What Lot's Wife Saw (49 page)

We have no idea what you are talking about.

Book leant back in his chair and revelled in the man’s surprise. He had rarely enjoyed anything so much in his life. He contemplated the thought that the Seventy-Five had probably registered a similar horror when they’d read the six letters since nothing that they contained was remotely part of any plan, scheme or decision of theirs.

To be precise, from the letters they must have learnt in horror of Governor Bera’s death on the 21st of August, that his place had been taken by some unknown in a pirate’s costume and that the Colony had been set afire. News takes three weeks to reach Paris, so even time had been against them. They’d immediately sent a team of inspectors with a contingent of armed guards but the expedition had taken another three weeks to reach the Dead Sea and so, when it finally disembarked in the Colony, it had been met by rebellious colonists and ashes. It was an unprecedented fiasco. Book could only imagine the panic that had gripped the higher echelons of the Consortium and the resulting mayhem. A large proportion of top management must have been fired, the team of advisors fined, all high-ranking employees raked over the coals and the Seventy-Five rendered deeply suspicious of each other (if indeed there are seventy-five of them).

The matter of the identity of the pirate who appeared out of the blue only compounded the mystery. His body was never found as the conscientious courtiers had burnt it to protect the salt. The ashes from the oven were sent for analysis, the Palace was searched inch by inch by forensic experts and the seven people who had seen him were hauled to Paris for interrogation – eight including Lieutenant Richmond. Within fifteen days the mysterious imposter had managed to dismantle the construct of the Seventy-Five and reduce it almost entirely to cinders, to destroy most of the saltworks and to be responsible for the resignation of thousands of enraged colonists, while those who had accepted to stay demanded a renegotiation of their terms of employment.

One thing that shone through the murky confusion of reality and fantasy was that one-third of the daily production of salt was stolen in the manner described by the six courtiers in their letters. The inspectors immediately visited the sandy plateau in the desert where the bags had been stacked by Drake’s conscientious caravans and, of course, found it empty. An elementary study of world consumption would immediately lead on to the conclusion that the salt had found its way to the Suez Mamelukes’ black markets, but even a detailed one couldn’t penetrate the labyrinth of illegal trade links and identify the first one.

In Book’s opinion, what had fundamentally disturbed the Seventy-Five was that the perpetrator had been no mere fraudster good at conning people and forging signatures. The “pirate” arrived at the scene inexplicably well informed about everyone and everything. He was even cognisant of the highly confidential files of the six courtiers when that information is kept under lock and key in Paris. He was also fully aware of the administrative system of the Colony, was an expert on the Palace, the desert and on the salt production process – in short, so many areas of expertise that they didn’t know where to turn their suspicions. Who’d informed, trained and guided this youth so superbly?

“Governor Bera, of course,” Book offered.

He hadn’t needed to read more than a few pages of the letters to realise that Governor Bera was malevolently taking revenge on his employers. It hadn’t even been necessary to reach the part where the “pirate”, quite rightly, introduces himself as Bera, to send the message of the late Governor to the Seventy-Five. Book had guessed it when he’d read that the six were standing shocked at the sight of his smiling corpse, at a loss about what to do since the Governor had chosen not to inform the six about their secret responsibilities. It was obvious that the Star Bearers had to follow certain guidelines when the Governor was unable to perform his duties (that was the whole point of the Purple Star and why the Governor’s wife was included), but it was equally obvious that they were unaware of that because this specific Governor took advantage of the fact that he was the sole link between the Colony and the Consortium’s headquarters and he had improvised. Their dulled minds received his death as an inexplicable inconsistency of the regulations which snowballed, opening the door for the “pirate”, the alter ego of the deceased, the avenging corsair Bera, who robbed the Consortium and burnt Sodom. The unwritten, clandestine and totalitarian forms of government unfortunately share a serious drawback: they allow an individual to become all-powerful. At the same time the rest of society is emasculated because the totally subjugated citizen can have no judgment and in the final analysis that proves dangerous. The reason that Governor Bera might have had to hate his employers and creators with enough passion to take his vengeance on them in such a symbolic fashion was probably something the Seventy-Five should seek in their perfect administrative system, but Book couldn’t help them there. The colonists, on the other hand, when weakened by systematic psychological pressures, become terrified rather than able to think constructively, so the system works only for as long as events follow the pattern. If and whenever something arbitrary or contradictory occurs, the system collapses like a house of cards because blind obedience cannot cope with the paradoxical.

“You amaze me, Mr Book. Can you explain how you’ve reached these outrageous conclusions?”

“Letters keep no secrets from Phileas Book, sir, and the creation reproduces all the characteristics of the creator. The six courtiers, products of the Seventy-Five, composed the most transparent letters that I’ve ever read. Through their personalities I’ve become acquainted with the personalities of their creators. The perfect administrative system has been laid bare before my eyes, and I seriously suggest that you re-examine it because it’s inexcusably disaster-prone.”

The bald man slowly gathered the piles of pages from the table and gave Book a sideways glance. “We underestimated you, Mr Book.”

“Anything but, I’m afraid.You had me pegged just as I am, a coward who would not dare defy you. You weren’t wrong, even my shadow refuses to grow and stubbornly remains stuck at one metre forty-eight centimetres to dispel any doubts about my small stature. You can rest assured about my confidentiality but the fiasco is far too large to be covered up. The colonists consider you to be the orchestrators of this dangerous experiment and some might even admire you for it. But what would they think if they were to learn that you were hoodwinked by the Governor that you’d trained, that your perfect system was full of holes and that the Colony was defenceless against any imposter? What will world markets have to say? Will international justice press charges? Here you are, interrogating even me only because my name is mentioned in the letters, which means that you have no idea where to begin looking for suspects!”

“You are very far from the truth, Mr Book,” the man interrupted him with annoyance.

“The tarnished image of the Seventy-Five is so evident in these letters that I am truly at a loss as to why you bother to defend it. Accepted, there must be many things that I’m unaware of, that I can’t even suspect; there are parameters that escape me, details I can’t imagine; but I’m certain that I can’t be as far from the truth as you say. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here and you wouldn’t have been talking to me. To go so far as to solicit the help of humble Phileas Book, you must be nearing the pits of desperation.”

Book pushed the notebook with the sketched crossword over towards the man and added:

“You’re morally responsible for the murder of this youth, whoever he was. Don’t forget that. You have a serious legal case to answer.”

“But how can you insist it was murder, Mr Book!” the man burst out. “Who was murdered? Who was the victim? Who on earth was this mysterious pirate? We’ve analyzed the ashes that we collected from the oven and have only found Governor Bera’s DNA and a golden earring of unknown origin. We employed the most advanced instruments to comb the Palace’s surfaces, but we found not a single fingerprint, nor a trace of his boots, a strand of his hair, a single skin cell or blood corpuscle. Can you tell me who he was?”

“
He was that He was
, I presume,” said Book simply.

“There is no hard evidence of his existence so we can’t judge who or what we were dealing with – it’s as if he were a wraith. Whoever laid eyes on him however, inclusive of Lieutenant Richmond, is so adamant that he was real that you give up. We gave a lot of credence to the latter’s testimony since, as you have ascertained, the six are of dubious morality, but Richmond is a paragon of honesty. Delusional, maybe, a bit lightheaded, perhaps, but honest through and through.”

“It’s truly puzzling,” Book agreed. “So what do you plan to do with the unfortunate seven that you’ve had the effrontery to interrogate? Not only have you failed to protect them, but you’ve entrapped them into committing horrible crimes. Will you kill them or buy them off?”

“Thankfully for them, they are as discreet as they are mercenary. The six will be staying with us for a while longer as there are numerous matters yet to be investigated. As for Bianca Bateau, well she’s probably a victim of this whole affair and she can’t really help anymore. On top of that she’s been nearly undone by the protracted ordeal and we’d rather she didn’t die in our care. She is departing this morning.”

“For the Colony?”

“No, she is
persona non grata
down there, as are all of them as you might have guessed.”

Book was amazed at the irresponsibility of their position. He couldn’t imagine how a girl who’d lived her whole life in the glass bowl of the Colony could be expected to survive in civilisation.

“That is not our problem, Mr Book.”

“But Bianca Bateau is a native colonist, you are her guardians, the only ones she ever had.”

“Good day, Mr Book.”

Book stood up reluctantly and headed for the door. Before crossing the threshold he heard the parting warning:

“If you keep your mouth shut, you have nothing to fear from the Consortium; we look after our people.”

Book nodded in assent. He walked out of the floodlit lounge and instinctively wiped his shoes on the plush carpet as if wiping off his guise as an actor. The pseudo crossword had served its purpose. Now it was time for the blessed meandros.

He buttoned up his raincoat and hurried to the lift. He was dying to catch Bianca Bateau before she left the building. He pressed the ground-floor button three or four times before the sliding doors shut off the danger of someone joining him.

The glass partition that separated him from the main entrance allowed him to glimpse a diminutive female figure standing in front of the outer doors, escorted by a couple of security officers. She held her arms crossed over her chest and looked frail and vulnerable. Book went through the partition in her direction, knowing that the brief encounter that would follow would remain forever etched in his memory. It might even survive his death, if there was any truth that on departing we leave behind something more than organic dust.

Conscious of the momentousness of the moment, he tried to will the internal cameras in his brain to start rolling so as to record all the details of her image, the colour of her hair, her profile, her expressions, everything down to her bitten fingernails. The men acknowledged his approach with an indifferent nod while the girl paid him no attention whatsoever. He stood in front of her and extended his hand. She turned towards him with her colourless eyes.

“Phileas Book.”

“Bianca Bateau.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

As he stood facing her, he discovered that two eyes without irises were not an off-putting sight because in her snow white eyes his own olive green irises were reflected back at him. A pair of coloured contact lenses would immediately camouflage the problem but it would be a pity to disguise eyes that so faithfully reflected the eyes of their beholder.

“You have given credence to Epistlewords, Miss Bateau, and justified my existence. Is there something that I could do for you, perhaps?” he asked her with genuine gratitude.

Bianca smiled demurely.

“You’ve done more than enough already.”

For a few more seconds, Book basked in the sight of his own olive green eyes mirrored in her eyes.

“Where do you intend to go from here?”

“Out.”

Book bowed and he watched her leave the building and start walking uphill from the coast road. With every step she took, her bearing became more upright, her stride gained purpose and she held her head higher. He smiled contentedly because this gradual metamorphosis came as no surprise to him.Those few words that they’d exchanged in the entrance hall had sufficed for them to communicate perfectly under the watchful eyes of the Consortium. As he stepped out, he turned and heartily shook the doorman’s hand to the latter’s evident surprise. He stood, only inches away from the building, and inhaled the Parisian air. He thumped his chest with both hands and with a spring in his step took off in the opposite direction from the one Bianca Bateau had taken.

The sense of euphoria that was flooding him was so absolute and unprecedented that Book had difficulty recognising himself. It had been finally worth being born into this world of woe just to savour this magnificent moment. If his own eyes hadn’t beheld it in the meandros, if the phrase that they, leaving him speechless with their courage, had masterfully sent him, hadn’t slotted perfectly into the diagonal and if they hadn’t proved themselves thoroughly capable of the impossible, he would never have believed that the seven determined conspirators could have managed to organise and execute such a daring ploy.

The mysterious stranger had been nothing but a figment of the extravagant imagination of young Lieutenant Richmond, but he represented the opportunity that the seven had been waiting years for, especially since Richmond’s vision had preceded the Governor’s death by a scant few hours.
“Which of our darkest dreams had spawned the boy with the black eyes and the blood-curdling voice; which of our grisly fantasies did he personify?”
Montenegro rejoiced, rubbing his hands with glee. Obviously Lieutenant Richmond was totally unaware that he, as an unimplicated neutral, would be an ideal witness to corroborate their statements. The Star Bearers had known perfectly well what was expected of them in the case that their overlord died, because Bera himself had given them all the relevant confidential verbal instructions that the unwritten and secretive administrative system of the Seventy-Five demanded; they’d just decided to deny any knowledge of them. It’s unfortunate that the unwritten rules have that very disadvantage, that they lay the field wide open to the intelligent and unscrupulous. They adopted the Lieutenant’s vision, embellished it with all the characteristics of a gifted Governor and they proceeded to serve this phantasm with unmitigated devotion, tearing the Colony apart at the seams, destroying what the Seventy-Five had painstakingly constructed, and finally pinning the blame on the deceased overlord who was portrayed with the tarnish and guilt of a Judas. That exceeded Book’s wildest imaginations by such a margin that he could hardly contain himself. He kicked a discarded tin out of his path so as not to have a heart attack.