by Rob Swigart
She stepped away. “Raimond mixed it all up. He was really cautious. He wrote two numbers in the book, Turner’s Greek Papyri, a Delta and a Phi. I think the Delta on the tape was directing me to the Delta in Turner, the Delta with a Phi inside. The number we’re looking for is Phi, not Delta at all; that was just a way of pointing from one to the other.”
“So we’re looking for the golden mean, 1.618….”
She shook her head. “No, but he could have anticipated his killer might be fooled into thinking he meant that.”
“Look,” Steve began, “just draw an equilateral triangle inside a circle, and then find the midpoints of two sides and draw a line to the circumference. The ratio between the line inside the triangle and outside will be Phi, the golden mean, a proportion, see? What else could it be?”
“Raimond wouldn’t refer to the golden mean. It doesn’t make sense in the context. In Greece Phi was the symbol for five hundred.”
“I know, but the Golden Mean is Greek,” he persisted. “Phi was proposed by Mathematician Mark Barr because it was the first letter in the name of the Greek sculptor Phidias. His sculptures were perfect examples of the Golden Mean.”
“Too modern,” she insisted. “Raimond might make a reference like that, but not here. I vote for the simple number: five hundred and six.”
“So, no Dirac Delta and no Barr Phi?”
“No,” she said decisively, again flipping rapidly through the envelopes. “Five hundred six.” A moment later she gave a cry of triumph and tipped an envelope to extract its contents.
A sudden sound sent them both to the staircase.
There was a scuffle followed by a crash, as if a computer had fallen from a desk. Someone shouted, “Get out of my way.”
Another yelled, “No, don’t!”
There followed the sound of shattering glass and a long scream abruptly cut short.
18.
Captain Hugo was pushing down firmly on his desk with both hands, towering over the man seated before him. “You lost them?” A file folder slid to the floor, scattering a fan of papers. He bent down to collect them.
Guardian of the Peace Philippe Dupond shifted uneasily. “They ate lunch,” he said to the back of the captain’s head. “They took a walk, caught a bus. It seemed innocent enough.”
“Innocent?” The captain straightened and replaced the folder on the desk. He regarded its alignment with the edge and shifted it slightly. “She’s a suspect, Guardian. No one is innocent until proven so. Napoleon was right in this. Did they spot you?”
“I don’t think so; they went to Mouffetard. It was crowded and they must have turned off somewhere. I realized I’d lost them when I got to Contrescarpe.”
He was so discouraged Hugo almost relented. “Then what?”
“I went to her building on rue de l’Esperance, but she never returned. I’m sorry, Capitaine.”
“How long have you been a Guardian of the Peace?”
“Three years, Capitaine.”
“You’re no longer an intern, then, so I suppose you did manage to call in to have his portable phone traced?”
“Of course, but without result. He must’ve turned it off.”
Hugo made a chopping motion with the edge of his hand at the desk, but stopped and let it drop before it connected. “Never mind; they won’t go far. Unless Mademoiselle Emmer really did kill Foix she won’t disappear on us. If she does run for it that can only mean she’s guilty and we’ll find her. Maybe they went to Viginaire’s place. There was something between them.”
“Yes, I saw that in the restaurant.”
“Do we know where Viginaire lives?”
Dupond shifted again. “It would appear he doesn’t live anywhere.”
“Well, we know that can’t be true.” Hugo sat down. Mathieu appeared in the office doorway holding a file. “Anything?” Hugo snapped.
“Not much.” Mathieu approached the desk with a cursory glance at Dupond. “The Propreté de Paris didn’t have any street cleaners on Montpensier at that hour, so it was a disguise. Clever, too, since no one remembers what a street cleaner looks like. We’re still canvassing the neighborhood. Many reported suspicious looking Arabs, or Africans, or Asians. One man swore he saw an extraterrestrial, and a woman was convinced her dog had been kidnapped. It’s crazy season. And an elderly woman in the gardens of the Palais Royal saw a nun in some kind of a futuristic wheelchair.”
Hugo grunted.
“Other results: the bullet was a nine millimeter hollow point. They’re trying to trace it, but doubt they can; it’s very common ammunition. Explosive on the door contained a small quantity of Penthrite, so it was probably Semtex. Oh, and the tape.”
“The tape, yes.” Hugo slicked his hair back absently. “You can go, Dupond.”
The Guardian, looking sheepish, bowed his way out. Once he was gone Hugo reached for the folder. “What about the tape?” he asked Mathieu.
The lieutenant placed the folder on the desk. “It’s the metallic kind used to decorate presents,” he said. “It’s sold in all the stores before Christmas. It was slightly damaged by stomach acid. No recording or anything like that on it. The rest of the roll was in Foix’s desk.”
While Mathieu was talking, Hugo flipped open the folder. Several pages were clipped inside along with digital photographs of the wheel marks on the carpet.
Mathieu trailed off, seeing he had lost Hugo’s attention.
The captain flicked his fingernail against a page and looked up. “What did you say before?”
“Pardon?”
“You said something about a nun in the gardens at the Palais Royal. Rossignol’s apartment would look onto the garden, would it not?”
“Yes. A witness mentioned a nun in a wheelchair.”
“Why?”
“I don’t understand.”
“A nun in a wheelchair can’t be all that unusual. Nuns in uniform may be less common than they used to be, but why notice this one?”
Mathieu looked at his notes. “She said the wheelchair looked strange, and the nun was staring at the windows along the west side of the gardens, like she was fixed on them or was looking for something.”
“I don’t suppose this witness described what was strange about the wheelchair?”
“She said it had too many wheels. The way she described it, it could have been one of those special things that can climb stairs. The sets of wheels rotate as it climbs. I saw a television special on them. I suppose the nun could have had one of those.”
“Yes? Well, Mathieu, from the width of the tracks and the weight of the object that made them, forensics thinks it likely they match a very sophisticated kind of chair with four big wheels, the kind belonging to a climbing wheelchair. It’s not certain, of course, just their best guess, but I do believe you’re correct.”
Mathieu grinned. “You’re not suggesting a crippled nun in a wheelchair shot Dr. Foix? She wouldn’t have been tall enough, for one thing.”
Hugo started scribbling on a Post-it note. “Not in an ordinary wheelchair, but the one suggested by forensics has hydraulic lifts and microprocessor controls. It’s expensive, well beyond the means of an ordinary nun, I would think, so someone must have got it for her. We have a man dressed as a street cleaner and a nun in a wheelchair. It begins to have a funny aroma, does it not, Mathieu? Have someone check sales records for this model. Maybe something will come up.” He handed the paper to Mathieu and went back to studying the forensics report.
* * *
The flames in Teresa’s hut began small, just a few orange flickers barely visible through the half-open door where Rossignol’s body was visible on her bunk.
The course of the fire was predictable enough: they grew rapidly, aided by the abundance of combustible material heaped inside and soon angry fire engulfed the room. A few moments later they breached the roof and released boiling clouds of dark smoke into the sullen sky.
“Not arso vivo,” Defago mused. “Not burned alive, b
ut condemned to the flames nonetheless. Such is the fate of heretics.” His hand rested lightly on the nun’s shoulder as if he could draw strength from the metal joint inside. They could no longer see the body on the cot through the inferno.
Her breath rasped when she sighed. “It is a shame.”
Defago gave her shoulder a squeeze. “I know.”
“This was my home these last two years.” She reached up and touched his hand. “But I understand the need.”
The great crucifix lay on top of the precious copy of Augustine’s City of God in her lap. The agonized face of the Redeemer seemed to flicker with false life. Flames poured through the burning door and licked up the side of the hut.
“I do regret it, believe me,” Defago told her. His voice was tender. “We had nowhere else nearby to use.”
The roof gave a sudden roar and a spiraling tower of sparks shot into the sky. Smoke was already blending into the low cloud, gray on gray. Moments later a ceiling beam crashed into the room, and new constellations of red stars danced for a time and one by one winked out. Ash fell on the two witnesses.
They watched in silence until the flames began to falter. “Well,” Defago said. “That’s one loose end. Now for the girl.”
They returned to the van, dark against the trees beyond reach of the firelight and drove slowly away on the gravel road. In the distance a siren began to wail.
19.
The shattering glass and the scream left behind a shocking silence in the Institut de Papyrologie.
“What the hell was that?” Lisa exclaimed. She shoved the document back into the envelope and slid it into her new large canvas bag. For someone who might have to go on the run it had seemed more practical than her old shoulder bag.
They clattered down the narrow spiral stair.
The front door was ajar. Down the corridor a figure was just disappearing around the corner. “Olivier!” she yelled, starting after him.
Steve held her back. “Look.”
The office was empty. Warm June air floated in through the shattered window beside the secretary’s desk, bringing the smell of flowers. Confused shouts rose from the Court of Honor.
“Stay here!” he hissed, moving toward the window. As he approached the frame a large triangular wedge of glass suddenly dropped free and fell into the courtyard. Someone screamed.
“We have to go!” He grabbed her hand and dragged her from the room. The hallway was empty. They ducked through the door to stairway B. Someone was running down the stairs ahead of them. A door slammed and they were alone.
One flight down new footsteps pounded up toward them.
They hurried from the stairwell and raced down the corridor, past three more stairways and several lecture halls. They were now on the St. Jacques side of the building, away from the Court of Honor. Finally they turned into yet another hallway, breathing heavily. Steve tried door after door, but formal classes had ended and they were locked.
Finally one yielded, opening onto an untidy office smelling strongly of chalk dust. The blackboard was covered with illegible writing that might have been English but looked as if it had been left over from a century ago. Old journals, stacked precariously on every available surface, were covered with a visible film of dust. The window faced the south end of the Cour d'Honneur. They looked down at brown and white checkerboard paving and the brown expanse of the court. Embedded in the surface were the remains of the foundations of previous buildings.
A crowd had gathered at the far end. Several people were pointing up at the broken window.
“Olivier?” Lisa whispered.
“I can’t see; there are too many people, but if it’s him, he must have fallen.”
“Fallen?”
“Protecting us.”
She sank against the desk. “He said something about a monk.”
“No time now. Come on.”
They clattered down the stairwell and found an outside door. A knot of spectators surrounded the SAMU paramedics. No one saw them walk across the court and out onto the rue de la Sorbonne.
An ambulance, its engine running and blue lights flickering, was double parked at the curb. Another crowd had gathered near the door, generating an excited buzz of speculation.
Lisa and Steve walked to the Renault. Moments later he maneuvered the Renault into the evening traffic on the rue des Écoles.
Lisa’s mind chased itself around a wheel: her brief fugue of this morning, Raimond’s bizarre murder, the boy’s death. What did it all have to do with her? Why was she on the run? She hadn’t had a moment to collect herself, and now here they were, circling the Sorbonne and heading south on rue St. Jacques. Soon they were passing the normally creamy white stone pile of the Pantheon on their left. Tonight, against the cloud-filled sky its columns and narrow dome seemed to be illuminated by a more somber light than usual. As she had in Raimond’s study this morning she told herself she was strong, she could handle this, whatever it was.
She took a deep breath and asked, “Are we going back to your place?”
“It won’t be safe. Olivier’s killer may have panicked, but whoever it was obviously didn’t believe Olivier when he said you weren’t coming back.” They stopped at the boulevard de Port Royal by the Val de Grâce military hospital. “Did you get a good look at him?”
“I couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman.”
“Was he wearing robes? The monk?”
She shrugged. “Sorry. It’s possible; I just don’t know.”
To the west boulevard Port Royal became Montparnasse. “Sooner or later they’d figure out where I live and now I think it will be sooner. And Hugo will be anxious to find us; he’ll probably think we’re responsible for what happened.”
“Check your phone, maybe he called.”
Steve handed her the phone and she switched it on. A few moments later it beeped. “You have three messages, two from Hugo, one from a number with no name.”
“What’s the number?”
She read it to him. Before she could point out that it ended with 22-14, the same numbers as Raimond’s door code, he sped up, raced a yellow light and swerved into the bus lane, passing slower traffic.
“What?” She gripped the door handle.
“Turn it off!” He glared at her. “The phone, turn it off!”
She did. He swerved around a bread van and cut across oncoming traffic onto the rue Delambre. Moments later he turned hard left into a dead end a block long. A large green garage door at the end of the street began to slide open as they approached. He drove inside, maneuvered up a ramp and parked against the far wall. The door was already closing behind them. “Come on!” He grabbed the duffel bag from the back seat.
She hurried after him. “Where are we going?”
Inside a service door was an elevator. She pressed herself against the back wall. “Another one of your secret retreats?”
“Safe house. Extreme emergency. The elevator’s private, for the back penthouse. The rest of the building is for normal people, who have their own elevator. I’ve never been here, but something’s happened to M. Rossignol and I have to call that number back as soon as possible. That means you and I are on our own for now, and we have a lot of people after us. Until we know who and why, we avoid everyone. I’ll know more soon.”
The door opened onto a small but finely furnished salon. There was a kitchen, the kind called American, built against a wall. Two open doors led to a bathroom tiled in off-white and a bedroom with a large bed covered in dark blue silk. There were no windows.
Steve put the bag on the entry table. “Montparnasse cemetery’s on the other side of that wall. If there were a window you could look down on the grave of Charles Baudelaire. We should be safe here. See if you can figure out what that Procroft document means while I call.”
“Want me to turn on the phone?”
“No!” He lowered his voice. “Sorry, the police could trace it, and if they could, so could others, whoever they are. I’ll
use the land line; it’s secure.” He was already dialing, simultaneously pulling a notepad and pen from a drawer.
He listened carefully, taking notes and speaking only a word from time to time. After he hung up he scribbled rapidly, filling the page.
“Well,” he said. “We have to catch a train in the morning.”
“Where are we going?”
“Toulouse.”
“I see. I’m sure some time soon you’ll tell me why we would want to suddenly go to Toulouse.” She sat on a plush sea-green couch, pulled the Procroft envelope from the canvas bag and laid it carefully on the white lacquered surface of the coffee table. “It’s parchment, not papyrus,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
“Perhaps nothing. Papyrologists study texts, no matter what they’re written on. The ancients mostly wrote on papyrus, but they also used broken pottery. Parchment or vellum were more rare and expensive, though, and would only be used for really important documents.”
“Then this would qualify as an important document, I’d say.”
“Yes.”
“Looks like Greek,” he observed.
She looked closely at the text. “The style is first or second century. I think it’s a forgery, a very good one.”
“What does it say?’
“It’s a series of eight short texts, each one prefaced by a Greek letter. The first says something like, ‘Know what’s in front of your face, and what’s hidden from you will be revealed to you.’ It’s another of Raimond’s damned jokes! It’s from the Gospel of Thomas.” In response to his unspoken question she continued, “One of the Gnostic texts that didn’t make it into the New Testament, like other gospels, like Judas or Mary, ancient wisdom shunned by the emerging Church hierarchy. Too pagan, or didn’t fit into the orthodoxy. It’s a little odd that this is in Greek, not Coptic Egyptian. Except for a few fragments from Oxyrhinchus, the Thomas we know about is in Coptic, from the Nag Hammadi library. Raimond either translated Thomas back into Greek or had a Greek version I don’t know about.”
