City of Swords (16 page)

Chapter 29

Roux couldn’t be killed, could he? Annja lay on her side in the darkness, wondering what had become of the old man and how Lawton’s crew might have disposed of him. He couldn’t be killed…he’d lived this long. But could they bury him so deep, or put him somewhere so remote, that he couldn’t possibly return? She wouldn’t look for him to save her. Annja had learned in her childhood at the orphanage to depend solely on herself. But would she need to save
him—
provided she could save herself?

She summoned the sword, her fingertips touching the pommel behind her. She couldn’t hold it, but if she kept in contact with it, the sword wouldn’t disappear into the otherwhere. Pain jolted through her limbs as she maneuvered herself so the cords touched the blade. She started working on them, moving back and forth. The steel cut into her flesh. Despite the added misery, she didn’t stop.

While she sawed, she listened to water drip and the squeal of rats. No human sounds, no footsteps. Summoning the sword was just what Lawton wanted and was the last thing Annja wished to do. But without the sword, she wouldn’t get out of here.

Maybe even with the sword she couldn’t. Annja hadn’t gotten a good look at the cell she’d been tossed in; she might not have the tools to effect an escape. They’d taken everything from her except her singed and shredded clothes.

It took more than a few minutes, but she finally cut through the cords and freed her hands. New pain pulsed through her, like a rhythmic drum coming up from the fingers of her left hand, thrumming into her shoulder, then her neck.
Pain is the body telling you you’re alive,
she reminded herself. Now to free her feet. She sat up, clasping the sword with her right hand; her left was next to useless, feeling as if an elephant had stepped on it. At least she had some sensation in it, even if it was agony.

Her ankles had been bound with rope thick enough to tie a good-size ship to a dock. Part of it was singed, but not enough to make a difference; there would be no wiggling out of it. Annja wondered which one of the “paladins” had managed the knots.

“Be careful that history’s monsters don’t come chasing you,” she mumbled as she put the sword to them and started to cut. “Well, they did more than chase me. They caught me.”

She sawed in time to the dripping water, meanwhile straining to hear other things…footsteps, maybe a car or siren…something to indicate how far she was beneath the warehouse. She heard nothing above or below.

The rope finally cut, she released the sword back to the otherwhere. She rubbed at her legs with her good hand, then wriggled around to pull the choir robe off. She waited a moment, breathing evenly and deeply, then stood, gritting her teeth as pain exploded through her left arm.

Damn, but she hurt. This trip to Paris had been largely one misery after another. Annja bent her knees, rolled her head and fought a bout of dizziness.

No matter how intently she stared into the darkness, she couldn’t see anything. It was like being in a cave without any source of light. She picked a direction and shuffled forward, bumping into a damp wall. She touched it with the back of her right hand and turned, keeping the wall to her right and inching along. Another wall, and she repeated the process, and then another before she found the bars. Annja pressed her face into a gap between them and inhaled. She smelled the oil from the lantern Luc had broken and the fustiness of this place, rats and their waste, spoiled things she didn’t want to think about. She wondered if she’d been near here when she and Rembert and the rest of the crew were filming.

With the fingers of her good hand, she explored the bars. Rusting iron, but strong. After a few moments, she found the lock.

Suddenly, out of the darkness, she saw a hazy glow. A flashlight beam. Sounded like only one person, in a hurry. She stepped back from the door and pulled out the sword, holding it in her right hand.

Archard appeared in front of the cell, keys in one hand, flashlight in the other. He peered at her through the bars. Saw the sword before she quickly let it go. His eyes widened, but he didn’t say anything for a moment. “You are in pain,” he finally managed to murmur.

“You think?” Annja’s hair was in her eyes. Looking at him was like trying to spot something through tall grass.

“‘Distraught was Roland with wrath and pain; Distraught were the twelve of Charlemagne.’”

“Great, your poem again.”

“You are more a student of history than myself, Miss Creed. My interest is narrower than yours. Studies did not come easy to me, so I concentrated on one area.” He watched her for a moment, as if he expected her to say something. “I’ve patterned myself after one of my favorite historical figures. Roland, favored paladin of Charlemagne. Did you know that some historians think he might have been Charlemagne’s nephew? Roland was a Frankish count, glorified in French epics as well as in Italian stories, where the tellers called him Orlando. Roland sounds better, don’t you think? Durendal was his sword, Veillantif his horse, Olivant a horn he blew before going into battle. He was the only man who openly opposed Charlemagne’s plans to make peace with the king of the Saracens. He was the last of the twelve peers to die.”

Annja remained silent.

“He has decided to kill you. Dr. Lawton,” Archard said. “He’s going to burn you to death, not just torture you like he did earlier. I am to bring you to him.” Her visitor paused. “And he said it would be my honor and responsibility to light the match.”

Annja studied him.

“But I cannot abide by that. You are not a heretic or an infidel, and perhaps you have as much right to that sword as Dr. Lawton believes he has.”

“I have far more right,” she stated.

Archard looked surprised at her comment. “I pray you keep it, then.” He put the key to the lock, holding his eyes on hers. “You cannot go upstairs, Miss Creed. You cannot take eleven people armed with swords and guns.”

“So the twelve paladins of Dr. Lawton are fully assembled.”

“Anew. You killed two last night, between you and the old man. But there were others in his service…waiting in the wings, I guess you would say. And they’re assembled to witness your demise.”

“If Lawton wants the sword, doesn’t he know that killing me—”

“He’s decided that with you dead, God will send the sword to another, and that he is the only logical other. He believes it is the only way he can come by your weapon.”

“And what do you believe?”

“I believe in him and what he hopes to accomplish. I follow him, as Roland followed Charlemagne.” Archard turned the key. “But I do not believe that killing you is what God intended. You cannot take the eleven upstairs, but there is another way out. Through the tunnels.” He gestured to his left. “I would hurry. Dr. Lawton will send someone to check on you and me.”

Archard opened the door and stepped aside, and Annja rushed him, turning the sword so that the flat of it struck him across the stomach. The air rushed from him and she hit him again. He dropped the flashlight and doubled over, went to reach for his own sword, but she stopped him, raising her leg and kicking at his knee with all the power she could summon. She heard the crack and saw in the dimness the astonishment on his face. He dropped to the stone floor and she dropped with him, rapping the butt of her sword against the side of his head. His leg was twisted at a painful, awkward angle.

She felt for a pulse, relieved when she found it. Dismissing her sword, she fumbled at his waist, freeing his sword belt. Annja had trouble fitting it on, with only one good hand to work with, but finally managed. “I’ll make sure Durendal gets back to where it belongs.” Next, she pulled the belt out of his pants, fastening it around her chest and cinching it tight to hold her broken hand and arm immobile. Finally, she scooped up the flashlight and shone it down the passage in each direction.

“Let’s buy me a little more time.” Using just her feet, she pushed Archard into the cell and closed the door, then locked it. She thought about taking the keys with her, but instead tossed them down the hall. It would make it easier for someone to let him out.

One way would take her back up into the warehouse, and that’s where she wanted to go. Annja wanted to confront Lawton with her weapon in hand. But Archard said there were eleven with him, certainly all with swords…how many of them stolen? For a madman’s insane plan.

She picked the other direction, trusting that Archard was right and that there was another way out through the tunnels. The corridor narrowed and curved, angled down and split like a snake’s tongue. The air was still, with nothing stirring to give her a clue. She chose to go right, moving faster now and barely stopping in time to avoid a break in the stone beneath her feet. Annja shone the flashlight into the hole. There was a chamber beneath, a stack of small crates against the wall, and to make life easy for her, there was a rope ladder dangling down.

“Convenient.” Maybe too convenient.
If it looks like a trap…
But she had a bum arm, and she needed to put distance between herself and Lawton and his paladins.

It would be the way to go, deeper under Paris. The tunnels wound their way throughout the city and would eventually take her to freedom.

Then she would go looking for Roux.

Chapter 30

They’d taken her watch and her cell phone, so she had no clue what time it was, how many hours had passed. And she had no way to call for help. She was tired, but her fatigue wasn’t an accurate measure of the passage of time. It could be noon, for all she knew. She didn’t know where she was, either, other than somewhere under a warehouse that was somewhere in Paris. And that it was cold here.

Annja would have to confront Lawton again, but when the odds were better, when she had help.

A tunnel led away from the chamber and she directed the flashlight down it. She had no choice. It was the only path available to her without having to go back up a level and try a different route. But she knew there would be others; the tunnels beneath the city were a maze of passages and caverns.

Something made her pause.

The crates.

They were wood, each about a foot square. Nothing stamped on them. Why not keep them in the warehouse upstairs? They would be harder to get at down here…but also harder to find. Wine that someone wanted kept chilled? She set the flashlight on one and reached for her sword, using it to pry the top off another—not an easy task with one hand. This could waste a few precious minutes, but might be important. It was the archaeologist in her, Annja thought, always looking to unearth some treasure or clue, even though she should be hightailing it out of here so she could call the police.

“What the…”

The crate held two silver metal canisters, each the size of a vending-machine soda can, carefully nested in packing material. A piece of masking tape served as a label, written in a Cyrillic scrawl. Annja held the flashlight closer. She could read Cyrillic—to an
extent—but these words were difficult for her to figure out. She worked on them like a tot in first grade sounding out syllables.

Tabun. Soman.
“What the hell does that mean?”

She set the lid back on and worried another crate open, while her common sense told her to move along. Get to the police.

Two more cylinders, marked the same.

A third crate revealed something different. Instead of cylinders, she found some sort of Mylar container filled with liquid and labeled with more of the hand-scrawled Cyrillic on masking tape:
sarin.
The word froze her.
Cyclosarin
on the other container.

“Oh, hell.”

She knew what sarin and cyclosarin were, and tabun and soman were likely of a similar nature. Liquid nerve gas. They were called G-series chemical warfare agents, developed by German scientists, hence the
G
attached to them. Hideously nasty stuff. And that’s why they were down here, where it was cool. At room temperature they became volatile. Odorless, colorless and lethal. Enough of it could wipe out entire communities, especially if the wind was blowing…or used surgically, in small indoor places. There were nine crates, and if each held two canisters, that would be eighteen containers of liquid nerve gas.

Why weren’t they all the same? Annja almost immediately answered her own question. Lawton likely hadn’t been able to get as much as he wanted from one source, hence the different varieties in different packages.

This cleansing Lawton intended…the liquid nerve gas had to be part of it.

Murdering Buddhists and Scientologists with swords had been shocking, attention grabbing. But it had been just a prelude. Annja felt as if she’d just been dropped in ice water.

She really had to get to the authorities now. Right now.

She wished she could take one of the canisters with her as evidence, but no. If she dropped it she’d be dead, and there’d be no way to report her grisly find. And if she dropped it within range of innocent people, she’d be killing more than just herself.

Annja relegated the sword to the otherwhere, grabbed the flashlight and hurried down the passage. She paused when she spotted a discarded miner’s helmet, but soon saw that its light was broken, useless to her. Maybe she would come across another in better shape, one that might give her a little more light, so she could see better and move faster and have her good hand free for her sword. Miners’ helmets were standard gear for utility workers, tour guides and the cataphiles who delighted in exploring the dark web of tunnels.

She moved on at an almost reckless pace, hoping wandering cataphiles wouldn’t come across the crates. Unless they were Russian or Ukrainian, they wouldn’t have a clue what the stuff was.

Annja hoped she’d come across a ladder that would lead up to the street. She would call out, hoping there was a cataphile within range of her voice, or some city worker down below, checking the stability of the tunnel she was in…but after she was farther away from the warehouse and the nerve gas. Had Lawton discovered Archard in the cell? Had he sent men looking for her? What had triggered Archard’s inexplicable turnaround? As if she’d believed it.

The next time the tunnel split, Annja took the wider route, where she could move faster. But after a hundred yards, she came to a mound of rubble where a section of wall had collapsed. Retracing her steps, she took the other branch, its tight corridor slowing her. She had to turn sideways and squeeze through. Maybe Lawton had caused the collapse in the other tunnel, to keep people from discovering his nerve-gas cache. Annja had to inch her way through now and twist to avoid hurting her broken hand. She wasn’t entirely successful, scraping the back of it and ripping her already tattered shirt. She thought of Roux, to keep her mind off her own predicament. Somewhere, he was all right, she hoped. Or working himself toward being all right.

The tunnel became so tight that the rock dug into her chest, stomach and even her face, adding to the pain that pulsed from her broken arm and hand. She was certain she’d have to abandon Durendal—the long sword wasn’t helping her in this tight fit. Just when she thought she’d get stuck and suffocate here, she managed to scrape through. The tunnel widened on the other side, and she stopped to catch her breath and aim the flashlight ahead. Nobody in Lawton’s cadre was small enough to come this way, even Sarah. Relief washed through Annja. She checked to make sure the rescued sword in the belt at her hip was undamaged.

“Safe,” she pronounced. Or as safe as she was going to find herself until she could reconnect with Roux and alert the authorities to all of this. Annja pressed on, training the beam right and left, up and down, looking for other corridors and praying for some form of escape.

“Where the hell am I?” She blew out a breath in frustration. She was thoroughly lost in the arteries of Paris, one of the oldest subway and sewer systems in the world.

She hollered now, until she was hoarse, but got no response. She picked up her pace and let the worries about the liquid nerve gas and Lawton’s prospective targets tumble through her head. Rouen had a Muslim community. In fact, Muslims were found in sizable numbers throughout France. More Buddhists. More Scientologists. More of anything that wasn’t Christian…and just how Christian was that?

Two years ago she’d searched some of the limestone quarries located below a cluster of posh boutiques. Annja could picture those old caverns in her mind. Was she near one of them? So far, there was nothing familiar here…. If she could find something she recognized, she could make her way out.

In the early 1100s, when Philippe Auguste was king, he’d ordered extensive quarrying to provide limestone for building ramparts to protect Paris. And who would protect Paris now from Lawton?

The corridor narrowed again and rose, then almost immediately descended again and turned in a serpentine course, doubling back and going ever deeper. After a few minutes Annja found the slope became steeper and slick with water that oozed through a crack in the wall. She had to creep along to keep from falling.

She shivered, not just from the fear of what Lawton had planned with the nerve gas. It was even colder here and certainly quite a bit deeper than when she’d first come below. Her teeth were chattering. The flashlight beam bounced off water droplets clinging to the ceiling. More rivulets ran down the wall ahead. The air smelled of mold, damp earth and old stone.

Annja forced herself on, skidding to a stop when she finally came to a chamber lined with bones. The dead were stacked like cordwood to her right and left. On a shelf that ran around the entire chamber, skulls were perched, staring at her with empty eyes. More than six million bodies were supposedly buried in various catacombs beneath Paris.

Some bodies had been buried down here even before the 1800s, when cemeteries became overcrowded and city officials ordered skeletons to be dug up and dumped into the old quarry tunnels. Archaeologists dated some of the oldest to Merovingian times, others to the French Revolution.

The bones in this chamber were the shade of eggshells and old parchment. Femurs were stacked like logs reaching waist height, and between the puddles that dotted the floor were chips of bone. All of it had a patina that on pottery or art would be considered striking and beautiful.

Annja walked softly, tiptoeing around bone fragments out of respect.

The tunnel continued beyond this place, and Annja had just stepped into it when she heard something—an echo? Laughter? She turned to face the bone chamber again and focused on the sound—of voices seeming to come from the skulls. She caught the gist of a conversation. About nearly getting caught on the way in here.

“Where are you?” Annja whispered. “Who are you?” She cocked her head. The voices weren’t coming from either tunnel entrance. Above her? Taking a chance it wasn’t Lawson, she yelled for help in French, English and German, repeating the cycle, then stopping and listening again.

She heard laughter, then voices again. She finally realized they were coming from a level or more higher. The skulls were acting as speakers to funnel the sound. Whoever was talking probably didn’t hear her, but she tried again, anyway.

Nothing.

“Dammit.” She shivered. It was as cold as a wine cellar down here.

Annja’s stolen flashlight died. And now it was pitch-dark.