The Empire Of The Wolves

33

One hell of a night.

Paul Nerteaux had dreamed of a stone monster, a malignant titan prowling through the tenth arrondissement. A Moloch who dominated the Turkish quarter, demanding human sacrifices.

In his dream, the monster wore a half-human. half-bestial mask, of Greek and Persian style. Its mineral lips were white-hot, its penis stuck with blades. Every one of its steps made the earth quake, dust rise and buildings crack.

He had finally woken up at 3:00, covered in sweat. Shivering in his little three-room apartment, he had made some coffee, then examined the fresh batch of archaeological documents that the boys from the Brigade Criminelle had left in front of his door the previous evening.

Until dawn, he browsed through the museum catalogues, tourist brochures and scientific studies, observing and scrutinizing each sculpture, comparing it with the autopsy photos-and unconsciously with the mask in his dreams. Sarcophagi from Antalya. Frescoes from Cilicia. Bas-reliefs from Karatepe. Busts from Ephesus…

He had crossed over ages and civilizations without obtaining the slightest clue.

Paul Nerteaux then went to the Trois Obus café by Porte de Saint-Cloud. He confronted the smell of coffee and tobacco, forcing himself to ignore his senses and pushing down his nausea. His lousy mood was not just because of his nightmares. It was Wednesday and, like every Wednesday, he had had to call Reyna at daybreak to tell her that he could not look after Céline.

He spotted Jean-Louis Schiffer standing at the end of the bar. Closely shaven, wrapped up in a Burberry raincoat, he was looking decidedly better as he dunked his croissant in his coffee.

When he saw Paul, he grinned broadly. "Slept well?"

"Great."

Schiffer stared at his rumpled appearance but made no comment on it. "Coffee?"

Paul nodded. A black concentrate rimmed with brown foam immediately appeared on the bar.

The Cipher picked up the cup and nodded toward a free table beside the window "Let's sit down. You're not looking too good."

At the table, he handed Paul the basket of croissants.

Paul refused. The very idea of swallowing something brought acid up to his nostrils. But he had to admit that Schiffer was playing at being buddies that morning. He asked, "And you, did you sleep well?"

"Like a log."

Paul pictured once more the sliced fingers and bloody guillotine. After the carnage, he had accompanied the Cipher to Porte de Saint-Cloud, where he had an apartment on Rue Gudin. Ever since then, a question had been bugging him.

"If you've got this apartment," he said, and pointed through the window at the gray square, "what the hell were you doing at Longères?"

"The herding instinct. The desire to be around cops. I was bored to death all on my own."

The explanation rang false. Paul remembered that Schiffer was registered at the home under a pseudonym, his mother's maiden name. Someone in the Special Branch had tipped him off. Another mystery. Was he hiding? If so, who from?

"Show me the files," the Cipher said.

Paul opened the folder and placed the documents on the table. They were not the originals. He had dropped into his office early that morning to make photocopies. Clutching a Turkish dictionary, he had studied each file and had managed to work out each victim's name and personal details.

The first one was called Zeynep Tütengil. She used to be employed in a workshop beside La Porte Bleue Turkish Baths, which belonged to a certain Talat Gurdilek. She was twenty-seven, childless and married to Burba Tütengil. They lived at 34 Rue de la Fidelité. She came from some village with an unpronounceable name near the town of Gaziantep, in southeast Turkey, and had been living in Paris since September 2001.

The second's name was Ruya Berkes, and she was twenty-six and single. She worked from home, at 8 Rue d'Enghien, for a certain Gozar Halman a name Paul had already seen on several police reports-a sweatshop owner who specialized in leather and furs. Ruya came from Adana, a city in south Turkey. She had been in Paris for just eight months.

The third was Rouyike Tanyol. She was thirty, single and a seamstress for a company called Sürelik, based in Passage de l'Industrie. She had been living incognito in a woman's home at 22 Rue des Petites-Ecuries. Like the first victim, she was born in the province of Gaziantep.

This information provided no common points. There was not the slightest indication, for example, of how the murderer spotted them or approached them. But above all, it did not give these women the slightest presence or sensation of reality. Their Turkish names even increased their inscrutability. To convince himself that they were flesh and blood. Paul had had to turn back to the Polaroid shots. The women's broad, rather smooth features suggested generously rounded bodies. He had read somewhere that the ideal of Turkish beauty corresponded to just such a physique, with moonlike faces…

Schiffer was still studying the data, his glasses on the tip of his nose. Still feeling nauseated, Paul hesitated before drinking his coffee. The din of voices and the chinking of glass and metal were getting on his nerves. Above all, the drunken conversations at the bar needled him. He just could not stand such wastrels, killing themselves with one arm on the counter and the other constantly raised… How many times had he gone to fetch one or both of his parents from a zinc bar? How many times had he picked them up from the sawdust and cigarette butts while he was struggling against the desire to puke over them?

The Cipher removed his glasses and concluded: "We'll start with the third workshop. The most recent victim. While memories are still fresh. Then we'll work back to the first one. After that, we'll go to their homes, their neighbors, and retrace their journeys to work. He must have jumped them somewhere, and no one's invisible."

Paul downed his coffee in one gulp. Over his burning bile, he said, "Don't forget, Schiffer, the slightest fuckup and…"

"You arrest me. I haven't forgotten. Anyway, this morning we're changing tactics." He waggled his fingers as though manipulating a puppet. "We're now playing it softly, softly"

They left the café and headed out to the Golf.

With the police light flashing, they took the bypass. The grayness of the Seine, added to the granite of the sky and the riverbanks, made for a smoothly monotonous world. Paul liked this crushingly dull and depressing weather. It made for another hurdle for this energetically willful officer to cross.

On the way, he listened to the messages on his cell phone. Bomarzo the magistrate wanted an update. His voice was tense. Paul now had just two days before he was going to put more officers from the Brigade Criminelle onto the case. Naubrel and Matkowska were pursuing their investigations. They had spent the previous day with the "moles," workmen who dig into the depths of Paris and decompress every evening in specially built chambers. They had questioned the managers of eight different companies and drawn a blank. They had also paid a call on the main manufacturer of these chambers, in Arcueil. According to the boss, the idea that a decompression chamber had been used by someone who was not a qualified engineer was absolutely ridiculous. Did this mean that the killer had such knowledge. or was it a false lead? The officers were now continuing their investigations in other sectors of industry.

When they reached Place du Chatelet, Paul spotted a patrol car turning up Boulevard de Strasbourg. He caught up with it by Rue des Lombards, and motioned to the driver to stop.

"Just a second," he told Schiffer.

From the glove compartment, he took the Kinder Surprises and chewy sweets he had bought an hour before. In his hurry, the bag tore and its contents fell onto the floor. Blushing with embarrassment, Paul picked them up and got out of the car.

The uniformed officers had stopped and were waiting beside their car, thumbs hooked over their belts. Paul rapidly explained what he wanted them to do, then spun around.

When he sat back down behind the wheel, the Cipher waved a sweet in the air. "Wednesday-no school for the kids."

Paul pulled off without responding.

"I used to use patrol cars as messengers, too. To take my girlfriends presents-"

"Your employees, you mean."

"That's right, kid, that's right…" Schiffer unwrapped the bar of caramel and folded it into his mouth. "How many kids have you got?”

“One daughter."

"How old is she?"

"Seven."

"What's her name?"

"Céline."

"A bit fancy for a cop's kid."

Paul thought so, too. He had never understood why Reyna, the Marxist idealist, had given their child such a precious name.

Schiffer was chewing away. And the mother?

"Divorced."

Paul drove through a red light and past Rue Réaumur. The fiasco of his marriage was the last thing he wanted to discuss with Schiffer. With relief, he spotted the red-and-yellow McDonald's sign that stood at the beginning of Boulevard de Strasbourg.

He sped up, not giving his partner the chance to ask any more questions.

Their hunting ground was in sight.

34

At 10:00, Boulevard de Strasbourg looked like a battlefield in full fury. The sidewalks and roads themselves dissolved into a single frenetic mass of passersby, slipping in between a maze of trapped, hooting vehicles.

Above them, the sky was colorless, as taut as a tarpaulin full of water, about to split at any moment.

Paul decided to park at the corner of Rue des Petites-Ecuries and follow Schiffer, who was already making his way through the cardboard boxes being carried on men's backs, their arms hung with clothing and the loads wobbling on the trolleys. They turned down Passage de Industrie and found themselves beneath an arch of stone, leading to an alleyway.

Sürelik's workshop was in a brick building, propped up by a framework of riveted metal. The façade was gabled. with a Gothic arch, glazed tympanums and sculpted terra-cotta friezes. The bright red edifice oozed a sort of enthusiasm, a cheerful faith in the future of industry, as though someone inside had just invented sliced bread.

A few yards from the door, Paul grabbed Schiffer by the lapels of his coat and pushed him under the porch. He then searched him thoroughly to check that he was not armed.

The old cop tutted reprovingly. "You're wasting your time, kid. Softly, softly, like I said."

Paul turned around without a word and headed toward the workshop.

Together, they pushed open the metal door and entered a large square space with white walls and a painted cement floor. Everything was spick-and-span. The light green metal structures, bulging with rivets, reinforced the overall sensation of solidity. Large windows let in oblique rays of light, while galleries ran along each wall, like the bridges of an oceangoing liner.

Paul had been expecting a pit; what he found was an artist's studio. About forty workers, all of them men, were neatly spaced out and laboring behind their sewing machines, surrounded by cloth and open boxes. In their overalls, they looked like special agents stitching up coded messages during the war. A cassette recorder was playing some Turkish music. A coffeepot was sizzling on a gas hot plate. A craftsman's paradise.

Schiffer stamped on the floor with his heel. "What you were imagining is downstairs. In the cellars. Hundreds of female workers crammed together like sardines. Illegal immigrants, the lot of them. We're inside now, but this is only the respectable front."

He pulled Paul toward the machines, walking between the workers, who forced themselves not to look up. "Lovely, aren't they? Model workers, my boy. Industrious, obedient, disciplined."

"Why be so sarcastic?"

"The Turks aren't hardworking at all. They're spongers. They aren't obedient. They're indifferent. They aren't disciplined. They follow their own rules. They're a load of fucking vampires. Pillagers who can't even be bothered to learn our language… What's the point? They're just here to earn as much as they can, then piss off back home. Their motto is `Take it all, leave nothing.' " Schiffer grabbed Paul by the arm. "They're a plague, my boy"

Paul pushed him away violently.

"Never call me that again."

He looked up as if Paul had just threatened him with a gun. He stared at him quizzically. Paul wanted to tear that expression off his face, but then a voice sounded behind them.

"What can I do for you, gentlemen?" A squat man, dressed in spotless blue overalls, was coming toward them, an oily smile glued under his mustache. "Ah, Inspector!" he said in astonishment. "It's been so long since I've had the pleasure of seeing you!"

Schiffer burst out laughing. The music had stopped. The activity of the machines had ceased. A deathly silence reigned.

"Aren't we on first-name terms anymore?"

Instead of replying, the workshop's boss looked over distrustfully at Paul.

"This is Paul Nerteaux," the cop continued. "He's a police captain.

And my immediate boss. But he's above all a pal." He slapped Paul on the back and grinned. "You can trust him like you can trust me."

Then he went over to the Turk and put his arm around the man's shoulders. The ballet was choreographed down to the slightest movement. "Let me introduce you to Ahmid Zoltanoi," he said to Paul. "The best workshop manager in all of Little Turkey. As starchy as his overalls, but with a heart of gold, deep down. People round here call him Tanoi."

The Turk bowed slightly. Beneath his coal black eyebrows, he seemed to be sizing up this newcomer. Friend or foe? He turned back to Schiffer, his voice oily: "I heard you had retired."

"Force of circumstances. When there's an emergency, who do they call up? Uncle Schiffer, that's who."

"What emergency are you talking about, Inspector?"

The Cipher swept the pieces of cloth off a table and placed the picture of Rouyike Tanyol on it.

"Recognize her?"

The man bent down, hands in his pockets, thumbs out like gun triggers. He seemed to be balancing on the starchy folds of his overalls. "Never seen her before."

Schiffer turned over the snapshot. On the white edge, written in indelible marker, could distinctly be seen the victim's name and the address of the Sürelik workshop.

"Marius has coughed up. And the rest of you will follow. Believe me." The Turk's face fell. He gingerly picked up the photo, put on his glasses and stared at it. "Yes, her face does ring a bell."

"And the chimes must be pretty loud. She'd been here since 2001, hadn't she?"

Tanoi put down the photo. "Yes."

"What was her job?"

"Seamstress."

"She worked downstairs, I suppose?"

The manager raised his eyebrows while putting away his glasses. The workers had now started sewing again. They seemed to realize that the policemen were not after them it was their boss who had problems.

"Downstairs?" he asked.

"In the cellar." Schiffer was getting annoyed. "Now wake up, Tanoi, or I'll lose my temper."

The Turk swayed slightly on his heels. Despite his age, he looked like a contrite schoolboy "Yes, she worked in the lower workshop."

"Where was she from, Gaziantep?"

"Not exactly-a nearby village. She spoke a southern dialect.”

“Who's got her passport?"

"She had no passport."

Schiffer sighed, as though saddened by this fresh lie. "Tell me about her disappearance."

"There's nothing to tell. She left the workshop on Thursday morning. She never made it home."

"Thursday morning?"

"Yes, at six. She was on the night shift."

The two officers glanced at each other. So she had indeed been on her way home when she was jumped, but this had been at dawn. They had been right, except for the time of day.

"You say she never made it home," the Cipher continued. "Who told you that?"

"Her fiancé."

"They went home together?"

"No, he's on the day shift."

"Where can I find him?"

"Nowhere. He went back home." Tanoi's answers were as stiff as the stitches in his overalls.

"He didn't try to recover the body?"

"He had no papers. He couldn't speak French. So he fled in grief A Turkish destiny. An exile's destiny."

"Spare me the violins. Where are her colleagues?"

"What colleagues?"

"The ones who go home at the same time. I want to question them.”

“That's impossible. Gone, all of them, vanished."

"Why?"

"They're scared."

"Of the killer?"

"No, of you. Of the police. No one wants to get caught up in this affair."

The Cipher stood squarely in front of the Turk, hands behind his back. "I think you know far more than you're letting on, fat man. So let's take a stroll down into the cellars. It might refresh your memory"

The Turk did not budge. The sewing machines continued to rattle. Music was twisting beneath the steel girders. He hesitated another second, then headed toward an iron door under one of the galleries.

The officers followed him. At the bottom of the stairs, they dived down a dark corridor, went through a metal door, then took a second corridor with a clay floor. They had to bend their heads to walk. Bare light bulbs, hanging from the pipes on the ceiling, lit the way. Two rows of doors made of planks of wood, numbered with chalk figures, faced each other. A humming rose up from the depths.

When they reached a turning point, their guide stopped and picked up a metal bar concealed behind the springs of an old wire mattress. Advancing cautiously he started knocking on the pipes across the ceiling, setting off a series of deep echoes.

Suddenly, invisible enemies appeared. Rats gathered together on a cast-iron arch above their heads. Paul remembered the forensic scientist's words: With the second one, it was different. I think he used something… that was alive.

The manager swore in Turkish and banged as hard as he could in their direction. The rodents vanished. The entire corridor was now vibrating. Every door was trembling on its hinges. Finally, Tanoi stopped in front of number 34.

He forced the door open with his shoulder. A thundering noise exploded outward. Light spread into the tiny workshop. About thirty women were sitting behind sewing machines, which were going at full speed, as though propelled by their own momentum. Bent double beneath the strip lights, the seamstresses were pushing pieces of cloth beneath the needles, without paying the slightest attention to the visitors.

The room measured no more than twenty square yards and had no means of ventilation. The air was so heavy-with smells of dyes, particles of cloth, the stench of solvents-that it was barely breathable. Some of the women wore scarves over their mouths. Others had babies on their laps, wrapped in shawls. Children were also working, grouped together on the piles of fabric, folding them and packing them in boxes. Paul was suffocating. He felt like a character in a film who wakes up in the middle of the night only to find out that his nightmare is real.

Schiffer adopted his most sincere delivery: "This is the real face of Sürelik Limited! Twelve or fifteen hours' work, several thousand garments produced per day, per worker. The Turkish version of our three eight-hour shifts reduced to just two, or even one. And the same applies in all the other cellars, my boy"

He seemed almost delighted by the cruelty of the scene. "But don't forget, all this has the state's blessing. Everyone closes their eyes. The clothing industry is based on slavery."

The Turk was trying to look ashamed, but a flame of pride was burning in his pupils. Paul looked around at the women. A few eyes rose in response, but their hands continued their flurry, as though nothing and nobody could stop them.

He then pictured among them the matted faces, long wounds and bloody crevices of the victims. How did the killer get to these underground women? How had he noticed that they looked alike?

The Cipher launched into another round of questions, his voice raised above the din. "When there's a change of shift, that's when the delivery boys take away the finished products, isn't it?"

"That's right."

"If you include all the workers coming out of the shops, that means there's quite a crowd on the streets at six in the morning. And no one saw anything?"

"I swear to you."

The cop leaned against the wall of cinder blocks.

"Don't swear. Your God is less merciful than mine. Have you spoken to the bosses of the other victims?"

"No."

"You're lying, but never mind. What do you know about this series of murders?"

"They say that the women are tortured, their faces destroyed. That's all I know."

"And the police have never come to see you?"

"No."

"So what's your private police force doing?"

Paul trembled… It was the first time he had heard of such a thing. So the neighborhood had its own force of order.

Tanoi yelled over the machines: "I don't know. They found nothing." Schiffer pointed at the women. "And what do they think?"

"They don't dare go out. They're scared. Allah cannot allow this. The neighborhood is accursed! Azrael, the angel of death, is upon us!"

The Cipher smiled, gave the man a friendly tap on the back and pointed at the door. "Steady, now… you're finally starting to sound human…"

They went out into the corridor. Paul followed them, closing the planks over the machine hell. He had only just done so when he heard a stifled groan. Schiffer had just rammed Tanoi up against the piping.

"Who's killing the girls?"

"I… I dunno."

"Who are you covering for, you fucker?"

Paul did not intervene. He sensed that Schiffer would not go any further. Just a final burst of rage, to save his honor.

Tanoi did not answer; his eyes were popping out of their orbits.

The Cipher released his grip, letting him get his breath back beneath the bare bulb, which was swinging like a hypnotist's pendulum. Then he murmured: "You keep all this under your hat, Tanoi. Not a word about our little visit to anyone."

The sweatshop manager looked up at Schiffer. He had already recovered his servile expression. "My hat has always been in place. Inspector."

35

The second victim, Ruya Berkes, had worked not in a sweatshop but from her home at 58 Rue d'Enghien. She used to hand-stitch the linings of coats, which she then delivered to the Gozar Halman fur warehouse, at 77 Rue Sainte-Cécile, a road perpendicular to Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière. They could have started with the woman's apartment, but Schiffer decided to go straight to see her employer, whom he had apparently known for some time.

As he drove in silence, Paul savored his return to fresh air. But he was also dreading fresh revelations. He saw the shop windows begin to darken, weighed down with brown materials and languid folds, as the car moved away from Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis and Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin. In each store, the fabrics and cloths were being replaced by skins and furs.

He turned right, onto Rue Sainte-Cécile.

Schiffer pulled at his arm. They had arrived at number 77.

This time, Paul was expecting a sewer full of flayed skin, cages clotted with blood, the stench of dead meat. What he found was a little courtyard, full of light and flowers, whose paving stones looked as if they had been polished by the morning mist. The two officers crossed to the far side, to a building dotted with barred windows, which was the only edifice resembling an industrial warehouse.

"I'm warning you," Schiffer said as he went through the door. "Gozar Halman is a Tansu fanatic."

"Who's that A soccer player?"

The policeman sniggered. They went up a staircase of gray wood.

"Tansu tiller is the former prime minister of Turkey. A degree at Harvard, international diplomacy, minister of foreign affairs, and then head of the government. A model career."

Paul's response was blasé. "A typical career for a politician.”

“Except that Tansu tiller is a woman."

They reached the second floor. Each landing was as vast and dark as a chapel. Paul remarked, "There can't be that many Turkish men who take a woman as their role model."

The Cipher burst out laughing. "Really, if you didn't exist, then someone would have to invent you. Gozar is a woman! She's a teyze, a fairy godmother in every sense of the term. She watches over her brothers, her nephews, her cousins and her workers. She takes care of getting them work permits. She sends people to renovate their hovels. She sends their parcels and money orders for them. And then she gives out bribes to the cops so that they will leave them alone. She's a slave driver, but a benevolent one."

Third floor. Halman's warehouse was a large room with a parquet floor that had been painted gray, scattered with pieces of Styrofoam and crumpled papers. In the middle, planks laid on trestles acted as counters. On them lay piles of cardboard boxes; acrylic shopping bags; pink plastic bags from the local discount store: protective bags for suits, from which some men were removing coats, jackets and collars, examining and then smoothing them out, checking their linings, and finally putting them on hangers suspended from gantries. In front of them, women dressed in head scarves and long skirts, with dark rugged faces, seemed to be wearily awaiting their verdict.

A glazed mezzanine, veiled by a white curtain, overlooked the area an ideal position to supervise the workplace. Without hesitating, or saying a word to anyone, Schiffer seized the banister and started climbing the steep stairs that led to the platform.

At the top, they had to confront a barrier of plants before entering an attic room, which was almost as large as the space beneath it. Windows edged with curtains looked out over a landscape of slate and zinc-the rooftops of Paris.

Despite its dimensions, the workshop's décor made it look more like a boudoir from the 1900s. Paul went inside, drinking in every detail. Doilies protected the modern equipment-computer, stereo, television and sat under the framed photos, glass knickknacks and huge dolls. Everything was drowning in acres of lace. The walls were decorated with tourist posters, singing the praises of Istanbul. Small, brightly colored rugs were hung up like tapestries. Paper flags of Turkey, dotted around all over the place, echoed the postcards that were pinned up in groups on the wooden pillars that supported the roof.

A solid oak desk, covered with a leather blotter, took up the right of the room, leaving the center to a green velvet divan standing on a huge rug. Nobody was there.

Schiffer headed toward an opening hidden behind a bead curtain and cooed, "My princess, it's me, Schiffer. There's no need to doll yourself up."

The only reply was silence. Paul advanced and took a closer look at the photos. In each of them, a short-haired, quite attractive redhead was smiling in the company of a famous president: Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin, François Mitterrand. This was presumably Tansu cater.

A rustling sound made him turn his head. The bead curtain opened to reveal the double of the woman in the photos, in person, but even larger than life.

Gozar Halman had accentuated her resemblance to the politician, no doubt to give herself additional authority. Her black tunic and trousers, enlightened by just a few pieces of jewelry, were rather sober. The way she moved and walked was in the same register, expressing the haughty distance of a businesswoman. Her look seemed to draw an invisible line around her. The message was clear: any attempt at seduction was doomed from the start.

But at the same time, her face told a different story. It was as broad and white as a Pierrot Lunaire, framed by red hair, with violently sparkling eyes. Gozar's eyelids were painted orange and dotted with spangles.

"Schiffer," she said in a hoarse voice. "I know why you're here.^-"At last, someone with their wits about them!"

Looking distracted, she tidied away some papers on her desk. "I knew that they'd resurrect you sooner or later." She did not really have an accent -more of a light lilt that ran through each sentence, which she seemed to cultivate for its charm.

Schiffer introduced them, temporarily abandoning his sneering tone. Paul sensed that he was going to play it straight with this woman. "What do you know about it all?" he asked at once.

"Nothing. Less than nothing." She leaned over her desk for a few more seconds, then went to sit on the settee, slowly crossing her legs. "The neighborhood's scared," she whispered. "All sorts of rumors are flying round."

"For example?"

"Stories that contradict one another. I even heard that the killer was one of your men."

"Or men?"

"Yes, a policeman."

Schiffer waved the idea away with the back of his hand. "Tell me about Ruya Berkes."

Gozar was caressing the lace cloth covering the armrest of the settee. "She brought her articles every two days. She came here on January 6, 2002, but not on the eighth. That's all I can tell you."

Schiffer took out his notepad and pretended to read it. Paul sensed that he was just trying to keep his countenance. This woman was clearly a match for him.

"Ruya was the killer's second victim," he went on, eyes still on his notes. "The body was found on January 10."

"God save her soul." Her fingers were fidgeting with the lace. "But it's none of my business."

"It's everyone's business now. And I need information."

The tension was mounting, but Paul detected a strange familiarity in their exchange. A complicity between fire and ice that had nothing to do with this investigation.

"I have nothing to say" she repeated. "The neighborhood will close in around this affair. As it always does."

Her words, voice and tone made Paul observe her more closely. She was fixing her dark eyes, topped with red gilt, on the Cipher. They made him think of strips of chocolate filled with orange rind. But, more importantly, he suddenly understood the truth of the situation: Gozar Halman was the Turkish woman whom Schiffer had almost married. What had happened? Why had it fallen through?

The fur seller lit a cigarette. A long languid drag of blue smoke. "What do you want to know?"

"When did she deliver her coats?"

At the end of the day"

"Alone?"

"Yes, always alone."

"Do you know which way she came?"

"Via Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière. At that time, the streets are crowded, if that's your next question."

Schiffer turned to generalities. "When did Ruya Berkes arrive in Paris?"

“May 2001. Haven't you seen Marius?"

He ignored the question. "What sort of woman was she?"

"A peasant. But she had also lived in the city"

" Adana?"

"First Gaziantep, then Adana."

Schiffer leaned over. He seemed interested by this detail. "She came from Gaziantep?"

"Yes, I think so."

He was pacing round the room, his fingers idling over the knickknacks. "Was she literate?"

"No, but she was modern. Not a slave of tradition."

"Did she go out in Paris? Go for walks? Go out to nightclubs?"

"I said modern, not loose. She was a Muslim. You know as well as I do what that means. Anyway she didn't speak a word of French.”

“How did she dress?"

“As a Westerner," she said, her voice rising. "Schiffer, what are you after?"

"I'm trying to work out how the killer jumped her. It isn't easy to approach a girl who never goes out, never speaks to anyone and has no leisure activities."

His questions were leading nowhere. They were the same as an hour before, and were eliciting the same inevitable answers. Paul stood in front of the bay window, looking over the courtyard, and drew aside the curtain. The Turks were still working away; money was changing hands, above furs that were curled up like sleeping animals.

Behind him, Schiffer's voice pressed on: "What was Ruya's state of mind?"

"Like all the others: 'My body is here; my heart is back there.' All she wanted to do was to go home, get married and have children. She was here in transit. The daily round of a worker ant, stuck in front of her sewing machine, sharing a two-room apartment with two other women."

"I want to question her roommates…"

Paul stopped listening and observed the comings and goings downstairs. These exchanges were like bartering, an ancestral ritual. The Cipher's voice broke into his mind once more.

"And what do you think about the murderer?"

There was a long enough silence to make Paul turn back toward the room.

Gozar had stood up and was now staring out of the window at the rooftops. Without moving, she murmured, "I think it is more… political." Schiffer went over to her. "What do you mean?"

She spun around. "This affair could go above and beyond the interests of a single killer."

"Gozar, explain yourself!"

"I have nothing to explain. The whole neighborhood's scared, and I'm no exception. No one will help you."

Paul shivered. The Moloch in his nightmare, with the quarter in his clutches, seemed more real than ever. A god of stone looking for its prey in the cellars and hovels of Little Turkey.

The teyze concluded, "This conversation's over, Schiffer."

The cop pocketed his notepad and, without trying to insist, walked away. Paul took a last look at the negotiations downstairs.

It was then that he spotted him.

A deliveryman-black mustache and blue Adidas jacket-had just arrived in the warehouse, his arms laden with a box. He automatically looked up at the mezzanine. When he saw Paul. his face froze.

He put down his load, said something to one of the laborers by the coat hangers, then withdrew toward the door. His final glance up at the platform confirmed what Paul had sensed. He was frightened.

The two officers went down to the lower floor. Schiffer spat: "That stubborn bitch really pisses me off with her subtle hints. Fucking Turks. Warped, every one of them…"

Paul sped up and leapt out of the door. He peered down the stairwell. A brown hand was skidding along the banister. The man was running away. He muttered to Schiffer as he arrived on the landing, "Come on. Quick."

36

Paul ran as far as the car. He got in and turned the ignition key in one movement.

Schiffer just had time to get in beside him. "'What's going on?" he grumbled.

Without answering, Paul pulled off. The figure had just swerved right at the end of Rue Sainte-Cécile. Paul accelerated and turned into Rue du Faubourg-Poissonière, once again coming up against the crowds and chaos.

The man was walking quickly, slipping between the deliverymen, the passersby, the smoke of the pancake and pita sellers, glancing around nervously over his shoulder. He was heading toward Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle.

Schiffer said moodily, "Are you going to explain yourself, or what?" Paul shifted into third gear and murmured, "There was a man at Gozar's place. When he spotted us, he ran away"

"So what?"

"He smelled us out. He's afraid of being questioned. Maybe he knows something about our business."

Their customer now turned left, into Rue d'Enghien. Luckily for them, he was walking in the direction of the traffic.

"Or he doesn't have a work permit," Schiffer muttered.

At Gozar's? Who does? No, this guy's got a special reason to be afraid. I can just sense it."

The Cipher stuck his knees up against the dashboard. He asked gloomily, "Where is he?"

"Left pavement. The Adidas jacket."

The Turk was still heading up the street. Paul tried to follow him as discreetly as possible. A red light. The silvery blue form grew more distant. Paul felt that Schiffer's stare was following him, too. The silence in the car was marked by a particular depth: they had understood each other; they now shared the same calm, the same attention, concentrating on their target.

Green.

Paul pulled off, gently pressing on the pedals, feeling an intense heat rising up his legs. He accelerated, just in time to see the Turk swerve right, into Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, still in the direction of the traffic.

Paul followed, but the street was jammed, blocked, suffocating in a mass that was casting up into the gray air its din of cries and hooting horns.

He bent his neck and squinted. Above the cars and the heads were rows of shop signs-wholesale, retail, retail-wholesale… The Adidas jacket had disappeared. Paul looked farther. The façades of the buildings were fading away in the mist of pollution. At the far end, the arch of Porte Saint-Denis was glimmering in the smoky light.

"I can't see him anymore."

Schiffer opened his window. The din burst into the car. He pushed his head outside. "Farther up," he said. "To the right."

The traffic started moving. The blue patch stood out against a group of pedestrians. Another stop. Paul said to himself that the jam was playing into their hands, by letting them drive at walking pace and so keep tabs on him…

The Turk vanished again, then reappeared between two delivery trucks, just in front of Le Sully café. He kept glancing around. Had he spotted them?

"He's shitting himself" Paul commented. "He knows something.”

“That doesn't mean a thing. There's not an icicle's chance in hell-”

“Trust me. Just this once." Paul shifted to first gear again. His neck was burning and the collar of his parka was damp with sweat. He accelerated and caught up with the Turk at the end of Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis.

Suddenly, at the foot of the arch, the man crossed the road, practically in front of them, but without noticing them. He started heading down Boulevard Saint-Denis.

"Shit," Paul said. "It's one-way."

Schiffer sat up. "Park. We'll continue on-fuck it, he's taking the metro!"

The figure had trotted across the boulevard, then disappeared down the steps of Strasbourg-Saint-Denis station. Paul swerved the car violently and pulled it to a halt just in front of a bar called L'Arcade, on the off-road alongside the arch.

Schiffer was already out.

Paul lowered the sun visor marked POLICE and leapt out of the Golf. The Cipher's raincoat was flapping between the cars like a banner. Paul felt a surge of fever. In a second, he drank it all in, the excitement in the air, Schiffer's rapidity the determination that united them for once.

He, too, zigzagged between the traffic on the boulevard and caught up with his partner just as he was heading downstairs.

The two officers rushed into the station entrance. A crowd was hurrying along beneath the orange vault. Paul stared around: to the left, the glass fronts of the ticket offices; to the right, the blue metro map; in front, the automatic doors.

No Turk.

Schiffer dived into the mass, performing an extraordinary slalom in the direction of the doors. Paul stood up on tiptoe and caught sight of the man, who was turning right.

"Line four!" he yelled to his partner, who was now invisible among the passengers.

Already, at the end of the ceramic corridor, the swishing sound of opening metro doors could be heard. A wave of panic ran through the crowd. What was happening? Who was shouting? Who was shoving? Suddenly, a roar broke through the din.

"Open the fucking gates!" It was Schiffer's voice.

Paul dashed toward the ticket office, just to his left. He leaned over to the window and yelled, "Open the gates!"

The metro employee froze. "What?"

Far off, the siren marked the departure of the train.

Paul shoved his card up against the glass. "Fucking hurry up and open the fucking gates!"

The doors opened.

Paul elbowed his way though, stumbled, then managed to force himself past. Schiffer was running beneath the red vault, which now seemed to be palpitating like a living organ.

He caught up with him by the stairs. He took them four at a time. They had not even covered half the distance when the train doors clicked shut.

Schiffer bellowed as he ran. He was about to reach the platform when Paul grabbed his collar, forcing him to stay back. The Cipher was speechless. The lights of the train passed before his staring eyes. He looked like a madman.

"He mustn't see us!" Paul shouted into his face.

Schiffer kept staring at him, stunned, unable to get his breath back. Paul then added, more softly as the whistling of the metro faded away, "We've got forty seconds to get to the next station. We'll bag him at Chateau d'Eau."

They glanced at each other in mutual understanding, then ran back up the stairs, dodged through the traffic and leapt into the car.

Twenty seconds had already gone by.

Paul drove around the arch and swerved right, while lowering his window. He stuck the magnetic light on the roof and shot off down Boulevard de Strasbourg with the siren blaring.

They covered the five hundred yards in seven seconds. When they reached the junction with Rue du Chateau d'Eau, Schiffer motioned to get out. Once again. Paul held him back.

"We'll wait for him on the surface. There are only two exits, on either side of the boulevard."

"What makes you think he'll get out here?"

"Well let twenty seconds go by. If he stays in the train, then we'll have another twenty seconds to grab him at Gare de l'Est."

"And what if he doesn't get out there?"

"He won't leave the Turkish quarter. Either he'll hide somewhere or else he'll go and warn someone. Either way, it will be here on our turf. We'll have to follow him all the way. To see where he goes."

The Cipher looked at his watch. "Let's go."

Paul peered around one last time, right, left, then shot the car off again. In his veins, he could feel the vibrations of the metro as it passed beneath the car's wheels. Seventeen seconds later, he stopped in front of the grating of the courtyard of Gare de l'Est, stopped the siren and the flashing light.

Once more, Schiffer went to leap out, but Paul said, "We're staying here. We can see just about all the exits. The main one's on the courtyard. There's another to the right on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin. Then to the left on Rue du 8 Mai 1945. That gives us three chances out of five."

"Where are the other two?"

"On either side of the train station. On Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin and Rue & Alsace."

"What if he takes one of them?"

"They're farther away from the platform. It'll take him over a minute to get there. We'll wait for thirty seconds. If he doesn't materialize. I'll drop you off on Rue d'Alsace, and I'll take Saint-Martin. We can stay in contact using our cell phones. He can't escape us."

Schiffer remained silent. Wrinkles of thought were furrowing his brow "How do you know where all the exits are?"

Despite his fever. Paul grinned. "I learned them by heart, in case of pursuit."

The face of gray scales smiled back at him. "If our boy doesn't reappear, I'll have your balls for breakfast."

Ten, twelve, fifteen seconds. The longest ones in his existence. Paul observed the figures emerging from the each metro exit, shaken by the wind. No Adidas jacket.

Twenty, twenty-two seconds.

The flow of passengers became more staccato, beating to the rhythm of his heart.

Thirty seconds.

He shifted into first and said, "I drop you on Rue &Alsace." The car screeched away, turned left down Rue du 8 Mai 1945 and let the Cipher out at the beginning of Rue d'Alsace, without giving him a moment to say anything. Then Paul spun it around and, with his foot flat down, reached Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin.

Ten more seconds had ticked by.

This part of Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin was very different from its lower reaches, in the Turkish quarter. All that could be seen here were empty sidewalks, warehouses and administrative buildings. An ideal exit route.

Paul watched the second hand on his watch. Each click dug into his flesh. The anonymous crowd broke up, scattering into the excessively large street. He stared toward the interior of the train station. He saw its huge glass roof, which made him think of a greenhouse. full of noxious shoots and carnivorous plants.

Ten seconds.

The chances of seeing the Adidas jacket reappear were now practically nil. He thought of the metro trains passing beneath the earth, of the departures of main-line and suburban trains, dispersing beneath the open sky, of the thousands of faces and minds dashing below the gray girders.

He could not have been mistaken. It just was not possible. Thirty seconds. Still nothing.

His cell phone rang. He heard Schiffer's guttural voice: "Useless fucker."

Paul joined him at the foot of the staircase that cut Rue d'Alsace in the middle, thus raising it above the immense gulf of rail lines. The policeman climbed into the car and repeated, "Dickhead.”

“We can always try Gare du Nord. You never know. We-”

“Shut your trap. We've lost him. It's over."

Paul nevertheless accelerated the car toward Gare du Nord.

"I should never have listened to you," Schiffer went on. "You've got no experience. You know nothing. You-'

"There he is."

To the right. at the end of Rue des Deux-Gams, Paul had just spotted the Adidas jacket. The man was now trotting along the upper part of Rue d'Alsace, just over the railway.

"The ass," the Cipher said. "He used the outside staircase in the main-line station. He went out via the platforms." He pointed up. "Drive straight on. No siren. No speeding. We'll grab him in the next street. Nice and easy."

Paul shifted down to second and kept to the twenty kilometer-perhour speed limit, with his hands trembling. They were crossing Rue La Fayette when the Turk suddenly surged out a hundred yards farther on. He stared, then froze.

"Shit!" Paul yelled, remembering that he had left the magnetic light on the roof of the car.

The man started to run as though the sidewalk were on fire. Paul stepped on the accelerator. The massive bridge that appeared in front of them seemed to him like a symbol. A stone giant opening its black arms beneath a stormy sky.

He accelerated again and passed the Turk halfway along the bridge. Schiffer leapt out before the car had stopped. Paul braked and in his rearview mirror saw Schiffer tackling the Turk like a rugby halfback.

He swore, turned off the ignition and got out of the Golf. The cop had already grabbed the runaway by his hair and was ramming him against the railings of the bridge. In a flash, Paul pictured Marius's hand in the guillotine. Never again.

He took out his Glock as he ran toward the two men. "Stop!"

Schiffer was now pushing his victim over the edge. His strength and speed were astonishing. The man in the jacket was stuck between two metal spikes, feebly kicking his legs.

Paul felt certain that he was going to throw him into midair. But the Cipher clambered up beside him, grabbed the first stone crossbeam, then immediately yanked the Turk up there with him.

This maneuver had taken just a few seconds, and the physical feat added even more to Schiffer's diabolical standing. When Paul arrived, the two men were already out of reach, perched in the crook of those concrete arms. The runaway was screaming while his torturer, back to the void, was raining blows on him and yelling at him in Turkish.

Paul clambered up the metal spikes, then froze halfway up.

“Bozkurt! Bozkurt! Bozkurt!"

The Turk's cries echoed in the damp air. Paul first thought that it was a cry for help, but he saw Schiffer release his victim, then push him toward the sidewalk, as though he had now obtained what he wanted.

By the time Paul had grabbed his handcuffs, the man was limping away hastily.

"Let him go!"

"Wh-what?"

Schiffer dropped down in turn onto the sidewalk. He fell on his left side, grimaced, then pulled himself up onto his knee. "He told me what he knew," he spat out, between coughs.

"What? What did he say?"

Schiffer stood up. Out of breath, he was clutching the top of his left thigh. His skin was purplish, marked with white spots. "He lives in the same building as Ruya. He saw them take the girl away, on the stairs. On January 8, at eight PM."

"Them?"

"The Bozkurt."

Paul did not understand. He stared back into Schiffer's chrome blue eyes and thought of his second nickname: Mr. Steel.

"The Grey Wolves."

"The what?"

"The Grey Wolves. An extreme right-wing group. The killers of the Turkish mafia. We got it all wrong. They're the ones who are killing the girls."

37

The tracks spread out, unbroken, into the distance. It was a hard, frozen network, imprisoning the mind and senses. Lines of steel that engraved the eyes like barbed wire, points designating new directions without ever becoming free from their rivets or iron. Turnings that disappeared over the horizon, but still evoked the same feeling of ineluctable rigidity. And the bridges of filthy stone or dark metal, with their ladders, gantries and turrets, topped off the whole.

Schiffer had taken an unauthorized route down to the tracks. Paul had then caught up with him, twisting his ankle on the sleepers.

"Who are the Grey Wolves?"

Schiffer walked on without replying, breathing in short gasps. The black stones rolled beneath his feet. "It would take too long to explain," he said at last. "It's all part of Turkish history."

"Tell me, for Christ's sake! You owe me an explanation!"

The Cipher kept walking, still holding his left side. Then, in a hollow voice, he began. "It was during the 1970s. There was the same overheated atmosphere in Turkey as in Europe. Leftist ideas were universally accepted. There was about to be a sort of May '68… But over there, tradition always wins. A resistance group was set up. Men of the extreme right, led by a real Nazi called Alpaslan Türkes. They started out by forming little units in the universities, then they recruited young peasants in the countryside. These recruits called themselves the Grey Wolves or Bozkurt. Or else Ülkü Ocaklari, the Young Idealists. Right from the start, their main argument was violence."

Despite the heat of his body, Paul's teeth were chattering so hard that the noise echoed around his skull.

"At the end of the 1970s," Schiffer went on, "the extreme right-wingers and the extreme left-wingers took up arms. There were bombings, pillage and murder. At the time, about thirty people were killed a day. It was a real civil war. The Grey Wolves were trained in special camps. The recruits became younger and younger. They were indoctrinated and transformed into killing machines."

Schiffer was still swaying along the rails. His breathing became more regular. He kept his eyes on the gleaming lines as though they were dictating the direction of his thoughts.

"Finally, in 1980, the Turkish army seized power. Everything returned to order. The fighters on both sides were arrested. But the Grey Wolves were soon released. Their ideas were the same as the soldiers'. But now they had become idle. As for those kids who had been trained in camps, all they knew how to do was to kill. So, logically enough, they were employed by people who needed hit men-first the government, always pleased to find boys ready to discreetly assassinate Armenian leaders or Kurdish terrorists, then the mafia, which was beginning to control the opium market of the Golden Crescent. For the Mafiosi, the Grey Wolves were a godsend. A force that was strong, armed, experienced and above all had links with the powers that be. Ever since, the Grey Wolves have been carrying out their contracts. Mehmet Ali Aga, the man who shot the pope in 1981, was a Bozkurt. Today, most of them have become mercenaries and have left their political ideals behind them. But the most dangerous ones still remain fanatics, terrorists who are capable of anything. Lunatics who believe in the supremacy of the Turkish race and the return of the Ottoman Empire."

Dazed, Paul listened. He could see no connection between this ancient history and his investigation. He finally asked, "And you're telling me that it's these men who are killing the women?"

"The Adidas jacket saw them taking Ruya Berkes away"

"He saw their faces?"

"They were wearing hoods, in commando getup."

"Commando getup?"

The Cipher sneered. "They're warriors, son. Soldiers. They drove off in a black station wagon. The Turk couldn't remember its registration number, or even its make. Or doesn't want to remember."

"Why is he sure that it was the Grey Wolves?"

"They shouted slogans. They have their own distinctive signs. There's no doubt about it. What's more, it fits in with the rest of the situation. The silence of the community. The fact that Gozar mentioned 'something political.' The Grey Wolves are in Paris. The Turkish quarter is shitting bricks."

Paul could not accept such a different, unexpected direction, which broke entirely with his own intuitions. He had worked too long on the idea of an isolated killer. He insisted: "But why such violence?"

Schiffer continued up the tracks, which were gleaming in the mist.

"They come from distant lands. The plains, deserts and mountains, where such torture is standard. You were working on the hypothesis of a serial killer. With Scarbon, you thought you could recognize a quest for suffering in the wounds of the victims, or the traces of some trauma or something… But you overlooked an extremely simple solution. These women were tortured by professionals. Experts trained in the camps of Anatolia."

"What about the mutilations after death? The cuts on their faces?"

The Cipher's weary gesture seemed to accept all forms of cruelty. "One of them is maybe even nuttier than the rest. Or else perhaps they don't want their victims to be recognized, for the face they're looking for to be identified."

"That they're looking for?"

The cop stopped and turned around toward Paul.

"You still don't understand what's going on, son? The Grey Wolves have a contract. They're looking for a woman." He rummaged through his bloodstained raincoat and then showed him the snapshots. "A woman with this face, answering to this description: a redhead, a seamstress, illegal alien, originally from Gaziantep."

Paul silently looked at the photos in that wrinkled hand.

Everything was taking shape. Burning up.

"A woman who knows something that they need to drag out of her. On three occasions, they thought they'd got her. And they were wrong each time."

"Why are you so sure? How can we be certain that they haven't found her?"

"Because if one of them had been their target, then she would have talked, you can be sure of that, and they would have gone."

"So… so you think the hunt's still on?"

"For sure."

Schiffer's irises were glistening below his lowered eyelids. Paul thought of silver bullets, which alone can kill werewolves.

"You got the wrong lead, son. You were looking for a killer. You were grieving the dead. But it's a living woman you need to find. Someone very much alive, who is being hunted by the Grey Wolves."

He gestured around at the buildings alongside the rail tracks.

"She's there, somewhere, in this neighborhood. In the cellars. In the attics. In the depths of a squatters' building or home. She's being pursued by the worst killers imaginable, and you alone can save her. But you're going to have to act quickly. Very very quickly. Because those bastards are highly trained, and every door in the quarter is open to them."

The Cipher grabbed Paul by his shoulders and stared intensely at him. "As they say, it never rains but it pours. I've got another piece of good news for you: if you want to pull it off, I'm the only chance you've got."