Part 2 (1/2)

Her eyes lost their focus for a second. Then the intensity was back. Behind her, I could see Metatron's gigantic appendages bursting out of the broken windows of the cathedral, thras.h.i.+ng in the air.

Johnny. Johnny. Johnny. Her voice echoed and pounded me. It sounded like a wail, but all that time she didn't move, didn't s.h.i.+ft her gaze from me, only this voice coming out of nothing and into my head and b.l.o.o.d.y Metatron and the full moon and I thought, This is it, this is where death comes.

”Johnny was good to me,” she said. It took me a moment to realise she had spoken that out loud. She spoke French with a southerner accent. Her voice had a petulant tone. She said, ”He was a gentleman.”

”There are so few,” I said, and thought she might smile, but she didn't.

Johnny is gone. The voice came from her, too, I knew that, and yet it wasn't. Was she channelling? If she was, I didn't want to meet the thing on the other end.

”Johnny said we could go to the Bahamas,” Sophie said. ”He said he would buy us a house with coconut trees and I would only dance for him.”

Fool, said the voice, and yet it had a mournful tone. And again, with that awful laughter, He dies.

I tried to move towards her but my perspective changed; the walls were melting around me in a swampy green; the ceiling dribbled and fell in drops to the floor, and where I stepped in it, it turned to blood.

”Who is dying?” I said. My voice came out thick and indistinct, as if I were speaking through water. The air felt alive around me, elastic, pliable.

”We were going to be so happy. Only he had to go off in a hurry. He said it will solve all of our problems. That this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, like something from heaven.”

Shut up! The voice, raging, and I was falling into a vortex of dark colours, sucked into the floor.

Concentrate. Breathe. Control.

I opened my eyes and I was back in the hallway, standing the same distance away from Sophie. I didn't like what she was saying. An opportunity from heaven. I wondered if Eldershott knew what he had got himself into. I wondered if I did.

Can you feel it? said that awful voice, and there was terrible delight in it.

And I could, all of a sudden. Like an explosion of pain, humiliation, torment, fear--he was like a bear wounded and still struggling as its death was being carried out.

I could feel it, and it was terrible. And I watched it happen, and was unable to turn away.

There were cracks in the cathedral now and, as I watched, Metatron's body shuddered once, fracturing the entire building, and then he was gone, and Sophie turned around to me and the voice laughed and then she jumped out of the window.

It took me a fraction of a second to get to the window, but she was already in the air and then she disappeared, just disappeared in a final distortion that seemed to shake the world one last time, and she was gone and I was standing in an ordinary house, looking at an ordinary street, and Metatron's gigantic corpse flopped lifelessly through the broken windows of Notre Dame.

Chapter Six.

”Two pieces of luggage are permanently lost.”

I was standing by the public phones, close to the Shakespeare and Co bookshop, looking over at Notre Dame. The place had an abandoned aura, the charm of the Archangel banished. It felt human again.

I didn't bother with a cipher, and one public phone is the same as the next. It was as secure as anything else right then and I was in a hurry.

”I am terribly sad to hear of your trouble.” It was Berlyne again, on duty in the communications room. ”How may we compensate you?”

Two pieces of luggage: a dancer and a bartender. ”Oh,” I said, as if the thought has just struck me, ”there was a third piece of luggage I lost recently. It was very precious. Heavenly.”

And an Archangel. Paris was yet again without a Presence.

”I see.”

”I want a representative of the company to meet me in person,” I said. ”As soon as possible.”

It took him quite a while to get back to me. In the square in front of the cathedral there was a crowd, held back less by police tape and more by several large policemen. I wondered how they were going to conduct this particular investigation.

”Tomorrow morning.” he said.

”Now look--” I started, but he interrupted me to give me an address. ”You can stay there tonight, if you like. On the company expense. We hope you accept it as partial compensation for your troubles.”

He hung up.

I got a cab. Someone would have to inform Avis where I'd left the car and arrange for it to be returned. Right now, it seemed the safest bet for Anna Krojer to disappear.

The address I was given turned out to be a Moroccan restaurant near the Gare du Nord. As I went through the doors the smell of cooking hit me, and I realised how hungry I was, and how tired.

The organism needed to recharge, demanded fuel.

A short, olive-skinned man with a bald patch hurried towards me with open arms. ”Mademoiselle! Please, come in, sit, please!” He ushered me to a corner table and I sat down, facing the door.

”My eldest son's wife.” He said it with another big show of hands, speaking to the diners who were paying him no attention.

”Mohammed Giza,” he said in a low voice, shaking my hand. ”Don't worry, you're safe here.”

”Could I have some food?”

He must have seen how hungry I was. ”Of course.”

In moments, a large tray of couscous with roast lamb and a thick vegetable stew was deposited on my table, together with a carafe of water.

Recharging. I concentrated on the taste of the food, drank gla.s.ses of water.

They brought me another carafe, and more lamb.

When I felt as if I were human again I sat back, and after a couple of minutes a small pot of thick, dark coffee was put in front of me, together with a plate of honeyed pastry.

I chewed on the sweet, flaking pastry and drank coffee and felt my mind return to something resembling functionality.

I had a cryptographer missing. I had his girlfriend, who seemed to have strange powers and two minds, and who was also, though more recently, missing. Finally, I had a dead Archangel--the second in as many months.

Could they be linked? Could my a.s.sa.s.sination of Raphael have played a part, however remotely, in Metatron's killing?

I didn't like the picture I was coming up with. I thought, They'd better send me someone I can work with; not Reynolds, he could get me killed; not Ramsey--he once let an executive fall to the Russians because he wanted to feed them misinformation--not Feltham, she has more dead Executives than a barrel of puppies. But there was nothing to gain by sitting there worrying about it, so I just sipped my coffee and watched the door and tried to put the pieces together and couldn't.