Magic Lantern (Rogue Angel)

by Alex Archer

  “Did they admit to that?”

  “Not even, but it cut some difference with them. Their resolve weakened. They’re certainly more receptive to the idea of putting me in touch with the purchaser.”

  Fiona spoke up from the other corner of the room. “Perhaps I can be of assistance.”

  Annja had almost forgotten about Fiona. She smiled. “Of course you can.”

  “I’ll put Ollie on it right now.” Fiona took out her sat-phone. “I’ll just need the particulars of that sale, if you please, Professor.”

  * * *

  WAITING FOR OLLIE’S IMMINENT success was hard. Annja occupied her time with her work. Chiefly, the Mr. Hyde investigation back in London. Detective Chief Inspector Westcox was the star of a half-dozen media interviews, four on television and two on radio, and he was collecting a lot of ink and rising in Google stats as more and more people wrote about the murders and speculated on the killer’s identity and continued interest. And the helplessness of the London Metro Police Department.

  Annja felt bad for the dead women. She looked at their faces and wished she hadn’t. The photographs revealed on the various websites were garish.

  You’re not a detective. She had to remind herself of that. You’re an archaeologist. There might be some overlap in skills, but you don’t have the resources of a police department. Westcox will find the murderer. He’s good at that sort of thing. If there was something in that investigation you could help with, you would.

  There were several emails from Doug, letting her know he was collecting the media reports for her, covering for her while she was off trying to find the magic lantern.

  Mr. Hyde continued to taunt the police. He’d written in twice more, claiming his victory, that they wouldn’t catch him and that he would kill again.

  Soon.

  Annja felt torn. She knew she wasn’t equipped to help out with the police investigation, but she still felt a need to be there. Despite her lack of police training, she’d gotten involved in the search for the killer and that chafed at her.

  “Why so pensive?”

  Startled, Annja looked up to see Fiona standing in the doorway. “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you come in.” The woman was developing an irksome habit of popping up without Annja knowing.

  “No wonder, what with the material you’re looking at.”

  Guiltily, Annja closed her computer down. “I shouldn’t be. Keeping up with all of that just makes me feel useless.”

  “Those murders aren’t something you can do anything about.”

  “I’ve been reminding myself of that.”

  Fiona regarded her. “But you feel guilty, anyway.”

  Annja hesitated and wanted to deny that, but she couldn’t. “Yes.”

  “Because of your involvement through the television show?”

  After everything she’d seen Fiona do in the past two days, Annja wasn’t surprised the woman knew about her Mr. Hyde investigation for Chasing History’s Monsters even though it hadn’t been mentioned. “Yes.”

  For a moment, Fiona was silent. “Have you always been so aware of this need to feel responsible for people?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Most individuals wouldn’t take on the responsibilities that you shoulder, Annja. If they’d met someone like Edmund Beswick, they would have felt badly for him and wished him well, maybe drop a donation into a bucket, but that sense of responsibility would have ended there.”

  Annja hadn’t thought about that. “Maybe.”

  “There’s no maybe to it.” Fiona’s voice was soft. “You stepped right into the young professor’s battle without an instant’s hesitation.”

  “Seems to me you did the same thing.”

  Fiona arched her brows. “The pot calling the kettle black?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Not so. I took you on at the express request of an old friend. You didn’t even know the professor, except for a few phone calls and a couple meetings.” Fiona shook her head. “Not the same thing at all. Furthermore, I’m in the business of dealing with other people’s troubles. You are an archaeologist.”

  “And a television personality.” Annja smiled.

  “I rather think you happened into that one and are using it to your own ends. I don’t believe for an instant that being a television personality was ever an ambition of yours.”

  Annja couldn’t disagree.

  “What I have to wonder, though, and I am concerned, is how much that sword influences your sense of judgment.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m thinking perhaps it pushes you in the direction of helping others rather more than you would if left to your own devices.”

  “Couldn’t I just be a good person?”

  “I wouldn’t think you could be anything else.” Fiona was silent for a moment. “But I saw you with that sword up on the rooftop. It was like…like you and that sword know each other. As if you’re in a relationship.”

  Annja would never have considered using those words.

  “I know about the troubled things that Roux searches out. I know how bad they can be for people, and the horrible things that some of them can do.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  “Then you’re fortunate.” Fiona shivered. “My point is that perhaps that sword might carry some trouble with it, as well.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “I didn’t think you would, but I wanted you to at least consider the possibility. The things you do, Annja, the bad situations you’re drawn into, they may be brought on by that sword. It may well be that the sword doesn’t push you toward these troubles, but perhaps it draws them to you.”

  Annja took a deep breath. “I’ve thought about that, Fiona. But I’m more of the opinion that—if anything—the sword lets me see the bad things that are happening. There’s no forced involvement. The choice is mine.”

  “I hope that’s true.”

  “Let me ask you a question.”

  “Of course.”

  “You searched for the sword with Roux, even found a few of the pieces.”

  “That’s not a question, and you already know that I did.”

  “Here’s my question—how do you know that the search you went on with Roux, that the contact you had with those sword fragments you helped him find, didn’t somehow influence you and what you’re choosing to do?”

  Fiona held Annja’s gaze, then smiled uneasily. “That sword was put here to change the life of one young woman.”

  “I’ve met several people whose lives have been changed because I was able to help them.”

  “Touché.”

  Annja smiled. “Did you just come up here to offer advice?”

  “To pry, you mean?”

  “If I thought you were prying, you wouldn’t have gotten a word out of me. I was raised by nuns. I know how to keep my mouth shut, and when to shut it and disavow all knowledge of anything.”

  Fiona laughed. “You are a treat, Annja. I can see why Roux is drawn to you.”

  “I don’t think drawn is the word he would use. The last conversation I had with him? I called him an asshat.”

  Fiona laughed. “I wish I had been there.”

  “I had to explain the term to him. That kind of took some of the sting out of it.”

  “No worries. I’m sure Roux was still considerably stung.”

  “I hope so.” Annja sighed. “Roux can be a real jerk sometimes.”

  “Yes, he can. He is only a man, after all, and proof that even if a man lives five hundred years—or more—he is limited in what he can learn.” Fiona shook her head. “I came up here to let you know Ollie has located the missing diary.”

  33

  Night had fallen over Paris. The glow of the City of Lights pulsed against the windows of the flat as Annja took a seat on the couch beside Edmund. She hadn’t realized how late it had become.

  Fiona sat on the other side of Edmund. T
he professor’s computer was open on the coffee table, displaying Ollie Wemyss, as immaculate and unflappable as ever, center stage in Fiona’s office back in London. The view showed him from the waist up, and Annja was certain the man had staged it.

  “Good evening, Ms. Creed.”

  “Hello, Ollie.”

  “As I was telling Ms. Pioche and Professor Beswick, I have had a bit of luck locating the contents of the diary you people are looking for.”

  “Wait.” Annja held up a hand. “The contents of the diary?”

  A small frown turned down the corners of Ollie’s mouth. “Yes, you see, there was a problem with the diary. At about the time Professor Beswick went missing and Laframboise’s people were breaking into his storage unit—with Puyi-Jin’s people vectoring in at that moment as well, all very exciting—the purchaser of the diary had her house burgled. The diary appears to have been the target of the invasion.”

  “Was the woman harmed?”

  “No. Fortunately she was out of the house when the theft occurred.”

  “Then how did you end up with the contents?”

  “Ms. Creed, when you’re about to deliver a lecture, do you allow the audience to pester you with questions—which you plan to answer in their proper due course—at the outset?”

  Chagrined, Annja restrained her curiosity. “I apologize.”

  “We’ll have time for the Q and A afterward.” Ollie smiled. “As I said, the original document was lost. Whatever secrets might be in the architecture of the book itself, I’m afraid, are beyond us at this point. Though, I am told, the new owner had checked the volume quite thoroughly.”

  Annja curbed her impulse to point out that a hidden message could have been contained in the weave of the material comprising the cover, or that there could have been bumps or irregularities, or any of a dozen different things. If Ollie knew about such things, and she was almost certain he did, then he knew what they had lost. And if he didn’t know for a fact, he was too clever not to realize that a facsimile wasn’t as good as the original document.

  It was gone. They had to concentrate on what crumbs they had left.

  “Mrs. Rollison—quite an invigorating old bird, and I use that as a term of endearment—took it upon herself to photocopy all of the pages. She found me absolutely charming when I presented myself on her doorstep and asked after the diary.”

  Annja made herself be calm, but she was exploding with questions.

  “I had to endure a lot of cheek pinching, but I persuaded her to part with a copy of her computer file. I’m sending it along now through the FTP site Professor Beswick has accessed. Since Mrs. Rollison is quite the expert in Chinese written language across the ages, and a suitable person will take some time to locate even with my connections, I also got her to share her partial translation with us. She’s still working on the document.”

  Fiona interrupted at that. “Even though you’re quite taken with Mrs. Rollison and her translation abilities, I’d like to have the translation double-checked.”

  Ollie put a hand over his heart as though wounded. “Seriously, Ms. Pioche?”

  Fiona sighed. “Sometimes, Ollie, dear though you are to me, you are insufferable.”

  “How very magnanimous and eloquent of you. I’ve currently got the document with two other learned souls who shall get back to me forthwith because I bribed them heavily with your money. Since you’re a woman of means, I saw no reason not to get the best available.”

  “I trust they’re working independently, as well?”

  “Definitely.”

  “How long will their translations take?”

  “Days, I’m afraid. But since time is of the essence, I asked them to work the diary backward, believing that the last entries would be the most beneficial.”

  “Thank you, Ollie.”

  Ollie gestured broadly. “I live only to serve, Ms. Pioche.” He smiled. “From the pages Mrs. Rollison has translated, the diary belonged to a man named Tsai Chien-Fu. At the time of the writing, he was a Chinese official working with the Shanghai banks in the late 1790s.”

  Excitement flared through Annja and she couldn’t help grinning.

  Edmund was smiling, too. “Looks like we’re back in the race.”

  “I don’t want to dim your spirits, but I would like to put things in perspective for you.” Ollie looked serious. “Mrs. Rollison has been quite diligent in her translation, and I gave it a read-through as I was preparing it to send to you. There is no mention of a treasure. Tsai Chien-Fu appears to have been a very thorough Chinese bureaucrat working for the emperor. And quite boring.”

  Fiona waved that away. “But is there any mention of Anton Dutilleaux?”

  “As it turns out, Ms. Pioche, there is. Tsai Chien-Fu worked with Anton Dutilleaux.”

  * * *

  FOR OVER AN HOUR, EDMUND’S computer downloaded the graphic-intensive files through the server. As each page of the diary came through, he printed it out and sent it to Annja’s computer so they could all look at the work being done.

  Most of the reading was dry material. Tsai Chien-Fu wrote mostly about the day-to-day business of Shanghai banking as he learned it. He was fastidious about his recollections of the people he met and the transactions that were made.

  “Typical bureaucratic documentation.” Sitting at the table, Fiona leafed through the pages of translation she’d been passed.

  “The Qianlong Emperor wasn’t known as a generous person and was very conservative.” Annja kept her focus on the images on her computer, blowing up the characters and searching for hidden meanings. It was mostly wasted effort on her part, though, because she couldn’t read Chinese and only had the barest acquaintance with the characters. “He abdicated the throne in favor of his son, the Jiaqing Emperor, so he wouldn’t rule longer than his grandfather, the Kangxi Emperor. That didn’t really matter, though, because he ruled his son, anyway, until his death three years later.”

  Edmund stared at her. “No one plays Trivial Pursuit with you, do they?”

  “I knew Dutilleaux was there during the Qianlong Emperor’s reign. I read up on the history.” Annja turned her attention back to the documents. “The point is that Tsai had every reason to make sure he had a separate record of what he was doing. In case the emperor’s accountants took his books.”

  “This isn’t going to help us much.”

  Fiona held up a printout. “Tsai seemed quite enamored of Dutilleaux, though.”

  Annja looked at the paper. “When’s that from?”

  “October 22, 1790. This details how the two of them met.”

  Edmund consulted a small notepad. “Dutilleaux was in Shanghai from 1786 to 1792. He went to work at the Shanghai bank in 1790.”

  Annja thought about that. “So the two of them met in 1790, and two years later, Dutilleaux left. Did he have another job offer?”

  “No. He returned to Paris and began his career in magic.”

  “He didn’t have much time to work on it.”

  “On the contrary, Dutilleaux was a magician before he went over to Shanghai. He just didn’t have his act together. Before then, he’d toured the small Parisian theaters but didn’t have much success. He took the accounting job in Shanghai to avoid debtors’ prison. Over the next few years, he was able to pay off his creditors and sharpen his craft.”

  Fiona sipped her tea. “Tsai was quite impressed with Dutilleaux’s sleight of hand. In some of these references, Tsai calls Dutilleaux ‘Xian.’”

  That caught Annja’s attention. “I don’t know enough Chinese to do much more than survive in the country, but that’s a word I know. The literal translation is magician. Or wizard or shaman. Among other things. But if Tsai was calling Dutilleaux that, I’d be willing to assume that’s why he did.”

  Tilting the paper, Fiona started searching. “All right, if we now know that Xian was a pet name for Dutilleaux, then this later part makes more sense.” She handed papers over to Annja. “In this section, Tsai refers to pu
tting all his hope into the Xian.”

  “The translator could have inferred the article. Tsai might have been referring to Dutilleaux.” Annja leaned over to more closely examine the paper. It didn’t do any good. She still didn’t have enough of a command of the language to make a difference.

  Fiona looked at Edmund. “Do you know when Dutilleaux left Shanghai to return to Paris?”

  Edmund consulted his notes. “July 15.”

  Nodding, Fiona smiled. “On this page, Tsai talks about how the Xian carried all the seeds of his family’s future to more fertile pastures. This is dated July 15, and if memory serves me correctly, that corresponds with the Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival, the traditional day the deceased are believed to visit the living. By all accounts, a most singular day.”

  Edmund looked hopeful. “Then perhaps there’s reason to believe that Dutilleaux stole nothing. Whatever treasure he was carrying was something he got from Tsai.”

  “There’s still the question of what happened to Tsai.” Fiona returned to the printouts. “Tsai’s diary goes on for five more weeks, then stops abruptly. The last few entries are filled with his concern that the emperor’s men have discovered what he has done, and that they are going to kill him. He goes on to say that they didn’t know Xian was already gone.” She looked up at Annja. “You said that some of the information you had dug up indicated the Qianlong Emperor’s men were searching for Dutilleaux?”

  “Yes.” Annja pulled up the information and scanned it. “According to this, there was a theft from the royal treasury. Several bank employees were executed.”

  “Was Tsai one of them?”

  Annja shook her head. “The information doesn’t say. But the time frame appears right. Sometime in the early days of September.” She took a deep breath. “We need to find out what happened to Tsai Chien-Fu.”

  Fiona’s phone rang and she answered it. She talked briefly to Ollie, then took down a URL. When she was finished, she thanked her major-domo and passed the slip of paper to Annja.