Angel City (38 page)

“Astruc wasn't awakened yet. Didn't know what he was,” Harper said.

Krinkle nodded, finished his tea.

“They tried to awaken him in Toulouse. It didn't go well. He couldn't accept the duality of his being, especially when it came to the ‘us against them' part. Not after what he'd found in the safe. It all got twisted. In his world, it was him and the kid against the Dark Ones. Like I said, I half understand Astruc's point of view. He's been on the run for years from the good, the bad, and all the fucked-up killers in between.”

“Does the kid know Astruc is his father?”

“Unknown. But digging through the house in Paris, HQ says the kid isn't a victim. He's a player, he believes everything Astruc tells him.”

Harper flashed back to the first time he saw Goose. Hiding in the shadows, his face half hidden by a hoodie. He saw the hatred dripping from the kid's glassy, colorless eyes. Sure, Harper thought, why wouldn't he? The kid considered Harper no different from the man who attacked him with pliers and cut out his tongue.

“HQ thought the kid was dead.”

“He wasn't supposed to live beyond his mid-teens. That was the medical line. Of course, no one knew the kid was what he is. So his stamina is way above normal, even as small and frail as he is. Also, Astruc's been keeping the kid going with potions he cooked up in the kitchen sink. Same with himself. He's come up with his own radiance potion to ease the weight, also masks the light in both their eyes.”

“So how fucked up can Astruc be if he's whipping up potions in a kitchen sink?”

Krinkle finished his tea, set the cup on the desk. He reached for a bottle. Single malt, half full. Two crystal tumblers were parked nearby. Krinkle poured a heavy hand, handed over one tumbler. Harper took it.

“Cheers.”

“Astruc's half awake in nowtimes, half suspended in a war of his own making. Now his war is going to shit, and if we don't bail him out, he's taking what's left of our kind with him.”

“How so?”

“The SX squad dug deeper into the desktop at Astruc's hideout in Paris. Seems he discovered a file hidden deep in the enemy's mainframe. Sucker was locked with a password that'd stretch from here to Berlin. Astruc cracked the password and downloaded the file to Paris. Care to know what was in it?”

“Sure.”

“So would we. Astruc zapped it clean. Nothing left but a file name,
circa humana fabula miraculum nativitate
.”

Harper ran the words.

“Regarding the Human Myth of Miracle Birth.”

“Check.”

“Meaning what?”

“Who knows? The only place that file exists is in Astruc's head. Point is, he knew we'd find his hideout in Paris and the computer. He knew we'd crack the computer; still, he left a clue of what he knew. And right now, the enemy's gone Code Red hunting him down.”

“You suggesting I give him some slack?”

“I'm suggesting somewhere in Astruc's fucked-up head, he's trying to do the right thing. Besides, I would've thought you would know how messy an awakening can be.”

Harper flashed back to the cathedral job. Saw himself kicking and screaming as they tried to shake him awake. He saw the trail of mutilated bodies strewn along the way. One of them was a lad with a lantern, bred by his own kind.

They sipped. Krinkle smacked his lips.

“Now that we got that out of the way, I'm supposed to communicate new orders to you from the one you call Gobet. Track Astruc, get him to Lausanne Cathedral by any means necessary.”

“Why me?”

“There are two people who know what Astruc looks like these days. Astruc killed one of them, that leaves you. Advantage: Astruc thinks he killed you, too. His mind won't be tuned to look for you. Grab him, get him to the cathedral for a session with Gabriel. Astruc needs to be completely awakened.”

Harper wound back his timeline till he saw a morphine-addicted tramp on the altar of Lausanne Cathedral, standing in the light passing through the giant stained glass window of the south transept . . . Monsieur Gabriel. Turned out that he was one of Harper's kind. Had the job of shaking stubborn sorts awake to the truth of their being. Was also the keeper of ancient secrets. Revealed them as required. Harper blinked himself back to the bus.

“What about the kid?”

“Grab Astruc, the kid will follow. Soon as the kid crosses into Switzerland, he'll be picked up, taken to the medic in Vevey.”

“Why isn't the inspector issuing the orders himself?”

“Because, officially, he has no idea where you are.”

Harper flashed back again. In the vineyards with the cop in the cashmere coat. Drinking tea, smoking radiance, watching the stars. Inspector tells Harper he's being sent back to Paris . . .
HQ doesn't know you're juicing me for a mission, do they?
Answer: no. Harper blinked, looked at Krinkle.

“So unofficially, Inspector Gobet told HQ fuck all about Astruc.”

Krinkle made with the make-believe gun:
bang.

“Got it. But if it comes to ‘any means necessary,' what do I pull a trigger with? My teeth?”

“Come again?”

Harper held up his bandaged hands.

“Oh, yeah.”

Krinkle kicked open the desk's lower drawer. Jars of ointments and clear liquids inside. Also a fully rigged kill kit, good to go.

“I've got some potions to fix up your hands. They'll still hurt like hell, but they'll be workable, sort of. The guns and knives are for you, too. And Gobet told me to remind you that while ‘any means necessary' implies the use of violence, it also implies if violence isn't necessary, then it should not be used.”

Harper had heard that one before. Somewhere.

“So if I need to shoot him, be nice about it.”

“Check.”

Harper took another sip of single malt.

“Any idea where I start looking?”

Krinkle grabbed an iPad from the desk. He tapped and swiped the screen a few times, handed it to Harper. Onscreen: one mangled laptop computer, one something else looking like a stereo amplifier, one two-meter sat dish.

“A transmission rig?”

“Most probably the gear used to hack into Blue Brain last night. A local found it at dawn. He called the local gendarmerie. This happens, that happens, then the rig is in Berne within three hours. The laptop is customized, the uplink gear better than current military specs in anyone's army. Protocol acceleration and encryption, data transfer speeds at nearly four hundred gigs per second; all crammed into a unit the size of a bread box. There was a cable connected to the laptop, probably to an external hard drive. The drive is missing. HQ suspects the kid made the gear himself. His room in Paris was filled with electronic gizmos and microchips. Get this: The kid worked by candlelight.”

Harper thought about it. The kid from Toulouse, the lad from Lausanne Cathedral; the two of them with a thing for candles . . .
Bloody hell.
He looked at the iPad again, saw a small black tube next to what was left of the laptop.

“What's this?”

“A thousand-watt laser pointer. The beam can be seen from outer space. It was found planted on the side of the mountain, pointing east. Would've laid a line on a west-to-east horizon, perpendicular to the line of sight from the north gate, where they found the rig.”

Harper replayed Leo the Astrophysicist and his theory about the great cosmic clock:
He needs a perfectly still horizon, probably a laser.

“It's Astruc, no doubt about it. Where did they find all this?”

“One hundred twenty klicks south of my bus.”

Harper stared at him.

“I give up.”

Krinkle sipped his drink, reached over, swiped the screen. Harper saw a photograph of a giant rock shooting out of the ground and into the sky. The next photos were different angles of the fortress ruins atop the rock. Medieval, thirteenth century. Took Harper three seconds to make it from the History Channel's program on the Cathars.
Fancy that,
Harper thought.

“Montségur, in the Pyrenees.”

“That's right, brother. Trippy, isn't it? That place . . . us.”

“Us?”

“You, Astruc, me. The reason we're talking.”

“I thought we were talking so you could pass along new orders.”

“That too.”

Harper flipped back and forth between the photos. Flashed last night's scene with Inspector Gobet and the judge. Drilling him about one Bernard de Saint-Martin, dispossessed knight from Languedoc, burned to death as a heretic at the end of the Montségur siege in 1244. In front of ten thousand bloody witnesses, but manages to show up in Paris a year later with an ancient sextant in a reliquary box. Gathers a few disciples, hides the sextant, tells the lads to keep up the good work, vanishes. Fast-forward to nowtimes: Astruc, half awakened, half mad, atop Montségur with the same damn sextant, predicting a celestial event to the bloody second that announces the time of the prophecy is at hand. Harper wasn't sure what Krinkle meant by
trippy
, but it sounded spot-on.

“So what's your connection to Montségur? And why are we talking about it?”

Krinkle reached over, flipped the photos till he landed on a wide shot of the fortress atop the pluton.

“The three of us were there, brother.”

Harper stared at him.

“Inspector Gobet told you this?”

“Put it this way: The one you call Gobet's seen to it that my timeline is flipped wide open, for one night only.”

Harper looked at the teacup Krinkle had been drinking from.

“Doctor's orders?”

Krinkle nodded.

“Drink the tea and talk to the one called Harper about old times. Then broadcast tunes through the night, call me in the morning.”

“Lucky you.”

“Book's still out. We'll see how it goes.”

Harper sipped whiskey and smoked his fag, realized that he'd been standing since he came on board. He looked back, reached over to grab a chair. It wouldn't budge.

“It's a bus, brother,” Krinkle said. “The chairs are anchored to the floor.”

“Right.”

Harper sat down, ran through his meeting with the judge and Inspector Gobet in Paris.

“Inspector Gobet says I made an unauthorized apparition in 1244,” Harper said.

“Wrong. You were assigned to Montségur from 1243–1244, the three of us were. It's your trip to Paris, after the fire, where you went AWOL. And just because you're listed as AWOL doesn't mean it's legit. Because, I'm telling you, the shit I'm seeing in my eyes is mind-blowing.”

From trippy to mind-blowing in sixty seconds. He did look wide-eyed, Harper thought.

“What can you see?”

Krinkle settled back in his swivel chair.

“Astruc and me, inside Montségur with the fighters. Him as Jean de Combel, me as Raymond de Marseillan. We both fought alongside Bernard de Saint-Martin—the man, I mean. He was one tough bastard. Led a few hard battles, massacred ten Inquisitors at Avignonet. I'm not surprised you slipped into his form. After the fighting, I mean. Of course he was dying from a crossbow wound, so that helped.”

“Mate.”

“Yeah?”

“Focus. Was I in the form of Bernard de Saint-Martin at Montségur or not?”

“Not till the fighting was over. All through the siege you were form-jumping, picking up whatever was lying around. You worked in the shadows of the pluton and down on the plain; you were tracking the Crusaders, hunting bad guys in the ranks. And when you found one, you mutilated him, left him in pieces with a killing knife buried in his chest. Scared the Crusaders shitless. They had a name for you:
le chevalier fantôme
.”

Harper smoked deeply.

“What was our mission, exactly?”

“To keep the treasure of the Cathars from falling into the hands of the bad guys. What else?”

Harper stared blankly. “What treasure?”

“You playing me for a sap, brother?”

“Let's say I'm checking how the tea's working.”

“Coming on strong. And let's call ‘the treasure' that thing you took from Montségur and hid in Paris when you went AWOL. The thing Astruc got his hands on a few days ago. The thing he brought back to Montségur to make his big splash with the comet.”

Harper flashed the sextant.

“And since you were there in 1244, you know what that thing is,” he said to Krinkle.

“Didn't know then, don't know now.”

“No?”

“The one you call Gobet didn't tell me, and for the likes of you and me, that means ‘don't fucking ask about it.' And so what? During the siege, none of us did.”

Harper glanced at the teacup, then Krinkle.

“Mate, what did they put in your tea? Because you're not making sense.”

“No idea, brother. Package arrived by messenger. Open it up and there's the jars, your kill kit, and a tea bag with a note:
Drink me.
Maybe you're not supposed to mix the tea with alcohol. Whatever, I'm all over my timeline now, but there you go. What I'm telling you is, back then none of us—you, me, Astruc—knew what the real treasure of the Cathars was. All we knew was there were hundreds of bad guys hiding in the Crusaders' ranks, and we were ordered to keep them off Montségur. I Googled the place as the tea was coming on to see if I could kick-start my timeline. Down there, all across the Pyrenees near Montségur, legends and myths grow like weeds. Biggest one says Mary Magdalene came from Jerusalem and brought the Holy Grail of Jesus Christ with her. People think there was a pagan temple up there where people worshipped the sun. Some people think the Cathars were up to the same thing. Another legend says the Cathars had the Holy Grail and they were hiding it in the fortress. And that four Cathars escaped with it before the rest of them were burned to death.”

Harper gave it a few beats.