The Gilded Seal (42 page)
“It’s simple. You can never tell anyone this place,” Tom
instructed her.
“What place?”
“You’ll see.”
C H A P T E R S E V E N T Y- T W O
PALAIS GARNIER, 9TH ARRONDISSEMENT, PARIS
23rd April— 10:10 p.m.
They crossed the road, Jennifer noticing that Tom was
keeping his gaze lowered so as not to make eye contact
with anyone they crossed. She did the same, certain that by
now Ferrat would have released a photo and description of
her, turning the entire city into his eyes and ears. Only
Archie, who the police still knew nothing about, walked with
his head held high.
The Palais Garnier opera house loomed ahead of them at
the apex of the wide avenue, its ornate façade lavished with
statuary and opulently decorated with multicolored marble
friezes and columns. Far above, two gilded winged horses
framed a copper dome. Behind this, the sharp, angular sil-
houette of its main roof fell away toward the cobbled street
below.
Tom led them around to the left of the building, the posters
outside the main steps indicating that the eve ning’s perfor-
mance of
Il Trittico
was sold out. Stopping about halfway
down, he nodded toward a small metal door, perhaps fi ve feet
high and three across.
“In here?” Jennifer frowned. She didn’t like being kept in
the dark and Tom was being uncharacteristically cryptic.
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“If he’ll see us,” said Tom, pointing at the video camera
pointing toward them.
“Who?”
“He’s called Ketter. Markus Ketter.”
“Just don’t make any sudden movements,” Archie warned
her. “He’s a nervous bastard at the best of times.”
Unprompted, the door suddenly swung open and they
stepped inside. As the door locked itself shut behind them an
overhead light automatically flickered on, revealing a small
chamber, empty apart from the narrow stone spiral staircase
that coiled steeply toward the shadowy heavens.
“I hope you’ve got your comfortable shoes on,” Tom warned
her with a smile.
The light from the chamber soon faded behind them, the
steps rising in a dark, dizzy corkscrew that left Jennifer feel-
ing increasingly disorientated and nervously pressing her
right hand to the rough stone walls to keep her balance and
guide her feet. The air felt thick and heavy too, the sound of
their footsteps and strained breathing echoing through its
dense, suffocating embrace as if it couldn’t escape. But then,
almost imperceptibly at first, a more gentle sound fi ltered
down to them. A woman’s voice.
“Listen,” Tom said, suddenly stopping. Jennifer could hear
the voice quite clearly now, a pure, crisp sound that rose and
fell like the swell of the sea. “We’re lucky, they don’t put
Il
Trittico
on very often. It’s made up of three one- act operas.
Sounds like they’ve just started
Gianni Schicchi
. Come on, I
want to show you something.”
A little further on the darkness suddenly lifted where one
of the stones in the wall had been replaced with a small metal
grille. The light from the massive central chandelier was leak-
ing through it.
“This staircase runs behind a false wall. We’re right up in
the gods here.” On the stage far below a young woman was
seemingly pleading with her father. Tom pointed up at the
ceiling. “Look, do you remember the Chagall painting I told
you about?”
She did remember his rather breathless description back at
the Louvre, though it seemed a lifetime ago now, rather than
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3 1 7
just a few days. He’d portrayed the ceiling then as being
somehow slightly demonic. Now that she was able to see it
for herself, however, she wasn’t sure she agreed. The dizzy-
ing, intoxicating carousel of bright colors and wild shapes
seemed more like a dream to her; a warm, slightly drunken
dream that you might never want to wake up from. She gazed
at it longingly, sensing Tom smiling at her, sharing in her
wonder.
“It’s beautiful.”
Again they climbed, the music accompanying them all the
way, until a solid brick wall suddenly loomed ahead of them,
blocking the top of the stairs. Jennifer frowned, wondering
how they were going to get past, until she noticed a small
steel panel set into the bricks at about waist height. The panel
suddenly snapped open and a gun muzzle appeared through
the rectangle of light it had revealed, aimed straight at Tom’s
stomach.
“Who is it?” A muffled voice intoned in clipped, precise
En glish.
“You know who it is, Markus,” Tom chided him. “You’ve
got infrared cameras the whole way up that staircase.”
“Half the planet is looking for you, Felix. If you’ve led
them here . . .” The accent was hard and unfeeling. German
perhaps, or possibly Scandinavian.
“If I had, you wouldn’t be talking to us now,” Tom said
nonchalantly.
“Who’s she?” The gun swiveled to point at her.
“She’s with us.”
“She moves like a cop.”
“Old habits die hard. She’s running with us now.”
There was a pause.
“What do you want? You know I don’t like surprises.”
Tom held the book out. The gun was slowly retracted and
a white gloved hand reached out and grabbed it. There was a
long silence. Then the hiss and release of a hydraulic pump
as the entire wall slowly rose into the roof like a giant port-
cullis. They stepped inside and the wall immediately lowered
itself behind them.
Ketter emerged out of the darkness, shifting his weight
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warily from foot to foot. Dressed entirely in white, from his
patent leather shoes to his tie and white cotton gloves, his
willowy figure stood out from the surrounding gloom like a
candle flame in the night.
“Come,” he ordered them, turning on his heel before she
could get a good look at his face.
“Shoes there. Lighters and matches
here. Wash there.”
Ketter pointed first at a low shelf, then at a large dish and fi -
nally at a white porcelain surgeon’s basin complete with elon-
gated tap handles to allow people to turn the water off with
their elbows rather than use their hands again.
“What’s with the outfit?” she whispered.
“So he can see the dirt,” Tom explained as he turned the
taps on and squeezed some soap on to his hands. “In fact the
only thing he hates more than dirt is fi re.”
“Why fire?” she asked.
“You’ll see,” Archie hissed, shaking his head as he dropped
his lighter into the dish, making it ping.
“Look,” Jennifer mouthed. Ketter was sealing a thin plas-
tic sheet over their shoes. Sensing their eyes on him, he stood
up and smoothed his suit down self-consciously.
She could see now that he was in his late fifties, with deep
vertical lines carved into his sunken cheeks and pink grooves
on the bridge of his nose from wearing glasses. He was also
tall, and would have seemed even taller if it wasn’t for the
way he pulled his shoulders up into his neck as if he was
flinching. In fact, there was something slightly elephantine
about him, his hands and feet almost comically oversized.
Satisfied that they were done, Ketter led them up a narrow
set of stairs to a steel trapdoor set into the low ceiling. Un-
locking it, he nodded at them to step through and then bolted
it shut behind them, muttering to himself as he opened and
shut the lock several times to check it was secure.
A cloying red tint from a couple of filtered overhead lights
gave the room an apocalyptic, almost satanic feel. Ketter’s
suit, for one, had been transformed into a blood-red velvet
and even his thinning brush of white hair had burst into a
crown of crimson fl ames.
He found the switch and flicked it on, a cool wash of light
t h e g i l d e d s e a l
3 1 9
revealing the dome’s graceful roof soaring high above them,
the walls covered in white rectangular tiles whose beveled
edges glinted in the light. But her eye was instinctively drawn
to the regimented lines of shelves that stretched the length of
the circular room as if on parade, their height rising and fall-
ing with the arch of the dome like a bulging muscle.
It was an impressive and unexpected sight and she breathed
in sharply, just catching Tom staring at her out of the corner
of his eye. It was strange, but he seemed to be taking a rather
perverse pleasure in bringing her here, in initiating her into
some of the secrets of his world. Perhaps this was his way of
opening up, of convincing her that she really could trust him
again.
“What is this place?” she whispered as Ketter led them
down one of the narrow corridors formed by the rows of
bookcases, suddenly understanding the reason for Ketter’s
dislike of fi re.
“A library.” Tom smiled. “A library of stolen books.”
In truth it seemed less of a library to Jennifer than a
morgue—the walls covered with white tiles, the books laid
out on the metal shelves towering on either side like corpses
on gurneys. And the whole time the opera’s distant echo rose
from the stage below, the words half-formed and indecipher-
able but strangely compelling.
“A fi rst edition
Don Quixote
.” Tom pointed at the gilded
spine of one of the books wrapped in a protective wrapper on
the felted shelves. “And here, a full set of the
Blaeu- Van der
Hem Atlas
.”
“Don’t touch,” Ketter warned them without looking around.
“All stolen?”
“Markus finds them a new home, gives them a new lease
on life.”
There was a break in the shelving to their right and Ketter
led them through it, crossing several aisles until he came to a
small clearing. To the left was a narrow bed, meticulously
made, and a spotless kitchen and eating area. To the right was
a workshop, complete with desk and an array of tools, magni-
fying glasses, scanners, glues and other binding materials.
Ketter sat down and placed the book in front of him on a
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type of foam pillow that supported its spine. His hunched
shoulders seemed to relax as he arched forward over the book,
as if adopting a familiar and comforting position.
“What do you want?”
“An opinion,” Tom answered.
“On what?”
“We’re not sure,” Tom conceded. “Anything unusual.”
“The standard consultation fee is five thousand dollars.”
“Put it on our account,” Archie suggested.
Ketter glared at him unsmilingly.
“It’s a joke, Markus,” Archie reassured him, raising his
eyebrows at Tom and Jennifer. “I’ll make sure you have it in
the morning.”
“Good.” Apparently satisfied with this, Ketter took a fresh
tissue and opened the book to the title page. “Volume One of
the Imperial edition of the
Description de L’Egypte
,” he in-
toned. “Published 1809. Condition . . . acceptable. I’ve seen
better. It’s rare, yes, but without the rest of the set and in this
state . . . not particularly valuable. From the library of . . .”
He glanced down at the bookplate on the inside front cover
and then looked up with a toothy smile, the first he had
given. “Well, you certainly didn’t waste any time.”
“What do you mean?” Jennifer asked.
“This was in to night’s sale at Tajan, wasn’t it? I saw it in
the catalog a few weeks ago. What did it go for in the end?”
“Seventy thousand,” Archie volunteered.
“Too much.” Ketter shook his head. “Forty, forty-fi ve at
the most.”
“Ledoux bought it,” Tom informed him.
“Ledoux?” He seemed genuinely surprised. “That’s inter-
esting . . .” He looked down at the book again with a frown.
“I wonder why he . . . ?” His voice tailed off as he switched
on a desk light that had a magnifying glass built into it and
held it over the signed bookplate. “This has been tampered
with,” he said slowly, pointing at where one of the corners
had been lifted.
“Ledoux was prodding it with some sort of scalpel,” Tom
confirmed, thinking back to what he had seen through the
window in Fontainebleau.
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Ketter reached for a bottle in front of him and moistened a
cotton wool bud. Then, gripping the raised corner with a large
pair of tweezers, he rubbed the bud against the underside of
the plate. Little by little it lifted, the chemical dissolving the
glue, Ketter proving himself to be surprisingly dextrous de-
spite his ungainly hands.
“There’s something there,” Jennifer exclaimed as a spi-
dery shape emerged from under it. “A word.”
“A name,” Tom corrected her as the scrawl became clearer,
underlined by a wild swish of black ink. “A signature. Napo-
leon.”