by Jon Steele
“So, hotshot, any last words?”
The goon slowly raised its hands in surrender, turned around. Harper saw the half-dead eyes under the balaclava break into a smile.
“Acta est fabula, plaudite.”
Harper ran the words: The play is over, applaud . . . last words of Emperor Augustus. Harper squeezed the trigger.
“Not bad.”
The back of the goon’s head blew apart in a spray of blood and brains. Harper crawled ahead, fired rounds into the skulls of his pals.
“Now stay dead.”
Screams again.
Harper turned, saw two passengers pointing off the bow. The Batobus had come around, heading for Pont Neuf. In the searchlights Harper saw the chains hanging from the bastions . . . laden with four-sided hooks and razor wire. The chains wouldn’t just entangle the Manon, they’d rip all human flesh to shreds. Harper rushed to the pilot house, pulled the dead goon from the controls. He tried to pull back on the throttle and shut down the engine, but it was jammed. He scanned the riverbanks. Stone embankment to port, wood-hulled barge tied up to starboard.
“Swell.”
He turned the wheel to the right, pulled the dead goon back over the wheel to hold it in place. He dove back toward the hostages.
“Hold on!”
The boat rammed the barge with a sickening crunch. Benches ripping from planks, shards of Plexiglas cutting through the air, hostages skidding over the deck. The Manon’s hull rose from the water, slammed down, and shuddered as if hitting concrete. And with engines running full speed and the rudder now jammed to forty degrees, the stern came about wildly and rammed the chains hanging from the bridge. The Manon struggled like a fish on a line till the razor wire caught her propellers. The engines shrieked, sputtered to a stop. The Manon was dead in the water.
VI
THE HOSTAGES LAY SCATTERED ABOUT THE CABIN LIKE BROKEN things. Harper scanned their eyes. He could already see the nightmares that would haunt them the rest of their lives. He got to his feet, holstered his SIG. The hostages stared at the bloodied knife in his right hand. Harper pulled the knife to his back.
“It’s over. Help will be here soon.”
He hurried aft, sliced the shoulder straps of the backpack from the headless bomber. He sheathed his knife, pulled off his coat, and lay it on the deck. Carefully, he slid the bomb from the bomber and lay it on his coat. He tied the coat’s arms into a sling, lifted the bomb, and hurried to the bow. Here he could jump onto the barge, slip away in the shadows. He heard a voice:
“And kissed my cheek without a trace of fright.”
Down at his feet, a little girl clinging to the body of a man.
Harper saw the gash across the man’s throat. He checked the man’s eyes for light. The man was dead, but his soul held on to the last breath as desperately as his daughter held him. Rules and regs flashed through Harper’s mind. Stopped cold on Do nothing to reveal yourself to men, even if it means abandoning a dying soul.
Then came the sound of steel-toed boots pounding along the embankment heading for the Manon. French coppers in full battle array, Harper thought. He turned, walked away from the little girl and the dying man. He hurried past the hostages and jumped the rail and landed on the barge. His eyes followed the shadows, saw where he could move into them and slip away. He looked back over his shoulder at the wreckage of the Manon. Could have been worse, he told himself. He headed for the shadows, stopped . . .
“Sod it.”
He jumped back aboard the Manon. The hostages, thinking the killing had returned, screamed with fright. Harper raised the palm of his right hand to their eyes.
“Transit umbra, lux permanet.”
They quieted. Harper rushed through the cabin, knelt next to the little girl. Her head was resting on the man’s chest, and her eyes stared blankly ahead. Harper knew she’d slipped into that terrible place of numbness human beings go when their souls are battered by unknowable things. He passed the palm of his hand before her face.
“Et non somnia visitet te.”
She took a sharp breath, released it slowly, and fell to sleep.
Harper leaned over the dead man, called to his soul.
“Your daughter is safe now. The nightmares will pass her by. You can let go now, you’re finished here. Be not afraid, this is how it happens.”
TWO
HARPER HEARD TWO SETS OF STEPS MOVING DOWN A LONG HALL. His and whoever it was pushing him along. No use resisting. He had a black bag over his head and his hands were bound at his back with nylon cables, so the one guard pushing him had the power of fifty. At the end of the hall the guard pulled at Harper’s shoulder.
“Arrêtez ici.”
Harper stopped, heard a door slide open . . . whoosh.
The guard pushed Harper ahead two steps and told him to stand still; the door closed. Five beeps, then the sound of a second door sliding open in front of him. The guard pushed Harper ahead and told him to stand still again. Same drill two more times till he was guided into what smelled like a room of polished wood and pipe tobacco. An office or a study. And whoever occupied it was locked up behind four hermetically sealed doors. Harper felt himself led across a wooden floor, then onto a carpet. The guard ordered him to sit. Luckily, there was a chair waiting for him. The guard cut the cables from Harper’s hands, pulled the bag from Harper’s head.
He was in a room of cream-colored walls and furniture that looked like it’d been seconded from Versailles. There was a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling and it filled the room with warm light. There was a Persian carpet under Harper’s feet and a Louis XIV desk facing him. An empty armchair was parked behind the desk. It was embroidered with gold thread. No telephone or computer or papers on the desk. Just Harper’s overcoat and sports coat lying in a lump. Three delicate chimes filled the room. Harper saw a gilt-bronze clock on an ornate side table. The base of the clock was cloudlike, and the clock itself was held by two cherubs as if in flight. The sound of the chimes faded away, then there was just the ticking of the clock.
“So where the fuck am I?”
Whoosh.
Harper looked back over his shoulder; the guard was gone. He stretched his arms, noticed the gold emblem on the wall behind the desk. Scottish thistle in the center, the words “Brigade Criminelle” curving above it. His mind scanned episodes of the History Channel. Half a second later he knew where he was. Brigade Criminelle, 36 Quai des Orfèvres, Île de la Cité. HQ of the French police once known as la Sûreté, the model for Scotland Yard and every hard-nosed cop squad in Europe. Words curved below the thistle: Qui s’y frotte, s’y pique.
Harper ran the words: If you rub against it, it will sting. A quaint expression French mothers told their children to warn them about the obvious dangers of life. Like playing with fire, or crossing a road without looking both ways. From the lips of Brigade Criminelle, Harper imagined the warning to translate more like: Screw with us, you’ll get one of these up your arse.
“Even more terrific.”
To the right of the desk, a leather-backed door was cut into the wall. Looked like any door till it clacked and thunked and opened on hydraulic hinges. A small gray-headed gent in his late sixties stepped through the doorway and entered the room. He was dressed in a rumpled suit, carried a stack of files under his arm. There was a briar pipe anchored between his teeth, and a trail of smoke followed him as he shuffled to the desk. That’s when Harper noticed the man was wearing bedroom slippers instead of shoes.
The steel door eased closed automatically and locked.
Thunk. Clack.
The man pushed Harper’s coats aside and dropped the files onto the desk. He took his time arranging them side by side before sitting in his armchair and emptying his pipe into an ashtray. Harper watched the man open a drawer, rummage through the contents, pull out a pouch of Bergerac tobacco. The man reloaded the pipe and
lit up. Harper heard a voice emerge from the cloud of smoke that had swallowed the man’s head.
“Mon nom est Bruno Silvestre. Je suis le juge d’instruction spéciale pour . . .”
The introduction continued according to the French tradition of never using three words when twelve will do. Gave Harper a moment to think. Any minute, Inspector Gobet’s time mechanics would drop a time warp over the place and the cleanup crew would move in. They’d sort the bomb, they’d make any sign of Harper having been there disappear. Nothing to do but stall.
“Sorry, gov, I don’t speak French.”
“Non?”
“No.”
The man opened the file farthest to his left. He flipped through the first three pages. Harper saw a gold signet ring on the little finger of the man’s left hand. He couldn’t make out the insignia.
“In the arrest report, the GIGN commander at the scene states you spoke French on Pont des Arts, with an English accent.”
“He’s mistaken,” Harper said.
“How could he be mistaken, monsieur?”
“There was a chopper a few meters above our heads. Two of them, in fact. It was loud. Understandably, your GIGN commander at the scene got it wrong.”
“Choppers, monsieur?”
“Helicopters.”
“Ah, je comprends.”
The man took a fountain pen from his jacket and made a notation in the margin of the page, mumbling to himself.
“. . . les hélicoptères . . . à quelques mètres . . . au dessus des têtes . . . très fort.”
He tapped the page with an emphatic period and closed the file.
“Alors. I am Bruno Silvestre. I am the special investigating judge for the Brigade Criminelle. Because of the unique nature of the evidence collected so far, I requested to review certain facts in your case. Do you understand what I am saying to you now?”
“Sure.”
“Bon, then we may begin.”
The man who called himself a judge removed a set of mug shots, held them up for Harper to see.
“Is this you, monsieur?”
Head-on and profile shots of a bloke with light brown hair, green eyes, a handsome enough face to suggest someone of well-bred English stock. Other physical characteristics were listed at the side of the photos. Height: 1.95 meters, estimated weight: 80–85 kilos, estimated age: 36–39, name: blank.
“I’m sorry, gov. What was the question?”
“Is this you, monsieur?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Pardonnez-moi?”
“I said, in a manner of speaking.”
“That this is you in the photographs?”
“It’s complicated.”
The judge nodded, puffed on his pipe, lay the mug shots on the desk.
“Who are you, monsieur?”
“Me? I’m a tourist. In town to see the sights.”
The judge opened the next file, pulled out a handful of photographs, fanned them across the desk like a deck of cards. All of them tinted with the green glow of a night vision lens. POV said the photos were taken from the police choppers tracking the Manon. Harper scanned the shots. Him blowing the bomber’s brains out, him slashing open a goon’s throat and tossing the dead thing over the side, him drilling bullets through the skulls of two more dead goons and summarily executing the last goon standing.
“For a tourist in town to see the sights, monsieur, you have had a very busy night. By the way, how did you know there was a weapon of mass destruction aboard the Manon? I only ask because the police did not know this. There was no mention of it in the original tip-off.”
Harper didn’t answer.
The judge pulled out a white card and held it up. Harper saw ten black smudges all in a row.
“Your fingerprints were taken immediately after you were brought to the Brigade Criminelle at twenty-one hundred hours this evening.”
Harper flashed back.
Bagged and tagged by the police aboard the Manon, dragged up the embankment steps, thrown into the back of a police van. Facedown on the floor, heavy boots on his back and neck. Van sped through the streets, sirens screaming till it slammed to a stop. Hauled out, dragged into a building, and shoved up against a wall. Police pulled the bag from his head. “Smile, roast beef,” one policeman said. They snapped the mug shots, bagged him again. Not daring to let him loose, they twisted his bound hands, inked his fingertips, and pressed them to paper. Then one of the police grabbed him, led him down concrete stairs, tossed him into an isolation cell. Quiet. The kind that’d drive a man insane if he stayed in it too long. Harper slowed his heart rate to hibernation mode. Slow breaths, stillness. Wasn’t a sound till five hours later when the cell door opened and a lone guard led him to the judge’s office. The whole trip through beforetimes took a half second.
“Yes,” Harper said. “I seem to recall something like that.”
The judge tossed fingerprints onto the desk. They skidded to a stop in front of Harper.
“Your prints have been reviewed by every police department and security agency in Europe and North America. Several times, with no result. We expanded the search worldwide. As yet there has not been a single match; not even a possibility of a match. The odds of such a thing for a European male of your age and race, not to mention your obvious special forces training, are less than zero.”
Harper gave it five seconds.
“I’m not European.”
“Pardonnez-moi?”
“I’m not European. I’m British.”
The judge took his pen and made a note in the file.
“Le suspect . . . dit qu’il est . . . britann . . . ique.”
The judge opened the next file, pulled out six more fingerprint cards, dealt them onto the desk.
“These fingerprints belong to the men who carried out the attack aboard the Manon. They have proven to be slightly more interesting than yours.”
“How’s that?”
“Because there are no fingerprints.”
Harper shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first criminals to have their prints surgically removed.”
“Very true. And it is a known practice by members of Muqatileen Lillah before a suicide mission. But this is the finest work I have ever seen. Not the hint of a loop, or a whorl, or a ridge. It is as if these men were born without fingerprints. Either way, you may appreciate my problem.”
Where the hell is he going with this?
“Depends. What’s your problem?” Harper said.
“Monsieur, there was a battle in the center of Paris tonight. A battle that saw nine innocent human beings slaughtered. But none of the combatants, including the one survivor, can be identified.”
“I had nothing to do with the civilian deaths, gov.”
The judge looked back through the arrest report.
“Non, you are only a British tourist in town to see the sights, who appeared from nowhere and attempted to stop the French security forces from the exercise of their lawful duty on Pont des Arts. You then disappeared in an unexplained flash of light and fog, only to reappear aboard the Manon where you disarmed a weapon of mass destruction in the most reckless manner possible, then executed six men dressed in black jumpsuits and balaclavas. You then attempted to remove the WMD from the scene, but were subdued and arrested by the French police. Would that be an accurate description of what you did do?”
Harper sat still for a long moment, analyzing the man’s voice. The old gent was bland as Muzak and couldn’t be read.
“Speaking of the bomb, gov, where is it?”
The judge took a considered puff from his pipe.
“It was placed in a hazardous containment unit and is now in the process of being transferred to a secure location.”
“A military base, you mean. Where a pack of generals is wai
ting to get their hands on it, see what makes it tick.”
The judge’s silence was an affirmative.
“Mind if I give you a little advice, gov?”
“I welcome it, monsieur.”
“Tell your generals not to open it. Better yet, tell them not to even look at it.”
“Why not, monsieur?”
“Because it isn’t a bomb. It’s Pandora’s fucking box.”
The judge nodded, wrote slowly in the file.
“Pandora’s . . . fucking . . . box.”
Harper heard the ticking of the clock. He checked it; twenty after the hour. The inspector’s time mechanics were taking their bloody time. He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the weight of his form pressing down.
Need a hit of radiance, boyo.
“You are expected somewhere else, monsieur?”
“Sorry?”
“I notice you watching the clock.”
“Just passing the time. Listen, I’ve got some fags in my coat. Mind if I grab one?”
The judge sucked on his pipe, filled the room with smoke.
“I am afraid smoking is forbidden in the office of Brigade Criminelle, monsieur.”
“Of course it is.”
The judge opened file number four, laid out individual shots of the dead goons.
“Would you please confirm these are the men you killed aboard the Manon?”
First up: a slashed throat under a face that had been chopped to pieces by the Manon’s propellers after Harper threw him into the river. Next five shots: one goon each, skulls blown open by multiple head shots.
“Sure, that’s them.”
“Who are they, monsieur?”
“Terrorists. From Muqatileen Lillah.”
The judge shook his head.
“Members of Muqatileen Lillah are exclusively South Asian. Their manifesto decrees them to be the chosen race of God. Never has a person of another race been included in their number. Despite your handiwork in deconstructing their skulls, initial examination suggests the men are not Asian. These men appear to be Caucasian of undetermined ancestry.”
