The Doomsday Key (47 page)

Rachel translated the French. “The Renaissance Association of Clairvaux Abbey conducts tours of the prison.”

They all stared over at Kowalski.

He shrugged. “What? Got that thing shoved in my face. Sometimes it helps not to blend in.”

In Kowalski’s case, that was an understatement. No one could mistake him for a local.

Rachel skimmed the rest of the brochure. “They conduct tours twice daily. Costs two euros. The day’s second tour begins in an hour.”

Wallace took the brochure and flipped through it. “Such a short tour won’t allow us much time for a thorough search, but we could get a cursory sense of the place.”

Gray agreed. “It’ll also let us get a peek at the security from the inside.”

“But on this tour,” Seichan warned, “we’ll be searched. We won’t be able to bring any weapons inside.”

“No one will,” Gray said with an unconcerned shake of his head. “With all the armed guards surrounding us, we’ll be safer than we’ve ever been.”

Seichan looked far from convinced.

2:32 P.M.

So the bitch lived.

Four kilometers outside the town of Troyes, Krista crossed the grassy field toward the unmarked helicopters. The two stolen Eurocopter Super Pumas were already being loaded for the mission. Eighteen men in combat gear waited to load up. Technicians had finished equipping both birds with the necessary firepower.

A spotter on the ground reported that the targets were on the move. They had commissioned a tour of the abbey ruins and were headed to the prison. She had hoped to have dispatched Seichan before moving forward. The woman was too much of a wild card, but Krista had more than enough firepower and men to deal with her.

It just made it harder.

So be it.

Her orders were to acquire the artifact and eliminate the others. She intended to do that, but after the recent disasters, she also recognized how
precarious her standing had become in the organization. She recalled the threat behind the cold words on the phone. Any failure from here would end in her termination. Yet she also knew that just
meeting
those expectations would not serve her.

After all that had gone wrong, she needed a win, a trophy to present to Echelon. And she intended to get it. If the Doomsday key was present among the ruins, she would force the others to find it for her, then eliminate them.

With the key in hand, her position in the Guild could be resecured.

Keeping that goal in mind, she left nothing to chance. Her targets had no weapons and no means of escape. Not while trapped in the heart of a maximum-security prison. Once her assault started, the prison would be locked down.

They would have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

She signaled her squad to board their aircraft.

It was time to crash this party.

29
October 14, 2:40 P.M.
Clairvaux, France

Gray knew they were in trouble.

Security at the prison proved to be iron-tight, even for the private tour group. Their passports were logged in, their packs hand searched, and they had to pass through two metal detectors, followed by a full-body wanding. Guards armed with rifles, batons, and holstered sidearms held positions throughout the main facility. More men patrolled the outer yard with massive guard dogs.

“At least they skipped the cavity search,” Kowalski groused as they cleared the last checkpoint.

“They’ll do that on the way out,” Gray warned him.

Kowalski glanced his way to make sure he was joking.

“This way,
s’il vous plaît,”
their tour guide said with a wave of her mauve umbrella. The representative from the Renaissance Association was a tall, no-nonsense woman in her midsixties. She was dressed casually in khaki pants, a light sweater, and a burgundy jacket. She made no effort to mask her age. She had a weathered look to her, her gray hair pinned back over her ears. Her expression seldom mellowed from stern.

Down a hall, they came to a set of double doors that led out to an inner courtyard. Sunlight splashed over the trimmed lawns, manicured bushes, and gravel paths. After the high security, it was as if they’d suddenly stepped into another world. Sections of crumbled stone walls, half-covered in ivy, crisscrossed the two-acre expanse, along with angular mounds that marked old foundations.

Their guide led them across the yard, trailed by an armed guard. She waved her umbrella toward the walls. “These are the last remnants of the original
monasterium vetus.
Its square chapel later became incorporated into the larger abbey church with its vast choir and radiating chapels.”

Gray took it all in.

On the tour bus ride there, the woman had given them a brief history of the monastery and its founder. They knew most of it already. Except for one telling detail. Saint Bernard had built the monastery on his own family’s land. Because of that detail, he would certainly have been well aware of the topography, of any hidden caves and grottoes.

Had he chosen this exact spot for a reason?

Gray noted Rachel staring down at the ground, too, surely wondering the same.

Off to the side, Seichan kept her gaze higher, toward the surrounding walls of the prison and its watchtowers. The ruins were completely enclosed on all four sides. Her expression remained grim.

Seichan caught him studying her. She held his gaze as if she were about to say something. Though outwardly stoic, the tinier muscles in her face, those beyond most people’s voluntary control, seemed to shift through an array of emotions, blurring into an unreadable confusion.

She finally turned away as the tour guide spoke. “Come, come. We’ll move next to the beautifully preserved lay building. It offers us a wonderful example of monastic life.”

She headed to the far side of the yard where a three-story stone building sheltered in the corner. It was fronted by archways and pierced by small doors and windows.

“The lower level housed the monastery’s
calefactorium,
or communal day room,” she explained. “Its design is ingenious,
très brillant!
Beneath the pavement ran a series of flues from hidden cellars. Fires below would warm the cold monks after prayers or night offices. Here they could also grease their sandals before they began their day.”

As she went on to explain more about daily monastic life during the Middle Ages, Gray studied the stones under his feet.

So the monks were proficient engineers and tunnel makers.

He also remembered Wallace’s assertion that such monasteries and abbeys were often riddled with secret passageways.

Did any of them survive?

The woman led them through more of the ruins, even out to the remains of a barn that served as an old currier’s shop, and lastly she rounded them back toward the ruined walls of the old church. She ended at the massive Grand Cloister, the crown jewel of the tour.

They crossed through a huge archway and entered the cloister grounds. The structure consisted of a square walkway, covered on top and lined with columns on the inside, facing a sunny inner garden. Gothic vaults held up the roof over the walkway.

Gray ran his fingers along the neighboring wall. To have lasted for a millennium, the whole structure stood as a testament against the ravages of time and weather.

What else might have survived?

Their guide brought them out into the central garden, with its narrow paths framed by low bushes and angular flower beds. “The cloisters were built to the south of the church to take full advantage of the best sun.”

She lifted her face to the sky to demonstrate.

Gray followed her out and stood beside an ornate compass that graced the center of the garden. He turned in a slow circle and studied the square of columns that surrounded him.

Of all the abbey grounds, why was the cloister so well preserved?

He sensed that if there was a way into Saint Malachy’s tomb, it had to be here. A few steps away, Rachel took photographs. They would study them back at the hotel, try to discern a solution.

Still, as Gray stood there, he knew photos could not capture the ancient feel of the place. He took a moment to absorb it all. Something about the structure nagged at him. He pushed away all distractions. He ignored the others wandering the ruins, turned a deaf ear to the guide’s continuing discourse.

Instead, he listened to this place.

He allowed himself to slip back in time, to hear the monks’ chanting, the ring of bells in a call to prayers, the silent prayers cast heavenward.

Here was a sacred place …

Surrounded by ancient stone columns …

Then he knew.

He turned full around once more, his eyes wide. “We’re in a sacred stone ring.”

A step away, Rachel lowered her camera. “What?”

He waved an arm around the cloister. “These columns are really no different than the standing stones back in the peat bog.” His excitement grew, his voice breathless. “We’re standing in the middle of a Christian version of a stone ring.”

Gray rushed to the towering columns and moved from one to the next. Carved out of massive blocks of yellow-gray limestone, each one had to weigh several tons, truly no different from the standing bluestones of England.

On his fourth column, he found it. It was faint, no more than a shadow worn into the surface of the limestone. He ran his fingers over the mark, tracing the circle and the cross.

“It’s the symbol,” he said.

The guide had noted his sudden attention. She joined him.
“Magnifique.
You’ve discovered one of the consecration crosses.”

He turned to her for elaboration.

“During the Middle Ages, it was traditional to sanctify a church or its property with such symbols. Unlike the crucifix that represents Christ’s suffering, these crossed circles represent the apostles. It was typical to adorn a sacred place with them. They always numbered—”

“Twelve,” Gray finished for her. He pictured the standing stones in the peat bog. There had been twelve crosses there, too.

“That’s correct. They mark the blessings of the twelve apostles.”

And maybe something much older,
he added silently.

Gray moved through an archway into the covered walkway. He wanted to examine the far sides of the columns. The standing stones back in England had spirals on their reverse sides.

He searched quickly along the cloister. The others joined him. He found no markings on the inner surfaces of the columns. By the time he had circled all the way back to where he started, his excitement had waned. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was reading too much into the symbolism.

The woman noted his determined search. “So you’ve heard the local legend,” she said with a slight scoffing tone. “I think half the reason the cloister still stands is because of that mystery.”

Wallace wiped his brow with a handkerchief. “What mystery are you talking about, my dear lady?”

The woman smiled for the first time, slightly smitten by the older professor. Also, Wallace had been sticking close to her, asking lots of questions, which probably contributed to the attraction.

“It’s a legend only told locally. A story passed from one generation to the next. But I’ll admit, it is an oddity.”

Wallace returned her smile, encouraging her to continue.

She pointed to the courtyard. “As I said before, it’s typical to sanctify a church with
twelve
consecration crosses. But here there are only
eleven.”

Surprised, Gray stepped back out into the garden. He mentally kicked himself for not being thorough enough. He had never thought to count the number of symbols. He had assumed there were twelve, like the standing stones.

“The story goes that the missing twelfth and final consecration cross of Clairvaux Abbey guards a great treasure. People have been looking for it for ages, scouring the grounds here, even searching the outlying barns. But it’s all just silly
légendes. Absurdité.
Most likely the twelfth cross had been carved inside the abbey itself, joining the blessing out here to the church.”

And maybe that link still existed,
Gray thought.

The guide checked her watch. “I’m sorry, but we must end our tour here. Perhaps if you come tomorrow, I could show you more.”

This last offer was mostly directed at Wallace Boyle.

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll be back,” he promised her.

Gray glanced at Seichan to see if she thought that might still be possible. She had sidled next to him. With the tour ending, she had grown visibly tense.

Before he could question her, a loud siren blared, jarring and strident. They all searched around. What was going on?

The armed guard moved closer. Rachel turned to their guide, checking her face to see if this was a normal occurrence.

“We must find cover,” Seichan said at Gray’s ear. Her voice was urgent, but she looked almost relieved, as though she had been waiting for something to happen.

“What’s going on?”

Before she could answer, a new noise intruded. Past the siren, a heavy
thud-thud
reverberated, felt in the gut. He looked to the sky as two helicopters shot into view over the wooded ridgeline. The pair rose high, then tipped their noses and dove straight toward the prison.