by Alex Archer
“Hurry.”
With deliberation, Annja trailed her fingers over the obelisk. Some of the stones seemed more deeply set than others. “If the treasure is still here, Dutilleaux might have set a trap. You might want to consider that.”
“There is also the chance that someone heard the gunshots in this tunnel. If someone else arrives, I will have you and your friends killed at once.”
Annja considered the problem and tried to put herself into Dutilleaux’s mind.
“He was an illusionist, Annja,” Edmund said quietly. “Whatever Dutilleaux hid, it wouldn’t be in plain sight.”
The warrior guarding Edmund chopped him in the throat with the edge of his hand. Gasping and coughing, Edmund dropped to his knees. Annja started toward him, but two warriors intercepted her.
Puyi-Jin glared at her. “Find the treasure. You are running out of time.”
Annja turned back to the column. Edmund was right. Dutilleaux wouldn’t have hidden the treasure in such an obvious spot.
She glanced around the room again, taking in everything. It would have to be something Tsai Chien-Fu would know to look for in case something happened to Dutilleaux.
Her gaze settled on one of the piles of bones across the room. For the first time, she saw the pattern in the lower left corner of the stack. Skulls had been placed there in front of the bones but tucked back so they matched the bones.
Eight of the skulls sat in a horizontal row. Under the second, fourth and sixth skulls stood three skulls, two skulls and three skulls. There were eight skulls across and an aggregate of eight skulls piled under those in vertical columns.
Annja knew then where the hiding place was, and that the obelisk was a trap. Glancing up, she again noticed how the obelisk touched the ceiling, and the way the ceiling curved over the front door.
She looked at Puyi-Jin. “I know where the treasure is.”
“Then reveal it.”
“It’s a magic trick. Have you heard of the disappearing woman?”
Puyi-Jin shook his head irritably. “Show me the treasure.”
Annja glanced at Edmund and Fiona. “The disappearing-woman trick works like this—a woman lays on a table and a cloth is dropped over her. The audience doesn’t realize that the cloth has an internal wire structure that blends to the woman’s body, then collapses when the magician yanks away the cloth.” She turned to Puyi-Jin. “For all intents and purposes, the woman vanishes.”
“Now, Miss Creed, or the man dies.”
Hoping that Edmund and Fiona had understood her warning, Annja turned back to the obelisk. She grabbed one of the carved stones on the column and pulled.
40
For a moment, the carved stone Annja pulled on held. Then it grudgingly came away from the obelisk. It wasn’t just a stone, though. The carved rock had been attached to a three-foot-long iron rod that was pitted with orange rust.
Something shifted inside the obelisk.
Behind Annja, Fiona said one word. “Jenga.”
Annja nodded. “Exactly.” She searched for another stone to remove. Evidently Dutilleaux had hoped his ostentatious structure would draw the attention of anyone who didn’t know the room’s secret. At least Fiona knew what was going on and what would probably happen.
“Shut up.” Puyi-Jin stepped forward with a small automatic in his hand. He pointed the gun at Annja’s head. “No more talking.”
Annja grabbed another stone and pulled. The obelisk moved again, and this time a tremor ran up to the ceiling. Puyi-Jin and his warriors stared around the chamber, trying to fathom what was going on.
Ignoring them, Annja grabbed another stone and pulled another rod from the obelisk. This time when the grinding inside the obelisk started, it didn’t abate. The sound continued to escalate in the space of a heartbeat and became a thunderous ripple of cracking that filled the chamber.
The mortised area over the door that concealed the counterweight shattered and a rock slide poured out of the opening. Fiona broke free and grabbed Edmund by the shoulder, yanking the professor back as the avalanche toppled from the ceiling. She forced him against the wall. With all the dust rising up from the rock slide, Annja quickly lost sight of them, but she believed they’d managed to avoid the brunt of the falling rock.
Throwing herself forward, Annja dived clear of the obelisk as it came apart in a cascade of tumbling rock. Puyi-Jin had time to shout, then he was knocked down by the falling stone. Dust plumed up and the lantern’s light hit the cloud of particulates and filled the chamber with a milky-gray fog. The light-reflecting properties of the gypsum dust was almost as bad as the dark. Through the haze, Annja could only see vague images of the others.
She rolled to her feet in a squat, her left hand before her for support. With her right, she reached for the sword and pulled it into the chamber.
One of the black-clad warriors came at her from out of the dust. He had his pistol pointed in front of him and started firing immediately. Bullets struck the stone floor where Annja had been, but she was already running toward the man, angling for his right side. He wheeled and tried to come around, his pistol still jumping in his fist.
Annja swung the sword and the blade passed above the man’s outstretched arms and through his neck. The man’s head toppled down one shoulder and the body slid to the floor. Choking on the dust, her eyes watering, Annja got her bearings and headed back across the pile of rubble that had dropped where the obelisk had been. She searched desperately for Fiona and Edmund.
The column was now just debris covering the floor. The carved rocks were mixed in with the rough stones. A warrior tried to push himself up. Blood covered his face, but he freed his machine pistol.
Without breaking stride, Annja kicked the man in the head and he fell back, unconscious. Another warrior came out of the dust at her with his machine pistol chugging. Knowing she couldn’t throw herself across the rock-covered floor without sustaining injury and that she had no hope of sliding away, Annja leaped up as hard as she could, trusting her enhanced speed and strength to get her clear.
She flipped over the man and came down on her feet behind him. Reversing the sword, she thrust the blade behind her and felt the point crunch through the man’s chest. The resistance gave way at the last and she knew she’d pierced him through.
Spinning around, she put a foot into the man’s back and kicked him off the blade. Her breath came in hoarse rasps as the dust coated her mouth and throat. She searched for more opponents, remembering where they’d been before the rock had knocked them all down. Five were left. And Puyi-Jin.
Frantic, Annja raced toward the wall near the door. She’d last seen Fiona and Edmund there. The rubble appeared to thin. The swirling shadows created by the multiple lanterns caused even more confusion. She caught sight of a gunner slightly behind her in her peripheral vision. Planting a bare foot, feeling the sharp stone bite into her flesh, she pushed herself sideways as bullets split the air where her head had been.
Annja went into a low crouch and spun to face her attacker. He was ten feet away and content to keep his distance advantage. She watched him, hoping that she would know which way to move before he started firing again.
Harsh gunshots thundered through the chamber.
Confused, certain that she’d seen no muzzle flashes, convinced that the man would not have missed her at that distance, Annja watched the man fall back limply as his face came apart.
At Annja’s side, Fiona stepped out of the swirling dust holding a machine pistol in her hands. “How many?”
“I’ve put down three.”
Fiona nodded grimly. “Then we’re up to five. When I liberated this weapon, I killed the man holding on to it with his knife.”
Annja stood. The dust was still too thick for her to see far in any direction. Her eyes ached and burned and required constant wiping to clear the dust.
“Where’s Edmund?”
“He’s fine. I left him by the wall.” Fiona strode to the left, circling the
biggest section of the fallen rock. Puyi-Jin and his warriors had been struck by most of it.
“Annja! Look out!”
Whirling at the sound of Edmund’s voice, Annja tried to bring the sword around, but the man who had risen behind her was too far ahead. He shoved his pistol muzzle toward her face and pulled the trigger.
Annja dropped in a loose sprawl, falling on top of the rock and below the pistol. Three shots thundered, and the muzzle flashed over her head. Lying on her side, she swept her right leg forward and knocked the man’s feet out from under him. The warrior went down as more gunshots rang out from Fiona’s position.
The warrior landed on his back and struggled to get up. Annja rolled over on her side, rose to her knees and grabbed the man’s gun wrist in her left hand. The sword couldn’t be effectively used in such close quarters. She released it and it promptly vanished. Surging forward, she caught the warrior’s face in her palm and banged his head off the stones until she felt him go limp beneath her.
Annja picked up her attacker’s gun and threw it aside. She didn’t want to risk ricochets inside the chamber. No one else involved in the firefight seemed to worry about that. She reached for the sword, found it and walked forward.
A shape stood about fifteen feet in front of her. Annja wasn’t sure if it was just a trick of the gypsum fog or if it was Fiona. Almost too late, the fog thinned and she recognized Puyi-Jin. Evidently he’d been waiting for his vision to clear, as well.
He pointed his pistol at her.
Reversing her grip on the sword as it hung at her side, Annja rocked her body forward and threw the blade underhanded, then raced toward Puyi-Jin. Even if the sword didn’t hit him, she hoped that it would be enough of a distraction to cause him to miss.
Instead, though, the sword sailed true and sank into the Asian warlord’s chest just below his heart. He looked down at the sword that transfixed him. Stubbornly, he tried to aim the pistol again, but the weapon dropped from his nerveless fingers. He sank to his knees and started to fall forward.
Annja reached for the sword and it disappeared from Puyi-Jin’s chest and was once more in her grasp.
“How did you do that?” Edmund said from a few feet away as he stared at the sword.
Annja grinned. “Magic.” She searched for Fiona, who was trudging across the rubble.
Fiona glanced down at Puyi-Jin. “That will be the lot of them.”
“What about Laframboise?”
“I’m pretty sure he’s dead. Puyi-Jin and his people were thorough about wiping them out.” Fiona gazed around the room.
Most of the dust had settled and less than half of the lanterns had been broken so there was still plenty of light.
Fiona wiped blood from her face. “So this is it, then? There is no treasure?”
“We’ll have to see.” Annja walked over to the wall of bones. “The obelisk wasn’t Dutilleaux’s hiding place. That was only window dressing.”
“And a rather nasty trap.”
“Yes.” Annja looked at Fiona. “You don’t see the clue, do you?”
Fiona wiped grit from her eyes and looked at the wall of bones. “All I see are a lot of poor souls who ended up as landscape.”
Annja shifted her gaze to Edmund. “But you do, don’t you?”
Excitedly, Edmund nodded. “Dutilleaux marked his hiding place with a symbol that Tsai Chien-Fu would understand.” He approached the wall of bones and knelt in front of it. “The secret’s here. In these skulls.” He traced a line with his hand. “See? The long line of skulls here.”
“Eight of them.” Annja released the sword and knelt beside him.
“And three columns. Again, only using eight skulls.”
Fiona nodded in understanding. “The numeral eight in Suzhou. Very clever.”
“Unless it’s just an anomaly.”
“Surely you don’t believe that.”
Annja reached for a skull. “No, I don’t believe that.” She pulled the first skull away.
Edmund joined in the efforts and they quickly cleared the space of skulls and bones. Behind the bones sat a brass box. Annja leaned back and gestured to Edmund.
“Your lantern is what brought us here. The honor’s yours.”
Edmund shook his head. “I’d never have gotten this far without you.” He removed the brass box and set it before Annja. “You do it.”
Carefully, Annja opened the box and tilted it so the lanterns’ light better illuminated the contents. A jumble of gold coins, pearls and gems.
Reaching in, Annja plucked out the royal seal of the Qianlong Emperor. As she did, her fingers brushed against another hard surface in the pile of coins and gems. Digging through them, she found two books, one of them written in Chinese and the other a collection of sketches, but there was an English translation on the title pages.
Poems of the Qianlong Emperor and Sketches of the Qianlong Emperor.
Annja couldn’t believe what she was holding. She turned the pages reverently.
“What is it?” Fiona leaned in more closely.
“These books are supposed to have belonged to the Qianlong Emperor.” Annja studied the pictures of loons, petrels and pelicans. There were other birds she couldn’t recognize, and animals, as well, including tamarin, alligators and pandas. “If they are, if that can be verified, they’ll be worth a fortune.”
Fiona stood and looked around the room. “I think we need to be going. We should probably notify the Parisian police before they end up catching us down here, don’t you think?”
Annja nodded and closed the brass box. “I’ll need to get my backpack first. We don’t want to get those books wet.” She handed the box to Edmund. “Well, Professor Beswick, how does it feel to find your first treasure?”
Edmund’s eyes gleamed. “Like nothing I’ve ever felt before.” He shook his head. “But this isn’t the first time for you. I suppose after a while an experience like this loses its luster.”
Annja grinned. “Never.”
Epilogue
“So you’re back in London?” Roux sounded only vaguely interested.
Annja walked through the winding alley in the East End. It was two in the morning and darkness draped the buildings. Sorting out the discovery of the treasure and accounting for all the bodies in the catacombs had taken three days and a host of Fiona Pioche’s lawyers.
In the end, though, the law-enforcement agencies had cut them loose, but none of them had been happy about it, and Annja had gotten the distinct impression that her presence in Paris wouldn’t be appreciated anytime soon.
“I am back in London. And I’m looking for Mr. Hyde. Again.” Annja turned her collar up against the chill and watched a group of college-age men walking down the streets. Judging from the way they were walking, they’d been on a pub crawl.
“I read about the catacombs find.”
The story had made international news, and that was one of the things that had mollified Doug Morrell and the Chasing History’s Monsters production management. Doug was working on cobbling some of the story together for a feature. It wouldn’t be quite Mr. Hyde caliber, Doug had been quick to point out, but they were going to heavily work the Chinese curse angle. After all, a lot of people had ended up dead.
“Congratulations on your success.”
Annja smiled. Roux was digging for something. He’d pried himself away from a Texas Hold’em table long enough to make the call. She’d ignored it, then returned his call when she was ready. “Thank you. So how’s the table action?”
“I’m making my way. What is your professor going to do with his share of the treasure?”
“Need a backer for your gambling?”
Roux made a grunting noise.
In the end, Edmund hadn’t been able to hang on to the find. Tsai Chien-Fu had given his life in the hope that he would provide a better future for his family. Two hundred years later, Edmund felt that the original effort needed to be honored. He had returned the treasure to the Tsai family, but L
i Xiaoming had insisted that her good fortune be shared. She had given half of it to Edmund, Annja and Fiona.
“He doesn’t know what he’s going to do with the money yet. He gave the treasure to the Li family. He’s a good man.”
“If he invests it wisely, he wouldn’t have to work again. Neither would you.”
“I’m investing my share wisely.”
“How?”
“By leaving it with Fiona. She’s smart and capable, and I don’t like the idea of managing money. I never have. Mostly, I have what I need. I’d rather pile up experiences and memories than try to hang on to material things. Physical things just provide a lot of clutter.”
“You forget, I’ve seen your loft. You have boxes stacked everywhere.”
That was true, but most of the antiquities were there for classification and validation. Some of it she’d asked for to pursue her own studies. “Most of those artifacts go back as soon as I finish with them. I enjoy seeing them in museums when I get the chance.” It wasn’t often, but it was enough.
“As much as you have found over these past years, you could retire.”
“Not all of us can spend all of our days playing Texas Hold’em.” Annja knew that would never happen. As long as she was able to take up the chase, she wanted to be doing exactly what she was doing. Success wouldn’t change that. Financial gains weren’t what made her life good. It was the hunt, the challenge of the unknown and the friendships she made along the way.
Roux harrumphed. “There will come a time when you grow jaded.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Trust me.”
“If things do change, money will be there waiting for me. Besides, the way I live? I don’t think retirement is part of the package.”
“You shouldn’t talk like that.” Roux’s voice softened. “It’s depressing.”
“You know who else hasn’t lost that zest for life and become curmudgeonly?”
Roux didn’t reply.
“Fiona.” Annja kept walking, but she heard the echo of someone’s footsteps behind her. She turned at the next corner to put a streetlamp behind her. Long shadows of things behind her stretched across the cobblestones. “I’ve been with Fiona these past few days. She hasn’t changed. She still enjoys the danger and excitement. Probably more than I do. Or, at least, she’s more comfortable dealing with it.”