by Rob Swigart
The flares of red and yellow on the screen were moving around the study on the top floor. He dialed his cell phone. Captain Hugo answered.
“In the apartment, Captain. Two people. No alarms. I’m sure it’s the Emmer woman and Rossignol’s assistant.” He waited. After a moment he said, “Are you there?”
“Not a word to anyone about this,” Hugo said. “No arrests, no reports. We will have serious problems, Mathieu. Rossignol was… I can’t tell you who he was. Take my word for it, we don’t want to be caught investigating this any further. The case is officially closed. Do you understand me?”
Mathieu winked in the dark and said. “Yes, sir. Follow and report.”
Static crackled in his ear. Hugo’s voice seemed to come from farther away. Portable phones! “I want to know where they go and what they do. Are they working with Rossignol’s killers? If so, why? If not, what is the connection?”
The line faded away and finally dropped. Mathieu frowned at the phone, shrugged and put it away.
Half an hour later the shapes faded, which must mean they were on the stairs where he couldn’t get a good IR reading. They reappeared briefly in ghostly outline on the floor below and vanished again.
Minutes passed; Mathieu grew nervous. Had they left by a back door? There was no door in the back: the garden belonged to a different building. The street was deserted. It was two in the morning. Monday, he thought. It’s Monday already. Had he slept at all since Friday?
He rubbed his eyes. Something flared on the screen at the front door. The shapes emerged, walked swiftly to the corner of Bernard Palissy and turned.
He grabbed the camera and fled down the stairs, four flights, winding around the elevator shaft, trying to keep silent. The soles of his shoes helped. He raced across the rue du Dragon and down the small side street. He could just see them at the far end, on the rue de Rennes. They boarded a bus and it pulled away. He panted, hands on his knees, and watched the taillights of the number 121 Noctilien dwindle away in the direction of Montparnasse.
* * *
Back in the safe house, Lisa fell onto the couch. “I could sleep for a week.” She watched Steve pace back and forth. His face was pale and drawn.
“Stop pacing,” she commanded. “Alain isn’t going to call at three in the morning and we need sleep. We have to be at the lab at ten.”
He sat next to her. “Something’s not right.”
“What’s not right?” She stifled a yawn.
“That was too easy. Someone should have been there. Someone was there, watching. I’m sure of it. It’s what I’d do.”
“Someone,” she agreed. “But who? Did they see us? Where are they now?” She laughed. “Too many questions, as always.” She turned to him, her fatigue forgotten. “I have to tell you something.”
“Uh-oh.”
She took a photograph from the pocket of her windbreaker and handed it to him.
Raimond Foix had his left arm around her shoulders, his hand visible on the other side, fingers cupping her bare upper arm. He was looking to his left at the ruins of a Greek theater. A pale cliff face filled the frame behind and to his right. His tan face was deeply wrinkled and grave, his eyes hooded, as if his thoughts were important but far away. He might have been considering something she had just said, or what he was about to tell her. Yet his long stare gave the impression he might not be aware of her at all, and was looking into his memory, or the history of the place, or even, Steve thought, the future, seeing something that had not yet happened. When this picture was taken he must have already become the Pythos.
A spirited breeze was blowing his white hair toward the camera. His right hand was pointing at the stone bleachers of the theater. Perhaps he was telling her about a play he had seen there decades before.
Lisa had just looked away from the theater and turned toward the camera, an exuberant half smile playing around her lips. Her blue eyes were caught behind eyelids squinting against the sun and nearly invisible. She wore a white skirt and cornflower blue tank top, heartbreakingly beautiful and young. And, Steve realized, vulnerable.
“Where is this?” he asked.
“Delphi, three years ago. He kept it on his dresser. I didn’t steal it. If I’m his heir, it belongs to me.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“No.” She fell silent, looking into his eyes.
He had a sudden realization. “You were lovers.”
She shook her head. “Not the way you think. I loved him, of course I did, but he was fifty-one years, five months, and twelve days older.”
“I don’t understand what you mean. He was old enough to be your grandfather.”
“I can’t explain it, but I always knew exactly how much older he was. It seemed important. There were times he gave me something that made me very sick. After, though, we went, together, somewhere… else.” She wanted to say more but stopped. “I don’t have the words. I didn’t understand then what it meant. He was teaching me about life, he said. I think, now….” She shrugged.
Steve examined the photograph. Foix wore a long-sleeved maroon shirt. It fit loosely and ballooned where the wind played inside it. His dark slacks were pressed and formal. Looking at the picture a second time it seemed Foix was unconsciously set in a heroic pose, chin jutted out, eyes set on a horizon only he could see. There were pine trees in the background.
“I understand.” Steve handed her the picture.
She didn’t take it. “No, you don’t. You can’t know what it meant. To me it was always strange. Strange, and wonderful. My life before that, Chicago, college, was a dream. He woke me up, brought me to understand what I could do, and to accept what I had always thought of as my problem, my fugue states. Now the second dream, life with Raimond Foix in it, is over. His death woke me up, you see. He loved me,” she added simply. “And I loved him in ways I can’t easily describe. Gratitude? Admiration?”
“The precision about his age seemed odd, that’s all. I shouldn’t ask you about it.”
She shook her head and her long blond hair swirled. “No, Steve Viginaire, you have every right to ask. But there are things you don’t know, things about me… I can’t tell you. I was young, then, and maybe I was foolish, but from the beginning I knew one day, even without the bullets, he would have had to leave. He was a vital man, and healthy, but he was old, and already moving away, as if he knew it was going to end. Now I see he was preparing me to take his place. Hell, you can see it there.” She turned the picture toward him. She looked at it herself and her voice dropped. “I can see it.”
“I…”
She put her finger to his lips. “I don’t know what will happen,” she said.
“You’re the Pythia,” he said softly. “You know what will happen, even if you don’t know you know it.”
She put the picture aside and unzipped her jacket. Underneath she wore a blouse. This she unbuttoned with profound concentration, as though this ordinary act was her only thought. Though her bra was black and lace trimmed, it was sensible. She took it off and faced him.
He watched her unbutton his shirt without moving.
She touched the bandages over his smooth chest very lightly.
“I’m breathing,” she said softly. “In this moment, I’m alive.” She leaned toward him. “We’re both breathing. Can we breathe together?”
They remained thus, her hand on his chest; they might have been two statues caught as one suspended forever in a single moment.
The moment ended and they separated. The Pythia, he knew, was supposed to be celibate.
He wondered if this rule was really unbreakable.
37.
Gray light filtering through the window facing the river cast a pall over the Prior General’s office. He rested his head against the back of his executive chair, his eyes closed, his cheeks wreathed in foam. His secretary carefully scraped with a straight razor, pausing frequently to rinse the blade in a bowl of steaming water dotted with islands of foam and dark wh
isker.
Lacatuchi closed his eyes to better savor this moment. He knew his minions Defago and the nun were compelled to wait patiently. He could feel the scrape of the blade against his cheek, smell the faint garlic and tobacco scent of his secretary’s breath. There was an exquisite tension in the room. Ritual was important. Cleanliness was necessary for the final deciphering of Bruno’s message in Lo spaccio de la bestia trionfante, for it would reveal where to find the final piece of the puzzle, the almost mythical Founding Document so often mentioned in the annals of the Order. The heretical text was written in the presence of the witch Hypatia herself and would reveal at last the grand plan of the Pythos and the principles that had directed its actions for more than sixteen hundred years. With the final mask ripped away, the Order of Theodosius would know exactly what it had been fighting.
He sighed contentedly and opened his eyes. The secretary wiped his face with a soft towel, cleaned up his things and left the room. The portable computer on the surface of the enormous desk displayed a photograph of the enciphered page in Bruno’s book. Beside it were a pad of yellow paper, a Montblanc ballpoint pen, and the reassembled cipher disk.
With a friendly smile at Defago and Sister Teresa, waiting tensely, the Prior General turned the laptop and carefully examined the photograph. He then turned the wheel of the disk, lined up the letters, and carefully copied the plain text.
When he was finished it made no sense. There was no message, merely a random jumble. “The keyword does not work, Defago.”
The monk’s expression remained unchanged.
Lacatuchi tried again, with the same result. He slammed his fist onto the desk; the image on the computer screen jumped.
Defago’s expression changed to open contempt. “Patience, Eminence. It’s a polyalphabetic cipher. Decipherment takes time; we don’t know the interval.”
Lacatuchi pushed the disk and pad across the desk impatiently. “Then you do it.” He walked to the window and looked at the town across the river, hands clasped tightly behind his back. A tractor moved along the opposite bank, turned away and slowly disappeared behind some buildings. The town appeared deserted, even at nine in the morning. It was Monday. This was the day the Struggle would end. It had to be the last day. He willed it so.
But doubt had crept in. He was no longer sure there was a message at all, or what language it was in. The letters had turned from nonsense to more nonsense.
The keyword Rossignol had confessed was de umbris idearum, The Shadows of Ideas, a book Bruno had written two years before Lo spaccio. Was it just a ruse, a trick Bruno was playing on them? Did it mean they were chasing shadows?
But it was true; he did lack patience. This was a failing, like his fastidiousness over torture. He swung his clasped hands hard against his buttocks. The sharp stab of residual pain from the masseur’s work revived him. The only pain he could truly appreciate was his own. He turned back to the room.
Defago’s head was bent over the disk. He turned it, wrote, turned it again.
The nun’s eyes, intently fixed on the monk, smoldered behind her yellow-tinted lenses.
Lacatuchi watched her moisten her thin lips with a pale tongue, fascinated. It probed between the lips like some kind of eyeless animal, a worm or rodent looking around blindly. It would dart sideways, right, left, and back to the center to resume its hunting movement. She seemed unaware.
Defago began to hum, working faster, turning the disk, writing a letter, turning the disk. The nun’s tongue seemed to speed up as well, as if they were psychically connected.
Finally Defago leaned back and held up the pad. “It’s Italian.” There was a strange edge in his voice.
“What does it say?” the Prior General asked, suddenly apprehensive.
“I’ll have to divide it up.” Defago began drawing strokes between the words. He put down the pen. “Yes.” He turned the pad around so Lacatuchi and the nun could read it.
The Prior General thought Defago’s smile was odd, not triumphant exactly, but something else, something unpleasant. “How did you do this?”
Defago shrugged. “Patience.”
Lacatuchi frowned at the large, widely spaced block letters and began translating in his head. Tell the king the glorious dwelling has fallen… “What is this?”
Defago’s smile widened but came nowhere near his eyes. “You recognize it, don’t you, Eminence?”
Lacatuchi looked again. Tell the king the glorious dwelling has fallen to earth, the springs that spoke are quenched and dead… “Is this a joke? Is that why you smile, Defago?” He glanced at the nun, but her eyes were still on her master, and in her eyes he saw the certainty of his own ultimate defeat.
The brother answered, “Yes, Eminence, it is most certainly the Great Heretic’s joke, perhaps the last. These words are from the final oracle, the one given to the Apostate Julian. The oracle is closed for good, looking further is a dead end. After more than four hundred years Giordano Bruno thumbs his nose at us. This disk is a fake, Eminence.”
He emphasized the title, almost aggressively impertinent, but his superior merely tugged at the bump of his broken nose, as if trying to pull something unpleasant off the skin. A vein pulsed in his temple. “I see,” he muttered. “Yes, I see. I went to Istanbul to bring back a practical joke.” He went back to the window and smacked his clasped hands against his hidden bruises over and over.
Sister Teresa exchanged looks with Defago. His eyes were hooded, secretive. Had he gone too far? Perhaps it was the Prior General who had gone too far, who was breaking apart before them?
Lacatuchi collected himself and turned back. “I forgive you this time, Brother Defago.” His voice was low and reasonable and absolutely cold.
An old memory of the bitter menace in his own father’s voice chilled Defago to the core.
“But the next time there will be no forgiveness for failure.” The Prior General added. “Bring them here, the Emmer woman and the Canadian. Take them to your workroom downstairs. Until they return to us what is rightly ours they must not be harmed. They must have the real inner disk, but more, they have the document, the cipher or whatever leads to the Founding Document, Defago. They’ve had them all along. We’ve been chasing a phantom. This time there must be no mistakes. Do whatever it takes, but do it now. I want results. Do I make myself clear?”
Defago lowered his head. A pulse tugged at his eyelid. For the moment he dared not look at the nun, his comfort and companion, his shield and sword. He dared not. And then he did look at her, and saw in the light in her eyes the same feeling of triumph he felt himself, and was lifted up again. “Yes, Eminence,” he said. His voice was steady and gave no hint of the turmoil within.
At the door Sister Teresa turned to look at the Prior General.
Had he not been looking at the river, Lacatuchi himself might have felt the first uneasy twinges of fear at the expression of profound hatred in her eyes not even her tinted glasses could soften.
38.
The only light in the optics laboratory came from a large monitor covering half the end wall. The screen was divided into four panels, each holding the image of a page in a different color: red, green, blue and natural light.
Lisa, Steve, along with Ted, Marianne, and Alain, were gathered around a technician in a white coat, watching intently. A series of filters flickered, bringing out at times a block of blurred lines, at others some faint dots, dashes, curves. Only the page in natural light clearly displayed the Greek sayings of Thomas.
The tech had a goatee and glasses. “Is that an acrostic that spells Bourbaki?” he asked, evidently able to read Greek. “He was a mathematician, wasn’t he, but a kind of hoax? Is someone playing a joke?” He looked down to tap a few keys and his lenses momentarily reflected the screen. “What’s this passage?” He pointed at one of the selections.
“It’s an Apocalypse, perhaps Thomas,” she said. “Raimond either translated from the Latin or from an original Greek text: ‘There will be great distu
rbance among the people, and death. The house of the Lord will fall…’ ” She paused. “That’s odd, nearly the same words as the last Delphic Oracle: ‘the glorious dwelling has fallen to earth.’ A coincidence?”
The tech’s expression was blank.
“Never mind.” She continued translating, “ ‘The altars will be abhorred and spiders will weave their webs in them. The altars will be corrupted, the priesthood polluted, agony will increase, virtue be overcome, joy perish, and gladness depart. In those days evil will abound, truth will be no more, covetousness will spread among the priests,’ and so on. The usual.”
“Oh.” He lost interest and turned to the keyboard. A large image of the page replaced the four windows. “This is the multi-spectral composite,” he said. The blurry lines almost coalesced into something like writing in a fine printed hand.
Lisa shook her head. “Not good enough. How about X ray?”
An older man leaning unnoticed against a table in the shadows at the back of the room, moved into the light, bobbing his head energetically. “I’m Dr. Sully. We’ve done this before, you know; coherent X rays make the iron in the ink fluoresce. I have great confidence we can improve the imaging.”
The platform holding the Procroft 506 began to move into a round structure like a pot bellied stove on its side. There it stopped and a door closed.
“Watch the screen,” Sully said. “This is synchrotron X ray radiation from the high energy collider ring.”
A new image formed the outline of a page with uneven edges. After a moment a dense block of neat, small letters appeared.
“I’ll need a hard copy,” Lisa said. She was exultant.
The technician nodded and tapped a key. On the far side of the room a large color printer began to hum.
Steve puzzled over the block of text on the printout. “As we thought, it’s in cipher.”
