The Paris Vendetta (37 page)

“I don’t want to get myself killed,” Meagan finally said to him.

Scorn tinged her words.

“Then leave.” He tossed her his cell phone. “I don’t need it.”

He turned away.

“Old man,” she said.

He stopped but did not face her.

“You take care.” Her voice, low and soft, hinted at genuine concern.

“You too,” he said.

And he stepped out into the rain.

SIXTY-NINE

M
ALONE PUSHED HIS WAY THROUGH A HEAVY SET OF OAK
doors into the Church of St. André. Typical of Paris, gabled apses, crowned by a gallery, a high wall encircling the ambulatory. Sturdy flying buttresses supported the walls from the outside. Pure Gothic splendor.

People filled the pews and congregated in the transepts on either side of a long, narrow nave. Though heated, the air bore enough of a chill that coats were worn in abundance. Many of the worshipers carried shopping bags, backpacks, and large purses. All of which meant that his task of finding a bomb, or any weapon, had just become a million times harder.

He casually strolled through the edge of the crowd. The interior was a cadre of niches and shadows. Towering columns not only held up the roof, they provided even more cover for an assailant.

He was armed and ready.

But for what?

His phone vibrated. He retreated behind one of the columns, into an empty side chapel, and quietly answered.

“Services here are over,” Stephanie said. “People are leaving.”

He had a feeling, one that had overtaken him the moment he entered.

“Get over here,” he whispered.

A
SHBY WALKED TOWARD THE MAIN ALTAR
. T
HEY’D ENTERED
the basilica through a side entrance, near one inside staircase that led up to the chancel and another that dropped to a crypt. Row after row of wooden chairs stretched from the altar toward the north transept and the main entrances, the north wall perforated by an immense rose window, dark to the disappearing day. Tombs lay everywhere among the chairs and in the transepts, most adorned with inlaid marbles. Monuments extended from one end of the nave to the other, perhaps a hundred meters of enclosed space.

“Napoleon wanted his son to have the cache,” Caroline said, her words sputtering with fear. “He hid his wealth carefully. Where no one would find it. Except those he wanted to find it.”

“As any person of power should,” Lyon said.

Rain continued to fall, the constant patter off the copper roof echoing through the nave.

“After five years in exile, he realized that he would never return to France. He also knew he was dying. So he tried to communicate the location to his son.”

“The book that the American gave you in London,” Lyon said to Ashby. “It’s relevant?”

He nodded.

“I thought you told me Larocque gave you the book,” Caroline said.

“He lied,” Lyon made clear. “But that doesn’t matter anymore. Why is the book important?”

“It has a message,” Caroline said.

She was offering too much, too fast, but Ashby had no way of telling her to slow down.

“I think I may have deciphered Napoleon’s final message,” she said.

“Tell me,” Lyon said.

S
AM WATCHED AS
T
HORVALDSEN ABANDONED
M
EAGAN AND
she plunged back into the rain, running toward where he stood hidden by one of the many juts from the outer wall. He pressed his back against cold, wet stone and waited for her to round the corner. He should be freezing, but his nerves were supercharged, numbing all feeling, the weather the least of his concerns.

Meagan appeared.

“Where are you going?” he quietly asked.

She stopped short and whirled, clearly startled. “Damn, Sam. You scared me to death.”

“What’s going on?”

“Your friend is about to do something really stupid.”

He assumed as much. “What was that clamor I heard?”

“Ashby and two others broke into the church.”

He wanted to know who was with Ashby, so he asked. She described the woman, whom he did not know, but the second man matched the man from the tour boat. Peter Lyon. He needed to call Stephanie. He fumbled in his coat pocket and found his phone.

“They have trackers in them,” Meagan said, pointing to the unit. “They probably already know where you are.”

Not necessarily. Stephanie and Malone were busy dealing with whatever new threat Lyon had generated. But he’d been sent to babysit Thorvaldsen, not confront a wanted terrorist.

And another problem.

The trip here had taken twenty minutes—by subway. He was a long way from Paris central, in a nearly deserted suburb being drenched by a storm.

That meant this was his problem to deal with.

Never forget, Sam. Foolishness will get you killed
. Norstrum was right—God bless him—but Henrik needed him.

He replaced the phone in his pocket.

“You’re not going in there, are you?” Meagan asked, seemingly reading his mind.

Even before he said it, he realized how stupid it sounded. But it was the truth. “I have to.”

“Like at the top of the Eiffel Tower? When you could have been killed with all the rest of them?”

“Something like that.”

“Sam, that old man wants to kill Ashby. Nothing’s going to stop him.”

“I am.”

She shook her head. “Sam. I like you. I really do. But you’re all insane. This is too much.”

She stood in the rain, her face twisting with emotion. He thought of their kiss, last night, underground. There was something between them. A connection. An attraction. Still, he saw it in her eyes.

“I can’t,” she said, her voice cracking.

And she turned and ran away

T
HORVALDSEN CHOSE HIS MOMENT WITH CARE
. A
SHBY AND HIS
two companions were nowhere in sight, vanished into the gloomy nave. Darkness outside nearly matched the dusky interior, so he was able to slip inside, unnoticed, using the wind and rain as cover.

The entryway opened in nearly the center of the church’s long south side. He immediately angled left and crouched behind an elaborate funerary monument, complete with a triumphal arch, beneath which two figures, carved of time-stained marble, lay recumbent. Both were emaciated representations, as they would have appeared as corpses rather than living beings. A brass plate identified the effigies as those of 16th century François I and his queen.

He heard a clamor of thin voices, beyond the columns that sprouted upward in a soaring Gothic display. More tombs appeared in the weak light, along with empty chairs arranged in neat rows. Sound came in short gusts. His hearing was not as good as it once was, and the rain pounding the roof wasn’t helping.

He needed to move closer.

He fled his hiding place and scampered to the next monument, a delicate feminine sculpture, smaller than the first one. Warm air rushed up from a nearby floor grate. Water dripped from his coat onto the limestone floor. Carefully, he unbuttoned and shed the damp garment, but first freed the gun from one of the pockets.

He crept to a column a few meters away that separated the south transept from the nave, careful not to disturb any of the chairs.

One sound and his advantage would vanish.

A
SHBY LISTENED AS
C
AROLINE FOUGHT THROUGH HER FEAR
and told Peter Lyon what he wanted to know, fishing from her pocket a sheet of paper.

“These Roman numerals are a message,” she said. “It’s called a Moor’s Knot. The Corsicans learned the technique from Arab pirates who ravaged their coast. It’s a code.”

Lyon grabbed the paper.

“They usually refer to a page, line, and word of a particular manuscript,” she explained. “The sender and receiver have the same text. Since only they know which manuscript is being used, deciphering the code by someone else was next to impossible.”

“So how did you manage?”

“Napoleon sent these numbers to his son in 1821. The boy was only ten at the time. In his will, Napoleon left the boy 400 books and specifically named one in particular. But the son wasn’t even to receive the books until his sixteenth birthday. This code is odd in that it’s only two groups of numerals, so they have to be page and line only. To decipher them, the son, or more likely his mother, since that’s who Napoleon actually wrote, would have to know what text he used. It can’t be the one from the will, since they would not have known about the will when he sent this code. After all, Napoleon was still alive.”

She was rambling with fear, but Ashby let her go.

“So I made a guess and assumed Napoleon chose a universal text. One that would always be available. Easy to find. Then I realized he left a clue where to look.”

Lyon actually seemed impressed. “You’re quite the detective.”

The compliment did little to calm her anxiety.

Ashby had heard none of this and was as curious as Lyon seemed to be.

“The Bible,” Caroline said. “Napoleon used the Bible.”

SEVENTY

M
ALONE STUDIED THE CONGREGATION, FACE AFTER FACE
. H
IS
gaze drifted toward the processional doors at the main entrance, where more people ambled inside. At a decorative font many stopped to wet a finger and cross themselves. He was about to turn away when a man brushed past, ignoring the font. Short, fair-skinned, with dark hair and a long, aquiline nose. He wore a knee-length black coat, leather gloves, his face frozen in a bothersome solemnity. A bulky backpack hung from his shoulders.

A priest and two acolytes appeared before the high altar.

A lecturer assumed the pulpit and asked for the worshipers’ attention, the female voice resounding through a PA system.

The crowd quieted.

Malone advanced toward the altar, weaving around people who stood beyond the pews, in the transept, listening to the services. Luckily, neither of the transepts was jammed. He caught sight of Long Nose edging his way forward, through the crowd, in the opposite transept, the image winking in and out among the columns.

Another target aroused his curiosity. Also in the opposite transept. Olive-skinned, short hair, he wore an oversized coat with no gloves. Malone cursed himself for allowing any of this to happen. No preparation, no thought, being played by a mass murderer. Chasing ghosts, which could well prove illusory. Not the way to run any operation.

He refocused his attention on Olive Skin.

The man’s right hand remained in his coat pocket, left arm at his side. Malone did not like the look of the anxious eyes, but he wondered if he was leaping to irrational conclusions.

A loud voice disturbed the solemnity.

A woman. Midthirties, dark hair, rough face. She stood in one of the pews, spewing out something to the man beside her. He caught a little of the French.

A quarrel.

She screamed something else, then rushed from the pew

S
AM ENTERED
S
AINT
-D
ENIS, STAYING LOW AND HOPING NO
one spotted him. All quiet inside. No sign of Thorvaldsen, or Ashby, or Peter Lyon.

He was unarmed, but he could not allow his friend to face this danger alone. It was time to return the favor the Dane had extended him.

He could distinguish little in the bleak light, the wind and rain outside making it difficult to hear. He glanced left and caught sight of the familiar shape of Thorvaldsen’s bent form standing fifty feet away, near one of the massive columns.

He heard voices from the center of the church.

Words came in snatches.

Three forms moved in the light.

He could not risk heading toward Thorvaldsen, so he stayed low and advanced a few feet straight ahead.

A
SHBY WAITED FOR
C
AROLINE TO EXPLAIN WHAT
N
APOLEON
had done.

“More specifically,” she said. “He used Psalms.” She pointed to the first set of Roman numerals.

“Psalm 135, verse 2,” she said. “I wrote the line down.”

She searched her coat pocket and located another sheet of paper.

“‘You who stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God.’”

Lyon smiled. “Clever. Go on.”

“The next two numerals refer to Psalm 142, verse 4. ‘Look to my right and see.’”

“How do you know—” Lyon started, but a noise, near the main altar and the door through which they’d entered, arrested their captor’s attention.

Lyon’s right hand found the gun and he whirled to face the challenge.

“Help us,” Caroline cried out. “Help us. There’s a man here with a gun.”

Lyon aimed the weapon straight at Caroline.

Ashby had to act.

Caroline crept backward, as if she could avoid the threat by retreating, her eyes alight with uncommon fear.

“Shooting her would be stupid,” Ashby tried. “She’s the only one who knows the location.”

“Tell her to stand still and shut up,” Lyon ordered, the gun aimed at Caroline.

Ashby’s gaze locked on his lover. He raised a hand to halt her. “Please, Caroline. Stop.”

She seemed to sense the urgency of the request and froze.

“Treasure or no treasure,” Lyon said. “If she makes one more sound, she’s dead.”

T
HORVALDSEN WATCHED AS
C
AROLINE
D
ODD TEMPTED FATE
. He’d heard the noise, too, from the portal where he’d entered. About fifteen meters away, past an obstacle course of tombs.

Somebody had come inside.

And announced their presence.

S
AM TURNED AT THE NOISE BEHIND HIM, FROM THE DOORWAY
. He caught sight of a black form near the outer wall, approaching a set of stairs that led up to another level behind the main altar.

The size and shape of the shadow confirmed its identity.

Meagan.

A
SHBY NOTICED THAT THE RUSH OF WIND AND RAIN FROM
outside had increased, as if the doors they’d broken through had opened wider.

“There is a storm out there,” he said to Lyon.

“You shut up, too.”

Finally, Lyon was agitated. He wanted to smile, but he knew better.

Lyon’s amber eyes were as alert as a Doberman’s, scouring the cavern of faint light that enclosed them, his gun leading the way as he slowly pivoted.

Ashby saw it at the same time Lyon did.

Movement, thirty meters away, on the stairway right of the altar, leading up to the chancel and the ambulatory.

Somebody was there.

Lyon fired. Twice. A sound, like two balloons popping, thanks to the sound suppressor, echoed through the nave.

Then a chair flew through the air and crashed into Lyon.

Followed by another.