Thrillers in Paradise

by Rob Swigart

  But she never felt she could control it. At times it just came over her, as the other night when she found herself underneath Steve’s apartment before she knew him. The night Raimond was murdered.

  Who was she? A girl from Chicago whose life, almost by accident, took some surprising turns. Thirty-two years old, flawed by a hidden disability, or blessed, as her mentor would have had it, unmarried, a scholar of crumbling Greek and Latin domestic and legal texts, a student of Dr. Raimond Foix, professor of Greek from the Sorbonne who had one day appeared and changed her life.

  It struck her again even more forcefully that her meeting with Foix was not accidental. He had materialized at the door to the gymnasium just as she was about to commit herself to a clear path. Why? And, she had to ask herself, why had she so willingly turned away from her destiny and followed him across the campus to his temporary office in Classics, beginning a completely different and unfamiliar path? He was only a visiting professor, after all, on campus for a semester.

  Somehow he had chosen her. How?

  He was the Pythos. He simply knew!

  That couldn’t be all of it. Certainly, his agents had been watching. They knew everything about her. She had been selected, because of her genetics or her personality she didn’t know, and he had gone to California to recruit her. The organization not only had charter airlines and numerous businesses and banks at its disposal, it had human resources that spanned the globe.

  That day, despite her weakness, or because of it, Raimond Foix had somehow known in advance she would agree.

  Raimond had turned and walked away. She stood for a heartbeat or three, and walked after him, the gym forgotten. “You’ll teach me life?” she asked, knowing she was leaving everything behind, and feeling in that moment a tremendous relief and excitement.

  Without breaking stride he answered, “Life, yes; a very precious thing, life. Best not to waste it.”

  “How is studying dead languages going to help?” she had asked.

  This time he stopped to look at her with a twinkle in his eye. “Are you willing to find out?” It didn’t occur to her then that he had answered her question with one of his own.

  Now she couldn’t tell if this was a memory or a dream and decided in the end it didn’t matter. This was as close to Raimond Foix as she could ever be again.

  32.

  Sister Teresa lay naked in the tub, her misshapen legs stretched out before her. Her eyes were closed. She could smell the perfume Defago had added to the water in the vapor rising from its surface. They were in the special lodgings of the Dominican Order a few streets east of the Place de la Bastille. This was their refuge, but despite the soothing ritual bath she remained restless and unhappy.

  “Don’t worry so, my Tisiphone,” Defago said gently. He was seated behind her, his hands on her neck. “It wasn’t your fault. He got in the way.”

  “The bullet hit, but he lives. I’m sure of it.” Her breath disturbed the rising steam. Twisted scar tissue on the side of her head glowed pink and white in the subdued light. Her gray-blond hair, what was left of it, was tied up in a knot on top of her head. The rest of her body was submerged, hidden.

  “Scoot up,” Defago said.

  She struggled and her shoulders emerged from the foam. The terrible scars continued from the side of her skull and ear down her shoulder. Inside the puckered skin and ravaged flesh there was forged titanium alloy, plastic, screws; there was also muscle, bone, the pulse of blood. She was vital and alive. Defago touched the shoulder with a sponge. Hot water flowed.

  “That’s good.” Her eyelids fell closed.

  He gripped the joint and squeezed. An echo of her pain passed over her face. She sighed, leaning into his hand.

  He undid the knot of her hair and brought water up, wetting it. Soon he was rubbing in shampoo, and foam cascaded down her cheeks. Leaning over her he whispered into the dark hole that had been her ear: “We’ll get them, my dove, I promise you.”

  She nodded. “How? How will we get them, Armand?”

  “Mm.” He soaped her neck and kneaded the cord of muscle on each side of her spine. It had the durable temper of oak. She was strong, his instrument! She was strong, and true. “They have gone to ground,” he said softly. “They hide, but they must come out, and we will be there. We watch around Montparnasse where they left the Canadians. Our eyes lost them in the crowd of heathens then, but when they emerge we will have them. We have eyes, my sister. We have eyes.”

  “It is too bad about Cedric,” she murmured dreamily. “We could use him now.”

  “No,” he answered gently. “Brother Cedric made mistakes, serious mistakes, he attracted attention. He was careless and had lost his value. We are well rid of him. But we have choices. If we knew where they were hiding we could burn them out, perhaps, but we do not know, and besides, we should not do it. We could kill when they come forth. I think instead, we should convince them to give us what other secrets they might have.” His voice momentarily changed register, becoming cold, with an edge of calculation. “The Prior General wants them dead. Perhaps for that reason alone we should keep them alive.”

  She didn’t acknowledge his change of tone, and spoke dreamily, saying, “Do we really need such secrets, even if they exist? Shouldn’t we just kill them, my master? It would be over. They would no longer have importance. The Pythos already is gone. If we kill the girl and the man there would remain the one who drove them and that couple in Mirepoix, and none of them are the Pythos or ever could be. They are just soldiers, workers. We can kill them any time. You did tell me the war would be over by now.”

  “Do you grow weary, my sister, my pure one?”

  She turned in the bath and the water rippled away from her torso, lifted now above the froth, and ricocheted off the ceramic. Her flat breasts, cupped in chaotic waters, were fixed to an armature of muscle and bone. She gripped the side of the tub and her biceps bulged; the awful power of her upper limbs was visible only for a moment.

  She softened. “I’ll never be tired as long as you’re with me, my priest, my father, you know that.” Her voice was a harsh whisper. “I meant no reproach. Forgive me.” She seized his hand and kissed it, murmuring apologies in Latin.

  “We shall see,” he said. “Perhaps it would be better to kill them after all.”

  Later he washed her battered chest, her horrific scars, and her tense, muscular back. She sat straight and still, her head bowed. “Stand,” he commanded, and she did, holding a bar.

  He worked his way down her sides, sponging over the narrow hips, the groove of her backside, her long-forgotten sex, her thighs and ravaged calves. She stood patiently on her one good foot, showing neither pleasure nor pain, but there was something stoic and docile in her manner of standing, in her acceptance of his ministry as he laved the sharp stump where her leg ended just above the ankle.

  He finished. She remained standing, a scar-veined statue of weathered wood. “I’m done,” he said.

  “What? Oh.” She shook once and, bending her knee, carefully lowered herself until she was sitting once more in the water and her legs were stretched out before her.

  “Shall I add hot?” he purred, a bass rumble.

  She nodded, and he ran the water. She slid down below the foam, resting her head against the back of the tub with her eyes closed, and sighed. “I can see it now, Armand, I can see how it will end.”

  “Yes?”

  “It would not be seemly to kill them, not right away, you’re right about that. We must lure, draw them to the abbey. They must come to the abbey. They must.”

  “If we must lure them there, then it shall be so.”

  She looked up. He was leaning over her, and she could see his eyes, so full of light and love. “I don’t ask this for myself, my father. I ask this because we do our best work at the abbey, don’t you think? It’s there, where we examined Rossignol, that we must examine them. We will tell them about Rossignol, how he screamed, how he begged. They will be afraid, and
they will tell us all about the cipher, the message. They will say everything. They will cry like babies. They will beg. They will beg, won’t they? At our feet, hands clasped in prayer, they will beg to be spared. Yes.” Her eyes rolled up, inward. “The Pythos died too quickly, my father. I was in his place and couldn’t take my time. They will be in our place, at our mercy, and mercy we will not show them, Armand. Tell me we will show them no mercy.”

  Defago was seated once again on the stool at the head of the tub. He thought this was a long speech for one so tired as Sister Teresa Williams. “No, my flame, my sword, we will show them no mercy. We will smite them – you will smite them – and the war will, finally, be over. You are Tisiphone, my Fury, my avenger. Come, let me dry you.”

  33.

  Lisa sat up in the dark.

  There was nothing but velvety darkness. The space was close but not suffocating. Gradually it came to her that she was in the apartment by the Montparnasse Cemetery.

  “You’re awake.” Steve was right beside her, in the bed!

  She sat up. “What time is it?”

  She could hear him move, check the glowing dial of his watch, a faint cool green blur in the dark. “Morning, almost eleven.”

  “I must’ve sleepwalked in here. I don’t remember. God, I was tired.” She imagined his face. His forehead was broad and smooth, his nose straight and thin, aristocratic. She was on the point of confessing these thoughts but caught herself. It would sound foolish in the dark, and besides, it was un-American. So she asked how he was feeling.

  “Better, thanks.” He snapped on the light and rolled toward her. The skin of his muscular shoulders was white and smooth, like porcelain. And damn it, his nose really was aristocratic!

  She was sprawled on top of the bedspread, her dress tangled around her waist. Her long legs were bare. Her foot twitched. “I must look awful,” she murmured with a laugh, smoothing her dress.

  He laughed with her. “You do,” he agreed. “And you haven’t even been shot.”

  “Right, not yet, anyway.” She got up. “But I was shot at, you may remember. And you saved my life.” It felt good to repeat this, so she did. “You saved my life, but if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll freshen up…”

  She returned in sweat pants and a t-shirt. He whistled.

  “Whistling? That seems so American,” she chided. Idiom must be on her mind.

  “International,” he corrected. “You looked better before you cleaned up! Your hair looks like a wig. You could be a sans logis.”

  She did a little curtsy. “Thank you. I can pass for homeless if I need to.”

  “Do you need to?”

  “After I fix lunch I’m going out to check around and get some supplies. No one notices a bum.”

  “Bums don’t go shopping.”

  “I said nothing of shopping. I’m going to forage. No shops, no surveillance cameras, no witnesses.”

  “You’re a glaneuse?”

  She nodded. “I scavenge, yes. It’s an old Parisian custom, a form of recycling, very honorable, I assure you. Plenty of good food gets thrown away at the end of a market day and the sellers are always glad someone will collect it. Don’t worry, it’s fresh and edible enough. Say, shouldn’t Alain have called by now?”

  “I suspect he was letting us sleep. We did have a long day.”

  She prepared some frozen food while he cleaned up. He came out of the bathroom in trousers with a towel around his shoulders. “Sorry, but I couldn’t get a shirt on by myself.”

  “The Pythia is always ready to help.” She stopped. “I can’t believe I said that.”

  “You’re the Pythia now?”

  “I guess I am. Well, as I say, always ready to help.” She appraised him. “On the other hand, maybe I’ll keep you that way, helpless and dependent.”

  “Would you really want to do that?”

  She turned serious. “Not really. I’m scared, Steve. They’re so… relentless.”

  Before he could answer the phone buzzed. “Alain,” he mouthed, picking up the receiver, holding up his hand. “Yes.”

  He listened for a long time, said yes again and cradled the receiver. “Tomorrow morning at ten you have the lab at Orsay,” he told her. “It seems you have whatever you need: X ray fluorescence, synchrotron radiation, UV.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Alain tells me someone gave the lab a substantial donation on the condition that it be available at short notice. Your name was specifically mentioned. They’re expecting you.”

  “Raimond? He did plan ahead, didn’t he? What is it?” Steve was staring. She took a step. “Steve?”

  He shook his head. “I’m fine. You’re so…” Unable to finish, he cupped her chin with his good hand and lifted her face, examining it as if for the first time. “T’es belle, tu sais,” he murmured.

  She moved forward until she could feel his breath on her lips. She looked into his eyes and a shock ran down her spine, a continuous current.

  She tore herself away, breaking the spell. “There are things I need to tell you,” she said huskily.

  “It doesn’t matter.” His voice was little more than a whisper.

  She shook her head. “It does, but there isn’t time now. It’s almost two and I have to get to the market at Villemain by two-thirty. The homeless walk slowly, you know.”

  “I could go with you.” He was reserved and under control again, his voice casual. It was just an offer.

  “No.” She pulled a light windbreaker inside out and shrugged into it. A cap shaded her eyes. “We can’t go out together; they’ll be looking for a couple. Besides you have to rest; I’ll need you tomorrow. We have to find out what was on Procroft.”

  He nodded assent.

  She collected a plastic bag full of packaging from their frozen meals. “We have to neutralize the Order. I don’t know why the Delphi Agenda is so important, but they certainly believe it is. Think about it. I’ll be back by four.”

  She was out the door before he could react.

  Lisa hesitated just inside the garage. Someone from one of the front apartments on the second floor clattered down the stairs opposite the elevator and walked to a car, taking out his keys. She waited until the garage door began slowly creaking open and the car started up. When tires squealed on the cement floor she followed it down the ramp and slipped outside. She slouched along the wall toward the concierge entrance. The garage door creaked shut behind her.

  The impasse was only a block long but it was a cheerful Sunday afternoon and it had the usual complement of pedestrians, including a pair of older ladies fussing over their dogs. Now that the luncheon rush at the restaurant on the corner was winding down, a pair of shopkeepers stood in front of their stores watching a waiter smoking by the curb at the edge of the terrace. Someone signaled; he shrugged and tossed his cigarette into the street. A young couple in front of the building next door to the safe house punched in the door code, exchanging jokes. Soon they were gone.

  She approached the man reading a paper next to a shop called Eros Boutique. He might be their police escort from the other day, but no, no raincoat, no hat, no glasses, a stranger. He glanced over his paper without curiosity and showed himself much older, overweight with hair so thin it seemed transparent.

  She was just another homeless person with an uneven gait carrying a bag of trash. He sniffed as she went by as if he knew she was drunk.

  She mumbled to herself the length of the rue de la Gaité. Once she banged into a signpost and cursed loudly. People looked away or hurried past, heads down. She was invisible. Rue de la Gaité was lined with peep shows and sex shops on both sides. She hesitated in front of the Palais du Plaisir for a moment, wondering what it was like inside. When a man appeared in the doorway she limped away.

  A few minutes later she approached the outdoor market between Villemain and Alesia. The metal frames of the canvas awnings over the stalls were already half-dismantled. At the curb men were loading delivery trucks with unso
ld clothing, CDs, books. Wooden boxes half filled with leftover produce or flowers were scattered around the area. She dumped the sorted load into the recycling bins and began rummaging through the market’s discarded food, her hands choosing and rejecting with practiced ease. Three other gleaners joined her. The others were regulars and traded banter with the vendors while they picked the market clean.

  A small green Propreté de Paris cart drove down the aisle, spraying the trash into the gutter where it was collected by two large garbage trucks.

  It was summer in Paris, a balmy June afternoon. She started back toward the safe house, her sack slung over her shoulder. They would eat fresh vegetables tonight.

  She decided to go east on Alesia and take Didot north to break the pattern, not to follow the same route, use small back streets. She did this without thinking.

  Once off the main road she proceeded with more confidence. A feeling of contentment filled her. Gleaners were part of the life cycle of the great city; they collected and used what would otherwise be thrown away. She was glad to be part of it.

  She began thinking about the Order of Theodosius, which was proving an implacable enemy, long-lived, single-minded, and self-perpetuating. The Pythos was the same. The two were locked in a constant cycle of cat and mouse, attack and protect. In this game the Order had the advantage. Their goal was to destroy, to root out and kill the Pythos. They were the hunters. They had weapons and the fanaticism to use them.

  The successors to the great Oracle of Delphi, on the other hand, had to live in the shadows. They had to take whatever the Church, the Inquisition, and the Order of Theodosius did to them. Despite its great influence and the power it wielded, the Oracle at Delphi never took sides, never fought back. It was this impartiality and honesty that maintained its prestige. A single act of revenge would kill it.

  The Pythoi were careful whom they dealt with. After all, they could see the warp and weft of the future and know which clients they could trust. They would uncover any attempt by the Order to infiltrate or coerce. So the Order had to come after them in other ways.