Collette was here, or rather, all that remained of her. He had laid her to rest in the sanctified ground, not to honor her dying wishes or the tenets of her faith, but because his family owned a plot and, should things go wrong this night, his arrangements for his own disposition stipulated that he should be laid here as well, once more at her side. Not that it mattered.
Ashes to ashes…
There was no afterlife, no heaven in which he would find a place in her arms. She was not gazing down upon him, longing for that much delayed rendezvous. She was simply gone.
And if I’m wrong?
But he wasn’t wrong. Because if he was, she would have reached out to him and stayed his hand at the moment in which he had taken the life of the man they both had thought of as their son. If the God to whom she had prayed even in the final hours of her life really existed, He would have sent her, as He sent the angel to Abraham to rescue Isaac from the slaughtering knife. No, there was no longer any doubt in his mind. The entity behind the veil of heaven was no omnipotent, omniscient benefactor, but only a hazy amalgam of humanity’s unconscious superstitions, given life by the awesome unrecognized power of the planet’s magnetic field.
Chiron had been raised in a house divided. His mother, like the woman he had eventually taken as his wife, was a devout believer, while his father, nominally a Roman Catholic, had been a man devoted to secular wisdom. Following the end of the German occupation, the elder Chiron had pushed his son to pursue a life of culture and learning, and the young man’s fascination with both the unrealized potential of atomic power and its horrifying utilization as a weapon, had given him the focus to become both a nuclear scientist and outspoken opponent of weapons proliferation. He now realized that, in his own way, he had been searching for faith as surely as the women in his life. His scriptures were the equations of Einstein, Fermi and Oppenheimer, and in those cryptic texts, he had found the power of God.
And yet, for all that he knew this to be true, here he was at Collette’s grave and standing in the shadow of the cathedral where she and thousands of others had come to pray; Sacré Coeur — the Sacred Heart.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, knowing that she would understand where further words failed him, knowing that she no longer existed save as a memory in his own fractured conscience, knowing even that his apology was not entirely directed at the ghost of his wife. He was also speaking to the presence ostensibly occupying the grand structure atop the Butte Montmartre. In that respect at least, he was heard.
“We’re being followed,” Kismet announced as the Mercedes raced along the Rue Royale. “I noticed him on the bridge. Everyone else is whizzing by us like we don’t belong here.”
Buttrick glanced in the mirror, then over his shoulder. Rather than comment, he quickly signaled and made a right turn at the next intersection. A pair of headlights, which had maintained a constant distance behind them, made a similarly hasty course change.
“Not too subtle about it,” the officer observed. He made another right, onto the Rue Cambon and the trailing vehicle followed suit. “What do you want me to do?”
“I have to take a look at Pierre’s flat,” Kismet answered, “but there’s no reason we have to let our shadow know that.”
“What are you proposing?” asked Marie.
“We split up. Next time we make a turn, slow down long enough for me to jump out. There’s a Metro stop not too far from Pierre’s building. I should be able to get there and start searching the place in about half an hour. Meanwhile, you can take our friend back there on a scenic tour of the city. After that, go to your place, Marie, and wait for me to call.”
“And what if this guy decides to do more than just tail us?”
Kismet met Buttrick’s stare. “Do what you can. If I can’t reach you at Marie’s, I’ll know something came up. Leave a message for me at UNESCO if you can.”
Marie scribbled her phone number on a torn scrap of paper and gave it to him, along with a quick kiss. “Good luck.”
Buttrick whipped the Mercedes left onto a narrow side street then took the first right onto an unmarked but short street and pumped the brakes. When the car slowed to a mere 20 kilometers per hour, Kismet opened the door and rolled from the passenger seat onto the pavement. The impact exacerbated latent aches in his extremities, but he pushed through the agony and scrambled for cover behind a trash receptacle. The engine of the rental car revved loudly in the confined area as Buttrick hastened away, and no sooner had the Mercedes turned the corner at the far end, when twin spots of brilliance appeared at the other. A rust-colored sedan, moving too fast for him to identify make or model, raced down the cramped street and exited onto the main thoroughfare, all within the space of a few seconds.
He lingered in the shadows of alley a moment, searching for signs of a second trailing vehicle. Typically, intelligence and police agencies trying to maintain contact with a mobile suspect would employ as many as four different automobiles in constant radio contact, to avoid the kind of amateurish mistakes that had alerted Kismet to the presence of the tail. But with no other vehicles in evidence, he rose from his hiding place and moved in the same direction the other cars had gone.
The street opened onto the Rue de Rivoli, which ran along the northern edge of the Jardin des Tuileries. The extensive garden was just a part of the large city park which included such famous Parisian landmarks as the Arc de Triomphe and the Musée du Louvre. Traffic on the boulevard was constant and steady; if there was a backup surveillance vehicle, it had already moved on. This revelation prompted Kismet to eschew his stated plan to use the transit system in favor of a more straightforward means of transportation. He flagged down a passing taxi and in flawless French, gave the driver Chiron’s address.
The building, located on an insignificant thoroughfare which connected the Rue de Richelieu and the Rue St. Roch, was just as Kismet remembered. No lights burned on the top floor of the three-story house, the floor where Pierre and Collette Chiron had lived most of their married life together in a two-bedroom apartment. Kismet had once asked why the aging couple had not retired to the country, and sensed in the answer that he had unwittingly aggravated an old wound. It had always been their intention to leave the urban environment in order to raise their children, and since fate had not deigned to grant them that fondest wish, there had been no reason to leave. Shaking off the bittersweet memory, Kismet scanned the area looking for anything out of place, then moved inside.
The interior of the apartment building was quiet. A single incandescent bulb depending from the ceiling of each landing provided the only illumination and the only evidence that the structure was in fact occupied at all. Kismet saw no indication that anyone was in the building as he crept up the stairs to Chiron’s threshold.
With a grimace, he unleashed a kick to a point above the latching mechanism. The door burst inward with a noise that seemed, in the stillness, like a gunshot, but if anyone on the second floor heard, they elected not to investigate. He quickly moved inside and closed the door. After a moment of fumbled searching, he found the light switch. Even before his eyes could adjust, he knew something was wrong.
There were four of them, all dressed in black, looking very much like they had in the laboratory complex. Their guns were the same also, and without exception, were fixed on him. “Damn.”