Jean-Christophe Grangé - The Empire Of The Wolves

He paused. The two women remained silent, a tacit invitation to continue.

"First, I increased your amnesia by injecting an overdose of Valium.

Then I started working on conditioning you. Constructing a new personality. Using Oxygen-15."

Intrigued, Mathilde asked, "How did you proceed?"

Another drag, then he answered, incapable of taking his eyes off Anna. "Mainly by exposure to information. In every form. Words. Films. Sounds. Before each session, I injected a radioactive substance into you. The results were incredible. Each piece of information turned into a real memory in your brain. Every day, you were becoming more and more like the real Anna Heymes."

The slender woman stood up from the pillar. "You mean she really exists?"

The smell in the garage was stronger and stronger, as though of rotten flesh. He was starting to decay as he sat there, while the craving for amphetamine raised a slope of panic in his mind.

"We had to fill your mind with a coherent set of memories. The best way was to choose a real person and use her life story, photos and video films. That's why we chose Anna Heymes. We had all the necessary material."

"Who is she? Where is the real Anna Heymes?"

He pushed his glasses up his nose, before saying, "Several feet underground. She's dead. Heymes's wife committed suicide six months ago. So the place was vacant, so to speak. All your memories are part of her story. The dead parents. The family in the southwest. The wedding in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. The law degree."

At that moment, the light went out. Mathilde lit it again. The return of her voice coincided with the return of clarity. "And you would have let such a woman loose again in the Turkish community?"

"No, that would have been senseless. This was a trial run. An attempt at… total conditioning. To see how far we could go."

"In the end," Anna asked, "what would you have done to me?”

“No idea. That was out of my hands."

Another lie. Of course he knew what was awaiting her. What was to be done with such an embarrassing guinea pig? Lobotomy or elimination, that's what. When Anna next spoke, she seemed to have understood that dark reality. Her voice was as cold as a blade.

"Who is Laurent Heymes?"

"Exactly who he claims to be. The research director of the Minister of the Interior."

"Why did he participate in this farce?"

"It's all because of his wife. She was depressive, uncontrollable. Toward the end, Laurent got a job for her. A special mission for the Ministry of Defense concerning Syria. Anna stole some documents. She wanted to sell them to the authorities in Damascus before running away somewhere or other. She was nuts. The affair leaked out. Anna panicked and committed suicide."

Mathilde did not understand. "And this was a way of putting pressure on Laurent Heymes, even after her death?"

"He was always afraid of a scandal. His career would have been in ruins-a top civil servant married to a spy… Charlier has a complete dossier on the subject. He has a hold over Laurent, like he does over everyone else."

"Everyone else?"

"Alain Lacroux. Pierre Caracilli. Jean-François Gaudemer." He turned toward Anna. "All those supposedly high-ranking officials you had dinner with."

"Who are they?"

"Puppets, crooks, crooked cops who Charlier has information on and who were forced to attend the carnival."

"Why those dinners?"

"That was my idea. I wanted to confront your mind with the outside world and observe your reactions. Everything was filmed. The conversations were recorded. You must understand that your entire existence was fake: the building on Avenue Hoche, the janitor, the neighbors… Everything was under our control."

"A laboratory rat."

Ackermann stood up and tried to take a few steps, but he immediately found himself stuck between the car door and the wall. He slumped back down onto his seat. "This program was a scientific revolution," he replied hoarsely. "Moral considerations were irrelevant."

Anna offered him another cigarette over the car door. She seemed ready to forgive him, so long as he told her all.

"What about the Maison du Chocolat?"

When he lit the Marlboro, he noticed that he was shaking. A shock wave was on its way. The craving was soon going to start screaming beneath his skin.

"That was one of our problems," he said through a cloud of smoke. "Your job took us by surprise. We had to tighten our surveillance. Cops were constantly watching you. The doorman of a restaurant, I think-"

"La Marée."

"Yes, that's it."

"When I was working in the Maison du Chocolat, there was a regular customer. A man I had the impression I recognized. Was he a policeman?"

"Maybe. I don't know all the details. All I do know is that you were escaping from us."

Again, night fell and Mathilde woke up in the strip lights.

"The real problem was your fits," he went on. "I immediately sensed that there was a fault line, and that things were going to go from bad to worse. Your trouble with faces was just a precursor. Your real memory was beginning to resurface."

"Why faces?"

"No idea. This was pure experimentation."

His hands were trembling more and more. He concentrated on what he had to say. "When Laurent caught you observing him at night, we realized that the problem was worsening. We had to section you."

"Why did you want to conduct a biopsy?"

"To be sure what was going on. Maybe the huge jab of Oxygen-15 had caused a lesion. I just had to understand!"

He broke off, sorry that he had shouted. It felt as if short circuits were sizzling in his skin. He threw away his cigarette and stuck his hands between his thighs. How long could he hold out?

Mathilde Wilcrau then asked the crucial question: "Where are Charlier's men looking? How many of them are there?"

"I don't know. I've been sidelined. Laurent, too. I'm not even in touch with him anymore… As for Charlier, the program's over. The vital thing for them now is to catch you and put you out of circulation. You read the papers. You know what they're saying in the media and how outraged public opinion is about a little bit of phone tapping. Imagine what would happen if this story got out."

"So there's a price on my head, is there?" Anna asked.

"More like a desperate need for treatment. You don't know what you've got in your mind. You must give yourself up to Charlier. To us. It's your only chance to recover, and save all of our skins!"

He looked up over the curve of his glasses. The two of them now looked out of focus, and it was better that way. He added, "Jesus, you don't know Charlier! I'm sure all of this was perfectly illegal. So now he'll be sweeping up. Right now, I don't even know if Laurent is still alive. It's a total fiasco. Unless we can treat you again.." His voice was dying in his throat. What was the point of going on? Even he no longer believed in the possibility.

Mathilde then said, in her deep voice, 'All of which does not explain why you altered her face."

Ackermann felt a smile rise to his lips. He had been expecting this question right from the start. He stared straight into Anna's eyes. "You were like that when we found you. When I did the first scan, I discovered the scars, implants and screws. It was incredible. A complete surgical overhaul. It must have cost a fortune. Not the sort of operation an illegal immigrant worker could pay for."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you're not a simple worker. Charlier and the others got it wrong. They thought they were kidnapping some faceless Turk. But you're much more than that. Crazy as it might seem, I reckon you were hiding out in the Turkish quarter when they discovered you."

Anna burst into tears.

"In a way," he went on bitterly to the end, "this fact explains the success of the treatment. I'm no magician. I could never have transformed a simple working girl from Anatolia to this extent. And definitely not in a few weeks. Only Charlier could swallow such nonsense."