by Jon Steele
At the edge of the village, Harper followed the inspector onto a grassy path bordered by fieldstone walls. A hundred meters on, they came to a stone arch fitted with an old iron gate. Inspector Gobet removed a key of similar vintage from his coat and opened the lock.
“Let me guess,” Harper said. “Your own private vineyard.”
“Let’s just say I’m the latest in a long line of propriétaires. It was on this very patch of land that our kind inspired the Romans to cultivate the Chasselas grape. There are some wonderful writings in the Lausanne Museum you must read sometime. Lots of reports to the Emperor from the commander of the legion, explaining how the soldiers enjoyed working in the vineyards at harvest time. Lots of in vino veritas, that sort of thing.”
Harper looked back at the village. Locals had gathered on the village square overlooking the lake for another round of singing to the cows, this time to the cows across the lake in France.
“Not surprised.”
The inspector pushed open the gate and they walked down the fieldstone steps leading through the vineyard. A third-quarter moon gave enough light to guide them in the dark, and at the end of the steps there was a small stone hut sitting amid the vines. The inspector turned to Harper.
“Please, take a seat on the bench. I won’t be a minute.”
Harper watched the inspector open the door. Moonlight spilled through the doorway, and Harper saw the sniper team inside. The spotter checking his sector through binoculars, the shooter adjusting the sight of his Barrett anti-material rifle. The door closed behind the inspector. Harper sat on the bench, scanned the hillside. He saw stone huts scattered through the vineyards. He did a recon of the layout. There wasn’t a square meter of ground surrounding Grandvaux that couldn’t be seen by one of the huts. All together, the huts triangulated a series of impenetrable kill zones. No doubt the inspector’s snipers could make a head shot from a thousand meters. And with a 12.7-millimeter explosive round, the hit would be impressive. Harper laughed to himself. An hour ago he’d arrived and found himself bemused by the transcendental gentleness of the villagers. Now he was in a vineyard surrounded by shoot-to-kill snipers.
“Switzerland, land of enchantment.”
The inspector emerged from the hut and joined Harper on the bench.
“My apologies, I needed to check in with our command post on Chemin de Baussan. Lovely view from here, don’t you think?”
Harper gave it a glance.
Moon, mountains, lake.
“It’s swell.”
The inspector had a cigarette case in his hand, and he offered it to Harper.
“I have,” Harper said, patting his pockets. “Somewhere, I think.”
“Actually, I’m switching you to a new blend. Keep the case as a token of my appreciation for a job well done in Paris.”
Harper flashed back to the café, getting up to speed with Monsieur Dufaux.
“Can’t remember much of it. But from what I saw on the front page of the newspaper, and from what Dufaux tells me, it looks like cleanup in Paris was a bloody mess.”
The inspector dropped the cigarette case in Harper’s lap.
“You made six confirmed kills, we made the bomb disappear, all with minimal collateral damage. In our line of work, we call that a good day.”
Harper took the cigarette case.
“Cheers then.”
He opened it, saw twenty gold-filtered fags all in a row. He took one, and the inspector had a burning match at the ready. Harper nodded toward the stone huts scattered throughout the vineyards. “Lighting me up for your snipers?”
“More like giving them an opportunity to align their sights.”
“Right.”
Harper touched the tip of the cigarette to the flame and drew in the smoke. He felt a warm rush of radiance as the weight of his form melted away. Christ, he thought, it had been a long time since it was that good.
“Mind if I ask a question, Inspector?”
“Go ahead.”
“Just how did my picture end up on the front page of every newspaper on the planet? Thought your clever lads in the SX squad were supposed to take care of that sort of thing.”
“As they did, as the cleanup crew did. Every shred of tape or image of you caught in a camera or mobile was tracked and deleted. We decided to leave that particular image in the public domain.”
“Figured as much. It’s the why I’m wondering about.”
“Well, firstly, you aren’t identifiable to any great degree to the general population. Secondly, HQ likes a bit of stoking the angelic legend now and again. Thirdly, we’d very like to locate the one responsible for it.”
“Sorry?”
“The picture appeared the night of the attack as part of a videotape that was released before the battle was even over. By the time it was spotted on the Internet, it’d already been seen by millions of people around the world. Given that everything sent on the Internet is routed through our SX squad before delivery, it was quite the trick.”
“Any idea who did it?”
“We can’t trace the source. Nor can we trace who it was that hacked Monsieur Geoffroy de Villehardouin’s blog.”
“Geoffroy de what?”
“The art historian who allegedly posted the pictures on his blog. He died ten months ago. His blog has been inactive, till yesterday.”
Harper took another hit. He saw himself on the Pont des Arts, saw himself jumping from the bridge into the fog.
“What are you imagining, Mr. Harper?”
Harper smiled.
“Couple of hits off a new blend and you’re checking the manner of my thinking already?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact.”
Harper took another drag.
“Whoever took the picture knew where the attack was happening before we did. Someone who knew I’d be there. Couldn’t be the enemy, they’d have used the intel to put me down.”
“What else?”
Harper flashed the front page of 24 Heures.
“Someone knows who I am, who we are. Knows how to cover his tracks.”
The inspector nodded approvingly.
“Not bad for a first go out of the tank. Continue with the imagination, Mr. Harper.”
“Anything specific?”
“Let’s try the events of the Paris operation.”
Disconnected fragments of time floated through Harper’s eyes. Now and again he saw a sequence, the wham . . . he flashed the Paris job. Jumping from Pont des Arts onto the Manon. Screams, cries, blood. Whacking the goons, defusing the bomb. A dead father, a young girl singing a song. French police coming on board, slamming Harper to the deck. Then a blast of white noise, then seeing himself climbing out of the tank at the Vevey clinic ten days later.
Harper blinked, looked at the inspector.
“There’s a hole in my timeline.”
“You cannot upload any images from the last ten days?”
“That’s how long it’s been?”
The inspector nodded.
“Two days in La Santé Prison, eight days in the tank.”
Harper tried again. Zip.
“Sorry, only thing I know about the last ten days is what I read in 24 Heures.”
“Because HQ ordered everything from the point of your arrest, up to your being released from the tank, deleted.”
Harper took a hit of smoke.
“Why?”
“You were exposed to specific information regarding the life and death of Captain Jay Michael Harper. You had a rather bad reaction to it, especially at the hands of the French secret police who subjected you to enhanced interrogation in prison. Which explains the rather heavy-handed manner of your memory scrub, and your current state of confusion.”
Harper thought about it.
“Feedback?”
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“I’m afraid so.”
“How bad?”
The inspector found his own cigarette case in his cashmere coat. He took a cigarette, had a match at the ready, and lit up. He took a long pull, then released the smoke.
“By the time we pulled you from La Santé, you were clawing at your skin, trying to dig your way out of your form.”
Harper saw himself climbing out of the bloody tank, saw the gashes and scratches on his stomach. Thought it was from the battle on the Manon. He snapped back, chuckled to himself.
“This conversation’s getting better by the bloody minute, Inspector. Can’t wait to get the punch line. Wouldn’t mind having another drink before you spill it.”
The door of the hut creaked open. One of the snipers stepped out with two steaming mugs and a bowl of grapes on a wooden tray.
“Ask and you shall receive, Mr. Harper.”
“Not exactly what I had in mind.”
The inspector took the tray, set it on the bench. He lifted one of the mugs, popped a few grapes.
“Merci, Corporal,” the inspector said.
“Voluntier, Inspecteur.”
Harper looked at the soldier’s face. A young woman of Asian descent, nineteen or twenty years old max, dressed in military camouflage. Her black hair pinned to the back of her neck, her emerald green eyes staring at Harper. For long seconds, Harper returned the stare.
“Something is wrong, monsieur?”
Harper took the other mug.
“No. Cheers, Corporal.”
She returned to the hut, quietly closed the door. Harper looked at the inspector.
“She’s one of them, isn’t she?”
“If you mean is Corporal Mai one of my Swiss Guard tacticals, yes.”
“Inspector, I know my brains are fried at the moment, but I can still spot one of your recognition tests well enough. She’s one of them, from your school at Mon Repos.”
The inspector sipped his tea.
“Very good. How did you know?”
Damn good question, Harper thought.
“It’s . . . her eyes.”
“Why?”
Harper thought about it some more.
“Back at the café, Dufaux said the lad’s name. I saw him for a second. Hat, lantern.”
“Marc Rochat, you mean.”
Hearing the name again, Harper saw him again, but only for a second.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“And?”
Harper nodded to the sniper hut.
“The corporal’s eyes are the same as the lad’s.”
“The color, you mean.”
“They’re the same color, yeah, but so are yours and mine. It’s everything else. The shape and separation. They’re exactly the same as the lad with the lantern.”
The inspector drew on his smoke.
“It’s a genetic trait.”
“All of them?”
“Yes, all of them.”
“Does she know?”
“Does she know what?”
“Does she know she’s a half-breed, bred by our side?”
The inspector pulled another grape and ate it.
“I suggest you drink your tea, before it gets cold,” he said.
The inspector’s tone had all the politeness of a good and gracious host. Still, Harper knew if he didn’t shut up and drink, the inspector would see to it the tea was poured down his throat. He almost sipped, looked at the inspector instead.
“What’s yours?”
“Earl Grey, with a dash of milk.”
“What’s mine?”
“Does it matter?”
No, Harper thought, it didn’t. He sipped. Whatever it was, it had the delicate flavor of jasmine.
“Not bad as potions go, Inspector. What will it do?”
“It should better regulate random electrical impulses as they interact with the hippocampus region of your brain. Specifically those you were exposed to in Paris.”
“Memories, you mean. Captain Jay Michael Harper’s memories.”
“Yes.”
Harper took a grape, sipped his tea.
“Everything was deleted, plus I’ve just had the mother of all memory scrubs. Not to mention eight days of regenerative stasis. I should be good to go.”
The inspector reached inside his cashmere coat again. He removed a manila envelope, handed it to Harper.
“What’s this?”
“Your regenerative stasis results.”
Harper rested his mug of tea on the bench. He took the envelope and opened it. Two sheets of paper. List of tests and procedures on page one; page two listed the results.
“Nothing here but zeros,” Harper said.
“Because there are no results. The process was canceled.”
“Canceled?”
The inspector drew on his cigarette.
“Always been a tricky business, our hiding in the forms of men. Now and again, a phantom manifests itself and searches for a soul no longer there. Our beings enter a state of feedback. Unregulated, the consequences can be most severe.”
Harper flashed back to Café du Grütli. Reaching for his killing knife, ready to slice open Monsieur Dufaux’s throat for no reason at all. Then Mutt and Jeff with their guns in his face . . . We were told you’re not quite yourself these days . . . and get in the fucking motorcar, s’il vous plaît. No bloody wonder.
“I know what feedback is, Inspector. I also know the only way to fix it is regenerative stasis. So when do the medics fix it?”
“As yet, they can’t.”
The inspector tapped his cigarette. Harper watched the smoldering ash sink to the moonlit ground, all the while listening to the inspector’s voice.
“What happened?” Harper said.
“When the medics began to extract your eternal being, your form went offline. Extraction was abandoned.”
“I died, you mean, in my form.”
The inspector didn’t answer.
“How long?”
“Fifteen hours, fifty-eight minutes, nineteen seconds.”
Harper thought about it. A human soul could hang on for three days until dissipation of rigor mortis, waiting to be comforted and guided to the next life. For Harper’s kind, it was three minutes.
“Not that I’m complaining, Inspector, but why the hell am I still here?”
“Best guess: At the moment of extraction, a phantom electrochemical signal from your host’s hippocampus region jumped the firewall and made contact with your eternal being.”
“Best guess, you say.”
“Affirmative.”
Harper felt something crawl over his skin. Then again, it wasn’t his skin.
“Are you telling me my host is still alive?”
“‘Alive’ is not a word I would use in describing the condition.”
“No? What word would you use? Take your pick, there are a quarter million words in the Oxford English Dictionary alone.”
The inspector regarded the view.
“‘The formation of heavenly bodies according to the received theory which supposes it to have taken place by the concentration and consolidation of cosmic matter.’”
“That’s twenty-five words, Inspector.”
“Yes. From Views of the Architecture of the Heavens, by the ninth-century astronomer and opiate addict John Pringle Nichol. A Scot, you know. Curiously enough, his words serve as a rather good definition of the word evolution in the OED.”
Harper added it up: 2 + 2 = no bloody way.
“Locals evolve, Inspector, not our kind. Not you, not me, not the handful of us who are left. Not in two and a half million years. We die in our forms, we die forever.”
“So it would seem. However, in your case, at the very
moment the medics were about to pull the plug on you, a luminance burst was registered in your eyes at a factor of 1.6×109 cd/m2.”
“Sounds rather bright.”
“One way of imagining it would be to imagine the brightness of the midday sun pouring through the rose window of Lausanne Cathedral.”
“What’s the other way of imagining it?”
“It matches the luminance level of the first light of creation hidden beneath Lausanne Cathedral.”
Harper heard the inspector’s voice, then saw himself and the lad in the cavern beneath the cathedral, saw a fire burning in a small bush. They transferred the fire to the lad’s lantern, carried it back to the nave to hide it from the bad guys.
“You’re telling me something happened to me during the cathedral job. Being exposed to the light . . . changed me.”
“Actually, I’m not saying anything of the sort, Mr. Harper. I merely lay out the facts.”
“What facts? That I bloody rose from the dead? That’s not evolution, Inspector, that’s a . . .”
“A what?”
“A miracle. And you and I know there’s no such thing in paradise.”
The inspector sipped his tea.
“Yes, so for the moment, let’s call it an undefined metaphysical condition as a result of your form being exposed to the first light of creation, two and a half years ago.”
Harper flashed through the cathedral job. Landed on the messy end with the lad killed, himself half dead, bad guy corpses everywhere . . . and someone else.
“I wasn’t the only one exposed to it.”
“Me and those members of the Swiss Guard associated with the Lausanne operation, you mean. We’ve been running tests on anyone exposed to the light. Luminance levels are all normal, so far.”
Harper looked at the inspector.
“That’s not who I’m talking about.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“There was a woman, a local. I can’t see her, but I can see her shadow on the timeline. She was there with me and the lad. She was exposed to the light, too. What was her name?”
The inspector smiled.
