by Rob Swigart
He ran low on breath and looked around. When he caught sight of the ducks again he brightened. “See, they’re mating.” It wasn’t a question and no one answered. “Well, what do you know about Ophis Sophia, then?”
“They own property in Paris, Frédo. We have an idea where he might be.”
“Then let’s get him.” He patted the object in his pocket. “We must! He won’t last long if they question him. He’s an old man. He won’t…”
“We will, Frédo,” Lisa said, squeezing his forearm. “But there’s something to do first.”
Frédo’s eyes kept darting around. People in groups, in couples, alone, were everywhere. Their voices rose and fell.
Lisa waited for his fear to subside. He stiffened and walked away.
They followed him to a broad open space out of earshot of other people. He whispered, “Sometimes snakes eat their young.”
“Ophis Sophia eats children?” Steve asked.
“No, no, that would be too much, but it’s suspicious, isn’t it, a snake cult in Paris, poisonous vipers? Dimme, Lamaštu, the demon of childbirth! See, I read about something called the Culebre, a scaly dragon. It imprisons beautiful spirits called xanas at a place in Spain called Desfiladero de las Xanas.”
Lisa stared at him. “Say that again.”
“The Culebre, a scaly…”
“No, the place!”
“Desfiladero de las Xanas, a kind of narrow gorge. Why?”
She turned to Steve. “That’s where she is, Desfiladero de las Xanas.”
“Who?” Frédo asked.
“Tell you later. I can say this birth is important to them. They believe it will usher in a new age, their age.”
“Their age?” Steve asked. “As in take over the world? How would they do that?”
She shrugged. “They’re apocalyptic, certainly. They may have a doomsday weapon like a virus or a stockpile of suitcase bombs, there’s just no way to know. What I do know is that we have to get to the Jardin des Plantes now. Come with us. We don’t have a lot of time. Things are going to happen very soon.”
“Shouldn’t we find Usem now?”
“Not yet. Soon.”
His expression went through disappointment to anger to fear. “Someone attacked you, that’s what scared me. What if it’s already too late?” Almost an afterthought he added, “They might have killed him already.”
“We’re on our way to find out,” Lisa said.
Frédo looked intently at Lisa while she explained about the meeting with Ibrahim.
When she finished, he seemed satisfied. “It sounds really dangerous, but I don’t care. I’m in. Let’s go find Usem.” His hand was gripping the gun in his pocket.
They left the park and hailed a cab. The driver talked non-stop about the day he almost died in a terrorist bombing all the way to the Jardin des Plantes.
Vipers
The taxi dropped the three of them behind the mosque a block from the Natural History Museum. Twenty minutes remained before the meeting with Ibrahim.
“Don’t see anyone,” Steve said. “That doesn’t mean no one’s watching. Good luck.”
She crossed rue Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and passed through the iron gates into the park.
Steve and Frédo followed a minute later. They stopped in front of the museum, as if deciding whether to go in, but a long line of families waiting at the ticket window discouraged them. Although the weather had been odd, this was a weekend. The museum would be crowded.
“I spot two,” Steve said, “They already know us so they won’t be fooled.”
“I thought he was supposed to come alone,” Frédo protested.
“So was Lisa. It won’t matter, it’s expected.”
“Oh.”
Lisa beat a class of elementary school children and their chaperones to the zoo entrance. She bought two tickets and crossed the Esplanade.
At the Botanical Gallery she stopped before a life-sized bronze of an older shirtless man seated on a chair with a curved back, his lower body wrapped in a kind of skirt that reached to his bare feet. His head and shoulders were slumped over a large egg cupped in his left hand. The expression on his bearded face was both puzzled and melancholy. For some reason Lisa never questioned closely, this statue comforted her. He must be contemplating which came first. Perhaps, she now told herself in a moment of self-candor, she felt this way because, for her always partial and constantly changing visions of the future, the conundrum of the chicken and egg was most appropriate. Like this man, she was looking for first causes, for certainty, knowing such things did not exist.
Events unfolded in their own way. The future could not be rushed. Though her view into it was short and clouded, she took pleasure in knowing this bronze man had infinite time to contemplate the mysteries. Like him, she could step outside of time when necessary.
Never was being outside of time more crucial than now. Whoever the woman with the gray face was, she would soon come to term, and she needed Lisa Emmer. This much was true.
Why was a different question, one with no definitive answer. For now she would just have to wait for Ibrahim to reveal himself.
No one strolling along the flowerbeds seemed a likely prospect. She didn’t know what he looked like. No sense worrying. She’d know when she saw him.
She sat on a bench, her back to the statue, and looked at the flowerbeds.
The crowd flowed around her with no signs of recognition. The hour of the meeting arrived. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, inhaling warm air with faint floral scents. The storms in the Atlantic were far from Paris; only the very edges would brush by, bringing overcast, with small gusts and tastes of the sea.
Her awareness drifted out in small, languid ripples. Footsteps grew louder, passed, and faded. Birds called, sang, complained, threatened. Behind her the leaves of a venerable black locust rustled. The French called it a False Acacia. One of Henri IV’s arborists transplanted it from the l’Ile de la Cité only thirty years after Giordano Bruno died in the flames of the Inquisition. Bruno, a man of enormous energy, had left to his successors more clues about the future than any other Pythos. He had tried to head off a religious confrontation that nearly destroyed Europe, and for that he was martyred.
She recalled that the locust’s neighbor, exploding this month with the earliest of its deep pink blossoms, was a Judas tree, and told herself not to read too much into these details. They could mislead with false significance.
Her eyes remained closed, her breathing slow and steady. Footsteps approached. Paradoxically, they grew more muted as they approached, as if the walker was taking special care to tread softly.
This was Ibrahim. She drew in a deep breath, resisting the temptation to look. Best show indifference. Let him speak first.
The footsteps stopped. His own slow breathing blended with birdsong, children’s laughter, the fitful wind. Small pellets of gravel ground under a shoe as he pivoted.
He sat down on the bench next to her. The leaves rustled. Something scraped along the dirt path, a crumpled candy wrapper, perhaps. Alain and Frédo were not far away discussing the finer points of the king’s herb garden. Steve was… somewhere nearby. She was safe.
Ibrahim cleared his throat. Lisa lifted her head and opened her eyes.
He was peering at her through rimless spectacles, his small, neat hands folded primly in his lap. Polished black shoes beneath the sharply pressed cuffs of a dark gray suit rested flat on the walk. His odd greenish black eyes were devoid of deceit or guile. Innocence, she thought, was his most dangerous weapon.
She looked back, relaxed, her expression neutral.
He displayed small, even teeth in a half smile. Hints of cedar, nutmeg, and sandalwood wafted from him. His cologne and carefully combed hair suggested a prudish self-pride that served to emphasize an air of supreme confidence. He was vain, but his vanity was justified.
Lisa’s neck prickled. His eyes were too opaque; their candor superficial, reflected. She of
fered him a polite smile, a first gesture.
He nodded. “You’re not alone.” His voice, like his expression, was mild. He spoke French.
“Nor are you.” She had seen no one, but knew he had his watchers, too.
His hands turned over in an eloquent shrug. The way of the world, alas. For the moment he dropped this line. “I would thank you for seeing me.”
Her nod was brief, apparently disinterested.
Birds called from the locust, from the Judas tree.
She turned toward him, taking in neatly folded hands and prim glasses. His bland smile, which held neither warmth nor menace, hinted at the possibility he was a man of great compassion. Lisa, examining this open, trusting face, felt a dazzling web of history and happenstance tighten around her.
He returned to his initial line. “We were agreed you were to come alone.”
“As were you.”
He smiled disarmingly. “Ah, I see. They can’t hear us. Very well, then.” He waited.
She stood. “Come.”
“Ah. You anticipated it, so of course you prepared. I should have expected nothing less.” He shook his head in admiration. “Worthy, indeed. Very well, lead on.” He made a great show of bowing.
They walked together across the Esplanade to the Menagerie. They might be a normal couple out on a Saturday afternoon.
She presented the tickets and they entered.
Ibrahim’s smile was a weak broth that offered little nourishment. “Mmm,” he murmured. “Not staying in the open any longer than necessary.”
She shrugged. They passed an aviary full of shrieking parakeets, and a large open space filled with flamingos engaged in an ongoing dispute. Although the paths were lined with trees, the open spaces were too easy to watch, to target. There was neither privacy nor safety outside.
She stopped in front of the small reptile house.
“I see.” Ibrahim’s smile grew thinner yet, and she realized he had anticipated this.
She pushed open the door.
A ripple of distaste washed over Ibrahim’s smile and disappeared. He followed.
The lighting was dim, the humid air filled with the bitter scents of cold-blooded creatures warming under concealed heat lamps. Near the door a startlingly green snake on a branch lifted its head as they passed. Lisa winked at it. The snake merely stared.
They went through a series of rooms, past alligators and boa constrictors and pythons and giant turtles. The humidity dropped as they moved from swamp to desert.
In the “Salle des Vipères” she pointed out a handwritten label: Thanks to an anonymous gift, the Menagerie now has these nine saw-scaled vipers from Iraq. Although nocturnal, this viper is quick to anger and will strike at any time. Unless treated quickly, its bite is often fatal. “Very kind of you,” she murmured.
A thick swirl of greenish-gray and brown bands dozed in a heap of S-shaped coils. An unseen lamp bathed them with faint pink light. Even so, they were hard to tell apart against the bed of dark sand.
“This is the oldest civil zoo in the world,” Lisa murmured. “Marie Antoinette’s private menagerie came here after she lost her head. Don’t you find that interesting?”
Ibrahim acknowledged this with a grunt. He apparently cared little for French history, although, Lisa thought, he was probably the kind of man who would enjoy the rasp the guillotine, so like the slither of snakes.
They leaned against the railing and contemplated the tableau.
A hand appeared from above holding the tail of a mouse between thumb and forefinger. The further the hand descended, the more violently the animal curled upward and snapped at the fingers, recoiling from the smell of death below. Its eyes bulged. Its fur was mostly white with brown and black patches.
It was mid-afternoon supper in the Salle des Vipères. The hand released the rodent and rose out of view. The light dimmed when the top closed.
The mouse froze at the edge of the cage. A snake stirred and extended its head. The mouse backed away with a shriek and scurried around the outside of the enclosure. The snake’s pear-shaped head swiveled to follow, eyes cold black and unblinking. When the mouse ran by on its third lap, the viper struck. The movement was so fast and casual Lisa almost missed it. The snake lowered its chin to the sand and watched the mouse struggle. There was no blood. It wobbled in diminishing circles and toppled slowly. Its paws twitched for an impossibly long time, jaw opening and closing, legs stiffening.
By now other snakes were creeping toward the kill, their scales hissing together. The successful viper closed its mouth around the rodent’s head and the others backed away. The mouse’s back legs kept twitching with residual life.
Lisa glanced over. Ibrahim was smiling. “You asked to meet,” she murmured. The heat lamps turned the mouse’s tail the deep pink of Judas tree blossoms.
“Mmm, yes. We wonder about your Group, Mlle. Emmer. You seem quite resourceful. This is surprising for a scholar. May I ask what your interest in our cause might be?”
“Snakes,” she scoffed. “Reason enough.”
“Come, you were involved before the unfortunate matter of these innocent reptiles.”
“Just helping a colleague.”
“Frédéric Daviau, yes. And why did M. Daviau talk to you about us?”
“He didn’t. He knows nothing of Ophis Sophia. He was concerned for the old man you kidnapped. Your prisoner.”
“Prisoner?” He was quite practiced at feigning surprise. “Dr. Izri is not a prisoner, Mlle. Emmer. We think of him as a guest.”
“Whatever you say.” The nearly undetectable undulation of the vipers’ breathing gently lifted and released their triangular scales.
Ibrahim pursed his lips. “Mmm. Tell me, please, what the Delphi Group does. Indulge me.”
“Consulting, M. Ibrahim. We’re consultants. We advise organizations. But you know this already.”
“Not really. I know only what is public knowledge: a phone number, a web address. Almost nothing.” He gave a dry laugh. “The web site doesn’t say what the Delphi Group is or does. The telephone number reaches an answering machine. You say you are consultants, yet do not advertise what you do. For instance, what kinds of organizations do you consult for? If you would be so kind.”
The hand opened the cover again, and dropped another mouse into the cage. The knot of vipers thrashed into a frenzy of hissing life, followed by a brief series of screeches, and the small wet sound of fangs thrust through skin. Soon the winner was engulfing his twitching prey with almost solemn deliberation. The others gradually grew torpid once again.
As if nothing had just happened, Lisa answered Ibrahim’s question, “All kinds. Companies, charities, governments.”
“And they have specific questions, these companies and such?”
“Sometimes they do, yes.”
“And when they don’t?”
“We tell them what they need to know.”
“I won’t ask how you know.”
“Trade secrets,” she agreed.
“What do you charge for such services, if I may ask?”
“You couldn’t afford us.”
“You are ignorant of the extent of our resources. My… organization could benefit from your services.” He stated it as a fact, neither a question nor request. His diffidence was disarming.
Disarming, but false. She murmured something indistinct. Somewhere behind the exhibits a door opened and closed. Aside from the two of them, the building was empty.
“Tant pis,” he said. “A shame, really. We have so many questions.” He looked at her closely. “Many questions. I’m sure you could help with answers. We can pay. No?” He let out a small laugh. “I understand your lack of interest.”
For a moment they contemplated the slumbering reptiles. Then he murmured, apparently to himself, but loud enough for her to hear, “Something’s going to happen, something profound and wonderful.”
She straightened, appraising him. “And you’d like the Delphi Group to fac
ilitate your part in this… something?”
“That would be ideal, yes. No reason exists for us to be enemies; our interests are mutual.” His voice had lowered to an unctuous, seductive level.
“We both want to save the world from itself? Yes, I know.”
He moved his hand, palm down, across the front of the exhibit. “You’re being ironic, I understand. But the future, yes. Everyone will be surprised by what’s coming.”
She faced him. “Everyone but you.”
“I exclude us, of course. We know. It will be a storm, Mlle. Emmer, such as the world has never seen.”
“Mph.” She was already moving away.
He stood still, watching her.
She glanced at a small lizard crouched at the back of a cage. An inflated bladder under its chin throbbed. Threat? Mating display?
Then she saw the sleeping cobra. No rats for this viper.
She turned back to Ibrahim, and for the first time since they met his expression showed puzzlement.
This was a warning. He was not the calm, practical man he pretended. Standing beside her in this cool, dim room, was a fanatic. The attack was no mistake, as he claimed, but a deliberate act of self-righteous conviction. The vipers in this case had been intended for her, yes, but more than that, they were instruments of faith. The certainty of that faith is what made these snakes dangerous, not their venom. They were extensions of the divine.
But the future is by definition uncertain. The divine is an idea, not a reality.
This was a dangerous moment, yes, but something in the geometry of their relationship shifted. He might still try to convince her to join him in the search, but she saw his heart was no longer in it. She recognized his cunning and ruthlessness, but understood he did not make the final decisions. Ibrahim was not the leader of Ophis Sophia; only someone with great charisma could command such cruel loyalty.
The Delphi Agenda was now in a race to find the woman in the miniature painting. That mournful mother-to-be was the key to the puzzle, and Usem was the key to the key. The way to the miraculous child could only go through him. His vision started it all, and she, Lisa Emmer, knew when to trust a vision.
