The Watchers

by Jon Steele

  Rochat got to his feet, dusted off his trousers and made himself presentable to answer the telephone in his official capacity. He unhooked the listening tube from the side of the box, spoke into the talking cone at the front.

  ‘Bonsoir, je suis le guet de la cathédrale de Lausanne.’

  There was loud music and a screaming voice trying to make itself heard.

  ‘Hello, what? I can’t hear you. You want what? Pizza? I’m sorry, this isn’t the all-night pizza place. That has a number six at the end, not a number seven. No, I’m very sure, six at the end of the numbers spells pizza, seven at the end spells cathedral. What? Yes, I have no pizza.’

  The line went dead.

  Rochat reset the listening tube on its hook, tried to remember what he was thinking about before pizza. He couldn’t, so he turned around to the shelf on the wall and sorted through his sketchbooks, pulling down the one he had titled, les bishops mort. He thumbed through the pages to the last drawing of Basil the First. He took an eraser and pencil and began to touch up the old boy’s face. Basil lived with other dead bishops in the nave, all in a row near the Virgin’s Chapel. No one knew their real names because somebody forgot to carve them into the marble. So Rochat named them all Basil and he always greeted them when passing. He was very sure they appreciated it. But the years had not been kind to Basil the First’s marble face. His eyes and nose were missing, and his ears stuck out from the side of his head like a monkey. Rochat worked at it till it was time to prepare for the three o’clock bells, the final call of the night.

  ‘I’m truly sorry, your grace, but here’s no hope.’

  He closed the sketchbook, put on his overcoat and floppy hat, set a fresh candle in the lantern and waited for Marie-Madeleine to call him outside. The binoculars from Monsieur Buhlmann sat on the table, the neck strap looking like the lead on Monsieur Junod’s small dog in Café du Grütli. Rochat picked up the binoculars and slipped the strap over his head.

  ‘D’accord. We’ll go for a little walk, but no barking.’

  The timbers creaked and groaned, Marie sounded three times. Rochat lit the lantern and shuffled around the balconies, calling the hour to the east, north, west and south. When he finished, he looked out over Lausanne.

  ‘All was very well for another night, Rochat.’

  He blew out the lantern, hooked it to the iron railings. He raised the binoculars to his eyes and focused on the red-tile rooftops of the Palud quarter. Heatsmoke curled from chimneys. A little to the right, a lone trolley bus rolled over Rue du Grand Pont. Sparks flashed where the trolley’s arms touched the overhead power lines, the lights on the bus sputtered off and on. He panned left. The clock on the belfry of Saint-François was staring back at him through the lenses.

  ‘Aha! I knew it. Just like the bells in the Hôtel de Ville. Two minutes fast. You’d better not let Clémence find out. She’ll have you boiled in oil.’

  The clock looked close enough for him to reach out and give the big hand a tap and set it right. Then he remembered he was looking through binoculars. He turned the lenses backwards, looked again. Now the clock was so far away it looked as if it was sitting across the lake in France.

  He shuffled into the shadows of the southeast turret and leaned against a pillar. He looked through the binoculars again. Down on Pont Bessières, a man standing at the railings of the bridge, looking up at the cathedral.

  ‘Do you see, Marie? That man on Pont Bessières? He’s standing very still and he’s got his hands in the pockets of his coat. And it’s a coat with a belt and little straps on the shoulders like detectives wear in old movies Grandmaman liked to watch.’

  He lowered the binoculars and thought about it. He turned to the great bell hanging in the timbers.

  ‘You know, Marie, I think the man on the bridge must be a detectiveman, and I think he must be solving a mysterious mystery because that’s what detectivemen do, they solve mysterious mysteries. But I can’t think of any mysteries in Lausanne, can you?’

  A small breath of wind whisked by Marie-Madeleine to find him in the turret.

  ‘What do you mean, the cathedral is full of mysteries? When was the last time you saw a detectiveman movie, hmm? Why, there’s nothing in this pile of old stones but some teasing shadows who keep leaving doors open and all those dusty skeletons under the nave who like to rattle their bones at night and Otto the Brave Knight always falling over in his armour. Very common things for a cathedral, that’s what I think.’

  Rochat slowly raised the lenses, he scanned the rooftops of Lausanne and the trails of chimney smoke in the sleepy dark.

  ‘Non, I’m very sure if there is a mystery in Lausanne, it must be somewhere out there. And with these very good binoculars for watching cows on hills I can see …’

  A bright light flashed in his eyes, and a woman in a white robe appeared as if floating. She settled before a mirror, let the robe fall from her shoulders. Rochat saw the skin of her naked back. Her hair was wet and she slowly combed it till it lay in long blond streaks.

  Harper stood a moment longer.

  He’d been walking the streets, checking every strip joint and after-hours club in Lausanne looking for Alexander Yuriev with nothing but a pocketful of receipts to show for it. Coming up Rue Caroline, and on the phone to the night clerk at the Hôtel Port Royal in Montreux for another round of ‘no, the man you want has not checked for messages, sir’, Harper heard the bells of Lausanne Cathedral ring for three o’clock.

  He remembered the night before, the light floating in the belfry just after the midnight bells. Curious if it’d be there again and wondering if he’d only been well pissed, he disconnected with the night clerk and headed up the road. By the time he rounded the corner and saw the cathedral atop the hill, all was dark. Then he thought he saw something shadowlike moving in the belfry. He walked slowly ahead, stopped and waited. Eyes focused on the high pillars and arches. He gave up and pulled out his smokes.

  ‘And the winner is – well pissed.’

  He lit up, aware of his surroundings. On a bridge stretching between Avenue Mon Repos and the old city. As if the earth had fallen out from under him and he was standing in midair. He stepped to the railings, looked down. A 200-metre drop to narrow lamp-lit streets, where unseen winds gathered dead leaves and carried them away in darting spirals. Shadows chasing leaves, leaves chasing shadows. The winds curled up the bridge supports, cut through the railings … He snapped back from the edge, rubbed the back of his neck.

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Harper turned to the voice, saw a young man standing on the pavement the other side of the bridge.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Are you all right? I noticed you leaning over the railings.’

  Harper stepped to the edge of the pavement. Two of them at the middle of the bridge, talking across the roadbed like villagers chatting across a brook.

  ‘Fine. Touch of vertigo looking over the edge, I guess.’

  ‘Lausanne takes some getting used to. I came from Poland, everything’s so flat there. All these hills and bridges in Lausanne, always looking down, it’s a little like flying.’

  ‘Or standing in midair maybe.’

  ‘Yes, that too. You’re a newcomer, aren’t you?’

  Harper took a long pull of smoke.

  ‘What did you call me?’

  ‘A newcomer. Those are the names we use in Lausanne. “Locals” for the people who live here, and “newcomers” for ones like …’

  ‘Like me.’

  ‘Yes, like you.’

  Harper took another pull of smoke, stared at him. Leather jacket, blue jeans, trainers on his feet. Nineteen, twenty maybe.

  ‘I walk this bridge at night. Sometimes I see newcomers wandering near the cathedral, not quite sure where they are. They always come this way.’

  ‘That’s what you do, keep a sharp eye out for newcomers on the bridge?’

  ‘You don’t know about this place, do you?�
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  Harper looked both ways, not a soul in sight.

  ‘What’s to know, other than I’m standing on a bridge in the middle of the night?’

  ‘Some of the locals come here and … I thought you might be a local, someone in need of comfort. That’s what I do.’

  Swell, Harper thought, spend the night looking for a drunken Russian and end up in Lausanne’s all-night cruising shop.

  ‘That’s terribly kind of you, mate, but maybe you could just tell me the way to Chemin de Préville.’

  The young man pointed towards the old city.

  ‘That way.’

  ‘Up the hill, past the cathedral?’

  ‘There’s a view of Lausanne from the esplanade. You’ll see where you need to go next.’

  Harper checked his watch: three thirty in the morning. He pointed to the opposite direction.

  ‘Actually, I think I saw a taxi stand back down—’

  ‘There’s not a lot of time, monsieur.’

  Harper dropped his smoke on the pavement, shoved his hands in the pockets of his mackintosh.

  ‘Not a lot of time, right. I’ll get a move on then.’

  Harper headed off the bridge.

  Corner of Rue Caroline he looked back.

  One midnight cruiser crossing the roadbed, carefully removing a handkerchief from his leather jacket and collecting the crushed remnants of Harper’s cigarette and tossing it in a bin. Then stepping back to the pavement marking the centre of the bridge, waiting for someone else to come along.

  ‘And good luck.’

  five

  The mobile rang and vibrated at the same time.

  Harper pulled his eyes from the telly, watched the thing rumble into a half-empty bottle of vodka. The bottle went clink. He grabbed the phone before it did any more damage.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mr Harper, Nathalie Barraud calling. The Doctor is on his way from Geneva Airport and wishes to see you in Vidy Park.’

  Harper kick-started his brain. The Doctor. Doctor Johann Schwarzenberg, President of the International Olympic Committee. Liked to be called le docteur rather than le président. Nathalie Barraud, nice-looking bird who ran the Doctor’s office. Wore horn-rimmed glasses and tight skirts, spoke nine languages, never smiled. Coming from the airport? Right, overnight from Jo’burg, the African regional games.

  ‘What day is this?

  ‘Sunday and the Doctor does apologize for the inconvenience. But he’ll be receiving the King of Spain tomorrow and must see you about the lab report.’

  ‘Lab report?’

  ‘The one you faxed to him yesterday. He received it before boarding and read over it in flight. He wishes to discuss it with you. There’s a car waiting outside your flat. You are expected at two o’clock. Please, be prompt.’

  ‘Right, what time is it?’

  ‘One fifteen.’

  ‘A.m. or p.m.?’

  ‘It’s the afternoon of Sunday, December twelfth. Is there a problem of some sort?’

  Harper’s head throbbed.

  ‘No, everything’s fine.’

  ‘Good. And in future, Mr Harper, please have the courtesy to submit any and all communications to the Doctor through me.’

  The line went dead.

  Harper pulled himself from the couch and opened the curtains. Grey light poured through the windows. Gave his studio flat all the cheeriness of a Dutch still life. He thought about cleaning up the remnants of another sleepless night. Hell with it, no time. He picked up the remote, switched off the telly just as a narrator’s voice was telling him about the spectacular Gothic interior of Coutances Cathedral. Sunday special on History Channel. Great Cathedrals of the World. Chartres, Westminster Abbey, Paris, Cologne. Everything you never needed to know about cathedrals. Kept waiting to see if Lausanne’s home-town entry made the grade. No such luck.

  He threw water in his face, shaved and dressed quickly. He downed three aspirins for breakfast, jumped in the waiting car and headed for Vidy Park. Fifteen minutes later, Miss Barraud escorted him into the Doctor’s office. He was at his desk, reading from neatly bound pages while pointing to an empty chair.

  ‘Come in, Mr Harper. I’ll be with you in a moment.’

  Harper made the long walk across the office and sat.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir.’

  The Doctor continued to read.

  Harper kept himself busy looking out of the glass wall opening to the Doctor’s private garden. Huge lawn, sculpted hedges. Probably a nice view on a clear day. The lake, the Alps. Today, with the fog, it was hard to see beyond the smoked glass and steel building next door, where the mere mortals of the IOC dwelled, where Harper’s own office was. The one with the nice view of the parking ramp. The Doctor and Miss Barraud worked in the more heavenly confines of what was known as le Château.

  He turned his eyes to the Doctor’s desk. Everything on it white. White leather folders, white papers, white telephone with twenty white buttons. He looked around the office. Everything in the room white. Chairs, sofas, coffee table. The flag in the corner with the interconnecting rings of red, blue, yellow, green, black did add a splash of colour. And the laptop computer on the desk, black for the computer. Harper wondered how often the Doctor used the thing. Why would he? The man had twenty buttons on his telephone. Push one and Miss Barraud rushes in. Takes a memo, reads the mail, sorts your life with a cuppa. Tea, Christ, please. The Doctor looked at his watch.

  ‘Is it two, already?’

  Harper checked his own watch, still five minutes behind the rest of the world. ‘Seems so, sir.’

  The Doctor sat back in his swivel chair.

  ‘When did the lab come back with this?’

  ‘Friday afternoon.’

  ‘And they’re quite sure of their findings?’

  ‘There are questions, sir.’

  ‘The only question I care to have answered at the moment is whether or not the drug was used in the Beijing Games.’

  ‘The blood samples of all Beijing medallists are still in the IOC lab. They’ve tested eighty per cent. So far, nobody’s popped hot.’

  ‘So it’s untraceable, as the documents claim.’

  ‘Sir, I’m not sure it even exists.’

  ‘These documents call it a topically applied potion, already in use.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Question is, what’s it for?’

  ‘To win gold medals, Mr Harper, that’s why athletes take drugs.’

  Harper nodded yes, but that’s not the bloody point.

  ‘Sir, in their review of the documents, the IOC lab notes much of the data doesn’t make sense. They have no idea what some of the compounds are. The ones they can identify would bring about severe psychotropic effects, if not render an athlete comatose. In fact, the word drug isn’t used anywhere in the material, it’s always referred to as “a potion”.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Whoever used it would be high as a kite.’

  ‘So then the dosage is reduced.’

  ‘That’s just it. Knock down the dosage, there’s no effect.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Exactly what sort of drug is this?’

  ‘We’d have to ask the person who sent the documents.’

  ‘It was sent anonymously, you may recall. That’s why you were asked to look into it.’

  ‘There’s been a development, sir. Shortly after you left for Africa, I received an email from someone who said his name was Alexander Yuriev. He claimed he sent the documents.’

  The Doctor blanched.

  ‘What do you know about him?’

  ‘Nothing, sir, till I Googled him. After that I went into the IOC files.’ Harper pulled a rolled-up clump of papers from his mackintosh. ‘Makes for rather sad reading.’

  ‘The man was a seven-time gold medallist at Innsbruck, one of the greatest champions ever.’

  ‘Sir, I read that you’re the man who had him banned from any contact with the Olympic movement, pretty much ending his career.’

&nb
sp; ‘By then his career was well in the bottle.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I only mention it because when I wrote to him, asking what he wanted, he said he needed to see you, he said you were the only man he could trust.’

  ‘Are you telling me you established a correspondence with him?’

  ‘Nine times, each time through a different Hotmail address. May I ask, did Yuriev ever try to contact you after he was banned?’

  The Doctor looked at Harper. Harper sensed the man’s discomfort.

  ‘Just as background, sir.’

  ‘There were letters after he was banned, begging me to reconsider. There was nothing I could do, I’m afraid, and I didn’t respond. I really had no idea what happened to him, he disappeared. Then, nine months ago, quite unexpectedly, I received an email from him.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘He wanted to see me, he said it was a matter of life or death.’

  ‘Did you answer it?’

  ‘I deleted it and asked Miss Barraud to block his name from the IOC server.’

  ‘No other emails then?’

  ‘I told you, his name was blocked.’

  ‘He got to me, sir, using the same IOC server.’

  The Doctor considered it.

  ‘Yes, that is curious.’

  ‘When the documents came through the post, you had no idea they came from him?’

  ‘Indeed not. And I’d appreciate it if you could tell me how you know the man you’re dealing with is, in fact, Alexander Yuriev?’

  ‘Yes, sir, sorry. After his initial email to me, I asked for proof of identity. He sent a copy of his Russian passport. He continued to say he needed to see you. As with you, he told me it was a matter of life and death. I wrote he had to go through me. He continued to insist you were the only man he could trust. There was an increasing level of desperation in his subsequent emails, so I gave him my number and told him to telephone. He called that same day, said he needed to give you something for safe keeping. And again he said you were the only man he could trust.’