The sun rose over the Alps and set afire the ice-covered peaks above Évian. The fierce light reflected back across the lake straight into Harper’s eyes. He turned away, watched the clock next to the bed flip to eight o’clock. The inspector’s drug-induced stupor finally easing. Harper thought he should order coffee, eat something maybe, shake off the numbness in his arms and legs. Then again, the waitress with the gun might shoot as quickly as she’d bring him a croissant.
He pulled himself up and dropped his feet to the floor. He stumbled across the room and sank into a chair, saw the bottle of red wine on the table. He opened it and poured, watching the deep red color swirl in the glass. He drank it down, remembered the inspector’s prophecy: Mr. Harper’s missed his supper and he’s in for a rough night. A full-bodied red will do him wonders.
He poured another glass, remembered some more.
Came back to the hotel just after one. No coppers waiting for him. Thought he was clear till he opened the door of his room. Pitch black inside. Light from the hall revealed someone had been in the room and shut off the telly and turned down the bed. Two Swiss chocolates lay perfectly on the pillow.
“Bollocks.”
Something slammed into his back and shoved him in the room and up against a wall. Blunt steel digging at the back of his neck, a woman’s voice spitting venom.
“You should’ve chosen a film with a longer running time, monsieur.”
“Any recommendations, mademoiselle?”
“Ben-Hur. Two hundred twelve minutes.”
A quick roundhouse kick caught the back of Harper’s knees and dropped him to the floor. Another kick to his shoulder knocked him upright. He was looking up the death end of a pistol. The waitress with the gun on the trigger end.
“Where did you go, monsieur?”
“Went for a walk. I needed a pack of smokes.”
Her knee smashed into his face and sent him to the floor. Then a swift kick to his bruised ribs.
“Fuck!”
She grabbed his collar and pulled him upright again and set the gun at his head.
“S’il vous plaît, monsieur, where did you go?”
“This is all very impressive, mademoiselle, but could we just get to the bloody point?”
The desk lamp switched on from across the room. The cop in the cashmere coat sitting comfortably, Mutt and Jeff standing behind him.
“Speaking of the bloody point.”
“Good evening, Mr. Harper, nice to see you looking so well. We were enjoying your romp through the park when the town’s CCTV cameras shut down. Unscheduled service, it seems.”
“Unscheduled? In this town?”
“A minor inconvenience that will not be repeated. No matter, as I suspect you’re about to tell us what you were up to.”
“Told you. Went for a walk, needed a pack of smokes.”
“Yes, rather fond of evening strolls myself. Good for the digestion. By the way, where would I find Katherine Taylor?”
“Get stuffed.”
The inspector raised one eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me.”
“Mr. Harper, you seem to forget that I’m with the police.”
“No, I didn’t.”
The waitress with the gun threw another roundhouse kick. Harper caught her ankle midflight and pulled hard. She hit the floor, rolled, and was back on her feet with the gun at his head in the blink of an eye.
“Now that was really impressive, mademoiselle.”
The inspector cleared his throat. “Officer Jannsen, that will be quite enough. I’m sure Mr. Harper would prefer to take a seat on the bed.”
She held out her hand and pulled him to his feet. He towered over her.
“Oui, monsieur.”
“Enchanté, and suppose you make yourself genuinely useful, love, and get us a cup of tea.”
She turned to the inspector; he nodded.
“Would you be so kind, Officer? The Earl Grey, I think. And if you’d bring a bottle of good Lavaux. Mr. Harper’s missed his supper and he’s in for a rough night. A full-bodied red will do him wonders.”
“Tout de suite, Inspecteur.”
She left the room. Harper sat on the bed.
Mutt closed the door and rested his back against it. Jeff eased to the other side of the room. Both of them opening small notebooks and writing. The inspector rose from the chair, took his cigarette case from his cashmere coat. He crossed the room, offered one of his gold-tipped smokes to Harper.
“Now, why don’t you tell us about your evening with Miss Taylor?”
“Didn’t see her, didn’t talk to her.” Harper took a smoke, set it to his lips. “Anyone got a match?”
Mutt stepped in with a lighter, Jeff dropped an ashtray on the bed. They retook their positions as the inspector picked up one of the chocolates on the bed pillow.
“You don’t mind, do you? I have a weakness for Swiss chocolate.”
“Take two, Inspector, they’re small.”
“One’s quite enough, thank you.” He walked back to his chair, unwrapped the chocolate, popped it in his mouth. “In that case, why don’t you tell us what you were doing while you were out not seeing Miss Taylor.”
“Actually, I was thinking about skipping town on the next train.”
“I see you’re still here.”
Harper inhaled deep puffs, exhaled clouds that floated about the room. “Couldn’t get a ticket. Skiing holidays and all.”
“Yes, well, one must book ahead this time of year.”
The inspector waited in silence; he watched Harper smoke. Mutt and Jeff continued to make scratching noises in their notebooks. A quiet knock at the door. Mutt opened it. Officer Jannsen wheeled in a serving trolley. China pot, cups and saucers, milk and sugar, bottle of Swiss red wine. She poured two cups of tea, set one on the table next to the inspector.
“Thank you, Officer.”
“Volontiers, Inspecteur.”
She served a cup to Harper, bowed, and left the room. Harper turned to the inspector.
“Nicely trained, that one.”
“Her first year on the task force, keen to do well. I hope she wasn’t too rough on you. She was terribly aggrieved you got the jump on us. I thought it an opportunity to see how her enhanced interrogation techniques were coming along. How would you rate her?”
“Nice smile, vicious kick.” He raised his cup and breathed in the bouquet, took a long sip. “And she makes a decent cuppa. She’ll go far in your gang.”
“Happy to hear it. I think it effective to have attractive young women do the dirty work. Greatly reduces the time in getting to the facts of the matter when dealing with truculent sorts, wouldn’t you agree?”
“If you say so.” Harper took another long sip, watching the inspector watch him like a cat waiting to pounce. “Something else on your mind, Inspector?”
“Just wondering if you enjoy the taste of the tea? Special house blend, you know.”
“Don’t tell me, here’s the part where we shoot the breeze about the evil Spaniards on their horses, slaughtering their way into the New World. Followed by a bit of whimsy about the king of Morocco and his tobacco patch. Or was it the other way around?”
“In fact, this is where you describe the nature of your relationship with Miss Taylor.”
“I hardly know her.”
“That wasn’t my question. I asked about the nature of your relationship.”
“Our relationship?”
“Di immortales virtutem approbare, non adhibere debent, and so on.”
Harper took a draw on the cigarette. “If you’re asking me if I’ve known Miss Taylor in the biblical sense, the answer’s still no.”
“I am relieved. Attachments with women of her sort, not the healthiest of things for our sort.”
“What makes you think I’m one of your sort?”
“Well, you’re here, aren’t you?”
“Never knew you to talk in riddles, Inspector.”
“Believe me, Mr. Harper, I’m not. Where and when did you meet Miss Taylor?”
Harper felt one of those “get stuffed” moments rising from his guts but couldn’t find the wherewithal to say the words.
“LP’s Bar, a few days ago, she bought me a beer and I took her newspaper. We also had a drink on Place Saint-François at the Christmas fête the same night. She went home alone. I saw her in LP’s again last Tuesday evening. She was waiting for a high-priced client. No idea who, so don’t ask. That’s all there is to it.”
“I’m told you gave her a maquette of Lausanne Cathedral while at the bar.”
Harper set his cup in the saucer, drew on his smoke. “And I see you had a chat with the polite bartender at LP’s.”
“Indeed. He was most helpful in spite of your advising him to lie to us. For future reference, Mr. Harper, the locals find such behavior quite unnatural. They’re just not very good at it.”
“So you knew what I was up to. Why didn’t you catch up with me at Miss Taylor’s flat?”
“Because I had every confidence you’d return to tell us all about it.”
Harper sipped at the tea. “All right. I picked up the maquette in the cathedral gift shop the day I discovered Yuriev’s note. Had no real use for the bloody thing, so I gave it to Miss Taylor when I saw her in the bar that evening, right after I slipped my business card inside.”
Inspector Gobet raised the other eyebrow. “Your business card?”
“That’s right, the one pinned to the wall next to what was left of Madame Badeaux.”
“And for the record, why didn’t you identify Miss Taylor’s voice on the answering machine, knowing she was involved with the killers?”
“You telling me you didn’t already know who she was or what sort of trouble she was in?”
“Of course I did. But I’d still like to know why you didn’t identify her voice.”
“Didn’t like the tone of yours.”
“Pardon?”
“Set up people to die, Inspector, you should at least be polite about it.” Harper took another sip of tea, huffed on the inspector’s cigarette. He dug a set of keys from his coat, tossed them to Mutt.
“Keys to her flat, lads. Number two, Rue Caroline, rooftop flat. Have fun sorting which key is which. Place is a wreck, but I kept my prints off things. And there’s an oily patch on the floor in the sitting room, near a broken lamp. Careful you don’t slip.”
Mutt and Jeff stopped writing, shot a look at the inspector. Harper’s turn to raise an eyebrow.
“Let me guess: You’ve heard that one before. Let’s try this one: A witness saw two men outside her building in the early hours of Thursday. One short with a small beard, goatee most probably, wore a black suit. Other one was tall and thin in some kind of pajama outfit. Black, Oriental maybe.”
Harper read the looks on the coppers’ faces.
“My, seems we’ve heard that one, too.”
“It would be helpful if you gave us the name of the witness, Mr. Harper.”
“Not on his life.”
“What?”
“Let’s just say I’d rather not see an innocent person slaughtered.”
“You’re being most unhelpful, Mr. Harper.”
Harper took another long draw on the cigarette. “Don’t take it personally, Inspector, but for a country with only a handful of willful homicides a year, bodies are dropping like flies in this place.”
“Mr. Harper, you don’t seem to understand what’s going on in Lausanne.”
“Enlighten me.”
“I’m afraid I can’t.”
“Right, you’re the policeman, I’m not.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“What’s complicated? You’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys. Or are the lines a little less clear, other way around, maybe?”
“I’m not quite sure what you mean.”
“Then I’ll spell it out for you, Inspector. You’re as bent as they come.”
Mutt and Jeff stepped toward Harper. The inspector kept them in place with a quick glance before returning his attention to Harper.
“Perhaps you’d care to share with us the manner of your thinking, Mr. Harper.”
“Back to the manner of my thinking routine, are we? Fine, goes like this: A rain of shite is about to come crashing down on your cashmere coat.”
“Do tell.”
“You told me your task force had been tracking the killers when it was Yuriev you really wanted. Or rather, whatever the fuck it was he smuggled out of Moscow. My guess is you got it off him before he ended up in a ditch.”
“Are you suggesting I had something to do with Alexander Yuriev’s death?”
“I’m saying it was convenient he ended up in a ditch.”
“And what, do you suppose, is it that I obtained from Yuriev?”
“Knowing you, some gadget to rule the fucking world.”
“Surely you can do better than that.”
“All right, how about a performance-enhancing drug with severe psychotropic effects?”
“And what would I want with such a thing?”
“I told you, rule the fucking world.”
The inspector removed a fluff of lint from his coat. “Mr. Harper, may I remind you that the fool does not become wise through the repetition of his folly.”
“You’ve got it back to front, Inspector.”
“Do I?”
“It’s ‘If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.’”
“Of course. William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, yes?”
“No bloody idea.”
“No? Something you heard, then. The History Channel, perhaps.”
Harper felt himself wobble. “What did you say?”
“It wasn’t important. Let’s stay with your manner of thinking.”
“Manner of…thinking.”
“Yes. I fail to understand Miss Taylor’s role in my grand scheme to ‘rule the fucking world,’ as you put it.”
“Miss Taylor…she’s…she’s a direct connection to Simone Badeaux. That’s why the killers want her alive, and why you want her dead.”
“You’re beginning to imagine things in a very serious manner, Mr. Harper. You should be careful. I’m not sure you can handle it.”
Harper shook his head. “No? Then imagine this: Legendary courtesan with a client list that’d bring down several European governments, she was your bloody front.”
“I don’t follow.”
“You practically run this country, you practically run Europe. No wonder. You’re blackmailing Europe with one hand and cashing in on every crooked scam with the other. And the profits are hiding in Simone Badeaux’s bank accounts to the tune of forty million. The killers have it all on paper, ready to share with Euronews, along with pictures of Madame Simone’s mangled corpse. The killers want to make a deal. Give us what Yuriev smuggled out of Russia or we let the world know what an upstanding pig you are, courtesy of Miss Taylor. How am I doing?”
“Like the proverbial blind man describing the elephant.”
The room began to spin. Harper tried to focus his eyes. “Sorry?”
“The blind man and the elephant, missing the point and all. Though for a moment I thought you were coming around. Making the connection between the oil you found in Miss Taylor’s flat and the formula delivered to your office at the IOC and all.”
Harper felt the floor giving way under his feet. “Formula?”
“Yes. You see, it’s actually a breeding potion, as ancient as evil itself, used by those who already rule this world. Their mating rituals are as painful as they are cruel. The potion induces selected females into imagining they are experiencing intense pleasure. I’m sure you understand what all this means for Miss Taylor.”
“You’re…you’re out of your bloody mind…I’m getting her out of this cesspit you call a country.”
“You? Oh, do be serious, Mr. Harper. You’re nothing but a drunkard who can’t even remember his London telephone number.”
The room spinning faster. Harper dropped the cigarette in the ashtray, grabbed the bedpost. “Fuck…”
“Are you feeling unwell, Mr. Harper? You seem to be drifting. Perhaps you should take another sip of tea.”
Harper looked down at his cup. Special house blend, you know…He looked up into the inspector’s smiling face. Like the bloody Cheshire Cat.
“You drugged me.”
“Just a little potion of ours to enhance the cumulative effect of the cigarettes.”
Harper saw the cigarette in the ashtray, still burning. He raised his blurring eyes to the inspector. “The fags.”
“Yes, hand-rolled in a little shop in Paris, just behind the Ritz.”
Harper dropped his cup, stumbled across the room. “Bastard.”
Mutt and Jeff jumped and pinned Harper to the wall. He saw the inspector almost floating toward him, his voice coming from the way beyond.
“I want you to listen to me very carefully, Mr. Harper. This is what we call an intervention. You need to wake up and remember what you are and why you’re here.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Me? I’m Inspector Jacques Gobet of the Swiss police. The question is: Who are you?”
Feeling himself slip from his body, trying to hold on. Seeing himself coming to in a shabby London flat. Brit passport with a photo and name inside.
“Harper, my name’s Jay Michael Harper.”
“And where was Jay Michael Harper born?”
“London…I was born in London.”
“And what was your father’s name, your mother’s name?”
“My mother, my mother was…her name was…”
“Where did you attend school, your hobbies, the name of your first sweetheart, perhaps?” The inspector moved close to Harper’s face. “When was the last time you slept?”
“I don’t remember.”
“No, you don’t remember. Curious, isn’t it? You know everything there is to know about this world. You speak its languages and quote its poets with no remembrance of where you learned such things. In fact, you don’t remember a single day of life before a telephone rang in a London flat with a call from Guardian Services Limited.”
Consciousness sinking. “I’m Harper, my name’s…”
The inspector slapped Harper’s face hard. “Stay with me, Mr. Harper. You are not a creature of free will, you are one of our kind, and you’ll tell me what I want to know.”
“I won’t let you slaughter her. I won’t let you slaughter him.”
“You cannot save the living from the time of their death, Mr. Harper.”
“Watch me, you fucking pig.”
The inspector slammed Harper into the wall. “I didn’t bring you to Lausanne to be a savior of men, Mr. Harper, I brought you here to kill.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The war, eternal and forever. We’re losing badly and running out of time. We need you to wake up.”
“Go to hell!”
The inspector rammed his iron fist into Harper’s guts. Harper crumpled over. The inspector stepped back and adjusted his silk scarf.
“There is no heaven, Mr. Harper, there is no hell, there is only this place. And these are the days of slaughter and destruction. Wake up!”
Mutt and Jeff tossed Harper to the bed. Numbness spreading through his limbs. He rolled onto his back. The inspector hovered over him.
“What the fuck have you done to me?”
“I do hope you enjoyed your evening, Mr. Harper. It’s about to come at you in spades.”
Harper could barely speak. “No.”
The drugs dragging him into a paralytic stupor. Watching the inspector float out of the room. Seeing Mutt tear a page from his notepad, hand it to Jeff. Jeff laying it on the desk, and then the two of them drifting out of the door.
“Bloody insane…”
Searing light from the hall, burning his eyes.
Officer Jannsen appearing in the doorway and eclipsing the light.
“All of you…insane.”
Smiling at him, pulling the door closed.
Rest of the night, unable to move, unable to speak. Hands clawing at bedsheets.
The night rolling through his mind again and again, as if he were trapped in a ripple in time till the sun rose over the Alps and set afire the ice-covered peaks above Évian. The fierce light reflected back across the lake straight into Harper’s eyes. He shook his head clear, saw the bottle of red on the table.
“Hell with it. Can’t beat ’em, get pissed.”
He poured a glass and looked out of the window. He watched the sun on Les Big Rocks across the lake.
Crack.
The crystal glass in pieces on the floor and the red liquid flowing through glass shards slow as molasses, bleeding into the carpet. Not remembering the glass falling, hand and fingers still formed in the crescent that held it, then seeing it again. Taking a sip of wine, watching the glass fall, watching it shatter, knowing where each piece of glass would lie before it touched the ground. Watching the wine seep deep into the carpet and taking the shape he had already seen. Then looking out of the windows and seeing the same sun crawling across the same bloody ice-covered rocks.
…days of slaughter and destruction…days of slaughter and destruction…
His eyes shot to the desk. Note from Mutt and Jeff, left atop the computer keyboard. He picked it up, focused his clearing eyes: Book of Enoch, chapter fifteen, verse nine. Harper scoured the scraps of paper on the desk, stopped cold finding one: The spirits of the giants shall be like clouds which shall oppress, corrupt, fall, and bruise upon the earth…and they come forth during the days of slaughter and destruction.
“Christ, come to Lausanne, lose what’s left of your mind.”