by Nora Roberts
trunk of a tree.
“I’ve still got the papers, you sonofabitch!” he shouted across the canal. “I’ve still got them. Why don’t you take a little swim across the canal and try to take them from me?” For a moment, he closed his eyes and just worked on getting his breath back. He could hear Whitney heaving up canal water beside him. “You tell Dimitri I’ve got them and you tell him I owe him one.” He wiped the blood from his mouth, then spat. “You got that, Remo? You tell him I owe him. And by God, I’m not finished yet.” Wincing, he rubbed the shoulder he’d wrenched during the struggle with Weis. His clothes were plastered to him, wet, bloody, and stinking with mud. A few yards away in the canal, crocodiles were in a frenzy of feeding. The gun was still in his hand, empty. Deliberately, Doug took out the box of bullets and reloaded.
“Okay, Whitney, let’s…”
She was curled into a ball beside him, her head on her knees. Though she made absolutely no sound, he knew she was weeping. At a loss, he ran a hand through his dripping hair. “Hey, Whitney, don’t.”
She didn’t move, she didn’t speak. Doug looked down at the gun in his hand. Violently, he shoved it back in his belt. “Come on, honey. We’ve got to move.” He started to put his arms around her, but she jerked back. Though tears ran freely down her face, her eyes burned when she looked at him.
“Don’t touch me. You’ve got to move, Lord. That’s what you’re made for. Moving, running. Why don’t you just take that all-important envelope and get lost. Here.” Reaching in her pocket, she struggled to pull her wallet out of her clinging slacks. She threw it at him. “Take this too. It’s all you care about, all you think about. Money.” She didn’t bother to wipe at the tears, but watched him through them. “There’s not much cash in there, only a few hundred, but there’s plenty of plastic. Take it all.”
It was what he’d wanted all along, wasn’t it? The money, the treasure, and no partner. He was closer than ever, and alone, he’d get there faster and have the whole pot to himself. It was what he’d wanted all along.
Doug dropped the wallet back in her lap and took her hand. “Let’s move.”
“I’m not going with you. You go after your pot of gold alone, Douglas.” Nausea heaved in her stomach, rising in her throat. She swallowed it down. “See if you can live with it now.”
“I’m not leaving you here alone.”
“Why not?” she tossed back. “You left Jacques back there.” She looked over toward the river and the shaking started. “You left him. Leave me. What’s the difference?”
He grabbed her shoulders hard enough to make her wince. “He was dead. There was nothing we could do.”
“We killed him.”
That thought had already rammed into him. Perhaps because of it he gripped her harder. “No. I got enough baggage to carry around without that. Dimitri killed him the same way he’d swat a fly off the wall. Because it doesn’t mean any more to him than that. He killed him without even knowing his name, because killing doesn’t make him sweat, it doesn’t make him sick. It doesn’t even make him wonder when it’s going to be his turn.”
“Do you?”
He went very still a moment, while water dripped from his hair. “Yeah, dammit. I do.”
“He was so young.” Her breath hitched as she grabbed his shirt. “All he wanted was to go to New York. He’ll never get there.” More tears spilled over, but this time she began to sob with them. “He’ll never get anywhere. And all because of that envelope. How many people have died for it now?” She felt the shell, Jacques’s ody—for safety, for luck, for tradition. Whitney wept until she ached from it, but the pain didn’t cleanse. “He died because of those papers, and he didn’t even know they existed.”
“We’re going to follow this thing through,” Doug told her as he pulled her closer. “And we’re going to win.”
“Why the hell does it matter so much?”
“You want reasons?” He drew her back so that his face was inches from hers. His eyes were hard, his breath fast. “There’re plenty of them. Because people’ve died for it. Because Dimitri wants it. We’re going to win, Whitney, because we’re not going to let Dimitri beat us. Because that kid’s dead, and he’s not going to have died for nothing. It’s not just the money now. Shit, it’s never just the money, don’t you see? It’s the winning. It’s always the winning, and making Dimitri sweat because we did.”
She let Doug draw her into his arms, cradle her there. “The winning.”
“Once you don’t care about winning, you’re already dead.”
That she understood because the need was in her as well. “There’ll be no fadamihana for Jacques,” she murmured. “No festival for him.”
“We’ll give him one.” He stroked her hair, remembering the way Jacques had looked when he’d held the fish. “A real New York party.”
She nodded, turning her face into his throat a moment. “Dimitri isn’t going to get away with this, Doug. Not with this. We’re going to beat him.”
“Yeah, we’re going to beat him.” Drawing her away, he rose. They’d lost his pack in the canal so they’d lost the tent and cooking utensils. Hefting hers, Doug secured it to his back. They were wet, tired, and still grieving. He held out his hand. “Get your ass in gear, sugar.”
Wearily, she stood and tucked the wallet back in her pocket. She sniffed, inelegantly. “Up yours, Lord.”
They walked north in the lowering evening light.
C H A P T E R
12
They had eluded Remo, but they knew he was hot on their heels, and so they did not stop. They walked as the sun set and the forest took on lights only artists and poets fully understand. In twilight when the air turned pearly gray with mist as the dew fell, they walked still. The sky darkened, went black before the moon rose, a majestic ball, white as bone. Stars glittered like jewels of another age.
Moonlight turned the forest into a fairy tale. Shadows lowered and shifted. Flowers closed their petals and slept as animals that knew only night stirred. There was a flutter of wings, a thrash of leaves, and something screamed in the bush. They walked.
When Whitney wanted to drop into a ball of mindless exhaustion, she thought of Jacques. Gritting her teeth, she went on.
“Tell me about Dimitri.”
Doug paused only long enough to pull the compass out of his pocket to check their direction. He saw her fingering the shell as she had off and on during the hike but he’d run dry of comforting words. “I already did.”
“Not enough. Tell me more.”
He recognized the tone of voice. She wanted revenge. And revenge, Doug knew, was a dangerous ambition. It could blind you to priorities—like staying healthy. “Just take my word for it, you don’t want a personal acquaintance.”
“But you’re wrong.” Though breathless, her voice was soft and firm. She wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. “Tell me about our Mr. Dimitri.”
He’d lost track of the miles they’d covered, even the hours. He was only sure of two things. They had put distance between themselves and Remo, and they needed to rest. “We’ll camp here. We should be deep enough in the haystack.”
“Haystack.” She sank down gratefully on the soft, springy ground. If it’d been possible, her legs would’ve wept with relief.
“We’re the needle, this is the haystack. Got anything in here we can use?”
Whitney pulled makeup out of her pack, lacy underwear, clothes already rent, filthy, or ruined, and what was left of the bag of fruit she’d bought in Antananarivo. “A couple of mangoes and a very ripe banana.”
“Think of it as a portable Waldorf salad,” Doug advised as he plucked up one of the mangoes.
“All right.” Whitney followed suit and stretched out her legs. “Dimitri, Douglas. Tell me.”
He’d hoped to set her mind on some other scene. He should’ve known better. “Jabba the Hutt in an Italian suit,” he said as he bit into the fruit. “Dimitri could make Nero look like
a choirboy. He likes poetry and porno flicks.”
“Eclectic taste.”
“Yeah. He collects antiques—specializes in torture instruments. You know, thumbscrews.”
Whitney felt the little pulse in her right thumb throb. “Fascinating.”
“Sure, Dimitri’s a real fascination. He has an affection for soft, pretty things. Both of his wives were stunners.” He gave her a long, level look. “He’d like your style.”
She tried not to shudder. “So, he’s married.”
“Married twice,” Doug explained. “And tragically widowed twice, if you catch the drift.”
She did, and bit into the fruit thoughtfully. “What makes him so… successful,” she decided for lack of a better term.
“Brains and a streak of ice-cold mean. I’ve heard he can quote Chaucer while he’s sticking pins between your toes.”
She lost her appetite for the fruit. “Is that his style? Poetry and torture?”
“He doesn’t simply kill, he executes, and he executes with ceremony. He keeps a first-class studio where he tapes his victims before, during, and after.”
“Oh God.” She studied Doug’s face, wanting to believe he was weaving a tale. “You’re not making that up.”
“I ain’t got that much imagination. His mother was a schoolteacher, I hear, with a few wires crossed.” Juice dribbled down his chin and he wiped at it absently. “Story goes that when he couldn’t recite some poem, Byron or somebody, I think, she hacked off his pinky.”
“She—” Whitney choked, then forced herself to swallow. “His mother cut off his finger because he couldn’t recite?”
“That’s the story on the streets. Seems she was religious and got her poetry and theology a little mixed. Figured if the kid couldn’t quote Byron, he was being sacrilegious.”
For the moment she forgot the horror and death Dimitri had been responsible for. She thought of a young boy. “That’s horrible. She should’ve been taken away.”
He wanted her to shy away from revenge, but he didn’t want to replace it with pity. One was as dangerous as the other. “Dimitri saw to that, too. When he left home to start his own—business, he went out in a blaze. He torched the whole damn apartment building where his mother lived.”
“He killed his own mother?”
“He got her—and twenty or thirty other people. He didn’t have anything against them, you understand. They just happened to be there at the time.”
“Revenge, amusement, or gain,” she murmured, remembering her earlier thoughts on killing.
“That about sums it up. If there’s such a thing as a soul, Whitney, Dimitri’s is black with boils running on it.”
“If there’s such a thing as a soul,” she repeated, “we’re going to help his into hell.”
He didn’t laugh. She’d said it too quietly. He studied her face, pale and tired in the bright moonlight. She meant what she said. He was already indirectly responsible for the death of two innocents. In that moment, he took responsibility for Whitney. Another first for Doug Lord.
“Sugar.” He shifted so that he sat next to her. “The first thing we have to do is stay alive. The second is to get to the treasure. That’s all we have to do to make Dimitri pay.”
“It’s not enough.”
“You’re new at this. Listen, you get in a kick when you can, then you back off. That’s the way to stay in business.” She wasn’t listening. Uncomfortable, Doug came to a decision. “Maybe it’s time you got a look at the papers.” He didn’t have to see her face to know she was surprised. He could feel it in the way her shoulder moved against him.
“Well, well,” she said softly. “Break out the champagne.”
“Get smart and I might change my mind.” Relieved by her grin, he reached in his pocket. Reverently he held the envelope. “This is the key,” he said. “The goddamn key. And I’m using it to get through the lock I’ve never been able to pick.” Drawing out papers, one by one, Doug smoothed them.
“Mostly in French like the letter,” he murmured. “But someone already translated a good bit.” He hesitated another moment, then handed her a yellowed sheet enclosed in clear plastic. “Look at the signature.”
Whitney took it, skimming down the text. “My God.”
“Yeah. Let ′em eat cake. Looks like she sent this message a few days before she was taken prisoner. The translation’s here.”
But Whitney was already reading the leader written in the tragic queen’s own hand. “Leopold has failed me,” she murmured.
“Leopold II, Holy Roman emperor and Marie’s brother.”
She lifted her gaze to Doug’s. “You’ve done your homework.”
“I like to know the facts on any job. I’ve been boning up on the French Revolution. Marie was playing politics and struggling to secure her position. She didn’t pull it off. By the time she wrote that, she knew she was almost finished.”
With only a nod, Whitney went back to the letter. “He is more emperor than brother. Without his help, I have few to turn to. I cannot tell you, my dear valet, of the humiliation of our forced return from Varennes. My husband, the king, disguised as a common servant and myself—it is too shameful. To be arrested, arrested, and returned to Paris like criminals with armed soldiers. The silence was like death. Even though we breathed, it was a funeral procession. The Assembly has said that the king had been kidnapped and has already revised the constitution. This ploy was the beginning of the end.
“The king has believed that Leopold and the Prussian king would intervene. He communicated to his agent, Le Tonnelier, that things would be the better for it. A foreign war, Gerald, should have extinguished the fires of this civil unrest. The Girondist bourgeoisie has proved incapable, and they fear the people who follow Robespierre, the devil. You understand that though war was declared on Austria, our expectations were not met. The military defeats of the past spring have demonstrated the Girondins do not comprehend how it is to conduct a war.
“Now there is talk of a trial—your king on trial, and I fear for his life. I fear, my trusted Gerald, for all our lives.
“Now I must beg your help, depend on your loyalty and friendship. I am not able to flee, so I must wait and trust. I beg you, Gerald, to receive that which my messenger brings you. Guard it. Your love and loyalty I must depend upon now that everything is crumbling around me. I have been betrayed, time and time again, but it is sometimes possible to turn the betrayal into advantage.
“This small portion of what is mine as queen, I entrust to you. It perhaps will be needed to pay for the lives of my children. Even if the bourgeois are successful, they too will fall. Take what is mine, Gerald Lebrun, and guard it for my children, and theirs. The time will come when we again take our rightful place. You must wait for it.”
Whitney looked down at the words written by a stubborn woman who had plotted and maneuvered herself to her own death. But still, she’d been a woman, a mother, a queen. “She had only a few months to live,” Whitney murmured. “I wonder if she knew.” And it occurred to her that the letter itself belonged safely behind glass in some tidy corner of the Smithsonian. That’s what Lady Smythe-Wright would have felt. That’s why she’d been foolish enough to give it and the rest to Whitaker. Now they were both dead.
“Doug, do you have any idea just how valuable this is?”
“That’s just what we’re going to find out, sugar,” he muttered.
“Stop thinking in dollar signs. I mean culturally, historically.”
“Yeah, I’m going to buy a boatload of culture.”
“Contrary to popular belief, one can’t buy culture. Doug, this belongs in a museum.”
“After I’ve got the treasure, I’ll donate every sheet. I’m going to be needing some tax write-offs.”
Whitney shook her head and shrugged. First things first, she decided. “What else is there?”
“Pages from a journal, looks like it was written by this Gerald’s daughter.” He’d read the translated parts,
and they were grim. Without a word he handed a page to Whitney. It was dated October 17, 1793 and in the young hand and simple words were a black fear and a confusion that was ageless. The writer had seen her queen executed.
“She appeared pale and plain, and so old. They brought her in a cart through the streets, like a drab. She revealed no fear as she mounted the steps. Maman has said she was a queen to the end. People crowded around and merchants sold wares as though at a fair. It smelled like animals and flies came in clouds. I have seen other people pulled in carts through the streets, like sheep. Mademoiselle Fontainebleu was among them. Last winter she ate cakes with Maman in the salon.
“When the blade descended on the queen’s neck, people cheered. Papa wept. Never have I seen him weep before and I could only stand, holding his hand. Seeing his tears I was afraid, more afraid than when I saw the carts or watched the queen. If Papa wept, what would happen to us? That same night we left Paris. I think perhaps I will never see it again, or my pretty room that looks over the garden. Maman’s beautiful necklace of gold and sapphire has been sold. Papa tells us we will go on a long journey and must be brave.”
Whitney turned to another sheet, dated three months later. “I have been sick unto death. The boat sways and rocks and stinks from the filth of the wretched below-decks. Papa also has been ill. For a time we feared he would die and we would be alone. Maman prays and sometimes, when he is feverish, I remain and hold his hand. It