Yesterday, they stole. Today, they have guns.
Barbaric hordes are surrounding the capital. It will only take a spark for the city to be besieged, while awaiting the final assault which will have the last privileged few taking refuge on the Ile Saint Louis or the Ile de la Cité, in the middle of the Seine, blowing up the bridges behind them. In the glow of the fires that will devour the nights, the city of fire and blood will plunge into the chaos of a future with no tomorrow. So yes, again yes, Paris smells danger and sends out an alarm signal. Paris is calling. Paris is calling with all the strength it has left. Paris is calling for other cities to help before it’s too late.
‘You were meant to call me, Momo. Did you forget?’
‘No, sir, but I couldn’t. I was busy, I couldn’t find the time, you’ll have to forgive me…’
‘Oh, so you found a job? An honest job, I mean?’
‘Don’t swear, sir!’
‘Ha, that’s a good one, well done! I knew you were a good grass and now I see you can be witty too. So tell me, am I going to have to do without your services, Momo?’
‘Well, sir, it won’t be like before, sir, yeah, I’m sorry but…’
‘But you’ve found someone who pays better than me, that’s all. I get it, I’m not stupid, I only hope you’re not barking up the wrong tree. They’re saying second-hand Kalashnikovs bring in more than dope these days, Momo?’
‘I don’t know, sir. Seems so, yeah. But then some people would say anything to get attention.’
‘Momo, you disappoint me, you know that?’
‘I’m not a grass any more, sir!’
Alone and last to leave the boardroom, the woman with the scarf slowly closes the open file in front of her as if sealing a tomb. The speaker’s lyrical flights have scared her. His last words are still ringing in her ears, like a haunting refrain: Paris is calling for help…
But who will hear?
Translation © Lulu Norman and Ros Schwartz
THE FLÂNEUR OF LES ARCADES DE L’OPÉRA by MICHAEL MOORCOCK
THE FIRST CHAPTER: IN THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS
In all the many cases investigated by Sir Seaton Begg of the Home Office Metatemporal Investigative Agency, one of the most curious concerned his co-operation with his opposite number, Commissaire Lapointe of the Sureté du Temps Perdu, involving not only the albino gentleman connected to a royal house whom we call ‘Monsieur Zenith’, but also members of an infamous terrorist gang, a long-dead enemy of Begg’s German cousins and the well-known adventuress, Mrs Una Persson. As Begg’s friend, the pathologist Dr ‘Taffy’ Sinclair, remarked, ‘For a while it seemed that Chaos, in all its unchained wildness, had been let loose through every region of our vast and complex multiverse, so that even now we cannot be certain whether it was contained or whether we are merely experiencing a moment of relative harmony in a howling cacophony…’
‘I cannot tell you, my old friend, how delighted I am that you should come over at such short notice.’
Lapointe, his assistant Bardot, Taffy and Begg were wandering through the pale gold autumn light of the Luxembourg Gardens. The chestnut trees were shedding dark reds and yellows and the flower beds were full of beauty on the verge of succumbing to winter. Lapointe had thought it expedient for them to talk in the open air where there was less chance of being overheard.
‘The train? Was it comfortable?’
In his light tweed sports jacket, white shirt and well-pressed flannels, Lapointe had a bulky, stiff-necked, slightly professorial air, with a great wave of grey hair untidily arranged over his pale forehead. His deep green eyes, angular features and heavy body gave him the air of a large amiable dinosaur. Begg knew his opposite number had one of the sharpest minds on the Continent. Single-handedly Lapointe had captured the ex-police inspector turned crook: George Marsden Plummer (alias ‘Maigret’ in France) who had once been Lapointe’s chief. Lapointe had also been the one to bring ‘Fantomas’ to book at last. Together he and Begg had tracked down ‘Jock Collyn’, otherwise known as The Master Mummer, and been instrumental in his lingering to this day on Devil’s Island. Inspector Bardot, on the other hand, had no spectacular record, but was much admired at the Quai des Orfèvres for his methodology and his coolness under pressure. Small, dark, he seemed permanently and privately amused. He wore a buttoned three-piece grey suit and what was evidently an English school tie.
The two Home Office men had come from London via the recently opened Subchannel Excavation, whose roads and railway lines now connected the two nations, a material addition to the decades-old Entente Cordiale, an alliance which had been cemented by the signing of a European-wide Mutual Co-operation Pact, which, with the Universal Civil Rights Act, united all the Great Powers, including the Confederated Forty-Seven States of America, in one mighty alliance, sharing common laws and goals.
‘Perfectly, thank you,’ said Begg, speaking excellent French. Lapointe had put the STP’s private express at his disposal. The journey had taken less than an hour and a half from London to Paris. ‘I must say, Lapointe, that you French chaps have your priorities well in hand – rapid and comfortable transport and excellent food among them. We had a superb lunch en route.’
The French detective acknowledged this compliment with a small self-deprecating shrug.
Taffy, taller than the others, murmured his own discreet appreciation.
‘I gather, Dr Sinclair, that you are recently back from the Republic of Texas?’ Lapointe courteously acknowledged the pathologist, whose expertise was internationally famous.
‘Indeed.’ Sinclair removed his wide panama and wiped his glistening head with a large Voysey-patterned Liberty’s handkerchief, which seemed an uncharacteristic part of his otherwise muted wardrobe. Save for his taste in haberdashery, nobody would have guessed that during his time at Oxford he had been a leading light in the post-Pre-Raphaelite revival and that women had swooned over his massive head of hair and melancholy features almost as much as over his poetry. Like his friend and colleague, he wore a cream-coloured linen suit, but whereas Begg’s tie was a rather flamboyant bow, Sinclair’s neck was adorned by his old school colours. Indeed, his tie was identical to Bardot’s. The two had been contemporaries at Blackfriars School and later had attended the Sorbonne before Bardot, eldest son of a somewhat infamous Aquilonian house, entered the service of the Quai d’Orsay and Sinclair, after a spell in the army, decided to follow his father into medicine and the civil service.
‘You are familiar with the shopping arcades which radiate off the Place de L’Opéra?’ murmured Lapointe once they were strolling down a broad avenue of chestnut trees towards the Gardens’ rue Guynemer entrance. ‘And you are aware, I am sure, of the reputation the area has at night, where assignations of the heart are pursued and men and women of a certain inclination are said to come together.’
‘I have read something of the place,’ said Begg, while Taffy nodded gravely.
‘These arcades are the most complex in Paris, of course, and extend into and beneath the surrounding buildings, in turn becoming a warren of corridors and suites of chambers connected to the catacombs. They have never been fully mapped. It is said that some poor devils have been lost there for eternity, cursed to wander forever beneath the city.’