherine looked at the flame in Rochat’s lantern; the delicate thing was swaying again. She returned to the chair, parked the IV stand, and sat down.
“What’s in the cookies?” she said.
“Ma’am?”
“Besides chocolate chips?”
“Nothing. They’re from my lunch box. I made them at home. I thought you would enjoy some.”
Katherine stared at her. Corporal Mai stared back, looking deep into Katherine’s eyes.
“It’s called looping, ma’am.”
“What?”
“What you were doing when I left the room. It happens sometimes, especially after a traumatic temporal event. We have all experienced it. It goes away.”
“‘We.’ As in Harper’s kind, half-kinds.”
Corporal Mai nodded.
“You read my mind?”
“I saw it in your eyes.”
“Like Harper? Like the cop?”
The corporal nodded again.
Katherine had a sip of tea and a bite of the cookie.
“Um, yummy. So tell me, Corporal, as you’ve been ordered to answer my questions: I am just an ordinary human being, aren’t I?”
“Are you asking me if you are one of them? Like Mr. Harper and Inspector Gobet?”
“I’m asking exactly that.”
Corporal Mai smiled. “You are a local, ma’am. That’s what we call human beings.”
Katherine nodded. “Makes sense.” She took another bite of cookie and sipped at her tea. “So, do locals loop through time?”
“No, ma’am. Locals have memories.”
More tea in slow sips. “So why am I looping?”
“Nobody knows.”
Katherine studied the young woman’s face again. Her expression wasn’t blank, Katherine realized; in fact, it was completely transparent. Corporal Mai was incapable of not speaking the truth.
“Okay, let’s try it this way: What is the purpose of looping, in the fun world of angels and half-kinds?”
“It’s a timeline reset to better focus on specific data.”
“What specific data?”
“Repressed data. Something we want to avoid or not face.”
She wasn’t talking like Marc Rochat now. She was talking like a shrink with a gun.
“How do you find out what that data is, Corporal Mai?”
“We reconnect with the point in time we left off before the looping began.”
Katherine gave it a try. She was walking across the room with the corporal. The corporal was telling her about Goose. Never went to Mon Repos, never knew him, the corporal said. His father, one of Harper’s kind, wanted Goose to be like Max, born of light, not of his own flesh.
“Did Goose think he was the one?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Was he attacked because he was trying to protect my son?”
“And his father, and all of us.”
Katherine rested her cup on the tray.
“I want to see him. Right now.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Katherine got herself up from the chair. She grabbed the IV stand and they started walking.
“You knew I was going to say that, didn’t you? You read it in my eyes.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
ii
Sergeant Gauer was at the wheel of the magic bus. At the moment the bus was acting completely normal on the lakeside road back to Lausanne. A fullish moon was suspended over the mountains above Évian. Its light was reflected in the currents and eddies of the dark water. He watched; he added it up. The light on Lac Léman was actually the light of the sun, currently located at the other side of paradise. The sun’s light was traveling ninety-three million miles through space and hitting the moon, currently two hundred fifty thousand miles above Évian. That light was reflected off the moon and was now hitting the lake and bouncing into Harper’s eyes. Distance divided by speed of light meant the trip took five hundred seconds. Equals: The light in his eyes had left the surface of the sun at the same moment the magic bus pulled out of Vevey 8.33333333 minutes ago. Not that the events were connected, but the narrow lakeside road opened to four lanes at the same time and a rush of cars passed the bus on the left and floored it for Lausanne. Harper stepped closer to the driver’s compartment. He checked the speed of the bus. Fifty-five mph. The cars were zipping by at eighty. Harper checked his watch: 00:30 hours.
“It’s the middle of the night,” Harper said.
“What of it?” the Swiss Guard said.
“There’s a lot of traffic on this road for the middle of the night. It looks like a parade.”
“Perhaps they’re trying to make it into town before last call,” the Swiss Guard said.
A white VW van came along and matched their speed. The side door opened. There were eight excited faces smiling from ear to ear; they waved. Then the door was pulled closed and the van took off. Harper caught the license plate. EU orange. DSM 5574. The blue flag on the left of the plate was stamped with a D for Deutschland.
“Drinking buddies of yours on their way to last call, Herr Gauer?” Harper said.
“Why would they be buddies of mine?”
“Because they were bloody waving at you.”
Harper felt a tap at his back. He turned around. The roadie was offering him a whiskey with his right hand. His left hand was holding his cell phone as he read a message.
“They’re fans of the band. They know the bus.”
Harper thought about it. “Because you’re having a concert, yeah?”
“Four nights of concerts, brother. It’s a festival. It’s scheduled to kick off tomorrow night, but I got flash traffic: The music has already begun. Would you take the glass and drink, please?”
Harper took the whiskey and sipped. “You’re going live on the Internet. To millions of souls around the world. That’s what your dream catcher said.”
“Yup.”
Harper looked out the windshield. The bus was slowing through the towns before Lausanne: Lutry, Paudex, Pully. At each red light, different cars pulled alongside the bus and windows rolled down and there were more happy faces and bigger waves. A couple of them held large fliers out the windows. Harper focused on one of them: Older Than Dreams Tour Redux. Locomotora, Jakob, pg.lost, Shaking Sensations. Lausanne, Nowtimes. There was a picture on the flier, too. Harper recognized it. It was the only surviving photograph of himself jumping from Pont des Arts during the Paris job. The shot caught him hanging between heaven and earth in silhouette against the spotlights of police choppers. A gun in one hand, a knife in the other, the flaps of his long coat flaring above his shoulders like wings. The photographed leaked and went viral with the headline “Was This the Angel Who Fell from the Sky to Save Paris?” Harper looked out the right side window. The A9 highway ran along the crest of the hills higher above the lake. Inbound lanes for Lausanne were packed with cars. He looked at Krinkle.
“They’re partisans. The lot o
f them.”
“Yup.”
Harper waited for the roadie to spill. He didn’t. “You’re not going to tell me what all this really is, are you?”
“Not till you get better,” the roadie said.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re already confused as shit. Relax. The active ingredients in the potion are time-released. They’ll kick in soon.”
An image reconnected on Harper’s timeline as Krinkle spoke. Coming out of the tank. The roadie telling Harper about the needle he’d been hit with. Something to help you better understand the nature of your mission. Wasn’t working then, isn’t working now, Harper thought.
“If you say so.”
The bus rolled by Mon Repos. Harper flashed passing the place at night in beforetimes. Beyond the wrought-iron gates, beyond the trees and manicured gardens, there were always candles burning in the windows of shadowed buildings. All through the night the candles burned; different hours, different windows. But there was darkness beyond the gates now. There was a terrible reason for it, but Harper couldn’t find it on his timeline. He refocused out the forward windshield. The bus was crossing Rue Caroline and rolling onto Pont Bessières. Harper saw the cathedral on the hill ahead. And all down the hill and all around the esplanade were camping tents and small crowds of people. Flash: Something’s wrong.
“Where’s the time warp? Where’s security?” he said.
Krinkle calmly sipped at his own whiskey. “Lausanne has been an open city since sundown.”
“You’re bloody joking.”
The roadie shook his head. “We’re trying to get as many partisans inside as we can. The time warp will go back on line as soon as we cross.”
Harper checked the side mirrors. There was still a long line of headlamps following the bus.
“And the ones left outside?” he said.
“Not your concern, brother. It’s not part of your mission.”
Harper thought about it. “In Jerusalem.”
“See, you’re getting better already.”
Harper triangulated the geography from here to there. “We’re going the wrong way. We’re going west, Jerusalem is east.”
“We’ll get there. But first, you’ve got a date at the cathedral.”
Sergeant Gauer turned the bus onto Rue Louis-Auguste Curtat and headed up the steep hill to the esplanade of Lausanne Cathedral. Harper saw Café de l’Evêché on the corner. And scanning the windows he saw the joint was packed with more happy faces. Men, women, old, young, every color. All of them with healthy glasses in their hands, all of them seeing the bus pass by, all of them waving. Then he saw the T-shirts under their jackets and coats. All of them branded with the same bloody picture as the flier. He looked at Krinkle.
“What sort of date are we talking about?”
“The kind you don’t miss if you’re a gentleman,” the roadie said.
“Sorry?”
“You’re just keeping the books straight, brother. The parade was extra. You were supposed to be gone by now, but Karoliina called Gobet and told him no way should you leave Lausanne without coming to the cathedral first. The cop begged to differ and hung up. Karoliina called back and told him in no uncertain terms that he would be tempting some fucked-up karma by sending you on a mission without first keeping a promise you made.”
“A promise.”
“Yup.”
“The inspector bought that line?”
“Dude, Karoliina was talking about some seriously fucked-up karma. And she’s a dream catcher—the cop didn’t have a friggin’ choice.”
The bus crept up the hill, inching through the tents and crowd. Hundreds of faces were highlighted in the headlamps. Here the people were subdued. No one waved, no one smiled; everyone just stared into the bus with an expression of wonder. Harper saw the same T-shirt under open coats and jackets. The penny dropped; they could see into the front of the bus, they could see the one the world called “The Angel Who Saved Paris.” As the bus slowed and stopped next to the cathedral, the people gathered around, but they left a passage from the bus to the skinny red door in the base of the belfry. Sergeant Gauer shut off the motor and opened the door. Harper looked at Krinkle.
“I have no idea what I’m supposed to do.”
The roadie took the empty glass from Harper’s hand. “You’re supposed to get off and find out.”
“Right.”
Harper stepped off the bus. The people on either side of the passage continued to stare at him. It was quiet; no one spoke.
“Good evening,” Harper said.
Then came a swell of soft-sounding hellos and good evenings in all the languages of the world. As the voices faded, a bittersweet sound resonated through the night. It was a cello. Harper knew the music from somewhere: Johann Sebastian Bach’s Prelude from Cello Suite No. 2 in D Minor. All the people gathered on the esplanade looked up at the belfry. Harper leaned back and looked up, too. He saw the shadow of a woman’s form wrapped in a sheepskin jacket. She was leaning over the railing and lowering down a skeleton key at the end of a very long piece of string. The key came to a stop just in front of the red door. As the cello finished the Prelude and began the Allemande, a shred of time rolled through Harper’s eyes. In the nave of Lausanne Cathedral on a dark and stormy night. The new one, Ella, had emerged from the shadows with a lantern in her right hand. She was making a circle with her left: Eins og svo, she was saying. Like this. She was describing the round sound her cello made. The great bell in the belfry liked the sound very much, the new one said.
“Would you like to come to the belfry, monsieur? You can listen to me play for Marie-Madeleine.”
“Sure.”
“When?”
“Sometime.”
“Right. That promise.”
TWENTY
i
Harper walked through the crowd and removed the key from the string. There was a young kid close to the door. He was dressed in blue jeans and a leather jacket. He stared at Harper with a curious look. All the faces around the kid were the same. The Angelic Effect had taken hold. The crowd waited for Harper to speak, to reveal something wondrous to them. He couldn’t think of a bloody thing.
“Anyone know the time?” he said.
“It just rang for one,” the kid next to the door said. His accent was Polish.
“Le guet called the hour as you were coming across the bridge,” a young woman in the crowd said. Her accent was Greek.
“Then she began to play the cello,” said a tall woman with pale gray eyes. Harper could not identify her accent.
“Tell me your name.”
“Kaia. I come from Estonia.”
Harper looked at her and all of them. As he did, he released a spark of light from his eyes.
“Cheers.”
He unlocked the outer door, pushed it open, and stepped into a small vestibule. To the left three stone steps led to a wooden door. He knew that it was the way to the belfry and that he’d been that way twice during the cathedral job. That much he was sure of. The door straight ahead was open and the lights were on. He made it for the cathedral gift shop. A tapping sound was coming from inside.
Harper pulled the key from the door and dropped it in the pocket of his trench coat. He closed the door without looking at the faces outside so he would disappear from their memories. He walked to the shop. The drummer from Locomotora stood behind the counter; his hands were moving furiously. It took Harper a couple Planck units to see the drumsticks in his grip. They hammered down on a rubber pad the size of a dinner plate. Dressed in his kill kit with his UZI slung over his shoulder and the monocle set to his right eye, the drummer had the concentrated gaze of someone who would blow your head off if you interrupted him and then didn’t buy enough stuff to make the disturbance worth his while. Suddenly, the drummer’s hands froze midhammer. He looked up at Harper.
“Sorry, mate. I believe I’m expected,” Harper said.
“Joo, you’re cleared. Karoliina is w
aiting. Go on up.”
“Right. And good luck.”
“With what?”
“The music festival and whatever else is going on in this town,” Harper said.
The drummer laid his sticks on the glass counter. “You were wrong when you closed the door on the faces watching you. Those people out there will never forget seeing you tonight. You will not be wiped from their memories. That’s the way it’s going down tonight. You should know that.”
“Sorry?” Harper said.
“There have been a lot of changes in the cathedral since your last tour. There isn’t a corner of the place I cannot see from this room on CCTV. I watched you with the closing-the-door trick. I’ve seen Krinkle do it plenty of times.” The drummer picked up his sticks, gave them a twirl. “The cop wants me to tell you you don’t have a lot of time up there. Go up, let Ella know you came to hear her play. Tell her it’s going to be okay, tell her you’ll see her again. That’s it.”
“Understood.”
Harper backed out of the shop and mounted the steps to the wooden door. As he reached for the iron latch, the door opened automatically. The side view revealed it was like the door at his flat: blast-proof, bulletproof. He passed through the opening, saw the CCTV cameras fitted in the curves of the stone ceiling. The cameras covered every angle. He headed up the worn stone steps, round and round to the right. It was the same drill through the back-and-forth walkways in the women’s choir loft: Armored doors disguised as creaky wood opened and closed without a key or an “open sesame.” He reached the tower steps and climbed round and round again till he felt the night air pour down the stairwell. Then came the sound of a cello finishing the Sarabande movement of the No. 2 and beginning the Menuet. Harper rested against the stone wall and listened to the music, wondering how the hell he knew so much about Bach’s No. 2 in D Minor. He looked at his freshly gloved hands. The left hand knew the fingering of each stop; his right hand knew every sul ponticello and sul tasto of the bow.
“Blimey.”
He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his trench coat and continued to climb the steps. He made the final turn of the tower, saw Karoliina the dream catcher at the top of the steps next to a bank of CCTV monitors. Her face glowed in the dull light cast by the screens. She had her index finger over her lips and her japa mala beads hanging from her wrist. She turned and walked slowly along the stone arches of the south balcony.