Jean-Christophe Grangé - The Empire Of The Wolves

"Forget all that."

"What?"

"This is no time to play soldier. We've got the wrong face.”

“ What?"

Schiffer took a deep breath. "The woman we're looking for has had plastic surgery. That's why the Grey Wolves can't find her."

"Do you… do you have proof?"

"I've even got her new face. Everything fits. She shelled out several hundred million francs in order to wipe out her previous identity. She completely changed her physical appearance. She's dyed her hair brown and lost twenty kilos. Then she hid out in the Turkish quarter six months ago."

Silence. When Nerteaux next spoke, his voice had lost several decibels. "Who… who is she? How did she get the money for the operation?"

"No idea," Schiffer lied. "But she's no simple working girl."

"What else have you found out?"

Schiffer thought for a few seconds. Then he told it all. The raid by the Grey Wolves, who had grabbed the wrong target. Sema Gokalp in a state of shock. Her detention at Louis-Blanc, then admission to Sainte-Anne's. The kidnapping organized by Charlier and the grotesque treatment. Finally, the woman's new identity: Anna Heymes.

When he stopped talking, Schiffer could almost hear the cogs turning at full speed in the young officer's brain. He imagined him completely stunned in a phone booth, lost somewhere in the tenth arrondissement. Like him. Two coral fishermen suspended in their lonely cages, in the middle of the ocean's depths…

Finally, Paul asked skeptically, "Who told you all this?"

"Charlier in person."

"He confessed?"

"We're old pals."

"Bull shit."

Schiffer burst out laughing. "I see that you're starting to understand what sort of world we're in. In 1995, after the explosion in the Saint-Michel RER station, the DNAT-which was still called the Sixth Division-was decidedly nervous. A new law allowed them to detain people longer, without charge. It was real hell. I know, because I was there. There were roundups all over town, in Islamist groups, and especially in the tenth. One night, Charlier turned up at Louis-Blanc. He was sure that he had the right suspect-a certain Abdel Saroui. He went at him with his bare fists. I was in the office next door. The next morning, the guy died of a ruptured liver in Saint-Louis Hospital. So this evening, I reminded him of the good old days."

"You're so corrupt that you're almost coherent."

"Who cares, so long as we get a result?"

"I had a different idea of my crusade, that's all."

Schiffer opened the booth door again and took a breath of fresh air. "So now," Paul asked, "where's Sema?"

"That's the icing on the cake, son. She's just escaped. She lost them yesterday morning. She must have found out what they were up to. Her original memory must be coming back."

"Shit…"

"Exactly. There's a woman wondering around Paris right now with two identities, with two groups of bastards chasing her, and with us in the middle. In my opinion, she must be investigating her own past. She's trying to find out who she really is."

Another pause from the other end of the line. Then: "So what do we do now?"

"I've made a deal with Charlier. I convinced him that I was the best placed to find the girl. Turks are my specialty. So he's handed me the case, for one night. He's on a knife's edge. His project was illegal. And it could blow up in his face. I've got his file on the new Sema, and two leads. The first one's for you, if you're still in the race."

He could hear the sound of pages turning. Nerteaux was taking out his notepad.

"Go on."

"Plastic surgery Sema paid big money for one of the best surgeons in Paris. We have to find him, because he was in contact with the real target, before her operation, before she was brainwashed. He must be the only person in town who can tell us anything about the woman the Grey Wolves are looking for. Are you up for it?"

Nerteaux did not reply at once; he was presumably writing this down. "There must be hundreds of names to go through."

"Not at all. You have to go to see the best, the real virtuosos. And among them, the ones who lack scruples. Having your face completely redone is never innocent. You've got all night. At the speed things are going, we won't be alone on this lead for long."

"Charlier's men?"

"No. Charlier doesn't even know that she's altered her appearance. I'm talking about the Grey Wolves. They've been held in check for three months now So they're going to end up figuring out that they're not looking for the right face. Plastic surgery will occur to them, and they'll be looking for the quack. We're going to end up on the same track. I can just feel it. I'll leave you the girl's file at Rue de Nancy. with the photo of her new face. Go fetch it, then start working."

"Shall I give the portrait to the patrols?"

Schiffer broke into a sweat. "That's the last thing you should do. Just show it to the doctors at the same time as the Identikit. Got me?" Silence once again saturated the line.

They were, more than ever, like a pair of divers lost in the deep. "What about you?" Nerteaux asked.

"I'll take care of the second lead. Luckily enough, the boys from the DNAT forgot to destroy Sema's old clothes. They might contain a clue, an indication, something to lead us back to her former identity"

He looked at his watch. Midnight. They did not have much time left, but he still wanted to make a final check: "So, nothing new your end?"

"The Turkish quarter is being put to the sword, but now.."

"And Naubrel and Matkowska still haven't come up with anything?"

"No, nothing." Nerteaux sounded astonished by the question. The kid must have thought that the investigation into the high-pressure chambers did not interest him. On the contrary, this business of nitrogen bubbles intrigued him.

When Scarbon had mentioned it, he had added, "I'm no diver." But Schiffer was. In his youth, he had spent ages exploring the Red Sea and the coast of China. He had even considered the idea of dropping everything and opening a diving school in the Pacific. So he knew that high pressure does not just create a problem of gas in the blood-it also leads to hallucinations, a state of drunkenness that divers call rapture of the depths.

At the beginning of their inquiries, when they thought they were tracking a serial killer. this detail puzzled Schiffer. He did not see why a murderer capable of slicing up women's vaginas with razor blades would be bothered to create nitrogen bubbles in his victims' veins. It did not fit. However, in the context of a grilling, this rapture of the depths had a point.

One of the bases of torture was the "nice and nasty" technique. A good beating, then offer a cigarette. A few electroshocks, then a sandwich. It is in fact during these moments of respite that the person generally cracks.

By using a chamber, the Wolves had quite simply applied this alternation while bringing it to its ultimate state. After the most terrible torments, they had suddenly submitted their subjects to an abrupt feeling of relaxation and euphoria brought on by high pressure. They were presumably hoping that the violence of this contrast would make them speak, or that the drunkenness would act as a truth serum…

Schiffer sensed, behind this nightmarish technique, the implacable presence of a master of ceremonies. A genius of torture.

Who?

He chased away his own panic and murmured, "There can't be that many pressure chambers in Paris."

"My men haven't found anything. They've been to the sites where such equipment is found. They've questioned the industrial engineers who conduct tests on resistance. It's a blind alley"

Schiffer heard a strange note in Nerteaux's voice. Was he hiding something? But he did not have time to press the point.