Suddenly, silence returned.
Mathilde stopped at once, waiting a few seconds before opening her eyes. She could not see anything. The gallery was covered with ash, as though after a volcanic eruption. The stink of cordite mingled with the cinders, worsening her sensation of asphyxia.
Mathilde dared not move. She almost called out Anna's name, but she stopped herself. She should not let the killer spot her.
While analyzing the situation, she examined her body. She was unwounded. She closed her eyes again and concentrated. Not a breath, not a sound anywhere near her, with the exception of a few pieces of rubble, which continued to fall with dull thuds.
Where was Anna?
Where was the man?
Were they both dead?
She squinted in an attempt to see something. Finally, two or three yards farther on, she noticed a lamp giving off a vague light. She remembered how they punctuated the alleyway about every ten yards. But which one was it? The one by the entrance to the corridor? Which way was the exit? To her right, or to her left?
She fought back a cough, swallowed her saliva, then silently picked herself up onto an elbow. She started crawling toward the left, avoiding the rubble, the shells, the spillage from the urns…
Suddenly, the fog materialized in front of her.
A completely gray figure: the killer.
Her lips opened, but his hand pressed hard over her mouth. In the bloodred eyes that were staring at her, Mathilde could read: One sound, and you're dead. The barrel of a revolver was rammed against her neck. She rapidly fluttered her eyelashes as a sign of assent. Slowly, the man removed his fingers. She gave him another imploring look, guaranteeing her total submission.
At that moment, a ghastly sensation hit her. Something had happened that made her feel even more awful than the idea of dying: she had dirtied herself. Her sphincter had loosened. Urine and excrement oozed between her thighs, soaking her tights.
The man grabbed her by the hair and dragged her across the floor. Mathilde bit her lips to stop herself from screaming. They passed through the clouds of mist, between the vases, flowers and human ash.
He prowled around the galleries several times. Still being pulled brutally, Mathilde slipped along in the dust, making a soft rustling sound. She kicked her legs, but the movement made no noise. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out of it. She was sobbing, groaning, whistling between her teeth, but the dust absorbed everything. Through her pain, she realized that this silence was her best ally. At the slightest sound, the man would kill her.
The advance slowed. She felt his grip loosen. Then the man grabbed her again and started going up stairs. Mathilde braced herself. A wave of agony ran from her skull to the base of her spine. It felt as if deadly clamps were pulling the skin of her face. Her legs were still kicking, heavy, wet, filthy with shame. She smelled the ghastly waste that was staining her legs.
Then everything came to a halt again. It lasted only a second, but that was enough.
Mathilde twisted around to see what was happening. Anna's form was standing out against the fog while the killer soundlessly aimed his gun.
With a wrench, she lifted herself up on a knee to warn Anna.
Too late. He pressed the trigger, causing a deafening crash.
But nothing happened as expected. The figure exploded in a thousand shards; the cinders changed into a lethal hail. The man yelled. Mathilde freed herself and rolled backward, down to the bottom of the steps.
As she fell, she realized what had happened. He had fired not at Anna but at a glass door, stained with dust, that was sending back his own reflection. Mathilde landed on her back and witnessed the impossible truth. Just as the back of her head hit the floor, she saw the real Anna, like a gray statue, crouching in the gutted window. She had been awaiting them there, as though floating above the dead.
At that moment, Anna leapt down. Hanging with her left hand from a niche, she swung her body as fast as she could. In her other hand, she held a spike of broken glass. Its sharp end stuck into the man's face.
By the time he had aimed his gun, Anna had pulled out the blade. The bullet flew through the dust. The next second, she attacked once more. The shard slid across his temple and sliced into his flesh. Another bullet went astray through the air. Anna was already crouched against the wall.
Forehead, temples, mouth. Back she came again and again. The man's face was being torn apart in bloody slices. Staggering, he dropped his gun, clumsily flapping his arms, as though pestered by killer bees.
At last, Anna went in for the kill. With all her weight, she leapt on him. They rolled onto the ground. The spike stuck into his right cheek. Anna kept up the pressure, literally slicing apart the flesh and exposing the gums.
Mathilde eased herself up the stairs on her back, pressing on her elbows. She was yelling, without managing to take her eyes off that savage combat.
Anna at last dropped her weapon and stood up. The man, gesticulating in a heap of ashes, was trying to pull the glass out of one of his eyes. Anna picked up the gun and pushed his hands aside. She grabbed the shard, twisting it around and pulling it out of the socket, with the red eye stuck on it. Mathilde tried again to look away but failed. Anna rammed the barrel into the gaping hole and pulled the trigger.
56
Silence again.
The acrid smell of ash again.
The overturned urns, with their sculpted lids.
The colors of the scattered plastic flowers.
The body slumped down a few inches from Mathilde, spraying her with blood, brains and pieces of bone. One of its arms was touching her thigh, but she did not have the strength to push it away. The beating of her heart was so feeble that each interval seemed to her to be the final one.
"We've got to go. The watchmen will be here soon."
Mathilde raised her eyes. What she saw tore into her heart.
Anna's face had turned to stone. The dust of the dead had gathered in the hollows of her features, changing them into cracked furrows, wrinkled gulches. In contrast, her eyes were bloodshot and raw.
Mathilde thought of the eye stuck on the point of glass. She wanted to vomit.
Anna was holding a sports bag, which she had presumably removed from the niche.
"The heroin's lucked," she said, "so let's not waste any more time here.”
“Who are you? For heaven's sake, who are you?"
Anna put the bag down and opened it. "He wouldn't have pulled any punches either, believe me."
She picked up the wads of dollars and euros, counted them rapidly, then put them back in the bag. "He was my contact in Paris. The person who was supposed to take care of the heroin in Europe. To handle the distribution networks."
Mathilde looked down at the corpse. She saw a brownish grimace, from which a single eye was staring up at the ceiling. As an epitaph, she wanted his name. "What was his name?"
"Jean-Louis Schiffer. He was a cop."
"Your contact was a cop?"
Anna did not reply. From the bottom of the bag, she produced a passport and flicked over its pages quickly.
Mathilde returned to the body. "You were, partners?"
"He'd never seen me, but I knew his face. We had a sign of recognition. A brooch shaped like a poppy. And also a kind of password: four moons.”
“What does that mean?"
"Forget it."
Kneeling on the ground, Anna continued her search. She came across several magazines for an automatic pistol. Mathilde observed her in disbelief Her face looked like a mask of dry mud, a ritualistic figure, frozen in the earth. There was nothing human left about Anna.
"What are you going to do now?" Mathilde asked.
The woman stood up and removed a handgun from her belt-no doubt the automatic she had found in the niche. She released the spring in the handle, removing the empty clip. Her confident gestures revealed reflexes born of training.
"Leave. There's nothing for me now in Paris."
"Whe
re to?"
She slipped a fresh magazine into the gun. " Turkey "
" Turkey? But why? If you go there, they'll find you."
"Wherever I go, they'll find me. I have to cut out the source.”
“The source?"
"The source of this hatred. The origin of this vengeance. I have to go back to Istanbul. Take them by surprise. They won't be expecting me there.”
“Who do you mean by 'they'?"
"The Grey Wolves. Sooner or later, they'll discover my new face.”
“So what? There are thousands of places you could hide."
"No. When they find out what I now look like, they'll know where to find me."
"Why?"
"Because their leader has seen me, in a completely different context.”
“I don't get it."
"I repeat: forget it! They'll chase me till they find me and kill me. For them, this is no normal contract. It's a question of honor. I betrayed them. I broke my oath."
"What oath? What are you talking about?"
Anna slipped down the safety catch and put the gun behind her back. "I'm one of them. I am a Wolf"
Mathilde's breathing stopped; her blood seemed to slow.
Anna knelt down and took her by her shoulders. Her face was now colorless, but when she spoke, her pink, almost fluorescent tongue could be seen between her lips. A mouth of raw meat. "You're alive, and that's a miracle," she said gently. "When it's all over, I'll write to you. I'll give you the names, the circumstances, everything. I want you to know the truth, but later-when I'm ready to put an end to this story, and when you're in safety"
Haggard, Mathilde did not answer. For a few hours-an eternity-she had protected this woman as though she were her own flesh and blood. She had made her into a daughter, her baby.
And in fact, she was a killer. A being of violence and cruelty.
An unbearable sensation started up deep inside her. A shifting of slime in a decaying pond. The ghastly dampness of her open, slack entrails.
At that moment, the idea of being pregnant took her breath away. Yes, that night she had given birth to a monster.
Grabbing the sports bag, Anna stood up. "I'll write to you. I promise. I'll explain everything." She vanished into a screen of ash.
Mathilde remained still, staring into the empty gallery. In the distance, the sirens of the cemetery were blaring.
PART X
57
"It's Paul."
A breath at the other end of the line. Then: "Do you know what time it is?"
He looked at his watch. Only just 6:00 AM. "Sony. I haven't slept." The breath changed into a weary sigh. "What do you want?"
"I just want to know if Céline got her candy."
Reyna's voice hardened. "You're sick."
"Did she get them-yes or no?"
And that's why you're calling me at six in the morning?"
Paul banged on the window of the phone booth. The battery of his cell phone was dead again. "Just tell me if she was pleased. I haven't seen her for ten days!"
"What really made her pleased were the men in uniforms who brought them over. She talked about that all day. For fuck's sake. All that ideological effort-to end up with pigs as babysitters.."
Paul pictured his daughter looking admiringly at the silver buttons, her eyes glistening at the candy the patrolmen had given her. It warmed his heart. Suddenly, with a cheerful tone, he promised. "I'll call back in a couple of hours. Before she leaves for school."
Without a word, Reyna hung up.
He left the booth and took a deep breath of night air. He was on Place du Trocadéro, between the Musée de l'Homme, the Musèe de la Marine and the Théatre National de Chaillot. It was drizzling on the central square, which was surrounded by fences and was clearly being renovated. He followed the planks, which formed a corridor and crossed the esplanade. The drizzle was creating a greasy film on his face. It was far too warm for the season, making him sweat in his parka. This humid weather matched his mood. He felt dirty, worn out, empty. There was a taste of papier-maché in his mouth.
Since Schiffer's phone call, at 11:00 PM, he had been following up the plastic-surgery lead. After digesting this new twist in his investigation-a woman with a new face, being chased by both Charlier's men and the Grey Wolves-he went to the headquarters of the French Medical Association on Avenue de Friedland, in the eighth arrondissement, in search of doctors who might have had some dealings with justice. As Schiffer had put it, having your face completely redone is never innocent. So he had to find a surgeon with no scruples. His initial idea was to look for those who had police records.
He had immersed himself in the archives and had made no bones about calling the departmental head to help him, even in the middle of the night. The search had turned up over six hundred files, just for the Paris region, over the past five years. How to wade through such a list? At 2:00 AM, he had phoned Jean-Philippe Arnaud, the president of the Association of Plastic Surgeons, to ask his advice. In reply, the sleepy voice had provided three names of virtuosos with iffy reputations, who might have agreed to carry out such an operation without asking too many questions.
Before hanging up, Paul had questioned him about other "scalpels" among the "respectable" surgeons. After some prompting, Arnaud had added seven more names, insisting that they were recognized practitioners and would never have gotten involved in such a business. Paul cut short his comments and thanked him.
So at 3:00 in the morning, he had had a list of ten names. For him, the night was still young…
He stopped at the far side of the Trocadéro, between the two museums, looking over the Seine. Sitting on the steps, he let himself be seduced by the beauty of the view. The gardens were laid out in different levels, with fountains and statues forming a dreamlike landscape. The Pont d'Iéna added touches of light to the river, as far as the Eiffel Tower on the opposite bank, which looked like a huge cast-iron paperweight. All around, the dark buildings of the Champ-de-Mars slept in religious silence. Overall, the scene was reminiscent of a hidden Tibetan kingdom, a marvelous Xanadu at the end of the known world.
Paul went through what he had learned over the previous few hours.
To begin with, he had tried phoning up the surgeons. But his very first call proved to him that he would not find out anything that way: the man had hung up on him. In any case, the vital point was to show them the pictures of the victims and the one of Anna Heymes that Schiffer had left for him at the Louis-Blanc station.
So he went to see the first of the "shifty" surgeons on Rue ClémentMarot. According to Arnaud, this millionaire from Colombia was suspected of having operated on the godfathers of Medellin and Cali. He was extremely renowned for his skill. It was said that he could operate using either his right or his left hand.
Despite the late hour, the artist in question had not gone to bed -or rather, was not asleep. Paul had disturbed him in full action, in the scented shadows of a vast penthouse. He had not seen his features clearly but had grasped that the faces on the photos Paul showed him rang no bells.
The second address was of a clinic on Rue Washington, on the other side of the Champs-Elysées.
Paul had grabbed the surgeon just before an emergency operation on a victim of first-degree burns. He had played his part, producing his card, sketching out details of the case, placing the pictures on the table. The man had not even lowered his surgical mask. He had just shaken his head before leaving to take care of that charred flesh. Paul remembered what Arnaud had said: this character artificially cultivated human skin. It was said that, after burning, he could modify people's fingerprints, thus completing a new identity for criminals on the run..
Paul had gone once more into the night.
He had found the third surgeon fast asleep in his apartment on Avenue d'Eylau, near the Trocadéro. He was another celebrity one who was supposed to have operated on the greatest stars of show business. But no one knew who or what on. It was also rumored that he had alter
ed his own appearance after some problems with the police in his native South Africa.
He had received Paul warily his hands jammed in his dressing-gown pockets like revolvers. After looking at the photos in disgust, he had uttered a categorical "never seen them before."
Paul had emerged from these three visits as though he had been swimming underwater. At 6:00 in the morning, he had suddenly felt in need of something familiar, something he knew. So he called up the only family that he had-or what was left of it. But the call had not comforted him. Reyna was still on another planet. And Céline, fast asleep. was light-years away from his world-a world in which killers put living rodents in women's vaginas, where cops cut off people's fingers to get information…
Paul raised his eyes. Dawn was stretching up in the sky, like the curve of a distant star. A broad mauve strip was gradually turning pink and, at the top of its arc, was distilling a hint of sulfur, already dotted with white, sparkling particles. The mica of day…
He stood up and retraced his steps. When he reached Place du Trocadero, the cafés were opening their doors. He spotted the lights of Le Malakoff, where he had arranged to meet his two assistants, Naubrel and Matkowska.
The previous day, he had told them to drop the business about high-pressure chambers and instead obtain as much information as they could about the Grey Wolves and their political history. While Paul was focusing on the target, he also wanted to know something about the hunters.
In the doorway of the café, he paused for a moment and considered another problem that was bugging him-the disappearance of Jean-Louis Schiffer. He had heard nothing from him since that phone call at 11:00 last night. Paul had tried contacting him several times, in vain. Instead of fearing the worst, he sensed that the bastard had double-crossed him. Now that he was free again, Schiffer had presumably found a hot lead and was following it up all on his own.
The Empire Of The Wolves Page 27
