Thriller (67 page)

States to have bin Laden because that’s what bin Laden wanted.

But that had not happened. So Sharma had delivered another gift.

One that Malone would this time personally hold on to until the

moment was right. A little legwork would be needed, but it

shouldn’t be hard to track down Cobb, his cohorts and their employers. After all, that was the Magellan Billet’s specialty.

He read again the note that had been included with the disk.

MAKE SURE ALL THE DEVILS GET THEIR DUE.

Damn right.

He stood and headed for his plane.

Katherine Neville’s award-winning first novel,
The Eight,
is

widely regarded as a cult classic, translated into thirty languages. That story begins at the dawn of the French Revolution when a fabulous, bejeweled chess set, once owned by

Charlemagne but buried for a thousand years, is dug up by the

nuns of a French abbey and scattered around the world to preserve its mysterious powers. The nonstop suspense moves

from the 1790s of the French Revolution to the 1970s of the

OPEC oil embargo. The plot itself is a giant chess game, and

the characters are pieces and pawns.

When Neville began her long-anticipated sequel, she was

glad that she could retrieve many fascinating historic figures,

characters like Benjamin Franklin who, due to earlier schedule constraints, she’d had to limit to walk-on parts. But even

despite the recent flurry of additional histories, biographies

and films heralding Franklin’s three hundredth birthday,

Neville’s research offered her a big surprise that, inexplicably, none of the experts appeared to have noticed. When it

came to her character’s well-documented, almost obsessive,

penchant for creating or joining private clubs, here was an

enigmatic gap in his life.

The Tuesday Club
fills that void.

Franklin would not have been Franklin without a club,

and his club in France was the Lodge of the Nine Sisters.

—Carl Van Doren,
Benjamin Franklin

August 31, 1784, 7:00 a.m.

Auteuil, France

Today, the day of the crisis, was a Tuesday.

As always, thought Mme Helvetius with irony, things went

more to the mark in French—
non?
For example, in French, the

name Tuesday was
mardi
, Mars Day, the day of the god of war.

And given the impending crisis, and the message she’d just received, any thought of Mars spelled more than it seemed—

indeed, it could spell
la calamité!

Although Mme Helvetius had been awaiting such a message

for months, it was so cleverly coded that even the messenger

who’d brought it from Scotland could not understand it. Still,

given his urgency, she knew it could only mean that what she

had expected was about to happen, quite soon, something that

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could ruin all her well-crafted plans, that might place their entire enterprise—their very lives—in danger.

But to deliver the message right away would require a deception.

In stealth, she let herself out the side French windows of her

private salon to where her gardener’s large white mule stood patiently, saddled and waiting. The mâitre d’hôtel of her estates—

a very bossy man, indeed (servants today carried themselves

with more pretensions than the nobility ever dreamt of)—had

insisted she must take care, if traveling in secrecy and alone.

She understood that the extensive entourage within her household would be inflamed with curiosity if they saw her depart so

early. She hoped they all believed in a clandestine tryst she’d never

taken pains to deny. At home or abroad, these days, every room

and road in France was riddled with spies, acting on behalf of

one fractious faction or another: to be cautious was to be wise.

Nonetheless, Mme Helvetius felt a complete fool in this ridiculous disguise, dressed as she was in the faded blue costume borrowed from her milkmaid (which smelled rather rich) and a

dilapidated straw hat. Done up like a strumpet, astride a big

white mule—she, Anne-Catherine de Ligniville-Autricourt, Mme

Helvetius—one of the wealthiest women in France and, at one

time, among the most beautiful. Well, that had been another day.

And she was, assuredly, another woman.

With impatience, Mme Helvetius prodded the mule to go

faster through the rolling hills and vineyards still drenched with

dew, along the dusty, winding road from her
banlieue
of Auteuil,

just outside Paris, to its neighboring suburb of Passy. When she

noticed the mule eyeing a heavy bunch of grapes along the road,

she tapped his rump firmly with her hand, muttered,
“Obstiné,”

under her breath, and jerked at the reins.

Although she might be anxious to reach her destination, Mme

Helvetius couldn’t help thinking about the strangeness of the

message running unbidden through her mind like a longforgotten melody. The oddity of it—so peculiar, like nothing

she’d ever thought of. Whatever could it mean? There was only

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one person, she knew, who could decipher it. She must get to

him—and quickly.

The mule was so slow, it seemed hours before Mme Helvetius

at last spied the sun breaking over the eastern cliff. And there,

high on its perch above the river Seine, lay her destination: Le

Valentinois. Tucked like an ostentatious jewel into its lavish setting of gardens and follies, plashing fountains and octagonal

pools, the famous château was a bastion of extravagance that

would rival a pasha’s palace.

Mme Helvetius felt the chill she felt whenever she came here,

which was more often than she cared think of. Given the criticality of her mission, she was grateful she’d come in this attire,

so she might eschew the carriage entrance and enter through the

gardens where she wouldn’t be recognized. For Le Valentinois, despite its opulence, was known as the nest of gunrunners, speculators, thieves and spies—a notorious circle formed and fed upon

war and crisis, of the sort they’d just come through in Europe.

This circle was ruled by the most dangerous man of all: the

château’s wealthy, mysterious owner, Donatien le Ray de Chaumont. Given the importance of her message, she prayed she was

not walking with open eyes into a trap. At whatever cost, she

must deliver the message in private, before the household was

stirring. She must get the message to Franklin at once—here in

his private wing of the château.

Only Dr. Franklin would know what they must do—what action the club must take when it met tonight—that is, once he

had deciphered the message in that song.

8:00 a.m.

Auteuil, France

One might be lonely in Paris, thought Abigail Adams with chagrin—but one could surely never be alone!

Wherever one tried to move, crowds of unwashed bodies

closed in about one. The streets were a cesspool. No wonder the

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Parisians wore more lace around their necks than a Dutch tablecloth—within easy reach of their noses, to block the smell!

Hadn’t her dear Mr. Adams fallen deathly ill each time he’d

crossed the waters here from America?

And the women! There were forty thousand of them licensed

as whores (she blushed even to think the word) who’d been

sanctioned to “ply their craft” within the very city gates.

And the boxes! A horror she’d gleaned from the churchwardens

themselves: boxes set out on designated street corners for women

to drop their unwanted children into. An improvement, they said,

upon the “old days” of the philosopher Rousseau, when babies had

been left on church steps to die of exposure—some frozen so hard,

they had to scrape their little bodies off the stones. O, iniquity!

After just a few days in Paris, Abigail felt, before exposing them

further to this rotten decadence, she should take herself off with

her own two children, Nabby and Johnnie, for a steam cleaning

at a thermal spa.

So thank heavens, Abigail sighed in relief, from now on they

would not have to spend another moment in the sordid sink. Her

dear Mr. Adams had secured them a place in the country, at Auteuil.

The house was quite impressive—fifty rooms! Replete with gardens and servants, far across the river from the city’s turmoil.

There was an extra plum in the pudding, too, for just next door to

their new residence lived the woman whom Dr. Franklin had once

described to Abigail as “a true Frenchwoman, free of all pretension…the best person in the world.” Her name was Mme Helvetius.

It did seem to Abigail, despite the lady’s heralded modesty, that

Mme Helvetius had a few gifts and accomplishments of her own

to boast of. Among these she was still considered, at nearly age

sixty, to be among the most beautiful women in France. It was

said that the poet Fontenelle, on his hundredth birthday, had

sighed, “Mme Helvetius makes one long to be eighty again.”

Abigail had learned, too, that the lady’s late husband was a famous philosophe who’d planned to found a club of distinguished

dignitaries and scientists. Upon his death, his widow, Mme Hel-
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vetius, had drawn upon her own fortune to fund the club’s creation: “The Lodge of Nine Sisters” it was called, referring to

muses of the arts and sciences. As its official founder, Mme Helvetius was the only woman admitted to the Lodge’s private meetings. Though these were by invitation only, they were far from

secret, for the club boasted among its early members Lafayette,

Voltaire and Dr. Franklin: the doctor had tapped its financial connections for monies needed to ensure the success of the American Revolution.

Her new neighbor here in Auteuil must be a great lady indeed,

thought Abigail as she dressed to depart for her day at Le Valentinois—Abigail couldn’t wait to meet her. But hadn’t Dr. Franklin

said that Mme Helvetius’s club always met on a Tuesday?

So Abigail might make her acquaintance, even tonight.

9:00 a.m.

Bois de Boulogne

John Adams truly loathed Anne-Catherine de Ligniville-Autricourt, Mme Helvetius. Like his attitude toward most French

aristocracy, he’d despised her nearly from the day they’d first met.

Cantering on his gray gelding through the Bois de Boulogne, as

he did each morning, Adams thought of this woman who had

wreaked so much damage, over all these years upon the American

mission to France. Naturally, he couldn’t share these feelings with

Abigail—though he’d never kept secrets from his dear spouse before. But La Helvetius, like so many of these useless upper-class

women, had captivated the great Dr. Franklin with her so-called

“gaiety and charm.” The doctor was besotted with all things French.

Adams knew he must exercise caution in his dealings here on

the continent. He’d been recalled once by Congress, from a previous mission, due to complaints by the French minister, Vergennes, about his comportment in diplomatic circles. But Adams

had always suspected it was Franklin himself who’d gotten him

recalled. For the doctor, who’d lived much of his life abroad and

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had soaked up the sins of each land, could no longer abide Yankee honesty and directness.

Adams could only pray that, if not he, then at least Thomas

Jefferson would be able to talk some sense into the good doctor,

regarding the critical treaties that they three were to forge with

England and France. And there was something more.

There was a fly in the molasses when it came to this blighted

French mission. Adams suspected it had been there for quite some

time: there was a spy—perhaps even a double agent—working all

this while in Passy, right under the nose of Benjamin Franklin. As

God himself knew, that residence, Le Valentinois, was fraught with

dire possibilities. Not only Chaumont, its arms-dealer owner, was

suspect. But also Franklin’s own twenty-two-year-old grandson

who lived there, Temple Franklin, a youth whose father William

(Ben’s bastard son) was himself a Royalist exiled from America.

In John Adams’s view, however—of the elitist aristocrats, Royalist sympathizers and nouveau riche the doctor always sucked

into his orb in that retreat at Passy—the most dangerous of all

was Mme Helvetius. And for very good reason.

The Sieure Helvetius, her late husband, had made his fortune

by royal sinecure, hadn’t he? He was one of the “Farmers General,” those who’d been given exclusive rights, monopolies, one

might say, over all sale and purchase of goods produced or imported by France. The same people who still held sway, today,

over American trade with France and her dominions.

As for La Helvetius, she’d even established a secret society to

help her circle of vipers maintain control—a club whose members had the audacity to call themselves liberals, Freemasons!—

when half its founders came from the nobility of France!

As Adams patted the flanks of his steaming horse and prepared

to make toward Passy to attend his morning meeting, he smiled

at a private thought: He imagined his wife, a preacher’s daughter, meeting La Helvetius for the first time.

It might happen today, mightn’t it? After all, today was a

Tuesday.

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10:00 a.m.

Passy, France