by Rob Swigart
Lisa said thoughtfully, “Raimond, again. He’s suggesting we should be looking for a secret group of some kind.”
Steve rolled his eyes. “Uh-oh. I hope you’re not talking about something like the Rosicrucians or the Templars.” He showed his pleasure at her laughter by grinning back.
“No,” she said. “They’re too well known. And besides, they don’t really exist.”
“How do you know?”
She looked suddenly grave. “What are you saying?”
“You can’t prove a negative.” Steve’s mock seriousness stopped her for only a moment.
“All right, all right. For the sake of argument let’s say we’re looking for a group that doesn’t want anyone to know they exist. One would think that all secret groups would be modest and, well, secret. They wouldn’t attract attention; they’d blend in, be part of society. They’d work behind the scenes, doing… whatever they do. But like Bourbaki, it would at the same time be something in the world, something important.” She examined the papyrus again. “Gnostics, perhaps,” she muttered. “Or something else. And the Greek in the skytale, gnothi seauton. It means ‘know thyself.’ A well worn phrase, yes? Was Raimond a member of this group?” She leaned back and rubbed her eyes. “I’m hungry.”
“Right. What we have will be canned, powdered or, more likely, frozen, but I think I can put something together.”
Steve opened the freezer, which was full of packages from the chain of frozen food stores called Picard. He turned out to be a wizard with frozen food. Lisa could do nothing but stand idly by and watch him thaw and season.
Soon they were sitting down to slices of a terrine of salmon with basil and suprêmes de pintade with port and mushrooms. There were even bottles of a decent Bordeaux.
Over dessert of apple tarte Normande she asked him why this part of Paris was called Montparnasse. “Mount Parnassus is a limestone mountain behind Delphi, sacred to Apollo. How did it get here?”
“Interesting question.” He filled her glass. “There was once a huge pile of construction debris on the southern edge of the city where Montparnasse and Raspail now meet. In the seventeenth century the students in the Latin Quarter called it Mount Parnassus, because it was white, and because they were studying Greek. It was a joke. The modern boulevard was begun in the eighteenth century, and by the nineteenth the hill was just a memory, but the name stuck. A good setting for Poldevia’s prime minister to demonstrate his poverty, wouldn’t you say?”
“Perhaps.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I think it’s important, this connection with Montparnasse, or Mount Parnassus.”
“Why? It’s just a name.”
“No, it’s more than that. Raimond was a professor of Greek. He forged this papyrus in Greek. He left the name Bourbaki, a Greek, and a secret society as well.” She paused in astonishment. “That’s it! You know I said he closed the shutters on the court but left them open on the street side? He was trying to get me to think about the street.”
Steve shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
“The name, rue du Dragon, draco, drakaina, also the python Apollo killed at Delphi, under Mount Parnassus. The dragon or snake was identified with Gaia, an earth spirit, because snakes live in the earth. Perhaps her death at the hands of Apollo was a symbol of the conquest of the primitive inhabitants by the more civilized Hellenes, but the Python was a hero to the original inhabitants, and the Greeks instituted funeral games in her honor. The Pythia, the priestess of the Oracle at Delphi was named after Pytho, the Python. And puthein is Greek and means ‘to rot,’ after the rotting corpse of the snake. Or dragon.”
“Isn’t all this a bit far-fetched?”
“More than far-fetched, it’s ridiculous, but do you have a better idea? He did leave the street shutters open and I know he meant something by it.”
“Are you saying we’re looking for the Delphic Oracle?”
This time her laugh held no humor. “Of course not, the Oracle was closed by the so-called fourth law of November 8, 392 by Theodos…” She stopped.
“What is it?”
She began to pace restlessly, as if looking for a window, but there were no windows and she sat again. “Theodosius. The book that was out of place was a biography, Histoire de Théodose le Grand by Valentin Esprit Fléchier. Raimond wanted me to notice, to put it all together. Theodosius closed the pagan temples for good. It was the end for Delphi and all the old gods, and the final triumph of orthodox Christianity. From then on the Church ruled.” She slapped the table and made the glasses jump. “And the Hesiod! It was open around line 500. I thought it might refer to Procroft 506, but that’s not it. It was the lines themselves, the story of Kronos, who knew he would be overthrown by one of his children. To prevent this he swallowed all his children, but Gaia and Ouranos saved Zeus by substituting a stone. Zeus later forces Kronos to vomit up the stone.”
“So?”
“Zeus then set it into the earth at ‘goodly Pytho,’ under Parnassus, ‘to be a sign thenceforth and a marvel to mortal men.’ That stone is the Omphalos, the Navel Stone. It’s supposed to be the center of the world at Delphi. Pytho of course was the Python, the dragon Apollo defeated….” She shook her head in frustration. “But I don’t understand. It makes no sense.”
He tried to get her to continue but she refused to say more.
Later he said, “Tell me something.”
“What?”
“Anything, something about yourself. Who are you? Why is this happening to you in particular? I’m your banker now but I’m not sure yet what I’m to do for you…”
“You mean, besides save my life?”
“Well, that, that was nothing. It might help if you told me more. There must be a clue in your background somewhere, something that would help explain what’s going on.”
She told him about going to cheerleader practice, holding back only how much of a fraud she had felt then, how it was her face for the world. She told him she was at the door, and so was Raimond Foix. “It was intentional, him appearing like that out of nowhere and telling me to follow him. Why did I do it? Up until then my life had been very clear, very predictable. I could see my future to the very end. I wanted that future. We lived north of Chicago, my father was an executive in an office tower doing something mysterious with transportation, or so I thought, and my mother baked and did charity. I was following her. I had looks and was supposed to use them. That’s what I was doing, despite my prob….”
Her expression darkened and she shook her head to clear it. “Anyway, the world was a tidy place, then, with clear rules, at least to a teenager in Chicago. But Raimond appeared and it turned out to be all too easy to change course, though my mother didn’t talk to me for another ten years, and then only to call one day to let me know my father had died.”
They were sitting on the sofa. Steve had found a bottle of brandy, but Lisa, lost in her memories, had barely touched her glass. “I went back for the memorial service. It was in a hotel, all very well bred and decorous. Everything was exquisite, the setting, the floral display…. There must have been four or five hundred people there. They said things about my father, nice things, and they might even have been true, but I realized I had no idea who this person was they were talking about. He had been instrumental in getting some technology or other used by Homeland Security. I thought he was in transportation, but it turned out to be some kind of surveillance. He made things to spy on people, Steve. My mother was very brave, of course. Now we speak on the phone every few months. She’s busy, of course, with her charity boards. She never talks about my father. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m not sure she knew him either.”
“What about Foix? What was he like?”
“There’s a picture of him when he was young on his dresser at the apartment. He’s squinting at the camera, looking half over his shoulder. He has his hand up so it looks as if he’s telling the photographer not to take the picture, to leave him
alone. You know he had blue eyes, like yours?”
“Like yours,” Steve said.
“Ours. Anyway the picture makes him look shy, but when you got to know him you found out he really was rather shy. But in spite of it, I never, in all the years I knew him, would have guessed he could belong to some kind of secret society. And if it’s so secret, why did he send me all these hints? What does he want from me?”
She put her head on his shoulder, breathing softly. He turned, but her eyes were closed. She was asleep.
22.
They emerged at 5:36 in the morning into a watery dawn light and headed toward the Gare Montparnasse, but the Avenue du Maine was clogged with a mass of trucks parked nose to tailpipe and people of every size, color and costume.
“What’s going on?” Lisa asked.
A man in a bright orange wig and a navy blue suit with broad white vertical stripes shouted something. In response a crane lifted an enormous pomegranate the same color as the man’s wig above the truck bed. The object, at least three meters in diameter, lowered with a light thump. The man in the suit disconnected the cables and patted it.
“I forgot,” Steve told her. “Gay Pride parade this afternoon. We’ll have to find a way around.”
They walked along the floats under construction – an enormous wedding cake lathered in pink icing of plastic foam, an elaborate lavender hospital operating room with disco lights, and an Alice in Wonderland toadstool beside which the caterpillar, antennae bobbing, puffed on a cigarette while chatting with a mime. Just past a rainbow-hued school bus someone called to them from the driver’s seat of a truck, “You need to get across?”
Steve looked up.
“Steve?” The man jumped down. He wore a black tank top emblazoned with a stylized white kokopelli. “Steve Viginaire?” He spread his arms.
“Henri!”
Lisa looked from one to the other as they embraced, kissing both cheeks. Steve, his arm around Henri’s shoulders, introduced them. “Henri and I were in the same class in high school.”
“You must have been very close,” Lisa observed dryly.
Steve laughed. “Henri’s an AIDS researcher.”
“This is research?” Lisa asked.
Henri said, “Not really. I head the Quebec delegation.” He swept his hand, taking in the truck, randomly painted with flowers. “This is our float. Not much, I agree, but it will do. We don’t have a big budget, and this was all we could afford to rent.”
“Shouldn’t it be a maple leaf?” she asked. “This is a fleur-de-lys.”
Steve made a rude gesture. “Maple leaf for Canada. Fleur-de-lys for Quebec!”
“How does the rental company feel about you painting their truck?”
“Oh, they’ll never know; it’s water-based paint. I just hope it doesn’t rain.”
Daylight increased along with the good-natured banter. Lisa squinted up at a clear sky. “It looks to me like you’re in luck.”
Henri grinned. “Hope so.”
“We do have to catch a train,” Steve said.
“Of course, of course. Climb through the cab.”
The street on the other side was dense with people, some already in makeup and costume, most in ordinary street clothes. Three women in blue workmen’s jackets were bent over a huge Paris map on the hood of a truck, tracing the route all the way to the Bastille. “We’re going to really mess up the traffic this year,” one of them said.
They found the south entrance to the station. There were few people out this early, and it was only a short walk to the high-speed trains.
Lisa looked around before boarding, but didn’t see anyone suspicious.
They settled at the back of the car where they could keep an eye on the rest of the passengers. Three women came aboard carrying large suitcases and settled into facing seats, chatting amiably. A family of five sat near the front. A stocky, expressionless man got on at the last minute and took a seat on the opposite side three seats ahead of them. He opened Le Monde and began to read. The signal sounded and the train began to move. Soon they were speeding through open countryside.
“How long’s the trip?” Lisa asked.
“A little over five hours.” Steve had tilted his head back and closed his eyes.
She whispered, “What about that man up there, reading the paper?”
He opened his eyes without moving his head. “What about him?”
“He could be following us.”
“He is following us.”
She nudged him. “What are you not telling me?”
“Alain. Don’t worry, he’s watching our backs. I talked to him last night.”
“And who is Alain?”
He opened his eyes and smiled. “Rossignol’s… personal assistant, I guess you could say. He handled the emergency instructions.”
“And why are we going to Toulouse?”
“To meet some people I don’t know. That’s all I can tell you. I don’t know who they are or why we have to meet them, but those are the instructions. I was to talk to whoever was at that number that called yesterday and follow orders. So I’m following orders.”
“Do you always follow orders?”
“When I’m with a beautiful woman and we’re being chased by killers, yes.”
“Very well.” She flipped down the tray table, pulled the Procroft 506 from her bag and began taking notes. The TGV raced on through vast forests and fields green with wheat in almost perfect silence.
It was just past twelve thirty in the afternoon when a Toulouse taxi stopped in the small picturesque village of Mirepoix. Lisa and Steve walked up the wide cart road into the enclosed main square and its central covered market.
An arcade supported by wooden columns surrounded the square. The exposed joists of the colorful half-timbered facades were often carved into fanciful forms: women's faces, bearded heads, mythical animals. Wind-driven clouds raced overhead. Under the arcade the tourist shops and restaurants were mobbed. Mirepoix, in the heart of Cathar country, was a popular summer destination.
Lisa studied the crowd but again saw no one threatening. After a rapid meal eaten in silence, Steve led them through a series of back streets to a half-timbered home at one end of a row of similar houses. It was nearly concealed behind a flagrant display of red, blue and yellow flowers, shrubs and vines.
At the thick oak door Lisa remarked, “Lunch was lovely, wasn’t it? Almost like being married.”
“Married? Oh, the silence.” Steve smiled grimly. “We do have to be careful.”
“You’re right. Please excuse the sarcasm.”
“Excused.”
“Thanks. Now what’s happened to our guardian angel? He got off the train in Toulouse ahead of us and disappeared. I thought I’d see him hovering about, watching our backs, as you said.”
“He was there. Still is.” He rang the bell.
A man inside, clearly British, shouted, “All right, all right, hold on.”
Footsteps approached the door. It flew open to reveal a stocky couple in identical dark blue smocks standing side by side, square heads surmounted by dark brown hair hanging to their shoulders and bangs cut straight across just above their brows like twin Prince Valiants. One wore a dress under the smock and the other wore pants and had a beard.
The beard had an operatic flair. “You must be the Rossignol’s assistant, Viginaire, and you would be Dr. Emmer, wouldn’t you, dear? Come in. Yes, yes, very good, don’t stand there.” They turned as one and disappeared inside.
Although the interior was surprisingly large, the entry was so crammed with books that it seemed small. Books were three and four deep on the shelves, piled in towers, scattered in fans across a broad leather couch. They threatened to fall from high surfaces. There were modern paperbacks in French, Italian, English and Greek, and older, leather-bound volumes in Latin. Lisa recognized one pile that appeared to be in Turkish, a large section in Arabic, and several Japanese paperbacks.
They passed through an
arch into the next room. It may at one time have been a salon but books piled nearly to the beamed ceiling forced them to walk single file through narrow, twisting passages. The path forked and since their hosts had disappeared, they picked a direction at random, were stopped by a dead end and had to retrace their steps.
The next room, more open than the previous, had, besides the ubiquitous bookcases, a small but serviceable dining table and a desk with a computer monitor, the only modern element. Next came the kitchen, strangely free of books, where a door onto the garden was invitingly open. They went outside.
The couple was waiting by a white wrought iron table with a bottle of Calvados and four glasses. The wrought iron chairs were almost lost in the confusion of the floral background, beyond which they could see a high wall enclosing the garden, completely isolating them, at least visually, from the outside. The man gestured for them to sit.
He poured apple brandy for everyone and sat down, holding his glass. “We are Edward and Marianne Maintenon. The name’s French but we’re from England, which you may already have surmised. Most people call me Ted. Alain warned us that the Rossignol is dead and you would be coming. The death of the Rossignol we regret, don’t we, Marianne?”
“We do regret it, Mr. Maintenon,” his wife replied. Her voice was surprisingly low and sensual. She sipped slowly, looking at her visitors over her glass with glittering eyes.
“The Rossignol was a good man,” Ted continued. “Since he is dead, something worse must have happened to the Pythos, though Alain did not say.”
“Pythos?” Lisa asked.
“Perhaps you’re familiar with a symbol, a letter Phi inside a Delta: triangle, circle, line?”
“Yes. Raimond drew it in his own blood.”
Ted squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, as if to blot out an unpleasant sight. “That is the sign of the Delphi Agenda, Dr. Emmer. Dr. Foix was the Pythos.”
Lisa looked at Steve. “I’m sorry? The Delphic oracle was a woman, a Pythia.”
