Chapter 19

“WHAT’S GOING ON?” MARKOV said, swinging around and trying to peer through the press of people crowding them from the rear.

Lindsay had tight hold of his arm. They had nearly reached the entrance doors to the great salon where Cazarès’s last collection would be shown. All around them was the decorum of classical architecture—the lovely roofs, windows, and entablature of seventeenth-century design at its most graceful; all around them was chaos—the thrustings and yellings and hysteria of the crowd. Up ahead Lindsay could see dark-suited executives and muscular security men. In front of them and behind them was an angry surge of humanity, hell-bent on getting through the doors. Ahead of her now she could glimpse three celebrated fashion editors; the head buyer for Bloomingdale’s; a French film star, long a patron of Cazarès and famed for her enigmatic beauty and chic; a rock star of international renown, together with his fifth wife, then a herd of indeterminate shoulders and heads and backs and waving arms. White invitation cards flashed. It never ceased to amaze her that everyone, famous or unknown, powerful or humble, rich or poor, elderly or young, was put through this. Markov said that all the couturiers cultivated these fights for admittance, fostered the panic, and intentionally humiliated those they sought to impress. “They want the adrenaline pumping,” he said. “And the fear—that you could be the Queen of England and you still might not get in. They want us all down on our knees, Lindy, pleading to be one of the Elect. That way our critical faculties get shafted before we’re inside the door. They’ve abrogated our power. It stinks.”

Lindsay agreed with this, yet she still resigned herself to the process. She had now been trapped in this manipulated hysteria for the past thirty-five minutes. Her body was sore with being pummeled and pushed. Her head already ached. She could hardly breathe—and when she got inside the salon and finally made it to the sanctum of the front row, she still wouldn’t be able to breathe, for heat and bodies and scent. But she wouldn’t mind. Her own status would have been confirmed by precisely the same people who had been humiliating her and everyone else—and that she valued, or always had in the past. Now, thinking of comments Rowland McGuire had made on this process, she despised herself.

Even so, she could feel the panic rising, the sensation that the frantic crowd behind might at any moment trample her underfoot. Just let me get in, let me get seated, she thought.

“Well, what do you know? It’s the fuzz.” Markov was still craning his neck. He removed his dark glasses briefly in order to obtain a better look. “Storm troopers yet. It’s the GIGN, Lindy—look.”

Lindsay risked the briefest glance around and was astonished. Through the gaps in the swelling crowd behind her she could see the familiar and menacing black vans pulling up, blocking the street beyond the courtyard. Arguments had broken out; attempts were being made to move the clustering Cazarès Mercedes and the TV crew trucks. A siren whooped, then stopped. The black doors at the back of the GIGN vans were opening, disgorging helmeted black-garbed men. Someone behind her gave her a violent shove.