Chapter 12 - Jean Montafian

I had to leave my rifle outside the door when I was shown into a small room lit by an oil lamp. The whole place smelled of lamp oil. Sitting behind a wooden desk was a man with a round face. He nodded towards an old chair. ‘I’m Jean Montafian, please sit down.’ He spoke with a trace of some foreign accent. Queenie and I sat down. He peered at me long enough for it to become uncomfortable.

He looked like an uncle. The skin of his puffy face was pale with fine wrinkles like cling wrap. He was wearing a striped double-breasted jacket—like in a 1930s gangster film—a cream-coloured shirt and a blue bow tie. Weird.

He looked at me, then he took off his glasses and looked at them pensively, then looked at me again full beam and said, ‘So you’re James Walters, the computer man?’ Maybe the accent was French.
‘Yes, I am. Pleased to meet you Mr. Montafian. What can I do for you?’ Spoken like a true toady.
‘I’ve a problem you may be able to solve for me. I’ve accumulated much gold here. I have a team. We enter all the bank vaults. They call us the Gnomes of Paris. Gold is the only thing that has not decayed. I need to monetise it. Listen now, and understand’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I need to monetise that gold, and I want you to find a way. Start thinking it over once I have explained.’
I politely nod-blinked in acquiescence.
‘What I have here is security. Through the tunnels, we can move unseen to almost anywhere in Paris. We have a complete network of unsleeping watchers. We picked up you and your stupid dog from the moment you entered Parc Montsouris. We have modern weapons, not like that museum piece of yours. We are ready to use them. Every window and manhole is a firing position. Paris belongs to us. We let no one enter unless we want them in. A regiment of tanks couldn’t dislodge us, nor divisions of infantry. And we offer no targets to aviation. Britiniacum and their pathetic flying bombs. Ha! Very little real effect on London during the Blitz, as the history books tell us. No, we are as safe here as anywhere in the world.’ 

He paused.

‘And if we were not safe here, what use would the gold be to us? Do you see what I’m getting at?’
‘Er, you have gold stashed away safe and you want to monetise it, right?’ Intrigued, I prompted him, hoping he would soon get to the point. It also occurred to me that if someone did want to dislodge him it would need to be by guile, infiltration, betrayal.
‘Correct,’ he went on. ‘Gold in the ground is of no use. I want to link it to Cryptocoins or something and make it a universal currency.’ Big plans, the man! Better humour him for now. Cryptocoins were OK, but they could go up and down unexpectedly, and they might even be cracked by a clever hacker and disappear. The thing was that Cryptocoins, or whatever, totally depended on how trustworthy the scheme looked to everyone, and Crypto coins were dodgy. They were basically a hot-protato currency that nobody wanted to hold for long. 

I was thinking that it might be possible to devise a blockchain system where there would be a small tax on every transaction that would cover the cost of gold security. I had read of a scheme that had been proposed before The Virus for value-added tax. The idea was to have traders subscribe to a blockchain system that recorded every buying and selling transaction they made, applied a flat tax percentage and automatically paid the difference to the state every month. That was the clever thing about a value-added tax: a seller had an incentive to issue an invoice for every transaction so that he could get the tax back, otherwise he would be paying the buyer’s tax for him—a supremely sly system. Meanwhile, Montafian was going on…

‘I plan to mint five-gram gold coins and issue certificates for them. Do you think that would work? Can you do that for me?’ I thought that I probably could. However, there were two problems. First, would the users like his system and want to participate? Not that there wasn’t a need for a more reliable currency but how was he going to generate the necessary trust? This led to the second point: trust between him and me. How was he going to make sure that I didn’t put some backdoor into the system and empty it of cash later? And how was I going to trust him to pay me and not just eliminate me when the project was completed? Well, he had a plan for that.

‘This is how I’m thinking of arranging things between us. I’m offering you twenty kilos of gold in coin for this job, that’s about one million Cryptocoins at present rates, but the gold coins will stay here with all the others. You will just get the certificates. How does that sound?’
It was definitely enough to get a new body for Anna, so I said, ‘Twenty kilos, eh? I have an idea and I believe I can do it. Can you give me a bit of time to think things over?’

He replied, ‘I can give you until this evening to come up with a plan. You have to stay here now, and I advise you not to try and do a runner, or I’ll set Fat Freddy on you. I think you two have met; he showed you in. He is very tenacious, you know, and will do anything for a bonus.’ He got up. He was wearing a suit with matching trousers and brown leather shoes polished like conkers. He continued, ‘Out you go; we will now walk over to our secret base.’ “Secret base”, a childish notion. Was he serious or ironic? very smart or very crazy? Anyway, Fat Freddy was waiting for us outside and said, ‘I’ll be carrying your gun, squire, now take it easy and give me that knife too.’ I was going to say “What knife?” but thought better of it when he sort of smirked and pointed at my sleeve. Queenie didn’t like the look of him at all. With Montafian leading the way with a miner’s lamp and Fat Freddy behind on guard duty, we began weaving our way through tunnels lined with stacks of human bones.

After a while, we came to a heavy iron door set in concrete. Montafian had the key and after a bit of jangling and creaking, we passed through. Then it was carefully locked again behind us. The tunnel was now concrete-lined with mysterious cables and pipes hanging from the ceiling. It seemed that my future was now definitely in front of me and that there would be no going back. The tunnel went on and on. But it was now lit by dim electric lights spaced well apart, which meant that there was a generator somewhere and therefore a source of fuel: civilisation.

After what seemed a long walk, we got to a sort of guard station with an armed man on duty. He was expecting us and saluted Montafian, who returned the salute and said, ‘Carry on, guard.’ After passing through another iron door, we entered a hall with light streaming through high windows. Montafian turned to Fat Freddy. ‘Get him a room, check in his gear and issue him a mess card. I’ll see you later, after assembly.’ He turned to me. ‘Freddy will settle you in. Do what he says. I will see you after assembly at sixteen thirty hours. Have a meal, a shower and a rest before then. Go now.’ I was clearly dismissed.

With Fat Freddy leading the way, it was off to a nearby counter where a surly clerk exchanged my rifle and knife for a token. Then over to another counter where a young woman gave me a room card and a mess card. At this, Freddy gave a sort of snort, nodded, told her to look after me and nipped off, duty accomplished.

I turned to the woman and said, ‘I’ve just arrived, where exactly are we?’ 
‘Oh, nice to meet you. This is La Santé Prison complex…didn’t you know? We have our main base here. It’s nice.’ She gave me a coquettish smile. ‘Why don’t you go find your room, it’s on the second floor, clean up and have a nice rest? At twelve hundred hours you can go to the mess and get lunch. After that you can have a nice nap in your room. Assembly’s at sixteen thirty…What a nice dog! Come back later for a nice chat, eh? Your name is James, right? I’m Sarah. Take the stairs over there to your floor and back down for the mess later, okay?’

I looked round, spotted the stairs and went up to the second floor. The place was wide and echoey with offstage clangings, bangings and heavy footsteps: prison ambience. I clumped down a long corridor with hard, ugly floor tiles and let myself in. The whole place smelt of some kind of cleaning product or disinfectant. It was a sort of basic apartment that had once been a cell. There was a sink with running water, so I filled a bowl and set it on the floor for Queenie. She had been looking apprehensive but now seemed to relax a bit. Me too.

Thinking about Montafian’s offer, I realised it was one that I couldn’t really refuse. I was actually in a prison now, although a repurposed one. I looked at my communicator: nearly eleven. I topped it up with a little alcohol: just to give myself something to do. I unpacked some clean clothes and entered the bathroom closet, hoping that Queenie was house trained.

When I came out refreshed and shaved, to my relief Queenie was quietly dozing on the floor. I wondered whether I could take her for a walk outside. I thought it would be good to have a look round too, so I collected a few things but left the high-tech smock Edward had given me, stepped out, locked the door and sneaked out with Queenie—back along the corridor down the wide stairs to the spacious hall where encouraging beams of sunshine shone down from high unbroken windows: very orderly and comfortable. Sarah was still on duty, so I walked up with an engaging smile and asked her how to get outside. She swung her shoulders slightly, smiled and pointed to the door. I told her that she was most helpful, kind, obliging, friendly, gracious and courteous (the full thesaurus treatment) and made for the main door.

Outside, the strong spring sunshine took me full in the face. On unscrewing my eyes, I found myself in a courtyard containing buildings bounded by a high wall. Queenie ran free and found a place to do her business. I wandered over to the monumental gate to the outside and reflected that this was a different world inside the walls, a place where you could be comfortable and safe—most Deva-ish. I made a circuit of the walls with an excited Queenie scampering across paved areas, between flower beds and planters, in front of grim six-story blocks and past the odd armed guard. By the time I had got back to where I started, it was nearly twelve, and feeling distinctly hungry, I went into the main hall again and followed the signs to the “mess”.

The mess turned out to be a large self-service canteen and coffee lounge with an enticing collective-cooking smell: promising. We joined the queue, stainless steel tray in hand, flashed the mess card and took our turn at the serving station. Into the recesses on my tray were deposited, at my request, three smooth orange-brown sausages, two dollops of refried beans, a heap of a steamed leaf vegetable and, in another recess, two of last-year’s apples (a bit wrinkled but sweet and sound), together with two chunks of French bread. Copious, standard stuff. I found a place to sit, fumbled for the cutlery and tucked in with a sigh of contentment. I ate slowly, looking around me. 

About a third of the places were occupied: men and women, some alone, some in small groups. Everybody looked animated and high-spirited, happy to be safe and well fed in this “secret base”. Quite a few were wearing uniforms like the guards outside—jackets and trousers in what Edward called “urban camo”. I was rather impressed with what Montafian (if he really was in charge) had managed to achieve here. And I wondered where the food, water and all the rest had come from. Clearly there could be no production in the ruins of Paris and the old food stocks were long gone. I guessed it must have been brought in through tunnels, which could hardly have been easy.

When I’d had enough, I put the tray on the floor for Queenie to finish. I looked around and saw Sarah eating with a colleague. She spotted me looking and gave me a nod. Then it was chair back and tray to trolley. Another glance at Sarah and off to my room with Queenie trotting alongside and licking her mouth.

When I got inside my room, I realised that I felt tired and that I had an empty afternoon until four thirty. I set my communicator’s alarm for four, pulled my boots off and flopped down on the bed. The bed was clean and comfortable. I stretched out and closed my eyes. It struck me that if this was a “secret base”, then they would hardly let me out any time soon. Still, it seemed to me that this place was probably my best option anyway. A lot better than joining the pig-raising community… I decided that I would do my best to make Montafian’s project a success. I was determined to find the money to get a new body for Anna. Suddenly, it all came back to me—how much I missed her. Feeling sorry for myself, I drifted off to sleep.

When my communicator buzzed I awoke from a dreamless sleep with Queenie peering quizzically at me. Time to nip down for her walk before assembly at four thirty. She had a quick run then it was back in the main hall and following the signage to the assembly hall, which turned out to be a low-ceilinged, quarry-tiled car-park sort of area with bare concrete columns. There was a rough wooden dais at the back. 

As I came in, following the general flow of people, the man at the entrance called out, ‘Hey, you’re new here aren’t you? What’s your mess number?’ I nearly said “What mess?” wondering if he was referring to Queenie. Then I realised what he meant and meekly showed him my mess card.
‘Glad to have you with us, Engineer Walters.’
‘Er, yeah.’
‘You’re in Squad B; that would be Rank 2, Man 3. Engineer Musgrave, the tall guy, is the right marker. Please carry on, sir.’
Apparently, I was in the army now. So I carried on.
I turned to a man near me and said, ‘Where’s Squad B?’
‘Over there’—he waved vaguely—‘it’s marked on the floor,’ he said then wandered off.

The floor was well-provided with painted markings. I soon found the part marked “Squad B”. A particularly tall individual who I assumed to be right-marker Musgrave was standing on the front right-hand corner of a sort of rectangle and some other people were milling around him. I sneaked up to the edge of the group. 
There was something of a hush then a flurry of footsteps down the side of the assembly hall. Finally, Montafian and three aides stepped up onto the dais in front of us. The show was about to begin.
One of the aides, the beefy one, took a step forward and bellowed, ‘Century 3, GET on paRADE!’

At this everybody started shuffling about to get in line. I found my position without difficulty (Rank 2, Man 3).
When everyone was in position. He shouted, ‘Century 3, SHUN!’ At which we all had to stand on our appointed spots with our feet together and our arms by our sides.

Then he shouted, ‘Century 3, staaand EASY!’ Everyone moved their feet slightly apart and put their hands behind their backs.
All this was quite easy to pick up. Queenie thought it was good fun.
Montafian stood in front of us on the dais, staring at the ceiling, motionless, seeking inspiration, as it were, or possibly trying to stifle a fart.

He nodded to the shouter who said, ‘Duplicarii take the roll call. Carry on.’ It seemed that I had inadvertently joined the Roman army.
Out stepped the Duplicarii with their clipboards who proceeded to read off our names. When our name was called we had to yell “Present Duplicarius!” So I did too.

When the yelling stopped, Montafian nodded to the shouter again. He picked up a clipboard and began reading off news and orders. This was all boring stuff that didn’t apparently concern me, but at one point he yelled, ‘Engineer Walters shall report to Room 603 at seventeen thirty hours!’ I had my orders.

Once all this was finished, it was “Century 3, SHUN” again: we all shuffled to attention then “Century 3, diss-MISS”, and we all trooped out.

I looked at the others for signs of grumbling and dissatisfaction: none. They all seemed high-spirited and keen: clever old Montafian! So it was back to the main hall then outside. Queenie scampered around a bit and made herself popular with the personnel. I stood waiting for the time to report to Room 603. It was like waiting for a dental appointment. I watched the time on my communicator. When it was a quarter to five, I called Queenie and set off for Room 603.

Room 603 was on the top floor, a trudge up the stairs. The corridor seemed identical in look and smell to mine. I soon found the place and knocked on the door. A voice shouted, ‘Come!’ I went in. It was a good-sized room with a big window at the back looking out over the old prison wall onto decaying roofs of the buildings of Paris. This appeared to be a waiting room with a row of chairs and an assistant behind a desk near a door to another room. Definitely a going-to-see-the-dentist feel about it. The assistant was a young man with red hair in the ubiquitous urban camo. He stood up, smiled and held out his hand to shake. I took his hand and the handshake was neither flabby nor squeezy, which was a relief.

‘Sir Montafian will receive you in a minute; please take a seat.’
So it was “Sir” now. Duly noted. He seemed friendly, so I decided to take a chair near his desk and try to get some information out of him.
‘I’ve just arrived. Is this the old La Santé Prison building? Why have you occupied it?’
‘Yes it is. It has a solid wall right round it, plenty of space. And it was in great condition, built to last. Another thing, it connects to he local tunnels. There are great many tunnels in this area.’
‘How long have you been occupying this place?’
‘Years. Look, if you want more information, you will have to ask the Old Man himself. Don’t worry, he’ll be free soon.’ 

So that’s what they called him. I sat back and took my communicator out. Then I became aware that someone was shouting behind the door. Then an almighty shout of ‘Do I make myself clear?’ and a confused shuffling. Mr Helpful was nodding to me as if to say this was normal and not to be alarmed. But I was. I was stuck here at his mercy with no way back and nowhere to go back to. The door opened and an urban camo came out looking upset and emotional. 
Mr Helpful sent him on his way him by pointing to the exit. He turned to me unfazed and with a friendly smile said, ‘I’ll see if he’s ready to receive you now, went into the inner office and closed the door behind him. Something was said, the door opened again and he nodded and beckoned. This was it. I went in, and the door was closed behind me.