Читать книгу: «Day Of Atonement»

2

“You absolute bastard!”

Roux had ignored Moerlen’s calls and, when they finally appeared to stop, assumed he’d gotten the message: there wasn’t a serious magazine or newspaper in the world that would touch the story. A few of the editors had humored Moerlen and admitted that yes, it was curious, wasn’t it? But curious or not, it wasn’t for them. A few that Roux knew personally had laughed in the young man’s face.

Roux said nothing.

Instead, he allowed the journalist to vent his frustration over the phone. He was doing the man a favor, even if he didn’t appreciate it. By letting him get it out of his system it minimized the chances of him doing something stupid. Sooner or later Moerlen would find some small circulation magazine that liked the unexplained and unexplainable, which would buy the story and might even run it, but no one took that kind of nonsense seriously.

“It’s not going to work. You can’t gag me, no matter who you know. I’ll find someone who will publish this story. The truth will come out.”

“Look,” Roux said patiently. “I don’t know what you think you know, but believe me, you don’t. There is no story to sell. Let it go. Get on with your life. Don’t make an enemy of me, son,” Roux said, deliberately patronizing the man on the other end of the line.

“You think you are so clever, don’t you? You think that you have it all worked out. What you don’t get is that the whole world will want to know your story. How can someone live for so long without aging? I’m not naive enough to think you signed some kind of pact with the devil, but something is going on. That is you in those photographs. I know it is. I’ll prove it.”

“I’m sorry that you’ve wasted time on this,” Roux said, signaling an end to the conversation, but the man refused to go.

“Fine. I’ll begin my story by telling everyone how I’ve been muzzled. That makes for a compelling beginning. How someone—you—didn’t want this story out in the public domain. That just makes it more interesting, doesn’t it? Think about it. The fact that the truth is being suppressed is more interesting than the truth itself. Why would you want this kept secret unless you had something to hide? You can try to ridicule me and make me look like a fool, but I won’t be silenced. There are other ways to tell this story. This is the modern world now. Information wants to be free. There are bulletin boards and chat rooms that would devour this type of thing, giving it a life of its own. All I have to do is log in and start to tell the world everything I know. It’s not about money anymore. It’s about the truth. You’ve misjudged me, Mr. Roux, if you think that all I care about is money. I didn’t turn up on your doorstep trying to blackmail you. I came looking for answers.”

“And that was a mistake,” Roux said, then hung up.

Moerlen was right; the world was changing, and changing faster than it had for decades before. It was already smaller than it had been even twenty years ago with the pernicious invasion of television, but now with so many people having access to computers and those machines somehow connecting like some giant message network, it was so much more dangerous for a man like him.

This was escalating too quickly. The risk now was that it would slip out of his control. There were strings he could pull, more favors he could call in, but once the story had a life of its own there was no way he could put that genie back in the bottle. And that was what those bulletin boards and chat rooms promised to do.

Which meant he had to find another way to stop the story.

He needed to speak to someone who understood this electronic world, and the very real damage that could be done if he were to be exposed. There was one obvious choice, but given that they hadn’t talked for longer than Moerlen had been alive, it wasn’t exactly an easy call to make. The last time they’d been together Garin Braden had tried to kill him. The same thing had happened the time before. A third time and he’d start to take it personally.

He dialed the number, but he was forwarded straight to voice mail.

“Call me,” he said, then hung up.

There was nothing more to say.

Garin—his former pupil—would recognize his voice, and understand just how important it was that they talk simply because he’d swallowed his pride and reached out.

He thought about ignoring the situation and hoping the mess would just go away. The more he fought against it, the more obvious it was he had something to hide, after all. But what if it didn’t go away? What if those damned photographs led to more journalists banging on his door, asking more and more questions he couldn’t answer? He hadn’t asked for this life, even if, looking around him at the riches he had assembled across the centuries, it might look like a blessing rather than a curse. All it would take was the wrong person digging deep enough and everything would begin to unravel. The last thing he wanted to do was to have to begin a new life somewhere else. It was getting harder and harder to do that in this era of powerful computers and international cooperation.

His world, and Garin’s, was in danger of falling apart.

He punched a number on his phone again.

“Mr. Moerlen,” he said before the man on the other end of the line had had a chance to say hello. “You are right, we should meet. I will be in Paris in a couple of hours.”

“I’m so glad you’ve come to your senses, Mr. Roux. But things have changed since the last time we spoke.”

“How so?” Roux asked, not liking the sound of this.

“Remuneration, Mr. Roux.”

“Ah, so despite all of your protestations, this is about money, then? I’m disappointed.”

“Don’t be. I’m a child of the modern age. The modern age, as I’m sure you have noticed, is an expensive place to live. Let’s make it the top of the Eiffel Tower shall we?”

Moerlen named a time and hung up.

Roux wondered how much this was going to cost him. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the money. He had plenty of money, but would it ever be enough to guarantee his privacy? Pay the blackmailer once and then what? Expect him to be good for his word and never turn up on the doorstep again looking for another handout? Blackmail was a dirty business. There could never be an end to it.

Which, unfortunately for Moerlen, meant it needed to end very differently.

* * *

IT WAS A long climb.

There were a dozen tourists already on the viewing platform by the time Roux reached it.

There was no sign of Patrice Moerlen.

Roux’s plane had been refueled and would be ready to leave Orly Airport at a moment’s notice if things went the way he assumed they would. He would need to distance himself from the city for a while. A glance at his watch, an eerily precise Patek Philippe chronograph, showed that he was almost five minutes early. He hated to be early for anything; time spent waiting around was time wasted. Perhaps it was because he had so much of it he hoarded it?

A couple of tourists glanced in his direction, no doubt wondering why he had made the dizzying climb up the iron stairs and wasn’t leaning over the rail to take in the view across the city.

“Are you afraid of heights?” a small boy with a thick American accent asked him. “You can’t fall out you know. You’d have to climb and jump because of the railings, so it’s really safe.”

Roux forced a smile.

“That’s good to know.”

The boy’s mother took hold of his arm and pulled him away, muttering something about not talking to strangers.

Roux checked his watch again. Ninety seconds. Still no sign of Moerlen. And no sign of him on the stairs below, working his way up to the platform. This wasn’t good. He couldn’t control the situation. He didn’t like it when he couldn’t control the situation. The elevator doors opened behind him.

Another handful of tourists emerged, but the journalist wasn’t among them.

As the last of them stepped onto the platform, his phone rang.

He still wasn’t used to the fact that technology had advanced so quickly over the past few years that it was possible to carry a phone around wherever you were in the world, even if reception was patchy.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“I’m at the foot of the tower.”

“I’m not in the mood for games, Mr. Moerlen. You said the observation platform,” Roux said. “I am on the observation platform, you are not. How am I supposed to trust you if you can’t even keep this simple agreement? This does not auger well for our relationship.”

“What can I say? I changed my mind. I wanted to know how serious you were. Now I know.”

“Serious? I’m trying to save you from wasting any more of your life, and in the process ending your career, but it looks like you are intent on leading me off on some wild-goose chase. I don’t appreciate being treated like an idiot.”

“Save me?” Moerlen had the temerity to laugh at him. “Save yourself, you mean. You misjudged me, Mr. Roux. It was never about the money. I’ve only ever been interested in the truth. And you’ve just given it to me. Goodbye.”

Roux pressed against the viewing window, knowing there was no hope of being able to spot the damned journalist so far below.

People milled around like so many ants on the ground below. He’d read somewhere that if a person dropped a centime on its edge from this height it would cut through a man, splitting him in two. He had a problem. If he didn’t do something about Moerlen now, he might not get the opportunity again before it was too late. He had to stop that story getting out. His privacy afforded him a certain standard of living. Exposed, his life could never be the same again. It really was as simple as that. Moerlen, consciously or not, had forced his hand.

Behind him, the elevator doors began to close. He moved quickly. Two strides, three, and he reached out, sliding his hand between the doors before they could shut. He stepped inside. The silence was punctuated by the occasional disapproving tut from the woman whose boy had spoken to him before.

Roux said nothing.

He waited out the short descent, then pushed his way through the doors before they were fully open, elbowing between the next wave of tourists eager to make their way up to the observation platform without the climb.

He couldn’t see Moerlen; not that there was any guarantee the journalist had ever been there, no matter what he’d said. But if there was the slightest chance he was there, maybe watching from the safety of a nearby café to note how Roux reacted to his taunt, he had to try everything he could. If the guy wanted him to beg, then he’d beg. If he wanted to negotiate some exclusive deal to his story, then he’d negotiate it, but only if he could control it. That was what it was all about now—control.

He tried the journalist’s number again, listening for some telltale ring and all the time he turned through three hundred and sixty degrees, scanning the faces around him. Moerlen didn’t answer.

But Roux could hear a phone ringing.

He moved his own cell phone away from his ear and started to walk toward the sound.

He pushed through a family, barging between mother and father and sending the kids scattering. The commotion caused heads to turn. Roux saw one in particular, a reflexive glance followed by the fight or flight instinct kicking in.

The man ran.

“Wait!” Roux shouted.

More heads turned in his direction, everyone in the crowd thinking the call was for them.

The man didn’t stop.

He ducked his head and quickened his pace, pushing through the gathered tourists as he aimed for the open spaces of the square and the streets beyond where he hoped to disappear.

Roux tried to keep up with him but people kept getting in the way, clustering around the shadow of the tower, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the world. He shouted again, his voice carrying over the heads of the tourists, but Moerlen had worked himself into open space and began to run.

He had no intention of talking.

Moerlen offered another frantic glance over his shoulder to be sure he was leaving Roux behind. There was nothing the old man could do. He couldn’t keep up. In that moment, caught looking back, Moerlen’s foot slipped and his ankle turned as he reached the road, stumbling on the curb. He couldn’t stop himself as fear had him staggering out into the line of oncoming traffic.

A horn blared, harsh, panicked, but it was too late.

Bones and metal met in a collision. There could only ever be one outcome.

The car—a blue Peugeot—slammed on its brakes and started to slide. The car behind it, slower to react, rammed into its trunk to a cacophony of crunching metal and breaking glass.

Moerlen was the only one who didn’t make a sound.

But then, dead men had little to say.

Roux watched as people rushed toward the journalist, the first few to help while others gathered around, horrified. Roux heard someone call out that he was a doctor, the words parting the throng like the Red Sea to allow him through. Roux followed in his wake, knowing that the idiot was dead. It had never been meant to end this way. Yes, he had wanted him stopped, but he hadn’t wanted him hurt.

A woman in a heavy knit cardigan knelt over Moerlen, her hand on his throat.

She looked up at the crowd.

There was a moment when she might have said anything else, when it could have played out differently, but then she told them, “Il est mort.” And it was final.

Roux had known it from the angle of the fall, the way his body twisted on the black surface of the Parisian road.

This wasn’t what he’d wanted. All he’d wanted was a quiet life, the journalist out of it. Peace. It wasn’t a lot to ask, just to be left alone.

Roux heard the Doppler-effect sound of sirens approaching, still streets away. Someone had to have called for help. The crush of bodies eased, people moving back as if the man’s condition might be contagious. The doctor knelt beside the body.

There was a briefcase lying in the middle of the road, having spun out of the dead man’s grip.

The photographs were almost certainly still inside.

Moerlen had been emphatic that they weren’t his only copies. It was irrelevant if they were or weren’t. If the police opened that case and saw all of those versions of the old man’s face, it could only lead to questions. Roux worked his way around the crowd to the briefcase and picked it up, careful not to draw attention to himself.

As the paramedics arrived, he slipped away through the slowly thinning crowd.