The Empire Of The Wolves

by Jean-Christophe Grangé

At the beginning of their inquiries, when they thought they were tracking a serial killer. this detail puzzled Schiffer. He did not see why a murderer capable of slicing up women's vaginas with razor blades would be bothered to create nitrogen bubbles in his victims' veins. It did not fit. However, in the context of a grilling, this rapture of the depths had a point.

  One of the bases of torture was the "nice and nasty" technique. A good beating, then offer a cigarette. A few electroshocks, then a sandwich. It is in fact during these moments of respite that the person generally cracks.

  By using a chamber, the Wolves had quite simply applied this alternation while bringing it to its ultimate state. After the most terrible torments, they had suddenly submitted their subjects to an abrupt feeling of relaxation and euphoria brought on by high pressure. They were presumably hoping that the violence of this contrast would make them speak, or that the drunkenness would act as a truth serum…

  Schiffer sensed, behind this nightmarish technique, the implacable presence of a master of ceremonies. A genius of torture.

  Who?

  He chased away his own panic and murmured, "There can't be that many pressure chambers in Paris."

  "My men haven't found anything. They've been to the sites where such equipment is found. They've questioned the industrial engineers who conduct tests on resistance. It's a blind alley"

  Schiffer heard a strange note in Nerteaux's voice. Was he hiding something? But he did not have time to press the point.

  "What about the ancient masks?" he went on.

  "Does that interest you, too?" Paul was increasingly skeptical.

  "In a situation like this," Schiffer replied, "everything interests me. One of the Wolves might have an obsession, a particular kink. Where are you at now?"

  "Nowhere. And I haven't had the time to progress. I don't even know if my boys have found any more sites, and-"

  He butted in: "Report back in two hours. And find a way to recharge your battery" He hung up. In a flash, Nerteaux's figure passed before his eyes. His Indian hair, his eyes like grilled almonds. A cop whose features were too fine, who did not shave and who dressed in black to make himself look tough. But also a born policeman, despite his naiveté.

  He realized that he liked the kid. He even wondered if he was not starting to go soft, if he had been right to include Nerteaux in what had now become his investigation. Had he told him too much?

  He left the phone booth and hailed a cab. No. He had kept back his trump card.

  He had not told Nerteaux the most important point.

  He climbed into the car and gave the address of police headquarters, Quai des Orfèvres.

  He now knew who the target was, and why the Grey Wolves were looking for her. Because he had spent the last ten months looking for her, too.

  48

  A rectangular box of white wood, seventy centimeters long by thirty deep, struck with the red wax seal of the French Republic. Schiffer blew the dust off the lid and said to himself that the only remaining proof of Sema Golkalp's existence lay in this baby's coffin.

  He took out his Swiss Army knife, slid its finest blade beneath the seal, snapped the red blotch and lifted the top. A musty smell rose to his nostrils. As soon as he saw the garments, he just knew that they would contain something for him. Instinctively, he glanced over his shoulder. He was in the basement of the Palais de Justice, in the booth with a filthy curtain where freed prisoners could discreetly check that all their personal effects had been returned to them.

  The ideal place to dig up a corpse.

  First he found a white coat and a mobcap of creased paper-the standard uniform of Gurdilek's workers. Then her day clothes: a long pale green skirt, a crocheted raspberry red cardigan, a slate blue blouse with a rounded collar. Cheap rags from the cheapest of stores.

  The clothes were Western, but their cut, colors and above all context gave them the look of Turkish peasant girls, who still wore baggy mauve trousers and bright yellow or green blouses. He felt sinister desire rising inside him, excited by the idea of stripping, humiliation and servile poverty. The pale body he pictured beneath these clothes bit into his nerves.

  He looked at the underwear. A small, flesh-colored bra and a pair of fluffy, black, threadbare panties, whose shiny appearance had been caused by wear. They suggested the figure of an adolescent. He thought of the three corpses: wide hips, heavy breasts. This woman had not just altered her face-she had sculpted her body down to the bone.

  He continued his search. Worn-out shoes, laddered tights, a shabby fleece coat. The pockets had been emptied. He felt down to the bottom of the box in the hope that their contents had been placed there together. A plastic bag confirmed his hopes. It contained a set of keys, a book of metro tickets, beauty products imported from Istanbul…

  He examined the keys. They always fascinated him. He knew each and every type: flat ones, crosscut ones, lever keys, or those with active branches. He was also an expert when it came to locks. Their mechanisms reminded him of the cogs inside the human body, which he loved to violate, torture, control.

  He looked at the two keys on the ring. One opened a grooved lock-probably of some home, hotel room or derelict apartment, long occupied by members of the Turkish community. The second was flat and presumably was for the upper lock on the same door.

  No interest.

  Schiffer stifled a curse. His search had turned up nothing. These objects and garments simply sketched the portrait of an anonymous working girl. Too anonymous, for that matter. It stank of fancy dress, of a caricature.

  He was sure that Sema Gokalp had a hiding place somewhere. When you are capable of changing your face, losing twenty kilos, voluntarily adopting the underground existence of a slave, then you must have a place to fall back on.

  Schiffer remembered what Beauvanier had said: We found her passport sewn into her skirt. With his fingers, he felt each garment. He lingered over the lining of the coat. Along the lower hem, his fingers came to rest on a lump. A hard, long, jagged protuberance.

  He tore open the material and shook it. A key dropped into his hand. A piped key stamped with the number 4C 32.

  He thought: It must be a luggage locker.

  49

  "No, not baggage check. They use codes now."

  Cyril Brouillard was a brilliant locksmith. Jean-Louis Schiffer had found his wallet on the site of a break-in, where a supposedly impregnable safe had been opened with the skill of a virtuoso. He had then gone to the address of the owner of the ID papers and come across a young, shortsighted man with shaggy fair hair. When Schiffer gave him back his documents, he told him that he ought to learn to be less absentminded. He had then covered up the break-in in exchange for an original Bellmer lithograph.

  "So what is it?"

  "Self-storage."

  "What?"

  "A furniture warehouse."

  Since that night. Brouillard had done whatever Schiffer asked. Opening doors for unauthorized searches, turning locks to catch crooks red-handed, safe-breaking to obtain compromising documents. This thief was a perfect alternative to having a warrant.

  He lived above his shop on Rue de Lancry -a locksmith's workshop that he had bought, thanks to his nocturnal activities.

  "Can you tell me more?"

  Brouillard examined the key beneath his desk lamp. He was unlike any other burglar. As soon as he approached a lock, a miracle happened. A vibration. A touch. A mystery that unfolded. Schiffer never wearied of watching him at work. It was like observing some hidden force of nature. The very essence of an inexplicable gift.

  "At Surger's," the crook whispered. "You can see the letters engraved on the side."

  "Do you know the place?"

  "Of course. I've got several cubbyholes there myself. It's open day and night."

  "Where?"

  "Chateau-Landon. On Rue Girard."

  Schiffer swallowed his spit. It seemed on fire. "Do you have the entry code?"

  "AB 756. Your key is numbered 4C 32.
On level four. The floor with the miniboxes." Cyril Brouillard looked up, pushing back his glasses. His voice waxed lyrical. "The floor with the little treasure troves.

  50

  The building looked out over the tracks of Gare de l'Est, as imposing and solitary as a cargo ship coming into port. With its four floors, it looked as though it had been renovated and freshly painted. An island of cleanliness harboring goods in transit.

  Schiffer went through the first gate and crossed the garage.

  It was 2:00 AM, and he was expecting to see a night watchman appear, wearing a black outfit marked SURGER, flanked by an aggressive dog and carrying an electric prod.

  But no one came.

  He entered the code and opened the glass door. At the far end of the hall, which was plunged in a strange red glow, he saw a concrete corridor, punctuated by a series of metal doors. Every twenty yards, perpendicular alleyways crossed the main axis, creating the impression of a labyrinth of compartments.

  He walked straight on, beneath the safety lights, until he reached a staircase at the far end. Each of his steps made an almost imperceptible dull thud on the pearl gray cement. Schiffer savored the silence, the solitude, the mingled tension of power and illegal entry.

  He reached the fourth floor and stopped. Another corridor opened up, containing apparently smaller compartments. The floor with the little treasure troves. Schiffer searched in his pocket and removed the key. He read the numbers on the doors, became lost, then finally found 4C 32.

  Before opening it, he stood still. He could almost sense the presence of the Other, there behind the barrier-of this woman who still did not have a name.

  He knelt down, turned the key in the lock, then swiftly raised the metal screen.

  A box measuring three feet by three appeared in the gloom. Empty. He kept cool. He had not been expecting to find a compartment full of furniture and audio equipment.

  From his pocket, he took out the flashlight he had pinched from Brouillard. Crouching at the threshold, he slowly played the beam around the concrete cube, lighting up the slightest cranny, each cinder block, until he discovered a cardboard box at the back.

  The Other was closer and closer.

  He dived into the darkness, stopping in front of the box. He stuck his flashlight between his teeth and started to search.

  There were clothes, all of dark colors, and all by famous designers:

  Issey Miyake, Helmut Lang, Fendi, Prada… His fingers ran up against some underwear. A clear darkness. That was what came to mind. The material was of an almost indecent softness and sensuality. The watered silk seemed to retain its own reflections. The lace fluttered from the contact of his hands… This time no desire, no erection. The pretentiousness of such lingerie, the haughty pride that could be seen in it, cut away any such thoughts.

  He went on searching and found, wrapped in a silk scarf, a second key. A strange, rudimentary, flat key. More work for Monsieur Brouillard. All that was missing now was the final proof.

  He looked further, rummaging, scattering.

  Suddenly, a golden brooch, depicting poppy leaves, caught the beam of his flashlight, like a magic scarab. He dropped his light, which was dripping with sweat, spat, then murmured into the darkness: "Allaha sükür!' You're back."*

  "God be praised!"

  PART IX

  51

  Mathilde Wilcrau had never been so near to a positron camera.

  From the outside, it looked just like a traditional scanner: a wide, white wheel with a stainless-steel stretcher inside, equipped with various analytical and measuring instruments; nearby a stand supporting a drip; a small trolley covered with vacuum-packed syringes and plastic bottles. In the half-light of the room, it made for a strange construction. A sort of massive hieroglyph.

  To get access to such a machine, the fugitives had had to go as far as the University Hospital in Reims, some sixty miles from Paris. Eric Ackermann knew the head of its radiology department and had telephoned him at his home. The doctor had immediately dashed out to welcome the neurologist effusively. He looked like a frontier officer, receiving the visit of a famous general.

  For six hours, Ackermann had been slaving feverishly around the machine. In the control room, Mathilde Wilcrau watched him at work. Leaning over Anna, who was lying with her head inside the machine, he was giving her injections, checking the drip and projecting images onto a tilted mirror inside the upper reaches of the cylinder. And most of all, he was talking.

  As she watched him through the window, running around like a mad thing, Mathilde could not resist succumbing to a certain fascination. This lanky, immature creature, to whom she would not lend her car, had pulled off a unique scientific experiment in a vicious political context. He had made a huge step forward in the understanding and control of the brain.

  In other circumstances, this advance could have led to major therapeutic developments. It would have inscribed his name in the history books of neurology and psychiatry. Would the Ackermann method get a second chance?

  The tall redhead was still busying himself and twitching nervously. Mathilde read between his gestures. Apart from the tension caused by this special session, Ackermann was drugged up to the eyeballs. He was hooked on speed or other uppers. In fact, as soon as they had arrived in the hospital, he had made a shopping trip to the pharmacy. Such synthetic drugs suited him perfectly. He was a thing possessed, living by and for chemical substances…

  Six hours.

  Lulled by the purring of the computers, Mathilde had nodded off on several occasions. Then she had woken up and tried to gather her thoughts. In vain. One idea blinded her, like a moth by the light.

  Anna's metamorphosis.

  The day before, she had picked up a vulnerable creature with amnesia, as fragile as a baby. Then the discovery of that henna had changed everything. The woman had crystallized around that revelation, like quartz. At that moment, she seemed to understand that the worst was no longer to be feared, it was to be sought-and confronted. It was she who had decided to take the enemy by surprise and trap Eric Ackermann, despite the risks involved.

  It was she who was now in command.

  Then, during the questioning in the garage, Sema Gokalp had appeared. The mysterious working girl, with all her contradictions. The asylum-seeker from Anatolia who spoke perfect French. The prisoner in a state of shock, whose silence and altered face concealed a different past… Who hid behind this new name? Who was this person who was capable of transforming herself utterly into someone else?

  The answer would come back with her memory. Anna Heymes. Sema Gokalp… she was like a Russian doll, with layered identities, with each name, each appearance containing another secret.

  Eric Ackermann got up from his chair. He removed the catheter from Anna's arm, pushed away the drip and tilted up the mirror in the machine. The experiment was over. Mathilde stretched, then tried one more time to put her thoughts in order. She just couldn't. Another image chased that hope away.

  Henna.

  Those red lines on the hands of Muslim women seemed to trace out an unbridgeable frontier between her Parisian world and the distant life of Sema Gokalp. A culture of deserts, arranged marriages and ancestral rites. A savage, terrifying universe born of scorched winds, predators and rock.

  Mathilde closed her eyes.

  Tattooed hands-the brown whirls curling around the palms of callused hands, about dark wrists and knotty fingers. Not an inch of virgin flesh: this red line was unbroken, it stretched out, unraveling, turning back on itself, in loops and curls, giving birth to a hypnotic geography…

  "She's asleep."

  Mathilde jumped. Ackermann was standing in front of her. His white coat was loose around his shoulders, like a flag. Beads of sweat winked on his forehead. Twitches and shakes racked his body, but a strange solidity also emanated from his figure-the confidence of know-how beneath the nerves of the addict.

  "How did it go?"

  He took a cigarette from the comput
er desk and lit up. He inhaled deeply, then replied through a tunnel of blue smoke. "I started by giving her an injection of flumazenil, the antidote to Valium. Then I wiped out the conditioning I had given her, by activating each zone of her memory using Oxygen-15. I retraced my steps precisely"

  He sketched a vertical axis with his cigarette. "With the same words, and same symbols. It's a shame I don't have Heymes's photos or videos anymore. But I think most of the work has been done. For the moment, her ideas are rather muddled. Her real memories are coming back, little by little. Anna Heymes is going to disappear and leave her place to the initial personality. But watch out!" he said waving his cigarette. "This is purely experimental!"

  A real loony. Mathilde thought. A mix of coldness and exaltation. She was going to say something, but another flash stopped her. Henna, once again. The lines on the hand coming alive. The hooks, whirls and twists slithering along the veins, curling up around the phalanxes, until they reach the nails stained with pigments…

  "Right now, this won't be much fun for her," Ackermann went on, taking another drag. "The various levels of her consciousness are going to telescope. Sometimes she won't be able to tell the difference between what is true and what is false. But her original memory will slowly begin to dominate. With flumazenil, there are also risks of convulsions, but I've given her a little something to reduce the side effects…"

  Mathilde pushed back her hair. She must look like a ghost. "What about the faces?"

  He chased away the smoke with a vague gesture. "That should sort itself out, too. Her reference points are going to become more fixed. When her memory returns, her reactions should become more stable. But I repeat: all of this is extremely new and-"

  Mathilde noticed a movement behind the window. She rushed at once into the room. Anna was already sitting on the table of the PET scanner, her legs dangling down, leaning back on her hands. "How do you feel?"