The Tenth Chamber (39 page)

It had been a tough job but he was confident his old demo men had done it properly, auguring into the cliffs in a half-dozen spots, stuffing picratol, lots of it, deep into the ground. A huge swathe of the cliffs would crumble into the river taking the cave with it.

The cave that had brought his village to life and threatened it with death would be dust. If Pelay did his job, Simard would be dust. He’d find Sara and she’d be dust.

He cranked the wooden handle and heard it ratcheting. When he couldn’t turn it anymore he would put his thick thumb on the knob that said
ZÜNDEN:
ignite.

He heard the footsteps first then, ‘Stop!’

Luc was ten metres away, creeping forward on the gravel. He saw Bonnet hunched over something, doing something.

Luc lifted the shotgun to his shoulder.

Bonnet looked up and grunted a simple, ‘Go to hell!’

Luc could hear the sound of ratcheting.

The ratcheting stopped and Bonnet moved his hand.

At that moment, Luc’s head completely filled Pelay’s sniper scope, perfectly contrasted against the grey horizon.

Pelay was in low brush, on one knee. His hands were steady for a man of his age. Luc’s head was in sharp focus.

Luc screamed at Bonnet, ‘Not my cave!’

Pelay heard the shout and through the scope saw Luc’s lips moving. The cross-hairs were planted on his temple.

The trigger was digging into his forefinger. He began to squeeze it.

Luc reeled when he heard the shot from behind.

He expected to feel some kind of searing pain but there was nothing.

He turned back to Bonnet. The old man was only five metres away now.

Bonnet looked into Luc’s shotgun. He shouted, ‘Pelay! Hurry!’ His thumb was on a knob.

Luc shouted. But it wasn’t a word. It was a primitive roar, a primeval death cry that came from somewhere inside of him.

The shell from his shotgun exploded and flashed the darkness.

There was a
thwacking
. Wood, stone, flesh. It was bird shot.

Luc slowly moved forward, straining to see what he had wrought.

Bonnet was lying on his side, bleeding from his face, his eyes still searching. His right thumb was on the ignition button. His left hand was moving. It was grasping the copper wire that had been sheared off the detonator by shotgun pellets.

Bonnet was going to touch the wire to the terminal.

It was a centimetre away
.

Luc didn’t have time to reload. He didn’t have time to smash Bonnet’s head or arm with the butt of the gun.

He was out of time.

Then, another shot rang out.

Luc was disorientated.

His shirt felt wet. He instinctively touched the fabric. Blood and bits of gelatinous material.

There were men surrounding him, pointing automatic weapons and roughly shouting at him to drop his gun.

Bonnet’s head was half gone. The detonator wire remained a centimetre from the terminal.

Luc let his hands go limp. The shotgun fell at his feet.

From the circle of men, one came forward. He was tall and erect, unarmed, dressed in dark civilian clothes, a black commando-style jumper with epaulets.

‘Professor Simard,’ he said, in an upper-crust type of accent. ‘I’ve been wondering when we’d meet.’

Luc gave him a once-over. He certainly wasn’t from the village. ‘Who are you?’

‘General André Gatinois.’

Luc looked quizzical. ‘Military?’

‘Of sorts,’ was the enigmatic reply. Gatinois came closer and inspected the mayor’s corpse. ‘Bonnet had a long run at the tables. It had to end sometime. Even for him.’

‘You killed him,’ Luc said.

‘Only after you failed.’ Gatinois observed the peppering Bonnet’s body had received. ‘Bird shot is not an efficient way to kill a man.’

‘It was all I had. He was going to blow up my cave.’

There was a commotion as two men in black dragged a moaning body inside the circle of protection their comrades had created.

It was Pelay, bleeding from a chest wound, gasping for breath. One of Pelay’s handlers gave his M1 carbine to a shorter man who had appeared at the General’s side. It was his aide, Marolles.

‘He had you in his sights,’ Gatinois said, adding matter-of-factly, ‘I saved your life.’

‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on?’ Luc demanded.

Gatinois paused to think. ‘Yes, I don’t see why not. Do you, Marolles?’

‘It’s entirely up to you, General.’

‘Yes, I suppose it is. Where’s the American?’

Marolles spoke into a walkie-talkie pinned to his vest and a static reply followed. ‘We’re bringing her in,’ he told Gatinois.

Pelay let out a pitiful, gurgling cry.

‘Are you going to get him a doctor?’ Luc asked.

‘The only doctor he’s going to see is himself,’ Gatinois replied dismissively. ‘He was valuable, but I never liked him. Did you, Marolles?’

‘Never.’

‘His last useful act for us was letting us know you were coming to Ruac tonight.’

The baker’s Peugeot pulled onto the gravel, driven by another of Gatinois’s men who helped Sara out of the car draped in her bloody sheet. She looked confused and wobbly but when she spotted Luc in the centre of the circle, she had the strength to slip the light grip of her guard and run to him.

‘Luc, what happened?’ she asked weakly. ‘Are you all right?’

He put his arm around her. ‘I’m okay. These men, I don’t know who they are. They’re not from the village.’

She saw Pelay who was curled into a fetal position on the ground, making low, horrible sounds. ‘Jesus,’ she said.

‘No, we’re not from Ruac,’ Gatinois said. ‘But Ruac has consumed us for many years. We are devoted to Ruac. We owe our existence to Ruac.’

‘What are you?’ Luc asked. ‘What do you do?’

‘We’re called Unit 70,’ Gatinois said.

Marolles looked down and shook his head. It was a gesture that caught Luc’s attention and alarmed him. This man, Gatinois, had apparently crossed some line. Some dangerous line.

‘You know, during the war, the Resistance leadership, as loose as it was, gave the Ruac maquis a code for the purpose of their communications. They called them Squad 70. They were a particularly ruthless and effective group. The Germans feared them. The other maquisard distrusted them. When our unit was set up in 1946, our founder, General Henri Giraud, one of de Gaulle’s inner circle, chose the name. Not very creative, but it stuck.’

‘I know about Ruac’s role in the Resistance,’ Luc said. ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you know quite a lot. We’re going to find out how much.’ He pointed to Pelay. ‘How much do you know about this man?’

‘Nothing,’ Luc said.

‘He’s an old bugger, this Pelay. Maybe two hundred and thirty, two hundred and forty years old. Even he isn’t sure exactly. He became a doctor in the 1930s. They sent him to Lyon for training. They needed one of their kind. They’d never allow an outsider to treat them, of course. But Pelay’s always been a drinker and a talker. During the war, he was Bonnet’s number two in Squad 70. Giraud invited him to Algiers for a sit-down. He got good and drunk one night and spilled the beans to de Gaulle and Giraud! Hundreds of years of secrecy, and this buffoon gets drunk and blows it. Their longevity, the tea, the reasons they’re so aggressive. Everything. So, after the war, de Gaulle remembers this, of course, and decides Ruac needs to be watched, to be studied by the best minds.’

Sara’s head seemed to be clearing. She stood straighter, her eyes were more focused. ‘And
that’s
what you do?’ she asked. There was a bite of anger to her tone.

Gatinois nodded. ‘Yes, for sixty-five years we’ve been studying the Ruac tea. It’s remarkable really, Professor Mallory, and a testament to modern science that in a very short time you were able to learn many of the features of the tea, things that took us decades because we had to wait for the science to catch up to our needs. So, for example, I believe Dr Prentice would have told you about the activity he found at these so-called longevity genes, the serotonin receptors, the other effects.’

‘And that’s why you killed Fred?’ she asked angrily.

‘Well, we didn’t really have a choice.’ He was casual about it, completely casual.

‘Christ!’ Luc exclaimed. ‘You blew up the lab in England! Over forty people were killed! This was a state-sponsored act of terror!’

Gatinois sighed. ‘I wouldn’t characterise it that way. We have a remit to protect France’s greatest secret. Our methods aren’t subject to review and clearance. Nothing is known higher up. Nothing is official. As long as we are absolutely discreet, all is well.’

Luc felt his fear mounting. This man was telling him too much. The implications were clear enough but still, his desire to know more pushed him on. ‘And you had Bonnet kill my people, and try to kill Sara and me in Cambridge.’

Gatinois laughed at that. ‘Did you hear that, Marolles! That’s a good one! No, Professor. Bonnet didn’t even know we existed. None of them did, except for Pelay here. Pelay was our man. Our informer. Giraud and de Gaulle turned him after the war, after they controlled the government. They gave him money. They gave him secret medals and all the status he never got under Bonnet’s thumb. They buttered him up good, and then they threatened him. They threatened to let Bonnet know he’d talked. He knew Bonnet would carve him up and feed him to the pigs. That was his greatest fear. We’ve used the same approach with the good doctor ever since. So Pelay’s been giving us information for sixty-five years. Every time one of the villagers saw him for a problem, we got a sample of their blood, their urine, their swabs, whatever. We got regular reports. That’s all. What Bonnet did – these murders – he did on his own.’

‘You let him!’ Sara screamed. ‘So you’re responsible too!’

Gatinois shrugged it off. ‘Maybe. In a legal sense, who knows? But this is never going to a court of law. What we do is very secret and very protected. It’s probably easier to get France’s nuclear launch codes! But, yes, we let Bonnet be Bonnet.’

Sara stiffened and leaped forward. Her slight body turned into a weapon, and letting loose a blood-curdling, ‘You fucking bastard!’ she closed the gap between herself and Gatinois, her sheet falling away, and naked she began clawing at his face, his eyes.

Gatinois was too caught off guard to defend himself well so Marolles pulled her off. Others subdued her while Marolles pointed his pistol at Luc and warned him to stay put.

Luc was stunned by Sara’s action, the way she was kicking and screaming at her subduers with wild abandon. ‘Don’t hurt her!’ he shouted.

Gatinois blotted a streak of blood on his cheek with a handkerchief. ‘You see, Professor. That’s a graphic example with one of the problems with the drug. It’s a delayed effect, maybe an hour or two after the high wears off. I’m told it’s the action on the 5-HT
_2A
receptors.’ He guffawed. ‘You know, this job has turned me into a scientist, what do you think, Marolles?’

His aide grunted and told the men to cuff her wrists and ankles, cover her back up and put her inside the car until she calmed down. She yelled and swore at them ferociously but they managed to remove her from their midst, all the while pointing rifles at Luc and threatening him not to intervene.

‘Good,’ Gatinois said. ‘Much quieter.’

‘You’ve gotten a drug out of the broth?’ Luc finally asked.

‘Not one. Three, actually. We’ve had them since the 1970s but, as I said, it’s taken until now to begin to understand the biological characteristics of the most important compound, R-422. These longevity genes, SIRT1 and FOXO3A were only recently discovered. There will undoubtedly be other important things scientists will come up with in the future. Eventually we’ll understand how 422 works. The other ones are easier, better-defined. The main ergot drug, R-27, makes you high as a kite. It’s quite the hallucinogen, really sends you on a trip. The drug R-220, that’s an interesting one. It works on potency and libido. In fact, we had a bit of a scandal on that one in the late 1980s. We had an outside contractor working on the compound, a university chemist who didn’t have a clue where it came from – that’s the way we like to work – and he apparently passed some information about the chemical structure to some guy he knew at the pharmaceutical company, Pfizer. That, apparently, was how Viagra was invented, so I think we’ve given back to society, wouldn’t you say? But our drug, R-220, though it’s even stronger than Viagra, has a nasty side-effect. It shortens and paralyses the sperm tails, makes the men infertile.’

Luc nodded knowingly.

‘And this you were aware of?’ Gatinois asked.

‘Yes, I knew. From the rapes.’

‘Ah. But from our perspective, R-422 is the real gem. That’s what all the fuss is about. That’s what Unit 70 is about. Imagine! The genuine fountain of youth! Live for two hundred years! Three hundred! In good health! And where are the heart attacks? Where are the cancers? What can this do for mankind, eh? Think about it.’

‘But,’ Luc said emphatically.

‘Yes, but,’ Gatinois agreed. ‘That’s the problem. That’s why there’s secrecy. The violence, the aggression, the impulsivity. These are not trivial effects. The drug can turn a man into a wild animal, a killer if the circumstances are right. And what about other longterm effects on personality, the mind? With Pelay’s help, the people of Ruac have been our guinea pigs for sixty-five years. There’s a mountain of data to sort out. The epidemiologists call it a longitudinal study. But most importantly, we’ve been working very hard to get the scientists to modify the drug, to change its structure to retain the longevity effects and eliminate the serotonin effect. So far, no luck. You lose the rage, you lose the longevity. It’s more complicated than that but anyway, it’s how a layman under-stands it. So you see?’