Island of Point Nemo - Jean-Marie Blas de Robles

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took Canterel only a glance to identify their maker. Two things were discordant, however: the deep scar that ran across half his forehead to his hairline, and the fact that he had not seen fit to take off his right glove.

      “Have you read this weekend’s New Herald?” asked Holmes, pulling a notebook from his jacket pocket.

      “You know very well that I never read the papers . . .”

      “Anyone can change, even you. But let’s move along. That means you did not come across this astonishing bit of news. I’ll read it to you: ‘Last Monday, a hiker on a beach on the Isle of Skye, in Scotland, was surprised to discover a human foot cut off at mid-calf; mummified by the salt, this appendage was still shod in a sneaker. Two days later, thirty kilometers to the east, at the source of the loch at Glen Shiel, the sea washed up a second, quite similar foot. And, yesterday, to the south of Kyle of Lochalsh—that is, at the tip of an equilateral triangle formed by the two previous points—Mrs. Glenfidich’s dog brought his mistress a third foot, hewn off in a similar manner and also wearing the same kind of shoe. These gruesome discoveries are rare in a county where there are neither sharks nor crocodiles; moreover, the police have not had report of a single disappearance in two years.’” Holmes paused for a moment and lifted one finger, drawing Canterel’s attention to the end of the story: “‘The plot thickens: regarding what the locals are already calling the “mystery of the three feet,” it should be noted that these are three right feet of different sizes, but shod in the same type of shoe.’”

      “What is the make?” Canterel demanded.

      “Ananke . . .”

      “I hope you haven’t come all this way just to tell me that?”

      He placed a ladyfinger in a cookie-dunking device that Miss Sherrington had brought in and left near his cup, and used it to soak the cookie in his tea for several seconds.

      “Ananke, you say?” he resumed, bringing the moistened cookie to his lips.

      “Yes,” said Holmes. “‘Destiny,’ the Greeks’ unalterable ‘necessity’ . . .”

      “Except that this make does not exist,” continued Grimod, sniffing his glass of scotch.

      “However,” added Holmes, “it is the name of the jewel that was stolen this week from the heart of that same triangle, Eilean Donan Castle . . .”

      “To the point, Shylock, get to the point!” exclaimed Canterel.

      “The Ananke,” Holmes continued without losing his composure, “is the largest diamond ever excavated from an earthly mine: eight hundred carats once cut, appraised at over fifteen million florins! This marvel belonged to Lady MacRae, widow of Lord Duncan MacRae of Kintail, in other words a certain Madame Chauchat who should not be completely erased from your memory, if I’m not mistaken.”

      “Chauchat, Clawdia Chauchat?” Canterel murmured.

      “The same,” said Holmes, pulling a cigar from his waistcoat pocket. “It is she—and the insurance company that offers my services at an exorbitant price—who has recruited me to retrieve this magnificent stone.”

      Canterel’s face had darkened suddenly.

      “Obviously, this changes everything,” he said, massaging his temples with two fingers. “Miss Sherrington, I beg you, I am going to need some more of my medicine . . .”

       II

       Breathtaking View of a Worker’s Backside

      At this point in the story, the voice stops, immediately replaced by the kind of background music that increases cows’ milk production. Monsieur Wang looks at his watch and shakes his head at the punctuality of the performance. Five o’clock on the dot, good work. Not a bad idea to bring this guy on, he reflects, adjusting his cufflinks. Once more, the proverbial wisdom has proven true: without going into the tiger’s den, how can one hope to lay a hand on its cubs?

      Wang-li Wong, “Monsieur Wang” as he makes everyone call him to keep all the natives from mangling his name, is the Chinese manager of B@bil Books, an assembly plant for e-readers in La Roque-Gageac, in Périgord Noir. An adolescent’s peach-fuzz mustache, in spite of his forty years, his hair slicked back in short, gelled waves, a three-piece suit with a tie and a white-buttoned collar. The Asian aspects of his features are faint. He looks more like a Japanese modernist from the sixties than a Chinese man. Perhaps this is the result of the outdated shape of his horn-rimmed glasses.

      He is sitting at his desk, in a modern, industrial space improved by several Asian antiques, including a gilt nautilus shell adorned with mer-people, its feet shaped like eagle talons.

      On the adjoining terrace, a small, deluxe pigeon loft holds several nests made of precious woods. Monsieur Wang is a pigeon-fancier; he owns six pairs of carrier pigeons, including one star—Free Legs Diamond—for which he paid a hundred thousand euros, putting him ahead of most of the competition.

      A proponent of “lean management,” Wang-li Wong works to streamline activity within his company. In pursuit of this goal—and at the urging of Arnaud Méneste, the former owner of the factory that his plant is replacing—he is trying out the practice of having a “storyteller” read aloud during the workday. He followed along with the whole of the first reading, astonished to find himself taken in by the nonsense. The name of the author, a writer of serial novels from the previous century, already escapes him; in any case, the workers appeared to be enthralled, but did not raise their eyes from their work. The initial figures are clear: far from slowing production, the reading sped it up. Even bathroom breaks decreased.

      This thought brings the manager’s gaze back to his iPad. Stroking several icons with his finger, he brings wide shots from the surveillance cameras up on the screen, then zooms in on the assembly lines to wait for closing time. The stations are set up in long parallel rows separated by clean, gleaming aisles. Yellow lines on the ground indicate the paths reserved for forklifts, reminding the employees not to let their stools or trays cross this strict boundary. A hundred workers sit per row, heads lowered under the harsh brightness of the fluorescents; almond-green gowns, latex gloves, caps, and breathing masks: a long line of surgeons bent over the golden innards that are their destiny. Monsieur Wang is only interested in the women. He doesn’t know all of their names, but he uses nicknames to distinguish among them: the white-haired slut, the weasel, the fatty with the mustache, smirk, gloomy, loon, nympho, Charlotte . . . The beautiful, the sweet Charlotte Dufrène. He lingers on the oval of her face, examines her big green eyes under thick eyebrows. Milky-white skin, lips the color of a swollen vulva, messy hair escaping from her bouffant cap. Every fifteen minutes, she glances lovingly at the man seated to her right. Fabrice Petitbout. This lapdog, with his pale mop of hair, needs no nickname. The eyes of a husky, the goatee of a sickly ginger. He has a tongue piercing, a black titanium barbell that makes him lisp on the rare occasions when he speaks. Those two have managed to get places next to each other on the line; they must have messed around a bit, but they’ve never fucked—Monsieur Wang would bet his life on it.

      Bell. Production halts. Not all of the workers react the same way. Some spring up immediately, others—the majority—remain seated for a few seconds, their eyes closed, their chins lowered, as if meditating; a few stretch their muscles, their elbows bent back behind their heads.

      Monsieur Wang touches his iPad, and it displays the women’s restrooms. He installed these cameras himself. Sophisticated equipment. Locker rooms, showers, toilets, nothing escapes him: there is even a sensor that opens a video feed on his screen every time someone turns the lock on a stall. The same equipment exists in the men’s room, but he has only looked at it once, when Jaffar stuck it to the white-haired slut during a break.

      Here come the women, chattering away as they enter the locker room. Wang has turned off the sound, but he knows he will be able to hear everything on the recordings. He has amassed dozens of hours of this over

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