Angel City (28 page)

“Then how did you two meet?”

“When you did not emerge from the police cordon around the
Manon
, we assumed you had been arrested. Knowing you would never divulge your identity, I circulated an all-ports warning with the French Police for one Jay Harper, wanted on suspicion of felony burglary in Lausanne and suspected of hiding in Paris. If the APW wasn't answered, it would be logical to assume that you had gone to ground and were waiting for us to find you.”

“But if someone responded?”

The inspector nodded. “I would know you were being held by someone who not only knew who you were, but what you were. This was confirmed two days later when I was contacted by the judge. He was most forthcoming with your situation and offered guidance as to how we might accelerate the glacial process that is the French judicial system. Most helpfully, he provided us with the exact coordinates of where you were being held within the two-meter thick walls of La Santé Prison, making it possible for us to pull you out with just enough time left over for a cleanup crew to lay down the trail of rather mysterious escape. Well, you know how things are in police work; interesting cases are discussed, information is exchanged. In particular, the judge asked if I could offer assistance in checking out someone who had been spotted prowling around the tunnels and quarries under Paris, asking questions of cataphiles.”

“Him . . . the priest, Astruc.”

The inspector considered Harper's words.

“How did you know he was a priest?”

“He told me. No, I figured it out, after the cover you fed him blew up in my face.”

“Your cover?”

“You told him I was a priest, associated with—”

“The Vatican?” the judge said.

Harper stared at the two of them.

“That's right. You built me up as being the personal representative of the Pope to investigate the cavern and to protect Gilles Lambert from evil. Tall order, gents, especially when the target was a priest in the first place. He saw me coming from a mile off.”

The inspector shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“In fact, your cover was that you were a professor of ancient languages from Lausanne University, nothing more.”

“Sorry?”

The judge turned to one of the tramps.
“Le photo, s'il vous plaît.”

The tramp reached into his jacket, pulled out a three-by-five photo, handed it over. The judge lay it on the table. Harper looked at it. Group shot. Young men in two rows, standing in St. Peter's Square, all of them wearing black and white robes. A yellow circle had been drawn around one of the men in the back row.

“Who's this?” Harper said.

“Father Christophe Astruc, OP. On the day of his ordination at the age of twenty-four.”

Harper looked at the photo again. The highlighted priest was tall. He was also blond, freshly scrubbed, and skinny.

“When was this taken?”

“Thirty-seven years ago. Is this the man you met at Saint-Germain-des-Prés?”

Harper gave the photo one more scan.

“Maybe, maybe not. The man I met was muscular, his face looked like it'd been through a meat grinder. And he couldn't be more than midforties. If you've got your dates right, Father Astruc would be in his sixties.”

“Did you see a cross?”

“A cross?”

“Of any kind?”

Harper flashed through the night.

“No, but I wouldn't have expected to.”

“Why not?”

“Because the priest I met had a bloody machine gun. And he handled it like someone who had knowledge of weapons and tactics. And I watched him kill an innocent man.”

“But he told you his name was Astruc, and that he was a priest.”

“He admitted it when I called him on it.”

“Could he have been pretending to be a priest?” the judge said.

Harper flashed Astruc reciting the Our Father in French.

“No, he was telling me the truth.”

“And you know this because?”

“Because I heard it in the sound of his voice.”

“Pardon?”

“It's the way we do things, gov, like imagining our way through time.”

The judge pointed to the photograph.

“This is the only surviving picture of Christophe Astruc. We know he was an orphan, raised by the Catholic Church, and later ordained into the Dominican Order. He was considered brilliant, and something of a protégé in the field of apocalyptic studies.”

“End-times, you mean. Armageddon and the like.”

“
Non.
His work was closer to the true definition of the word
apocalypsis
.”

Harper ran the word: Greek, root words
apo
and
kalyptein
. Meaning: to uncover something that is hidden. Harper wondered if now would be a good time to mention the something hidden Father Astruc—or whoever the fuck he was—had uncovered in the cavern two hundred plus meters below Paris.
Not yet, boyo.

“And?”

“Given his specialty, Father Astruc was assigned a research position within the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican.”

“Hang on, Astruc told Lambert I did the same damn thing.”

“Are you familiar with this office, monsieur?” the judge said.

Harper scanned the History Channel. Landed on an episode called
Inside the Vatican
.

“Enough to know it's responsible for safeguarding the faith and morals of the Church and that it reports directly to the Pope. Had a rough go of it lately when it was discovered the same office responsible for Catholic morality was covering up the sexual abuse of children by priests. Has something of an even worse past, though. It was first known as the Office of the Holy Inquisition. Famous for burning witches and heretics at the stake in the sixteenth century, but its work actually began in the mid-thirteenth century with the extinction of the Cathars of southern France.”

The judge bowed his head a moment, his lips trembling. If Harper didn't know better he'd say the man was praying.

“Indeed, monsieur. It is one of the darkest passages in the history of the Catholic Church. More than five hundred thousand human beings were slaughtered in the most horrific and unimaginable ways, all in the name of Christ.”

Harper stared at him, seeing the mournful look in the gent's eyes. Words ran through Harper's brain:
Oh, ever thus, from childhood's hour.
He wondered where he'd heard the line. No idea.

“What was Astruc doing for the Church, the last you know?” he said.

“He had been asked to research those events in preparation of a Statement of Responsibility to be delivered during the millennium year by Pope John Paul II. It was the wish of the Pope to ask forgiveness for the millions of innocents who suffered and died at the hands of the Church. He was given complete access to the Vatican Library as well as the
Archivum Secretum Vaticanum
, the private archives of the popes. His research led him to the Archdiocese of Toulouse, the seat of the Inquisition. He made many trips there, from his days as a seminarian.”

Harper added it up.

“He was feeding me his own history. Why the hell would he do that?”

“Why, indeed,” Inspector Gobet said.

Harper stared at the inspector, waiting for an answer. It didn't come.

“So what happened to him?”

“He was defrocked by Pope John Paul II sixteen years ago.”

“Why?”

“Murder.”

Harper thought about it.

“That's some career change. Why the hell is he still on the streets?”

The judge picked up the story.

“When the Toulouse police went to arrest Father Astruc, he had already disappeared. Two and a half years later, a man described as very large with wounds on his face and calling himself Father Christophe Astruc arrived at an orphanage outside Toulouse. He demanded that a certain twelve-year-old boy be released to him, as if the boy were a prisoner. When the staff refused, the man pulled a pistol and proceeded to kidnap the boy. There were no security cameras to record the kidnapping, and the police assumed the discrepancy in descriptions of the kidnapper to be related to the stress of the moment. It was also noted by the staff that the boy did not resist being taken and acted as if he recognized the man. He was heard addressing the man as ‘Father.'”

Harper flashed the kid with Astruc.

“What did he look like, the one Astruc kidnapped?” Harper said.

There was a moment of silence.

“Why do you ask, Mr. Harper?”

“Because the Astruc I met at Saint-Germain-des-Prés had someone with him. Someone who'd match the timeline you laid out.”

More silence.

Harper looked at the judge. “You telling me your boys didn't see the kid with Astruc?”

The judge ignored the question.

“What was the name of the boy with Astruc?” the inspector said.

“Goose.”

“Describe him, Mr. Harper.”

“Not tall, just over five feet. Light build. Astruc said the kid was twenty-six, but he could pass for much younger. Suffers from a form of paedomorphia. His head's too small for his body and neck, and it's misshapen. Small ears pinned back to the side of his head. Presents himself as deaf, but he hears well enough. He communicates through sign language. He's got an IQ of over two hundred according to Astruc. I tend to believe it. He's fanatically devoted to Astruc.”

The inspector and the judge stared at him.

“I get something wrong, gents?” Harper said.

“The boy you have described is George Muret,” the judge said.

Harper gave it five.

“If we're talking about the same kid, Astruc called him ‘Goose.'”

The judge turned to the tramp standing behind him. The tramp handed over another photo, it ended up in front of Harper. Black-and-white shot of a small boy sitting on a man's lap. The man had cruel and bitter eyes; the misshapen boy on the man's lap was Goose at two or three years old. Like looking at an antique photograph of a ventriloquist holding a grotesque dummy.

“That's him. That's the kid,” Harper said.

“Are you absolutely sure, Mr. Harper?”

Harper looked at the inspector.

“Yes. I'm sure.”

“Did you get a read of his eyes?”

“No, there's a milky haze over his irises. I assumed it to be some sort of masking drug.”

“Anything else that impressed you?”

Harper flashed back to the kid in the doorway next to Les Deux Magots.

“He knows how to hide in shadows, as well as you or me. But looking the way he does, I'm not surprised.”

“Please explain your reasoning.”

“What's to explain? The kid was tormented as a freak his entire life. Probably ran for every shadow he could find to avoid being seen.”

“How do you know that?”

“Know what?”

“That he was tormented as a child.”

“The priest, Astruc, he told me. At Les Deux Magots, before we went down into the tunnels.”

Harper's explanation was greeted with silence. He looked at the photograph of Goose and the man again. Father and son, had to be. And in the father's cruel and bitter eyes, Harper saw one part undiluted hate, one part face-slapping truth. He looked up from the photograph, stared at the judge.

“This is Goose's father. He's the man Astruc killed, yeah?”

The judge nodded.

“What happened?”

The judge took a long puff from his pipe.

“George Muret was born in Toulouse. His mother died at birth. He appeared normal at first, but within the first three months it was obvious the boy was suffering, as you say, from a form of paedomorphosis. As he grew, his deformity became more pronounced and it was discovered he was deaf. Though in some unknown way, he displayed an ability to
feel
the meaning of words and sounds, as if hearing them. This ability was regarded as one more example of the boy's . . . strangeness.”

Harper thought about it. Forget an IQ of over two hundred; how about completely off the bloody chart?

“What else to you know?”

The boy's father, Monsieur Pierre Muret, was a drunkard and suspected of sexually abusing his son. After spotting repeated bruising on the boy's arms and legs, a local doctor reported the situation to the police. The police investigated and, upon seeing the boy, were quick to accept Monsieur Muret's explanation that his son was clumsy and an idiot. Attitudes being what they were in that day, the matter was dropped. The boy was rarely allowed outside and had no real social interaction, but by order of the local council, he was enrolled in a school for the deaf near Toulouse Cathedral. The school was run by Dominican nuns. Father Astruc served as chaplain there and said Mass every Friday afternoon. It was at the school that Father Astruc met the boy and took an interest in him. He found the boy to be extremely bright and began to tutor him privately. Within months, the boy was reading with adult comprehension. He also demonstrated proficiency in math and languages, mastering calculus, German, and English by the age of nine. By now, Monsieur Muret was suffering from alcohol-induced paranoia. Seeing such remarkable progress in his son, the man became unhinged. He was known to tell his neighbors that his boy was possessed by the devil, speaking in tongues. He withdrew him from the school. One night, while in a blind rage, Monsieur Muret attacked his son and pulled the boy's tongue from his mouth with a pair of pliers and cut it off with a carving knife. Monsieur Muret was found walking the streets with the boy's tongue in his hands, calling it the sign of the devil.”

Harper filled in the rest. “Astruc finds out about it, kills the father, disappears. Shows up six months later—or someone calling himself Astruc shows up—kidnaps the boy.”

The judge nodded.

Harper looked at Inspector Gobet.

“Interesting tale. But you still haven't explained how Astruc went from wholesome priest to the bruiser, whiskey-swilling fanatic I had the pleasure of meeting at bloody Saint-Germain-des-Prés.”