The History Thief: Ten Days Lost (The Sterling Novels) (11 page)

Through the tape, the priest screamed as he fell to his side. He nearly let go of the detonator but Charney grabbed his balled-up hand before he did.

“Careful, Priest, you don’t want to end it so soon.”

Charney grabbed the priest’s right hand, wrapped it tightly over his left hand, and said, “You might want to use both.”

The priest was breathing hard through his nose; mucus was exiting forcibly, and he was fighting the waves of pain in his midsection. A small spurt of nearly black blood crept from his wound and seeped into the finely woven cloth of his robe, forming a wet circle. He raised his head up to look at his attacker, but Charney was already gone.

He looked at the bloodstain; it was growing larger.

Racing down the stairs three at a time, Charney knew that he had no more than ten minutes. The window of time had been calculated to precision. He exited Notre Dame just as the Emmanuelle bell tolled in a clear F-sharp; saved for important holidays and visits by dignitaries, it was the signal that the president of France and the American senator had arrived.

Above, in the south tower, the acoustic trauma caused by the onslaught of the ringing bell simultaneously perforated both eardrums of the priest. He writhed on the floor in agony; a wave of nausea sliced through him. Each heavy swing of the eleven-hundred-pound clapper felt as if it was hitting him rather than the bell.

He nearly released the detonator.

Struggling, he tried to rise to his feet but could not; the pain in his side and ears was too acute. Instead, he slid across the floor to the top of the stairs. Once there, he began to slide down them. Each step was excruciating; each subsequent one that he slid down replicated the plunge of the knife.

A trail of blood followed.

Outside of Notre Dame, Charney secreted himself to Sainte Chapelle. Once part of the original courtyard of the royal palace, the Gothic structure now stood seemingly alone amid grander structures on the island. Erected to serve the royal class, the palatine chapel was now a second thought to most who visited the island.

Charney made his way behind the Palais de Justice, the building that housed the courts of Paris and the Conciergerie—the place where Marie Antoinette awaited the guillotine. In the background, the Emmanuelle bell continued to ring. But inside of Sainte Chapelle, he was met with a cavernous quiet. Surrounding him was a kaleidoscope of reds and blues; thousands of square feet of stained glass—6,458 to be precise—welcomed him and urged him onward. The effects of the Rayonnant styling played with him, making him feel as weightless as the architecture.

Charney knew precisely where to go; the moment the priest had told him to go to Sainte Chapelle, it had made sense. He looked around the cathedral; it was quite familiar. He had been in the Sainte Chapelle before, and on more than one occasion.

A bit poetic really: this contract from his benefactor had unexpectedly crossed paths with his childhood.

It had been here where his father had whispered, mumbled really, and to no one in particular. Their visits to Sainte Chapelle were frequent and confusing; Charney’s father often resembled a ranting madman. A lifelong thief, the elder Frenchmen had been resigned to snatching wallets from tourists and handbags from unsuspecting women, a mediocre thief and a small-time thug. Once, his father had tried to elevate his craft, and had made the jejune and impetuous mistake of attempting to steal a painting by an early sixteenth-century Titian—
Man with a Glove
—from the Louvre. But his skills were weak, and he had been caught while his hands were on the painting’s frame and the painting still hung firm against the wall.

Seven years.

That was his father’s prison sentence.

Afterward, his father had returned, broken and arthritic. His career as a criminal was over. What little skills that he had, he passed onto his son, and the rest Charney had learned on his own. Leaving home at a young age, Charney sought refuge in the French Foreign Legion where he had learned a number of other skills: weapons, hand-to-hand combat, explosives, and more.

Charney was well trained.

He tried to escape his father and his past, but now he knew: there was a reason that his father had brought him so many times to this chapel. His father must have suspected that this was the true resting place of the Crown of Thorns. It would have been his father’s masterpiece, but, unfortunately, his father lacked the skills of a true artisan.

But Charney didn’t.

His father was a man that gave every reason to be despised, but Charney held no such feelings. Quite to the contrary, his father had bestowed a love onto him that was unmatched. Every pain that his father felt, every pain that he caused, he showered his young son with the opposite.

For a short moment, Charney closed his eyes and thought of his father. How he wished that he could be here with him, enjoying what was to come. Looking skyward, Charney whispered, “For you, Papa.”

Around the room, he was surrounded by leaded glass that rose from the floor to the ceiling. It was in this glass that the entire story of the Bible was told.

Quickly, he climbed a spiral staircase hidden in the corner that led him to the royal chapel. Once there, Charney eyed the apse that, too, was quite familiar. Walking slowly around the chapel, he traced his hand along the wall from column to column and was surprised to find them so cold. The columns marked the bays of the chapel, and on each was a statue of one of the twelve apostles. In front of St. Paul, he stopped; bending to the floor, he immediately saw the sign he was told about. Not easily discernible at a casual glance and carved into the marble in simple fashion was a cross pattée: two perpendicular arms of equal length and broad ends that narrowed at their center.

From around his neck and beneath his shirt, Charney pulled off the heavy medallion given to him when he had accepted the contract for this job. Etched on the back of the medallion was St. Paul’s name.

Now he knew why.

He placed the medallion over the carving on the floor and adjusted it until he felt it lock into place. Once it was set into the marble, he strained to make it move. Soon, he felt it give slightly. Every fraction of movement gave way to a larger and easier turn. Soon, a crack between the adjacent pieces of marble appeared and with each twist moved further apart.

One long and narrow slab rose above the other. The moment he could slide his fingers under the piece of thin marble, he did and then lifted it away from the floor. The sliver of marble exposed a chasm about twelve inches long and four inches wide.

He took a deep breath before reaching into it.

When he did, his arm slid nearly to the elbow, and the marble pressed hard against his flesh. He had to force his forearm through the hole until the skin started to tear away. The tips of his fingers brushed against something hard and cold. Reaching further, he squeezed his jaw together and felt blood beginning to trickle down his arm; its wetness lubricated his efforts. With one last push, he was able to put his fingertips underneath whatever was there; he carefully pulled it from where it rested.

Staring at it, the moment was far from anticlimactic, and a rush of exhilaration exploded in him. Finally, it was in his hands! He held it high above his head like an Olympic athlete winning gold; the only spectators were those that gave their lives before him; they stared down at him through carved marble eyes.

Encapsulated in a round tube of glass, the rushes that surrounded the thorns were quite visible. He rotated it, inspecting every angle possible. He could hardly believe that in his hands was the Crown of Thorns, the very crown that, presumably, Jesus had been forced to wear and the masterpiece that his father so desired.

His benefactor would be pleased; it pained Charney to have to part with it, but he felt that his father would understand. The crown would fetch his benefactor a large sum on the black market for relics, and Charney’s bank account would be fuller from the fee he would be paid for his work.

He was bathed in a wave of euphoria, but he quickly realized that this wasn’t the time. He needed to get off the island.

CHAPTER NINE

BENEATH PONT NEUF
ON THE QUAIS

S
ous-Lieutenant Bonaparte could feel the rise of his body temperature as he pressed the transmit button on the side of his radio. “Cocteau! Answer me!” His nostrils flared widely as he waited for a response.

Nothing.

He had been repeating this over and over, always with the same result.

He pressed the transmit button again, but this time he directed his command to another of his troops. “Deputy, this is Sous-Lieutenant Bonaparte.”

“Oui, Sous-Lieutenant?”

“Get over to the quais under the Pont Neuf. That idiot Cocteau was checking on a clochard. Go find him, and have him report to me immediately!”

“Oui, I am on my way now, sir.”

The young deputy of the Gendarmerie Nationale—the equivalent of an American Army private—picked up his pace. He was new to the ranks and upon reporting to duty, his first acquaintance had been with the rotund sous-lieutenant. He quickly learned that the heavy man’s contempt for anyone beneath his rank was of legend, and he felt sorry for Cocteau.

Where the hell is he?
the young deputy thought as he quickly scaled down the stairs that led underneath the Pont Neuf.

Soon the deputy was under the quais, but all that he saw was the clochard sprawled about, oblivious to the dealings going on overhead. There was no sign of Cocteau. The clochard’s body lay bent at an odd angle, and there appeared to be a dark pool of blood near his head. The deputy moved closer.

It only took a moment to comprehend what he saw. Instinctively, he pulled his pistol from its holster and then reached up to the hand mic attached through his epaulet and said, “Code Red, under Pont Neuf, on the quais. One man down with a bullet wound to the head. I need backup and medics immediately!”

The cold, distant voice of the dispatcher came back and restated, “Confirm, Code Red, male victim, head trauma. Medics dispatched.”

The sous-lieutenant heard the interchange and jumped in, “Deputy, is it Cocteau?”

The deputy inched his way carefully around the dead man until he was behind his head. Where the back of the man’s head should have been was nothing. He moved to the man’s front. Answering the sous-lieutenant, the deputy said, “Negative, sir. It appears to be the clochard. The man is dead. There is no sign of Cocteau.” It was a simple mistake, really, and not important in the great scheme of events that would soon take place; the deputy had only just met Cocteau. There was too much blood—some of it coagulated and some of it dried—on Cocteau’s face.

The fiery voice of the sous-lieutenant snapped back to the deputy. “Stand fast and touch nothing. I am on my way!”

The deputy had no intention of touching the dead man’s body. Better to leave that to the medics and the detectives, he thought. But where the hell was Cocteau?

To the surprise of the deputy, it didn’t take long for the sous-lieutenant to find his way to the quais. The portly officer was huffing forcibly, and the blood vessels around his nose and in his cheeks flushed a mix of dark purple and bright red; they looked as if they were ready to burst. Just as he arrived to the quais, so did the medics.

The fat officer stormed his way to the deputy and, with his neck rolls jiggling almost comically, he shouted, “Where is Cocteau?”

The ferocity of the officer’s screams instantly caused the young deputy to reel slightly backward, and he responded uneasily, “No idea, sir. The only thing down here was the body of the clochard.” The young private pointed to the dead man.

The medics were running to the body, and the sous-lieutenant shouted for them to halt. A handful of local police had responded to the Code Red as well. Stomping heavily, he shoved his way through the small horde of officials and made his way to the body.

One of the police shouted out, “Sir, please do not touch the body; this is a crime scene!”

The sous-lieutenant simply turned his nose up at the men and shouted arrogantly back, “This is my crime scene. I will determine what will and will not be done here!”

Kneeling to the body, it only took a moment for the sous-lieutenant to recognize the dead man’s face; he whispered first, and then shouted, “Cocteau, it is Cocteau!”

He grabbed Cocteau’s shoulder and roughly rolled him onto his back. If only the officer had been more patient, in better control. If he had followed the proper investigative protocol—his protocol—he might have lived. The abrupt motion dislodged the archaic grenade, which rolled lazily in front of the sous-lieutenant. The officer’s eyes followed the grenade as it came to a rest in front of his knees. His mind worked entirely too slow for a man of his position and rank. He watched the spoon release from the side of the explosive device; he even heard the slight sizzle of the chemical reaction set into motion within the grenade.

There he knelt, on the quais, and wholly unaware that this was his last moment of life. If it mattered, his arrogance as a man, his inability as an officer, and his love for French cuisine saved the lives of the young deputy, the medics, and the responding local police, who were just outside of the blast radius of the grenade and shielded partly by his corpulent frame.