by Alex Archer
The snow had gathered on the surface, reducing traction.
Annja drove carefully, enjoying the process of driving stick on a road that really wanted her to work for the privilege of driving down it.
She parked outside the hotel, and made a promise to meet Philippe in an hour. He double tapped on the roof to let her know he’d gotten the gear out of the trunk. She caught a glimpse of him looking at her—trying not to be seen to be looking—as he went inside.
France certainly had its plus points.
Annja turned up the music, pushed herself farther into the driver’s seat and opened up the engine.
She would have killed to be on a motorcycle instead of cooped up in a car, icy wind in her hair, red-lining it around the country roads… There was nothing like the freedom of a bike on open road, but for now the car would have to suffice. The local radio station was running an eighties marathon, which helped, offering up cheesy driving tunes. An hour in her own company would do her the world of good. Jane Weidlin sang about driving in the rush hour. The juxtaposition was brilliant. Snowcapped hills and empty roads couldn’t have been farther from the choking urban slow-death that was Manhattan’s rush hour.
She drove with only the vaguest idea of where she was heading, but it wasn’t as if it would be difficult to find her way back to the town. It was pretty much a case of all roads lead to Carcassonne around here. Worst case, she had the satnav app on her phone to fall back on, assuming she could get a signal in the mountains with the snow worsening again.
Twenty minutes from the hotel, she’d passed a grand total of four cars on the road, and seen the same number coming the other way.
That had changed less than a minute later.
A glance in her rearview mirror offered the glint of a silver car—a Mercedes—half a mile or so behind her. The driver didn’t seem to be in a hurry, but the power of the big car was deceptive, the distance between them closing fast.
A signpost on the hard shoulder promised a right-hand fork that would work its way back around to Carcassonne, so she took it. It wasn’t exactly hot-date territory, but tall, dark and brooding was better than room service for one.
The side road led her onto a second, narrower lane that hadn’t been plowed, forcing her to slow down to stop the rear wheels fishtailing on the icy surface. Snow topped the old stone walls and high hedges lining the road. Annja dropped her speed again, down to thirty, tapping her fingers on the wheel in time with the beat of Simon Le Bon’s vocal promising he was on the hunt, after her.
She joined in with the chorus, remembering another time in France, another wolf. The Beast of Gévaudan, right at the beginning of this whole mad life she was now living.
The road curved up ahead. There were no tracks in the virgin snow. The sound of it crunching under her tires was a constant undertone beneath the music.
The snow-laden trees dumped their burden in a whisper ahead of her, and as the fine dusting settled, she saw a battered red tractor lumber across her line of sight. Even though her vehicle was going slowly, the sheet of ice under the snow meant that Annja wasn’t going to be able to stop in time. She felt the wheels lose their grip and the car start to slide. Thinking fast, she turned into the slide, pushing the rental up onto the grass at the edge of the road, the passenger’s side scraping through the leaves of the hedge, barely inches from the unforgiving impact of the wall.
Even so, there was precious little room to spare, and if the driver of the tractor didn’t do likewise she’d end up forced into the wall.
Annja gritted her teeth, wrestling with the wheel as it wanted to turn relentlessly back toward the oncoming tractor.
The music cut out as she lost the signal.
The only sound inside the car was the scrape of leaves against the fender.
The tractor moved over to the side, leaving Annja just enough room to squeeze through without wrecking the rental. The hood shivered under the impact of another snow dump from overhanging trees. She nearly jumped out of her skin. Her reactions were good. Better than good. She had an almost preternatural control of her body, and even in the unfamiliar car, driving an unfamiliar stick shift, she was able to ramp it up less than an inch from the wall, and scrape along the hedge lining it, without totaling the car, and come out on the other side.
That was close, she thought.
Too close.
She eased on the brakes and came to gradual stop twenty feet down the road, and turned in her seat to see if the farmer was okay. He seemed to have taken the near-collision in his stride, not that she could see his face.
Maybe it was an everyday occurrence? After all, the tractor looked plenty beat-up.
And as far as Annja knew, maybe it was.
The tractor rumbled on its way relentlessly.
It disappeared out of sight, greeted by the sound of a blaring horn. The Mercedes. It was considerably wider than her rental car, and wasn’t going to have a lot of success getting around the tractor. She guessed that this was what counted as congestion in this part of the world.
Annja drove even slower for the next couple of miles, bringing the needle down under the twenty mark, and keeping her eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead, expecting the unexpected to be lurking just around the bend. The snowfall thickened in the air ahead. The wipers were hypnotic, swinging back and forth, back and forth, but as fast as they went they couldn’t cope with the gathering swirl of the snowstorm.
A quick glance at the dashboard clock promised she’d have just about enough time to sneak a shower before she hooked up with Philippe for dinner.
She didn’t see another vehicle until the huge castle was in view on the horizon, a blur in the white. The lane began to widen. It was only then that she realized just how tightly she’d been gripping the wheel.
Annja glanced in the rearview mirror. The silver Mercedes had managed to work its way around the tractor and was back on her tail. She could see the thin-faced driver leaning into the steering column, and a brute of a man crushed into the passenger seat beside him. The Mercedes drew up close behind her as she reached the next junction. She took advantage of the moment to study the two men in her mirror.
The driver revved his engine, meeting her gaze in the mirror. Annja didn’t look away. She was in that kind of mood.
She used the blinkers to signal a right and eased out, taking the road back toward Carcassonne.
The Mercedes followed.
Of course, it was the logical way to go, back into the town. That didn’t mean they were following her.
The snowplows had been out on this stretch of road, making the going decidedly less treacherous.
After a hundred yards, she pulled over to the side of the road, allowing the Mercedes to overtake her, but even as it did, she knew it was just as easy to follow someone from in front as it was from behind. She watched the Mercedes disappear into the swirling white of the snow.
There was something really off about the whole encounter.
4
The call came out of the blue.
Garin listened to the voice on the other end of the line, unsure whom he was talking to and incredibly curious as to how he had managed to get hold of his private number. Both problems were tempered by the fact that the man had a job that he was interested in. It wasn’t every day a gig turned up that piqued his interest, and this time it wasn’t all about the money.
“Obviously, given the nature of the artifacts I am looking to acquire, this is a sensitive undertaking,” the voice said. “But I have been led to understand that you are the man for the job.”
“Well, I’d say that rather depends on a combination of things, but right now I’m listening, which puts you ahead of the game. So, let’s put the bush over there and stop beating about it, shall we?”
“By all means.”
“What you are looking for?” After the lure of the cloak-and-dagger approach, the worst thing that could happen now was that voice would spoil everything by asking for something mundane
. There was nothing more disappointing. There was no joy in locating something bland, even if it involved a great deal of money. It was all about how you valued time, and sure, Garin had more of it than most, but his time was the most precious commodity he possessed, meaning giving it up had to be worth something. And even then he might be inclined to refuse. No, the thrill of the chase, the great hunt, the glittering prize…they were all part of the package. If one of them were missing from a job, the likelihood of him getting out of bed to deal with it were poor.
“The initial task is a relatively simple retrieval job. I would like you to locate the private papers of Guillaume Manchon, a court scribe at the church court in Rouen for the years 1430 and ’31.”
Manchon? The name rang a distant bell, but that was nothing next to the Klaxon the date and place set off in his head. The year 1431 was burned in his memory; it was the end and the beginning of all things. It was the date of Joan of Arc’s trial and execution and the beginning of the curse that saw him walking this earth more than five hundred years later.
“You have my attention,” he said, which was true. Anything that pointed back in that direction was intriguing.
“I had rather hoped I might. Alas, the papers are no longer there, so you will need to be, ah…creative. Guillaume made his notes in French, and they were later translated into Latin with five copies made. The French original and three of the transcribed Latin copies are in private collections, and unfortunately getting access to them is next to impossible.”
“So by retrieval you mean theft?” Garin decided to come straight out with it. Breaking the law wasn’t a deal breaker for a man like Garin Braden. More often than not a brief flirtation with the dark side only added to the thrill.
“Ah, no, no. Actually, I want you to find me one of the missing copies.”
“How can you be so sure that they still exist? Do you have a lead on one of them? Evidence, perhaps, that there is another copy that hasn’t been destroyed?”
“Sadly, no. I am laboring purely under the apprehension that what is lost can be found, and that you are the right man to track them down.”
“Remind me again who recommended me?”
“Remind? I didn’t actually say a first time. Suffice it to say it was a most impeccable source or I wouldn’t be talking to you now.”
“That’s really not saying very much, is it?”
“And yet it speaks volumes, if you care to think about it for a moment.”
Garin wasn’t so sure.
“Okay, let’s assume this mysterious benefactor knows his stuff and that I am indeed the man for the job. Why do you want these papers? What’s so fascinating? What makes them special, apart from the fact they’re nearly six hundred years old obviously?” More often than not, the answer to that question was more money than sense, with the buyer willing to throw cash at some mythical El Dorado.
“Please, don’t take me for a fool, Mr. Braden. I am sure that you know full well why a scholar such as myself would be interested in documents created in Rouen in that particular year.”
“Do I?”
“Put it this way—if you don’t, then I will have to reconsider the recommendation, and believe that I have made a gross error in judgment.”
“So these documents relate to the trial of Joan of Arc?”
He could almost hear the man’s smirk as he said, “That’s more like it. No need to be coy. As I said, these papers are just the first of several artifacts I am seeking. In the interests of full disclosure, I will email a complete list once we have agreed upon a fee for your services.”
Garin’s mind raced to an extortionate figure; after all, if the man was as determined to get hold of these artifacts as he sounded, he was ripe for a little extortion. “Three million, plus expenses,” he said, plucking the number out of thin air. He expected the man to counter with a lower offer and a back-and-forth of offers and counters to follow. It didn’t.
“Dollars or euros?”
“Euros,” he said without missing a heartbeat. “And this is purely for the papers. Anything else I turn up is extra.” It was a fishing expedition, of course. The hook baited, he wanted to see just how desperate the man was to get his hands on these lost words. “If I can’t find them, you don’t pay me. Fair?”
“Of course.”
The man hung up without another word.
Garin was glad that the caller could not see the smile that had spread across his face.
He wasn’t smiling because he was looking forward to the challenge of the hunt, though that would normally be the case. Garin wasn’t the kind of man who chased legends. He left that sort of thing to Annja Creed. He wasn’t interested in history’s monsters. He had gone toe-to-toe with more than his fair share of them. No, he was smiling because he knew the exact location of one of the two missing transcriptions of Guillaume Manchon’s papers.
They were currently locked up safe and sound in a vault in Roux’s house.
Sometimes it was just too easy.
5
By the time Annja had left the hotel with her cameraman, the sun had started to sink in the sky. The late-afternoon chill had turned into full-on cold.
She couldn’t dislodge the thought that the two men in the Mercedes had been following her. Had it been Brooklyn instead of the South of France she would have been worried about carjacking, or that insurance scam where people deliberately rammed into you for the claim. But without them mysteriously reappearing on her tail, there was nothing for her to actually worry about.
“Are you okay?” Philippe asked as they drove away from the restaurant. The food had been good, rustic farmhouse fare. Good, plain, healthy, but tasty, too. Farm fresh. It had been his recommendation. She was always happy to take advantage of local knowledge when it came to food, stay off the tourist track, keep it cheap, keep it wholesome. “You seem distracted.”
“It’s all good,” she promised. “Just thinking.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
She chuckled at that. “Isn’t it always?”
They were heading back to the site to take a few night shots with the castle lit up in the distance. It was always good to hit the atmospheric stuff when the sun was down. It added to the mystique.
Philippe kept talking, telling more stories about growing up in the area and days on the farmhouse where his grandma would stain her toes purple crushing grapes and his grandfather would nurture cheese that smelled almost exactly the same as his grandma’s purple feet. Annja smiled, jealous of the trappings of a normal childhood. Every few minutes she’d glance in the rearview mirror, only for her heart to skip a beat if she spotted the shape of a car behind them, silver or not. She had to snap out of it; she was jumping at silver ghosts.
The spot they’d been filming at earlier was covered in three inches of fresh snowfall, though mercifully the night was clear and crisp, not so much as a flurry to be seen. What had worked during the day wasn’t as suitable for the night shot, and she’d never intentionally put herself in the exact same position—that would only serve to make the segment look like some weird time-lapse photography experiment. They moved around, looking for a better angle where the spotlights accentuated the harsh old stones and served as a great reminder of just how old the fortress was.
“Inside could work,” Philippe suggested. “A different aspect, very mean and moody. It would give the shoot an air of foreboding.” He opened his case as he talked, pulling out the camera and beginning the prep work before they started shooting properly.
“I get what you’re saying, but a distance shot, looking up at me with the wall rising to tower over me and really highlight the insignificance of man in this harsh winter landscape, could look pretty impressive.”
“You’re the boss,” he said, hoisting the camera onto his shoulder.
Annja skimmed through her rough notes, familiarizing herself with the facts even though she’d read them dozens of times and knew them inside out. It was a compulsion. She could recite t
his stuff in her sleep. That was just the way her mind worked. She couldn’t wipe it away even if she wanted to.
She swept her hair from her face, took a deep breath and gave him the nod.
The moment the red light glowed in the dark beside his face she was in her element. The spotlight on the side of the camera threw her features into stark relief, the perfect accompaniment for the tale of murder, witchcraft and heresy she was about to tell.
“In his book Practica inquisitionis heretice pravitatis—Conduct of the Inquisition into Heretical Wickedness—the Inquisitor Bernard Gui wrote a section related to sorcerers and diviners and the invokers of demons.” She considered that for a moment. “His work proves beyond the shadow of any doubt that the Inquisition was concerned with the idea of witchcraft one hundred and sixty-five years before the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum, and refutes the notion that paganism in France had been suppressed by the year 1000…”
“Look out!” someone shouted.
Almost too late, Annja launched herself away from the wall, barely managing to shove Philippe aside as a huge piece of masonry hurtled down from far above, shattering on impact as it cracked the ancient flagstones. Philippe stumbled backward, desperately trying to cling to his camera even with his balance gone. Annja reacted faster, already looking up at the top of the wall, at a loss to understand how the huge slab could have fallen, and not seeing anyone on top of the wall who might have thrown it.
“Are you all right?”
She turned to see an older man in a wheelchair.
The woman pushing him had turned an unhealthy shade of white.
Annja offered a wry smile. “Thanks to you,” she said, dusting herself off.
“I don’t even know what possessed me to look up,” he said. “I was just enjoying listening to your recounting of our ancient history. I assume it’s for a news bulletin? Has something happened?”
“Oh no,” she said, realizing his misunderstanding. “I work for an American cable TV show called Chasing History’s Monsters. We’re filming a segment about Bernard Gui, the Inquisitor.”