The Napoleon Affair

by Ernest Dempsey

  Four columns, stained to match the reddish cherry wood finish of the furnishings, stood at both ends of the room, at the entrance under one archway, and on either side of the desk under a second archway. In the middle, a lavish rug rested on the floor. Its primary pale blue color contrasted with the pale cream color woven into the center, outlined by a burgundy wheel of sorts. Directly over the rug, a seven-sided domed ceiling arched upward, creating a false sense of roominess. A round, brass table with a shiny glass top stood in the center of the floor. It was a strange place for a coffee table, if that's what it could be called.

  The volumes of books on the shelves still looked the way they did when Napoléon last visited this room. Tommy could see the general sitting in one of his chairs, slumping with his belly protruding out slightly over his pants as he pored over one of the tomes. Tommy wished he could pull one of the books from a shelf, but he imagined the volume might disintegrate if he were to do so.

  Ironically, it was Bodmer who snapped Tommy back to their original reason for being there.

  "Look," the commander said, pointing up at the ceiling in the center of the room.

  There, in the middle of the nearest arched portion of the ceiling, about ten feet above, two faces stared toward each other. A narrow chandelier hung from the center, and it was the same on the other end near the desk. The two deities were painted in white and surrounded by olive-green wreaths that matched much of the ceiling's paint, and even the drapes at the window.

  "Apollo and Minerva," Tommy whispered.

  He stepped forward until he was directly under the first chandelier and gazed up at the two images.

  "This is where you'll find it," Adriana said. She'd inspected the room within seconds of entering. The wooden floor planks were arranged in an intricate design that looked like the great general was going for some kind of geometric feng shui. It reminded her of an Escher painting.

  An attendant was standing outside the room, watching the group as they looked around, taking in every detail.

  Sean noted the man's casual watch over the area and lowered his voice. "So, I don't know about you, Schultzie, but if I had to guess I'd say that all signs are pointing to that spot." Sean motioned with a tip of his head toward the center of the room where the table was positioned.

  "The table?" Tommy asked. It sounded like a dumb question when it came out of his mouth, but he couldn't stop it in time.

  "I doubt it's that," Sean said, glancing over his shoulder at the man standing guard. The guy clearly didn't care much about his job, which was something that Sean planned to use to their advantage.

  "So, under the table?" Tommy suggested, still dubious.

  "Yep."

  Tommy looked around again, panning the room for the same clue his friend must have found. Then it hit him. The four faces of the deities, the circle in the rug that seemed to be designed to flow into the center, the four chairs pointing toward the little table. Sean was right. Everything appeared to be directed toward the middle of the study.

  "You think whatever we're looking for is under the rug?"

  Sean nodded.

  Tommy leaned close. "How are we going to move the table and rug while that guy is standing at the doorway?"

  Sean was already thinking of that problem. "I have an idea," he said.

  Tommy's brow furrowed with concern. "Why do I have a feeling I'm not going to like this?"

  "Oh, not to worry, my worrisome compadre," Sean said, placing his hand on Tommy's shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze. "I think it's time our friend the commander made himself useful."

  Bodmer eyed the two suspiciously, only catching fragments of their conversation.

  "What?" the man asked.

  Sean simply offered a wry smile in reply.

  16

  PARIS

  The cab pulled into a spot along the curb, and the driver put the transmission into park. He looked around, hoping the lady in the red dress walking in his direction would be his next fare. For a moment, he let his eyes linger a little longer on her well-defined legs as she strolled by. The scarlet skirt fluttered in the wind and he forced himself to have at least a little respect, refocusing his gaze on the street and sidewalk ahead.

  He hung his elbow out of the open window and bit his thumbnail as he waited for another fare. It was a glorious day, one of the reasons he loved Paris in the summer. He wished he could cut out for the rest of the day and go play chess with his friend Pierre, but he knew that had to wait for another two hours. Chess would always be there. Money had to be made.

  He heard a rumble from behind and glanced in his rearview mirror. Two black motorcycles approached, their engines grumbling loudly as the two riders pulled into a tight spot behind the cab. There was barely enough room for the two bikes, and the cab driver wondered if he was going to be able to get out of his spot. He'd been careful to leave a little extra space between his front bumper and the car ahead of him, but even with that he wasn't certain he could clear the other vehicle.

  The two riders climbed off their bikes and stalked forward. The cab driver was glad. He fully intended to give them a piece of his mind or at the very least, ask them to park somewhere else or risk having their expensive motorcycles knocked over—not on purpose, of course.

  He leaned out of his window a little farther and looked back as one of the riders approached. For a second, he wondered where the other was until he heard something to his right and turned to see that she'd come up on the other side of his car.

  When he swiveled his head back around to the left, his eye came into contact with the end of a long, black cylinder with a hole in the end.

  Terror coursed through the driver. Who were these people? What did they want? Why were they pointing a gun at him?

  Back in his days in Turkey, he'd run a few drugs here and there to make some extra money, but he always promised himself that as soon as they had enough, he was going to move them out of Istanbul and start a new life, a legitimate one.

  Things hadn't gone as planned, but he managed to make it work.

  During those wild and dangerous times, he never once had a gun put to his head. No, he had to come to Paris and start driving a taxi for that to happen.

  "What do you want?" he asked nervously.

  "Where are they?" the gunman asked.

  "Where are who? Who are you talking about?" The man could feel his bladder unclenching slightly and he had to force himself to hold it tight. Why hadn't he gone to the loo after that last fare?

  "The group you just had in your car. Where are they? There were four of them."

  The driver couldn't place the man's accent. He thought maybe it was German, but it was difficult to say, especially disguised by the helmet. Neither rider gave anything away. They were covered head to toe, so making out any physical details, other than the fact that one was a man and one was a woman, was nearly impossible.

  "The…" Realization set in as he immediately understood what these two wanted. "The Americans?"

  "Yes. Where are they?" The gunman pressed the pistol's suppressor barrel harder into the man's skull.

  The driver managed to wiggle slightly, just enough so that the suppressor muzzle was no longer pressing into his eyeball. Still, it hurt with the hard metal digging into the bone of his eye socket.

  "I…I dropped them off at the Château de Malmaison."

  The tinted motorcycle helmet didn't move, as if the wearer didn't understand what the driver said or perhaps was processing the information.

  "What were they doing there?"

  The cabbie shook his head vigorously, causing the loose skin around his jaw and chin to shake back and forth. "They didn't say," he stammered. "I don't know. I swear. Please. Just let me go."

  "What were they looking for?" The gunman asked, pressing the barrel deeper into the cabbie's skin.

  "I just told you. I don't know. They just wanted a ride there. They didn't tell me anything. I swear it. Please. Don't kill me."

  The
gunman looked across the top of the minivan at the other rider, as though he was waiting for her command.

  She gave it with a simple shake of the head.

  The gunman nodded curtly and then leaned back. The woman glanced to her left then right then issued a single nod to the gunman.

  For a moment, the cabbie was awash with relief. Another close call in a lifetime of near misses. He was lucky. That much was true.

  Then the back quarter of his head exploded, accompanied by a quiet click from the pistol. The cab driver's body slumped over to the right and onto the center console. The killer quickly opened the door, rolled up the tinted windows, and switched off the light declaring he was open for business.

  He closed the door, leaving the dead man inside his vehicle and, satisfied that no one would notice unless they really looked, walked back to his bike and joined the woman.

  The two were gone within seconds, ghosts that people perhaps believed they'd seen but couldn't describe other than them having been on motorcycles.

  The murder had been executed perfectly; in broad daylight, on a usually busy city street, and no one had seen a thing—at least nothing they would recall. The two riders whipped their bikes around the nearest corner and disappeared from the crime scene. There was no telling how long they had until someone discovered the cabbie's body. It could be one minute or thirty, it was impossible to know. It didn't matter, the two killers would hide the bikes and their clothing and when they entered the Château de Malmaison, they would look just like another couple of tourists.

  They'd been delayed, but that would be remedied soon enough.

  17

  PARIS

  Bodmer doubled over and pretended to retch at the doorway of Napoléon's library. The man was hardly an actor, he'd never win an Academy Award, but the sound was realistic enough that the nonchalant attendant took notice with immediate concern.

  "Monsieur?" he said, rushing to Bodmer's aid. "Is everything all right?"

  Bodmer spoke fluent French, which was another reason he was the perfect candidate to be a decoy.

  "I…don't feel well," he said, stuttering through the declaration. "Where is your bathroom?"

  "Let me show you. Please, right this way."

  Sean knew where the restrooms were. He'd noted their location on the way in. Just like so many other things in his life others might think unusual, for him it was an old habit.

  When Bodmer and the attendant were gone, Sean scanned the room one more time to make sure there were no cameras. Just because he didn't see any didn't mean they weren't there.

  He took the phone out of his pocket and opened the camera. Tommy and Adriana did the same as the three positioned themselves around the circular table in the center of the room with their backs to each other.

  Each of them held out their phones as if about to take a picture.

  "Ready?" Sean asked, checking the other two over his shoulder.

  "Yep," Tommy said.

  "Ready," Adriana added.

  "Go."

  The three pressed the buttons on their phones, and all three devices emitted a sequence of bright flashes, ending with a more pronounced and brighter flash.

  "Okay, now," Sean said.

  The three spun around. Tommy grabbed the table and pulled it back toward the desk while Sean and Adriana rolled back the carpet. Tommy stepped out of the way as the other two moved past him. He took the flashlight on his phone and held it up, shining the bright light around the room as he spun in a circle, once more sending a blinding beam into any potential camera lenses.

  The initial flash should have incapacitated any recording devices for a few seconds, but they would need to keep hitting them if they were, indeed, there.

  Sean and Adriana stopped rolling the rug and stared down at the floor. It was astounding to discover something that they assumed hadn't been seen in two hundred years.

  Sean stepped away from the middle and looked at the image carved into the floor. His eyes were narrow as opposed to Tommy's wide-eyed reaction.

  There, carved expertly and intricately into the floorboards, was a rose.

  The flower was only a couple of feet in diameter; three at the most. At first glance, the rose appeared to be nothing more than a decoration, one last tribute to the general's love—his ex-wife. As Sean got down on one knee to have a closer look, however, he realized that there was more to this symbol than he first thought.

  He stood quickly and strode around the room, looking for any other signs of a camera. It was the second time he'd swept the space and, convinced there weren't any electronic devices—aside from their phones—he told Tommy to stand down with the flashlight.

  "I guess that whole exercise was one of futility."

  "Shut up and help me lift this," Sean said, trying to work his fingernails into the nearly invisible seam between the rose's wooden disk and the rest of the floor.

  "Can I get a please?" Tommy joked. Then he caught a flash of irritation in his friend's eyes and apologized. "Right. The attendant will be back any second. My bad."

  Tommy got down on the floor and started working his fingernails in the same way Sean was doing, but both were futile. The narrow seam was too tight, nearly a perfect fit.

  "We need a tool or something," Sean realized.

  "Like this?" Adriana stepped closer and knelt down beside him. She held up one of the tools from her lock-picking kit that was almost always on her person. This particular tool was a thin metal shiv with a small hook on the end. It wasn't a tool Sean had seen before, though his experience with lock-picking utensils was sparse.

  She stuck the thin object into the seam and then tilted it back like a lever. She pried hard and the other two thought that the metal tool was going to snap in half. It held firm, though, and gradually, the disc slid up.

  When there was more than an inch to grab, Sean pressed his thumb to the edge and pulled up, keeping constant pressure on the side of the disk to make sure it didn't fall back down into place.

  Tommy joined in when he had a surface area to work with, and within a minute the rose disk popped free of the floor.

  All three of them stared into the cavity and marveled at the wooden box within.

  The object was stained the same color as everything else in Napoléon's library: dark cherry. Just like on the surface of the disk, a rose was carved into the lid of the little box.

  Sean stopped wasting time and bent down. He removed the box with the greatest of care, putting his hands under each end as he lifted it gently from the hole. It was lightweight and only about the length of his forearm, and maybe four or five inches wide.

  Sean set the box down on the floor and looked back to the doorway. The attendant would return any second. Bodmer could only keep the man at bay for so long. Sean was surprised the commander had been able to delay the guy's return for this long.

  He gave a quick once-over to the container, making sure it wasn't rigged to damage whatever was inside—or his fingers. Then he pulled up a golden latch and pried the lid open.

  Inside was a piece of parchment rolled up into a scroll. The document was nearly the length of the box. Sean glanced at Tommy. "You don't happen to have any gloves, do you?"

  Tommy arched one eyebrow suspiciously, then shook his head. "Yeah, they're right here in my back pocket."

  "You don't have to be a jerk. Besides, I thought you would be irritated if I just picked up the paper."

  The two caught movement in front of them and saw Adriana lift the document from the wooden box.

  "Would you two shut up and stop screwing around," she hissed.

  They watched with mouths agape and eyes wide as she unrolled the parchment and stared at the surface. The two men scooted toward her and looked over her shoulders at the faded ink on the page.

  "That's…" Sean didn't know what to say.

  "Strange?" Tommy finished.

  "Yeah."

  There was only one sentence on the parchment, written in dramatic cursive, as wa
s common in Napoléon’s time.

  "May their victory stand eternal, heroes of the Empire." Adriana read the line out loud.

  "Victory stand eternal?" Sean muttered. "Whose victory?"

  Their eyes fell to the letters at the bottom of the page. They were nonsensical, jumbled, and without meaning.

  DLOWONOG

  "Any idea what that means?" Sean asked the other two.

  "Nope," Tommy said. "Although, notice how the letter O is spaced evenly."

  Sean had noticed that, but he'd blown it off as having no meaning. "Yeah, but there are two consonants before the first one and only one after the last."

  "It's a puzzle," Adriana said. "Like in the newspaper."

  The other two looked at her with disbelief.

  "What?" Tommy sounded incredulous. It couldn't be that simple. Could it? He'd seen ciphers, puzzles, and riddles that could bend the minds of some of the best code breakers, archaeologists, and treasure hunters in the world. Perhaps, in this instance, all that experience from the past, all the complex clues he'd unraveled, were causing him to over think this. After all, there have been many instances where the simple solution was usually the right one. Occam's razor, it seemed, had been applied here.

  "So, you think it might be a word scramble?" Sean asked.

  She nodded. "We just have to think of what word would be related to Napoléon and contain these eight letters." Her smooth tone mixed with the Spanish accent was aural caramel in Sean's ears and he caught himself staring at her for moment with complete admiration.

  "What?" she asked, catching him in mid-stare.

  "Nothing," he shook off his daze quickly. "Just a nice view. That's all."

  Tommy rolled his eyes. "Okay, can we please get back to solving this riddle? Pretty sure the guy who was guarding this place will be back—"

  "Soon?" A new voice cut in from the doorway.

  The trio raised their heads in unison and stared at the entrance. The attendant was standing there with his arms crossed and a bewildered expression on his face. Bodmer was behind him, looking disappointed and irritated all at once.