Valentin emerged from the shadows at the corner of the building. He was so fast that Laurent didn’t see him coming. Before he even knew what was happening, he felt himself being raised off the ground and a moment later he was pushed against the wall with an arm pressing against his throat and the man’s breath, stinking of garlic and gum disease, in his face.
‘Well, Laurent? Why don’t you remember your friends when you’ve got a little cash?’
‘What do you mean? You know . . . that I . . .’
A thrust against his neck interrupted his protests and he gasped.
‘Stop bullshitting, you wanker. You laid down a whole bunch of dough last night in Menton. You forgot that the money you were playing with belongs to Maurice, didn’t you?’
Valentin Rohmer was Maurice’s bully, his troublemaker, his tax collector. Fat and flabby as he was, Maurice could not pin people’s arms behind their backs until they cried. Or push them against a wall until they felt the rough plaster rip their skin. But Valentin could, the bastard. And that other bastard who had cashed his cheque last night in the bar in front of the casino – he was the one who had ratted on him. Laurent hoped that piece of shit would get the Valentin treatment one day.
‘I . . .’
‘Shut the fuck up. There are a few things about me and Maurice you just don’t get. Like how he loses patience and so do I. It’s about time I refresh your memory.’
The punch in his stomach left him breathless. He retched, bringing the acid taste of vomit up to his dry mouth. His legs buckled. Valentin held him up effortlessly, grabbing him by the shirt collar with an iron grip. He saw the thug’s right fist and realized that his face was the target and that the blow would be so powerful that his head would smash into the wall behind him. He closed his eyes and stiffened, waiting for the fist to strike.
It never did.
He opened his eyes again as he felt the grip on his neck relax. A tall, strong man with light brown hair in a crew cut had come up behind Valentin and grabbed him by his sideburns, pulling violently upwards.
The pain and surprise made Valentin release his grasp.
‘What the hell . . .’
The man let go of Valentin’s hair and the thug stepped back to face the newcomer. He looked him up and down. He was all muscle and there was absolutely no sign of fear on his face. He was much less reassuring than Laurent’s harmless, sickly figure. Especially the eyes that were watching him without expression, as if he were simply asking directions.
‘Great. I see help has arrived,’ said Valentin in a voice that sounded less secure than he would have liked.
He tried to use the fist intended for Laurent on the man standing in front of him. The reaction came in a flash. His adversary dodged the punch with a duck of his head and then he stepped forward and wedged his shoulder under Valentin’s. After clutching it with his arms, he pressed down with all his weight.
Laurent could clearly hear the sound of bones breaking with a crack loud enough to make him jump. Valentin screamed and bent down, holding his broken arm. The man stepped back and spun around gracefully, a pirouette to give force to the blow. His foot crashed on Valentin’s face, and blood spurted from his mouth. Valentin fell to the ground without a whimper and lay there motionless.
Laurent wondered if he was dead. No, his unknown rescuer seemed much too skilled to kill by accident. He was the type who killed only when he wanted to. Laurent started coughing, bending over to hold his stomach as acidic saliva trickled from his mouth.
‘Looks like I got here just in time, Mr Bedon, no?’ said the man who had saved him, in very bad French with a strong foreign accent. He helped him up, holding his elbow.
Laurent looked at him, thunderstruck, without understanding. He had never seen him before in his life. But the guy had saved him from Valentin’s fists and knew his name. Who the hell was he?
‘Do you speak English?’
Laurent nodded. The man gave a brief sigh of relief. He continued in English with an American accent.
‘Thank God. I’m not very good at your language, as you’ve just heard. You’re probably wondering why I helped you with this –’ he waved at Valentin’s body on the ground – ‘this . . . I’d call it. . . embarrassing situation, if you agree.’
Laurent nodded again in silence.
‘Mr Bedon, either you don’t read your e-mails, or you don’t trust rich uncles. I have a proposal for you.’
Laurent’s astonishment was written all over his face. Now he had an explanation for that strange e-mail. He would surely be getting others. This man hadn’t knocked Valentin out and saved his hide simply to carve a Z like Zorro on the wall and disappear.
‘My name’s Ryan Mosse and I’m American. I have a proposal for you. Very, very advantageous, economically speaking.’
Laurent looked at him for an instant without speaking. He liked the sound of that. Suddenly his stomach stopped hurting. He got up, breathing deeply. He could feel the colour slowly returning to his face.
The man looked around. If he was disgusted by the filth of this neighbourhood, he didn’t show it. He was looking carefully at the building.
‘My apartment’s over there,’ said Laurent, ‘but I don’t think you came to buy it.’
‘No, but if we come to an understanding, you would be able to, if you’re interested.’
As he straightened his clothing, Laurent’s brain raced ahead. He had absolutely no idea who this guy was and what he wanted . . . what was his name? Oh, yes, Ryan Mosse. But Mosse presumably would now tell him. And he would also name a figure.
A very large figure, apparently.
Laurent looked at Valentin, motionless on the ground. The pig’s nose and mouth were split open and a small puddle of blood was forming on the pavement. At that particular moment in his life, no matter who it was that saved Laurent’s hide from someone like Valentin and then talked to him about money, lots of money, Laurent Bedon would listen.
SIXTH CARNIVAL
Alone, far from the world, the man listens to music.
The notes of the Minuet from Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 5 float through the air. Enclosed in his metal box, the man is absorbed in the dancing rhythm of the strings and imagines the musicians’ movements and their concentration as they perform the symphony. Now his imagination soars above like a sky cam floating through space and time. Suddenly, he is no longer in his secret place but in a large room with frescoed walls and ceilings, illuminated from above by hundreds of candles suspended from enormous chandeliers. He shifts his gaze to the right in a view so clear that it seems real. His hand presses that of a woman moving next to him in the sensuous rhythm of a dance made up of elegant swirls, pauses and bows, practised so many times that it is smooth as wine poured into a glass. The woman is unable to resist his fixed stare. From time to time, she turns her eyes, veiled by long lashes, to the audience, seeking confirmation of the incredible awareness that she is the chosen one. There is admiration and envy in all those in the drawing room who watch them dance.
He knows that she will be his that night. In the soft glimmering candlelight, amid the lace and ribbons of the enormous canopy bed, he sees her emerge from the tangle of silks that cover her like rose petals. The rights of the king.
But none of that matters now. They are dancing and they are beautiful. And they will be even lovelier when . . .
Are you there, Vibo?
The voice arrives, gentle as always, anxious as only that voice can be. His dream, the image that he created before his closed eyes, is lost, crumbling away like burning frames of film.
It was only a moment’s respite from his duty, his burden. There is no room for dreams; there never was and there never will be. They could have dreamt once, when they lived in the big house on the hill, when they managed to crawl away from the obsessive care of the man who already wanted them to be men, when they just wanted to be boys. When they wanted to run, not march. But even now there was a voice that could break any vision t
heir imaginations managed to create.
‘Yes, I’m here, Paso.’
What are you doing? I couldn’t hear you.
‘I was just thinking.’
The man lets the music continue. The last postscript of his thin mirage. There will never be a dance with a beautiful woman for him. For them. He gets up and goes into the other room, where the lifeless body lies in its crystal coffin.
He switches on the light. There is a reflection on the corner of the transparent case. It disappears when he moves and changes position. There is another, but it is always the same. Tiny insufficient mirages. He knows what he will find. Another broken illusion, another magic mirror shattered at his feet.
He goes up to the naked body inside and runs his eyes over the dried limbs, the colour of old parchment. His gaze moves slowly, from the feet to the head covered with what, not long ago, was the face of another man.
His heart aches.
Nothing lasts for ever. The mask is showing the first signs of decomposition. The hair is dry and dull. The skin is yellowed and shrinking. In a little while, in spite of his care, it will be no different from the skin of the face it is hiding. He looks at the body with infinite tenderness, eyes softened by the affection he cannot erase. He darkens and clenches his jaw in defiance.
It isn’t true that fate is unavoidable. It isn’t true that you can only watch as time and events occur. He can change; he must change that eternal injustice. He can fight against the mistakes distributed by fate with open hands in the snake pit that is the life of man.
Obscurity means darkness. Darkness means night. And night means that the hunt must continue.
The man smiles. Poor, stupid bloodhounds. Baying with bared teeth to hide their fear. Night-blind eyes searching in the dark to discover where the prey turned hunter will come from. When will he strike, and where?
He is someone and no one. He is the king. The king has no curiosity, only certainty. He leaves curiosity to others, to all those who ask, to all those who show it in their eyes, in their erratic gestures, in their apprehension, their anxiety that is sometimes so thick you can touch it, smell it.
Those two eternal questions. When and where? When will that last breath come, held in with the growl of an animal, kept inside with clenched teeth, because there will never be another? When, at what hour of the day or night, at what tick of an unwinding clock, will there be that last second and no other, leaving the rest of time to the world as it continues in other directions and along other routes? Where, in which bed, car seat, aeroplane lavatory, beach, armchair, hotel, will the heart feel that sharp pain, the interminable, curious, useless expectation of another beat, after an interval that becomes longer and longer, growing infinite? Sometimes death comes so quickly that the last flash is a final calmness, but not an answer, because in that blinding light there is no time to understand it, nor even, sometimes, to feel it.
The man knows with certainty what he has to do. He has already done it and he will do it again, as long as it is necessary. There are many masks out there, worn by people who do not deserve the appearance they give to the world. Nor any other.
What is it, Vibo? Why are you looking at me that way? Is there something wrong?
The man is reassuring. His mouth smiles, his eyes sparkle, his voice protects.
‘No, Paso, there’s nothing wrong. I was thinking how handsome you are. And soon you’ll be even more so.’
Oh, no. Really? Don’t tell me!
The man cloaks his intentions in secret tenderness.
‘Stop. You mustn’t speak of it. Secret of secrets. Remember?’
Oh, is it a secret of secrets? Then we can only speak of it at the full
The man smiles at the memory of their childhood game, in the few moments when that man was not there to spoil the only game that they were allowed to play.
‘That’s right, Paso. And the full moon is coming soon. Very soon . . .’
The man turns and goes towards the door. The music in the other room is over. Now there is a silence that feels like the natural continuation of the music.
Where are you going, Vibo?
‘I’ll be right back, Paso.’
He turns to look at the body lying in the crystal coffin. ‘First, I have to make a phone call . . .’
THIRTY
At Radio Monte Carlo they were sitting and waiting, like every night. The story had created such a fervour that there were three-times the usual number of people in the building at that hour.
Now, in addition, there was Sergeant Gottet and a couple of men who had installed a much more powerful and sophisticated computer system than that of the radio station, and had hooked it up to the Internet. There was a young guy with them, about twenty-five and intelligent-looking, short brown hair with blond streaks and a ring through his right nostril. He busied himself with a pile of floppy disks and CD-ROMs, his fingers flying over the keyboard. The kid’s name was Alain Toulouse but hackers knew him as Pico. When he was introduced to Frank, he smiled and his eyes sparkled.
‘FBI, huh?’ he said. ‘I got in once. Well, actually more than once. It used to be easier, but now they’ve wised up. Know if they’ve got any hackers working for them?’
Frank couldn’t answer the question, but the boy was no longer interested. He turned and sat back down at his station. He typed with lightning speed as he explained what he was doing.
‘First, I’m going to set up a firewall to protect the system. If someone tries to get in, I’ll know. Usually we try to stop attacks from the outside and that’s it. This time it’s different: we want to find out who’s attacking, without their knowledge. I’ve installed a program that I developed. It’ll let us hook on to the signal and follow it back. It might be a Trojan horse.’
‘Trojan horse?’ Frank asked.
‘It’s what we call a masked communication that travels covered by another one, like some viruses. So I’m also installing anti-virus protection. I only want the signal that we intercept, when we intercept it.’
He stopped to unwrap a sweet and stuck it in his mouth. Frank noticed that the kid had no doubt that he would intercept the call. He must have a pretty high opinion of himself. Then again, his attitude was typical of computer hackers. Their presumption and sarcasm led them to do things that might not actually be criminal but were simply aimed at showing their victims that they could avoid surveillance and get through any wall designed to keep them out. They saw themselves as modern-day Robin Hoods, armed with mouse and keyboard instead of bow and arrow.
‘As I was saying,’ Pico continued, chewing vigorously on the caramel stuck to his teeth, ‘I don’t want them to include a virus that gets out if they’re intercepted. Otherwise, we’d lose the signal and our chance to follow it, along with our computer, obviously. A really good virus can literally melt a hard drive. If this guy is really good, then any virus he lets out won’t smell like roses.’
Until then, Bikjalo had been sitting silently at a desk nearby. Now he asked a question. ‘Do you think any of your friends might play tricks on us while we’re doing this?’
Frank shot him a look but the station manager didn’t notice. Pico turned his chair around to look at Bikjalo directly, incredulous at his ignorance of the computer world.
‘We’re hackers, not hoodlums. Nobody would do anything like that. I’m here because this guy doesn’t just break in where he doesn’t belong and leave a smiley face behind as his signature. This guy kills – he’s a murderer. No hacker worthy of the name would do anything like that.’
‘Okay, okay. Get on with it,’ Frank said, putting a hand on his shoulder, a gesture of trust that was also an apology for Bikjalo. ‘I don’t think there’s anyone here who can teach you anything.’ Then he turned to Bikjalo who had now come to stand next to them. ‘There’s nothing left for us to do here. Let’s go and see if Jean-Loup is back yet.’
What he really wanted to do was tell Bikjalo to get the hell out of the way and let them work without breathing
down their necks. They had enough pressure without him. But a sense of diplomacy held Frank back. They were all working together at the station and he didn’t want to ruin anything. There was already too much tension in the air.
‘Okay.’
The station manager shot a last puzzled look at the computer and at Pico, who had already forgotten about him. Excited by this new challenge, his fingers were again flying over the keys.
Bikjalo and Frank left the computer station and went over to Raquel’s desk as Jean-Loup and Laurent came in at the door.
Frank scrutinized the deejay. Jean-Loup looked better than he had that morning, but there was an indelible shadow under his eyes. Frank knew that shadow. When this was all over, he would need a lot of sun, and a lot of light, to get rid of it.
‘Hey, guys. All set?’
Laurent answered for both of them.
‘Yeah, the outline’s ready. The hard part is thinking that the show has to go on, no matter what. Aside from those calls, we’ve still got our normal callers. How’re things here?’
The door opened again and Hulot came in. He seemed to have aged ten years since Frank had arrived in Monte Carlo.
‘Oh, here you are. Evening, everyone. Frank, can I talk to you for a sec?’
Jean-Loup, Laurent and Bikjalo moved over to let Frank and the inspector have some privacy.
‘What’s up?’
They walked to the other wall, next to the two glass panels covering the switchboard, the satellite connections and the ISDN links that were there in case there was a blackout and the repeater failed.
‘Everything’s ready. The Crisis Unit’s on call. There are ten men standing by at the police station. They can get anywhere in a flash. There are plainclothes men all over the streets. Nothing’s going on. People walking dogs, prams, things like that. The whole city’s covered. We can move people in seconds if we need to. If the victim is here, in Monte Carlo, I mean. If Mr No One has decided to get his victim somewhere else, we’ve alerted the police forces all along the coast. All we can do now is try to be sharper than our friend there. Otherwise, we’re in the hands of God.’