Paris Noir: Capital Crime Fiction (16 page)

’I fear they have become at least a potential blood-offering to whatever demon of Chaos Johannes Klosterheim obeys,’ replied Begg in chastened tones. ‘I believe I have made the greatest mistake of my life. Can it possibly be reversed, cousin?’

Still the elegant
boulevardier
, Zenith paused and selected one of his opium cigarettes from his slender, silver case. He lit it with an equally elegant silver Dunhill. ‘I must be truthful with you. Sir Seaton. I am not sure. Theoretically, if Chaos or Law achieves total ascendancy, then Time stops. Like those fellows down there, we shall be frozen forever at the moment before our deaths. Scarcely a palatable fate.’

’Indeed.’ Begg looked about him and then down again at the great balance below. ‘What is this gem they said you’d steal?’

’It is already stolen.’ Zenith smiled almost to himself ‘That is what brought me here. I possessed it before the ship ever left Jerusalem. Their perception of time remains, as ever, very crude. The gem emits both light and vibrations and acts as a kind of compass. Madame Persson understood this. It was what we discussed before the situation grew less controllable. My object remains the Da Vinci in the Louvre, which I expected to possess by now. They have absolutely no right to it, you know. I had not reckoned, however, on Herr Klosterheim’s involvement. The rules of this game seem significantly changed. I had underestimated its nature. Madame Persson suggested..

‘I regret that I misled you a little, old friend.’ Mrs Persson still stood close to the expressionless Klosterheim. ‘Self-interest demands a fresh strategy. A new reality.’

‘The Nazis continue to be useful,’ said Klosterheim. ‘Whether their souls go to Chaos or their bodies serve my cause, it matters not. Like all women, Mrs Persson understands where her loyalties are best placed.’

‘Great heavens, man! Does life have no value to you?’ Taffy Sinclair broke away from his fellow investigators and strode towards the cadaverous creature. ‘How on earth can you allow such infamy?’

Klosterheim’s dreadful laughter whispered into the void. ‘You speak to one who has defied both God and Lucifer and now stands ready to control the nature of reality itself. I am not the first to try. But I shall be the first to succeed.’

‘Such confidence is reassuring in these uncertain times.’ Zenith seemed almost amused. ‘I envy you, Herr Klosterheim. When do you expect my lord Arioch?’

’He will come imminently. He promised.’ Klosterheim turned those hollow eyes on the albino. ’He shares my impatience and my ambition.’

’Some would say he is already with us.’ Monsieur Zenith motioned with his sword stick. Klosterheim’s eyes followed it, as if he thought Zenith pointed out the powerful Chaos Lord. He saw nothing but the Balance below and four bodies suspended above one of the cups, an instant from being absorbed into the cause of Entropy.

Behind Begg. Commissaire Lapointe was forcing Hitler to his feet and handcuffing him. ‘It is my duty, gentlemen, to get this fellow back to the authorities in Berlin. As to the rest of the matter, I fear it is far beyond my competence. So if you will permit me…’ He began to push the whimpering insurgent colonel ahead of him, followed by his wounded assistant, whose expression was one of regret and embarrassment. ‘Duty demands,’ murmured Bardot.

‘Of course,’ agreed Begg. ‘I have no objection. Were the situation a little less complicated, I would be with you. Can you find your own way back?’

‘I hope so. With good fortune, we will meet again to in Paris very shortly.’

‘You may count on it, Commissaire.’ Monsieur Zenith bowed and again raised his hat. ‘I will take the most conscientious care of your colleague.’

Herr Klosterheim however would have none of this. ‘I cannot permit any of you to leave. Not now. Your souls are the price of my success.’ When Bardot’s pistol was again turned to aim at his chest he let out a laugh that was almost humorous. ‘Oh, fire away, my dear policeman. Have you any idea how many times I have been killed by the likes of you? Your lives are mine, just as those others belong to me. They are already promised to my patron…’

‘My dear Klosterheim,’ drawled Zenith, ‘are you truly so ignorant of the change in your situation that you believe you can threaten these good officers and stop them performing their duty? I believe the clinical term for your condition is ‘denial’. You no longer possess any power to speak of.’ And, smiling, he pressed a silver stud in his ebony cane and swiftly withdrew the slender blade.

Sinclair had expected to see polished silver steel. He gasped as instead he saw that the sword in Zenith’s hand was actually darker than the ebony which had contained it and along its slim, vibrating length writhed bloody scarlet characters, the runes of some long-forgotten lexicon. He turned, questioning Begg, and to his astonishment he saw his colleague laughing, the Webley held so loosely in his hand it threatened to fall into the void.

‘Aha!’ exclaimed Begg, almost in delight. ‘Here is your sought-for demonic aid, my dear Klosterheim! What a jest! What a jest!’ And he stepped back as his cousin advanced, the thrumming blade, which seemed to cry with its own voice, held before him, advancing on Klosterheim who looked from Mrs Persson to Zenith, to the sword, and was bewildered at last.

’Mrs Persson, you assured me…’

’I told you that the black broadsword you call Stormbringer was no longer in Monsieur Zenith’s possession. I said nothing of any other blade, bearing similar characteristics, which he finds convenient to carry in a more modern form under a different name.’ The English adventuress was grinning like a lioness who had just made a kill. ’You must know, Herr Klosterheim, that just as the wielder of the sword takes many guises, so does the sword itself. And even that creature which inhabits the sword has more than one identity!’

Now she stepped aside as Klosterheim began to back away from the advancing albino. ‘I shall not be threatened, Monsieur! Arioch! Lord Arioch of the Seven Darks! Aid me, I beg thee. Arioch, thou promised me…’

’Lord Arioch’s promises are of a practical and volatile nature, also,’ declared Zenith, the slender sword still pointed at Klosterheim’s throat. ‘It surprises me that you did not consider this when laying out your equation for this particular adventure. There are only a few for whose blood and souls he has no appetite at all.’

’But you forget, monsieur. That blade and your master feed on souls as well as blood.’ Klosterheim’s smile was bitterly sardonic. ‘
Nein?
’ With a quavering laugh, somehow even more disgusting than any previous expression he had given, he folded his arms and challenged Zenith to stab him.

If anything, the albino’s smile chilled the onlookers’ blood more than the other eternal’s laughter. Without hesitation, Monsieur Zenith stepped forward in an elegant fencer’s movement and his delicate black blade took Klosterheim in the throat.

For a second the ex-priest continued to laugh and then his eyes widened. He clutched at himself, at the shivering blade. He gasped. He groaned. He staggered backwards towards the very edge of the moonbeam road and hung there, swaying, as blood bubbled from the wound Zenith had made. ’
Nein!’
he said again, this time without any form of irony, only with the most appalling fear. ‘
Nein!’

He realised suddenly where he stood and made an attempt to regain his balance, but it was too late. His deep-set eyes burned with terror, lighting that cadaverous head with an unholy fire. Begg and the others could not tell what emotion they witnessed, but they would agree that it was emotion.

‘How can this be?’ Klosterheim spoke in the old High German of his youth. ‘How-?’

‘You forgot, Herr Klosterheim.’ With a lithe, sudden movement Zenith resheathed the black blade. ‘My sword is capable of conferring souls as well as stealing them.’ He stepped forward again and his hand was light on Klosterheim’s chest as he tipped him, gently, off into the void above the pulsing Balance. ‘And only a creature with a human soul, no matter how corrupt, can enjoy that moment of forever, poised between eternity and oblivion, which comes with the end of everything. Meanwhile, I send you to consider that thought for as long as you shall last. Which, of course, shall be until the end of Time.’

And then Klosterheim was falling backwards screaming, to join those others who hung in the void, like flies in a web, conscious and frozen in the instant before their deaths.

Monsieur Zenith turned with a bow. Reaching out, he kissed Mrs Persson’s hand. ‘Well played, madam. Our plan was almost foiled by these good-hearted fellows.’ He inclined his head towards Begg and Sinclair.

‘You two had planned all this?’ Sinclair found himself torn between rage and relief. ‘All of it?’

‘Most of it,’ declared Mrs Persson, advancing towards the famous pathologist. ‘Really, Doctor Sinclair, we had no intention of deceiving you or your colleagues. Neither did I expect to be detained by them, so very likely you saved my life by arriving when you did. From then on I thought it the best strategy to pretend to ally myself with Klosterheim, at least until Monsieur Zenith made his somewhat belated appearance. We really did not know you would have either the powers of deduction or the sheer courage to reach this place. Then, when you did turn up, I for one was rather baffled. It seemed that everything Monsieur Zenith and myself had worked out was threatened.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Happily, as you see-’

‘Klosterheim, for all his evil, did not deserve such a fate,’ declared Begg gravely. ‘And neither did those others.’

‘Oh, I assure you, dear cousin, they do indeed deserve everything.’ Zenith looked down into the void to where the great Balance still swayed. ‘And this affair is probably not yet over, though your part is certainly done.’ Then, with a casual movement of his wrist, he threw his swordstick after the man on whom he had just conferred life and a kind of death at the same moment, and turned to guide the two men back in the direction from which they had come. ‘Quickly. The thing that is my sword is not so easily defeated in its ambitions.’

Begg hesitated, demurring, and Zenith’s face became a mask of urgency. ‘Hurry, man! Hurry! If you value your soul!’

From somewhere below there now sounded a voice more terrifying than anything they had yet heard and, blossoming upwards, they saw a huge, bloody black cloud rising, rising like a wave which, instinctively, Begg knew must soon engulf them. The noise grew until it deafened them, causing bile to rise in their throats, and at last Begg obeyed his cousin. Grabbing Dr Sinclair’s arm, he turned and ran, Mrs Persson and Zenith the Albino immediately behind him.

The moonbeam road quivered and trembled beneath their feet, as if they experienced a powerful earthquake. Still they ran, knowing that not only their lives but their eternal souls must be the price of any further hesitation…

… Until suddenly a deep calm settled over them and a silvery whiteness had sprung up, forming a kind of wall, and they were once again in the catacombs they had left behind for what seemed millennia.

Monsieur Zenith straightened his silk hat on his head. ‘I shall miss that cane,’ he said. ‘But I know the exact place I can buy another in the Galerie du Baromètre. Come, Mrs Persson, gentlemen. Shall we return to the Arcades de l’Opéra? I think we have a rather extraordinary adventure to celebrate.’

His shoulder thoroughly bandaged, Bardot was the last to join the four men and one woman who shared an outside table at L’Albertine the following day. He was received with a great sense of celebration as the hero of the hour. ‘Without you, my dear Bardot, we should perhaps even now be enjoying the fate of our Nazi antagonists. As it is, the arrest of Colonel Hitler took the wind out of the Freikorps insurgents, who were indeed massing to enter the tunnel to take them directly into Paris. The
Hindenburg
made a successful mooring at the Eiffel Tower and spent a tranquil night there. The Star of Judea was returned. Even now negotiations to found a new Jewish homeland in Bavaria are proceeding and it is fully expected the exodus to Southern Germany will begin some time towards the end of next year!’ Seaton Begg clapped his French colleague on his good shoulder and ordered him an Armagnac.

The autumn sun was rising high in a golden sky and the great fountain in the centre of the arcade was falling in dark blue and green sheets against the verdigris, marble and tile of the statuary. There was a tranquil, leisurely quality to the day which Begg agreed he had not experienced for some time. It was as if the atmosphere were created by the capture of Hitler and his men.

‘Illusion though it might be, my friends,’ murmured Commissaire Lapointe, ‘it seems to me as if our world is about to embark upon a new era of peace and prosperity. Call me superstitious, if you will, but I believe in our defeat of the Nazi gang and their subsequent fate, we achieved something. Do you follow my meaning, Sir Seaton?’

Begg permitted himself a small smile. ‘We can hope you are right, my dear commissioner. But you are of another opinion, I think, Taffy.’

Dr Sinclair did his best to make light of his own thoughts. ‘It was that Balance,’ he said. ‘Something was going on down there which terrified me. And the manner of Klosterheim’s death – well, I still have difficulty sleeping when I think about it.’ He glanced almost shyly at Monsieur Zenith, who leaned back, taking a long puff on his Afghan cigarette.

‘I am sorry you were forced to witness that, Dr Sinclair. If I had had any other choice, of course I would not have done what I had to do. But Klosterheim was the force behind Hitler and his men. He has lived for a very long time. Some will tell you he counselled Martin Luther. Others say he was the angel who stood with Duke Arioch at Lucifer’s right hand during the great war in Heaven. He had no soul. That is what gave him such confidence. Having no soul, he was almost impossible to destroy. By conferring a soul upon him, I could kill him. Or, at least, I hope I killed him…’

‘But I think what is concerning my old friend Sinclair,’ interrupted Bardot, ‘is a very important question.’