Angel City

by Jon Steele

  “With all due respect, sir, what are you saying?”

  She listened as the inspector spent the next hour walking her through the real results of the light scan. She heard the words—conceived of light, evolution, dream catcher, enemy knows, traitor in HQ, lockdown—and when the inspector was finished with all his words, she signed off.

  She sat very still for a few minutes, till she realized the guard manning the desk would know the inspector had already signed off the bird. And he’d remember the Quiet Room wasn’t for being quiet, it was for receiving bad news. Officer Jannsen breathed calmly and hit the switch to open the door. She stepped out of the room.

  “All members of the detail have returned to the compound and checked in?”

  “Yes, Chef.”

  “What about in Grover’s Mill?”

  The guard tapped a few keys on his computer, took a few seconds to read the information on screen.

  “Everyone is on site.”

  She took a calming breath.

  “Pass the word: Stay put, it’s going to be bumpy for a few seconds. They’re amplifying the time warp to level one. Nobody gets in or out.”

  III

  HARPER BLINKED.

  He was still in coach 17 of TGV 9261 to Lausanne. Crossing through the hills of Burgundy toward Dijon now. Passing farms, fields of cows, thick woods at three hundred kilometers per hour. Then it all went black as the train ducked into a long tunnel. Then there was a shudder and a ripping of light as another train passed in the opposite direction, heading to Paris. He felt his heart race, and he felt sick again.

  “Easy, boyo, it’s just the bloody train.”

  He pulled his eyes from the dark, took refuge in the glow of overhead reading lamps throughout the train car. The sleeping Chinese gentleman who’d been snoring next to him: gone. The American couple on their way to take the waters at Leukerbad: gone. The husband left his newspapers scattered over the table. Maybe he was being nice. Maybe, being a Yank, he expected someone else to toss them in the trash. Harper looked around the train car. Everybody else in place, with one new addition. A woman sitting across the aisle, facing him. Young, blond, wearing a dark brown hooded shearling sheepskin coat. There was a string of beads hanging from her right hand, and she was swinging it this way and that way, and the beads made tiny clacking sounds each time they wrapped around her index finger. There was a scent in the air, something familiar. Had to be coming from the beads, Harper thought. His eyes zoomed in. A string of 108 beads made of Tulasi wood. Japa mala they were called . . . Hindu prayer beads used in the recitations of mantras or in evoking the names of gods. Which might have been what the young woman was doing. Except as her lips rattled off silent words in rapid succession, she was staring straight at Harper. At least it seemed she was; hard to tell. Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of tortoiseshell Ray-Bans. The train emerged from the tunnel and into the light. The young woman stopped chanting, stopped swinging her beads.

  “Did I scare you?” she said.

  Harper straightened up as a message kicked in from the depths of his own reptilian brain: Must not die now. He worked his options with bandaged hands and a right arm in a sling. Weren’t many. Lunge ahead, ram his elbow into her throat, and break her windpipe topped the list.

  “Depends,” Harper said. “Where did everyone go?”

  She nodded to where the Chinese man had been snoring.

  “Him? He’s in the café car drinking beer.”

  Harper nodded to where the American couple had been.

  “What about them?”

  She took off her Ray-Bans, clipped them to the collar of her T-shirt. Harper scanned her eyes; they were clean.

  “The Americans? They’re in the café car, too. They’re drinking tea.”

  Harper relaxed, sat back in his seat. “Right.”

  “I’m Karoliina. I’m from Tampere. It’s in Finland, in the middle bit. I’m on my way to Montreux to meditate. You?”

  “I live in Lausanne.”

  “I got that. From the American lady. What I wanted to know was what you’re going to do in Lausanne.”

  Harper analyzed her voice. She was telling the truth. She spoke English with a Scandinavian postal code. He tried to shift gears on the manner of her thinking.

  “I didn’t know the Paris to Lausanne train made a stop in Finland,” Harper said.

  “Ha, ha, you’re funny. I just flew in from the States last night, got on the first train this way. There’s an ashram close by there. It’s in Les Avants.”

  “Is that where you’re going?”

  “Depends. Ever heard of Locomotora?”

  “Interesting name for an ashram.”

  “It’s not. It’s a post-rock band from where I live in Tampere. There’s a lot of post-rock bands there. But they’re the best. They’re the ones who know the real deal, the big scoop.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “I just did.”

  She gave the beads another go this way, then that way. Her lips reciting whatever words they were in rapid-fire silence. Then:

  “If you’re wondering what I’m doing, I’m praying.”

  “For who?”

  “For you.”

  “For me?”

  “That’s what I said. I was up in first class and got bored. I went to the café car to see if there was anyone interesting. I was told to look for someone interesting on the train. I got your story from the American lady. It sounded really interesting.”

  “My story?”

  “About your accident in Paris. Hit by a bus, she said. She thought you were such a nice British gentleman. Very polite and reserved, didn’t talk much. I’ve never met anyone hit by a bus before, so I came looking for you. I thought I’d pray for you. I do that a lot. I look for people I can pray for. I saw you and said to myself, That guy needs my prayers. You should check out Locomotora. The band, I mean.”

  “How did you know I was the interesting chap you were looking for?”

  “How hard is it to find a guy who looks like he’s been hit by a bus and is sitting in coach seventeen of the TGV 9261? You know, you’re lucky.”

  “So the American lady kept telling me,” Harper said.

  “I don’t mean the bus.”

  “No?”

  “No. I mean I found you just in time. Your aura was surrounded by the Five Poisons.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Ignorance, Pride, Attachment, Jealousy, Anger. They were all floating around you. I chased them away.”

  “Cheers.”

  “Olet tervetullut. That means—”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “You speak Finnish?”

  “Picked up a few words here and there.”

  She did her bead-flipping thing, recited her magic words to herself. Then, still staring at Harper, she stopped. She leaned across the table.

  “Tiedän kuka olet. Do you know what that means?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “It means ‘I know who you are.’”

  She nodded approvingly. “Pretty good.”

  Maybe she was one of the sensitive ones, Harper thought, able to sense the presence of his kind on Earth. Or maybe she was just barking mad with a capital B. And so what? The two were not exclusive of each other and were often complementary. Didn’t matter, really. What mattered was the odds of their lives crossing by chance were working out at 35 mill to 1.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re thinking this isn’t an accident. You and me on this train. Right here, right now. But you don’t know what it is. That’s what you’re thinking.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “There you go with that ‘you don’t say’ stuff. Is that one of the
rules for your gang? Never tell anyone who you are?”

  Harper stared at her.

  “Sorry, what’s your name?”

  “Karoliina. From Tampere. It was a sign, wasn’t it?”

  “Define ‘it.’”

  She leaned over the aisle and tapped her finger on the front page of the Daily Mail. The photo of the comet with the understated headline, “What the Hell Was That?!”

  “You saw it, didn’t you?” she said.

  “So did a couple million other people.”

  “Billions, but I know what it really means.”

  “You do?”

  “Tietysti, etkö?”

  “Sure, I know what it means. It means a piece of a comet named Giacobini-Zinner burned up upon entering the Earth’s atmosphere.”

  “Says who?”

  “An eminent astrophysicist from Oxford. At least he will.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight. He’s giving a lecture at l’Académie des sciences in Paris. It’ll be in all the papers tomorrow. Along with some impressive supporting data from EPFL.”

  “What’s EPFL?”

  “It’s where the smart people live in Lausanne.”

  She tipped her head as if Harper were a curious thing.

  “Why are you pretending?”

  Harper smiled.

  “Like you said, mademoiselle, those are the rules.”

  “So maybe I’m supposed to tell you what it means. That must be it, the reason we met.”

  “I’m listening.”

  She sat back in her seat, started flipping her beads.

  “He. Is. Born.”

  Harper stared at her.

  “Who’s born?”

  She smiled, leaned across the aisle, whispered, “A child conceived of light who will take us to the next level of evolution. He’s already here. That’s what it’s all about. That’s the real deal, the big scoop.”

  “And you know this how?”

  She sat back in her chair, gave her beads a twirl.

  “Everyone in my gang knows it. It’s our job.”

  “At the ashram.”

  “No, in the band.”

  Karoliina from Tampere was mad, Harper thought, but nicely mad. The kind for whom life was a journey from one guru to the next and who jumbled all her life experiences into a place she called the ultimate truth of everything there is. And Harper had to admit, her take on the comet was entertaining. Had a kid’s-Christmas-pageant feel about it. Matthew 2:2: Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. Adding to the imagination, a guitar sounded from on high. Strumming a progression of descending chords built around a tonic note. The sound hung in the air, then repeated. It was a mobile ringtone. The young woman dug through her overstuffed Prada bag. She found her phone, checked her messages. Harper chuckled to himself. Even the sensitive ones in search of universal truth need to be connected 24/7, it seemed.

  The train slowed.

  A recorded announcement played through the train car. “Mesdames et messieurs . . .” The train would be coming to a stop in Dijon. Next stop after Dijon, French-Swiss frontier. Harper waited for the announcement to run through French, German, Italian, and English. While it continued, the young woman closed her phone and dropped it in her bag. She started flipping beads again, staring at Harper the whole time. When the announcement finished, there was the clackityclack of the train running over steel rails and the rattle of the woman’s beads, andante moderato. Harper gave it a few beats to see if the young woman would pick up with the he-is-born riff. She didn’t.

  The train eased to a stop at Dijon station. She pulled her Prada bag over her shoulder and stood up.

  “Where are you going?” Harper said.

  “I’m getting off.”

  “You said you were going to Montreux.”

  “I did, and I was. But the band is doing a gig in Toulouse. I have to be there.”

  “Toulouse is south, toward Spain.”

  “I know. I’ll catch a train from Dijon. I’ll be there in five and a half hours. It was all in the message.”

  “What?”

  “This is how it works. The band announces a gig, sends you directions from wherever you are in the world. People drop what they’re doing and get there. We get together, make a flash mob, do some stuff. Maybe you should come. Check it out.”

  Harper ran Matthew 2:10: When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.

  “Got it. But, if you don’t mind, I’ll say good-bye.”

  “There are no good-byes in the universe, only nice to see you again.”

  “If you say so, mademoiselle.”

  She reached to the overhead rack, grabbed a small suitcase. She pulled her Ray-Bans from the collar of her T-shirt. Her sheepskin coat opened making the move, and Harper saw the image on the shirt. A winged form, falling through the fog at Pont des Arts in Paris. Harper was looking at himself during the Paris job. He saw the words: Older Than Dreams Tour . . . Locomotora . . . Aladdin Theater, Portland.

  “Hang on a sec.”

  “Yes?”

  “Your shirt.”

  “What about it?” she said.

  “Where did it come from?”

  “From the band. Locomotora. Like it?”

  “Sure. What does it mean?”

  She slipped on her Ray-Bans, smiled.

  “You’re really funny.”

  She turned, walked away.

  Harper looked out the window, watched her climb down the steps and walk along the platform and down the stairs. Then he watched the locals coming and going with their bags. He checked the billboard above the platform. He’d be in Lausanne in another two hours. Lausanne. He flashed Inspector Gobet coming back onto the rooftop in Paris, just after Bruno Silvestre of Brigade Criminelle dropped “the time of the prophecy is at hand.” Unfortunately, no idea what the prophecy was, or meant. Inspector tells Harper to get on the next train to Lausanne . . .

  Lausanne? What the hell am I supposed to do in Lausanne?

  Oh, I’m sure you’ll figure it out along the way, Mr. Harper.

  Just then, Harper did.

  “Not a damn thing.”

  Harper blinked, looked across to the next platform.

  TGV 5001. Dijon–Toulouse. Departing in seven minutes.

  “Bloody hell.”

  He got up, grabbed his coat, pulled it over his shoulders. He jumped off the train as the doors closed.

  EIGHTEEN

  AT MONTPELLIER, THE ONE TGV STOP EN ROUTE TO TOULOUSE, Harper stepped off the train with the rest of the smokers desperate for a fag. A voice blared over the public address system, announcing it’d be a five-minute stop. Harper found a shadow to hide in. They’d redone his bandages in Paris as part of cleaning him up, and the wrappings were less clumsy. Still took him half a minute to pull a smoke from his cigarette case; ditto with lighting the bloody thing. He inhaled deeply, let the radiance seep into his blood. He scanned the crowd, especially the ones heading for the exits. Karoliina from Tampere was nowhere to be seen. He’d walked the length of the train, checking all the cars of the train, twice. Couldn’t find her. And she wasn’t on the platform now. He worked the odds that he’d been a right prat in changing his itinerary. They came up dead even. No worries, Harper thought; there was always the universal truth of everything regarding his job in paradise: No matter where Harper ran through time and space, trouble always had a way of being there when he arrived.

  The trainman’s whistle screeched, warning the TGV’s doors were about to close. The locals all took last puffs and tossed ciggie butts onto the tracks. They climbed on board. Harper took a quick hit, dropped his fag on the platform, ground it into dust. Climbing onto the train, he kept his eyes drilled to the floor to avoid
the notice of the locals. Convenient trick, he thought, settling into his seat. The art of being invisible in a crowd. Not the least for the fact he hadn’t bothered to buy a ticket to Toulouse.

  The train pulled out of Montpellier, and Harper kept his eyes focused out the windows now. Off to the left, the land flattened and there were towns built along a string of saltwater ponds. There was a horizon rising beyond the ponds to the southeast. Grayish blue, shimmering in the midday light. The Mediterranean Sea, it was. And it was the first time he’d seen it since taking the form of Jay Harper. It felt familiar, like some long-forgotten thing suddenly found . . . Then something in the hippocampus region of his brain kicked in and the thing was forgotten again.

  Out the right windows, there were autumn-colored fields dotted with small villages, and farther on was the Massif Central. Bits of information connected in Harper’s brain. One: The Massif covered eighty-six thousand square kilometers, making it twice as big as Switzerland. Two: The region was packed with mountains, canyons, high plateaus. There were nearly four hundred fifty volcanoes quietly simmering away, as they had for the last ten thousand years. Three: The Massif was made famous by one George Julius Poulett Scrope, nineteenth-century English geologist and economist who published Memoir on the Geology of Central France, including the Volcanic Formations of Auvergne, the Velay, and the Vivarais in 1827. Harper chuckled to himself, wondering where the hell, or who the hell, the info came from. Then he hit it on his timeline. Captain Jay Michael Harper. Studied geography at the University of St. Andrews. Before any more info bled through, the hippocampus region of Harper’s brain did its thing and the not-so-dead captain went the way of the Med Sea.

  “C’est la bloody vie.”

  The train slowed passing through Béziers. And slowly crossing the trestle over the river Orb, Harper saw a great gothic cathedral towering over the town on the far bank. Looked more like a castle than a cathedral, and whilst looking at it, his mind ran through another info thread he’d picked up somewhere in time. La Cathédrale Saint-Nazaire, completed in the sixteenth century. The cathedral on the hill had been built over the ruins of another one, destroyed in the thirteenth century. Then something flashed in Harper’s eyes, so fast he nearly missed it. Coming into Montpellier, Harper had crossed into the Languedoc region of France. Languedoc. It meant “tongue of the Ocs”—the language of Occitania. Then came an episode of the History Channel: In the Name of God: The Slaughter of the Cathars. The episode ripped through Harper’s eyes. It was here, Béziers, July 22, 1209, the French Crusaders drew first blood. The army surrounded the town, demanded the surrender of all Cathars. The Catholic citizens of Béziers refused to hand over their friends and neighbors who were Cathars. The Crusaders attacked. Thousands of innocents sought sanctuary in the old cathedral and the churches of Marie-Madeleine and Saint-Jude. The Crusaders surrounded the buildings; they hesitated. Inside were not just Cathars, but fellow Catholics. There was a man among the Crusaders, Arnaud Amaury, Abbot of Cîteaux, personal representative of His Holiness the Pope. He sensed the hesitation of the Crusaders. He climbed the cathedral steps, held up the cross of his rosary and commanded them . . .