The Doomsday Key (46 page)

Did that mean something?

Which brought Gray back around to a question that still nagged him.

“Why
did
Napoleon turn the abbey into a prison?”

Wallace had returned and overheard the question. “It’s not that unusual,” he explained as he sat down. “Many old abbeys from the Middle Ages were converted into penal facilities. With their thick walls, towers, and monastic buildings, they were an easy conversion.”

“But of all the abbeys in France, Napoleon picked this
one
for his prison. He picked no others. Could he have been protecting something?”

Wallace rubbed his lower lip in thought. “Napoleon was a key figure during the Age of Enlightenment. He was fixated on the new sciences but also fascinated by the old. When he led his disastrous campaign into Egypt, he brought a slew of scholars with him to scour the archaeological treasures there. If he
had
learned of some forbidden knowledge hidden at the abbey, he might well have guarded it. Especially if he thought it might threaten his empire.”

“Like the curse.” Gray remembered the word written in the Domesday Book.

“Wasted.”

Had something scared Napoleon enough to lock it up?

Gray hoped so. If the Doomsday key had been buried in Saint Malachy’s tomb, it might still be there.

Rachel didn’t have time for them to be wrong.

Over the course of the past hours, she had begun to run a fever. Her brow was hot, and she was prone to chills. Even now, she wore a sweater buttoned to her neck.

She didn’t have the luxury of mistakes.

Gray checked his watch. They were scheduled to meet Kowalski and Seichan in another hour. The pair had gone off to the prison, to scope it out and study it for weaknesses. It was up to Seichan to discern a way into the maximum-security facility. She had left with a doubtful expression fixed to her face.

Rachel stirred from her book, her complexion waxy and pale, her eyes red and puffy. “I can’t find anything more than I have,” she finally conceded in defeat. “I’ve read Malachy’s whole life story, from his birth to his death. I still could not discover a reason why Malachy, an Irish archbishop, was buried in France. Except that he and Bernard were the deepest of friends. In fact, it states here that Bernard was buried
with
Malachy at Clairvaux.”

“But are they still there?” Gray asked.

“From everything I’ve read, the bodies were never moved. But the historical record after the French Revolution goes blank.”

Gray turned to Wallace. “What about Saint Bernard? Were you able to find anything about the man or the founding of the abbey that might be useful?”

“A couple of items. Bernard was closely associated with the Knights Templar. He even authored the Templar rules and was instrumental in getting the Church to recognize their order. He also instigated the Second Crusade.”

Gray weighed that information. The Knights Templar were considered to be the keepers of many secrets. Could this be one of them?

Wallace continued, “But one item stood above all the others, the story of a miracle. One that happened here. It is said that Bernard became deathly ill from an infection, but as he prayed before a statue of the Virgin Mary, it bled milk that healed him. It became known as the Lactation Miracle.”

Rachel closed her book. “Another example of a miraculous healing.”

“Aye, but that’s not even the interesting part,” Wallace said with a sly cock of one brow. “According to the story, the statue that bled the milk … was a Black Madonna.”

Gray took a moment to absorb the shock of it. “A Black Madonna healed him …”

“Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?” Wallace said. “Maybe it was allegorical. I don’t know. But after Malachy’s death, Saint Bernard became a major advocate for the worship of the Black Madonna. He was instrumental in starting the cult.”

“And that miracle occurred right here.”

“Aye. Definitely suggests that the dark queen’s body might have been transported here to Clairvaux—along with the key.”

Gray hoped he was right, but there was only one way to know for sure. They had to get into that prison.

12:43 P.M.
Clairvaux, France

Seichan headed through the woods.

Her scouting expedition to Clairvaux had produced few results. Wearing cold-weather hiking gear, she had binoculars around her neck and a walking stick. Just a young woman out for a day’s hike. Only this traveler packed a Sig Sauer in a holster at the small of her back.

The prison and former monastery lay in a valley between two wooded ridges. According to Rachel, it was common for the Cistercian order to build their monasteries in such remote locations. Preferring an austere lifestyle, the monks withdrew to woodlands, mountaintops, even marshes.

Out of the way, it also served as a good prison site.

Seichan had hiked completely around the perimeter of Clairvaux, noting the position of all the guard towers, the rows of walls, the steel pickets, and the razor-sharp rolls of concertina wire.

It was a fortress.

But no castle was impenetrable.

A plan was already building in her head. They would need uniforms and passes and a French police truck. She had left Kowalski at an Internet café in the neighboring village of Bar-sur-Aube. Through a Guild source, he was gathering a list of the names of both prisoners and guards, including their photos. She believed she could have everything ready by tomorrow. Morning visiting hours would allow one or two of them to get inside. The rest would need to come in the marked truck with fake photo credentials.

Still, there remained many variables. How long would they need to be in there? How would they get out? What about weapons?

She knew they were moving too fast, too recklessly.

Seichan suddenly ducked behind the thick bole of a white oak. She couldn’t say why she felt the need to hide.

Just a prickling at the base of her neck.

She knew better than to ignore it. The human body was a big antenna, picking up signals the conscious mind often missed, but the deeper part of the brain, where instinct was rooted, continually processed them and often sounded the alarm.

Especially if trained from childhood, like Seichan, whose survival had depended on listening to those darker folds of awareness.

As she held her breath, she heard the crackle of dried leaves behind her. Ahead, a rustle of branches. She dropped into a crouch.

She was being hunted.

Seichan knew that spotters had followed them to France. Before leaving England, she had reported in with her contact. Magnussen knew their destination. The tail had picked them up again in Paris. It hadn’t taken Seichan long to spot them.

But she would have sworn no one had followed her from Bar-sur-Aube after she dropped off Kowalski. She had left her car parked at a roadside rest stop and headed into the woods alone.

Who was out there?

She waited. Heard the rustle behind her again. She fixed the location in her head. Pivoting out, she took in the view in one unblinking stare. A
man with a rifle, camouflaged, crept through the woods, clearly military-trained. Even before she was done pivoting, she snapped out her arm. The steel dagger flew from her fingertips. It shredded through the leaves and impaled the hunter through the left eye.

He fell back with a cry.

She rushed forward and closed the distance in four steps. She slammed her palm into the hilt, driving it deep into his brain.

Without slowing, she snatched his rifle and continued upslope.

A boulder lay near the ridge. From her earlier survey, she had the entire terrain mapped in her head. Reaching the shelter, she slid and flipped over on her belly. She came to rest in a sniper’s crouch, her eye already at the scope.

A
ping
ricocheted off the boulder near her head.

She heard no gunshot, but the round’s passage had brushed through a pine branch. Needles puffed. She fixed the trajectory through the scope, spotted a solid shadow moving through a dappled one, and squeezed the trigger.

The rifle spat with no more noise than the snap of a finger.

A body crashed. No scream. A clean head shot.

Seichan moved again.

There would be a third.

She ran along the ridgeline, triangulating the most likely spot for a third assassin. She kept to the high ground. The map of the terrain overlay her vision, like the heads-up display inside a helmet.

If she had been setting up an ambush in this region of the woods, there was a tempting roost ahead. A lightning-struck dead oak with a hollowed-out trunk. If she had hiked another thirty yards, she would have moved into its field of fire. The other two assassins, sensing their prey about to stumble into the snare, must have let their guard down and closed in prematurely, foolishly exposing themselves in their haste.

Surely Magnussen would have warned them of their target’s lethality.

But these were men, mercenaries with egos to match.

She was only a woman.

She came at the tree from behind, from upslope. She slipped to it without disturbing leaf or twig.

Planting her rifle an inch from the back of the dead oak, she fired through it. A cry of surprise and pain erupted as a body fell out of the tree’s hollow on the far side. She came at him with her dagger.

He was burly, smelled of grease, his face stubbled with a black beard. He cursed at her in Arabic with a heavy Moroccan accent. She had the dagger at his neck, intending to interrogate him, to find out why she had been ambushed and who had sent them.

She could make him talk. She knew ways.

Instead, she dragged her knife across his throat, below the larynx, a silent kill, and kicked him in his face. There was no need to interrogate him, she realized. She already knew the answers to her questions.

Something had changed. A kill order had been sent by Magnussen. Catching her alone in the woods, they’d tried to take her out first.

She pictured Gray and the others. She ran headlong toward the parking lot. They had no idea.

She reached to a pocket and flipped open her phone. She jabbed in the number she had memorized.

As it was picked up, she let all her anger ring out. “Your operation! Just so you know, it
failed
!”

1:20 P.M.

Rachel stood with Wallace in a hotel garden at the heart of Bar-sur-Aube. She checked her watch.
Kowalski and Seichan should have been here by now.

She stared out toward the street. The plan was to meet for lunch, to go over plans. They had rooms booked here. The hotel—le Moulin du Landion—had been stylishly converted out of a sixteenth-century water mill. The original canal still ran through the gardens, turning an old wooden waterwheel.

She should have been charmed by the place, but all she felt was ill. Her
head pounded, her throat burned, and her fever was getting worse. She finally slumped and sat on one of the patio chairs.

Gray returned from the lobby. He shook his head as he approached. “No one picked up the keys.” He noted her sitting, and his face tightened with worry. “How are you feeling?”

She shook her head.

He kept staring at her. She knew what he was thinking. Seichan had sketched a general plan for entering the prison. They would attempt it tomorrow morning. Gray clearly wondered if she’d make it that long.

Suddenly Seichan appeared, passing from the street through the garden gate. She searched all around. The woman, always hyperalert, seemed especially edgy now. Her eyes were rounder, her gaze more flighty.

Gray must have noted the same. “What’s wrong?”

She frowned at him. “Nothing. Everything’s fine.” But when she noted they were missing one person, she tensed again. “Where’s Kowalski?”

“I thought he was with you.”

“I left him in town to do some research while I scouted the woods.”

“You left Kowalski to do research?”

Seichan dismissed the skepticism. “It’s all grunt work. I left instructions a monkey could follow.”

“Yet we’re still talking about Kowalski.”

“We should go look for him,” Seichan said.

“He’s probably found a bar open for lunch. He’ll find his way back here eventually. Let’s talk about what we’ve all learned today.” Gray motioned to Rachel’s table.

Seichan didn’t seem happy with that decision. She remained standing, pacing, keeping a constant vigil. Rachel noticed a muscle in her face twitch when the waterwheel squeaked.

The woman was drawn tight, but eventually she took a seat.

Gray questioned her on the plans for tomorrow. They all kept their voices to a low murmur, heads bowed together. As Seichan listed everything they would need, Rachel grew more and more dismayed. A thousand things could go wrong.

Her headache grew to a stabbing agony behind her right eye, painful enough that she began to feel nauseated.

Without missing a beat of the conversation, Gray placed his hand on top of hers. He hadn’t even looked in her direction. It was an instinctual gesture of reassurance.

Seichan noted it, staring down at his hand—then she suddenly swung toward the street and tensed. She went dead still, like a cheetah before it charges.

But it was only Kowalski. He came sauntering into view. He lifted an arm in greeting, opened the garden gate, and crossed toward them. He was puffing on a cigar, carrying a pall of sweet-smelling smoke with him.

“You’re late,” Gray scolded.

He merely rolled his eyes.

Wallace used the interruption to voice his own concern about the plans for tomorrow. “This is a bloody long shot. It will take perfect timing and lots of boggin’ luck. And even then, I doubt we’ll make it to those abbey ruins.”

“Then why don’t we just take the tour?” Kowalski asked and slapped a brochure on the table.

They all stared down at a tourist pamphlet. It displayed a picture of an old arched colonnade with a fancy marquee above it.