Lost City nf-5

by Clive Cussler

  They went down several short flights of stairs. Austin paused briefly at the dungeons, where Emil had paid his bloody homage to Edgar Allan Poe. The pendulum hovered over the wooden table, but there was no sign of the unfortunate Englishman, Lord Cavendish.

  Austin blundered down a few blind alleys, but his mariner's sense of direction held him in good stead. Before long, they passed through the bone-filled ossuary and followed the route to the armory. Again, a door was unlocked. Austin pushed it open and he and Zavala stepped into the altar area. The armory was in darkness except for a glow that came from the far end of the nave. The flickering yellow light glinted off the highly polished armor and weapons.

  Zavala glanced around at the display. "Cozy. I like the combination of Gothic and heavy metal. Who's their interior decorator?"

  "Same guy who worked for the Marquis de Sade."

  They made their way along the long nave past the lethal relics that were the foundation of the Fauchard fortune. The light grew brighter as they came up behind the mountedTcnights. Austin went first, and as he stepped around to the front of the display he saw Skye.

  She was seated in a sturdy wooden chair that was flanked by braziers, facing the charging figures on horseback. Her arms and legs were bound tightly with rope and a piece of duct tape had been stretched across her mouth. Two shiny suits of armor stood at her sides, as if ready to defend Skye against the fierce onslaught.

  Skye's eyes widened. She shook her head vigorously, becoming more frantic as Austin drew nearer. He was reaching for his sheath knife so he could cut Skye's bindings when out of the corner of his eye he detected motion. The armored suit on his right was on the move.

  "Oh hell," he said for want of a better reaction.

  Clanking with each step, the suit raised its sword hand and advanced on Austin like an antique robot. He backed away.

  "Any suggestions?" Zavala said, doing the same.

  "Not unless you brought a can opener."

  "How about our guns?" "Too noisy."

  The other suit had sprung into life and was advancing as well. The armored figures closed in with unexpected speed. Austin realized that the knife he had in his hand would be about as effective as a toothpick. Skye was struggling in her chair.

  Austin wasn't about to be sliced up like a salami. He put his head down, charged toward the nearest suit and threw a football body block across the jointed knees. The suit teetered, dropped the sword and, with arms flailing, toppled over backward and hit the stone floor with a horrendous crash. The suit's occupant gave a feeble jerk of his legs and arms and then he was still.

  The other suit hesitated. Zavala duplicated Austin's body block with equal effectiveness. The second suit of armor crashed to the floor. While Austin cut away Skye's ropes, Zavala bent over one fallen figure, then the other.

  "Out cold," he said with pride. "The bigger they are, the harder they fall."

  "It felt like tackling a Bradley fighting vehicle. All those misspent hours watching NFL football weren't a waste of time after all."

  "I thought you were worried about the noise. That little dustup sounded like a couple of skeletons making love on a tin roof."

  Austin shrugged and carefully peeled back the duct tape covering Skye's mouth. He helped her rise from the chair. She stood on shaky legs, threw her arms around Austin and gave him one of the longest and warmest kisses he had ever experienced. "I never thought I'd see you again," she said.

  A silvery laugh issued from the shadows of a nearby cloister. Then a tall slender figure whose face was obscured by a gauzy veil stepped into the flickering light from the braziers. The diaphanous fabric covered her form down to her ankles. Light filtered through the veil, outlining her perfect figure.

  "Charming," she said. "How utterly charming. But must you always be so dramatic in your comings and goings, Monsieur Austin?"

  Marcel stepped out behind the woman, a machine pistol cradled in his hands. Then six more armed men melted from dark corners. Marcel relieved Austin and Zavala of their weapons.

  Austin glanced at the motionless suits of armor. "From the looks of that pile of tin, I'm not the only one with a flair for the dramatic."

  "You know I like the theater. You were at my masquerade ball."

  "Masquerade ball "

  She slowly unwound the veil from her face and head. Hair that looked as if it had been spun from gold thread tumbled to her shoulders. Slowly, seductively, she removed the rest of the veil as if she were taking the wrapping off a precious gift and let it drop from her body to the floor. Underneath the veil, she wore a long, low-cut gown of pure white. A gold belt with a three-headed-eagle design encircled her slim waist. Austin peered into the cold eyes and felt as if he'd been struck by lightning.

  Even though Austin knew about the mysterious workings of the Lost City enzymes, the logical part of his mind had never fully accepted them. It was easier, somehow, to believe that the formula for the Philosopher's Stone, misused, could produce ageless nightmarish creatures than to imagine that it could create a mortal of such astonishing godlike loveliness. He had assumed that the formula would extend life, but not that it could roll back the effects of fifty years of aging.

  Austin found his tongue. "I see that Dr. MacLean's work was far more successful than anyone could have imagined, Madame Fauchard."

  "Don't give MacLean too much credit. He was the midwife at the birth, but the formula for the life that burns within me was created before he was born."

  "You look a lot different from a few days ago. How long did this transformation take?"

  "The life-extending formula is too powerful to be taken at once," she said. "It calls for three treatments. The first two doses produced what you see before you within twenty-four hours. I am about to take the third."

  "Why do you need to gild a lily?"

  Racine preened at the unlikely comparison to a delicate flower. "The third dose makes permanent the effects of the first two. Within an hour of completing the treatment, I will begin my journey through eternity. But enough talk of chemistry. Why don't you introduce me to your handsome friend? He seems unable to put his eyes back into his head."

  Zavala had not seen Madame Fauchard in her former, older incarnation. He knew only that he was in the presence of one of the most dazzling females he had ever encountered. He had muttered words of amazement in Spanish. Now a slight smile cracked the ends of his lips. The guns pointed in his direction did nothing to cool his appreciation for a woman who was apparently perfect in every physical way.

  "This is my colleague, Joe Zavala," Austin said. "Joe, meet Racine Fauchard, the owner of this charming pile of stone."

  "Madame Fauchard?" Zavala's mouth dropped down to his Adam's apple.

  "Yes, is there a problem?" she said.

  "No. I just expected someone different."

  "Monsieur Austin no doubt regaled you with descriptions of me as a bag of bones," she said, her eyes flashing.

  "Not at all," Zavala said, absorbing Madame Fauchard's slim figure and striking features with wondering eyes. "He said you were charming and intelligent."

  The answer seemed to please her because she smiled. "NUMA evidently chooses its people for their gallantry as well as their expertise. It was a quality I saw in you, Monsieur Austin. That's why

  I knew you would try to rescue yon fair maiden." She eyed their purple-stained skin. "If you wanted to sample our grapes, it would have been far less trouble to buy a bottle of wine than to bathe in them."

  "Your wine is out of my price range," Austin said.

  "Did you really think you could enter the chateau without being detected? Our surveillance cameras picked you up after you crossed the drawbridge. Marcel thought you would climb to the outside wall and come in that way."

  "It was kind of you to leave the stairway gate unlocked."

  "You were obviously too smart to take the bait, but we never dreamed that you could find your way through the catacombs. You knew the chateau was well defended. Wha
t did you hope to accomplish by coming here?"

  "I had hoped to leave with the mademoiselle."

  "Well, you have failed in your romantic quest."

  "So it seems. Perhaps, in the interests of romance, you would offer me a consolation prize. At our first meeting, you said you would tell me someday about your family. Here I am. I'd be glad to tell you what I know in exchange."

  "You could never equal what I know about you, but I admire your audacity." She paused a moment, crossed her arms and lightly pinched her chin. Austin remembered seeing the old Madame Fauchard make the same gesture of thought. She turned to Marcel and said, "Take the others away."

  "I wouldn't do that if I were you," Austin said to Marcel.

  He stepped protectively in front of Skye. Marcel and the guards moved in but Madame Fauchard waved them away.

  "Your chivalry appears to know no bounds, Monsieur Austin. Have no fear; your friends will only be taken a short distance away where you can see them. I want to talk to you alone."

  Madame Fauchard motioned for him to sit in Skye's vacated chair,

  and snapped her fingers. Two of her men brought over a thronelike chair of heavy medieval construction and she settled into it. She said something in French to Marcel, and he and some of his men escorted the prisoners a short distance, but still in view, while others dragged away the suits of armor.

  "Now there are just the two of us," she said. "Lest you entertain any illusions, my men will kill your friends if you do anything foolish."

  "I have no intention of making a move. This encounter is much too fascinating to end so soon. Tell me, what's with the high priestess outfit?"

  "You know how I enjoy costumes. Do you like it?" Austin couldn't take his eyes off Madame Fauchard in spite of himself. Racine Fauchard was stunning in the way a finely crafted wax figure is perfect in every feature considered important, except one. Her soulless eyes held all the warmth of the cold steel that the Fauchards had used to fashion their swords and armor. "I find you absolutely enchanting, but "

  "But you don't readily consort with a hundred-year-old woman." "Not at all. You've aged quite well. I don't usually consort with a cold-blooded killer."

  She raised a finely arched eyebrow. "Monsieur Austin, is this your strange way of flirting with me?" "Far from it."

  "Too bad. I've had many lovers in the last hundred years, but you're a very attractive man." She paused and studied his face. "Dangerous, too, and that makes you even more attractive. First, you must fulfill your part of the bargain. Tell me what you know."

  "I know that you and your family hired Dr. MacLean to find the elixir of life he called the Philosopher's Stone. In the process, you killed anyone who got in your way and created a group of wild-eyed mutants."

  "A cogent summary, but you've only scratched the surface."

  "Scratch it for me, then."

  She paused, letting her memory drift back through the years.

  "My family traces its ancestry back to the Minoan civilization that flourished before the great volcanic eruption on the island of Santorini My ancestors were priests and priestesses in the Minoan snake goddess cult. The snake clan was powerful, but power rivals drove us off the island. A few weeks later, the volcano erupted and destroyed the island. We settled in Cyprus, where we went into the arms business. The snake evolved into the Spear, then to Fauchard."

  "How did you get from spears to mutants?"

  "It was a logical outgrowth of our arms business. Around the turn of the century, Spear Industries set up a laboratory to try to design a super-soldier. We knew from the American Civil War that trench warfare would make future battles a stalemate. First one side would charge, then the other, with little gain in ground. They would retreat in the face of the automatic weapons that were being developed. We wanted a soldier who would charge the trenches without fear, like a Viking berserker. In addition, this soldier would have super endurance and speed, and fast-healing wounds. We tried the formula on a few volunteers."

  "Like Pierre Levant?"

  "I don't recall the name," she said with a frown.

  "Captain Levant was a French officer. He became one of the first mutants your research created."

  "Yes, he seems vaguely familiar. A dashing, handsome young man, as I recall."

  "You'd never recognize him these days."

  "Before you condemn me, you must know that they were all volunteers, soldiers who were excited at the prospect of becoming supermen."

  "Did they know that along with these superhuman powers, their appearance would change rather drastically?"

  "None of us did. The science was crude. But the formula worked, for a time, anyhow. It gave the soldiers superhuman strength and quickness, but then they deteriorated into uncontrollable, snarling beasts."

  "Beasts who could enjoy their new bodies forever."

  "Life extension was an unexpected by-product. Even more exciting, the formula promised to reverse aging. We would have succeeded in refining the formula if not for Jules."

  "He turned out to have a conscience?"

  "He turned out to be a fool," she said, with undisguised vehemence. "Jules saw our findings as a boon to mankind. He tried to persuade me and others in the family to stop the march toward war and release the formula. I led the family against him. He fled the country in his airplane. He carried papers that would have implicated the family in the war plot and intended to use them as blackmail, I suppose, if he had not been intercepted and shot down."

  "Why did he take the helmet?"

  "It was a symbol of authority, passed down to the family leader of each generation. He lost his right to the helmet by his actions, and it should have passed to me."

  Austin leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. "So Jules is gone, along with the threat that the family's war scheme will be exposed. He was in no position to stop your research."

  "He had already stopped it. He destroyed the computations for the basic formula and etched them into the helmet. Clever. Too clever. We had to start all over again. There were a million possible combinations. We kept the mutants alive with the hope that one day they might reveal the secrets of the formula. The work was interrupted by wars, the Depression. We were close to succeeding during World War Two when our laboratory was bombed by Allied planes. It set back our research by decades."

  Austin chuckled. "You're saying that the wars you promoted hurt your research. The irony must not have escaped you."

  "I wish it had."

  "In the meantime, you got older."

  "Yes, I got older," she said with uncharacteristic sadness. "I lost my beauty and became a crackling old crone. Still, I persisted. We made some progress in slowing aging, which I shared with Emil, but the Grim Reaper was catching up with us. We were so close. We tried to create the right enzyme, but with limited success. Then one of my scientists heard about the Lost City enzyme. It seemed to be the missing link. I bought the company doing research on the enzyme, and enlisted Dr. MacLean and his colleagues to pursue round-the-clock research. We built a submarine that could harvest the enzyme and set up a testing laboratory."

  "Why did you have the scientists at MacLean's company killed?"

  "We're not the first to dispose of ^scientific team so they won't talk about their research. The British government is-still investigating the deaths of scientists who worked on a Star Wars missile defense project. We had created a new batch of mutants and the scientists threatened to go public with the news, so we got rid of them."

  "The only problem with your scientists is that they hadn't really finished their work," Austin said. "Pardon me, but this operation sounds like a clown convention."

  "Not an inaccurate analogy. I made the mistake of letting Emil handle things. It was a big mistake. Once I took control again, I brought back Dr. MacLean to reconstitute a research team. They managed to recoup much of the work."

  "Was Emil responsible for flooding the glacier tunnel?"

  "Mea culpa again. I had
not brought him into my confidence about the true significance of the helmet, so he never tried to find it before flooding the tunnel."

  "Yet another mistake?"

  "Luckily, Mademoiselle Labelle removed the helmet, and it is now in my possession. It provided the missing link and we closed down the lab. So you see, we make mistakes, but we learn by them. Apparently, you don't. You escaped from here once, yet you came back to certain disaster."

  "I'm not certain that's the case."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Have you heard from Emil lately?"

  "No." For the first time there was doubt in her face. "Where is he?"

  "Let us go and I'll be glad to tell you," Austin said.

  "What are you saying?"

  "I stopped off at the glacier before coming here. Emil is now in custody."

  "A shame," she said with a flip of her fingers. "Too bad you didn't kill him."

  "You're bluffing. This is your son we're talking about."

  "You needn't remind me of my familial obligations," she said coldly. "I don't care what happens to Emil or his cretinous friend Sebastian. Emil planned to usurp me. I would have had to destroy him myself. If you've killed him, you did me a favor."

  Austin felt as if he had just been dealt a pair of deuces in a high-stakes poker game.

  "I should have known that mother snakes sometimes eat their eggs."

  "You can't insult me with your silly taunts. Despite its internal friction, our family has grown ever more powerful through the centuries."

  "And created a river of blood in the process."

  "What do we care for blood? It is the most expendable commodity on earth."

  "Some people might argue with that."

  "You have no idea what you have gotten yourself into," Madame Fauchard said, with a sneer. "You think you know us? There is layer upon layer invisible to you. Our family has its origins in the mists of time. While your forebears were clawing at rotten logs searching for grubs, the first Spear had already fashioned a flint point, attached it to a shaft and traded it to his neighbor. We are of no nation and every nation. We sold weapons to the Greeks against the Persians and the Persians against the Greeks. The Roman legions marched across Europe wielding broadswords of our design. Now we will forge time, bending it to our will as we once did steel."