The Empire Of The Wolves

by Jean-Christophe Grangé

  Finally, at noon on Tuesday, they crossed the final frontier and reached the hub. The compact block known as Little Turkey, covering Rue des Petites-Ecuries, the courtyard and passageway of the same name, Rue d'Enghien, Rue de l'Echiquier and Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis. Only a few acres, but here all the buildings were inhabited by Turks from the basement to the attic.

  This time, Schiffer deciphered the scene for him, providing the access codes to this unique village. He revealed the purpose behind each doorway, each building, each window. This yard led to a goods depot that was in fact a mosque; that unfurnished room at the far end of a patio was the headquarters of an extreme left-wing group… Schiffer lit all the lanterns for Paul, clearing up mysteries that had been baffling him for weeks-such as why there were always two fair-haired men dressed in black in the Cour des Petites-Ecuries.

  "They're Lazes," the Cipher explained. "From the Black Sea, in northeastern Turkey. They're fighters, warriors. Mustafa Kemel himself employed them as bodyguards. Their legend goes back a long way. In Greek mythology, they were the guardians of the Golden Fleece in Colchis."

  Or the shadowy bar on Rue des Petites-Ecuries, which contained a photo of a large man with a mustache.

  "It's the headquarters of the Kurds. And the picture's of Apo, or 'uncle' Abdullah Ocalan, the head of the PKK (Partiya Karkeran Kurdistan), or Kurdistan Workers' Party who's now in prison."

  The Cipher then entered into a grandiose speech that was almost a national anthem.

  "The greatest nation without a state. Twenty-five million of them in all, twelve million in Turkey. Like the Turks, they're Muslims. Like the Turks, they wear mustaches. Like the Turks, they work in sweatshops. The only problem is that they're not Turks, and nothing and nobody will ever make them change."

  Schiffer then introduced him to the Alevis, who met on Rue d'Enghien.

  "They're called 'redheads.' They're Shiite Muslims who practice a secret rite. And they're hard nuts, take my word for it… rebels, often leftists. And also an extremely close community based on initiation and friendship. They choose an 'oath brother' or 'initiate companion' and advance together toward God. They're a real force of resistance against traditional Islam."

  When Schiffer spoke like that, he seemed to have a hidden respect for these peoples he at the same time constantly derided. In reality, he had a love-hate relationship with the Turkish world. Paul even remembered a rumor according to which Schiffer had almost married a woman from Anatolia. What had happened? How had the story ended? It was generally when he was beginning to imagine a superb romance between Schiffer and the East that his partner came out with some terrible racist outburst.

  The two men were now sitting in their unmarked car, an ancient Golf that police headquarters had agreed to lend Paul at the outset of his inquiries. They were parked at the corner of Rue des Petites-Ecuries and Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, just in front of the Château d'Eau bar.

  Night was falling and mingling with the rain to melt the scene into colorless, muddy sludge. Paul looked at his watch. It was 8:30.

  "What the hell are we doing here, Schiffer? We should have gone for Marius today and-"

  "Patience. The concert's about to start."

  "What concert?"

  Schiffer was fidgeting on his seat, flattening down the creases in his Barbour.

  "I've already told you-Marius has a concert hall on Boulevard de Strasbourg. It's an old porn cinema. There's a show on this evening. Ills bodyguards will be taking care of the door." He winked. "It's an ideal time to pay him a call." He pointed at the street in front of them. "Start up and turn down Rue du Château d'Eau."

  Paul did so moodily. Mentally, he had given the Cipher just one chance. If he failed with Marius, then he would take him straight back to the home in Longéres. But he was also impatient to see this monster at work.

  "Park on the other side of Boulevard de Strasbourg," Schiffer ordered. "If we have problems, we can always leave via an emergency exit I know"

  Paul drove across the street, up another block, then parked at the corner of Rue Bouchardon. "There won't be any problems, Schiffer."

  "Give me the photos."

  He hesitated, then passed him the envelope containing the photos of the corpses. Schiffer smiled, then opened the car door. "Just give me a free hand, and everything will be fine."

  Paul then got out as well, thinking, One chance, you old bugger. One and no more.

  24

  In the concert hall, the beat was so strong that it obscured any other sensation. The shock wave hit you in the belly, stripping bare your nerves, then dived into your heels before surging back up your vertebrae, making them vibrate like the strips of a vibraphone.

  Paul instinctively sank his head into his shoulders and bent double, as though dodging blows being rained on his stomach, chest and both sides of his head, where his eardrums were ablaze. He blinked to get his bearings in the smoky atmosphere while projectors on the stage were turning.

  Finally, he made out the décor: carved, gilded balustrades, stucco columns, fake crystal chandeliers, heavy crimson curtains… Schiffer had mentioned a former cinema, but it instead reminded him of the ancient kitsch of an old cabaret. A kind of music hall for operettas with frilly shirts, in which ghosts wearing brilliantine would have refused to yield their places to furious neometal groups.

  On the stage, the musicians were writhing about, chanting their endless fuckin' and killin'. Bare-chested, gleaming with sweat and fever, they were wielding their guitars, mikes and drums as if they were assault rifles, raising the first rows in violent waves.

  Paul left the bar and went down onto the floor. Diving in among the crowd, he felt suddenly nostalgic for the concerts of his youth: pogoing furiously jumping like a spring to the heady riffs of the Clash: the four chords learned on his secondhand guitar, which he ended up selling when its strings started to remind him too much of the bloody zigzags in his father's car seat.

  He realized that he had lost sight of Schiffer. He turned around, staring at the spectators who had remained at the top of the steps, by the bar. They were standing nonchalantly glass in hand, deigning to respond to the frenzy on the stage by a mere slight swing of their hips. Paul looked among their shadowy faces, ringed with colored beams. No Schiffer.

  Suddenly, a voice burst into his ear: "Wanna score?"

  Paul turned around to see a livid face, gleaming beneath its cap. "What?”

  “I've got some great Black Bombays."

  "You've got what?"

  The man leaned over, hooking a hand over Paul's shoulder. "Black Bombays, Dutch ones. Where've you been hiding?"

  Paul pushed him away and produced his tricolor card.

  "That's where. Now piss off before I run you in."

  The man vanished like a blown-out flame. Paul stared for a moment at his cardholder, with the stamp of the police, and measured the gulf benveen the concerts of back then and his present profile: an intransigent police officer, upholding law and order, implacably shaking up the dregs of society. Could he have imagined that twenty years back?

  Someone tapped him on the back.

  "Are you nuts?" Schiffer yelled. "Put that thing away!"

  Paul was running with sweat. He tried to swallow but could not. Everything trembled around him and the sparkling lights dislocated the faces, crumpling them up like sheets of aluminum foil.

  The Cipher tapped him again, more amicably this time, on the arm. "Come on. Marius is here. We'll catch him in his lair."

  They headed off between the crush of shifting, waving bodies: a frenetic sea of shoulders and hips writhing in time, brutally, instinctively, with the rhythms being spat from the stage. By elbowing their way through, the two cops managed to reach the front.

  Schiffer then turned right, below the acute wafflings of the guitars that were surging from the loudspeakers. Paul had a hard time keeping up with him. He noticed that Schiffer was talking with a bouncer while the amplifier hummed furiously. The man nodded and o
pened a concealed door. Paul just had time to slip in through the gap. It led into a narrow, corridor. Posters gleamed on the walls. On most of them, the Turkish crescent and the Communist hammer were joined into a political symbol.

  Schiffer explained, "Marius is head of an extreme left-wing group on Rue Jarry. It was his pals who set fire to the Turkish prisons last year."

  Paul vaguely remembered hearing about those riots, but he asked no questions. This was no time for geopolitics. The two men set off. The music continued to echo dully in their backs.

  Without stopping, Schiffer sneered, "Putting on concerts was a smart move. A real captive market."

  "Sorry?"

  "Marius also has a hand in dealing. Ecstasy. Uppers. Anything with speed in it."

  Paul blinked.

  "Or LSD. With these concerts, he can build up his own clientele. He's a winner every way"

  It occurred to Paul to ask, "Do you know what Black Bombays are?”

  “They're all the rage these days. It's Ecstasy cut with heroin."

  How come a fifty-nine-year-old man, just out of a retirement home, knew the latest E trends? Another mystery.

  "It's ideal when coming down," he went on. "After the excitement of speed, the heroin is calming. It's an easy passage from saucer eyes to pinhead pupils."

  "Pinhead pupils?"

  "Of course heroin puts you to sleep. A junkie's always dozing off" He stopped. "I don't get it. You've never worked on a drug bust before?"

  "I spent four years in the drug squad. But that doesn't make me a druggie."

  The Cipher gave him his finest smile. "How can you fight something you've never experienced? How can you understand the enemy if you don't know his strengths? You have to know what kids are looking for in that shit. And the strength of drugs is that they're good. Jesus, if you don't know that, there's no point even trying to bust them."

  Paul recalled his initial idea: Jean-Louis Schiffer, father of all cops, half hero, half demon, the best and the worst brought together in one man. He swallowed his anger. His partner had set off again. A last bend, then two giants dressed in leather coats appeared on either side of a black-painted door.

  The cop with the crew cut produced his card. Paul shivered. Where had this relic come from? This detail seemed to confirm their current situation. It was now the Cipher who was calling the shots. To make matters even worse, he started speaking in Turkish.

  The bodyguard hesitated, then raised his hand to knock at the door. Schiffer stopped rapidly and opened the handle himself. On going in, he barked at Paul over his shoulder: "Not a word from you during the questioning."

  Paul wanted to answer back appropriately, but he did not have time. This interview was going to be his initiation.

  25

  "Salaam aleikum, Marius!"

  The man slumped in his desk chair nearly toppled backward. "Schiffer? Aleikum salaam, my brother!"

  Marek Cesiuz was already back in control. He stood up, grinning broadly, and walked around his iron desk. He was wearing a red-and gold football shirt, the colors of Galatasaray. His scrawny body floated in the satiny material like a banner on the terraces. It was impossible to guess how old he was. His reddish gray hair looked like still-smoldering cinders. His features were frozen into an expression of cold joy, which gave him the sinister look of an ancient child. His coppery skin accentuated his robotic face and melded into his rusty hair.

  The two men embraced effusively. The windowless office, with its piles of papers, was saturated with smoke. Cigarette burns dotted the carpet. All the decorations seemed to date back to the 1970s: silvery cabinets and round lamps, tom-tom stools, lamps suspended like mobiles, conic lampshades.

  In a corner, Paul noticed a printing press, a photocopier, two binding machines and a guillotine. The perfect outfit for a political militant.

  Marius's hearty laughter drowned out the distant din of the music. "How long has it been?"

  "At my age, you stop counting."

  "We missed you, my brother. We really did."

  The Turk spoke French without an accent. They embraced once more. Their playacting had reached its peak.

  "And the children?" Schiffer asked in a bantering tone.

  "They grow up too quickly. I don't take my eyes off them for fear of missing something!"

  "And my little Ali?"

  Marius aimed a punch at Schiffer's belly, which stopped well before contact. "He's the quickest of them all!"

  Suddenly, he seemed to notice Paul. His eyes froze over, while his lips remained smiling. "So you're back at work?" he asked the Cipher.

  "Just for a simple consultation. Let me introduce you to Captain Paul Nerteaux."

  Paul hesitated, then put out his hand, but no one took it. He contemplated his empty fingers in that overbright room, full of fake smiles and the smell of cigarettes. Then, to keep up appearances, he took a look at a pile of handbills lying to his right.

  "Still writing your Bolshevik stuff?" Schiffer asked.

  "It's ideals that keep us alive."

  The officer grabbed a sheet and translated out loud: ".. When the workers control the means of production.." He laughed. "I thought you'd grown out of this sort of crap."

  "Schiffer, my friend, it's the sort of crap that will outlive us.”

  “Only if someone keeps reading it."

  Marius had recovered his complete smile, lips and eyes in unison. "Some tea, my friends?" Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed a large thermos flask and filled three earthenware cups. Applause was making the walls tremble.

  "Aren't you fed up with those creeps?"

  Marius sat back down behind his desk, his chair against the wall. He slowly raised his cup to his mouth. "Music is the food of peace, my brother. Even this sort. In my country the kids listen to the same bands as they do here. Rock will unite the future generations. It will wipe out what's left of our differences."

  Schiffer pressed down the guillotine and raised his cup. "To hard rock!"

  The way Marius's form shifted oddly beneath his shirt seemed to express both amusement and weariness. "Schiffer, you didn't come all this way, and bring this kid with you, to talk about music or our old ideals."

  The Cipher sat down on the edge of the desk, sized up the Turk for a moment, then removed the horrifying photos from the envelope. Their disfigured faces scattered over the first drafts of posters.

  Marius drew back into his chair. "What on earth are you showing me, my brother?"

  "Three women. Three bodies discovered in your precinct. Between November and now. My colleague thinks they're illegal immigrants. So I thought you might be able to tell us more." His tone had changed. It sounded as if Schiffer had stitched each syllable with barbed wire.

  "That's news to me," Marius said.

  Schiffer smiled knowingly. "The whole neighborhood must have been talking about little else ever since the first murder. So tell us what you know and we'll all save a lot of time."

  The dealer absentmindedly picked up a packet of Karos. the local filterless cigarettes, and took one out. "My brother, I have no idea what you're talking about."

  Schiffer stood back up and adopted the tone of a fairground barker: "Marek Cesiuz, emperor of falsity and lies, king of smuggling and con tricks…" He broke into a raucous laugh. Which was also a roar, then stared down darkly at him. "Talk, you piece of shit. before I lose my temper."

  The Turk's face went as hard as glass. Sitting up straight in his chair, he lit his cigarette. "You've got nothing, Schiffer. No warrant, no witnesses, no clues. You've just come here to ask for advice that I can't give you. I'm sorry" He pointed at the door with a long flurry of gray smoke. "Now, you'd better leave with your friend and put an end to this misunderstanding."

  Schiffer planted his heels in the scorched carpet and faced the desk. "The only misunderstanding here is you. Everything's fake in this fucking office. These stupid handbills are fake. You don't give a shit about the last of the Commies rotting in prison in your coun
try"

  "You-"

  "Your passion for music is fake. A Muslim like you thinks that rock is the work of the devil. If you could burn down your own concert hail, you wouldn't hesitate for a moment."

  Marius motioned to get up, but Schiffer pushed him back.

  "Your cupboards are full of fake paperwork. You're no fucking workaholic. All this is run on smuggling and slavery!" He went over to the guillotine and stroked its blade. "You know as well as I do that this thing is just for cutting up your strips of acid into tabs." He opened his arms, in a theatrical gesture, and addressed the grimy ceiling: "O my brother, tell me about these women before I turn your office over and find enough to pack you off to Fleury for years!"

  Marek Cesiuz kept glancing at the door.

  The Cipher stood behind him and leaned over his ear. "Three women, Marius." He massaged his shoulders. "In less than four months. Tortured, disfigured, thrown onto the street. You brought them to France. Now give me their files, and we'll go."

  The distant pulses of the concert filled the silence.

  Then, sounding like the Turk's heart beating inside his carcass, Marek murmured, "I don't have them anymore."

  "Why not?"

  "I destroyed them. When the girls died, I threw away their records. No traces, no problems."

  Paul was starting to get worried, but he appreciated this revelation. For the first time, the object of his inquiries had become real. The three victims had existed as women. They started to take form before his eyes. The corpses had become illegal immigrants.