Angel City (10 page)

Everyone nodded in agreement. Even the small white dog on the stool in the corner wagged its tail with a hearty “Hear, hear.”

“It is quite the crowd,” Harper said.

Monsieur Dufaux lowered his voice. “I've been meaning to ask you. I heard you were with him when he died.”

Harper scanned the man's eyes. Dufaux was ex–Swiss Guard, and his café was a live drop site for partisans in service to Harper's kind. Two of them, the Algerian street cleaners, were coming into the café, just now, for espresso. The older one, the one with the white scarf around his neck, signaled Harper that all was well in the Saint-François quarter. Yes, Monsieur Dufaux would hear things. Didn't mean Harper could add to them, even if he wanted to.

“Sorry, there's nothing I can tell you, Dufaux.”

Dufaux raised his glass.

“To absent friends, then?”

Harper tried to see the lad's face. He couldn't.

“Sure.”

They drank.

“Does the new one ever come into the café?” Harper asked.

“The girl, you mean.”

Took Harper a moment to recall it was a young woman calling the hour now. She was from Iceland. She played classical guitar next to Marie-Madeleine to keep the old girl company. That's what Harper had been told, anyway.

“That's right, the girl. Does she ever come to the café?”

“Not yet, but Monsieur Buhlmann says to expect her soon.”

“Buhlmann?”

“You know, old fellow from the cathedral.
Le guet
before Marc Rochat. Buhlmann says the girl is still living at the school.”

“Mon Repos?”

“
Oui.
But she's just turned eighteen and they're letting her roam about town. And get this, she's a vegetarian. Can you imagine it? A vegetarian in Switzerland? Like an Eskimo lost in the Sahara. Then again, we've never had a girl calling the hour before. Anyway, old man Buhlmann asked me to add a few plates of rabbit food to the menu to attract her attention. Give her a safe place to spend her evenings. I hear she's quite pretty, but very shy.”

Harper looked down into his glass.

“Wouldn't know. I've never seen her.”

“Up close, you mean.”

Harper felt something, as if something dark had passed through the room. He scanned the locals; nothing. He looked at Dufaux. The man was smiling.

“Sorry?” Harper asked.

Monsieur Dufaux nodded out the windows to Escaliers du Marché and the wooden steps leading up the hill to Lausanne Cathedral. He spoke softly.

“Your new flat is up those steps and just behind the cathedral on Rue Vuillermet. Top floor studio, little balcony with a view of the belfry. And you've been living there for the last nine months.”

Something moved in the corner of Harper's eye. Heavy curtain at the door billowing, someone coming in. He looked at Dufaux, the man's face still smiling. Ex–Swiss Guard or not, no bloody way the man should know that one. Harper reached for the killing knife under his sports coat.

“How do you know where I live, Dufaux?”

Monsieur Dufaux shrugged, emptied the carafe into their glasses.

“Because I own the building, monsieur. Which reminds me, when you ask the inspector about the tab, tell him to not forget the rent.
Bon
, back to my kitchen. I need more practice with my bulgur, lentil, and tofu casserole.
Le guet
's favorite dish, Buhlmann says.
Bonne soirée, monsieur.
”

“Right. Cheers for the glass.”

Harper watched Dufaux hurry around the tables and disappear into the kitchen. Harper looked toward the door, saw two regulars coming in. The professor from the university and his wife, both of them with books under their arms. For a moment, Harper couldn't find his breath. He released his grip on the killing knife. He looked down at his hand . . . trembling. He rolled his fingers into a fist and squeezed till the trembling stopped.

“Fuck sake. What the hell was that?”

He drank the last of his wine, put on his coat, and eased through the tables. The locals had come to accept Harper's presence in the café, especially after Monsieur Dufaux passed the word that the tall, quiet Englishman worked as a security consultant for the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne. Made Harper something of a celebrity in the café. Harper shuddered to think what the locals would've made of him running a killing knife across Monsieur Dufaux's throat for no apparent reason. No doubt Madame Budry would have fallen into paroxysms of disquiet.

He pushed through the curtains, pulled open the door, and stepped outside. He walked along Rue Mercerie and ducked in the first shadow he could find. He found a loose gold-tipped fag in his coat and fired up. It tasted bitter, but he drew on it anyway, waiting for relief. It was slow in coming.

Nine deep-throated bells sounded in the night.

He looked up the wooden steps of Escaliers du Marché. Saw the trees along Rue Viret, saw the floodlit belfry of Lausanne Cathedral. An illuminated, solitary pile of rock. He imagined the new one, the girl from Iceland, already standing on the east balcony, waiting for the last bell to fade, waiting to raise her lantern and call the words of comfort over Lausanne. If he waited long enough, he'd see her round the tower and come to the south balcony, and he'd hear her call the hour. Harper lowered his eyes, dropped his smoke on the ground, kicked it down a drain.

“Cras credemus, hodie nihil.”

He walked across Place de la Palud toward the Saint-François quarter for a bit of look-but-never-touch at GG's nightclub. The barkeep always poured a healthy splash and the scenery was good, especially the midnight show. And in one darkened corner there was a table with a good view of anyone, or anything, coming through the door.

Just ahead, around the corner at Rue Madeleine, Harper saw something flutter in the light. His eyes registered a spike in black body radiation. He opened his coat, pulled his SIG Sauer. The closer he got to the corner, the more the spikes modulated heavily in the six-hundred-nanometer range. He raised his SIG, pulled the slide, loaded a round into the firing chamber. Whatever was waiting for him was bloody big.

“Here, kitty, kitty.”

He lunged around the corner, smack into the death end of a gun. Make that two guns. One for each of his eyeballs.

“Good evening, Mr. Harper.”

“Did we startle you?”

Harper tilted his head and looked beyond the barrels. Two bulldozer-sized men at the trigger ends.
No doubt about it,
Harper thought;
the light mechanic's Arc 9 filters need work.

“Well, well. Mutt and Jeff. Long time no see. What brings you boys to town, besides trouble?”

“Inspector Gobet requests that you join him presently.”

“Would you come with us, please?”

Mutt and Jeff hadn't lost their talent for speaking in double-tap.

“Where?” Harper said.

“He's waiting for you outside the protected zone.”

“His motorcar is just around the corner.”

Harper made his SIG safe, holstered it.

“Sorry, lads, I'm on mandated medical leave. In fact, I was just on my way to GG's to fill a prescription. So if you'll excuse me.”

Harper took a step. Mutt and Jeff's guns followed his head.

“Am I missing something?” Harper said.

“Just a precaution. We were told you're not quite yourself these days.”

“Now get the fucking lead out and get in the fucking motorcar,
s'il vous plaît
.”

The Merc was parked on Place de la Riponne. Jeff opened the rear door for Harper, then took the front passenger seat. Mutt climbed in behind the wheel, gave Harper the brief.

“We'll be leaving the protected zone at Pont Bessières and join real time.”

“How far back are we?” Harper asked.

“Standard five-minute lag.”

“Time to destination?”

“Twenty-one minutes.”

Harper thought about it.

“And what is our bloody destination?”

“You'll find out when you get there,” Mutt said, turning over the engine.

“Of course I will.”

Jeff reached down and lifted a Brügger & Thomet machine gun. It was fitted with red dot sight and sound suppression. He looked back over his seat.

“Fasten your seat belt, Mr. Harper.”

“Sorry?”

“All passengers, including those in the rear seat, must wear seat belts. It's the law in Switzerland.”

Harper pulled the shoulder strap and locked himself in.

“Of course. Wouldn't want to break the seat belt law as we blast our way through the streets, would we?”

The Merc headed to the traffic circle at Avenue de l'Université, rounded onto Rue Viret, and passed under Lausanne Cathedral. Mutt pressed one of the control buttons mounted in the steering wheel. Jeff's side of the windshield became a heads-up display of Lausanne in 3-D. A shimmering blue dome marked the protected zone around the old city and the cathedral. Jeff touched the windshield at Pont Bessières, and a series of blips and beeps sounded as the image spun around to display a POV shot of the bridge. A red line plotted a point at the far end. A woman's voice filled the car:

“You are attempting to exit the protected zone on a heading of one hundred and sixty-three degrees. Please render your access code.”

“Baker-six-Sierra-Golf-Zulu-five,” Jeff said.

“Access code accepted. Please select time differential equation for your present GPS coordinates.”

A stream of equations that would've made Einstein's head explode appeared on the windshield. Jeff tapped one of the shorter ones.

“Thank you. Please engage time warp modulators.”

Mutt pressed a switch that would've turned on the air-conditioning in a normal car. In the Inspectormobile, it generated a subharmonic frequency Harper couldn't hear, but he could feel it vibrating through the car.

“Time warp modulators engaged,” Mutt reported.

The Merc rounded the Lausanne Museum and lined up with Pont Bessières.

“Bridge and intersection cleared. Required speed for exit: one hundred ten kilometers per hour. Please stand by.”

“Standing by.”

Mutt eased off the accelerator, giving the traffic lamp across the bridge time to flip to green. When it did, he tore over the bridge at speed.

“Gate activated in five, four, three . . .”

The Merc followed the trajectory plotted on the heads-up display.

“. . . two, one, contact.”

For a moment, nothing moved. Silence. Then came a ripple of light and rush of wavelike sound, and Harper watched the slow bending of buildings and streetlamps till the Merc caught up with real time and things snapped back with a jolt.

Mutt shut down the heads-up display, and Jeff checked in with HQ in Berne.

“Berne, we are clear in real time. Package on board. Proceeding to rendezvous with Dragon Six.”

“Roger. Will advise. Enjoy your evening.”

Harper settled in his seat, lamenting the fact he could've been well into his second vodka tonic by now. Then again, with Monsieur Dufaux's description of the screwup that was the Paris job, Harper wasn't surprised he'd been summoned by the cop in the cashmere coat.

The Merc cruised out of Lausanne and through the small towns along Lac Léman till Mutt turned off the main road and the Merc's headlights were swallowed in the dark up ahead. A train flew across the sky and a long stream of illuminated windows whipped by in a blur. Harper thought it a swell trick and was somewhat disappointed to see the earthen embankment supporting the railroad as they drew closer. There was a tunnel through the embankment, and it opened to a shadowed somewhere. Instinctively, Harper sat up. His eyes followed the headlights along a narrow road bordered by stone walls, and beyond the walls he saw row upon row of ascending vines. The headlights caught a road sign—A
PPELLATION DU
V
ILLETTE
—and when the Merc rounded a turn and climbed a steep hillside, he saw the expanse of Lac Léman curving to the west and her dark currents running in willowy streaks. France rose on the south shore, and looking east, the blue-white peaks of the Alps sparkled with moonlight.

The road wound its way higher and cut through vineyards and skirted cliffs. It ran through the village of Aran before winding higher still. The Merc's headlights panned the hillside and lit up the stone terraces. Harper saw clusters of green and red grapes glistening on the vines. The Merc rounded a bend, and the headlights caught some stone houses gathered on a cliff, then another sign at the side of the road: G
RANDVAUX,
C
ANTON DE
V
AUD
. At the turnoff to the village, a metal fence blocked the road. Two men in reflective vests stood behind the fence. They watched the approaching car slow to a stop. Mutt shut down the engine, Jeff secured the Brügger & Thomet. They both turned back to Harper.

“You'll need to get out here and walk. Inspector Gobet is waiting for you at
les caves Duboux
.”

“We apologize for the inconvenience, and the guns in the face thing. Nothing personal.”

“No worries,” Harper said.

He reached in his sports coat, pulled his SIG.

“You won't need your weapon, Mr. Harper.”

“We failed to mention this is a social occasion.”

Harper flashed Montreux, two years back.

“You boys remember the last social occasion the inspector invited me to? In Montreux? The guest of honor was a hotel night clerk who'd been nailed to the wall and left with his guts hanging out.”

Mutt smiled with the sincerity of an insurance salesman.

“Rest assured, this is nothing of the sort.”

“Besides,” Jeff said, “the village is surrounded by a tactical unit of the Swiss Guard.”

Harper took another look at the men at the fence. The both of them with MP5 machine pistols under their reflective vests.