Jack Du Brul - River of Ruin

The auctioneer’s gavel came down with a stinging crack that carried across the ornate salon. “Sold for forty-seven thousand francs to bidder number 127.”

A digital board on one side of the elevated stage showed the exchange rates for each bid as they were acknowledged. The book held aloft by a white-gloved assistant standing behind the auctioneer had just been purchased for nearly seven thousand dollars.

The bid had actually been placed by an auction-house employee who fielded business from buyers either unable or unwilling to attend Paris’s premier rare book and manuscript sale. There were several such bid takers grouped together in an area like a jury box, each person equipped with telephones and an Internet-connected computer. The rest of the high-ceilinged room was given over to ranks of comfortable chairs for buyers in attendance. Derosier’s Librairie Antique was offering today’s books from a collection entitled “Patriarchs of the Industrial Age.” Tomorrow’s auction, the main event for the three-day affair, included dozens of Renaissance Bibles and a partial da Vinci manuscript expected to fetch millions of dollars.

There was a period of murmuring and catalogue rustling before the next book was brought out and its picture flashed on the projection screen at the back of the stage.

Philip Mercer had waited for the diversion before crossing the marble floor to a seat near the rear. A few elegant patrons frowned at the noise made by his wet, squelching shoes. He was more amused than embarrassed by their haughty reaction. Outside the tall, hemisphered windows, a fierce autumn rain pounded the streets. The leaden sky would not let the city shine. Still, the room managed to glitter with gold leaf on the ceiling and burnished woods covering the walls.

Mercer caught the eye of the auctioneer as he sat. Jean-Paul Derosier inclined his head slightly, careful not to show deference to any one client. Mercer knew his old friend was glad to see him. It was Jean-Paul himself who had enticed him to Paris with a list of what was coming to the block for this particular auction.

They knew each other from many years ago when Jean-Paul was simply Gene and pronounced his last name with an American hard r. They had been high school friends in Barre, Vermont, both outcasts in a sense because both wanted a life far beyond the confines of the small New England town. Derosier had somehow developed a taste for life’s finer things and was determined to have the means as well, while Mercer possessed an incurable wanderlust inherited from his parents, who had died in Africa when he was twelve. He had lived in Barre with his paternal grand-parents. Years later, Mercer and Derosier crossed paths again when business success allowed Mercer to indulge his interest in rare books. By then, Jean-Paul was well established in the trade.

Thumbing open the glossy catalogue, Mercer noted what lot number was due up next, and cursed. Today’s auction was just about half over. A business delay had ruined his plan to arrive in Paris a few days earlier. Had he not scheduled a meeting the following day, he would have canceled the trip altogether and bid through a proxy. He’d only just gotten into town and had taxied directly from Charles de Gaulle Airport.

The next book being offered was a personal journal written by Ferdinand de Lesseps during his sole trip to Panama in 1879. By the time the famed builder of the Suez Canal ventured to Central America, he had already convinced a syndicate of investors that he could repeat his triumph by carving a sea-level trench across the jungle-choked isthmus. Of course, his attempt ended in failure and the deaths of twenty-three thousand workers, as well as a financial crisis that rocked France to its core.

This was one of the most important items for sale today, expected to fetch around twenty thousand dollars.

Mercer scanned the rest of the catalogue and let out a relieved sigh. The manuscript he’d come to bid on hadn’t yet come up. Relaxing for the first time since his plane touched down, he used his palms to press rainwater from his dark hair.

“And our next item before a short recess is number sixty-two.” Jean-Paul Derosier knew to allow his voice to rise an octave, feeding the palpable wave of anticipation sweeping the room. Mercer also detected a vague sense of anger from the bidders that he couldn’t understand. “This one-hundred-and-seventy-page handwritten journal by Ferdinand de Lesseps was penned during his voyage to Panama. As you can see, the manuscript is bound in maroon leather with de Lesseps’s name on the cover and is in extraordinary condition.”

Derosier continued to expound on the virtues of the journal as pictures of individual pages were flashed on the screen behind him. He spoke in French, and while Mercer had once been fluent in the language, he couldn’t concentrate. Instead of paying attention to a book he had no interest in, he gazed out one of the windows, wishing he’d had time to at least change his shirt from the flight. His suit felt clammy and his tie dug into the stubble on his neck.

Jean-Paul ended his pitch by saying, “We will start the bidding at fifty thousand francs.” The phone operator holding a sign for bidder number 127 nodded her head and the audience let out a tired groan.

Mercer immediately recognized that this mysterious bidder had been bullying the auction by overbidding on the books he or she was interested in. In a minute-long frenzy, the price was driven up to thirty thousand dollars. Those bidders who nodded at the incremental increases did so with a resigned fatalism, knowing they were going to lose. However, it seemed they derived a perverse enjoyment from making bidder number 127 pay far more than the journal was worth. The telephone operator’s impassiveness began to crack as the bids passed the fifty-thousand-dollar mark, two and a half times the journal’s estimated value. Mercer could imagine the anger she was hearing in the voice of whoever she represented.

Then it was down to just two bidders, the mystery person on the phone and an American Mercer had seen at a Christie’s auction in New York about a year earlier. Like Mercer, this man was here for the love of the books, not their resale value. Mercer recalled the man was some kind of oil executive and had pockets deeper than the wells he drilled, but at seventy-five thousand dollars even he had to bow out with an angry shake of his head.

Following Jean-Paul’s cry of “Sold!” there wasn’t the normal round of applause for such a high sale. The room vibrated with an ugly tension. The operator who represented bidder number 127 would not look up from her desk, as if ashamed of the domineering tactics she’d been forced to use.

“There will now be a twenty-minute break,” Derosier said. “Champagne is available in the foyer outside the salon .”

Mercer accepted a fluted glass from a waitress and waited while Jean-Paul chatted up old clients and worked to make new ones. A cut across the knuckles on Mercer’s left hand had reopened and he dabbed at the blood with napkins. Patrons might have wondered about the man in the Armani suit with his injured hands, but none approached. It wasn’t that he seemed out of place, rather he appeared so self-contained, more comfortable in the opulent surroundings than they themselves felt despite the wet shoes and bloody wound.

He threw away the stained napkins when he’d stanched the cut and offered a disarming shrug to a staring matron as if to say, Don’t you hate when this happens? It was a curious, bonding gesture, like she’d been the one being judged and that she’d passed his inspection. Her dour facade cracked and she returned a smile.