“Hamas won first prize this year,” said the ghost of Cardinal Richelieu. “First prize in that part of the world means that you are allowed to compete for first prize next year. Second prize is, you’re extinct.”
Once again, I was shivering in the dank gloom of the Carthusian ossuary below the sewers of Paris, where 11 years ago I first conjured the spirit of the supreme strategist of the Thirty Years’ War and the architect of France’s lopsided victory over the richer and more populous Austrian Empire. Nitre dripped from the greenish rocks, and skulls atop neatly stacked rows of bone grinned at me from all sides.
I had carried a magnum of Chateau Petrus and a spittoon down the spiral staircase hidden below the Pont d’Alma – the Bridge of Souls – in Paris’ 7th arrondissement, to the crumbling stone stairs below the 19th century sewer system built by Napoleon III, through masonry encrusted by the mold of the ages until I reached the venue of my midnight tryst with the Cardinal.