An attack, then. Or not? In the next couple of minutes, before he reached the Pergamon hall. Unarmed and with no plan.
Not a glimmer!
No, he couldn’t attack. The only way to get one over that madman was blind luck, but what if Xin actually intended to keep his promise? What if Vogelaar failed in his attempt to put one past him, and in failing, actually caused Nyela’s death, not to mention his own?
Trick him? Trust him? Trick him?
Five minutes earlier, in the James Simon Gallery.
‘I understand you,’ Xin says gently. ‘I wouldn’t trust me either.’ He’s close behind Vogelaar, the flechette pistol hidden under his jacket.
‘And?’ Vogelaar asks. ‘Would you be right?’
Xin considers for a moment.
‘Have you ever got to grips with astrophysics?’
‘There were other things in my life,’ Vogelaar snarls. ‘Coups, armed conflict—’
‘A pity. You would understand me better. Physicists are concerned, among other things, with the parameters of a stable universe. Or indeed of any universe which could come into existence at all, as such. There’s a long list of facts to deal with, but it all comes down to two different points of view. One of them says that the universe is infinitely stable, that it never even had any choice but to develop in the form in which we know it. If things had been different, perhaps no life would have been able to arise. Pondering such matters though is as pointless as wondering what your life might have been like if you’d been born a woman.’
‘Sounds fatalistic, boring.’
‘Philosophically speaking, I quite agree. Which is why the other camp likes to speak of the infinite fragility of the universe, of the fact that even the smallest variation in initial parameters could lead to fundamental changes. A tiny little bit more mass. Just a very few less of this or that elementary particle. The first camp says that all sounds too contingent, and they’re right. But the second viewpoint does come closer to the way we imagine existence to be. What if… ? For myself, I prefer a vision of order and predictability, grounded in binding, non-negotiable parameters. And that’s the spirit in which we made our agreement, you and I.’
‘Meaning that you can always come up with some reason you needn’t keep your promise.’
‘You have a petty mind, if I may be so bold as to say so.’
Vogelaar turns around and stares at him.
‘Oh, I already see what you mean! I understand how you see yourself. Might the problem perhaps be that your’ – he waved his hand in the air in a circle – ‘idea of universal order doesn’t hold true for your fellow mortals?’
‘What’s up all of a sudden, Jan? You were calmer just a moment ago.’
‘I couldn’t give a damn what you think about that! I want to hear you say that Nyela will be safe if I keep my side of the bargain.’
‘She’s my guarantee that you’ll keep it.’
‘And then?’
‘As I have said before—’
‘Say it again!’
‘My goodness me, Jan! Truth doesn’t become any more true just from being repeated.’ Xin sighs and looks up at the ceiling. ‘If you like, though. As long as Mickey’s with her, Nyela’s fine, she’s safe. If everything else goes according to our agreement, nothing will happen to either of you. That’s the deal. Are you content?’
‘Partly. The devil never does anything without his reasons.’
‘I appreciate the flattery. Now do me a favour and move your arse.’
The Market Gate of Miletus.
Xin’s words in his ear. What if he turned round, right now, this moment? Ran through the museum full tilt, tried to reach the restaurant before him? That would definitely change the parameters! But to do that he would have to know exactly where Xin was. He had stayed behind as they went into the south wing. Vogelaar had turned round once to try to spot him, but hadn’t been able to see him among the hordes of tour groups. He didn’t doubt that the killer was watching his every step, but he also knew that from now on in, Xin would stay invisible until the time was ripe. Jericho and the girl were sitting in a trap in the Telephos hall. He would show up as though out of thin air, shoot twice—
Or would it be three times?
Trust him? Trick him?
Xin wasn’t sane. He didn’t live in the real world, he lived in some abstraction of reality. Which was actually a reason to trust him. His madness forced him to cling to order. Perhaps Xin wasn’t even able to break a promise, as long as all the parameters were observed.
He shrugged his way through the crowds and approached the entrance to the Pergamon hall, a smaller gate in the Hellenistic façade, which was just now being cleaned and restored. To leave a clear view of the architecture, the museum had clad it with glass walls rather than shrouds. The glass reflected the spotlights from the ceiling, and the statues and the columns all around, the visitors, himself—
And someone else.
Vogelaar stared.
For the length of a heartbeat he was helpless against rising panic. Iron bands clamped his ribcage, and an electric field paralysed his legs. Rage, hate, grief and fear pooled like a thrombosis in his feet, which became numb, refused to take one more step. Instead of horror at all the things that could happen to Nyela, he felt the searing certainty of what had most probably already happened.
As long as Mickey’s with her, Nyela’s fine—
Then why was Mickey in the museum?
Because Nyela was no longer alive.
It could only be that. Would Xin have allowed her to stay in the restaurant unguarded? Vogelaar walked on as though drunk. He had failed. He had surrendered to the childish hope that the madman might keep his promises. Instead, Xin had ordered the Irishman to come along to the museum to share the work of killing. That was all. Just as Nyela had never had a chance, right from the start, he too would die along with Yoyo and Jericho, in the little room at the top of the temple, if not before.
The thought acted like an acid, dissolving his fears in a trice. Ice-cold rage flooded in instead. One by one, his survival mechanisms clicked into place, and he felt the metamorphosis, felt himself become once more the bug he had been for most of his life. He marched onwards, chitin-clad, through the gate and into the Pergamon hall next door. Watchful, he waved his antennae, saw the entire hall through faceted eyes: over there, at the opposite end of the great hall, another gate that was the partner of the one he had come through, tiny, almost ashamed to be so small but nevertheless bravely doing its work, one narrow little bypass in the flow of bodies through the museum, pumping tirelessly. To his left, isolated parts of the frieze standing alone on pillars and pedestals; to his right the temple with the stairway, up above the colonnade, leading through to the Telephos hall where Jericho and the girl would be, waiting for a dossier that they would never see now, that they would never need. It would have all been so simple, so quickly over and done with. He would have been a hundred thousand euros richer, and he would have handed them the second dossier. The duplicate that apart from him only Nyela had known about—