The greatest difficulties Oshima and there team encountered as they entered Paris were driving and parking. They stayed on the periphique, the multilane ring-road that circled Paris, for one full circumference before managing to find the right exit, and emerged shaken, convinced that French drivers were a special group of maniacs. This judgment was vindicated as they sped through narrow side streets, and were hooted at by impatient Parisians every time they attempted to slow down. It was confirmed when they tired to find a place to park.
As a safe haven, Libya had its merits, thought the Lethal Angel, but with its limited traffic and vast open spaces, it was poor training for the cut and thrust of congested mainland Europe.
The group consoled themselves with the prospect of a good French meal. Unfortunately, they arrived at that hour in the evening when every Parisian simultaneously decides to eat and will brook no interference from amateurs like foreigners. All the restaurants they tried were full. After the eighth indifferent shrug of rejection, they dined on Big Macs, fries, and chocolate milk shakes at McDonald's.
The food reminded them of Tokyo.
* * * * *
Paris, France
May 29
The salle d'armes had been established in the late sixteenth century — about the time that dueling with a thin blade had become a serious pastime in France — and had continued to be well-patronized, with only a few brief interruptions, since that time.
During the revolution, since skill with a sword was considered to be an aristocratic attribute, the building had temporarily become a brothel. During the Nazi occupation, it had been an officers' club. Those interludes apart, the salle had operated continuously for roughly four hundred years as a place where one human being learned to kill or defeat another human being with a long piece of pointed steel.
Christian de Guevain considered the salle a fine monument to the human condition.
The building was in the fashionable 16th Arrondissement, conveniently situated near the Bosi de Vincennes military barracks, and was no more than a few minutes from his bank, his mistress, his home, and his favorite restaurant, de Guevain could work, fence, sport, eat well, and be back in time to put the kids to bed and watch TV with his wife, if he was so inclined, without straining himself excessively. He had, he considered, a most civilized existence.
He had taken Fitzduane's cautionary words to heart, though without enthusiasm. His black Citroën was armored and was driven by an armed bodyguard. A second bodyguard sat in the front passenger seat. The windows were tinted to hinder recognition. He switched cars and routes regularly. He no longer fenced at a time when the salle was relatively open. Now he fenced outside normal hours with only one or two chosen opponents, and arrangements were made in advance under conditions of some secrecy.
Nonetheless, there were patterns in his life. Three or four times a week — although there was some variation as to day and time — de Guevain could be found in the salle. He was determined to hone his skill so that he could defeat Fitzduane. de Guevain had mastered the longbow and was already way superior to the Irishman. Now he was determined to do the same with the sword. He was fiercely competitive by nature. And besides, he enjoyed the sheer speed and elegance of the sport, and the exhilaration of the exercise.
The black Citroën entered the Rue Jarnac and stopped outside the fray cut-stone façade of the salle. The passenger bodyguard got out and punched a code into the digital lock. The double doors opened and the Citroën entered the courtyard inside. Behind them, the heavy doors locked shut. de Guevain felt a sense of reassurance. He was secure in familiar territory. Followed by his bodyguards, he bounded up the worn stone stairs to the salle at the top. The long room had a wood block floor and arched ceiling. The walls were lined with historic weapons and old engravings. The names of the masters were inscribed in a frieze that ran around the top of the paneling. To de Guevain, the room was the essence of his France: a sense of purpose, élan, glory, the strength of tradition, the reassurance of history, the continuity of privilege, a manifestation of power.
The huge room was empty. "Make yourself at home, boys," said de Guevain. "I'm going to change." He headed for the locker room where Chappuy would be suiting up. Pierre, one of the bodyguards, moved to check the locker room, but de Guevain waved him aside impatiently. Vincent, his partner, smiled and took a seat. He was less intrusive.
Sometimes this security business could get out of hand, thought de Guevain. He was of two minds whether to continue it at all. He did not particularly enjoy conducting all his affairs under close scrutiny. God alone knew what would turn up in some glossy magazine in the years ahead. "The Private Life of a Paris Banker — by his bodyguard." He shuddered. France had privacy laws, but the rest of the continent was full of media that loved that kind of thing.
The locker room, a bright white-painted space divided into three aisles by rows of tall wooden lockers dating from an earlier century, had a tiled floor and a high beamed ceiling. He could hear the sound of dripping as he entered. Someone had obviously not turned a shower off. And yet the sound seemed closer.
He could smell something. His skin prickled. He would never forget that odor. He had first encountered it as a young man a quarter of a century earlier. It brought him back to Algeria, to the paratroops, to the broken bodies of the freshly dead. It reminded him of the slaughter on Fitzduane's island.
Blood. Death, Recent death.
Help was at hand, but his mouth was suddenly completely dry. Something caught his eye. He looked up. A thin braided climber's rope hung down from one of the beams. It was taut, as if something was suspended from it. He could not see what it was, because the rope terminated in the next aisle.
de Guevain licked his lips as best he could. As if compelled, he walked slowly down his aisle of lockers and turned into the aisle where the rope hung. He could hear a coughing sound from the salle, but his mind was focused on what he was about to see.
A huge irregular pool of blood stained the tiles and leached under the lockers. A bloody pile of human matter was at its center and snaked upward. de Guevain's eye followed it. The naked corpse of his fencing partner, Chappuy, was suspended upside down from the rope. The flesh was completely white, virtually drained of blood. The body had been cut open with one blow from the groin to the throat. Entrails hung to the ground.
de Guevain was momentarily numb with shock and fear. He gave a cry of desperation and horror, more animal than human, and ran from the locker room into the salle.
The action was futile. His bodyguards, Pierre and Vincent, the marks of bullet perforations from automatic-weapons fire clearly visible, lay sprawled in bloody heaps.
He was facing a semicircle of five people. Four held silenced submachine guns. At the apex was a woman, a very beautiful Japanese woman.
She held a sword.
* * * * *