by Maggy Diak
13.
Kate couldn't keep from me that she felt hurt because I went out the previous night on my own. But she said nothing. We checked the information revealed to me by J.E. It was correct. As a child, Isabelle lived in poverty. God knows why she was hiding it. However, she was hiding it well. It seemed that even Maurice knew nothing about her real status or situation. When he had told me that at our first meeting, I believed him. Thinking back now, calling his face into my memory, I was still convinced he did not lie. His face was honest. Nevertheless, everything is possible, isn’t it?
“She must have suffered because of her home situation otherwise she wouldn’t keep it in such a secret,” Kate said.
“Probably.”
“I can’t really blame her.”
“But I do. There are thousands and thousands of people in the world that are poor and illegitimate. I guess it is not easy, nevertheless, to suffer and feel ashamed is too much. It is stupid!”
Kate sighed. “Who knows what she had to go through as a child. It is easier for a child to have both, a mother and a father.”
“It depends. It depends on the kind of a father she would have. I have met tens and tens of children whose life was a hell just because of their fathers.”
“You are probably right. Unlike many poor children, she managed to go to University. She must have been given a scholarship if her mother was so poor. As a factory worker, she probably didn't earn much.”
“I guess so. And she didn't go to any University. She attended the prestigious Sorbonne!”
“No wonder she didn't want anybody to know about her past. About her poverty.” Kate’s face got lit by faint smile: “Especially if she intended to become a ruler.”
“My dear Kate,” I said laughingly, “it’s obvious you hadn’t read your husband's works. If you had, you would know that poverty in that case was her advantage not disadvantage.”
“How?”
“Well, it connects her to Joseph the Egyptian whose adequate she is supposed to be. I don't remember the exact words but it goes like this: Joseph the Egyptian, whose adequate is Marat and whose adequate will be the new European ruler, was poor as a child and despised by his brothers. He was even thrown into a well. In the end, he became rich and influential, but before that he had to suffer a lot.
So, Isabelle might believe that having been poor at the beginning of her life, suffering because of that was a guarantee that she would later become influential and rich. Just like Joseph the Egyptian.”
“You've become an expert in explaining my husband's work,” Kate laughed. “I understand what you have said, but I don’t get why to hide poverty if it is, in fact, her blessing?”
“By hiding it she might avoid the ‘being thrown into the well’ part of Joseph’s destiny. Who knows?”
“Maurice is a riddle to me, “said Kate after a while. “He seemed to be so honest. But if he knew about Isabelle's childhood …”
My cell phone rang.
“Listen, Tibor, the police caught that French student, Maurice,” said Frank.
“What? “I cried, “caught where?”
“Here in Slovenia. He had broken into Peter and Kate's house.”
For quite a time, I was speechless of shock. Then I asked: “But why, Frank?”
“I don't know,” he said. “I visited him in jail, however, he wouldn't talk to me. He insists on bringing him to you. He says he'll tell you everything. But Tibor, you know this is against the law. We'll have to hand him over to the French police.”
“Frank, don't! Don't do that. If I want to find Kate's husband, I need him.”
“For Christ's sake, Tibor …”
“Please, Frank, do me the favor. Make an exception.”
“It's not an exception! It's breaking the law!”
“Frank, please …”
“OK. One of my men will accompany him. Where should he bring him?”
“To St. Remy.”
“To St. Rémy? What, the hell, are you doing there?”
“Looking for Peter Otrin, what else. Listen, Frank, I met J.E. in St. Rémy. I told him Maurice was missing. I didn't know he was in Slovenia. J.E. immediately ran in search for him. If he finds him before me, Maurice will end in jail as a terrorist. To J.E., everybody in any connection with Otrin is a terrorist and you know what that means nowadays. I'll never have a chance to investigate him.”
“OK, you'll have him this evening. But not a word to anybody!”
“Of course! I promise. Thank you, Frank.”
I told Kate, who was staring at me scared to death, what Frank had told me. Her eyes widened when I told her that Maurice had broken into their house.
“But why? What was he looking for?”
“I don't know. He'll tell us in the evening.”
Maurice looked pale, disheveled, tired.
“I strongly advise you not to try any foolishness or otherwise I will immediately hand you over to J.E.,” I warned him after we had entered the room we were going to share. He promised. He was so scared that he didn't even dare to ask what we were doing in St. Rémy. In Isabelle's birthplace.
My first question was what he was doing in Kate and Peter's house.
“I was looking for the code,” he said in a tired voice.
“The code! Again the code!” I cried in a fit of temper. “Are you all mad? J.E. is running around the world looking for a code about terrorists, you are looking for … What, the hell, what code are you looking for?”
He closed his eyes. I thought he had fallen asleep, but after a few moments he said almost whisperingly: “Tibor, I lied to you.”
“I already know that! What did you lie about?”
“I did not tell the real reason for Professor and Isabelle's kidnapping.”
“Of course you didn't, and believe me or not, I know why. You lied because you didn't want me to know that the reason for their disappearance was Isabelle being the new European ruler.”
He looked at me surprised: “How did you find out?”
“I have my sources!” He did not deserve the truth.
“I didn't have the slightest idea she would go so far,” he stammered.
“So far? What do you mean?”
“It never came to my mind that she would kidnap Professor by herself.”
“Kidnap?” That was beyond my expectation. “Are you saying that Isabelle kidnapped Peter Otrin? She, him?”
He nodded. “I don't know how she succeeded in doing it all by herself. Without any help.”
“Without any help? Who else could have helped her? You?”
Again, he nodded. “We agreed to take him to a place where nobody would find him. We intended to keep him in isolation until he told us the code for 12 – helix DNA.”
“A code for 12 – helix DNA? What the hell is that again?”
“Well, it is something, which would help Isabelle to rule better. It …”
“Maurice, I sincerely hope you do not believe all this crap about the new European ruler! Least of all that it is going to be Isabelle.”
He hesitatingly shrugged his shoulders. “To tell you the truth I believe that everything is possible. Isabelle studied Professor's theories to the last detail. I didn’t. I am not good in languages, words, sounds. However, she says she found a strong proof that the fate chose her to be the ruler. It is not fictitious evidence! It is a scientific one. It lies in her names Isabelle-Victoria and in the names of the country and town where she was born. I cannot contradict that. If she has proofs, then there must be some truth in it. I just wanted to help her. Ruling over such a big region without any experience would be extraordinarily difficult. So, if she was clairvoyant, well, if Professor knows the word with which we could unlock the part of our DNA in which our supernatural abilities are hidden.”
I closed my eyes, grabbed my head with both hands and only after taking a deep breath, answered: “For God's sake, Maurice, have you all gone mad or what? You yourself told me when we met that you stopped being int
erested in Otrin’s lectures after you had found out they had nothing to do with science!”
“It is different with Isabelle's name,” he said meekly. “This explanation is scientific. And regarding DNA, well, he tells things that shouldn't be neglected. They might not be quite scientific, but science could use them. Tibor, I know, I am well aware that all this sounds crazy, yet believe me, in the part of the DNA, which is now believed to be inactive, is hidden much more than you can imagine!
The Professor discovered a great secret with the help of words, with the help of etymology; I am nearing it through genetics. If we combine the two, we can in our DNA awake abilities like telepathy, clairvoyance, the ability of teleportation and even immortality that had fallen asleep long long ago. Just imagine a ruler with all these capabilities! He or she would be invincible! That's why we needed the Professor.”
He is mad, I heard a voice shouting in my head. Totally, completely mad! But I had neither time nor right to fight his stupid ideas.
“OK, let's forget the supernatural for a while. I'd like you to tell me something else. How is it possible that Isabelle alone kidnapped Otrin if you agreed to do it together? Where were you at that time?”
“I was on a seminar on genetics in Toulouse. Before I went, she said we would do it together. She would wait. Why she didn't isn't clear to me either. I tried to reach her on her cell phone, but I couldn't.”
He looked at me helplessly: “I can't answer that question.”
“I can't imagine, how a thin, small girl was able to kidnap a man. It’s true that he is not heavy, all bones and skin, nevertheless, there is no way she would manage to tie him, lift him and throw him into a car or carry him into a flat.”
“She did not tie or carry him,” answered Maurice, “she probably intimidated him with a razor.”
“With a razor?”
“We decided to threaten him with a razor if he caused trouble. Of course, we did not intend to hurt him. Just to frighten,” he explained.
“Of course!” I said sarcastically. The idea couldn't be more innocent.
I looked at Kate. She did not understand my conversation with Maurice, so I translated it. All except the part with the razor. I did not want to frighten her. When I told her that Maurice helped Isabelle to plan the kidnapping of Peter, she suddenly jumped into Maurice and started to beat him with her fists. I quickly shoved her away.
“Are you crazy?” I cried.
“Crazy?” she screamed. “I am crazy? That beast set a trap to my husband! Who knows what that mad girl is going to do to him!”
She burst into tears. Suddenly she became old. Old and desperate. A wave of pity swept over me. Thank God I kept the information of the razor to myself.
“Calm down, Kate,” I said soothingly, “she won't hurt him. Now that we know who has him, we'll find him soon.”
I turned back to Maurice. “Do you know of any place, hotel maybe, in Paris or in the nearby surrounding where Isabelle might have taken Otrin?”
“No, I don’t,” he answered. “After her disappearance, I visited all her co-workers, and they couldn’t help me either.”
“Do you believe they were telling the truth?”
He said he was sure they were.
“Isabelle had no friends,” he continued. “As far as I know there wasn’t a person she was close to. Close enough to confide in them.”
“Maurice, try to remember all the places Isabelle has ever been to or has mentioned. Is there an abandoned house? A flat?”
He vigorously shook his head. “No, I know of no such place.”
A place hidden to the eyes, a place where Isabelle would feel safe and sure that nobody was going to bother her, a place … Suddenly it dawned on me that the most probable place would be her flat in St. Rémy. Of course! That's why J.E. came to St. Rémy. He expected to find Peter and Isabelle here. He obviously didn't, but that didn't mean they hadn’t been in St. Rémy. J.E. undoubtedly examined the flat thoroughly. If he had found any traces, he didn't tell me. Understandable. I wouldn't either.
“I think Isabelle brought Peter here, to St. Rémy,” I said. Maurice’s jaw dropped. “To St. Rémy? Here?”
I nodded. “St. Rémy is Isabelle's birthplace. A place far from Paris. A place where nobody knows her anymore. J.E. told me she seldom returned and never for more than two days. And nobody ever saw her. This place meant an ideal hiding place.”
Without waiting for Maurice to answer or without bothering to tell Kate what Maurice and I had been talking about, I called my friend in Slovenia.
“Frank, that student girl brought Otrin to St. Rémy. I am sure of that. Do you have any idea how to find out if anybody saw them on the highway? The way from Paris to St. Rémy is long, they had to stop a few times.”
Frank was silent for a few moments. Then his harsh voice said: “I'll see what I can do. But it will not be easy because the case is in the hands of the French police.”
“I know Frank.”
“Well, “he sighed,” I'll let you know if and when I get the information.”
I turned back to Maurice. “Why did Isabelle lie about her parents and sister? Why did she say that the parents were wealthy lawyers and her sister a director of a well-known museum?”
Maurice's face became red with anger. “She didn't lie! This is all true!”
“O no, Maurice, it isn't,” I said, feeling no pity for him. I never pity those who let themselves be fooled by others. I told him that Isabelle didn't have a sister, didn't have a father, and she was not wealthy. She was terribly poor. He was shocked and at first did not want to believe me. His reaction confirmed that he really had no idea who Isabelle really was or where she and Peter were. Nevertheless, I went on torturing him.
“Isabelle is your fiancée, isn't she?”
“I have already told you!”
“Answer my question!”
“Yes, she is.”
“Do you love her?”
“That's none of your business!”
“Answer!”
He nodded.
“Does she love you?”
“For God's sake what do these questions have to do with her disappearance?”
His face became crimson.
“Maybe nothing but they certainly tell you a lot about her love to you,” I said insolently. “What kind of love is it if you do not tell the person with whom you plan to spend the rest of your life, who you really are? Or if you run away with another man?”
“She did not escape with the Professor, she kidnapped him!”
“Believe it if you want,” I said, “but don't forget that she's been lying to you about almost everything. Have you never, in all four years that you spent together, wished to meet her parents and sister?”
“Of course I have. But whenever we had some free time and that was not often, we are both very busy at the University, her parents were away. They traveled a lot and her sister was constantly on a business trip. And St. Rémy is not so near.”
“Maurice, have you never suspected she was telling lies?”
“No, never.” He buried his face in his hands. I waited. After a moment of silence, he said: “When Isabelle disappeared my first thought was that the Professor kidnapped her.”
“He her? Why?”
“For money, I guess.”
“Money? What do you mean by that?”
“Well, if it is true that Isabelle is to be the next European ruler, if he has proofs then somebody might be willing to pay ransom for her release.”
“Who, for example?”
“I don't know. Somebody. People. Governments …”
Oh my God, I thought, almighty God!
Aloud I asked: “Did you expect to find Isabelle in Otrin's house? Is that why you broke into it?” He nodded. “Yes. Knowing that he does not know Paris or France or other countries well enough to find a good hiding place, for he had never before been abroad, the only logical place was his home.”
“Do I get you right
? You believed that Otrin made Isabelle go with him by threatening her with … with whatever! After they had passed all the checkpoints without arousing the slightest suspicion, they boarded the plane and flew off?”
“I know it was stupid to think so,” he answered crestfallen. “But I was so worried and confused … I was just not able to think clearly.”
“Okay, okay. Tell me, what was the first thought that entered your mind when you didn't find them in the Slovenian flat?”
“I began to suspect.”
“Suspect what?”
“That the Professor did not kidnap her … that they double-crossed me.”
“Both of them?”
“Both of them,” he answered bitterly. “Suddenly it became clear to me that they had made the plan to run away after I'd told them I would attend the seminar. They decided to find the code by themselves. I guess Isabelle won him over by promising him an attractive post after she became the ruler.”
“What attractive post? To be her lover?”
“Maurice’s dark eyes became darker with anger. “Of course not! As an advisor.”
“And after she had won him over with her promise, she started to show him her true colors with the razor?”
“Yes.”
“What are the possibilities that she’ll use it?”
“It is possible but unlikely.”
“Why?”
“Because she desperately needs him. Without him, she’ll never reach her goal. On the other side … If he doesn’t obey her she might lose her temper. Her wish to follow the steps she thinks her fate prepared for her is so strong … Well, I really don't know.”
“There's something else I want to know. Why did you break into Mr. Otrin's room?”
Maurice frowned. “I told you! I thought I'd find Isabelle.”
“I don't mean his flat in Slovenia, I mean your breaking into his Parisian hotel room the third day after his arrival. I know it was you!”
“No, I wasn’t!”
“Yes, you were!”
“How can you be so sure?” He gritted his teeth in anger.
To tell the truth, I wasn't till I learned that he had broken into Otrin's flat in Slovenia. At that moment, it dawned on me that criminals act according to a pattern. If Maurice had the guts to go to Slovenia, to a foreign country, he had never been to before, just to break into a flat, risking to be seen by people who would find him suspicious, risking to be caught, then he must have done a similar act before. Yes, I was sure!
“I just am,” I answered. “And there is no need to lie to me!”
He gave in. “Yes, I did,” he confessed finally. “Isabelle was convinced that Professor was hiding the code in his room. At that time, she was still planning that she and I were to get it from the Professor. She did not exclude me yet. Well, she was sure that in his room there had to be a file, a piece of paper, a notebook, something containing the code. I went to look for it. Luckily, the balcony door was open. But to my horror Professor came back earlier as I expected and I had to run.”
“Leaving the room in a total mess,” I finished. “I was wondering what a burglar does not clean the place after himself, thus removing all evidence. I suspected an amateur.”
“I know. But there was no time.”
“Besides,” I added mockingly, “you must have probably already figured out by then how inefficient the French Police, led by J.E. was and so you needn’t worry.”
Then I added seriously: “You didn't find the code, I guess.”
“No, I didn’t.” His face lit up when he continued: “But I found the proof of the existence of the twelve helix DNA!”
“You must be kidding!”
“Here, see for yourself.”
“Not another lecture,” I grimaced, seeing a piece of paper in his hand. Nevertheless, I took it and read.