Thrillers in Paradise

by Rob Swigart

“We’re not negotiating and I don’t want tea,” Lacatuchi said, his patience wearing thin.

  “Then we have no further business.” The shopkeeper removed the box from the counter, turned off the burner and started for the back door.

  “Wait.”

  He stopped with his hand on the doorknob. Fluorescent light gave a blue glow to his smooth scalp.

  “Tea, then,” Lacatuchi said, resigned. “Tea would be nice.”

  “Very well.”

  Ahmet offered a chair as if there had been no unpleasantness. He methodically prepared and with great gravity poured tea into two glasses set into intricately worked silver holders. “You have come far today?” he asked, sitting in a second chair by the counter.

  “From France.”

  “Ah, yes, that is far. Or perhaps it is not far in this age of air travel and such. I myself have been to France.”

  “Have you?”

  Ahmet sipped noisily and proceeded to tell the Prior General of the Order of Theodosius about a trip to Marseilles when he was fourteen years old. His father had taken him to visit cousins, who had moved there in the early part of the twentieth century. There was the sea journey on an Italian passenger ship. “We could not go on a Turkish boat,” he explained, sipping his tea. “There were complications with Greece in those days, you understand, over Cyprus. But there were no storms, only smooth seas. It was truly a trip blessed by Allah.”

  Lacatuchi felt out of his depth, but knew better than to take the bait. Though this was not going quite as expected and taking far too long, he wasn’t even going to get a glimpse of the disk unless he continued to play this charade. Besides, he was not here in the dress of his Order, but as a civilian. A theological discussion would help no one.

  “It was a magical time, efendim, that voyage to Marseilles,” Ahmet concluded. “I should have another such one day, insh’allah.”

  At last the matter of price arose. “For an object of such antiquity, and such provenience,” he said, naming a ridiculous figure. “It is from the sixteenth century, you understand. From Rome.”

  “I haven’t even seen the object,” Lacatuchi objected.

  “Of course, that can be arranged, you have only to ask.” Ahmet stood and placed the box once more on the counter. When Lacatuchi took his place opposite he carefully opened the lid.

  A disk of tarnished bronze lay on a bed of crushed maroon velvet. There was a hole in the center where it could be fixed to the outer part, waiting in the safe in Lacatuchi’s room. A series of letters and numbers were engraved around the edge. This was certainly the other half of the Alberti cipher disk.

  “I believe this is the item I’m looking for,” Lacatuchi admitted. “But I can’t be sure.”

  Ahmet gently replaced the cover. “This is the item I have,” he said.

  Lacatuchi always traveled with an ample supply of cash, a necessity for the discreet operation of the Order. He offered half the asking price. Ahmet looked insulted, and claimed his mothers’ mothers would sooner have strangled their children in the crib than accept such an offer.

  They bargained through two more glasses of tea but in the end the Prior General carried the box away with him. He almost collapsed with relief when it fell into place in the rest of the Alberti disk. He had succeeded! Defago and his nun had not let him down, not this time. Tomorrow he would retrieve the document this device was meant to decipher and it would all be over. With the Pythos dead, the Struggle was moving into its final phase. He could taste the triumph.

  He ordered food and wine from room service, took a hot bath and for a change shaved himself. This he did with enormous attention and care. He was unused to this act, but it was a sacrifice he was prepared to make, this ritual shave. After all, he was celebrating a triumph.

  The masseur who appeared later that evening was large and muscular and silent. The bruises on Lacatuchi’s buttocks and thighs would be visible for weeks, the pain had been exquisite, the culmination in all ways fulfilling. The Prior General had no reason to be dissatisfied, no reason at all.

  26.

  Ted had just twisted the lock on the kitchen door when fragments of the wrought iron table and chairs rained against the oak. The seat of one of the chairs crashed through the window, sending a spray of glass fragments into the room and sucking in filaments of smoke behind it. Dishes shattered on the other side of the room.

  The sound of the explosion rang in Lisa’s ears. “What the hell was that?” she cried.

  “Grenade,” Ted answered brusquely, leading the way around a stack of official parish records. In one of the dead ends in that strange chamber made of books he leaned against another stack. It reluctantly swung aside in one mass, revealing the parquet. He kneeled and pressed a series of the planks in a complex pattern. A small wooden lever popped up. This he pulled and a square section of floor dropped away, revealing a ladder.

  “Go!” he commanded. “You first, Lisa.”

  The front door was splintering under a concerted attack. She climbed down, followed by Steve and the others. When they were safely out of the way, Ted pushed the trap door closed and began manipulating a series of wooden levers set into the ceiling.

  “Perhaps we should pick up the pace,” Steve suggested. “You clearly have an escape route, Ted, and as it happens I don’t have a gun. I feel a certain urgency for Lisa’s sake, if not for the rest of us.”

  Ted held up one hand. “Just resetting the lock,” he whispered.

  Footsteps thumped on the floor above them. Someone stopped just overhead.

  Satisfied, Ted led the way to the back of the cellar. Just enough daylight filtered through narrow gaps between the ceiling and the wall to see the dirt floor and a few sticks of rotting furniture.

  Ted pushed a section of wall and an irregular mass opened outward to darkness. Lisa started through but Ted grasped her arm. “Wait,” he whispered, pointing back at the trap door.

  Suddenly a section of the ceiling dropped and a man in the habit of a Dominican monk tumbled through with a shout of surprise. He struggled to his feet, looking around. His face twisted in hatred and Lisa was sure he had spotted them, but a rumbling sound overhead jerked his gaze upward. He raised both hands in a useless attempt to block the cascade of books that quickly buried him. He fell silent. The books continued to fall until a mound reached nearly to the opening in the ceiling.

  “Old dictionaries,” Ted muttered. He urged them through the opening and shut it behind them.

  They were in a narrow, pitch dark space. Lisa felt rough stone on either hand. The ceiling grazed the top of her head. She jerked her foot back when something ran over it. With a reassuring touch of his hand on her back Ted said softly, “Let me lead.” He squeezed past and produced a tiny penlight. “These houses date back to the twelfth century, when this was Cathar country. Pierre Roger, who led the knights defending Mt. Ségur, was from Mirepoix. The Cathars had became adept at evading the Pope’s more zealous representatives in the Inquisition, though of course in the end they were all massacred. Passages like this allowed them to move freely without going outside. This one runs along the back of this whole row of houses, which, by the way, we own.”

  “That’s why you stay in a town like this, because of the Cathars?”

  “Call it tradition,” Ted said, leading them through a series of cellars. “Langedoc has always had a reputation for independent thinking. It’s been a good home. But,” he added cheerfully, looking back, “things change.”

  A hundred meters later he stopped. “End of the line.” Another doorway opened into a basement empty of everything but cobwebs and a narrow set of stairs leading up to a wooden door.

  Beside the stair was a tiny opening, visible by the small amount of light leaked from it. To this he put his eye. “All clear,” he said. “We can go up.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Periscope. Following the Cathars, we stay as low tech as possible. Electronics are too easy to detect and track and no one thinks of using
mirrors and peepholes any more.” He pushed the door upward and they climbed into the light. Down the block behind them smoke rose into the air. In the distance they could hear sirens.

  A sedan with darkened windows rolled to a stop before them and the back door swung open.

  “Let’s go.” Ted pushed Lisa and Marianne into the back and climbed in after them. Steve sat in the front with Alain. As soon as the door was closed the car started toward the house they had so recently left.

  “Hello, Alain,” Steve said to the driver. “Good to see you again.”

  He nodded. “You also, M. Viginaire. Everyone is safe, I see.”

  “Thanks to you, and these folks.”

  They rolled past the house. Smoke was pouring from the front windows. In the next block two people, a workman in blue overalls and a nun were moving away without apparent hurry, as though out for a stroll. Lisa stared back at them. There was a slight hesitation in the nun’s gait. She was favoring one foot.

  “All right,” she said, turning back. “What the hell was that about?”

  Alain replied, “The monk’s name is Defago. She is Sister Teresa Williams, a Dominican nun and former Lieutenant in the United States Marines. They are with the Order of Theodosius and are certainly responsible for the deaths of Dr. Foix and Rossignol.”

  “And you know this how?” She could feel the looming presence of a fugue coming on, her escape from stress. This time, though, there was something different, as if instead of removing her, it might somehow be helpful. This was something she would have to consider later on, this change in quality.

  Alain turned briefly. “We’re in full emergency mode,” he said with a thin smile. “I’ve begun a number of inquiries with various entities in and out of government and have gained some useful intelligence.”

  They passed a side street and something twitched in the back of Lisa’s mind. They crossed the intersection and she saw, like a sudden photograph, the parked cars, a few people running toward the fire, and, by itself on the other side of the street, a gray van with orange writing on the side. Then the house on the corner blocked her view and she turned back to the front. “Shouldn’t we go back, stop them, tell the police?” she asked, but she was preoccupied and spoke without much enthusiasm.

  Steve turned in his seat. “They’re armed and we aren’t, and remember Dr. Foix’s message: no police. It is a rule of the Delphi Agenda not to use violence, though I would love…. No, never mind.”

  Moments later they were accelerating away from Mirepoix on the regional highway.

  Ted said. “There’s a jet waiting at Carcassonne. We must return to Paris. There is much to do, and very little time. There are too many interested parties, including the police. Our security is growing more and more difficult. For a secret war, this has become far too public.”

  “I think you’d better fill us in,” Steve suggested.

  “On the plane,” Ted suggested. “Things are a bit too energetic at the moment. We will tell you everything on the plane, won’t we, Marianne.”

  “Yes, we’ll brief you on the plane when we can be a bit more relaxed.”

  27.

  During the half hour drive to Carcassonne, Lisa nervously watched the road behind them. Ted and Marianne were discussing something in whispers. She caught an occasional phrase but bided her time. Clearly they were organizing their presentation to her, and she would just have to be patient. She thought her situation was like a complex and badly preserved papyrus, the kind she had to contemplate, move around, turn upside down, squint at, and gradually tease out the letters and words. A certain sense was just beginning to form out of the turmoil of the last days. Yes, she could be patient.

  When at last they pulled into the private parking spaces by the civilian hangers, Ted assured her it made no difference if they had been followed or not, now they were here they were safe.

  They listened to the ticking of the engine as it cooled. The hangar doors were open. Two pilots chatted together at the foot of the stairs of an enormous corporate jet.

  Lisa laid her head against the back of the car’s leather seat. “I’m thinking of something on the skytale,” she said slowly. “It’s the way Raimond wrote his name, FOI instead of FOIX. I thought it was a mistake, that he was in a hurry, but now I think it was deliberate. He meant foi. He was telling me to have faith, to trust myself.”

  “And what does your self say?” Steve asked.

  She whispered, “My self says I don’t want to do this, to be the Pythia. It has nothing to do with me. I’m a scholar, a kind of scientist.”

  Steve nodded. “I understand.”

  “You do?”

  “Of course. This is all new to me, too. It sounds like nonsense, a fairy tale, like another product of the Conspiracy Nut Factory. I haven’t said yes, either.”

  She started to agree with him, to say they could just stop, go home, take themselves out of this fray. Instead she said, “Oh, damn.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t want to do it, but I loved Raimond, and he went through a lot at the end to pass this on. I don’t know if I really have a choice. If I say yes, I think I’ll need you.”

  “I’ll think about it, but I don’t see how we can stop these people, stop the Order.”

  She regarded the back of her hand and said slowly, “I see three ways: we can convince them we no longer exist, and then they’ll leave us alone; we can eliminate them ourselves; or we can expose them publicly. Publicity, not to mention the legal system, might take care of them for us.”

  “Or drive them further underground,” Steve countered. “They’ve had a lot of practice at stealth.”

  “So, should we follow option one? Convince them we’re gone?” she asked the group.

  It seemed she had already made her choice.

  Alain, stepping out of the car, heard her and leaned inside. “They know who you are, and they’re after you. You could try to disappear but they’d keep looking. They aren’t known for giving up.”

  “I see now that you’re right,” she agreed. “The Pythos has been an important if unseen force for a long time. After the Oracle was closed it didn’t just suddenly vanish, and it wouldn’t do so now. The Order would never believe it, especially since their existence depends on having the Pythos as an adversary. Without us they would cease to exist.” She paused to contemplate this. “No, it’s more than that. They’re truly desperate. Raimond must have gotten close to something important.” She smiled at Steve. “That’s all I’ve got. We need more information. A lot more.”

  Alain said they had filed a flight plan and should get going.

  Lisa realized she had spoken of herself as the Pythia. She was the Delphi Agenda. Her eyes snapped open. “Right, I see now what I have to do, but I don’t know enough. What has the Pythos been doing for the past sixteen hundred years? Where has it intervened, and why? How does it work?”

  Ted opened the door. “Marianne and I will brief you as best we can on the flight, but there is much you’ll have to discover for yourself.”

  They followed him to the plane. The name Apollonair ran along the side in large red cursive. “Apollon Air? Not Appollinaire the poet, anyway. Apollo, patron of Delphi and prophesy?” Lisa said. “Cute.”

  “A charter company,” Ted said. “It’s yours. More or less,” he added.

  “Excuse me? How much does one of these things cost?”

  “A little over eighteen million euros for a Citation X like this, the fastest in the fleet. I didn’t mean to say you own it personally: Apollonair is a privately held corporation, part of a loose conglomerate of such legal entities that make up the Delphi Agenda. We could say that Elizabeth Sybilla Emmer is the CEO, but of course no one would know your name. It’s not official, not public.”

  “You can’t be serious. That’s a lot of money.”

  “Never been more serious. In effect you, as Pythia, are the reason the extensive network of companies, research centers, think tanks, and banks ex
ist. Delphi Agenda itself is not a legal entity.” He chuckled. “It could hardly be secret if it were registered, could it, Marianne?”

  “No, Ted, it could not. And as Mr. Maintenon has said, the Pythos, or in your case, Pythia is not exactly a CEO, either.”

  “That’s correct, but I assure you, Lisa, the components like Apollonair are all legitimate. By way of example, Apollonair owns several aircraft of various sizes and configurations. It’s a thriving plane hire business that turns a tidy profit. Some of that profit is in turn invested back into the network, the rest returned to the business. Like any normal charter company it has a board of directors and a president and over a dozen crews. But there is always a plane available for the Pythos… or the Pythia.”

  Lisa shook her head. “Then why did Steve and I have to take the train this morning?”

  Ted nodded. “There wasn’t time. The attacks only happened yesterday. Even Alain can’t arrange things that fast, but we’re getting ready now, thanks to him. Now come along, we’re wasting time.” He started up the stairs.

  The beige interior was all wood paneling, smooth plastic and indirect lighting. Eight comfortable leather seats were set up in two groups of four around polished mahogany tables. In the back was a restroom, bar and small galley.

  Alain took a seat in the back grouping and pulled a laptop from a storage unit. He was already at work when the others took their places in front. The pilot closed the doors and within a few minutes they were leaping off the runway in a long sweeping turn to the north.

  Once they were airborne Marianne brought some refreshments from the galley and they settled down for the briefing.

  “Now,” Ted began, slowly peeling an orange. “We have a little over forty minutes to fill you in on structure, global assets, and sixteen hundred years of history so I’ll begin.” He popped an orange section into his mouth and chewed slowly, collecting his thoughts. “Most of the people who work for the Delphi Agenda think their immediate employers are private corporations and know nothing of the Delphi Agenda, which is confined to a core – that is, Marianne and I, Alain, the Rossignol and the Pythos.”