He finished just as the young man slammed down the phone with an audible "Merde!" and angrily stomped outside. A woman or money or both, Lang guessed, stepping over to a copier old enough to have served one of the French kings with a fairly low Louis number. The insertion of coins produced a protest of whines and clicks as though the machine resented being disturbed at this hour. Lang copied the written pages, stuffing the duplicates into a pocket. The original sheets went into the stamped envelope and then into the international mail slot.
Lang got the prints at the photo shop, gave them a cursory glance and drove back to the hotel. There, he examined the snapshots in detail. The differences in distance between the two locations from which he had shot the pictures made it difficult to tell if both groups depicted the same spot on Cardou's slope. Difficult but not impossible. A patch of sketchy green in the photos taken from the roadside could be the grove of stunted cedars recognizable from the shots taken from the tower. A white streak in the more distant view matched a stream of crumbled and fallen white rock. He studied the pictures taken from the tower, particularly anything, including shadows, that looked symmetrical or regular in shape.
He was disappointed to see nothing that could not have been created by wind, rain and the exfoliation of rock over the centuries.
Tomorrow he would inspect Cardou in person.
4
Toulouse-Blagnac International Airport
2330 hours
The airport terminal was closed for the night, the next regular passenger flight not scheduled until the 08:24 from Other than a bored watchman who was far too interested in his portable television to pay any particular attention to private aircraft, no one observed the Gulfstream IV when its tires squeaked on the runway and its twin jet engines spooled down as it taxied to the tarmac. Nor was there anyone to notice the slick black Citroën slide out of the shadows like a hawk gliding down on its prey.
There was the pop of an air seal as the aircraft's door swung open and wheezed down. Four men came down the steps, the younger three each carrying a small suitcase. From the care each man exercised with his luggage, an observant witness would have surmised that the bags contained something other than clean shirts.
The oldest of the quartet exited the plane last, carrying nothing other than a raincoat slung over one arm and an air of authority, the manner of a man accustomed to being obeyed. Without a hat, his shoulder-length silver hair reflected what poor light was available. One of the first three deferentially held the Citroën's passenger door open for the older man.
The aircraft's two-man crew stood stiffly on the top step until they were dismissed by a wave of the older man's hand. The plane's door shut and the idling engines began to whine. By the time the Citroën was driving through the airport's open security gate, the Gulfstream was screaming up into the night. It banked sharply to the west and was gone, its strobe lights fading like dying comets.
The older man was seated next to the automobile's female driver, the other three in the luxurious backseat.
"Where is he?" the older man asked in unaccented French.
"Asleep in his room," the proprietress of the Hostellier de Rennes-les-Bains answered.
CHAPTER THREE
1
Rennes-les-Bains
Lang had dreams that left him less than rested. As far as he knew, Dawn had never been to this part of France. Yet she had been waiting for him atop Blanchefort. There was a man with her. Lang couldn't see his face but, with that baseless certainty of dreams, he knew it was Saunière.
Lang knew better than to try to figure out what it all meant, other than the hole Dawn had left in the rest of his life would never be filled. Over ten years and not a day passed he didn't think of her. For that matter, rarely did an hour slide by without his seeing her face. Not the Dawn he had married but the dying bundle of bones and flesh in the hospital. It was becoming increasingly difficult to remember the way she looked before she got sick. Even seeing her that way in his dreams left him With teary eyes.
Memory has a sadistic streak. The brilliant sunshine pouring through the window was of some comfort. Hard to be gloomy when he looked into the cloudless sky. Below the hotel, fog covered the Aude Valley, shimmering in the sun like a blanket of silver wool. It would burn off by the time he dressed and had coffee and a croissant.
In the hotel's dining room, Lang sipped coffee strong enough to strip chrome off of a bumper. In front of him was the well-wrinkled photocopy of the Polaroid. It didn't matter that the faces were now blurred and the inscription fuzzy. He knew both by heart. It was the background, the shape and location of the distant mountains, he was trying to memorize.
An hour later, the little Peugeot again struggled to reach the flat space below Blanchefort. Yesterday's tire tracks were partially filled with loose dirt, the erasing effect of the wind. Lang searched for any tracks sharper, more defined, that would tell him someone else had been here. There weren't any.
At the base of the tower, he took a compass bearing and set off towards Cardou. Loose pebbles and scrub growth slowed progress along a saddle of rock. Occasionally, he stopped to check the compass and to make sure the rope loop that held the trenching tool to his belt was secure. Twice he sipped from the water bottle, not so much from thirst but because the motion gave him a chance to survey the surrounding slopes from under the hat's brim without appearing to be looking for anything. He couldn't shake a creepy feeling he was being watched, the sort of intuition the people in horror stories have when the spooky villain is about to strike. The only thing missing was background music building to a crescendo. He had seen no reflection from a distant pair of binoculars, no brush moving without a wind, none of the things that might betray a hidden observer.
Overactive imagination, he told himself, too vivid a memory of the grisly last chapter of Pietro's tale.
A flash of reflected sun gave him a start that nearly brought the croissant back up. He jumped behind a boulder, squinting into the glare for a full minute before realizing he had only seen the morning's light on the windshield of a car far below, on the same road he had been on the day before. If he could see the road, he must be… Yep, he was. A careful look and he could see the cross,,too. The Christ statue was invisible, blending in with the distant trees.
Lang trudged onward until he was standing in the field of scree he had noticed from the tower, loose rock that appeared as a bare spot from the cross. He took the picture of the painting from his wallet and turned it slowly.
The peak to the left, no more than a gray smudge in the distance, had the picture's jagged gap between it and a much closer hill. He leaned over, turning his head to get as close to an upside-down view as possible. The nose wasn't as sharp and the chin had disappeared but the gap could, conceivably, resemble Washington's profile on a quarter. It had been, what, four hundred years or so since Poussin had painted that picture? Plenty of time for geologic change.
This was as good a spot as any.
A very large spot, the size of a football field.
Speaking of which, he had to pick his way around rocks and boulders like a kick returner avoiding tacklers. The goal line was the point where the level space met the edge of Cardou's incline.
Lang stood there for several minutes. One place was slightly steeper than the rest. Steeper, yet the rock was piled just as high. Wouldn't loose stones roll until they reached a flat place? So gravity would seem to indicate.
Lang scrambled over a boulder, leaving a piece of the skin on his knee on a jagged point. Does anyone hear when you curse alone? Maybe not, but it sure made him feel better.