Jean-Christophe Grangé - The Empire Of The Wolves

JOB CREATION OR DEATH!

Farther on, others added:

NO TO OVERTIME! MAKE-UP DAYS

FIDDLE! BANK HOLIDAYS STOLEN!

The idea of Paris 's largest psychiatric hospital being left to its own devices, with its patients running around in complete freedom, amused Schiffer. He could just picture such a bedlam, in which the lunatics had taken over the asylum and replaced the doctors on night duty. But as he entered, all he found was a completely deserted ghost town.

He followed the red signposts directing him to neurosurgical and neurological emergency admissions, looking at the names of the various alleyways as he went. He had just taken Allée Guy de Maupassant and was now in Sentier Edgar Allan Poe. He wondered if this was a symptom of the hospital planners' sense of humor. Maupassant had lost his reason before dying, and the alcoholic author of "The Black Cat" could not have had all his wits about him by the end either. In Communist neighborhoods, the streets were named after Karl Marx or Pablo Neruda. Here they commemorated the great lunatics.

Schiffer sniggered to himself, trying to keep up his usual appearance of a hard cop. But he already felt panic biting into him. There were too many memories, too much agony behind these walls…

It was in one of these buildings that he had ended up on returning from Algeria, when he was only just twenty. Traumatized by what he had seen and done. He had remained as an inpatient for several months, dogged by hallucinations and suicidal tendencies. Others, who had fought by his side in the Détachements Operationnels de Protection, did not hesitate. He remembered one youngster from Lille who had hanged himself as soon as he got home. And another from Brittany who had cut off his right hand with an axe on his father's farm-the hand he had used to plug in the electrodes and then to press heads down in bathtubs…

Emergency admissions was deserted.

It was a large, empty space, covered with scarlet tiles-the pulp of a blood orange. Schiffer pressed the bell, then saw a traditionally dressed nurse arrive, with her white coat done up at the waist with a belt, her hair in a bun, and bifocals on her nose.

The woman looked ill at ease when she saw his gaunt appearance, but he quickly flashed his card at her and explained the reason for his visit. Without a word, she set off in search of Dr. Jean-François Hirsch.

He sat down on one of the seats that were attached to the wall. The ceramic tiles seemed to be growing darker. Despite all his efforts, he just could not chase away the memories that were surging up from the depths of his skull.

1960

When he had arrived in Algeria, as an intelligence officer, he had not attempted to evade the brutality of his work or escape from it by using alcohol or pills from the infirmary. On the contrary, he had gone at it hammer and tongs, day and night, convinced that he was still master of his own destiny. War had forced him to make the big decision, the only choice that mattered: which side he was on. He could no longer change his mind or turn his coat. And he had to be in the right. It was that or blow your brains out.

He tortured people twenty-four hours a day. He dragged confessions out of the local populace. First by using the traditional methods of beatings, electrocution and drowning. Then he had come up with his own techniques. He had organized fake executions, dragging hooded prisoners out of the town, watching them shit themselves as he pressed his gun against their heads. He had devised cocktails of acid, which he had forced them to drink, by pushing funnels down their throats. He had stolen medical instruments from hospitals in order to vary the treatment, for example, the stomach pump that he used to inject water into their nostrils.

He shaped and sculpted fear, always giving it new forms. When he decided to bleed his prisoners, both to weaken them and give their blood to victims of terrorist attacks, he felt strangely light-headed. It was as if he were becoming a god. holding the right to give life or death to humankind. Sometimes, in the interrogation room, he would laugh out of context, blinded by his power, staring with wonder at the blood covering his fingers.

A month later, he had become completely mute and had been repatriated. His jaw was paralyzed. He was incapable of pronouncing the slightest word. He had been admitted to Sainte-Anne, in a unit entirely devoted to traumatized combatants. The sort of place where the walls echoed with groans, where it was impossible to finish your breakfast before one of your neighbors had vomited over it.

Enclosed in silence, Schiffer lived a life of pure terror. In the gardens, he lost his sense of direction, no longer knowing where he was, asking other patients if they were the detainees he had tortured. When he walked in the galleries of the main building, he inched along the walls so that his "victims wouldn't see him."

When he slept, nightmares took over from his hallucinations. Naked men writhing on chairs, testicles sparking below the electrodes, jaws cracking against enamel sinks, bleeding nostrils blocked with syringes.. In fact, they were not visions but memories. Above all, he pictured the man hung upside down, whose skull he had smashed with a kick. Then he woke up, covered in sweat, feeling those brains splash out over him once more. He looked around the interior of his room and saw the smooth walls of a cellar, the bathtub that had been taken down there, and, on the table in the middle, the generator and ANGRC-9 radio..

Doctors explained to him that it was impossible to repress such memories. Instead, they advised him to confront them, to allot a moment of close attention to them every day. Such a strategy fitted with his personality. He had not drawn back when out in the field, and he was not going to fall to pieces now, in these gardens full of ghosts.

He had signed himself out and returned to civil existence.

He applied to become a policeman, concealing his psychiatric problems, and emphasizing his rank of sergeant and his military decorations. The political context played in his favor. There were more and more terrorist attacks by the OAS (Organisation de l'Armée Secrète) in Paris. They needed more men to track down those responsible. They needed experienced field operatives… And there, he was in his element. His street savvy had astonished his superiors. His methods, too. He worked alone, without anyone's help. All that mattered to him were the results, no matter how they were obtained.

His existence would henceforth be in this image. He would rely on himself and only on himself. He would be above the law, above human considerations. He would be a law unto himself, drawing from his own willpower the right to deliver justice. It was a sort of cosmic pact: his word against the shit heap of the world.

"What can I do for you?"

The voice made him jump. He stood up and took in the new arrival.

Jean-François Hirsch was tall-over six feet-and slim. His long arms ended in massive hands. To Schiffer, they looked like two counter weights to balance his slender frame. His head also was large, rimmed with brown curly hair… another counterweight. He was wearing not a white coat but a heavy green one. Apparently, he was on his way home. Schiffer introduced himself without producing his card. "Chief Lieutenant Jean-Louis Schiffer. I have a few questions to ask you. It will only take a few minutes."

"I was on my way out. And I'm late. Can't it wait till tomorrow?" The voice was yet another counterweight. Deep. Stable. Solid.

"Sorry," Schiffer said. "It's important."

The doctor looked him up and down. The smell of mint drifted between them like a barrier of freshness. Hirsch sighed and sat down on one of the bolted seats. "Okay, so what's the problem?"