Текст книги "Cradle of Solitude"
Автор книги: Алекс Арчер
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7
After examining the sack coat, Annja turned her attention to the pistol and sword Parker had been holding when he’d died.
The gun was a single action revolver, which she recognized as a Colt 1851 Navy Revolver from the engraving of a naval battle on the cylinder. The gun had been popular at the time of the Civil War. Her research told her that famous Navy Revolver users included Wild Bill Hickok, “Doc” Holliday and General Robert E. Lee.
Drawing back the hammer, she discovered that three of the six chambers still held percussion caps, indicating that they were loaded and ready to fire.
Apparently Parker’s enemy hadn’t been the only one who’d gotten a shot off at the fateful meeting, she thought.
She emptied the revolver, carefully storing the percussion caps, bullets and powder in separate vials, eliminating the chance of an accident while she examined the weapon.
When she was finished with the revolver she turned her attention to the sword. Since she’d miraculously inherited Joan of Arc’s famous sword, bladed weapons had become a passion for Annja and she immediately recognized this one as a Shelby cavalry sabre, named after General Joseph O. Shelby, leader of the Iron Brigade. When the Confederacy fell, Shelby, one of the few Confederate generals who had never been defeated in combat by Union troops, took his entire command to Mexico rather than surrender. The cavalry sword he’d carried throughout the war, a common enough model produced by the Ames sword company, was renamed in his honor after the war.
The blade was about forty inches in length and bore the CSA, or Confederate States of America, inscription, as did the brass guard. The grip was leather, wrapped with twisted brass wire. The entire weapon seemed to be in excellent shape and Annja gave it a few experimental swings through the air to get the sense of it. It was well-balanced, though shorter and lighter than the weapon she was used to using.
Putting the weapon back down on the examination table, she moved over to the rest of Parker’s clothing.
He’d been wearing leather cavalry boots rather than the usual leather brogans, but Annja wasn’t surprised by this, as Confederate footwear had been notoriously bad. The boots were in fairly good shape, but didn’t tell her anything new about their owner. The same was true for the regulation trousers that she examined next.
The shirt was a bit more interesting, if only because it held the evidence of the gunshot that had ended Parker’s life. There was a bullet hole in the front of the shirt, just to the left of the sternum, but no corresponding hole on the back. This meant the bullet hadn’t passed completely through his body, as she might have expected at such close range, but had remained lodged somewhere inside his chest. It was a good reminder that modern weapons were far more powerful than those of a hundred years ago and she told herself to keep that in mind as she examined the evidence of Parker’s demise.
Annja wished they had the bullet to examine, as it might have been able to tell them something about the gun that had been used. That could have narrowed their avenues of inquiry a bit, but she’d been unable to find it among Parker’s remains.
It’s probably on the floor of the antechamber. Maybe I’ll go back and try to find it later, she thought.
Annja was about to put the shirt aside when she noticed an odd double stitch along one of the seams. She ran her fingers over the cloth at that point and felt something there, just beneath the surface.
It was small, no more than an inch long and less than a quarter-inch thick, and it hadn’t gotten there by accident. Whatever it was, someone had taken a bit of trouble to hide it inside the seam of the shirt.
“I think I’ve got something,” Annja said, and when Bernard came back over to her station as he had done before, she showed him what she had found. They both agreed that it merited further investigation. They photographed the shirt from a variety of angles, wanting to preserve a record of its condition before they altered it in any way, and then they x-rayed it, as well. The latter was inconclusive, however; it showed the object and confirmed its rectangular shape, but it didn’t provide any information as to what it might be.
They were going to have to take a look for themselves.
Scalpel in hand, Annja carefully cut each of the threads that held the seam closed and then, using the flat of the blade, she lifted the edge of the cloth, revealing what was hidden inside—a folded piece of paper. Annja held the pocket of cloth open with the scalpel while Bernard used a pair of tweezers to tease the paper free of its hiding place and move it onto its own examination plate.
With the aid of a low-power magnifying glass Annja could see that two edges of the paper were evenly cut, while the others were ragged, indicating it had been torn from a larger source.
A few words had been written on the small slip of paper in a hurried scrawl. Using the magnifying glass, Annja read them aloud.
“Berceau de solitude.”
Annja didn’t need Bernard to translate. She knew the words were Cradle of Solitude,but she hoped he might have some insight on what it meant, because she didn’t have a clue.
“Only place I know by that name is a monastery in the Pyrenees,” he told her.
“A monastery? Can you think of any reason it might be connected to our mysterious friend here?” she asked.
“Not particularly. If memory serves, it started out as a convent in the early 1500s, was abandoned about a hundred years later and then was bought by a sect of Benedictine monks just before the French Revolution. They’ve been running the place ever since.”
Benedictine monks. She couldn’t think of any obvious connection between the religious order and the Confederacy, but it wasn’t her area of expertise. Still, there had to be a connection, for no one went through the kind of trouble Parker had to hide a piece of paper if it wasn’t important.
The monastery was the key to this mystery.
She was sure of it.
“Is it far from here?”
Bernard shrugged. “Four, maybe four and a half hours by car. There’s a train that runs in that direction, as well, but you’d have to find transportation up the mountain. Not much sense in going, though.”
“And why’s that?”
“It’s closed to the public. Outside visitors have to be approved in advance by the abbot and the process takes several months. I spent some time there a few years ago examining one of the books they have in their library and I remember the process being an absolute nightmare to get through.”
“So you’ve met the abbot?”
“The abbot, hmmm. Abbot Deschanel. Yes, I have. A charming man, actually.”
“Would he remember you?”
“I should think so,” Bernard told her. “We spent several evenings discussing a variety of topics over a glass of wine or two and I…” He paused, finally putting two and two together. “Oh, no.”
Annja smiled at him sweetly. “What?”
“You want me to call over there and try to get you in to see the abbott without going through the standard process.”
“You’d do that for me?” she replied, letting her eyes go wide and feigning innocent surprise.
Bernard laughed. “I’m supposed to believe that the idea never even occurred to you, right?”
“You can believe what you want. But now that you’ve brought it up I think it’s an excellent idea.”
“It’s been more than a hundred years, Annja. What do you expect to find?”
She shrugged. “I don’t have any idea. But I’m sure something will occur to me once I’m there. There has to be a reason that Parker went through all the trouble of hiding the name of the monastery inside the seam of his shirt. That doesn’t just happen by accident.”
Bernard considered that statement. “You think he knew he was going to run into trouble,” he said slowly, thinking it through, “and he took precautions in case he did?”
“I do. And I think somewhere in that monastery is the answer to just what kind of trouble he was expecting. If we know that, we might be able to figure out just what he was doing here in France in the first place. Isn’t that the point of all this?”
She knew she was stretching things a bit. The authorities hadn’t been all that clear on exactly what they wanted her and Bernard to do. Identify the body if at all possible, sure, but given the state of the skeleton they probably didn’t expect them to have all that much success. Turning the skeleton over to the museum had pretty much achieved what the police had most likely wanted to achieve, which was passing the buck on to someone else. Now that the skeleton wasn’t in the catacombs and potentially slowing down the construction of the Metro tunnel, the details really weren’t all that significant to the police.
But they were to Annja. Now that she was involved, she was determined to find out all she could about Captain Parker’s fate, if indeed the skeleton really was his.
She thought it was. Regardless of how outlandish the idea sounded when said aloud, at this point she was all but convinced that she was right. She wasn’t sure why she felt that way, as the evidence was scant at best, but something deep inside rang true at the thought. That meant tracking down what had actually happened to him might possibly lead them to the missing Confederate treasure, as well. And thatwas definitely a prize worth pursuing.
In order to do that, she had to get inside the monastery.
“So you’ll do it?” she asked.
Bernard, however, wasn’t convinced. “I’ll give it some thought,” he said.
Deciding she wasn’t going to get any more out of him at this juncture, Annja let the matter rest for the time being. She’d hit him up again before leaving that afternoon once he’d had a chance to think it over.
In the meantime, she had a lot of work to do.
8
About the time that Annja was examining the sword, Blaine Michaels, a direct descendant of the man who had fired the shot that had taken Captain Parker’s life, received a phone call at home from the same computer technician he’d spoken to earlier that afternoon.
The information he received was more complete this time around, outlining what had happened in the tunnels earlier that morning.
“You’re certain that they said the skeleton came from inside the catacombs and not the Metro tunnel itself?”
“Yes, sir.”
Michaels grunted, most decidedly not thrilled with those circumstances.
“And the Creed woman?”
“Because the skeleton was dressed in the uniform of a U.S. soldier, the police contacted the embassy and asked to have a representative present. Apparently the Creed woman was suggested by someone on the ambassador’s staff and was brought in to represent their interests.”
He didn’t bother to correct the misinformation in his subordinate’s report; he had better things to do with his time than explain the difference between the Confederate States and the United States. It was the fact that they had discovered the body at all that had him on edge.
He didn’t exactly know why. After all, the body had been down there in the dark for more than a hundred years. There was nothing that could tie his family or the organization as a whole to the crime, if it could even be called a crime at this point, and there was little enough to be done even if they could.
Relax, he told himself.
But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t. After struggling against it for some time, he got up and made his way to his study. Locking the door behind him, he moved over to the safe, knelt in front of it and dialed the combination lock. Opening the door, he reached deep into the back, past the stacks of cash and bearer bonds, and took out his great-grandfather’s journal.
The old man had recorded the events of the night in question in considerable detail, just as he’d been taught to do. As the current head of the society, Blaine had done the same thing himself many times, making note of the steps he’d taken and the motivations behind them so that the one who followed in his footsteps—his son, most likely—would understand how those actions fit into the society’s long-term plans.
He wasn’t troubled by what had happened that day, at least with regard to the actions the society had taken. Anyone who crossed them would meet a similar fate. No, what was troubling were the goals they’d failed to meet—namely, determining where the traitor had hidden the treasure promised to them. His great-grandfather had been unable to force the information from the traitor before killing him and all of their searches to date had ended with nothing to show for them.
Blaine Michaels had been haunted all his life by his great-grandfather’s failure. Those in the society had long memories and there had been considerable opposition to his rise to power as the group’s current leader, but he’d been determined to win back the position of power his great-grandfather had forfeited in the face of his failure.
More importantly, he was determined not to let history repeat itself.
And that, he realized, was the source of his unease.
He couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that there was something they had missed that night, something that might have provided the clue they needed to figure out just where the treasure had been hidden.
Blaine knew that the original meeting had quickly devolved into an argument, which in turn led to violence. A running gun battle through the catacombs had ended with both men wounded, the traitor mortally so. Time had been of the essence in getting his great-grandfather to safety. Afterward, there was confusion about where, exactly, the traitor’s body had been left behind and the searches that followed had been unable to locate it in the hundreds of miles of twisting tunnels beneath the Paris streets. Eventually, his great-grandfather had been forced to step down from the position of leadership and the incident had been swept under the rug as a total failure.
But now, it seemed, there was a chance to correct the errors of the past. If the body held information that might lead them to the missing treasure, then he couldn’t afford to pass up the chance to find it.
Decisive action. Yes, that’s exactly what the situation needed.
Satisfied he’d come to the right conclusion, he reached for the phone.
DECIDING TO CALL IT a night, Annja and Bernard gathered all the notes and photographs they’d produced during the day, transferred them to Bernard’s office down the hall and then locked the lab behind them. “Tomorrow morning, then?” Bernard asked.
“Sounds good,” Annja replied. “And give some more thought to getting me in to see the abbot, will you?”
Bernard smiled. “Your persistence is what makes you such a good archaeologist,” he said, and then, before she could object to his playful teasing, he added, “but yes, I will. You have my word.”
Satisfied, she rode the elevator up to the ground floor. The museum had closed for the day and the halls were empty and silent around her. She paused for a moment at the entrance to a hall devoted to Egyptian artifacts, breathing in all the history that surrounded her, and was struck with the odd sense of being at home.
Yeah, and if you don’t get out and have a life one of these days, you’ll end up a stuffed mummy just like those in there, she thought wryly.
She’d been working straight through since leaving the dojo earlier that morning and only had a few more nights left to enjoy Paris, so it was time to get out and see the sights.
No sooner had she decided to take a break, however, than she found her thoughts returning to the whereabouts of the missing bullet. The gunshot wound had almost certainly killed Captain Parker and it should have been there with his remains. Not having the bullet irked her; it was like finishing a puzzle only to find out that you’re missing one last little piece. It was a tiny detail, she knew, but an important one, and she was just detail-oriented enough to want to put it to rest.
You’ve spent all day on this, she thought, what’s another hour or so?
The spent bullet was probably lying on the floor of the chamber near the wall against which Parker’s skeleton had been resting. It shouldn’t be all that hard to find.
Go on, take a quick look. If you find it, great, and if not, at least you’ll know you gave it a shot, she thought.
Decision made, she caught a cab over to the Metro station they’d used to gain access to the catacombs earlier that day. The trains were still being rerouted around the station due to the construction and so her footsteps echoed off the walls as she descended the steps.
A uniformed police officer was waiting for her at the turnstiles, alerted to her presence by the noise of her footsteps. Obviously bored with the duty he’d been assigned, he told her the station was closed and only looked up at her when she thrust the pass under his nose that she’d been given by Laroche.
“You’ll be wanting to go into the tunnels, then?” he asked.
“Yes, I shouldn’t be long.”
“But it’s after dark.”
Annja didn’t see how that was relevant. She was going underground, where it was always dark. What difference did it make that the sun had gone down?
Rather than get into it with him, though, she simply said, “Yes, it is,” and smiled sweetly at him, hoping her charm would get him to open the gate.
What she really wanted to do was to laugh at his superstitious attitude, for the things she’d faced since acquiring her sword made the idea of roaming around in the tunnels beneath the Paris city streets seem like child’s play, but she knew that doing so would kill any chance she had of getting through the gate.
Thankfully, her official pass seemed to be enough. He gave her a look that clearly said he thought she had a few screws loose upstairs but he didn’t say anything as he unlatched the gate and let her in.
She jogged through the station and down to the same platform where Laroche had taken her. Arming herself with a lantern just as they had earlier in the day, she climbed down onto the tracks and set off toward the break in the tunnel that marked the entrance to the catacombs.
More sawhorses had been set out at the site since she’d been there earlier, their blinking orange lights bouncing down the tunnel and letting her know she was getting close. She followed the glow like a trail of bread crumbs until she reached the spot where the workers had broken through into the older passageway inside the catacombs.
She was relieved to see the ladder she’d used earlier was still in place and she quickly descended into the lower tunnel. At the bottom of the ladder she paused, glancing back up the way she had come. For a moment she thought she’d heard something, but the sound didn’t repeat itself.
Probably just a rat, she thought, and shuddered.
She brushed it off and continued on her way.
The cemented tunnel had given way at the bottom of the ladder to the smooth limestone of the catacombs themselves. The antechamber where they had found Parker’s remains was just ahead and she found herself hurrying the last few dozen feet to its entrance, eagerness spreading through her veins like a drug. As she entered the room the thousands of skulls stared back at her, eerie in their eternal silence, but her attention was solely focused on what she’d come here to find and she barely noticed.
She moved over to the spot where the skeleton had been found and got down on her hands and knees. Resting the flashlight on the floor so that its beam filtered across the area she intended to search, she began hunting for the missing bullet. When she’d gone over the entire area in one direction, she went back again in the other, crisscrossing her initial efforts so she could be assured that she hadn’t missed a spot.
When that failed to turn up what she was looking for, she moved her attention over to the wall against which Captain Parker’s remains had rested. Perhaps the shot that had killed him had actually passed through his body completely, even though they hadn’t found evidence of an exit wound. It was something that wasn’t completely outrageous if it had happened at close range. Perhaps the bullet had embedded itself in the wall instead of falling to the floor when the body decayed.
Searching the wall, however, proved to be much harder than the floor. Comprised as it was of hundreds of human skulls, there were too many nooks and crannies and shadowed surfaces that could be hiding the impact point of the bullet. With just the beam of her flashlight to illuminate the wall’s surface, there was no way she was going to find something that small amid all the stacked human bones.
Better to come back in the daytime with a team of grad students and a full bank of lights, she told herself, and decided to really call it quits for the night. The beam of her flashlight swept across the floor as she turned away and out of the corner of her eye she caught the glint of something reflecting back at her.
She turned in that direction and carefully made her way forward, shining the beam of her flashlight ahead of her, searching for whatever it was. When she reached the wall she slowly spun in a circle, still searching, knowing that whatever it was had to be here somewhere.
It couldn’t just get up and walk out on its own.
There!
It was a heavy gold signet ring set with a dark colored stone. It was lying on the floor near the wall directly across from where they had found Parker’s remains and it was partially obscured by the collapse of several loose bones, which explained why she and the rest of Bernard’s team had missed it.
She kept the flashlight beam trained on it as she walked over, not wanting to lose sight of it, and then bent to pick it up.
She turned as she straightened up, ring in hand, and she caught sight of the dark form standing behind her. He was so close and it was so unexpected that she flinched back in surprise.
The move saved her.
The fist that came hurtling out of the darkness struck her on the edge of the jaw rather than in the center of her throat, where it would have crushed her larynx. Instead, the force of the blow picked her up and flung her backward, tossing her against the carefully piled bones lining the wall behind her. The whole mess came tumbling down around her in a hard rain, bones bouncing off her head and shoulders in an unyielding waterfall that threatened to knock her unconscious.
She knew if that happened it was all over, so she fought back against the grayness threatening her sight and struggled to extricate herself from the jumbled pile of human bones.
The scrape of a shoe against the stone floor let her know her attacker was moving toward her. She had seconds at best, but the fall had knocked the wind out of her and the blow to the head had her thoughts ringing like a church bell in a steeple, messing with her concentration.
Get up!her mind screamed at her, but it was like swimming against the current, her body not quite obeying the commands her mind was giving.
In the darkness she sensed rather than saw a dark shape bending over her and the sudden spike of adrenaline that poured into her system wiped away the haze.
Her right hand folded around the hilt of a sword that hadn’t been there seconds before as she willed it into existence from the otherwhere. She swung out with a savage yell like that of a falcon on the hunt. The sword slashed, almost with a mind of its own, and she felt it slice through the flesh of the man’s arm.
Blood splashed across her face and whoever it was howled in pain and drew back, giving Annja the time and space she needed to scramble to her feet. She kicked away the bones of some forgotten French citizens as she did so, wanting solid ground beneath her already shaky feet for the fight to come.
Ambushing a woman in the dark was one thing but fighting that same woman, now angry and armed with a sword she knew how to use with a finesse born of hours of practice, was something else. Rather than move in and press his advantage, her attacker turned and ran, his footfalls echoing off the stone around them.
Annja took off after him.
He only had a few seconds head start, and so she should have been able to catch up to him quickly, but her head was still pounding and the lack of a light source quickly had her steps faltering and slowing to a stop after only a few dozen yards. Getting lost in the dark was not something she wanted to experience, no matter how badly she wanted to know who it was that had followed her down here or why they’d attacked. Wandering for hours through pitch-dark tunnels until she fell down an unseen chasm or died of thirst was not on her list of happy endings.
In the distance, her attacker’s footfalls faded away to silence.
She took a moment to catch her breath and gather her thoughts. She realized, with no little surprise, that her left hand was still clenched tightly around the ring that she’d picked up off the floor.
Thank goodness for small favors, she thought.
Not wanting to lose it after all this, she slipped it into her pocket to look at later. With her hand against the wall to use as a guide, she made her way carefully back down the tunnel until she could see the thin beam of light from her flashlight spilling out of the entrance of the antechamber.
She stepped into the room, retrieved her flashlight and decided that she’d had enough excitement for one day. Sword still in hand, she cautiously retraced her steps back up to the subway tunnel and from there to the station itself. She kept on the lookout for any sign of her attacker, but didn’t see or hear anyone along the way. Before entering the station she released her sword back into the otherwhere, for coming out of a dark tunnel carrying a sword in hand didn’t seem like the safest way to reacquaint herself with the police officer on duty.
As it turned out, she needn’t have worried. The guard was nowhere in sight.
That’s not a good sign, she thought uneasily.
He wouldn’t have left on his own without being relieved; at least, she couldn’t imagine him doing that knowing full well that she was in the tunnels. That meant that something had happened to him.
He probably ran into the same bastard that I did.
If that was the case, he could be lying somewhere unconscious, perhaps even seriously injured. She couldn’t leave without looking for him.
It didn’t take very long. She found the police officer lying against the far side of the ticket booth, a thick trickle of blood leaking from the swollen lump on the side of his head. His breathing was steady enough, she was relieved to discover. Annja used his radio to make an Officer Down call to headquarters. When they asked her to identify herself, she broke the connection. The officer was starting to stir so she got up, and walked off without a backward glance. It wasn’t the most Good Samaritan–like thing to do, but all she wanted was to return to her hotel and take a hot bath to ease the aches and pains out of her muscles. She wouldn’t get that if she had to spend the next three hours downtown answering questions.
Back at her hotel, she had room service send up hot chocolate and some croissants. While she waited, she took the ring from the pocket of her jeans, cleaned it off and held it up to the light for a good look.
It was a man’s signet ring, just as she’d thought. The stone set in its face was a deep crimson in color that seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it. It had been gently cut, with a beveled face and eight short sides. The gold itself was unadorned. She suspected it was Parker’s, but it could also have belonged to whomever he had been meeting there. There was no way of telling at this point. She slipped the ring into a little glassine envelope and then tucked it inside one of the zippered pockets of her backpack.
Her snack arrived, so she signed the check, locked the door behind her and devoured the food. Then she headed into the bathroom where she had drawn a bath. She stripped off her clothes and climbed into the water for some relaxation. She’d been going nonstop ever since she’d left for the dojo that morning and her body was telling her to take it easy or else. The hot water soothed her tired limbs the same way the hot chocolate had her throat.
When she was clean and relaxed, she climbed into bed and was asleep in what felt like seconds.
