“Now where are we?” Hilts asked sourly as they pulled off the road.
“Halfway up Les Sarrasins,” replied Simpson in an excellent French accent. “A mountain.”
The headlights washed over a strange, bulbous-looking structure seemingly built right into the side of the mountain. There was a dry stone wall on either side of the concrete bulge, and in the middle of that was a large steel door studded with huge rivets. The structure was clearly very old, the ancient cement dark and spawled, the faзade crumbled, the doorway caked with rust.
“What’s that?” Finn said.
“Technically it’s referred to as un gros ouvrage, a large fortification. An underground fort containing roughly three hundred and fifty men. This is the main entrance. If you look closely you’ll see what’s left of the narrow-gauge railway tracks that used to bring ammunition and supplies up. There are several miles of tunnels and pillboxes cut into the rock. From here they could pick off anybody coming up the valley. On the backside there’s a route the climbers call the Observatory. Well named. It was designed to be an early-warning outpost for an Italian invasion.” Simpson shook his head. “Never happened, of course. Mussolini had many qualities but bottle wasn’t one of them.”
“Bottle?” said Hilts.
“Courage,” answered Simpson. “What you Yanks generally refer to as balls.” The potbellied man in the tweed jacket pulled the Mercedes to a halt and switched off the engine. He left the headlights on, pointing directly at the rivet-pebbled iron door.
“Why dump our friend in the trunk here?” asked Hilts.
“It’s really quite difficult to dispose of a body these days,” said the elderly man. He leaned across the seat and fished a flashlight out of the glove compartment, then got out of the car. Finn and Hilts climbed out after him and went around to the trunk. “Police everywhere, closed-circuit cameras, quality-control officers in the meatpacking plants. Hard to get any kind of privacy.” Simpson opened the trunk and glanced down at Badir. “Your average forensic expert will have a field day with him once he’s discovered. Not like the old days. Bodies floating down the Seine and up the Spree and no one really took a second look.”
Together Hilts and Finn swung the body out of the car and manhandled it to the big iron door under Simpson’s direction. The door was actually slightly ajar and it was easy enough to get it open. Stepping inside, Hilts swung the flashlight around. Except for the concrete floor the entire vestibule was sheathed in the same studded iron as the door, walls, ceiling, and floor. It was like being in the belly of an old battleship.
“Down the stairs,” instructed Simpson, pointing with the flashlight. At the far end of the twenty-by-twenty-foot room was a massive cage elevator, like something out of a coal mine. Beside it was a circular staircase. Simpson went down first to light the way while Finn and Hilts followed with Badir, grunting under the deadweight.
“You really think he’s going to be found in a place like this?” Hilts panted. “I mean, who the hell even knows this place exists?”
“Oh, good Lord! Thousands of people. Bunker freaks, military types, engineers.”
“Bunker freaks?”
“Rather like people who play video games or chart the lives of serial killers on the Internet, then chat about it. Obsessive. There’s a whole raft of them who make pilgrimages to old underground installations all over the world. They organize tours.”
“How did you know about it?” Finn asked. “Are you, ah, a bunker freak by any chance?”
“I’ve been here before, actually,” Simpson answered. They reached the next level. It was a long, low-ceilinged tunnel that led off left and right. Like the room upstairs, this one was sheathed in iron plate. A set of miniature railway tracks ran down the center of the concrete floor. There was garbage everywhere, fast-food containers, beer cans, and broken bottles. Someone had made a makeshift bar in one corner and there was a rotting old mattress against the far wall. “I came here with Bernal and Solly Zuckerman before the war.”
“Bernal?” said Hilts. “Solly Zuckerman?” He and Finn swung Badir onto the mattress with a thump. Finn shuddered and wiped her hands against her jeans. The iron room was cold and drafty, a fitting tomb.
“John Bernal. He was the man who started me spying at Cambridge. He was also my physics tutor. Solly Zuckerman was an expert in primate anatomy at Oxford. Strange pair.”
“What were a primate anatomist from Oxford and a Cambridge physicist doing in an old bunker in France?” Finn asked.
“Blowing up monkeys to see what happened,” said Simpson. He slipped on a pair of thin leather gloves and started covering Badir with a layer of rubbish. “It was 1938. They were in charge of designing air-raid shelters for the War Office. I think Bernal was talking to agents from Moscow as well. Topping the local birds as well, sly old fox he was. I was their assistant. Their young red acolyte, you might say.”
“What did you do for them?” said Hilts.
“I was the one who actually blew up the monkeys,” Simpson replied, tossing an old square of cardboard over the dead man’s ruined face. “Set the charges and all of that. Messy business. Monkey brains all over everything.” He looked down at Badir. The man was almost completely covered with litter. Simpson nodded. “He’ll keep well enough. Hopefully the rats will do some damage, delay identification for a bit.” The white-haired man glanced at his two companions. “Presumably you didn’t think to pick up your passports when you flitted from Milan.”
“No,” said Hilts. “We were in a bit of a rush.”
“Never mind, young fellow. I know a man down the road in Aix-les-Bains who can fix you up with new ones.”
24
The first person to see Aix-les-Bains for what it was worth was probably a Roman centurion on his way into Gaul from Italy to conquer the unruly barbarians. When he mustered out of the army he returned to the pretty lakeside spot, built a pool over the hot springs, called it Aquae Grantianae, and a tradition was born.
Located under the shadow of Mount Revard by the shores of Lake Bourget, the largest body of fresh water in France, the little town of Aix-les-Bains has been soothing the arthritic joints of its wealthy patrons for the last two thousand years. It came into particular favor in the 1880s after a visit from Queen Victoria of England. She decided she liked it so much Her Royal Majesty attempted to buy it from the French government. They graciously declined, then built a casino and a racetrack to further fleece the charming resort’s guests, renaming the hot springs Royale-les-Bains.
Special trains arrived from Paris full of high society who came to paddle on the plage. Steamers churned their way across the English Channel, filled with the straw hat and tennis set intent on wiling away the hot summer months in the refreshing alpine air as wives cheated on husbands, husbands on wives, and best friends on each other while Clara Butt sang “The Keys of Heaven” on the gramophone. It was La Belle Epoque and as with all Йpoques it faded away like an old soldier, the gilt in the ceilings beginning to peel, the marble floors cracking, and the pipes carrying the hot-spring water making a terrible clanking noise and sounding much like the joints of the patrons it had once serviced. The small and ancient town hidden away in the mountains was virtually forgotten, which was exactly why Mr. Liam Alexander Pyx, the document provider, lived there; that and the town’s proximity to his numbered bank accounts less than a hundred miles away in Geneva, Switzerland.
Finn Ryan awoke as the first pink rays of the sun rose over the mountains and craggy hills that marked the edge of the French Alps of the Haute Savoie. Somehow she had made her way to the backseat of the Mercedes somewhere along the way, and Hilts was now sitting in the front with Simpson, who was still behind the wheel.