The Nostradamus prophecies

31

Alexi had been a master thief all his life – and master thieves know how to use happenstance. To benefit from the moment.

He was certain that the watchman would eventually be tempted out of the Sanctuary. How could he not be, when the entire congregation of the church had exited in a drove before him, spurred on by curiosity about what might be happening above them in the square?

Alexi could imagine the sequence of thoughts that would be passing through the security guard’s head. His duty, surely, lay outside? Sainte Sara could look after herself for a few moments, could she not? There was no formal threat against her that he knew of. Nobody had warned him to take especial care. What harm would it do to break up the morning’s monotony with a breath of fresh air and a riot?

He had just secreted himself on the right-hand side of the main door when the watchman burst through at the tail of the crowd, his face alight with anticipation. Alexi darted in behind him and straight down to the Sanctuary. He had been coming to this place all his life. He knew its geography like the back of his hand.

Sainte Sara was standing in a corner of the deserted crypt, surrounded by votive offerings, photographs, candles, knickknacks, poems, plaques, blackboards with people’s names inscribed and flowers – many, many flowers. She was dressed in at least twenty layers of donated clothing, interleaved with capes, ribbons and hand-stitched veils, with only her mahogany-brown face, dwarfed by its silver crown, peeping through the stifling density of the fabric surrounding her.

Crossing himself superstitiously and casting a ‘please forgive me’ glance at the nearest crucifix, Alexi upended Sara-e-kali and ran his hand across her base. Nothing. It was as smooth as alabaster.

With a desperate glance at the entrance to the crypt, Alexi muttered a prayer, took out his penknife and began scraping.

Achor Bale had watched the rapid unfolding of events in the square in front of him with keen interest. First the hasty appearance of the blond idiot – then the two angry gypsies, bearing down on the begging girlfriend. Then the begging girlfriend crying out and drawing everyone’s attention to the blond boyfriend, who would otherwise have undoubtedly noticed what was happening before anyone had a chance to see him and been able to make himself scarce before the shit really hit the fan. Which it was doing now.

The two motorcycle cops were still trying to force their way through the crowd. The blond boyfriend was facing off against the younger of the two men and, if Bale wasn’t mistaken, he was waving around an Opinel penknife – which would undoubtedly break the first time it encountered anything more substantial than a wishbone. The older man – the father, probably – was busy fending off his hysterical daughter, but it was clear that he would soon succeed in struggling free, upon which the two of them would fillet the blond long before the police had a dog’s dinner’s chance of getting close.

Bale glanced around the square. The whole thing seemed somehow contrived to him. Riots almost never happened organically – of their own accord. People orchestrated them. At least in his experience. He’d even stage managed one or two himself during his time with the Legion – not under the Legion’s particular aegis, needless to say, but merely as a means of forcing their involvement in a situation which, without them, might simply have resolved itself with no recourse to violence.

He remembered one riot in Chad with particular affection – it was during the Legion’s deployment there during the 1980s. Forty dead – dozens more injured. Word from the Corpus was that he had come perilously close to starting a civil war. How Monsieur, his father, would have been pleased.

Legio Patria Nostra – Bale felt almost nostalgic. He had learned a great many useful things in the Legion’s ‘combat village’ in Fraselli, Corsica – and also in Rwanda, Djibouti, Lebanon, Cameroon and Bosnia. Things he might have to put into practice now.

He stood up to get a better view. When that failed, he climbed on to the cafe table, using his hat as a sunshield. No one noticed him – all eyes were on the square.

He glanced over towards the entrance to the Sanctuary just in time to see Alexi, who had been lurking behind the main door, dart in behind the emerging watchman.

Excellent. Bale was having his work done for him again. He looked around the square for Sabir but couldn’t mark him. Best head down to the crypt entrance. Wait for the gypsy to come back out. In the maelstrom that was the Place de l’Eglise, no one would be in the least bit surprised to find a second corpse with a knife-wound in its chest.