It is bizarre, Bliss admits to himself, but he can't get away from the fact that literature and histories are full of parallels: I'll climb the highest mountain, swim the widest ocean, throw myself to the waves, build you the Taj Mahal.
It was the exuberant era of Louis XIV when the lovestruck man locked his heart away and turned his back on all temptations; a time when, for those rich enough or corrupt enough, anything was possible. It was a period of grandiose architecture and lavish design, clothes and footwear so elaborate and ostentatious women couldn't move in them, outrageous food like lark's tongue pie and roast peacock. Above all, it was a time of great romanticism. My theory is still valid, Bliss tells himself, despite the fact that it has some major holes. The Château Roger was certainly built in 1687, according to the inscription on the gate pillar, the same year as the masked man's incarceration, and the geographic location puts it directly across the strait from the fortress. The size of the famous prisoner's cell suggests that he was not an ordinary inmate, and the murals on the wall, presumably penned by him, depict a joyous gathering, like a wedding.
But with more than half of the manuscript piled on to his desk, Bliss has hit a sold wall: why wasn't the seventeenth-century romantic successful? Who was the woman and where was she?
A similar question is being asked of Janet Thurgood in Vancouver, where the missing woman still tops the wanted person's list.
"Where the hell could she be?" demands Dave Brougham as he sits down with Mike Phillips and Constable Paul Zelke, and all eyes turn northwards to the mountains and the distant community of Beautiful.
"It's a bit of a hangover from the sixties," explains Zelke, the force's expert on religious cults and sects. "It was originally set up by a bunch of American anti-war existentialists more interested in staying high than avoiding the draft. They really worshipped Dylan, Che Guevara, and Castro, but they somehow wrapped it up in a sort of revolutionary religiosity; let's face it, almost anyone can see God through a haze of blue smoke."
"Yeah," laughs Brougham. "The only real difference between Mother Theresa and Marilyn Monroe is a bottle of rye and a couple of joints."
"Franz Kafka was their hero really," continues Zelke more seriously as he flicks through his notes. "David and Goliath; small men taking on the world. But there's no overall logic as far as I can see. Shit, Nietzsche was an atheist and they even twisted his ideas into it somehow."
"How do they get away with it?" asks Inspector Phillips as he tries to understand.
"Charismatic leader; usually the long-haired one with a guitar and a line on a regular supply of coke or other shit. Wayne Browning, a low-life from the southern United States, quickly took over, and most of the other men either grew up or blew out their brains, leaving him with all the women."
"And they never caught on?"
"You'll believe anything if you want to, Mike. It's like sending money to those nuts on television 'cuz God wants you to."
"So, what happens there now?"
"We've kinda given up, to be honest. Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer wouldn't be too happy about us spending a bunch of money infiltrating a place like that. We've got a tap on his phones; we hear the odd rumours about kiddie abuse. It's odds-on that Browning has his pick of the young virgins as they leave the nest —"
"That's gotta be illegal," breaks in Brougham, but Zelke has heard it before.
"No different from any of the other communes, Dave. We'd take them on, but the world doesn't need another Waco or Jonestown."
Janet Thurgood knows nothing of the apocalyptic disasters in Guyana and Texas nor anything else that happened in the world beyond Beautiful for the forty years she was there — Wayne Browning made sure of that. And now, as she scavenges in the shadowy lanes of Vancouver's Chinatown, she is more than ever convinced that she has somehow slipped through a galactic wormhole. It should be 1953; in Janet's mind it is 1953. She is an eleven-year-old crying for her mother and crying over the loss of her precious Jesus.
"Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name," she mumbles as she squirrels into a garbage bin behind a restaurant, and then she mentally runs a list of childhood facts as she seeks security.
"Once two is two; two twos are… Twelve pennies in a shilling; twenty shillings in a pound… Ring a ring o' roses… The Queen is Elizabeth the second. Her official birthday is… Her real birthday is…
"Why can't I have two birthdays, Mummy?"
"That would be greedy, Janet."
"Is the Queen greedy, Mummy?"
"Get to your knees and pray that God didn't hear you."
"Our father…"
The vivid memories and rambling mutterings continue as she searches for her past, for food, and for her crucifix. The loss of her precious icon worries her most. It's the crutch she has carried with her from childhood. Without it, she knows that she is forever lost.
chapter four
The West African rainy season is the subject of jubilation around the boardroom table at Creston headquarters in London.
"Looks like the crop from Ivory will be above expectations," croons Dawes, surveying the latest data from the man on the ground.
Joseph Creston is less optimistic. "Assuming the Muslims don't invade and destroy it."
"Why worry," retorts Dawes, ever the accountant. "It'll just push up the price of our Ghanaian and Nigerian output."
November in the coastal rainforests of southern Côte d'Ivoire may mean constant downpours, but along the southerly coast of mainland Europe, where the French Alps stumble heavily into the Mediterranean, brilliant sunshine still turns the beaches to gold and the clear cobalt sea mirrors the sky.
Detective Chief Inspector David Bliss is walking — hour after hour, mile after mile — seeking inspiration to complete his novel.
"Well, just how hard can it be?" he chastised Samantha, his lawyer daughter, when she questioned both his ability and his sanity. But now, as he wanders home along the deserted promenade in St-Juan-sur-Mer, he peers across the bay to the island of Ste. Marguerite and wonders whether or not he will ever be able to convince skeptical readers that he really has discovered the secret of the island's most notorious prisoner — the Man in the Iron Mask.
Despite the touch of warmth in the limpid afternoon air, the quays and beaches are silent, apart from the occasional screech of a hungry gull; the restaurants and beach-side bars are padlocked and boarded up. The transient workers of summer have been drawn north into the alpine ski resorts by the scent of money, and only a few arthritic and bronchitic Brits, desperate to escape the lugubrious English winter, wander in search of a fish and chip shop and a recent copy of the Daily Mirror.
Most of the apartments in Bliss's building in St-Juan-sur-Mer are as vacant as the beaches, and since his arrival at the beginning of September he has only twice spied another occupant. The whirring of the elevator usually signals the arrival of Daisy, the bubbly Provençale real estate agent whose company and bed he has been sharing for a while. Isn't this what you wanted? he has asked himself a dozen times. Somewhere where you won't be disturbed.
"I 'ave just zhe place for you," Daisy enthused with a glint in her eye. "No one will know you are here — except for me," she added, and at first the arrangement seemed perfect.
The sound of the elevator signals Daisy's approach — the third time today — and Bliss can't help thinking that he would have had more privacy had he stayed in London. But this is where it happened; this is where Louis XIV's legendary prisoner spent eleven years of his life locked in solitary confinement with