Sixtine- The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by Caroline Vermalle

  When Max slowly got up to see the other side of the path, he quickly curled up. Violent nausea seized his body like a fever, and all his muscles became tense. Bian must have noticed his sudden pallor and asked, “What is it?”

  Fear had dried Max’s mouth and he swallowed painfully.

  Bian, with infinite caution, hoisted herself up to watch. Her eyes suddenly widened and she stifled a laugh.

  “Quiet,” Max ordered.

  But Bian could not help but admire the black mass of stripes that wavered in the dust. “Oh my god. I’ve never seen one before! It’s a royal cobra! It must be at least four meters long. It’s very rare, they’re endangered!”

  Max tried to concentrate on stopping the paralysis that consumed him. He tried to convince himself that the snake was thirty feet away from them and had no reason to attack them. But Bian shook him. “Oh, look, he’s standing up!”

  Her tone changed, lowering by an octave and she whispered, “Uh, maybe we should get out of here.”

  When Max was on the verge of making a run for it, Bian threw a stone a few inches from the cobra, which disappeared into the thickets on the other side of the path.

  Max’s limbs were still stiff with fear as he followed Bian and they climbed onto a rock.

  Within seconds, he forgot the royal cobra, as the scenery was breathtaking.

  Against the dark green scenery of the gigantic rocky peaks, stepped plateaus were drawn, on which huge waterfalls fell. The white of the waterfalls, the turquoise of the lagoons, the green of the bamboos and the vegetation that appeared everywhere, formed a sumptuous Technicolor setting.

  “It is called the falls of Angry Love,” Bian said with a dreamy smile.

  “Why?” Max asked.

  “It’s a legend in the village. I was told that there were two lovers here who loved each other with an eternal love. But the girl’s father wanted to marry her to another boy. So rather than marry someone else, she killed herself by throwing herself into the waterfall. That’s what I’ve always believed.”

  “Such a sad story for such a magical place,” Max said.

  “But maybe it’s not a legend. Maybe the people of the village, they always knew that old people came here with young girls. Fairy tales and legends should not be taken literally.”

  A shiver passed along Max’s back.

  A muted vibration came to them and they followed the noise to its source. Max pointed to a bamboo massif that seemed caught in a storm, while the trees in the valley were perfectly calm. Soon, they saw the propellers of a helicopter emerge above the vegetation. It soon disappeared into the sky, but at the same time, a dozen men appeared from the grove. They walked in line towards the edge of one of the blue lagoons.

  With a trembling hand, Max took the binoculars out of his bag.

  They were all Western, at least sixty years old, some of them well into their eighties. The way they were dressed didn’t make sense: some of them were even wearing suits and ties, as if they had just come out of a business meeting. No sign of Alfred-Jean.

  “What are they waiting for?” Bian breathed.

  Max looked around them until a Vietnamese man in his traditional red dress came out of the bamboos. He held a large black umbrella, which he opened as he passed in front of the men.

  “The tall skinny guy with the slick hair, I know him,” Max said when he adjusted his binoculars. “He is Frederick Montecito, the head of the Metropolitan Museum. And the other one is Jean-Patrick Dupuis, the director of the Louvre. Oh, my God.”

  He rested the binoculars on his lap.

  “What the hell are they doing here?” Bian breathed. “Do you think they’re part of the secret society?”

  Max looked at her. Yes, it was exactly what he thought, and it didn’t reassure him.

  “There are no women with them, so that’s something. Perhaps they are there because they have discovered a priceless treasure?”

  “There is no temple here, and it’s almost five o’clock. It will get dark soon. There is no road for many miles, and no hotel. It’s pretty risky to have a helicopter land at night in the rice fields, don’t you think?”

  “What the hell are they doing?” Max muttered.

  The Vietnamese man, with his black umbrella, was heading towards the waterfall.

  When Max understood what they were going to do, he couldn’t help but smile.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “He walks on water.”

  Frederick Montecito took a few strides on the turquoise water, then disappeared into the waterfall.

  “The waterfall! That’s the entrance. Of course!” Bian exclaimed, tapping her hand against her forehead. “They are karst formations, so they are filled with underground passages, cavities, chasms. So a tunnel behind the waterfall, of course!”

  “Here comes a third one with his umbrella,” Max commented. “They seem used to it, none of them hesitated. The water is also a different color under the feet of the men. All you have to do is place a footbridge a few inches from the surface, and you won’t see it or know it was there.”

  They watched the men enter one by one, then disappear without leaving a trace. The last helicopter flew away, and the valley became perfectly peaceful again.

  Max took a look at the setting sun, then at Bian, who smiled back at him. They understood each other.

  An hour later, Max wondered if waiting for night had not been superfluous, and more dangerous. He stomped his foot on the edge of the lagoon, the halo of his headlamp caressing the tall grass. Several times he had jumped when the light had caught a long, snaking shape near his feet; but each time the shape had turned out to be a shadow, or a branch. The lagoon, which had been turquoise an hour earlier, was now as black as the water from a bottomless well.

  “Are there water snakes here?” he asked Bian.

  “Yes, but they are harmless,” Bian assured him. “Do you want me to go first?”

  Max grumbled a negative answer. His good manners and upbringing prevented him from letting Bian go in front, but he would have given a lot for permission to be rude. He knelt where the men had walked, but nowhere did he find a bridge. He sank into the cool lagoon. Three steps later he couldn’t feel the surface anymore. He swam a few fathoms, turning his head every time he detected a strange shape in the perimeter of his vision. He hurried to get to the waterfall. But, from water to his neck, his heart swollen with adrenaline, he saw only a violent whirlwind, and the unknown on the other side.

  He was petrified with fear.

  Bian swam up to him.

  “Do you think that – ”

  But Bian didn’t stop, she continued swimming, and went through the waterfall.

  The next minute, Max was alone in the lagoon, in front of a deafening curtain of foam. Above him, the waterfall seemed infinite, as if the water came straight down from the starry sky. And behind him, the rock formations, those stone sentinels that guarded the Green River, seemed to be watching him.

  “Bian? Bian, are you okay?”

  He thought he heard words, then a scream, but the noise of the fall blurred everything. The sounds of the jungle were both muffled and magnified by the violence of the water. His pulse seemed to be beating in his throat.

  “Bian!”

  He remained motionless, his legs and arms flapping to stay afloat, terrified of being alone in the lagoon, and just as terrified of entering the waterfall. He quickly convinced himself that Bian, not seeing him behind her, would come out and tell her what was beyond. Or at least come back to check that everything was fine.

  He waited for what felt like hours, but Bian didn’t come out.

  The disastrous scenarios got carried away in his mind; he tried to silence them, in vain. Another reality caught up with him and squeezed his temples: he was unable to find his way back to Bian’s house.

  He shouted her name again. Once again, silence was the only answer.

  Suddenly he felt something graze his leg; he struggled hard, splashin
g the halo of light, clapping his arms in the void, missing to flow. He was barely calmed down when the thing touched his leg again. This time, he had not imagined it.

  He swam straight to the waterfall and entered the other side.

  19

  Gayle Talios jumped up, walked a few steps into the meeting room, and placed her polystyrene cup under the spout of the thermos. Her hand shook, as this was the seventh coffee since the package arrived.

  And she still hadn’t made a decision.

  She brought the cup up to her lips, her gaze fixed on Nefertiti. The coffee burned her tongue, but she ignored the pain.

  For four hours, she had been locked in the boardroom on the top floor of the BBC Television offices in London. Around her were four colleagues, all high up in the hierarchy: Travis Lyndon, head of news programs; Jane Moss, director of programs; Jim Roberts, director of the documentary department; and Phoebe Amillo, editorial manager of bbc.com, one of the most visited websites in the world.

  They were also high on caffeine and had not made a decision either.

  On the long boardroom table, the contents of an envelope deposited by a courier that morning were scattered about. Dozens of photos showed all the pieces found with Nefertiti’s mummy in her sarcophagus. They were identical to those presented on the websites and press releases of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Neues in Berlin, the British Museum in London, the Louvre in Paris, and the other international museums hosting Nefertiti’s exhibition.

  Gayle knew them well, as she was the editor-in-chief of several high-profile programs on science and archaeology. The producers under her orders had already completed several programs on Nefertiti, whose broadcast was to coincide with the opening of the exhibition in a few weeks. One of these producers was Florence Mornay-Devereux.

  Among these familiar images there were others, those of their manufacture by the forger.

  All of Nefertiti’s burial pieces were forgeries, including the mummy.

  The instigator of this spectacular coup and the sender of the envelope were the same person.

  Oxan Aslanian.

  The coffee flowed down Gayle’s throat and warmed her tense muscles. She felt relief for a few seconds, but did not last. Since she discovered the envelope and the blue binder inside, she was cold to the core.

  The details of the fake mummy represented only the first half of the slips. The rest was much more morbid.

  Aslanian claimed that in the sarcophagus under the fabric strips lay a murdered woman.

  It was not just any woman, it was Elizabeth von Wär, daughter of Helmut von Wär, the one who bought the mummy for a record amount at an auction in Paris, and donated it to the Met.

  Helmut von Wär was not just a wealthy philanthropist. He was the president of Humanitas, a charitable foundation who brought together the most powerful men in the world of art and antiquities. Directors of museums, foundations or auction houses, rich collectors and philanthropists, university deans or renowned archaeologists, and this since the end of the 19th century. But they shared much more than just a love for antiques.

  Oxan Aslanian claimed that Humanitas was a screen foundation that actually hid a secret society – Uls Humanitas – of which Helmut von Wär was the primary leader. Its members adhered to particular beliefs about death and the afterlife. And for a hundred years, orphans had been sacrificing orphans to fill the loneliness of their graves.

  More than fifty women had been buried against their will since 1887. The last one was Jessica Pryce. And there were others.

  The nausea turned Gayle’s stomach and mixed bile with the taste of coffee.

  A journalist suddenly burst into the room. His forehead shone and his shirt stained with sweat.

  “They’ve all received the same things.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?” Gayle hissed.

  “The New York Times, AFP, CNN,” the journalist stammered. “Wherever I have contacts, they have more or less confirmed to me that they had it. No one wants to talk about it, but they say they have an exclusive on Egypt. The Washington Post confirmed to me that it was on Nefertiti. The Guardian, on a conspiracy around archaeology.”

  “It’s already on Buzzfeed!”

  Jim checked the screen and tapped the table. “Shit, shit, shit, shit! Tonight, it’ll be everywhere.”

  “On Facebook, that’s for sure,” Jane said, with her eyes fixed on her screen. “But no one serious is going to broadcast without confirmation of the sources. We can’t afford to screw this up, I don’t want to have the destruction of the British Museum on my conscience.”

  “Done,” Phoebe said, tapping on her keyboard. “What do you think about a red banner on the home page, ‘Exclusive: a forger disputes the authenticity of Nefertiti, and involves museum directors in an international plot.’ The link leads to a page that is it an ongoing report. We don’t say anything about homicides.”

  “Of course we don’t say anything about homicides,” Jim spat out.

  “Vice didn’t deprive himself of it,” Travis said, leaning over his phone. “Nefertiti: Fraud of the century and serial murders.”

  He barely finished his sentence before picking up one of the phones on the table. Jane rubbed her forehead. “The legal counsel should be here any minute. We don’t take anything out until it’s validated.”

  “Damn it, we blame these guys and it’s the whole art world that’s falling apart,” Jim exploded and grabbed the sheets scattered on the table.

  “Frederick Montecito of the Met, Jean-Patrick Dupuis of the Louvre, Günter Signoll of the Pergamon, Jan Peters of the Neues, and even the British: Nicholas Dyson and Benedict Johnson. Damn it, Johnson. My daughter goes to school with his kid. I would never have imagined – ”

  “Helmut von Wär is Lichtenstein’s ambassador to the UN, he has diplomatic immunity,” Phoebe added.

  Jim suddenly got angry. “Add to that an international diplomatic incident, it’s great. Well, the checks, are they coming?”

  “There is not much we can verify, in fact,” one of the journalists dared to say, “the mine is failing. All the evidence is in the envelope.”

  “What do you mean, we can’t check anything? Elizabeth von Wär, is she missing? And who are these girls? Are there any BOLOs? And what’s he saying, a cave in Vietnam that would be their headquarters? How is it even possible to have a cave like HQ? God, this is huge, and no one can check anything?”

  “Yes, Oxan Aslanian was actually Yohannes De Bok, and he died in Mexico City two weeks ago,” the journalist said.

  “He also supposedly died in Berlin in 1929,” Jim spat. “And he managed to resurrect twice to put this package yesterday at the post office on 70th Street. Anything else?”

  The journalist lowered his head and left, before a woman in her fifties burst into the room. “Jane, I have Frederick Montecito’s assistant on the line.”

  Jane jumped and rushed out of the boardroom with lightning fast speed. Through the glass wall, Gayle saw her grab the handset, wave to the assistant to take notes, and they locked themselves in another meeting room.

  Gayle bit her lower lip, and closed her eyes for a while, hoping nothing happened to Florence.

  “Florence,” Gayle whispered suddenly. “Jesus Christ, Florence.”

  “What?” Jim asked.

  She had whispered it, and she didn’t think they would have heard it. She looked around, became very pale, then jumped to her feet. “Florence had the proof.”

  Jim shook his head, opened his hands, so eager to hear what Gayle had to say that she had forgotten the words. All eyes were focused on her, fingers had stopped typing on the computers. All that remained was the muffled noise of the chaos of journalists coming and going in all directions, yelling into their cell phones. And the noise of Gayle’s heart.

  “Florence sent me a document before she disappeared. Something about her ancestor,” Gayle said as she opened her laptop, her fingers trembling as she found what she was looking for.
<
br />   Then she sat down. The message was there before her eyes.

  Vivant Mornay.

  20

  When Sixtine climbed the steps leading to Thaddeus’s house, the premonition was so violent that she was suffocated by anxiety. Something terrible was about to happen, and this was confirmed by the front door standing ajar.

  Nausea on the edge of her lips, terror projecting horror scenarios into her mind, she took a few steps into the marble-tiled hall.

  “Thaddeus? It’s me, Sixtine!”

  No one lived there anymore, everything was so neat and clean, organized, imbued with classic and predictable luxury. So little like Thaddeus.

  As she was about to head towards what she imagined would be a small lounge for visitors, a toxic, vaguely pungent smell tickled her throat. She coughed, but at the same time she thought she heard a crackling sound from the top of the stairs.

  “Thaddeus?”

  Another crack, louder, resounded against the marble floor. It seemed to be mixed up with a female voice; she could not decide whether it was a scream or a plea.

  Without thinking, she went up the stairs. The first floor was a maze of arches and walls covered with bookshelves. The sound always came from above. And the air was getting thicker and thicker from that toxic smell.

  When she arrived on the second floor, she found something that froze her blood: slippery gray smoke from the third floor. Something was burning up there. And a woman was screaming.

  She raced up the stairs as fast as she could. The walls were already blackening, and the ceiling was waving under heat waves. The gray smoke overflowed from the hinges of a service door. The blue paint seemed to boil and the wood was whistling.

  “You killed her, didn’t you?”

  The door exploded out of its hinges and a huge, orange blast propelled Sixtine against a wall.

  She lost her balance for a moment, the black smoke clouding the floor. The electricity must have gone out, and the windows were black with soot. Only the flames lit the darkness.

  It was too late to escape.