Flowers of Darkness by Tatiana Rosnay (free ebook reader for iphone TXT) 📗

Ivan. When she got back to the living room, she could not believe what she was seeing on the TV. Her legs collapsed; she had to sit down. Her sister-in-law was whimpering, while Arthur screamed, aghast. She would never forget what she now saw being played over and over again, the slow collapse of the Eiffel Tower, subsiding into the night like a mortally wounded beast, a colossal sentry still shimmering with thousands of lights, crashing down amid the excruciating screech of twisted steel. She had asked Arthur and Jane what had happened. How was this possible? Dazed, they hadn’t answered. Arthur clicked from channel to channel, hypnotized by the same footage shown yet again, the Tower bending over in that almost grotesque fashion, barely believable, like in a video game or a movie. Clarissa had gone to the kitchen; she’d had a long drink of water, and then she’d turned the radio on. She’d had enough of the uninterrupted contest of pictures displayed on each network; she needed to understand. Again, she tried calling Jordan, Ivan, François. Voice mail. She was terrified. She felt weak. She focused all her attention on the calm voice on the BBC.

She told Andy that she knew then she’d remember that moment for the rest of her life: the vision of her naked feet on the tiles, the brutal heat of that summer night, her hands trembling. The calm voice had gone on to list the facts. Clarissa wondered how could it remain so serene as it proceeded to utter horror after horror. The events in Paris were cataclysmic, said the newscaster very clearly. Clarissa remembered that word: cataclysmic. She felt fear pervade her, shoot through her veins like a toxic drug. There was only one name on her mind, her daughter’s. She kept repeating it: Jordan. Jordan. Jordan. Nothing could happen to Jordan. Nothing could happen to her daughter.

The calm voice persisted, stirring her. At eleven o’clock French time, in Paris, while the Tower was still shimmering, as it always did upon the hour for five minutes, a large blast occurred at the top of the south pillar, on the level of the Tower’s first floor. The origin of the detonation was still not clear, but according to terrorism specialists, it was possibly drones, rigged with explosive devices, driven into the south pillar at a precise spot. No one had noticed the drones making their way through the darkness.

It had taken less than seven minutes for the Tower to fall, time enough for thousands of cameras and smartphones to capture the unbelievable pictures. The Tower toppled over toward the south, flat onto the recent Olympic site built especially for the games, jam-packed with pedestrians on a warm summer evening. But that wasn’t all. Within the forty-five minutes of pandemonium that ensued, the voice went on, while firefighters and police had barely gotten under way to rescue the people trapped within the Tower and underneath it, and while many casualties were already feared, a second deadly attack was perpetrated on the same area by more drones. Making the most of the darkness, the small aircrafts dropped three powerful bombs on the sector.

As she stood listening, shaking, horrified, Clarissa hadn’t at first noticed her phone was vibrating in her hand. It was Toby. He was calling from his home in the Basque country. He had just seen the ghastly news. He was overjoyed to hear she wasn’t in Paris. But he hadn’t heard from either Jordan or Ivan. Had she? With dread, Clarissa said she hadn’t heard. She hadn’t been able to get through. She hadn’t been able to get hold of François, either. Toby did his best to reassure her. He kept reminding her that Jordan and Ivan lived near the Bastille, on the east side of Paris. And as for François, he was no doubt safe as well, in their flat near the Luxembourg Gardens. Clarissa listened, nodded, but dread gnawed at her. Ivan had wanted to stay in Paris for the Olympics. Perhaps they had gone to one of the events this past evening, like many Parisians. She couldn’t bear to think about it. She felt physically ill. After saying good-bye to Toby, she feverishly perused Jordan’s social media posts, trying to check the last time her daughter had been online. She couldn’t face going back into the living room, watching the television until morning. It was already getting on to two o’clock. Three o’clock in Paris. She paced up and down the kitchen, cradling the phone to her. She tried calling, again. Again. She kept thinking, I’ve lost one child in my life. I cannot, I will not, lose another. I will not lose Jordan.

All those years later, she did not repeat those words to Adriana. She had never mentioned her son to her granddaughter. She went on with her memories of that night, telling Andy how it had taken ages to get hold of Jordan and Ivan. The wait was agonizing. The sun came up on another scorching day. It had been impossible to get through to Paris. Telecommunications were down. A part of the city had been irremediably destroyed. She had taken a shower, gone out to buy some bread. People in the streets were stunned, riveted to their phones. London had gone strangely quiet, and it felt like a lull before a storm. François had managed to call from a landline. She felt relief when she heard his voice, but as she had not yet heard from her daughter, the distress was still there. She wanted to leave now, rush to take a train, a plane. She became frantic. A sort of panic came over her. Her brother told her to wait. There was nothing else she could do. She refused to watch TV. She stuck to the radio, sat in the kitchen with a glass of water. The voices described utter chaos. Thousands of people had been killed. Who had perpetrated this? How had it been done?