Roberts backed Frank up. ‘If the shelter was built and does in fact exist, it probably happened the way Frank says. There was a construction boom back then and an awful lot of rules were stretched.’
Frank went on telling them what he knew. ‘Rouget, the owner of the other house, told me that the entrance to the shelter is located in an empty room behind a wall covered with shelves.’
A commando raised his hand. He was one of the men who had assaulted the house when the bodies of the three policemen had been discovered, and he had searched it from top to bottom.
‘There’s some kind of laundry room in the basement to the right of the garage. It gets light from a window that looks out on the courtyard. I think there are some shelves on one of the walls.’
‘Good,’ said Frank. ‘I don’t think the problem is finding the shelter as much as opening it and forcing whoever’s inside to come out. Let me ask a crazy question. Does anyone here know anything about tackling bomb shelters? I mean, more than they show in the movies?’
There was a moment of silence and then Lieutenant Gavin, the crisis unit commander, raised his hand. ‘I know a little, though not that much.’
‘That’s a start. More than I know. Once we’re in, how do we get the guy out of there, if he’s inside?’ As he spoke, Frank mentally crossed his fingers in hope.
Roberts lit another cigarette and took a long draw. ‘He’s got to be able to breathe down there, right? If we find the air holes, we can get him out with tear gas.’
‘I don’t think that’s feasible.’ Gavin shook his head. ‘We can try, but if things are the way Frank said and the guy has done the maintenance, it won’t work. If he’s kept up with the latest technology, forget it. Modern bomb shelters have an air-purification system that uses filters with normal or activated carbon acting as absorbers. Activated carbons are used as filtering agents in gas masks and high-risk ventilation systems, like in nuclear power plants. They’re used in tanks and military planes too. They can resist hydrocyanic acid, chloropicrin, arsine and phosphine. So tear gas wouldn’t do anything.’
Frank looked at Lieutenant Gavin with greater respect. If this was something he knew only a little about, what would he say if he was an expert? Frank raised his arms. ‘Okay, we’re here to solve a problem. Sometimes you solve problems by making stupid suggestions. Here’s mine. Lieutenant, what’s the chance that we could open the door with explosives?’
‘Well . . . it’s possible,’ Gavin said, shrugging with the apologetic expression of someone forced to keep giving bad news. ‘I’m not an expert, mind you, but logically a shelter like that is built to resist an atomic bomb. You’d need to make a lot of noise to get it open. But, and here’s the good news, keep in mind that this shelter is more than thirty years old so it’s not as efficient as the ones they build now. If there’s no alternative, that might be the best idea.’
‘If we opt for explosives, how long would it take?’ This time, the lieutenant’s scowl led to a positive conclusion.
‘Not long. We’ve got an explosives expert, Brigadier Gachot. If he and his team get to work immediately, all we need is the time it takes to get some C4 or something like that over here.’
‘Call the unit and get Gachot on it. Explain the situation and tell him where we are. I want him here in fifteen minutes max.’
The commando raced off without so much as the ‘Yes, Sir’ that Frank would have expected from him. Frank looked at each of the men standing before him.
‘Any other ideas?’ He waited for an answer that didn’t come and then decided to take the bull by the horns. ‘Okay, here’s how it’s going to be. If our man is in there, he can’t escape. Once we locate him, we can hypothesize all we want. First, let’s find this damn shelter and then we’ll decide what to do. From here on in, we improvise. Let’s move.’
The shift from conjecture to action put the crisis unit on much more familiar ground. They removed the seals from the gates and rushed down the ramp leading to the garage. Within seconds they had occupied the house, using a plan that was part of their training. They were silent, fast and potentially lethal.
At first, Frank had considered their presence there a ridiculous and excessive precaution. But after ten deaths, he was forced to realize that they were an absolute necessity.
The soldier who had described the entrance to the bunker led the way through the courtyard. He raised the door and went into the empty garage. There was a mountain bike hanging on a rack on the right wall and in the corner, a ski rack for the roof of Jean-Loup’s car. Next to it was a pair of carving skis, their rackets tied together with bungee cords. There were no snide remarks about the owner’s interest in sports. They also knew that there was a well-equipped gym upstairs. In light of what had happened, they realized that all that physical activity had not just been for fun.
At the back of the garage, they went down a corridor that turned to the right. A door in front of them opened on to a small bathroom. They walked single file, led by a commando aiming an M-16 rifle ahead of him. Frank, Gavin and Morelli took out their pistols. Roberts was at the end of the line, moving with an easy stride, soft as a cat. He felt no need to take out his gun. He simply unbuttoned his jacket so that it would be ready if needed.
They reached the laundry room, probably the cleaning lady’s area. There was a washing machine, dryer, ironing board and iron. To the left, a huge white cupboard took up the entire wall. In the corner next to the doorway, a stairway led down from upstairs. Another commando was coming down just at that moment.
There was a wooden bookshelf against the wall opposite the doorway. ‘That must be it,’ whispered the agent, pointing with his rifle.
Frank nodded in silence and put away his gun. He went over to the bookcase and examined it from the right while Morelli did the same on the left. Gavin and his two men stood in front of them, their weapons aimed as if danger could emerge from behind it at any second. Even Roberts pulled out his Beretta, which looked huge and menacing in his thin hands.
Frank grabbed hold of one of the shelves and tried to push it to one side. Nothing happened. He ran his hands along the wood on the side and found nothing. He raised his head and looked at the top of the shelves a couple of feet above him. He glanced around and then pulled over a metal chair with a Formica seat. He climbed on to it to see the upper shelf. He immediately noticed that there wasn’t a speck of dust. Then, in the corner by the wall, in a groove in the wood, he could see a tiny metal lever that seemed to come from a hinge. The mechanism was well oiled and there was no trace of rust. It seemed to be in perfect working order.
‘Found it,’ said Frank. Morelli turned and saw him carefully examining something on the top shelf that he couldn’t see. ‘Claude, do you see any hinges from where you are?’
‘No, if there are any, they’re concealed inside.’
Frank looked down on the ground. There were no marks on the stone tiles. The door probably opened forwards. If it went sideways and the shelves moved, he would be knocked off the chair. He thought of Nicolas Hulot and all of No One’s other victims and decided that it was a small risk compared with what they had suffered. He turned to the men standing in front of the bookcase with their guns pointed.
‘Keep your eyes open. Here I go.’
The three men got into position, their legs spread apart and slightly bent, holding their guns with both hands pointed at the bookcase. Frank pushed the lever all the way. They heard a sharp click and the bookcase opened outward like a door, silently rotating on well-oiled hinges.
A heavy metal door, mounted in bare cement, appeared before their eyes. There were no visible hinges. The closure was so perfect that the separation between the door and the frame was almost undetectable. There was a wheel on the left to open the door, similar to those in submarine hatches. They stood in silence, spellbound by that dark metal wall. Each man tried in his own way to imagine what or who was behind it.
Frank stepped off the chair and went to the door. He
tried grabbing and pulling the wheel, which was also a handle, and met with the resistance he expected. Turning the wheel in one direction and the other, he realized it was pointless to keep trying.
‘Doesn’t budge. It must be locked from the inside.’
As they all finally lowered their weapons and came up to the door, Frank mused over their absurd situation and now visualized not one but two hands with fingers crossed. He stared at the metal as if trying to melt it with his eyes.
You’re in there, aren’t you? I know you are. You’re in there with your eyes glued to this armoured door wondering how we’ll get you out. What’s ridiculous is that we’re wondering the exact same thing. And the most ridiculous part is that we’ll have to do backward somersaults, and maybe some of us will lose our lives in order to drag you out of this prison and put you in another one just as impregnable.
Suddenly, Frank could see Jean-Loup’s face in his mind and he remembered the good impression the young man had made on him from the very beginning. He could see his traumatized face at the station, bent over the table sobbing after one of the phone calls. He could hear the echo of his weeping, and in his memory it sounded like the mocking of an evil spirit. He remembered the friendly way he had spoken to Jean-Loup in his garden, trying to convince him not to quit the radio show, little knowing that he was persuading him to continue his killing spree.
Through the closed door, he thought he could get a whiff of Jean-Loup’s cologne that he had smelled so many times when standing near him, a light fresh scent of lemon and bergamot. He thought that, perhaps, if he placed his ear to the metal, he might hear Jean-Loup’s natural voice, warm and deep. It would seep through the thickness of the metal and again whisper the words that were branded on their brains.
I kill . . .
Frank felt a terrible rage rise up inside him, fed by a sense of deep frustration for all the victims of that man, Jean-Loup, No One, or whoever he was. It was such a deep anger that he felt he could just grab hold of the metal door with his bare hands, crush it like aluminium foil, and seize the throat of the man standing behind it.
A series of thuds brought him back to the reality that his red mist had momentarily obscured. Lieutenant Gavin was hitting the metal door at various points, listening to the different echoes. Then he turned to them with the expression he used for unpleasant situations.
‘Gentlemen, I hope my colleague who is coming with the explosives will prove me wrong. I don’t like to be the bearer of bad news all the time, but first I’d try talking to the person inside, if he’s in there. We’ve got to convince him that he’s been discovered and that there’s no hope. I’m afraid that if he doesn’t decide to open up of his own accord, it’ll be fairly complicated to get him out. If we want to use explosives to get through these doors, we’d need enough to blow up a half a mountain.’
ELEVENTH CARNIVAL
The man is safe in his secret hiding place, in that metal and cement box that someone dug deep under the ground long ago in fear of something that never happened. Ever since he discovered its existence, almost by accident, ever since he went inside for the first time and realized what it was and what it was for, he has kept his refuge in perfect working condition. The storeroom is full of tinned food and mineral water. There is a simple but efficient waste recycling system that would allow him to filter and drink his own urine, if necessary. The air is purified by chemical filters and reactants, and there is no need for contact with the outside world. His food and water supply will last for more than a year.
He goes out only occasionally, in darkness, with the sole purpose of breathing the pure air and smelling the perfume of summer, only slightly contaminated by the odour of the night, his natural habitat. The heady scent of a lavender bush in the garden triggers memories of boyhood fears, recurring dreams of a dark staircase. His mind selects these associations, like a record silently chosen from the others and slipped into place by the mechanical arm of a jukebox.
He moves in total silence in that house where he does not need light to see. Sometimes he goes out on to the terrace and, leaning against the wall, hidden in the shadow of the house, he raises his head to observe the stars. He makes no attempt to read the future, and is simply happy to admire the luminous twinkling in that fragment of the present. He doesn’t ask what will happen to him, or to them. It is not thoughtlessness or indifference, only awareness.
He doesn’t blame himself for making a mistake; he was sure that he would make one sooner or later. It is the law of chance applied to the fleeting life of a human being, and someone had taught him long ago that you pay for your mistakes. He had been forced to learn it the hard way.
And he, that is, they, had paid for their mistakes. More harshly every time, with heavier punishments as they grew older and their margin of error became more and more restricted until finally they met with complete intolerance. The man was inflexible, but in his presumption he forgot that he too was only a man. And that mistake had cost him his life.
He survived and that man did not.
He returns to his hiding place after those brief ventures outside and he waits. The dark metal lining makes it seem like a nocturnal place, as though he lets the darkness in through the door every time he opens it. When the door is closed the night is perpetuated for a little longer, and his isolation is complete.
Yet he does not feel the heaviness of waiting or of solitude. He has music and the company of Paso. And that is enough.
Yes, Vibo and Paso.
He no longer remembers when they invented those two meaningless nicknames. There may have been a precise reference, but it was probably just the randomness of it that they liked. A flash of youthful fancy with no need for explanation. Like faith, it was either there or it wasn’t.
With closed eyes, he listens to Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’, a rare live recording. He sits in the office chair, slowly rocking back and forth, following the melody that evokes a slow, gruelling climb, step by step, towards the sky. The stairway exists, but heaven might not.
In the other room, the corpse is still lying in its crystal coffin as if in suspended animation, waiting to be reawakened at the end of the journey that will never come. Maybe he hears the music too, or maybe he misses its finer points, wrapped in the new face, the last one procured to satisfy his understandable vanity. This false image, like all the others, will soon decompose. Then he will have to do something about it, but for now there is still time, and Robert Plant’s voice is his only priority.
The track ends. He leans on the wooden surface and stretches out his hand to press STOP. He doesn’t want to hear the rest of the record. One song is enough. He will turn on the radio and listen to voices from the outside world.
In the sudden silence following the music, he thinks he hears a series of rhythmic blows, as though something from outside is hammering on the door, causing a faraway series of echoes. He gets up from the chair and goes over to the door. He puts his ear to it and feels the cold of the metal against his skin. The blows are repeated and then, right afterwards, he can hear a voice shouting. The words from outside are indistinct, as from a great distance, but he is well aware that they are meant for him. He cannot make them out, but he guesses their meaning. The voice is certainly telling him to open the door of his refuge and surrender, before . . .
He takes his ear from the door with a smile. He is well aware that they are serious. He knows that there is not much they can do to get him out, but he also knows that they will do whatever they can. What they don’t know is that they will never catch him. At least not alive. He will never give them that satisfaction.
He walks away from the door and goes into the room where the corpse in the transparent cabinet seems to have a new lifelike tension instead of its normal stillness. There appears to be a hint of anxiety on the expressionless mask covering its face. He thinks that the expression must once have belonged to the man who had the face before. Now it is nothing but an illusion. Every emotion disappe
ared for ever, at the moment of his last breath.
There is a long, pensive silence. The man is silent, too, waiting. Several minutes pass. All eternity stretches before the dead, for whom time has no meaning. For the living, however, several minutes can last a lifetime. The voice in his head returns and asks the question he is afraid to hear.
What will become of me, Vibo?
The man pictures the cemetery in Cassis, the large cypress tree, the row of graves of people who were never their family, only their nightmare. There are no pictures on the headstones, but the faces of those inside are painted on the walls of his memory.
‘I think you’ll go home. And so will I.’
Oh.
A muffled exclamation, a simple monosyllable. A call for freedom, sunlight, the motion of the waves in the sea where men dive and come up as children again. Tears fall freely from the man’s eyes, running down his face to drop on the crystal case where he is leaning. Wet, ordinary tears devoid of nobility.
The affection in his eyes is boundless. For the last time, he looks at his brother’s body wearing another man’s face and sees him as he was, as he should have been: identical to him, a mirror in which he can see the reflection of his own face.
He takes a few steps back from the coffin before he is able to turn his back on it. He returns to the other room and stands for a moment in front of the long row of machines and recording devices that create music.
There is only one thing he can do now. It is his only escape and the only way he can once again defeat the bloodhounds that are after him. He thinks he can hear their paws scratching frantically on the other side of the metal door. Yes, there is only one thing left to do and he has to do it quickly.
He takes out the Zeppelin CD and puts in another heavy-metal disc, chosen at random, without even looking at the name of the band. The man puts it in the player, presses START, and the tray moves silently into place.