The Golem of Paris (31 page)

F
rom what Jacob had seen, mansions in L.A.’s high-end neighborhoods were often all show and no go, built wide and high in order to simulate volume, but disappointingly shallow—like the movie sets that had paid for them.

Now he saw the opposite illusion in effect.

As the Peugeot crept toward Le Petit Kremlin, the structure retreated and amplified, revealing an astonishing depth, most of it invisible from the street. A network of path lights gradually disclosed outbuildings, fountains, barbered trees, a gazebo—almost a city in itself. That it fit into the urban puzzle of Paris seemed magical, devilish.

He thought he caught the glint of a sniper scope at the roofline.

Schott cleared his throat uncomfortably.

Fifteen yards ahead, men in cargo pants formed a crescent spanning the driveway. Every one of them was thick in the abdomen—husky by virtue of genetics and bulletproof vests. Two held mirrors on poles; two restrained excited dogs.

The rest clutched submachine guns.

At their center, like an aberrant capstone, stood Knob Neck.

A transparent, three-paneled screen interposed itself between Tremsin’s army and the car. Blast-resistant Lexan, ten feet tall, with another several feet of overhang, braced from behind by steel rods and anchored beneath the paving stones. The outer panels angled to contain and redirect a pressure wave away from the house.

He’s a paranoid man.

Pelletier was relaxed—used to the process. She pulled up to the screen and parked. She took the keys from the ignition, opened her door, and set them on the ground.

“You want to talk to him,” she said, “you’ll talk to him. Under my supervision.”

Jacob said, “You can show up whenever you feel like it?”

“Of course not. When I told him who you were, he sounded curious. No guarantee, though. He might change his mind. He’s a creature of whim. Now hurry up and open your doors. Don’t get out, just sit there.”

“We can’t,” Schott said. “Locked in.”

Pelletier pressed a button and they shoved both rear doors open. She popped the trunk, then the hood. “Stay where you are. Lace your fingers behind your head. Get comfortable,” she said. “This could take a while.”

•   •   •

T
HE MIRROR MEN
and the dog handlers came forward, along with three gunmen, one for each passenger.

Up the driveway, Knob Neck was grinning.

Jacob said, “That’s the son of a bitch who followed me.”

“Dmitri Molchanov,” Pelletier said. “Tremsin’s chief of security.”

The devil—he delegates.

The thick blast shield distorted Molchanov’s features,
exaggerating his already extreme dimensions. He was broad, like the others. Broader even than Schott. Jacob had failed to appreciate that, hung up on the guy’s height. A gust of wind lifted his greatcoat, revealing a V torso, strata of muscle asserting themselves through his shirt.

Crazily, he appeared to have grown since their last encounter.

The bend in the glass.

Or a psychological by-product of knowing who—
what
—the guy was.

His colors.

He doesn’t have any.

Jacob looked over at Schott. Tight all over. Vigilant.

The gunmen stood by, weapons trained inside the car, while the mirror men circled the Peugeot, inspecting its undercarriage, probing the trunk. They wore earpieces, touching them and communicating their progress, to Molchanov, presumably.

One of the men stooped to pocket Pelletier’s keys.

No exit without permission.

Molchanov kept on grinning. At this distance, impossible to tell what amused him. But Jacob couldn’t shake the sense that he was the target.

Was this going to go bad right now, before they got in the building?

He smiled back at Molchanov, and the two of them stayed locked on each other, beaming like a couple of lovesick idiots, until a mirror man went to inspect the engine and the hood was raised and Molchanov disappeared from view.

The handlers approached. The dogs were elegant, subtly vicious animals, with black bullet eyes and golden coats and sharp, feral snouts. One of them poked its head into the car, licked Schott’s shin.

“Good puppy,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Sobaka nomer odin,”
the handler said.

“Pretty,” Schott said. “What’s it mean?”

“Dog number one,” Pelletier said.

Jacob’s leg buzzed: incoming message.

Roughly ten-thirty a.m. in L.A.

Recess time for Susan Lomax.

Reflexively he started to reach down.

The gunman watching him snapped the barrel into line with Jacob’s head.

“My phone,” Jacob said. “It’s in my pocket.”

The guy didn’t respond. The gun didn’t budge.

“Can I get it, please?”

Pelletier said, “Stop talking.”

•   •   •

A
MIRROR MAN
slammed the hood and rapped it twice.

Pelletier said, “Get out.”

Molchanov was already loping down the driveway toward them. He came around the blast screen and air-kissed Pelletier.
“Bonsoir.”

“
Bonsoir
, Dmitri.”

Molchanov smiled at Jacob. “Hello again, Mr. Lev.”

Jacob stifled his nerves, showed teeth. “No kiss for me?”

Molchanov laughed. He had a mouth full of huge white veneers.

“Okay,” he said.

•   •   •

T
HE SECU
RITY CHECK
wasn’t finished. It had barely begun. Jacob and Schott were frisked and wanded; their phones were confiscated, along with their wallets and everything else on them that wasn’t clothing. Jacob had left his bag containing Vallot’s crime scene
photos in the car, but the guards took the worn pair of maps from inside his jacket. Schott lost his sunglasses.

Pelletier stood off to the side, exempt from the ordeal.

“When do we get our stuff back?” Schott said.

“When you leave,” Molchanov said.

He touched his earpiece and gestured and guards stepped forward and surrounded them, creating a corral of muscle. A cage that moved. Swept along, Jacob and Schott and Pelletier proceeded to the steps of the mansion, toward the open half of two colossal bronze doors. Figures in relief. Satyrs, fauns, nude maidens—Rodin in a randy mood.

They stepped into a soaring limestone rotunda.

One by one, the guards filed through a full-body scanner, the machine alarming pleasantly.

Bing, bing, bing.

“Jackets and shoes off?” Jacob asked.

“Not necessary,” Molchanov said, tapping the monitor. “It will find everything.”

With a practiced air, Pelletier removed her wallet, phone, fitness tracker, jewelry, belt. She set them in a plastic bin and stepped through the scanner.

Bing.

Molchanov, reading the screen, murmured something that made the other guards smirk and that caused Pelletier to go red in the face.
“J’ai oublié,”
she said.

She reached into her suit jacket and withdrew a tampon. Tossed it into the bin and stepped through the scanner.

“Okay,” Molchanov said.

The guards prodded Pelletier’s items and returned them to her.

Jacob patted himself down, turned his pockets inside out.

He stepped through the scanner.

“Okay,” Molchanov said.

Schott’s turn.

Bing.

Molchanov frowned, studying the screen. He asked Schott to step out, back in.

Bing.

Jacob craned to see the monitor. A guard slid forward to block his view.

“This way, my friend,” Molchanov said.

Schott didn’t move.

Molchanov waited.

Schott stood there.

Jacob said, “Paul?”

Four exits radiated from the rotunda, a gunman stationed at each. Two additional guards moved into position, isolating Schott, who was blinking now, a line of sweat tracking down his neck.

Molchanov said, “Doktor Tremsin is waiting.”

Schott took in a deep breath, bringing his shoulders back, as if readying himself to make a move. But he exhaled and nodded and trudged off, accompanied by two gunmen.

They disappeared through the southwestern door.

Molchanov turned to Jacob and Pelletier and gave a little bow, which on him was a big bow. “Please.”

S
triding smoothly, ape arms swinging, Molchanov took them down a corridor carpeted in plum-colored plush, veered into a room.

A library, in the sense that it contained books. But no cozy spot for reflection. A rolling hall, cluttered with tables, bookstands, display cases, and tapestry armchairs. The roof was a coffered barrel vault of what looked like ebony, the walls paneled with riotously grained satinwood. Wheeled ladders on brass rails offered access to obscure upper shelves. It reminded Jacob of the Widener reading room at Harvard, if Harvard had been feeling spendy.

A lone gunman stood watch while Molchanov exited via curtained French doors on the far end.

Jacob heard the bolt turn.

“What now?” he asked.

“They’re checking up on you,” Pelletier said. She had taken a seat on a chaise longue and was idly spinning an enormous globe.

“Again?”

She shrugged.

“I notice you kept your ID.”

“They know who I am.”

Jacob tapped his foot on the parquetry, watched time tick by on a twelve-foot-tall chinoiserie clock.

“I thought Tremsin was waiting.”

“When he’s ready for us, we’ll know.”

Jacob began moving along the bookcases, fingering gilt-edged spines. Most of the titles were in French, English, or German—part of the grand old Russian tradition of looking to Europe for sophistication.

The gunman trailed him loosely.

Would he dare shoot if Jacob provoked him? Shred all that lovely wood and leather?

Where was Schott?

This way, my friend.

A terrible thought seized Jacob.

Schott and Molchanov: two soldiers in the hybrid army.

Schott had known all along.

Jacob looked over at Pelletier. Examining her nails.

“What’s happening with Paul?” he asked.

“You were the one who asked to come here, Detective. Relax.”

Jacob resumed walking, his pulse high up in his neck.

In a far corner stood a cabinet distinct from the rest, its contents shimmering behind greenish UV glass. Probably the really expensive stuff. First Folios, Gutenbergs.

Decent guess. But wrong.

Inside were drab magazines, dozens of them. Some of the spines were wide enough to accommodate titles in minute print.
Industrial Engineering and Chemistry.
International Journal of Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials.
What Jacob presumed were the Russian equivalents.

The issues were organized in chronological order, clustering in
the mid-seventies, picking up again in the nineties—the eras when Tremsin had been most active in his lab.

Behold the Doktor’s personal hall of fame.

The bottom shelf stood out.

Rather than magazines, it held forty or fifty slim volumes of uniform size, bound in burgundy leather, gilt stamped along the spines, the work of a custom bookbinder.

Jacob squinted to read.

Прага—апрель
1981

Прага—май
1981 (1)

Прага—май
1981 (2)

He reached into his memory, sounded out the Cyrillic characters.

Praga—Aprel 1981

Praga—May 1981 (1)

Praga—May 1981 (2)

He felt the room starting to spin.

She went to Prague.

Steadying himself against the case, he worked his way along, coming to the one he wanted.

Прага—ноябрь
1982

Praga—Nayaber 1982

Jacob reached to open the cabinet.

Locked.

She was never the same after that.

He gave the knob a firm wiggle.

Behind him, the guard said something.

Jacob tugged, harder.

“Stop,” the guard said loudly.

Jacob wheeled around.
“What.”

Startled by the outburst, the guy briefly lost the grip on his gun.

Down at the other end of the library, the French doors opened.

Molchanov entered.

Alone.

Jacob started toward him, halting with hands up as the guard recovered his aim.

Molchanov said, “Your friend made big mistake.”

He displayed a stubby brown object.

Pelletier was off the chaise, on her feet, instantly alert. “What is that?”

“Hidden in boot,” Molchanov said. “Wrapped in material.”

Mindful of the gun held level with his waist, Jacob came slowly forward until he could identify the object as a wooden-handled potter’s knife.

His mother’s knife.

“This special material,” Molchanov said, jouncing the knife in his palm, “very interesting. I cover knife, put wand, no beep. I take material away,
beep beep beep beep.
”

Pelletier gaped at Jacob. “My God. What is wrong with you?”

“I had no idea,” Jacob said, which wasn’t really true, because he did have some idea; only he hadn’t known where exactly Schott had stashed it. “I swear.”

“Je suis désolée,”
Pelletier said to Molchanov.
“Je pensais
—
”

But Molchanov had a hand up. “No problem.”

He smiled at Jacob. “Remove clothes.”

A beat.

Jacob said, “I’d like to leave now.”

Molchanov said, “Clothes.”

The library temperature was mild enough, calibrated for long-term storage of paper. Jacob shook nonetheless as he stripped off his shirt and pants.

“All clothes.”

Jacob stood naked. Pelletier made a show of studying the floor.

Molchanov set the knife down on an end table, removed his leather gloves, and began inspecting Jacob’s clothing, feeling along the seams.

On his left index finger was an enormous black ring.

Jacob, shivering, said, “What is that? Iron?”

Molchanov stopped what he was doing to glance at his own hand.

“Where’d you get it?” Jacob said.

“It was reward,” Molchanov said.

“Reward for what?”

“Work,” Molchanov said.

He tossed the jeans on the floor, picked up Jacob’s shirt.

“How about this?” Jacob said, tapping the side of his own neck.

Molchanov’s fingers darted to his hunk of scar tissue, as though to conceal it. A habit not quite broken. Quickly, he dropped his hand.

He said, “Also reward.”

He started to search the shirt—then, changing his mind, cast it aside.

He took out a new glove, a latex one. Pulled it on.

“Turn,” he said.

When Jacob did not, Molchanov said, “I must look for weapon.”

Still Jacob stood his ground.

Molchanov advanced like the leading edge of a tsunami. He seized Jacob by the shoulders and spun him around, bending him over the back of a chair and kicking Jacob’s feet apart.

Jacob gritted his teeth. “Whatever gets you off, asshole.”

“I am not asshole,” Molchanov said. “
This
is asshole.”

•   •   •

J
ACOB CROUCHED
: shrunken, damp, hurting, nauseous.

His clothes hit him in the back.

“Put on.”

Pelletier was still gazing dispassionately at the floor.

Jacob got dressed.

“Okay,” Molchanov said. He spoke to the gunman in Russian, and the four of them left the library and began to walk.

•   •   •

T
H
E HOUSE WENT ON
and on and on.

Ornate in spots, stark in others, room after room inhabited by domestics of every stripe. At Molchanov’s approach, they paused their chatter to give a respectful distance.

An exterminator squatting by the baseboards, a spray tank on his back, stood and doffed his hat.

Molchanov led them through passageways, switchbacks, miles of silk wallpaper. The further they went, the less the place felt like a fortress and the more it felt like a house. A really nice house, but a house. You could even overlook the security cameras, tastefully concealed behind leaded glass shades.

The air moved gently against them, carrying a distinct but agreeable iodine tang.

Jacob felt a dull ache where Molchanov had assaulted him. That had been more than security. It was an announcement—a change of plans.

He wasn’t going to talk to Tremsin. He was being
brought
to Tremsin.

Focus
.
Head up. Back straight.

He glanced over at Pelletier. Serene as cream.

They arrived at an elevator bank. Molchanov punched an ivory button. Pale, lustrous doors parted. “Lady first.”

They stepped into the car. Its three interior walls were made of
glass, exposing the elevator shaft, which was elaborately mosaicked with an abstract lattice. The elevator panels were made of the same lustrous metal as the doors.

Molchanov pressed another ivory button and the car began to rise—sluggishly.

Jacob saw letters and numbers tiled in among the lattice.

The patterns weren’t abstract.

They were chemical diagrams.

A nice slow ride, offering plenty of time for you to admire them.

Jacob said, “His creations.”

Pelletier nodded.

Jacob looked around again at the fixtures, wondering what the metal was. Nothing so pedestrian as white gold. Platinum, maybe, or something exotic that would excite a chemist. Palladium. Iridium.

The main panel was engraved with a warning.

EN CAS D’INCENDIE, NE PAS UTILISER L’ASCENSEUR.
PRENDRE L’ESCALIER.

In case of fire, do not use the elevator. Take the stairs.

It sounded so much more refined in French.

They reached the top floor.

The doors opened.

Molchanov said, “Lady first.”

•   •   •

T
HE MOSAICS CONT
INUED
across the floors and walls of a six-sided antechamber. There was only one way to go, through a door incongruously narrow and rustic, roughhewn from light-colored wood.

Molchanov stepped toward it but stopped, his hand going to his earpiece.
“Da.”

Whatever the message was, he didn’t like it.

“Nyet. Nyet. Devyanosto sekund.”

Molchanov lowered his voice, shot off a command in Russian, hustled back into the elevator. Through the glass, Jacob saw him pry open the panel and turn a knob. The car plunged out of sight.

“What was that about?” Jacob said.

Pelletier shook her head. “He said he’d be back.”

She had a brief conversation with the gunman in Russian, which ended with his shrugging agreeably and stepping aside.

“We’ll go ahead,” Pelletier said to Jacob.

She started across the antechamber, paused. “Have you prepared your questions?”

“A whole list.”

“Pick two or three.”

He said, “Why’s Tremsin curious to meet me?”

“You’ll want to address him as Doktor,” Pelletier said.

“You said he was curious to meet me,” Jacob said. “What did you tell him?”

“That you are an American police officer, in town to talk to him.”

“You gave him my name.”

“Naturally.”

“What else?”

“That was it,” she said.

“What exactly did he say?”

She said, “Only that he looked forward to meeting you.”