“My cousin works at the Samarqand Morning Star and they received it yesterday,” Nobal said. “He immediately contacted me because he knew, through me, you were interested in the case and because he doesn’t trust, hmmm . . . you know who.”
The allusion to Bureau 23 was clear enough.
“Is there anything we can do for him, to thank him?”
Nobal smiled sheepishly.
“I told him we would take care of his parking tickets.”
The inspector-general nodded.
“No problem. Tell him it’s done. Do we have an ID on the thumb?”
Konchev stepped forward, and proudly extended a piece of yellowed paper.
“We do, sir.”
“We do?”
Bassam heard the surprise in his own voice. He took a glance at the paper. Drug trafficking. Racketeering. The usual profile.
He put the paper down and frowned, trying to clear his thoughts.
“We have to play it safe for now . . . If Bureau 23 learns about this, you know what it means?”
The two cops nodded at the same time. They would be demoted and fired without any benefits. Prison even, maybe, although it would be hard, even for the Bureau 23, to push their case through a trial. After all, they were only trying to find the truth, and Bureau 23 didn’t seem to be in a hurry to find the murderers.
“See if you can pin something else on this joker and bring him in when you do. Then we’ll see who will terrorize who . . .”
The two cops nodded again. The inspector-general smiled when they left the room, then looked for his cigarettes. Poetry was great, but, sometimes, justice was even better.
Forty Eight.
Sitting at the kitchen table, Thomas looked at the fake passport and the untraceable credit card which lay before him on the table, under the single light-bulb. All that was left of Viborg City—Synth included. He let his hand run through his hair and sighed.
He was going to have dinner at Saran’s place tomorrow. In Viborg City, he couldn’t have a relationship because of his identity. Here, he didn’t have an identity anymore. Or rather, he had three.
At least, the woman’s voice said. Maybe more.
“Who are you? You’re not Synth . . .”
The voice laughed.
Oh no, I’m not poison. Not at all. Quite the contrary. I am life. Eternal life. And you’re back. Eternity bites its tail. As it usually does.
Thomas wondered for the first time in his life if he wasn’t really becoming insane. Maybe Synth was winning a secret war against his brain. Dr. Sojo had warned him. No one knew where it came from, or what its secondary effects were, in the long term.
War, you say. You were a warrior, once. But something else too. That’s why you came here, to the Chambers. The Dreaming Chambers. To hear your own music and learn. Learn who else you were. All your other selves. Ah not-Markus, if only you knew how happy I am to see you again.
“We’ve met before?”
Oh yes, not-Thomas, oh yes. But you know that. You surely know that. You have always loved to tease me. And you’re doing it again. Oh, not-Mathias, how I adore you!
Thomas nodded, pushing the passport aside and picking up the skeleton card. He wondered if it was still untraceable or if Karen had found a way to make it appear in her logs somehow. Karen screaming in the bathroom. Yeah, right. With his other hand, he felt for a lighter in his pocket. He flicked it and moved the card towards the flame. He felt like destroying it, but something stopped him. It wasn’t the end of the story yet. He might have to use it again. Synth superimposed a huge 1930s “THE END” over the room. “If only,” he sighed, “if only.”
The Song of the Birds
Forty Nine.
After her orgasm, Saran fell over him, sweaty and breathless, her small hard breasts crushing his chest. Holding her hips, he moved faster and faster until the piercing pleasure blurred her smiling face. They remained motionless for a few seconds, the tip of her fingers gently stroking his cheek. The smells prevailed in silence. Different sweats, spices, perfumes. A whole new puzzle. He kissed her hair and she lifted her head to look at him. They hadn’t turned the light off and she glistened under the ceiling light of the bedroom. He wondered if he looked transparent to her.
“Thomas . . .” she whispered.
He smiled, not knowing what to answer. He caressed her chin in his turn, then traced the shape of her thin mouth with his fingers. She pretended to bite him, like a panther or small tiger.
Dinner had been wonderful—chicken with rice and spicy vegetables—and she had chosen a great Chinese wine. They had talked and talked and then suddenly they were in her bed, making love. He tried to recollect the logic of history but, of course, there was none.
A brand new puzzle, a mosaic.
He had learned she was part of a research team in the university hospital—they were working on the use of music as supportive therapy in cancer treatment, depression and detoxification.
She began kissing his lips in a slow circling motion, as if his mouth was the center of a sensuous maelstrom.
“Thomas . . .” she repeated.
He had told her part-lies, but lies all the same. That he’d worked as an IT consultant in Petersburg and got tired of it all, and had come here for personal reasons.
You didn’t lie to her, not-Markus. You told lies to yourself. That’s why you came here, remember? To do away with lies.
“What?” Saran asked him, surprised, abruptly stopping her kissing.
“What do you mean, what?” Thomas replied, suddenly frightened she might have heard the voice too.
“You just froze. Did I do something . . .?”
She was looking at him with concern in her eyes. He tried to laugh it off.
“No, no. It’s me . . . I . . .”
A new mosaic. Big pieces and little pieces. Red, blue, yellow, white and black. If they fit, glue them together.
“I lied to you . . . Kind of . . .”
“You have a wife? A girlfriend?”
He shook his head. Was this the end of the journey? To give himself completely to the first woman he had slept with in a very long time? He remembered a book he had bought from Carlo in Viborg City—Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov, the murderous student, couldn’t live with his guilt and gave himself up. Dostoyevsky definitely had a point there.
Synth turned the room into an isba, with a smoking stove and furs on the bed.
“You did it again!” Saran exclaimed. “Are you sick?”
“What?”
“You just froze again, as if you weren’t here anymore. Your eyes turned . . . weird. As if you were seeing something else . . .”
Thomas opened his mouth and let his words spill onto the bed like Lego bricks escaping from a broken box. When he was finished, she looked him straight in the eyes, smiled and said “wow.”
Fifty.
Routine.
Inspector-General Ali Shakr Bassam looked at the crime scene with disgust. The man was sitting on the couch, his throat slit from ear to ear. The smell of blood was pungent and Bassam carefully breathed through his mouth. Nobal put on latex gloves and picked up the murder weapon, a large bread knife, painted red by the blood.
Konchev wasn’t here. He had managed to make contact with the terrorist scum, and had befriended him. He was now waiting for the one false move that could entitle them to nail him down, with his sorry friends. The inspector-general had put Konchev on sick leave, so nobody would suspect anything.
Nobal carefully put the knife into an evidence bag. The victim’s wife had called them in hysterics and confessed to the murder. Bassam switched the TV off. A jealousy drama. Routine. Routine. Routine.
Fifty One.
“So you’re a hero,” Saran said, with no irony in her voice.
She sat up and Thomas couldn’t help admiring her delicate and desirable body. That girl.
“And a junkie,” she added, this time with a smirk.
“Neither.” Thomas protest
ed feebly, sitting up in his turn.
“You really were from the Potemkin Crew? I can’t believe it.”
Thomas nodded.
“Yes, with Ole . . . I mean Olgeÿ Tazar . . . And Nick. He’s dead too . . .”
Saran was all excited now.
“You know that The Potemkin Overture is a classic here? You know that book, right, that Tazar wrote . . . Ok, he didn’t sign it, but everybody knows it was him . . . Wait a second . . .”
She jumped from the bed and began looking through the books on her shelves. Thomas didn’t know if he should begin to panic now or if he should wait a little more. Before he could decide, she was back on the bed with a thin paperback. Although he couldn’t read the cover, he understood immediately what it was.
“I have to read it again,” she said. “You’re in it!”
Thomas nodded nervously.
“Don’t tell anyone, OK? No one! If Viborg City or the Western Alliance learns I’m here, I’m dead!”
She put the book between her knees and stared at him for a few moments, looking very serious.
“Can’t you go to the authorities? I’m sure they would treat you like a hero . . . Look at Tazar . . . Well, he never officially said who he was, but I’m sure they knew . . .”
“He was just murdered. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a dirty trick from Viborg City or the Western Alliance. And the authorities couldn’t protect him.”
She nodded sadly, put the book aside and cuddled up in his arms. Her warmth and weight made him feel safe again.
“I’m afraid it might be some of our own. The political situation is very complex nowadays and Tazar made a lot of enemies with his poetry . . . But you’re right. Maybe you shouldn’t tell anyone . . . Can I call you Mathias then?”
“No!”
He’d almost screamed.
Not-Markus. Not-Mathias. Not-Thomas?
“Call me Thomas, please. But maybe Mathias in front of others,” he added, carefully.
Saran nodded and remained silent for a few minutes. He could hear her breathing.
“You know, I know Tazar’s widow, Faiza? She was my art teacher in high-school. We have kept vaguely in touch. I think you should go and visit her.”
Thomas remembered her from the funeral. A dignified woman with a beautifully tragic face.
“I don’t know . . .”
“You were a friend of her husband. A close friend . . . If it was me, I’m sure I’d love to hear some anecdotes about my late husband . . .”
Synth began to rumble and flashes of the old apartment in Niels Juels Gade began to be superimposed over his eyes.
“You’re OK? You’re switching off again . . .”
Thomas nodded, but his smile was crooked.
“You’re right,” he said. “I am a junkie.”
Dodecaphony
Fifty Two.
They hadn’t slept much, and Thomas found the suburb of Samarqand where Ole had lived the last and happiest part of his life quite depressing under the late morning sun. The only spot of color in the large concrete blocks, which weren’t so different to the ones of Viborg City—and that might have been why Ole had chosen to live here—was the blue dome of the Bibi-Khanym mosque he could see in the distance.
Saran had called Faiza Tazar earlier in the morning, right after breakfast, and she had immediately agreed to meet him. “See?” Saran had said, sitting on his naked lap and kissing him with triumphant strength.
A few people hung around here and there, by the entrances, like any other suburb of the world, the young wearing Western outfits and smoking pot, the older guys discussing international politics, the state of their marriage and the fate of their children.
Saran pulled him by the hand and they entered a building, suddenly absorbed by the piss-smelling shadow.
Fifty Three.
As he climbed the stairs—the elevator was out of order, of course—Thomas reflected about the situation, as his mind slowly emerged from the shell-shock of sleep. Was everything happening terribly fast or, on the contrary, was he still living his life in slow-motion, events deformed by their own dynamics and history by its own entropy? He looked at Saran’s back walking up the stairs in front of him. Karen? Not-Karen? Who was she? He didn’t even ask himself that. The essential question. A cold trickle of sweat rolled down his back. Who was waiting for him in the apartment? Sørensen? He stopped for a second, his heart beating inside his throat. Saran disappeared at the top of the stairs.
He suddenly felt like running away. Synth morphed the stairs into escalators in a huge train station. He was about to turn on his heels when Saran’s voice stopped him.
“She’s waiting for us,” she simply said.
Magical words.
Fifty Four.
Faiza Tazar held him for a long time, her hands grasping his arms with emotion.
“Olgeÿ talked about you so many times I feel I know you. It’s wonderful to see you, so wonderful . . . He would have been so happy . . . But sit, sit!”
A lump in his throat, Thomas sat next to Saran under a huge painting of his friend in traditional Perso-Mongol clothes. Faiza sat down in a large leather armchair, and poured chai into three glasses.
“He would have been so happy to see you,” she resumed, lifting the glass to her lips and blowing gently over the surface. “He was so proud of you . . . Have you read his book?”
Thomas nodded, although he didn’t want to explain under what circumstances. Ole would have undoubtedly been much less proud of him . . .
Politics, not-Markus. Always politics. They’re an evil wind one must follow.
“Please, tell me your story . . . How you came here . . .”
As a legendary bard, leaving the annoying pieces out, Thomas told her most of his story, stressing all the parts that featured Ole. When he was finished, he realized that Faiza was silently crying, two discreet silvery lines glimmering down her cheeks.
She held out a hand, which he grasped.
“You know he wrote beautiful poetry . . .” she said, almost gasping. “A lot of it was inspired by his experience with you.”
Thomas nodded, not knowing what to say. He felt Saran shift position on the sofa, pressing herself softly against him.
“And I’m sure a lot was inspired by you, too” he finally said, recovering his voice. “Much better poems than the ones I inspired, no doubt.”
She smiled and wiped her tears with both hands.
“I have something for you.”
She got up and disappeared into a small study. Saran quickly kissed him on the lips and winked.
“There,” Faiza said, coming back and giving him a book.
Thomas couldn’t read the title, printed in elaborate Perso-Mongol calligraphy.
“It’s called The Traveler’s Songs, and it’s dedicated to you . . . See . . .”
She gently made him open the collection on the first page. Something was written. His name, in Perso-Mongol.
The gift is always given at the end of the journey, not-Mathias. The story is eternal.
He was about to thank her when someone violently banged on the door.
“Police! Open up!”
They looked at each other with surprise, and Thomas saw fear flicker in the women’s eyes. Gesturing them to remain seated, Faiza went to open the door.
Fifty Five.
Inspector-General Ali Shakr Bassam mentally thanked his lucky star. He had been right to trust those local hoodlums. They had called him as soon as a stranger had appeared to contact Tazar’s widow. An Eleni. Of course, the man could be anybody—a friend, a tourist, a journalist. But who knew? He might also have been connected with something bigger, much bigger than themselves, that had to do with Tazar’s murder. When he turned his hand into a fist to bang on the door, it was the fist of vengeance. No, better than that—it was the fist of justice.
Fifty Six.
Inspector-General Ali Shakr Bassam looked at Thomas with unconcealed surprise. What was the h
ero of a Jules Verne novel and of a bad TV series doing here? And where was his tiger?
“Thomas, this is Inspector-General Bassam.”
Thomas nodded and stood up, extending a hand. Somewhat stunned, the policeman shook it rapidly.
“Yes, we’ve met,” the Eleni said.
“Indeed,” Bassam said, recovering his martial air. “But your name wasn’t Thomas, if I recall correctly.”
The Eleni’s face blanched.
This is too easy, the policeman thought, whatever is going on here. The guy is an amateur. The Western Alliance is probably suffering from budget cuts again.
“I have something to explain,” the Eleni (Thomas now) said.
The young woman who was sitting next to Thomas stood and took his hand.
How long had they known each other? What did she really know about him? And what was Faiza’s role in all of this?
“My real name is Thomas Wesenberg. I was part of the Potemkin Crew. I want to ask for political asylum.”
Inspector-General Ali Shakr Bassam opened his mouth, then closed it slowly. Why did it always have to fall on him?
Freejazz
Fifty Seven.
In the back of the little Diamant, Thomas re-lived various episodes of his life, in broken sequences. Saran sat next to him, talking to the inspector-general who was behind the wheel. They were talking too fast for him to understand, but it didn’t matter. He felt relieved and scared at the same time—open gates, closed gates?
Ah, not-Markus, not-Mathias, can any gate be otherwise? Timing is essential and I am your time now. I am entirely yours.
In spite of himself, Thomas smiled at his own reflection in the window. It didn’t smile back.
Fifty Eight.
Ali Shakr Bassam hated Bureau 23 headquarters with all his heart. Although he was nothing of a revolutionary, he resented secret services from all over the world, including his own city. Things had to be done in the open. That was the best guarantee for a regime. If only the king could understand that . . . He tried to cover his thoughts as he talked to the security officer who had stopped them in the huge, impeccable, gray marble hall.
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