Angel City

by Jon Steele

  Astruc took the goatskin, slung it over his shoulder.

  “If there is to be any hope for the eternal soul of mankind, it must be tonight.”

  Goose smiled and signed, If this is your belief, Father, then it will be so.

  “It isn’t what I believe, it’s what was foretold to the pure of faith.”

  Goose pointed down the hill to the clearing, where a stile stood atop a stone altar.

  Is that the field, Father?

  Astruc turned and saw the stile, saw the field of grass beyond bound by a simple wooden fence. The stile was too far away to see the cross and inscription carved into the stone, but Astruc didn’t need to see those things. The day was seared into his memory.

  EN CE LIEU LE 16 MARS 1244

  PLUS DE 200 PERSONNES ONT ÉTÉ BRULÉES

  ELLES N’AVAIENT PAS VOULU RENIER LEUR FOI

  In the fading light, the stile was backlit like something forever sacred. And he saw shreds of mist rise from the field and into the light as if the souls of the burned had never left this place.

  “Yes, that’s the Field of the Burned. We’ll stop there to say the Lord’s Prayer before we leave. Come now, the light is fading.”

  Goose lifted his backpack to his shoulders and followed Astruc along the path. A deer watched them pass from the cover of the forest. They walked quietly. Quietly enough to hear the wind pass through the branches of autumn-colored trees. The taller trees bowed to the east; the wind was coming from the west. Astruc checked the horizon. Still not a cloud in the darkening sky.

  III

  CAN I TOSS IN A PRINCESS?”

  “A what?”

  “A princess.”

  “Why do you need a princess in the story?”

  Katherine tipped her head toward Max without looking at him.

  “Because I don’t want to say the H word in front of you-know-who.”

  Officer Jannsen, at first captivated by the story so far, was lost. “The H word?”

  Katherine rolled her eyes, her mouth slowly forming the word hooker.

  “Ah, I’m with you now. In that case, I think a princess would be fine.”

  “Great.”

  Katherine tried to remember where she’d left off with her story. She’d set the stage. Once upon a time, in a faraway land, a strange and wonderful young man lived in the belfry of a cathedral and watched over the land through the night. He watched for fires and invaders and bad shadows. And he wore a black hat and black cloak and he carried a very old lantern.

  “And I’ll tell you a secret. It was this very same lantern.”

  Max’s eyes widened, watching the fire at the tip of the lantern’s candle.

  “And you know what else?”

  Max looked at his mother. She moved slowly toward him, and she smiled.

  “The strange young man had a cat. A big, fat, furry cat. And the cat’s name was Monsieur Booty.”

  Max looked at the furry beast sitting on the stool just outside the bars of the crib, the beast Max had by the tail.

  “Boo!” he said.

  “That’s right, Boo is in the story, too! Isn’t that funny?”

  Max giggled, certifying that the coincidence was very funny, indeed.

  “Okay, so. One night, this strange young man—”

  “Excuse me, Kat?”

  Katherine put her hand on her hip and regarded Officer Jannsen with mock horror.

  “Oh, what now?”

  “Shouldn’t he have a name?”

  “Who?”

  “The strange young man in the belfry.”

  Katherine thought about it.

  “Okay. Anything else?”

  “Non.”

  “You sure? Because you’re really throwing me off my method.”

  “Your what?”

  “My method. It’s an acting school thing.”

  “You were in acting school?”

  “Took a couple classes at UCLA before I dropped out and became a you-know-what.”

  Officer Jannsen smiled that half smile of hers.

  “Je comprend.”

  “Good. Can I go on now? I’d like to finish the story before Max hits puberty.”

  “Excusez-moi, mon petit canard.”

  “Okay. So, once upon a time, faraway land, strange young man, and his name was . . . What did you just say?”

  “I said, ‘Excuse me.’”

  “No, after that.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Anne, you just called me your little duck.”

  “Comme ça?”

  Katherine saw Officer Jannsen’s pale white skin flush with color. Mon petit canard did mean my little duck. Katherine also knew it was a term of affection among the French, who had a habit of referring to loved ones as cats, pigs, chickens, eggs, and/or fleas. And the more petit any of them was, the deeper the affection. Katherine realized why Officer Jannsen was blushing and, realizing it, she felt her own stomach do flip-flops again.

  She quickly looked at Max. He and Monsieur Booty had been going back and forth between the two women as if watching a game of tennis. Not knowing the rules or how the game was played, but knowing a game of some sort was being played, and it was most entertaining to watch. Just now, Max and Monsieur Booty were focused on Officer Jannsen, as she’d made the last play with Comme ça?

  Katherine took a breath, tapped the glass of the lantern.

  “Hey, Max and Fuzzface, stay with me, I’m working here.”

  Max and Monsieur Booty turned to Katherine. Almost too frightened to look at Officer Jannsen, Katherine stepped closer to her, feeling the Swiss cop’s eyes watching.

  “Okay. So, the strange young man’s name was Marc Rochat, and he watched over this faraway land, yadda, yadda, yadda. See, there was a sadness in the land, as bad shadows began to rule the world and the angels had nowhere to hide. Rochat kept his lantern shining in the belfry so they could find their way to safety in the cathedral to hide from the bad shadows. Then, one dark and stormy night, Marc Rochat saw the most beautiful hooker in the world . . . shit, princess, I mean . . . the most beautiful princess in the world.”

  IV

  THE SUN HAD SET DURING THEIR CLIMB, AND THEY HAD TO STOP to put on their night vision goggles to make their way through the dark, close-in forest lining the trail. Even so, the switchback trail was tricky to negotiate. The black stones of the trail were worn smooth by tourists and pilgrims, and it was easy to slip. Fifty-eight minutes later they were standing at the south wall of the fortress. A breeze circled the walls from the west. Astruc looked at the sky again. It was a new moon tonight; a thousand stars would be visible to the naked eye. But with the night vision goggles, even stars unseen by the naked eye became bright things, and the sky above Montségur was aglow with sparkling light. And the spiral galaxy of the Milky Way stretched two hundred thousand kilometers across the horizon like a churning fog.

  Goose stood next to Astruc and signed, It looks alive, Father, as if it’s breathing.

  “It is, Goose. It’s been breathing for fourteen billion years.”

  He found the Big Dipper formation within Ursa Major. Then the pointer stars of the dipper, Merak and Dubhe. His eyes traced an imaginary line across the sky to the huddle of five stars four hundred thirty-four light-years from Earth. From this distance they were the stuff of visual illusion, appearing as one star. Men called it lodestar, guiding star, Polaris. Astruc found the two inner stars of the Big Dipper’s cup, Phecda and Megrez . . . then Alioth, Mizar, and Alkaid in the handle, traced two imaginary lines across space into the NQ3 quadrant till they intersected amid the fourteen stars at a right ascension of 17 hours and declination +65°. This was the constellation Draco. And at the point of intersection was a rare white giant, a massive dying star, listed according to its Bayer designation as Alpha Draconis. The
pharaohs of Egypt called it Thuban, the snake. Three hundred times brighter than the sun, but at three million light-years from Earth, Thuban appeared no more than an insignificant smudge of light. But six thousand years ago in the time of the pharaohs, before the axial precession of Earth tipped the planet twenty-six degrees on its axis, Thuban was the lodestar, the guiding star of men. And tonight, Astruc thought, it would be again.

  “Come, let us make things ready.”

  They walked under the south wall, climbed the wooden staircase rising five meters to an open arch. They stepped inside, dropped their backpacks on the ground. The fortress interior was shaped as an irregular pentagon, the five corners giving a sum of 540 degrees. It was an odd shape designed to maximize the limited space atop the pluton. At the west end stood the squared tower of the keep. Astruc saw the archer’s slit in the stone of the tower’s east wall. There had been a matching slit on the west wall before the wall collapsed hundreds of years ago. The arrow slits led to a legend about the keep. On the dawn of the summer solstice, the first rays of the sun were said to pass unbroken through the keep like some holy thread of light. It led to legends of the fortress being a place where the Cathars held secret rituals to worship the sun. Astruc smiled. It was nothing but a legend; even so, the truth of the Cathars was more strange than any legend men could have imagined.

  “Et auran liurat.”

  Goose looked at Astruc. Father?

  “I was thinking of the innocent men and women who were sacrificed in this place to lead us to this moment.”

  Goose couldn’t see the eyes behind the goggles, but he sensed another vision about Montségur had passed through the priest’s mind. But it didn’t take hold of him, not this time.

  Do you wish to rest a little before we begin, Father?

  He watched the priest shake himself. “No, not now. There will be time for rest.”

  Goose opened his backpack, sorted pieces of his gear. His laptop, a small external hard drive, a Krypton laser pointer with remote trigger, a transceiver, panels for a portable satellite dish, cables, and spare batteries. He arranged the gear across the open arch of the north gate, connected it together to make a base station. He assembled the sat dish, connected it to the transceiver by long cables. He carried the dish to the wooden platform at the south gate. He used his iPhone to figure azimuth and elevation of a communications satellite parked forty-two thousand miles above Earth. Next was the laser pointer. He circled around the outside of the fortress along the narrow cliff till he reached the northwest corner of the tower. The ruins of the terraced village lay twenty meters below the plateau. He climbed down, looked for a clear line of sight. He anchored the laser pointer to fire at a latitude of 1°50'00.80" E. He activated the remote trigger once and adjusted the intensity of light. It was perfectly set, making a thin green line of light directly beneath the north gate of Montségur before dead-ending into an outcrop of rock. From here, the beam would be visible from above, but hidden from anyone below the mountain. He crawled back up the cliff, walked to the north gate, stepped over the base station and into the fortress. He switched on the gear, tested the satellite link.

  Everything is set, Father.

  “Very good.”

  They took off their night vision goggles, let their eyes adjust to the dark. Goose had fixed a red filter over his computer screen and set the luminance to its lowest level. It preserved the rhodopsin in their eyes and did not blind them from seeing the constellation Draco, Thuban, and all the stars of the heavens.

  “We should have our evening meal now,” Astruc said, sitting down on the wall. “It will be a long night.”

  Goose opened his backpack and dug out a box of high-protein biscuits. He gave two biscuits to Astruc, one for himself. Astruc lowered his head to offer thanks for the gifts they were about to receive. Goose bowed his head, too. There were no words, only a meditative silence that continued as they ate. When they finished their meal, they used water from their goatskins to wash their faces and hands.

  “Let us begin.”

  Goose opened the laptop, connected to the Internet through a spiderweb of encrypted proxies that circled the planet nine times before finding its target. He had already hacked the target’s security codes and created his own access name. Now it was a simple matter of feeding the data from his external hard drive to the target.

  We’re in, Father. It will take three hours to upload the program into their computer. You should rest a little, Father. There is nothing to do until it happens.

  “Yes, all right. A little rest, then.”

  Astruc opened the reliquary box, lifted the sextant into his hands. There was a large rock protruding from the brown grass of the courtyard. He sat on the grass and rested his back against the rock. He touched the grass, the dirt, the stones.

  “Et auran liurat,” he whispered.

  A cool breeze drifted down from the Pyrenees and through the south gate. Astruc closed his eyes and breathed deeply. It was pure, it was life-giving. He opened his eyes, and in that moment, the gate was like a tunnel, and just beyond the entire expanse of the universe was moving, rolling like the crest of a mighty wave come to wash over the Earth and make it clean.

  V

  WELL?”

  “C’est magnifique, Kat.”

  When Katherine finished her story about the strange young man named Marc Rochat who saved the angels hiding in Lausanne Cathedral because they had nowhere else in the world to go, and the hooker princess who was being chased by the bad shadows, she stood very still, lantern in her hands, the fire of the candle flickering in her eyes. She stared at her audience: Max sitting in his crib, Monsieur Booty sitting on the nearby stool, and Officer Jannsen sitting in a chair pulled up and parked next to the crib. The three of them had formed a captive front row for Katherine’s performance. And after she’d finished the last act, there wasn’t a squeak. It was as if they were frozen in a moment of time. Max still had hold of Monsieur Booty’s fluffy tail, and Officer Jannsen had yet to take a sip of tea from the mug in her hands. The three of them stared at Katherine with the widest eyes. Katherine waited a full thirty seconds for a round of applause. There was none, just the continued gaga gaze of the peanut gallery. Katherine lowered the lantern and set her hand on her hip.

  “Well?” she said.

  Officer Jannsen said, “C’est magnifique, Kat.”

  “You think?”

  “I’ve never heard anything like it.”

  “Really?”

  “Oui. It was so full of imagination, I feel like I was taken to another place. A really special place.”

  “Really? Wow.”

  Katherine looked at Monsieur Booty.

  “How about you, fuzzface?”

  Mrrrrrewww.

  “I’ll take that as a thumbs-up—or claws-up, in your case.”

  She looked at Max.

  “What about you, buster? Did you like the story?”

  Max didn’t speak or babble. He just stared at his mother as if she were a thing of magic and wonder. Even better than Whac-A-Mole. Then he lay down his head and slept.

  FOURTEEN

  THERE WAS A SMALL STONE ALCOVE TO THE RIGHT OF THE DOOR. Inside the alcove, a cross was mounted into the stone. It looked old, made of two thin strips of metal. Harper stared at it. The cross had been painted once. Looked a well-faded gold or yellow. Sergeant Gauer reached behind the cross and pressed a button. He stood next to Harper, the both of them facing the door.

  “Stand still, let them get a look at you,” Gauer said.

  “What’s this place, then?”

  “How would I know? I’m not here, neither are you.”

  The address was Number 4, Rue Visconti. It was tucked in an alleyway in the 6th arrondissement. It’s where Sergeant Gauer brought Harper after coming up from the cavern. In the same bloody cab with the same bloody driver that picked Harper up at Gare
de Lyon three bloody days ago.

  “I thought he was working with Astruc,” Harper said, recognizing the cabbie.

  “So did Astruc,” Sergeant Gauer answered.

  Harper blinked, saw the spyhole in the door, and thought, If I saw the likes of two blokes just up from les carrières, filthy and rough, I wouldn’t open up.

  But ten seconds later, click . . . the door opened.

  Into a vestibule and down a hall. Could’ve passed for an abandoned house, this place. The green wallpaper, imprinted with some arabesque pattern, was tattered and peeling in places. The wooden flooring not only creaked but was so worn that iron nails poked from slats. The bare neon lamp hanging from the cracked plaster ceiling was a nice touch. Gave the place a nauseating glow—or maybe that was just the way Harper felt. There wasn’t anyone about, but there were security cameras in the high corners of the hall. Harper followed Sergeant Gauer to a metal door with seven slots for seven keys. It was open a crack, and there was a light beyond. Harper looked at the door. Steel, six inches thick. It’d been forced open. Sergeant Gauer heaved the door aside and stepped in. Harper stopped at the threshold. A large rectangular-shaped room. Antique floor-to-ceiling bookcases with beveled glass doors lining the walls, patterned carpet on the floor.

  “Well, well, what have we here?”

  Another step and he saw a hand-carved walnut table stretching the length of the room. It was swell. Matched the bookcases. There was a line of brass lamps with green glass shades down the center of the table, and they filled the room with contemplative light, perfectly balanced at 3200 degrees Kelvin. Chesterfield chairs of aged, brown leather were placed around the table. As he stepped clear of the door, Harper saw Inspector Gobet sitting in one of the chairs. Not at the head of the table, but at the immediate place to the right. La place d’honneur, Harper thought. Made him wonder who got the big chair. The inspector’s muscle, Mutt and Jeff, stood behind the inspector. They paid Harper no notice. They were too busy leaning up against the bookcases, scribbling in moleskin notebooks. The inspector, too, was otherwise engaged with the file that lay open before him. It looked familiar, and it made Harper feel sicker than he already did. He shook it off.