The Mosque of Notre Dame

^{CHAPTER 13} A CONFERENCE UNDER GROUND

There was not enough electricity. They had to turn off every second light on the platform. As a result, the area looked striped.

People came one at a time or in small groups until the platform was actually crowded. To Eugène-Olivier, they looked like the commuters that must have stood here every morning twenty-five years ago, waiting for the subway to work. The crowd did not resemble the passengers on the platforms in Paris today. It did not include women dressed in tents, or men in fezes or green turbans. Instead, there were the fresh faces of young girls and the smoothly shaved cheeks of men.

Ever since the Wahhabis came to power, the only Frenchmen who wore beards were the collaborationists. Suddenly, everyone remembered that even Charlemagne shaved.

Everyone on the platform now was French—not formerly, but really. Among them was a gracious black woman in a long, pleated skirt who wrapped her slender shoulders in a black shawl. Around her neck—too heavy for her neck, really—was a cross. Not an ancient one, but an old one, probably something she had inherited from her grandmother. Eugène-Olivier knew her from the Panthéon ghetto and he remembered her well: There were not that many black people in the ghetto, except for practitioners of voodoo, who could be recognized on sight. He had not known she was a Christian, or even that Christians existed in Paris.

The young woman smiled to him as she carefully made her way in between the benches to meet her friends.

“That’s Michelle,” said someone behind Eugène-Olivier. “She’s getting ready to take her vows as a Carmelite.”

There was one Carmelite convent remaining in the Pyrenees. Her ancestors were Catholics in Gabon when Monsignor Lefebvre was a missionary there.

Eugène-Olivier’s heart began to beat wildly. Jeanne appeared next to him—radiant, apparently contented with life, with herself, or with both.

“Hi,” said Eugène-Olivier. He could feel himself starting to blush. How many times in recent days had he imagined meeting Jeanne again? And now he didn’t know what to do with himself. “I couldn’t imagine I would see you here,” he found himself saying, which sounded silly as the words left his mouth.

Jeanne teased him, “Now, how could all the honorable people be getting together without me? Am I an exception?”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I mean, not that you’re an exception, I simply didn’t think that you might be here, too…” He couldn’t sink into the earth, because they were already underground. Lord, what an idiot he was! Where were all those interesting subjects for conversing with Jeanne that he had rehearsed to himself a hundred times in his mind?

“Do you maybe know what is going on here today?” she murmured.

What a relief! At least she wasn’t angry.

“I don’t think anyone knows for sure. Not even Sevazmios, Brisseville, or Larochejaquelein.”

Eugène-Olivier knew that all three commanders of the Paris sections of Maquis must be somewhere on this platform, but he saw only Philippe André Brisseville—who, even in the bright light of day, was pale due to a lung ailment. He looked fifty years old instead of thirty-five.

Once the Wahhabis, in an effort to find Brisseville in one of his numerous hidden shelters, released a poison gas that caused great pain. But there was a bottle of mineral water in the shelter. Brisseville used it to gradually soak a handkerchief to protect his mouth and nose. This let him contain his cries of pain and not reveal his position. But he remained an invalid, and could not live for a month without triamcinolone, which he administered to himself in large doses.

Dark haired and thin, he was studying something on the screen of his palm-top.

“Oh, look!” said Jeanne, nudging Eugène-Olivier. “What is Sophia Sevazmios doing, hanging out with that creep?”

Following her gaze, Eugène-Olivier saw Sevazmios on the high staircase that once led to the city. There was no question about it. A few steps below her stood Ahmad ibn Salih.

“What is he doing here, anyway?” she added. “He might not leave the same way he came.”

“Yes, he’s no ordinary creep,” said Eugène-Olivier. Sophia was talking with the Arab. There was a smile on her lips, the kind it was impossible to confuse with anything else—a friendly, open, approving smile. She might have a thousand reasons for talking with him, even for allowing him to appear here. But she couldn’t have a single reason to smile at him as if he were one of her own. Little candles seemed to be going on in her eyes. What on earth was going on?

Sophia took out a cigarette from her pack.

Slobodan was saying to her, “It’s hard to cast off a mask that’s grown onto your face, not as much on the outside as on the inside. Very hard, Sophia.” In a simple linen jacket and soft collarless shirt, he now no longer looked like an Arab. But the reason was not the absence of his rich Arab clothing. The expression on his face changed his physiognomy in a strange way. “Nevertheless, I wanted to ask you something… I don’t even know where to begin.”

“You already began splendidly with being able to pronounce my name,” said Sophia Sevazmios with a smile. “That’s nice to hear for a change. Let’s switch to Russian. In Russian the questions flow as if they were accompanied by vodka.”

“I prefer juniper brandy,” Slobodan spoke Russian without an accent, but in a somewhat flat voice. “I haven’t spoken Russian in a hundred years, not even in my dreams. Sophia, how did you end up here?”

“Here in the subway? Here in Paris?”

“Yes, Sonya. The Europeans called those who deprived you of your childhood “rebels,” and “freedom fighters.” They didn’t want to believe those courageous fighters against pregnant women and children were terrorists. They gave them asylum. They helped those snakes slither all over the world.”

Eugène-Olivier was not the only one who was confused. Many members of Maquis cast long looks at Sophia Sevazmios speaking in some incomprehensible tongue with an Arab.

“Things were pretty bad in Russia, too,” said Sophia. “I don’t know if you remember. There was a lawyer named Kuznyetsov. Once, when I was a child, I met with him just after my imprisonment, but I didn’t know much then. At the beginning of 1995, there was an attack on those schoolchildren in Grozny. That traitor went in among the barricaded Russian soldiers being sent into Chechnya to hunt down the terrorists. He shouted, ‘I am the attorney Adam Kuznyetsov. I give you my word—surrender your weapons and I will take you away from here! Why would you want to fight this war, why would you want to be occupiers, to die in an unjust war?’

“Imagine, Slobo, who he was saying this to. Nineteen-year-old boys, but even their age is not the most important thing. You or I would not have fallen for it at sixteen. They were green, completely green—without life experience, without an ideology. They had finished school as the empire was collapsing. Even if some of them actually studied instead of twiddling their thumbs, what could they have read about Yermolov, who put down the Caucasus without sentimentality because he understood his enemy. Where would they have found him in the textbooks of perestroika? And so they believed him and turned in their weapons—and he turned them over to the terrorists. How could they not trust the nice man?

“The most horrible thing is that even a few months later, such a trick would not have succeeded. They became soldiers with incredible speed. There was still no national consciousness. Some joined the army when they understood that the Cross signifies something— like the boy martyr who was held hostage with me for a few days. Some joined to claim revenge for their friends. He wouldn’t have succeeded, even a month later!”

“They killed them all?” Slobodan asked—then quickly regretted adding wood to the black fire that burned in Sophia’s eyes.

“If only they had!” said the woman painfully. “If only they had, Slobo! Lord, the things they did with them! They raped them, they cut off their ears, their noses, they gouged out their eyes, they cut off their genitalia. And all this was accompanied by sniggering, following the model of an Afghani game of football using a live ram.”

“I know how they usually work,” a spasm of pain crossed Slobodan’s face. “I was born in Kosovo.”

“No one knows how most of these young men died. But they gave some of them back to the feds later on—as part of a campaign to frighten them. Some died quickly from the torture they endured. Others lived for many years in various psychiatric clinics.”

“All those perversions were paid for by Europe, Sophie. And by the USA, too, of course. Some believed in it, some didn’t care. During the Kosovo war, our side captured three US soldiers. Oh, what a commotion there was! America was decorated with yellow ribbons! And our men sent them back their so-called heroes. Do you know what I would have done?”

“Sophia shrugged her shoulders. “Would have given each of them a piece of lead to wear as a memento?”

“No, you’re wrong.” Slobodan laughed. “I wouldn’t have killed them; they’re not Albanians. I would have spared no expense, given them full security, and forced them to clear the ruins from the NATO bombings. I would have forced them to pull every burned body of a Serbian child from the ruins with their own hands. And then let them go. At least one or two would have come to their senses. Maybe they would have had something to say to their countrymen.”

“In Europe there were some who spoke up.”

“You could count them on your fingers. Sophia, I read about you in a book about the Dudzhahov case. The ransom paid to free you went directly into his pocket. I know that you tried here in Europe, first in Stockholm, then in London, you tried as a teenager to get them to listen to you. And I read many other things. Tell me, can you forgive the Europeans for being the sponsors of Islamic evil in Chechnya, just so they could destroy Russia?”

“I’m afraid that would be impossible,” said Sophia with a smile.

“But you have forgiven them.”

“Forgiven them?” asked Sophia. “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it. I’m here because this is where I am needed.”

“You’re a fantastic woman, Sophia. I couldn’t do it, I don’t forgive the Europeans, I don’t forgive them a single day. I don’t get excited over their troubles. They brought them on themselves.”

“Just don’t tell me you’re going to leave before the storm, Slobo.”

“I’ll stay. But not because of them. It’s simply that I’ve pretended too long. I have a crazy wish to take an automatic rifle and point it at the Muslims. You can’t imagine how many times I’ve wanted to kill someone during the years I’ve been undercover.”

“While I lived in the lap of luxury, denying myself nothing, right? What am I going to do now?”

They laughed like a young couple, looking deeply into each other’s eyes.

“Don’t blame yourself. You did more than practice marksmanship. Didn’t you and your husband manage to change the informational landscape? He managed to do quite a lot!”

“That began long before we met,” said Sophia with a smile. “My husband’s best friend, who intended to devote his life to the works of Euripides at the Faculty of Philology during his first year, was a countryman of yours, Veselin Janković. Being Orthodox, Leonid knew a lot of things that Europeans had never heard. Their friendship completely opened his eyes. While they were still in secondary school, they spent their holidays in Europe, and not only in the fashionable spots.

“Veselin had become irritated by the fact that among his many English, French and German friends, as soon as the Balkans were mentioned, all these highly individualistic intellectual became the same, like chicks from an incubator. A miserable lot of liberal stereotypes and ignorance of the facts. At first, Leonid spent nights in sports camps and discos talking about the clash of civilizations. Then he came to understand that he couldn’t convince them. And he didn’t like that at all. That’s how he got the idea of his own publishing house, Elektra. It published only documentary literature.”

“I remember those books very well—on poor-quality paper with soft covers. With a logotype of a maiden with loose hair. Those editions frequently fell into my hands.”

“Yes, in eight years, many things were printed. The decision was immediately made to publish in several European languages, not just Greek. The editions were banned the first year in France and the second year in Great Britain and Germany. Spanish editions of Elektra books only began to appear after they were… preventively banned. But the damage wasn’t great. Whoever needed them came to Athens to buy them. The employees in the publishing house called it ‘book tourism.’

“But who would work in such a company? Who brought manuscripts there? Documents, analyses? How did those writers get their documentation? Soon Elektra became a magnet. Things took on a life of their own. Leonid set up first one, and then another fund. He began to send physicians where they were needed. And in time, official activity was superseded by… un official activity.”

“Two sides of the same coin.”

“Yes. On the one hand, without Elektra’s publishing activity, there wouldn’t have been such a concentration of brilliant minds in the same place. The liberals guessed at the contours of the company’s work without going to the effort of proving anything. To be honest, they weren’t all that wrong. I met Leonid after all that was already working.”

Sophia smiled with only her eyes, remembering how, barely managing to wrap a towel around her head, she ran out of the bathtub to open the door. It was fine, it was just the young woman she was expecting. They had agreed to meet at 2:00, and she must be running ten minutes early.

But instead of a young woman, there was a young man at her door.

“Sophia Greenberg?” he smiled, showing his white teeth, as if he hadn’t noticed the towel and the bathrobe.

“Stop right there!” Sophia jumped backward. Her pistol was in the bedroom in a case.

“You were expecting Milana Mladić,” he said, still standing at the door. “And I was expecting her to meet with you today. But instead, she’s having a baby. It’s a good thing she called before she went to the hospital forty minutes ago. Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Leonid Sevazmios, the chief slave of the Elektra publishing house.

“Come in.” The towel fell on her shoulders and she shook her wet locks of hair.

She didn’t really care for the way he was dressed. Moreover, he was tanned, with brown eyes and dark hair. Sonya had always preferred blond-haired men, or at least brown- or red-haired ones, although she wasn’t sure whether that was a matter of taste or an unconscious act of self-protection. And he was too cheerful for her taste.

No, she didn’t like Leonid Sevazmios at first sight. Nevertheless, everything she knew about him, she had to admit, was to his advantage. And honesty at that time was a keyword for Sophia, almost a fetish.

“I’ll be out in a second!” she called from the bathroom, jumping into some denim overalls. “Would you like some tea?”

“No!” called the guest from the other room. “I only drink dried Lapsang Souchong from the Nubai Company, and you don’t have any! You probably have some kind of Pickwick tea in bags. I don’t want any coffee, either, because you don’t know how to prepare it properly. In general, women prepare awful coffee.”

“As I recall, I didn’t offer to prepare any coffee.” Sonya pulled a CD burned earlier from a drawer. “Here you have everything you need. There’s my statement, which they did not allow me to make during the trial. There’s the rejection of my US visa application. Some relatives of my father’s wanted to put me in a clinic there for psychological rehabilitation, but the US administration thought it undesirable to have a thirteen-year-old child victim of Chechen separatists in the country. There’s testimony from the authorities regarding how they crippled me.

She uttered the last sentence casually, as she always did, in order to avoid a reaction of pity.

“This material is red-hot right now,” he said, becoming serious. “Have you read the bacchanalia passing through the newspapers? Especially the English ones? ‘After ten years, the hand of the Kremlin reaches Chechen rebels.’ There are even better phrases, I can send them to you by email.”

“I’ve read them all.”

“I should have known you would keep up. Good, this book about their exploits should be a good first board for their coffin. We’ll try to get it as soon as possible, despite what Milana’s baby has done to us. But you know what, Sophia… I’ll let you know when the book comes out. They’re already conducting an investigation, and they will find anyone that had a personal account to settle with the dead man. It would be better if you weren’t in Europe at the time. They’re idiots, just idiots.”

“But if they find me, they won’t be idiots at all. I’m the one who killed him.”

Later, Sonya simply could not understand why, for the first and last time in her life, she acted so stupidly. She knew very well that even tried-and-tested people who deserve absolute confidence should be told only what was necessary. She certainly didn’t have absolute confidence in him. In fact, Leonid’s reckless appearance contradicted the serious facts she knew about him. Why did she tell him that—premonition? No, she didn’t believe in superstition.

An uncomfortable silence ensued. He looked at her calmly and persistently, his light brown eyes with honey-colored tones gradually becoming darker.

“To quote from one of our Russian books,” he finally said, ‘O Queen, why was it necessary for you to suffer personally?’ I read it in French translation, by the way, they told me it was the best.”

“I can’t stand Bulgakov,” bristled Sonya. “In his works, you have a bunch of retirees instead of fighters. The country needs saving and they’re sitting at home and sighing, ‘Ah, how nice it is to sit at home and drink tea next to a shaded lamp!’”

“Pickwick from a bag. By the way, I would really love it if you would offer me a glass of mineral water. Carbonated would be best. I can’t stand the social propriety of saying, ‘Oh, I only drink non-carbonated water’!”

“Listen, I’m tempted to dump your glass of carbonated water on your head,” laughed Sonya.

“That’s fine, it will put us on an even footing,” answered Leonid seriously. “By the way, you must have very good hair. Only women with good hair don’t use a hair dryer. The others have nothing to lose. Although I’m just assuming, what I see on top of your head right now looks more like a rat’s tail. So, are you going to leave?”

“Agnes Blacktomb could recognize me. Therefore, I have no reason to stay in Europe. I’m going to go and work on my tan on the Dead Sea.”

“Lord, how crazy you are! Please don’t be angry, but couldn’t you have shot him without a witness?”

“But she had to be the witness. I condemned her to that. Instead of the court in Strasbourg. Somebody has to carry out judgments.”

“Nonsense! You condemned her to be a witness! Normal people do such things without a witness. Bad people kill the witnesses, too. It never occurred to me that a third variant was possible that was so stupid.”

“She got what she deserved. She didn’t deserve the benefit of dying.”

“Where are the airports in this silly book?” Leonid was flipping through the telephone book, putting the receiver on his ear with his other hand. He looked up. “What are you doing standing there? Go pack! I’m taking you to the airport—if not to the Dead Sea, then to some place like Australia! Or perhaps to Katmandu, the world capital of the youth hippie movement of the 1960’s. Do you have money?”

Suddenly everything became very easy for Sonya, as if she had been pulling a heavy load for a long time and someone had suddenly jumped in and grabbed one of the handles.

“Will you be able to add my documents to this book of ours by yourself?” she asked, although she really wanted to know something completely different: “Do you think this book will get me killed?”

“We’ll always be in touch by email.” He put down the receiver and touched her hand with unexpected caution. “Everything will be fine with the book, Sophia.”

“Elektra continued to exist after Leonid’s death. Although it was progressively more difficult for it to publish books. Under pressure from the Muslim diaspora, the government came up with more and more obstacles. Alright, Slobo, we may have the opportunity to continue this conversation later. You see that the people are gathered.”