CARCASSONNE
Carcassonne was in darkness as Raoul made his way along the Canal du Midi.
He’d got out of the truck on the Villegly road. From there, it had been a short tramp over the hill to come down into the Bastide via the cimetière Saint-Vincent. He had not thought to be back in Carcassonne so soon and, now that Sandrine was no longer here, he was shocked at how alien the city seemed to him.
Below him, boulevard Omer Sarraut – where he had lifted Sandrine’s broken body from the panier à salade – was silent. Even now, Raoul could hardly bare to look at it. All he saw was her bruised face and her branded skin and the blood dripping from the leather of the seats on to the floor of Robert Bonnet’s car.
He stopped to catch his breath for a moment. Was Robert still alive? Gaston? Or Dr Giraud, who had saved Sandrine’s life? What about Aimé Ramond and Jean Bringer? He had not even had time to grieve for his mother. Raoul shook his head. Trying to clear his mind. There would be time to mourn, for those taken or lost, but not now.
The blackness made it easy for him to make his way unobserved towards the offices of the railway transportation department. Although it was being called the ghost train, the truth was that there were records. Every stretch of the line, every day the prisoners spent confined to the cattle trucks, was written down. All Raoul needed to do was find the information and let his comrades know. Then, at least, they would have a chance of delaying the transport.
He climbed the embankment and crawled out over the line. There was no hum of metal. The gravel between the tracks cracked and crunched, but no one seemed to hear. Raoul stepped over one sleeper, then the next, like a child playing a game in the schoolyard. He was surprised there was no patrol, but assumed perhaps that the Gestapo – that Authié – were concentrating their attention closer to the station buildings.
Without too much difficulty, Raoul located the station master’s office at the far end of the westbound platform. Even in the dark, the plaque seemed to gleam: CHEF DE GARE.
The door was solid oak. There was no way of breaking it without making enough noise to get the guards running all the way from the Caserne Laperrine. Instead, Raoul climbed on to the metal bench beneath a small window and reached his hand up. The catch had been left à l’espagnolette, to allow a shaving of cool air in, so it wasn’t difficult to lever the fastening up with his hunting knife.
He slithered through, head first, then lowered himself carefully down to the tiled floor. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he could make out the metal filing cabinets in the corner of the room and the huge leather-bound diary in pride of place on the station master’s desk.
He struck a match and turned the pages, looking for today’s date. There was nothing recorded. He frowned, then turned the pages back, looking for something that might tell him where the train had been, at least, if not where it was going.
After a few minutes, he found it. A list of names, Max Blum among them, and an hour-by-hour record of how the prisoners from Le Vernet were to be transported up the eastern border. Through Provence to Bourgogne, then into Lorraine and on to Bavaria in southern Germany. Heading for Dachau.
Raoul leant forward and traced the route with his finger. This was all he needed. If they moved quickly, they could position themselves to block the line and stop the train moving forward. If the rumours were true and the Allies were launching a second attack from the sea, then all they had to do was delay the train.
He put the spent match in his pocket, imagining Sandrine’s face when he told her – and her pleasure at being able to explain to Lucie and to Liesl what had happened. He moved a chair beneath the window and had put his hands on the sill, ready to pull himself up, when without warning the door was flung open. Raoul went for his gun as the electric light was switched on.
‘Halten Sie.’
His heart hammering in his chest, he turned slowly around. Four against one, Gestapo. He put his hands above his head.
‘Come down.’
Raoul had no choice but to do as he was told.
‘Name?’ one of the Germans barked.
Raoul didn’t answer.
‘Your name?’ he said again, shouting this time.
Raoul met his gaze.
The Nazi stared at him, then so quickly that Raoul didn’t even see it coming, he raised his rifle and swung it into the side of Raoul’s head.
TARASCON
Audric Baillard sat at the table with the Codex before him. The shutters were open and the light of the moon came in through the window and lit the beautiful letters of the ancient Coptic script. He let his thin white hand hover over the papyrus, his skin mottled with age, then withdrew it again.
The story of its long journey was finally clear in his mind. Arinius had smuggled the Codex from the community in Lyon to the mountains. Baillard suspected it was not the only version of the text. There were rumours about excavations in Egypt close to the Jabal al-Tarif cliffs, not far from the settlement of Nag Hammadi. He thought of his old friend Harif, dead many years now. It was Harif who’d taught him to understand the ancient languages of Egypt – Coptic and Demotic, hieroglyphs – and had told him of the network of some hundred and fifty caves on the west bank of the Nile two days’ ride north of Luxor, used as graves. A hiding place too? A secret library entombed in the rocks?
Baillard wished he knew what had happened to Arinius himself. Had he lived to make old bones? Had he remained close by, keeping watch over the Codex? Had it lain here undisturbed for hundreds of years until called upon by Dame Carcas to drive the invaders from the walls of La Cité?
He knew that the border regions in the fourth century had been violent, lawless places. Whole tribes decimated and villages put to the sword. But had Arinius’ settlement survived? Part of it, at least? Eloise and Geneviève Saint-Loup – Sandrine and Marianne Vidal too – were descended from those early Tarasconnais Christian families. The iridescent glass bottle containing the map that had been passed down from hand to hand to hand was proof of that. And even though Baillard now knew that the map had been bought by Otto Rahn from Monsieur Saint-Loup – when he’d been forced to sell the family possessions – Rahn, in turn, had sent it to Antoine Déjean in 1939, thereby returning the map to the land from whence it had come.
Baillard closed his ears to the noise of the world and lifted his eyes to the mountains, picturing in his mind’s eye the dark path he would take up to the Pic de Vicdessos. He believed that the power of the words would be strongest spoken there, where they had lain safe for so long.
There was a tap on the door. He stood up. Leaving the cedarwood box on the table, he placed the Codex in one pocket and his revolver in the other, then stepped out to join Guillaume Breillac.
‘Any word from Eloise?’ Baillard asked. He knew the young man was worried about his wife.
‘Not yet, sénher,’ Guillaume replied.
‘It is only a matter of time, I am sure.’
Guillaume didn’t answer.