«Spain?» Papadelias took a heavy breath. «Yes, Spain would do, though when the Bourbon dynasty is the least incestuous element of your politics, you worry.»
We laughed together, and I feared the sight of Mycroft Canner laughing would drive the ghost-faced policewoman on my left to an early grave, but Papadelias calmed her with an authoritative nod.
«And with that out of the way, shall we look at March nineteenth?» He did not have to specify the year. «There’s a discrepancy in your timeline here.»
«I don’t have time today, Papa. I have jobs waiting.»
«Just one question.» His lenses were already glittering with reports, though I cannot believe there were any details of my case left which Papa had not memorized. «That was a busy day for you, you grabbed Kohaku, Chiasa, Mercer, and Luther in one day.»
I shrugged. «I had to move fast. The third body was about to be discovered, and two more bash’members were missing, it wouldn’t take you long to put the rest in protective custody. If I grabbed them then, I could finish them any time.»
I wondered what topic the others thought we had moved to, these guards who stood deaf to our Greek but could see our body language grow more comfortable, more like family than enemies. No, I am dearer to this vocateur than family. Modern police work was invented by yet another Frenchman, Eugène François Vidocq, a son, not of the Eighteenth Century, but the Nineteenth. Vidocq’s exploits, with their disguises, great escapes, false identities, and lifelong rivals, are so spectacular one can hardly believe in them—indeed he seems more like one of Bridger’s miracles than real when one reads of the life which provided meat enough for Vidocq’s good friend Victor Hugo to base not just Valjean but Javert too on this one man. Between his exploits, Vildocq invented police networks, salaried informants, plainclothes detectives, all the vital tools of Papa’s trade, and Papadelias so idolizes this role model that he even forgives him for not being Greek. Deep down I know Papa longs for the Chinese curse of interesting times. To Vidocq Fate granted prison-breaks, fierce nemeses, an escape from galley slavery, and he made the most of tumults, creating false identities, infiltrating the very criminal world he worked to cage, and, after one great prison break, toiling for years disguised as his own successor in order to win a royal pardon for his former self and then unmask dramatically before the throne. But our present is too orderly to offer such adventures to poor Papadelias. By rights, at some point in his eight decades’ toil, Providence owed Papa a multidecade sparring match like Javert and Valjean, or at least the few precious years Holmes had with his Moriarty. But, alas, when Papa’s longed-for Master Criminal finally came, our battle only lasted two short weeks; you will indulge us if we won’t let those two weeks end.
«Here’s today’s question.» Papa’s eyes sparkled, like a poor poker player’s unable to disguise a good hand. «If you’d spent the whole previous day doing jug-and-funnel water torture on Makenna Mardi in Bunker 2, and feeding Leigh Mardi to lions in the Great African Reservation, when did you have time to go back to the Αlps and refill the tank for Jie Mardi’s Chinese water torture? It only held two hundred gallons, that wouldn’t have lasted three whole days.»
«I didn’t have to refill the tank,» I answered instantly. «It had already been two days, Jie had gotten used to measuring time by how far the water level rose. If the water supply ran out they would pass out as soon as the dripping stopped, and then when I refilled it and the drip started again they’d wake up and not think any time had passed, since the water hadn’t risen. If no time has passed psychologically it doesn’t break the spell.»
«But the body recovers during sleep, the mind too.»
«Not enough to matter.»
«I see.» He didn’t like that answer. He had that itchy look, like he would go back to his notes and brood, then call at four A.M. with some loophole. In fact, he had one now. «How’d you feed your dog, then?»
«What?»
«Your dog, you can’t have taken it with you where the lions were. You left it in the Αlps?»
I smiled. «I left it gnawing on Laurel’s left arm. Plenty of meat for two days. But that was already two questions. Are we done?»
Papa gave me a wary, probing squint. «For now.»
Sometimes I almost wished Papa would find it, the one elusive question I would have no answer for. He smelled something unfinished in my tale, my seamless web of answers. How did I do it? How did I strike so many, so far apart, such complex tasks, so fast? If nothing else, then, twenty, thirty years hence on his deathbed, Papa deserved to hear me whisper: Saladin.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIFTH
Madame’s
“The Six-Hive Transit System welcomes you to Paris. Visitors are required to adhere to a minimum of Gray Hiveless Law and to Parisian city regulations. For a list of local regulations not included in your customary law code, select ‘law.’ ”
Where else could the heart of all have been, reader? In the Enlightenment, Paris was the crown and capital of all things, as if Romanova, Alexandria, and La Trimouille were rolled in one. To live there was to live where all that mattered in the universe could be strolled to in a day, and to be banished thence was to be banished to mud and haystacks. Such a power does not lose its grip upon the world in a mere six hundred years.
“Over here!” Thisbe waved Carlyle over to her table at a corner café, where she had drawn him with the simple lure: <Ockham only said we couldn’t continue at the bash’.>
Despite his late night, Carlyle had risen full of strength that day, for March the twenty-sixth was the birthday of the Great Sage Zoroaster, and the Synaxis of Archangel Gabriel, a day on which men honored their Creator in ages past, today, and honor also those who give us access to Him. “I couldn’t find out any more about this ‘black hole’ than its location,” he said. “Eureka was right about it being very secret.”
Thisbe beamed pride. “I found a service entrance. Shall we?”
They were already at the steps when I realized I hadn’t checked on Carlyle in a while, and found his tracker signal in the worst place in the world. With a hybrid of Papadelias’s clearance codes and J.E.D.D. Mason’s I hacked into Carlyle’s camera feed at once, and saw the stairs before him, period laundry flapping on the lines above. Blame came first. I blamed Ockham for consenting to let Martin’s team investigate the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’. I blamed Papadelias for sending them. I blamed the thief behind the Black Sakura affair. I even blamed Julia Doria-Pamphili, as if Carlyle stumbling in on Bridger four days earlier had somehow been her fault for sending him. I blamed myself above all. I did not, oddly enough, blame Carlyle or Thisbe—Carlyle in my mind was like a child’s ball tossed toward a pit, helpless unless another player intervenes. And Thisbe was … Thisbe by nature could not resist the scent of secrets. How could I stop them? That was my only question. There had to be a way to stop them.
It was an old town chateau, vast in its way but cramped between its neighbors, as if the wings of a sprawling palace had been picked up and stacked within one crowded lot, like building blocks carefully packed to fit back into the box. Rows of arched or pedimented windows had not been altered since the days when architects worked with sketches of ancient temples on one side of the desk and tracings of flowers on the other. The columns, moldings, and tracery were fluted stone, the doors and windows ornamented with ivy-fine iron. Double and triple staircases waltzed one around another up the façade like the petaled fabric of a wedding dress. Humans have decorated things ever since cave dwellers first learned to weave, or to fire clay to hardness, gracing a pitcher with figures, a shawl with stripes. I think an ancient craftsman considered each creation a capsule of his immortality: so long as future ages see this work and speak its maker’s name, I am eternal. Only in the ages when we slogged through labor eager for our play did we degenerate to mass-production and boring houses. The men who crafted Madame’s façade made for themselves a respectable immortality.