The Delphi Agenda

by Rob Swigart

  “Lisa Sybilla Emmer!” His voice was hard, like flint; it could cut, could peel away her skin, flay her alive. She could feel it, a cold blade along her spine, down the sides of her legs.

  But he was a handsome man with a helmet of yellow hair and clear blue eyes darkened with concern. His chest and shoulder were bandaged, too, and she knew this injury had come while he was protecting her. She wanted to lean into that chest, put her head against his shoulder and close her eyes.

  But she could not do this any more than she could give way to the panic. Her belly tightened and her jaw clenched. Something was going to happen, something bad. Already the shadows and darkness were gathering, despite the lamp on the table, the glow from the bathroom nightlight. “No,” she insisted reasonably. “My name is Neele.”

  He shook his head. “Your name is Emmer. Lisa Emmer. You’re from Chicago. You live in Paris.”

  She said, No, no, but the negation stayed inside and didn’t emerge and she began to doubt. Finally she said, “Nancy. Nancy Neele. That’s who I am.”

  She didn’t want him to frown like that, not at her. She began to shake.

  He led her back to the couch, threw a blanket over her nakedness, held her, just as she had wanted, her head against his shoulder. It lasted only for a moment, so brief a time. She pushed away. “No,” she said. “No. We have to…” But what did they have to do? “Something’s going to happen.”

  “What?” he asked, reasonably.

  “I… don’t know.” Her teeth were chattering. “No. Wait. They’re coming.”

  “Who? Who’s coming?”

  She shook her head. Her hair swung in loops. She couldn’t stop the movement, the whip of hair across her eyes and forehead. He put his hands on either side of her face. Gradually it subsided. “Who’s coming?” he asked again, more softly.

  “They.”

  “Sister Teresa? Defago?”

  “Not them, not now. Someone else, Americans, I think.” She looked around wildly. “We have to go. They’ll drag us from the carriage, they’ll cut… burn…” She couldn’t go on.

  He stared. “Hypatia?”

  “Who?”

  “She was dragged from her carriage, flayed alive in the church.”

  “Was she? Oh, she was. We have to go.”

  “We’re safe here, Lisa. No one knows about this place. We’ll leave in the morning, I promise. What was that? What just happened to you?”

  She didn’t answer, merely repeated, “We have to go now.”

  She tried to pick up the clothes scattered on the floor, but her hands were numb and shaking. He had to help her pull on her panties, fasten her bra. She had jeans, blue jeans she remembered, that’s what they were called. Yes, they were blue, they covered the fading red lines on her body where the angry strangers had cut away the flesh. His hands were impersonal but gentle as they buttoned her blouse.

  “OK,” he said softly. “You’re dressed. It’s after two in the morning, though, and we have nowhere to go. If we leave, we’ll be exposed. We should stay here, Lisa. We need to wait for daylight.”

  “No! No. No.” She ran to the door, tugged at the handle. “It won’t open,” she said. She didn’t understand this was an elevator. All she had to do was press the button and the door would open. The little cabin was waiting for them. It only went between two places, here and down below.

  He didn’t tell her this, though. He took her hand, led her away. “No, Lisa. Calm. We must wait.”

  There was a ringing sound. The phone.

  He lifted the receiver and raised her hand at the same time. He kissed her palm and answered, “Oui?” She looked at the instrument curiously, held against his ear, the ear nestled in golden hair. Yes, it was a familiar object, you could talk to other people with it, but this was no time for distractions. Panic was leaning over her shoulder again, whispering. She tugged his hand. Come, she wanted to say. Come, let’s go.

  He was listening, paying no attention to her. He didn’t understand that people were coming for them, and they had to hurry.

  He cradled the phone. “Come on,” he said. “You were right. We have to go.”

  “Where do we go?” she asked, though she was the one who had wanted to leave.

  He pressed the unlock button and the door clicked open. “Down,” he said. The lights were off in the darkened rooms. Darkness would not stop the people who were coming for them, but it might delay them.

  In the elevator were two unmarked buttons. He pressed the lower one.

  There was no response. He pushed it again, but already he was looking around. She smiled at the way he was measuring shadows in the apartment, the few spaces of cover – bathroom, bedroom.

  Suddenly the little cage shuddered as if getting ready to move. He was examining at the shape of the service hatch in the ceiling. He pushed it, grabbed the sides and pulled himself up, disappearing like a rabbit gone up a hole. She thought this image was funny and giggled at the image of a rabbit running upward. His hands appeared from the black rectangle and pulled her up after him. He closed the hatch just as the elevator began to descend.

  The space in which they now crouched was confined and dusty, limited by the wheel set into the low ceiling above them and by the walls flowing upward, the cables in the center, bulges and humps of structure. She pressed herself into him and suppressed a sneeze.

  The counterweight passed them, going up. The mechanism was well oiled, though, and made very little sound. She could hear her own breathing.

  This was exciting. Nancy Neele had never seen this much excitement.

  And then she wondered Who was Nancy Neele? This man, Steve, had been calling her Lisa. She was Lisa, it struck her in that split moment, and she saw Raimond Foix in his desk chair, head tilted back. She could clearly see a dent in the cupid, a shattered star in the window behind him and blood, so much blood. The vision was so vivid she tasted the copper of it, felt the press of wood chips under her shoe.

  She’d had to leave the room. She was faint, and then numb. Now she sobbed, once, and Steve had his hand over her mouth in an instant. She stared at him, wide-eyed, seeing him clearly despite the paltry glow from a bulb near the roof of the building, growing smaller, a star alone and fading in a narrowing sky.

  The elevator stopped. They could hear the door slide open and people enter. It was small. Steve held up a finger, two, three. The cage lurched upward. The bulb approached, casting its feeble light. At the top the cage stopped again. He was already prying open an electrical service panel, exposing neat wiring. He had a coin in his hand and began turning the screws that held the wires in place.

  The door slid open below them. He held up his hand. Movement rustled. Again the fingers, one, two. So the third remained in the cage. He nodded.

  The door swung shut. When he heard it click, Steve pulled a wire free.

  The occupant pushed on the door. He muttered, “Shit!” and pushed again. He pounded once and laughed, as if it no longer mattered.

  Steve pulled off two more wires and twisted them together. The cage started down. The man in the elevator threw himself at the door. It didn’t budge, and as the elevator descended it took the door out of reach and he gave up.

  How did you know how to do that? Lisa mouthed, but Steve was listening. The elevator stopped, the door opened and someone left. The door closed again. Steve lifted the panel and dropped lightly inside. On the other side of the door the intruder was saying the elevator had brought him down, no, he hadn’t pressed the button, had they found anyone? He acknowledged and opened the elevator door. Light from the parking garage flooded in. Steve smiled.

  Lisa watched from the opening. The man, dressed all in black like a movie cliché, his eyes obscured by night vision goggles, took a step back in surprise. Steve followed. The man lifted his pistol and Steve doubled over into a coughing fit, holding up his hand as if to say, Wait, this will pass.

  Oddly he did wait. Steve inched closer, gasping for breath, hand still up. The coughing
continued, racking his body. It was too much for any man to bear, this frenzied arpeggio of tightened lungs begging for release. He wheezed, bent double, and straightened, swinging his arm in a vertical windmill that trapped the other’s arm between his own arm and back. His upper arm curled smoothly around the man’s elbow and twisted upward. There was an unpleasant snap followed by a grunt of pain and the pistol clattered to the pavement. Steve stepped back, smiled gently, and drove the edge of his hand into the man’s throat.

  Lisa climbed down into the elevator. The tinny voices of the men trapped upstairs chattered in the man’s earpiece, but neither they nor this man, his arm bent at an awkward angle, would be following them any time soon.

  She bent to retrieve the weapon. “American,” she said, handing it to Steve on the way out.

  44.

  Sister Teresa walked slowly across the vast chamber under the abbey, restless and frustrated. She missed her cabin in the woods, its solitude and special privations. From time to time she curled her scarred hand around the grip of her Glock and drew comfort. She was a warrior of the Lord and this weapon was what she knew, what she wanted. Strength flowed from it.

  It had begun so well. Despite the sloppy aim of her second shot, the execution had been clean. Yet in everything after that – kidnapping Rossignol, his confession, Bruno’s decoded message – she and her priest had been tricked and thwarted, the enemy remaining always just out of reach.

  Was it because of her theft? She should never have taken the Augustine. Yet how could she not? As soon as she had seen it there on the floor it had called to her. Augustine was the distant ancestor of her Order. He was why she believed. Had he not said, “Salus extra ecclesiam non est,” there is no salvation outside the church? Had he not created the Rule? Self denial and obedience? Did he not say, “The superior should be obeyed as a father?” Did she not obey her superior as a father?

  Collecting treasure was not part of her mission. Yet the Augustine and its rich illustration had called. Whenever she closed her eyes she could see the image of two small angels (she refused to see them as pagan cherubs), one with his spear deep into the side of a slain stag. The deer was Jesus Christ and she was the angel, the image of holiness, successful in the hunt. At the same time she was the killer of the Lord. Was Foix her deer? Was he the slain god?

  She put that thought away. Foix was no god, but a heretic and blasphemer who claimed the privileges reserved for the True God, omnipotent and omnipresent.

  At the bottom of the illustrated first page Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, regarded the City of God shimmering in the distance above the waters, while in the foreground deer and rabbits stood or lay down together in peace.

  She reached the west end of the cellar and touched the rough stone of the wall. Water dripped nearby, but she could see nothing in the shadows. She turned. The dim bulb half way back cast a somber circle of light over the instruments she and Defago would soon need again. She returned to the Judas chair, silhouetted against the greater darkness outside of the circle of light.

  Under the bulb was the scarred wooden throne where Rossignol had confessed, and in confessing, had tricked them. She tasted sour bile.

  It would not happen again. They would not let it.

  “You could not sleep, my angel?”

  Defago stood in the elevator recess, outlined against faint light, a shade wavering in semi-darkness.

  “No,” she answered. “I am restless.”

  “Don’t worry, they’re coming. Can’t you feel them? They’ll be here soon, today or tomorrow, perhaps. It’s almost over.” His voice was hollow, like one of the damned.

  He stepped forward, came toward her. Flesh gathered density around him, his features emerged in the light, and he was real again, a comfort.

  45.

  “Do you think it strange that I knew before you?” Lisa asked. They had left the taxi to walk arm in arm up the Rue de Rennes, two lovers out for a pre-dawn stroll. She seemed her old self again.

  He laughed almost gaily. “Not any more. You’re the Pythia. Alain learned someone was coming to the safe house.”

  “Not the nun, certainly. Americans?”

  “Mmm, from the frequencies used. Homeland Security, he thought.”

  She stopped. “Alain listens to everyone’s radio traffic? Where does he find the time?”

  He laughed. “Oh, no, not everyone’s, and it isn’t Alain who personally listens, of course. Honestly, Lisa, I don’t understand it all – it’s as new to me as it is to you. But I think the organization Ted described for the Pythos, it’s like a shadow government. They are those who watch the watchers.” He lifted his shoulders with a grin. “At least that’s the way I understand it.”

  They went through the Rue Bernard Palissy and were soon standing in front of Foix’ apartment building. It was the darkest time of night, and the quietest. Lisa whispered, “Do you think anyone’s watching, like the other day?”

  “Whoever it was, we lost him. I’m sure no one followed us.”

  She frowned. “If someone’s watching now….” After a moment lost in thought she swiftly punched in the door code: 2214.

  Steve followed her inside. “Are you worried?”

  She said, “No. If we’re being watched, so much the better. It’s going to end soon, Steve. I feel it now.”

  They took the stairs to the familiar rooms. The red light on the answering machine was blinking. “We need to get some sleep,” she said. “Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”

  “Not before you tell me what happened back there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t play with me. You were someone else, someone named Neele.”

  Her eyes turned hooded and wary. “I can’t tell you, Steve.”

  “You have to.” He held her shoulders, his blue eyes cold as ice as he stared into hers.

  She felt his fury, his determination, and sighed. “It’s why I can’t have a relationship, a condition, a….”

  “Talent?” He asked.

  “A difference.”

  “Go on.”

  She took a deep breath. “It’s called a dissociative fugue state, a kind of amnesia. It happened to me five times when I was young. Since then… I would forget who I was, complete amnesia. The police found me once sitting by the creek near my home. I’d been gone for two days. I’m told when they asked me who I was I said Nancy Neele and that I was fishing.” She shook her head. “Until recently I have no memory of the episodes, but they could happen any time. Now it’s better. With Bruno I was there and I was not there. You have no idea how much I tried to understand what was happening. Doctors, therapists, mediums, even, my mother’s idea. Nothing helped. They were terrifying and unpredictable. And then Raimond.” She looked at her hands. “I can’t inflict that on anyone, Steve. So you see…”

  He interrupted with a brutal gesture. “I don’t see anything!” His voice gentled. “Why that name, Neele?”

  She slumped. “The mystery writer Agatha Christie suffered from it. She disappeared once for eleven days. They found her living under the name of Teresa Neele. Nancy Neele was the name of her husband’s mistress.”

  “Why would you take the same name?”

  “I don’t know. I must have read about it.” She looked down. “I read a lot.”

  “And why had you gone fishing?”

  “Something happened. I don’t know what. Something my mother did. She would never tell me what it was.”

  His laugh was without humor. “So it’s caused by stress, or shock?”

  Her smile was wan. “Steve, it’s why I agreed to become a papyrologist. Well, one reason, anyway. Raimond promised me it was a quiet, stress-free profession, reading old documents. The past was calm, you see. All over except for the documents. Or so I thought. You do see, don’t you?”

  “Our life has hardly been stress-free the past few days,” he murmured. “But it’s not important; you recovered quickly. I can live with it.”

  “I beg
in to control it, Steve. I was there with Giordano Bruno and it felt, for the first time, that I knew where I was and what I was seeing. Of course, that wasn’t the future, it was the past, but it was real.”

  “You’re the Pythia,” he said solemnly. “You will see the future when you’re ready.”

  She put her finger to his lips. “Shh. We need to sleep.”

  “Shouldn’t we check the answering machine?”

  She made a negative sound and fell onto Raimond Foix’s bed. In the seconds before she was asleep she felt the ghostly presence in the apartment of her old mentor.

  Then it was gone.

  The first thing she saw when she sat up was the red light blinking on the nightstand. The bedroom window shutters were closed and the room was dark. It was already after nine, which meant they had slept for five hours. They had deciphered Bruno’s message on the palimpsest parchment and now had some idea she should look for the Founding Document in the folio copy of Augustine.

  The second thing she saw was Steve Viginaire facing her, propped on one elbow. His eyes were in shadow but she could see what they were saying as clearly as she had seen Bruno, and without hesitating, without thinking, she reached for him, and he reached for her, and the world, the danger, everything, faded into a luminous darkness.

  An indefinite time later their breathing returned to normal. The room took shape around them.

  Steve sat up beside her and switched on the light. “I guess I know what you’re smiling about.”

  She feigned indignation. “You bastard, you slept with me. You took off my clothes, and you slept with me!”

  “Guilty as charged, but there was a sword between us until…”

  She saw the bandages under his arm. They were crimson.

  “You’ve broken it open again,” she cried in alarm. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “No need for tears. It’s all that exercise, no doubt.” He was grinning, but she had already banished into the bathroom. She came back with a first aid kit and soon had laid out gauze, tape and antiseptic.