Angel City (46 page)

Harper flashed back to Serge's shed, watching the man weld bronze wings to an angel.
Nobel lord
, the man called the sorrow-laden thing.

“Sure.”

Serge tipped his head toward the windshield.

“The gendarmerie is out there, across the road.”

Through the falling snow Harper saw two gray buildings. Four floors, burnished red trim along the corners and windows. Black letters in relief on the building to the right:
GENDARMERIE NATIONALE
. The letters weren't quite straight for some reason. There was a green gate between the buildings; it was open.

“The building you want is the one with the sign.”

Harper saw bars on the windows of the first floor.

“Jail's there, behind the bars?”

“That's just to keep young Occitans from throwing rocks through the window. The holding cells are in the basement. There's a door on the side of the building. You go in, there's a reception counter with a policeman. Behind the desk is a steel door. It's controlled by a button under the counter. Behind the door are stairs to the basement. At the bottom of the stairs is another policeman, and there is a guard locked inside a bulletproof office. The one in the office controls the cell doors. There are only four small cells.”

“You sound like you know the setup.”

“When I was young, I was a rock thrower for the glory of Occitania. I'm the reason they put up the bars. I caught a policeman on the head. I was only ten, so they let me go. After they locked me up for three days to teach me a lesson.”

“Maybe they've added a few upgrades since you were a rock-throwing lad.”

“Are you serious? This is the
départment
of Ariège. Nothing changes here.”

Harper looked at his watch: 11:54 hours.

“Just about lunchtime.”

“Good timing. Most of the police in Foix will be heading to cafés for their meals. Except for the ones in the jail, of course. And the few hundred of them that live out the back.”

“Sorry?”

“All those buildings in the back. Those are residences for police.”

Harper looked through the gates. The place was more than a small-town cop shop; it was a compound.

“Oh, swell.”

“Not to worry. With this weather, they'll be in their rooms playing with their guns, hopefully.”

Harper looked at the back of the bread truck.

“Is the rear door open?”

“I'll unlock it.”

“And how far to Gare de Foix? Two minutes, you said?”

Serge pointed out his side window.

“Back over the river and go left. The train station is very close. But it will take three or four minutes in this weather.”

Harper looked out the window. The clouds had come down again and there was nothing but a blur of heavy snow.

“Right.”

He removed the bandage from his right hand, stretched the fingers. He pulled his killing knives from their sheaths, then the SIG. He ejected the clip, checked the firing chamber was clear. Serge watched with interest.

“No bullets, no weapons. A most interesting method to break someone out of jail.”

“Not here to harm anyone, just need to do a job.”

“Is he someone like you?”

Harper looked at the man. “He is, but he doesn't know it.”

“How can that be?”

“Comes to telling forests from trees, we're not that different from you sometimes.”

Serge pointed to the little glass objects on Harper's weapons rig.

“What are those tiny jars? If you do not mind my asking.”

Harper looked down at the vials of flash and fog on the straps of his weapons harness.

“Things to make us disappear.”

Serge smiled. “This I would very much like to see.”

Harper holstered his empty SIG.

“Maybe you will, and maybe you should keep the motor running.”

“This is not a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“We are almost out of gas.”

Harper rubbed the back of his neck. He looked deep into Serge's eyes.

“I want you to listen to me. If it goes bad, you drive away. Don't look back, go home.”

“As you command.”

Harper opened the door, stepped out, pulled up the collar of his coat.

“By the way, you and your ancestors are the noble ones. Without your family, the ones like me would've been wiped from the Earth long ago.”

Serge scratched his chin.

“I should like to ask you something about my family story, in the event I do not see you again.”

“All right.”

“Why would this someone like you see to it that the things of Christ were delivered to my family in the eighth century and command us to protect them, only to leave behind the broken cup and the bloodied nail, calling them ‘the things of men'?”

“Sounds like a philosopher's riddle.”

“One I have tried to answer all my life.”

“Come up with anything?”

“A third of a cup, one of three nails. In pieces and separate, they are the things of men. Rejoined and together, they become things of the Gods again.”

Harper thought about it.

“That's a damn good bit of imagining, Serge.”

“
Mercé.
By the way, have you ever broken anyone out of jail before?”

“No idea. But I saw it on the History Channel once. It was a reenactment of a jailbreak in the Old West. Arizona, it was.”

“Then you should do just fine.”

II

H
ARPER CLOSED THE DOOR, WALKED ACROSS THE ROAD AND
through the open gate. There were CCTV cameras mounted at the gate and above the door marked
BUREAU
. Harper looked down, watched his feet kick through the snow. He got to the office door, went in.

Fluorescent lights in the ceiling, greenish paint on the walls, brown linoleum floor. A poster board along the inner wall was stuffed with official notices, and there were red plastic chairs anchored to the floor underneath. Everything about it said
This is an official reception area of the Gendarmerie Nationale and you are not welcome.

Harper looked out the barred windows. Saw the bread truck in the parking lot, saw Serge watching him. Far end of the room was a counter and one French policeman leaning over a newspaper. He couldn't be bothered to look up to see who came through the door. Harper walked over, saw a bank of video monitors under the counter. Surrounding grounds of the compound on monitor one, cells in the basement switching every two seconds on monitor two. He saw the form of a big man lying still on a cot in one of the cells; the other cells were empty. Monitor three was Harper himself standing in the reception area. He looked up, saw the small CCTV camera in the corner.
Getting better all the time,
he thought.

“Vous désirez, monsieur?”
The policeman asked the question while checking the sports page.

“What I need for you to do is to stand up straight, look into my eyes, and listen to my voice.”

“Je ne parle pas anglais.”

Harper rested his hand over a picture of Lionel Messi scoring against PSG. The policeman looked up; Harper smiled, spoke slowly.

“Je veux que vous vous leviez, que vous me regardiez dans les yeux, et que vous m'écoutiez.”

The policeman stood up, stared at Harper.
“Quoi?”

“That's better.”

Harper waved the palm of his right hand before the copper's eyes.

“Dulcis et alta quies, placidæque simillima morti.”

The policeman slumped. Harper rounded the counter and caught him, set him in his chair. He pulled the policeman's gun, chucked it in a desk drawer. He found the door release and hit it, and the door popped open. Harper passed through, went down the stairs. He called back to the sleeping policeman,
“Merci, ah?”
giving it his best imitation of a hotshot French detective from Paris coming down to throw his weight around the provinces. The prison guard at the bottom of the stairs saw Harper coming, but hearing Harper's voice call back to the reception, he didn't react.

“Bonjour,”
Harper said, reaching to shake the guard's hand
.

The guard took the bait, Harper latched on tight.

“Bonjour,”
he said.
“Vous êtes ici pour le prisonnier?”

Harper nodded.
“Oui, c'est moi.”

The guard looked back up the stairs, looking for the rest of the armed detail.

“Où est l'escorte armé?”

Harper explained the armed escort was late because of the snow. The guard was annoyed.

“Merde,”
he grumbled.
“On voudrait bien aller déjeuner.”

Harper switched to English.

“Sorry, lunch is canceled on account of snow.”

“Quoi?”

Harper spun the guard around, twisting his arm and slamming him face-first into the bulletproof window. The guard inside the office jumped for the alarm. Before he touched it, Harper pulled his SIG, pressed the muzzle to his captive's head.

“Vous touchez l'alarme et je tire.”

The guard in the office froze.

“Jetez votre arme par terre, ouvrez la porte, mettez vos mains sur la tête, et vous allez dans la salle.”

There was a second where nothing happened. Harper hoped the guard was startled enough not to notice there wasn't a clip in his SIG, and that his threat to pull the trigger, while true, was complete and utter shit.

“Do it!”

The guard in the office pulled his sidearm and dropped it on the desk. He hit the button to open the outer cell door. The door buzzed open. The guard put his hands on his head, stepped out of the office and into the cell block. Harper nudged his captive forward.

“Mains sur la tête, lentement.”

The guard raised his hands, slowly. Harper pulled the guard's sidearm, stuffed it in his coat.

“Move inside.”

He herded the two men into the hall between the cells. Keeping his eyes on them, he reached in the office, grabbed the second gun, stuffed it in his belt.

“Ouvrez la porte du prisonnier,”
Harper said.

The guards looked fit to piss themselves. Obviously, a jailbreak was something new in these parts, Harper thought.

“Je ne peux pas.”

“Pourquoi pas?”

“Le déverrouillage est à l'intérieur du bureau.”

Harper glanced in the office, saw four buttons controlling access to the cell block. He checked the cells. Astruc was in number three; he was beginning to stir. Keeping his eyes on the police again, Harper reached in, hit the release to cells one and three:
bzzzz, clack, clack.

“Les portables sur le sol, lentement.”

The police unhooked their mobile phones, dropped them on the floor. Harper signaled the police to get inside cell one; they obeyed. Harper moved quickly, kicking closed the cell door, kicking the phones across the hall. He reached in his pocket, pulled out the guns, tossed them in an empty cell. He turned to the police.

“Je veux que vous me regardiez dans les yeux et que vous m'écoutiez.”

The police obeyed again. Harper waved the palm of his right hand before their eyes:
“
Dulcis et alta quies . . .”
The men slumped to the floor before he finished the rest of it. Harper looked at his watch: 12:06 hours. He turned to cell three. Astruc was sitting on the edge of his cot now, staring at Harper.

“Hello, Padre,” Harper said.

Astruc rushed from the cot, pushed open the cell door, charged at Harper. Harper cut left, caught Astruc's ankles, dropped him to the floor. The sedatives made Astruc's reactions slow, but he swung his fist wildly and caught Harper's jaw. Harper fell back, came up with his foot and drilled Astruc in the balls. Astruc went down, had trouble getting to his feet. Harper knocked him back down, knelt next to him, pinned his head to the concrete floor.

“You're dead!” Astruc shouted. “I buried you!”

“And three days later I rose from the dead. It's been known to happen.”

Astruc tried to pull away; Harper shoved the muzzle into his neck.

“Listen, Padre, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Either way, you're going to Lausanne Cathedral.”

“Why?”

Harper rolled him over, stood up, pointing the SIG at Astruc's head.

“Because you're as fucked up as I am. Get up.”

Astruc wiped his face with the back of his hand.

“Goose?”

“Your son, you mean.”

An expression of horror crossed Astruc's face.

“Relax, we all have our failings, Padre. Just now, all you need to know is he's still alive. You want to see him, you come with me.”

“You are one of the Dark Ones. You live by deceit and betrayal.”

“Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. Who cares? You want to see Goose, you come with me. Or you can stay here, because in a matter of minutes, a squad of police from Toulouse will come down those stairs to arrest you for a sixteen-year-old murder. If it was up to me, I'd let them take you. Choice is yours.”

Astruc got up from the floor. They hadn't cleaned him up, and there was blood on his clothes and hands. He glanced at the guards in the cell.

“Are they dead?”

“Killing the innocent is more your line, padre, not mine.”

“The innocent?”

“Gilles Lambert. He was just a man; a lonely, innocent man with a soul, and you killed him.”

Astruc looked at Harper.

“That isn't possible. I looked into his eyes.”

“Told you, you're fucked up. Move.”

Astruc turned, headed up the stairs. Harper followed, thinking sooner or later, someone was going to figure out there weren't any bullets in his SIG. Top of the stairs, Astruc saw the copper sleeping in his chair.

“Out the door,” Harper said. “Go left, walk across the road. Quick, but don't run. There's a bread truck directly ahead in the parking lot. Wait at the back. I'm right behind you. Take off, run away, you'll never see Goose again.”