The Thirteenth Bullet
Page 12
‘“Unsteadily, Râ walks towards a fantastically illuminated cave. Anubis would learn later that the light seeps out from a rock hidden deep down in the abyss. Râ approaches it, whilst the fox-god, dazzled, overwhelmed, but already more vigorous, spies on him. The great god picks up a handful of earth and eats it. Then he lies down on the same ground and goes to sleep. All night long Anubis contemplates him. He sees youth return to Ammon’s limbs. In the morning, a radiant adolescent once again, Râ will continue his mission.”
‘“Now, with great difficulty, I had managed to decipher the story on the papyrus. That was useful training, and what I learnt from it allowed me to continue the translation. The second part described the voyage of Anubis. And I was surprised by the precision of the information. The further I got into the narrative, the more I felt I would be able to follow the god’s journey. Where would his steps have led me? I don’t know, but what I do know is that Pharaoh had thus hidden an extraordinary secret. The papyrus, written in strange symbols, was a kind of cryptogramme, to which the legend was the key.
‘“So, what was the secret? The facts came back to me. The story of Geb, burnt by Râ’s uraeus, put me on the right track. Egyptian priests had found... radium. They recognised its power, simultaneously beneficial and deadly. They discovered a huge source, hidden in an inaccessible place, known only to them. A horrible death awaited the unwary. And, from what I understood—it’s very obscure—the place could be the centre of significant radiation which the writers of the papyrus apparently didn’t know how to control, but which modern science could utilise.
‘“One thing seems certain: only vague echoes of this story have reached the public, and they were the source of rumours about the philosopher’s stone. In that secret place, matter is so unstable that its transmutations can spontaneously transform any base metal into gold. Samples were brought to the Pharaoh’s court. One of them came into my possession. I shan’t say any more. What’s gone before is enough to demonstrate the power of this secret. The man who possesses it will dominate the world. He will be immensely rich and infinitely powerful.
‘“I continue reading the clues in the papyrus, and I translate them here: Isis spoke to Anubis on December 22nd, the day of the winter solstice. The moon was in its first quarter. The eclipse of the sun thus announced took place at the next new moon, thirteen days later, in other words, January 13th. It is on the evening of January 15th that Anubis begins his voyage. Its direction is determined by the line joining the south angle of the Great Pyramid to a mound situated to the west, the one which, on January 15th, the two-day-old moon kisses with its disc at the same time the sun disappears over the horizon. We even know the distance: between January 15th and the summer solstice, one hundred and sixty-five times twenty-four hours. It’s only necessary to determine the direction of the line from the Great Pyramid to the mound and its length, and prolong it one hundred and fifty-five times in its own direction. That will reveal the opening of the secret valley. The rest speaks for itself.
‘“But, some will say, why didn’t I use the document myself? I tried. It’s impossible without placing oneself in the precise conditions described. There are too many mounds to choose from, and even the smallest error, multiplied by one hundred and fifty-five, will result in a huge gap. Now, as we know, the cycle of the moon covers nineteen years. It’s enough to consult any almanac to know that the first year for which the moon is new on January 13th is 19... The measure should have taken place on January 15th, 19...”’
‘But that was the day before yesterday!’ exclaimed Bernès.
The professor responded briefly in the affirmative.
The document stopped there. There was a long silence. Each of us reflected on what he had just heard.
‘It’s not amusing,’ grumbled Bernès. ‘We have all the elements to hand, but once again we’re too late to use them. Forty-eight hours earlier—.’
‘I know,’ cut in Richard. ‘The deciphering was completed yesterday at nearly midnight. I drew your attention to the fact that it was a particularly delicate operation.’
‘Think about it. If the Cairo police had been notified on Saturday at midday, we could have arrested the bandit that same evening, at sundown.’
‘Don’t be silly, Romain. You can’t believe that it was the man in grey who took such steps. The calculations can’t be done by just anyone. Only an astronomer could do it.’
‘Duroyer wanted to go there!’
‘Maybe he was deluding himself.’
‘But we still have a chance. Whoever it is, the man there is only at the start of the trail. We have to do something.’
‘At five minutes after midnight, I knew the contents of the message. At half-past, despite the late hour, I was in contact with the Egyptian authorities. The local police are ready.’
XVIII
BOB SLOWMAN’S INTUITION
Monday, January 17, 1 o’clock
Romain Bernès shrugged his shoulders. After waiting a moment, he replied:
‘And you consider that an achievement? What a triumphant air for such a little story. What do you expect me to do with your archaeological-mythological hotchpotch? You can’t possibly think I’m going to make a statement about it to parliament tomorrow. What would I say: that there’s a secret that would give the one who found it such riches that the finances of whole countries would be destabilised, and prodigious power to boot... but that unfortunately we missed the boat once again? If there is one story in the world I wished to bury, it would be that. All you’ve brought me, in fact, is an extra burden.
‘And, to cap it all, the mystery of the bunker remains unsolved. I’ve turned it over and over in my mind, with all the analysis of which I’m capable. Yes, I know you’re going to say that’s not much, but even you must admit I do have a certain amount of common sense. And it’s all about common sense. The problem is clear: a man is murdered in a bunker, he couldn’t have been killed outside, and nobody went in. So there’s only one solution: the murder was impossible. A number of witnesses, obviously, must have lied. And what’s worse is that we’re talking about officials and members of the policeforce.
‘That’s the prime reason for this conference today. We have to cleanse the wound. Before we leave today, we have to determine exactly who could have done it. You, who were on the spot, should know. You must know who was in a position to give orders, to open the door, or cause it to be opened, and kill the victim. And, also, impose silence. No more attempts to dazzle us with this miraculous death. You’ve only succeeded in muddying things to the point that even the most naïve of the electorate is obliged to acknowledge the incredibility of the event and proclaim that the mystery about which you have made such a fuss is basically an impossibility.’
‘Oh!’ intervened Bob—and the comment, pronounced so very softly in the middle of a profound silence, produced a strange effect—‘I’ve just spent thirty hours solving it.’
He continued quietly, and I noticed that, unlike the others, he did not stand up.
‘You see, Monsieur le Président, what we forget to teach people is how to reason. Oh, I know very well you’ve studied logic and you think you know how to apply it perfectly. Allow me to say that, on that point, you’re mistaken. The proof is that you’ve been in possession of the same elements as me. I have reasoned on that basis, without any new facts, or any discoveries unknown to you.
‘To solve a problem of this nature, we must determine exactly what we know and stick to it, discarding all hypotheses. Now, what we know can be stated briefly: a man enters the bunker alive at half-past five. He’s alive when the door is closed. The next morning, at nine o-clock, when the door was re-opened, he was dead. We also know that the door was not opened between those times.All the complicities in the world won’t change anything. The two bolts shot from the inside are an indubitable proof of that.
‘Let us ask ourselves what changed materially between those two times. You will tell me right away: the man was dead. Materially, that makes no
difference. A body, at least in the earlier hours, does not differ from a living human. And, if you want to bring in the soul, I will have to say that the soul is not material.’
‘You’re surely not going to say, with all your sophistries, that nothing happened.’
‘A sophistry is an intellectual argument made by one person and refuted by another. I haven’t got to the point of my questions, which is this: was there something more or something less in the bunker, when the door was opened, than when it was closed?’
‘Because a man’s life doesn’t count for you, I would have to say no.’
‘I don’t agree with you. I made a rigorous inventory of the bunker, before and after and, although I didn’t find anything missing, I did find something extra.’
‘Amazing! Nobody saw it. Or, at least, nobody mentioned it.’
‘On the contrary! Everyone saw it, and everyone talked about it. It’s just that, as always, one overlooks the obvious.’
‘Tell us what it was, then.’
‘The bullet.’
‘The... Obviously, because without it, the Russian wouldn’t be dead.’
‘Irony and sarcasm have no place in my demonstration. They come, not from reason, but from sentiment, and so tilt the balance. Permit me to continue my naïve reasoning. Because, when all’s said and done, it’s my naïveté that’s my saving grace. If I were as... brilliant as you, I wouldn’t dwell on such trifles and... my reasoning would be cock-eyed. So, I ask: how did the bullet get in there?’
‘Good grief! That’s the whole question.’
‘So you say. But you never asked it. Forgive me for pressing the point. I take it as given that it couldn’t have entered the bunker whilst the door was being closed, nor whilst it was being opened. As for the period in between, it’s been demonstrated beyond doubt that the bullet could not have entered by any known means (and we know quite a few tricks).’
‘You’re repeating—.’
‘Excuse me! The situation is not the same. Let’s go back to our initial reasoning, replacing the murderer by the projectile: the bullet was in the bunker in the morning, it could not have entered during the night, therefore it was already inside before the door was closed. An unassailable syllogism.’
‘The murderer too.’
‘Excuse me! We don’t know yet that there was a murderer. Whereas we’ve seen the bullet. In the morning, at least. As for the evening, who’s to say that we didn’t overlook it. It’s not very big, a calibre 7mm. 65 cartridge. I know what you’re going to say: a bullet doesn’t jump into a man’s chest all by itself. It has to be projected with a minimum force, and there has to be a mechanism to project it. And this mechanism, which could not have left the bunker, wasn’t there in the morning. I repeat, I have no more information than you in this matter. So? So, the same logic applies: the bullet could not have penetrated Gregor’s chest, yet it was found there in the morning. So it was already there when we closed the bunker door on him.
‘Let’s go back to the Villemomble crime, at the moment that the murderer and his accomplice found themselves on the road. What’s going to happen? Is it conceivable that the man in grey would simply let the Russian return home peacefully? It’s not credible. A man who has massacred twelve people simply because fate might reveal his secret isn’t going let a casual, and now useless, accomplice live, particularly since he has little chance of passing unnoticed. So it’s reasonable to suppose that, once they reached a point far enough away from the crime, he would execute him in cold blood. Don’t forget, by the way, that that was the conclusion the professor and I arrived at straight away. So, following his usual practice, the man in grey kills him with a bullet to the heart. But, for once, he slips up. Did he misfire? Or did the abnormal constitution of the colossus cause him to make an error? In any case, the bullet, without touching the heart, lodged right next to it without damaging any of the essential organs.’
‘But...,’ began Bernès.
‘Of course, for now, these are all assumptions. Gregor falls down in a faint and the killer leaves, believing he’s got rid of him. Now I’m going to ask any of you who’ve seen the Russian. What impression did he leave on you? My friend Charles here summarised it in one word, one name: Rasputin. Physically, Gregor was of a similar type to the holy man. A veritable giant, but with a spiritual side. A primitive, with all the contradictions that word implies. Now, remember how difficult Rasputin was to kill. It’s the same for Gregor. Seriously wounded, he nevertheless gets up and finds the strength to keep walking. But he’s afraid. If the bandit knows he’s still alive, he’ll come back to kill him. So he only has one idea in his head: flee and hide. That explains his strange conduct during the next two days. He has to hide from everyone and find secluded spots to sleep. On the second day, sensing his clothes to be wet, and seeing them stained with blood, he replaces them with others which he steals. His wound hasn’t healed, but a clot has formed which stops the bleeding. Nobody suspects he is wounded. His state of shock, his pallor, his distraction, are all attributed his fright, his terror of the bandit. And, when he enters the bunker, it’s with a bullet in his chest that has not killed him and will not kill him.’
‘It’s pure fiction!’ exclaimed Bernès. ‘Richard here is a witness to the bullet—.’
‘Look here, Romain, don’t forget that the ways of Slowman are, like those of Providence, impenetrable. As he says, we don’t know where he’s going. Trust him.’
‘What happened during the night?’ continued my friend imperturbably. ‘We don’t know but, since we’re already at it, why not continue to imagine? It would be too absurd to think that, luckily for the bandit, fever occurred and complications set in, which resulted in death. Materially, it’s hardly possible. A man who had lasted two days would not succumb suddenly. So, did he have to be killed? And, if so, how? The problem remains the same. The means of death could not have got inside during the night. So therefore it must already be inside. And, proceeding by elimination, only poisoning meets the necessary and sufficient conditions.’
‘Poison. This is getting more and more absurd. The Russian didn’t eat or drink anything the whole day. Not even a glass of water.’
‘Excuse me,’ interjected Richard, ‘he absorbed a sedative which I prepared and gave to him myself.’
‘Oh, there’s no need to be so affirmative. There were a lot of people around Gregor and I couldn’t swear that one of them didn’t slip him something: a sweet, for example, or a cigarette. There’s another possibility: that someone sprayed a deadly gas up one of his nostrils. The method doesn’t matter, in any case, because it doesn’t change the conclusion we can draw. That conclusion is simple: we displaced the problem. The mystery remained intact because we confined it to a specific time and place. But, once we realise that the crime didn’t occur during the night, or in the bunker, and if we admit that Gregor, when he went through the door, carried inside him the two elements of the mystery: the poison which would kill him, and the bullet to which the death would be attributed, there’s no mystery any more. There’s just a relatively simple problem: the poisoning.’
‘Obviously, that’s a fairly interesting theory,’ said Bernès, ‘but we need proof.’
‘You’re forgetting another problem,’ said Richard.
‘I’m getting there. It’s the autopsy. Because, if the victim didn’t die from a bullet to the heart, if he was poisoned, why did the external observations show the opposite?’
‘Yes, why?’ growled Richard. ‘I’m waiting to hear, Bob. You yourself saw Gregor’s body on the slab. You held in your hands the heart, struck by a bullet, which had literally exploded. You made fun of me because I sent the viscera to the toxicology lab.’
‘Right. But the logic remains. The crime was impossible during a particular period and in a particular place. Therefore we have to explain the autopsy, which remains the only mysterious point. Let’s rule out straight away the question of poisoning. Are you sure, Richard, that no one could have got nea
r the potion you prepared?’
‘Absolutely. I was alone in the fort’s pharmacy. I brought the glass, which I had washed and wiped beforehand. I put the glass in the Russian’s hand myself and he emptied it right away. There was nobody nearby.’
‘Perfect. Second point: when you extracted the bullet, whilst we were in the cell, are you sure it was in the heart itself and not just in close proximity?’
‘Who do you take me for?’
‘I’m just trying to establish the facts. The firmer the ground, the firmer the conviction. So, along the same lines, are you sure there couldn’t have been a substitution of the corpses? Identical twins, for example.’
‘Pure pulp fiction. You’ve seen the corpse yourself. There couldn’t have been a mistake.’
‘Good. Now we’ve eliminated all the possibilities of error. There is therefore only one solution, the one that I arrived at, and which you can’t help seeing, now.’
‘Speaking personally, I’m completely in the dark,’ said Bernès.
Everyone chimed in, except Richard, who seemed deep in thought. I realised he was beginning to form an idea. He raised his head suddenly and looked Bob straight in the eye.
‘So you see,’ continued my friend, ‘if the medical examiner’s observations are correct, then my reasoning collapses. On the other hand, if my hypothesis is right, the autopsy report—.’
That’s when all hell broke loose. Everything happened so fast that it was only later that I was able to reconstruct it. At the time, it was all noise and confusion. This is what I think happened: as my friend pronounced that last sentence, fairly slowly, I had the impression he was waiting for something. We were all hanging on his words and Jannin himself, behind us, had stopped his irritating walk. Out of the corner of my eye, I sensed that Richard, to my left, made a sudden movement. At the same time, Bob, who I learnt later had tilted his chair backwards, flattened himself under the table. A shadow moved on my left, masking the professor. There was a detonation, followed by the sound of glass shattering. There was a brief struggle to my left and, almost immediately, Jannin stood up with a smile, a revolver in his hand. I turned to look at Richard. His wrists were being held behind the back of his chair by handcuffs.