The Bonaparte Secret

by Gregg Loomis

  “Mommy, will Vati be at the farm?”

  And the truck. It would be reported stolen. But with this weather and in the winter, she guessed later rather than sooner. She wondered if the farm’s pond was deep enough to conceal it.

  “Mommy, why did we leave the Hummer?”

  Manfred, like most small children, tended to ask questions not so much out of curiosity as for attention. For once, Gurt found them comforting. They kept her from thinking about what could have happened.

  The Sorbonne

  One of the two men in the doorway gestured with his weapon, speaking French to the professor. His harsh tone gave a sharp edge to words Lang did not understand. D’Tasse’s eyes went to the manuscript he had just shown Lang.

  The first man saw the glance and stepped forward to reach for it. Whoever these people were, they apparently kept up with articles in American University & College Review.

  D’Tasse snatched the papers up, holding them out of the man’s reach. The academic “duty” he had described included resisting armed robbers? Pompous or not, the little man had guts.

  The first man spoke to the second in another language, one Lang thought might be Chinese.

  Motioning Lang away from the door, the second man went to help his comrade, obviously thinking Lang presented no clear threat.

  That told Lang two things. First, neither was the same man who had tried to firebomb the house in Atlanta. That man would know what Lang looked like from observing before he struck. Second, there had been a real failure to communicate by the People’s Republic. These would-be thieves of academic treasure, if they were even aware of the problems Lang had caused, had not expected him here.

  The first man grabbed D’Tasse by the turtleneck, the collar of his overcoat falling away. Lang was not surprised to see he was, in fact, an Asian. So was the other.

  As the first man used the hand not holding the gun to drag the diminutive professor across the desk by his shirt, the other tugged on the papers D’Tasse had clinched in his fist. Lang felt powerless. If he attacked either one of the assailants, he or D’Tasse or both were likely to get shot. If he pulled out the Browning, gunfire would follow, with the same result.

  Before he could decide on a course of action, the decision was taken out of his hands. With the sound of ripping fabric, D’Tasse’s shirt tore, the inertia of his resistence sending him backward and into the bookcase behind the desk. With a crash, the bookcase slammed forward, showering D’Tasse as well as the other two men in a paper avalanche.

  In an instant, the Browning was in Lang’s hand. A single step brought him next to one gunman still struggling to free his feet from the pile of books. Lifting his pistol above his head, Lang brought the barrel down sharply on the gunman’s wrist.

  The crunch of shattered bone merged with a howl of pain as the man’s weapon hit the floor and spun across the room.

  Lang whirled to face the second man, whose gun was already coming to bear. Lang squeezed off a shot, the sound physically assaulting his ears in the confines of the small office. His target staggered toward the door as a red splotch grew on his light-colored overcoat. His weapon dangled from his hand as though forgotten. Then he turned, raising it. Before Lang could fire a second time, the man’s knees gave way and he sunk to the floor and lay still.

  D’Tasse yelled something, pointing. Lang turned just in time to see the other man sprint through the doorway, one hand holding both the smashed wrist of the other and the manuscript. Go after him? What was the point? What would he do even if he caught him? Besides, there was the possibility these two intruders had left backup outside.

  “My article!” D’Tasse shrieked. “Do not let him get away with it!”

  Lang holstered the Browning. “He only has the English copy. What’s the problem? I doubt he’ll have much luck selling it to Playboy.”

  “It is my intellectual property,” the professor said huffily. “Allowing it to get into other hands almost guarantees it will be pirated.”

  A man is possibly dead, another crippled, a second ago you were staring down the muzzle of a gun and you can only think about a few pages of paper being stolen?

  By now, D’Tasse had a cell phone in his hand, talking—no, shouting—into it. It was more than an even bet he had not called a friend to describe his good fortune in still being alive. Lang guessed the police would arrive shortly.

  The stinking cordite fumes were bringing tears to Lang’s eyes, a man was bleeding on the floor, the office was a wreck and it was definitely time to take his leave unless he wanted to spend the rest of his time in Paris answering questions in whatever the current version of the Bastille might be. D’Tasse was so intent on yelling into his phone, he did not notice when Lang slipped one of the French copies of the manuscript into a pocket as he shrugged into his coat. Lang cautiously peeked out into what proved to be an empty corridor. The professor was so intent on making sure the police knew what had happened even before their arrival, Lang doubted he even noticed his departure.

  On the first floor, Lang proceeded to a door with wc stenciled on it under the standard figure of a man. Inside, he took a stall and removed the Browning from its holster, transferring it to the pocket of his Burberry. If he had to use it, he was not going to have time to remove his overcoat.

  He had not gone two blocks before a white police car wailed past, blue light flashing, in the opposite direction, followed only moments later by two more. A half block farther, half a dozen police carrying automatic weapons were walking up the hill, checking out every business as they came. A quick glance told him he was the only pedestrian in sight. Had the professor given a description of him?

  Abruptly turning in the opposite direction would attract attention. Lang spied one of those street flower vendors common in European cities in the summer. Where this one had obtained her inventory this time of year was a mystery, perhaps North Africa. But the flowers’ source was not what interested Lang. To the flower seller’s surprise and delight, Lang purchased the first dozen roses he saw, paying full price without the haggling that takes place with those who do business on the streets.

  Just as a pair of cops reached him, Lang continued the way he had been going, roses in hand. He drew no more than a cursory glance. A man carrying a handful of flowers along a Paris street was hardly a man escaping from just shooting and possibly killing someone. He was a man on his way home to please his wife. Or more likely at this time of day, his mistress.

  24H rue Norvins, Montmartre, Paris

  That evening

  Lang remembered Patrick’s third-story walk-up flat. On the city’s tallest hill, it was equidistant from Paris’s last vineyard, also on the hillside, and Sacré-Coeur, with its odd, ovoid domes. The church, built in the late nineteenth century with private funds, was visible from nearly anywhere in the city.

  Montmartre had been a center for Paris’s artistic community for two hundred years. Géricault and Corot had painted here at the beginning of the nineteenth century. On any day it was not raining, almost every corner had its impromptu gallery displaying everything from copies of old masters to photographically real scenes from the city to contemporary blobs of undecipherable meaning.

  Patrick’s wife, Nanette, had chosen the area, Lang suspected, with her husband’s less-than-enthusiastic agreement. An artist herself, she had spent her earlier years here before her talent brought her to the attention of one of France’s largest advertising firms, where she had put her ability to work in a commercially successful if less-inspiring career.

  Since French law strictly mandated a thirty-five-hour-maximum workweek and four weeks minimum vacation, she still had ample time to paint, as evidenced by the artwork decorating the walls of the apartment. She embraced Lang at the door, thanked him profusely for the dozen red roses and insisted on opening a bottle of reasonably good champagne in his honor.

  Lang watched her pour two flutes. She was almost as tall as Gurt, slender with a face slightly too narrow, a feature em
phasized by shoulder-length dark hair that he knew she wore in a chignon with dark business suits for work.

  Stem glass in hand, Lang inspected the paintings that covered every available bit of wall space, murmuring appreciation of each. As usual, he silently marveled at the ability of Europeans, particularly those dwelling in large cities, to live in spaces Americans would consider claustrophobic. Two small bedrooms and a single closet of a bath opened off of a living room/dining area of less than three hundred square feet. Standing at the stove, no part of the kitchen was out of reach. Yet Nanette, Patrick and their son, Gulliam, seemed quite comfortable.

  Gulliam. The boy would be about the same age as Lang’s nephew, Jeff, had he not . . .

  Don’t go there. You have a son, a wife and life is good.

  “Patrick will be late,” Nanette announced in flawless English. “Something to do with a shooting at the Sorbonne. A refill?”

  Lang held out his glass, saying nothing.

  He went to the sofa, his bed for the night, and shuffled through the pockets of the Burberry he had tossed there upon entering the apartment. “While we’re waiting, I wonder if you could translate something for me?”

  “I will try.”

  Lang handed her the French version of D’Tasse’s work. “Thanks. If you don’t mind, just read it to me in English.”

  She went to a desk and took out a pair of glasses. Lang did not recall her using them before. But then, he had never seen her read anything other than a menu. He supposed vanity had prevented her from wearing them in public.

  Leaning over to catch the light from a lamp on a table, she studied the first page before she began. She had been reading for only about five minutes before Patrick’s key rattled in the lock and he entered, overcoat draped over one arm.

  “Sorry I am late.” He went the armoire against the far wall and carefully hung up his coat before giving Lang a meaningful look. “There was a shooting at the Sorbonne this afternoon. D’Tasse’s office. The police wanted to question you.”

  “Question Lang?” Nanette asked in confusion. “Surely they don’t think . . .”

  Patrick shut the armoire’s doors. “Wanted is the past tense, no? It is a matter of national security, since we believe the victim is employed by the Guoanbu.”

  Lang guessed the French had a picture-ID system like the Agency’s.

  Patrick continued. “It is a matter for the DGSE, not the local police.”

  Lang wondered how much weight Patrick had thrown around to accomplish that.

  “The Guo-what?” Nanette asked.

  “Chinese state security,” Patrick said, taking the champagne bottle from the ice bucket and inspecting the label. “Strange. They wanted an article written by a professor, something about Bonaparte. And were willing to take it at gunpoint.”

  Nanette looked from the manuscript in her hand to Lang and back again. “Could they not simply read it when it was published?”

  Patrick was pouring into a flute. “We believe they did not want to wait until the article became public. We do not know why. The inscrutable Oriental, no?”

  Nanette held up the papers in her hand, puzzled. “Why would Chinese want . . . ?”

  Patrick forgot the champagne. “Is that it? Is that the article on Bonaparte by your friend Henri D’Tasse?”

  Even more confused. “Yes, yes it is. I was translating it for Lang.”

  Patrick sat on the sofa, glass in one hand, the other fishing for the box of Gitanes. “Please, start at the beginning and read it to both of us.”

  Twenty minutes later, she finished.

  Lang was staring into space. “He left his most prized possession to his secretary’s namesake? Who would that be? And what was it he left?”

  Patrick held up the champagne bottle, ruefully noting it was empty. “There is a computer on the table in our bedroom. The answer to your first question could be sought on Google. But first there is the matter of dinner. On the other side of Sacré-Coeur there is a bistro with the best moules frites, mussels and fried potatoes, in Paris. We can easily walk there.”

  Jesus, does this guy ever get tired of seafood?

  Seated at a small and dimly lit table, Lang barely noticed the muted hubbub around him. His thoughts were on Saint Denis’ diary. What could Napoleon have had that was so precious to him? The obvious answer was the contents of the box that kept reoccurring in the diary’s frequently disjointed passages, the box that was brought from Egypt, was taken to Haiti by Leclerc and returned by his widow. But what was in the box? Alexander’s mummy—or what was left of it? Of everything Napoleon possessed, that would be a macabre favorite. Was its present location somehow revealed by his secretary? The Chinese must have thought so; otherwise what would they want with a soon-to-be-published scholarly article?

  And Saint Denis’ namesake.

  A son?

  Lang stopped, a mussel speared on a fork halfway to his mouth.

  Wait a second.

  The diary did not mention a namesake; he had just assumed that was what was meant. The words were in your name. Was the distinction important?

  “You do not like the moules?” Patrick asked, interrupting Lang’s thoughts.

  Lang ate the one on his fork. “No, er, I mean, yes. They’re quite good.”

  Nanette studied Lang’s face. “I think perhaps he has . . . what is the phrase? Something on his mind.”

  “I was thinking about Saint Denis’ diary and what Napoleon meant when he said he was leaving his most precious possession.” He paused a moment. “What does the name Saint Denis mean to you?”

  “It is the location of the Paris football stadium,” Patrick answered immediately. “The Pomme de Pain there has closed, to be replaced by a McDo’s . . .”

  A popular version of French fast food, a sandwich chain, had been replaced by McDonald’s, “McDo” in Parisian slang. Lang wanted to head off a discussion of American fast food, which the French blamed for, among other things, the current world economic problems, global warming and the collapse of Western civilization. In spite of the antagonism, KFC, Subway and Pizza Hut, to name a few, attracted a large following in Paris.

  “The football stadium,” Lang repeated. “Is Saint Denis the street address?”

  “It is the area where it is located,” Nanette interjected, “a suburb north of Paris. It is also the location of a very old church, the one where all but three of the kings of France after the tenth century were buried in the crypt.”

  “Could Napoleon have left his prized possession to a church?” Lang asked skeptically. “I mean, the revolution was anticlerical.”

  “It was he who returned the building to the church. The revolutionaries had confiscated all of them,” Nanette said.

  Patrick used a paper napkin to wipe the mussels’ juice from his lips. “Not only did they confiscate the basilica of Saint Denis, they opened all the royal tombs in the crypt and dumped the remains into a common pit. Later, when the basilica was restored to the Catholic Church, it was impossible to tell which was which. The various relics went into a common ossuary.” He glowered at Lang and Nanette as though this disposed of the matter and there was no need to continue this breach of French dinner-table etiquette. “Now, who would like another glass of wine?”

  Unabashed, Lang asked, “So none of the kings are in their tombs?”

  Patrick looked at his wife, daring her to answer.

  She did anyway. “Not quite so. Ironically, the last two Bourbons are the only ones who have their own resting places today.”

  “I thought Louis XVI was dumped in an unmarked grave with his wife, Marie Antoinette, following about nine months later,” Lang said.

  “True,” Nanette responded. “Their bodies, along with about twenty-eight hundred other victims of the guillotine, were disposed of in that way.”

  “Then how did they wind up in Saint Denis?”

  “A lawyer, a secret royalist, lived nearby. He saw both the headless royal bodies dumped there and marked
the places in his mind. Later, he bought the little garden where they had been treated so rudely and planted trees over the site. When Louis XVIII came to power after Bonaparte was defeated the first time, he had the bodies removed to Saint Denis and a monument erected in January of 1815. There were only skulls and a few bones and part of a lady’s garter left because the bodies had been covered with quicklime.”

  Patrick put down his fork, disgusted. “This talk of bodies and guillotines does not go well with dinner, no? Let us discuss it afterward.”

  Lang thought a moment, either not hearing or ignoring his friend. “A monument after a mass grave? That would be a return from anonymity, would it not? And Saint Denis, the church, would be ‘in the name of’ the guy writing the diary. And what better place for Alexander’s mummified body, or whatever is left of it, than a crypt?”

  He stood, forgetting his half-eaten meal. “How long will it take to get to this church?”

  Patrick looked up at him as though Lang had uttered some particularly vile blasphemy by suggesting the meal not be finished. “The church would be closed by now. Sit, enjoy your dinner.”

  Another thought made Lang sit. “But how could Napoleon put anything there? He was on Elba until the spring of 1815.”

  “He had many followers eager to do his bidding, as witnessed by how quickly he raised an army after his escape,” Nanette offered. “And he returned to Paris straight from Elba, presumably with full access to Saint Denis or any other church in the city. But do not consider going to Saint Denis at night. The area is not safe.”

  Lang was on his feet again. “You can bet the Chinese aren’t worried about safety. We have to get whatever is in that church before they figure out what Napoleon meant.”

  He signaled frantically for the check. “I can’t wait.”

  With a sigh of resignation, Patrick stood. “And I cannot allow you to go to the Saint Denis area alone and at night.”

  2 rue de Strasbourg

  Basilique Saint Denis

  An hour later

  Stopping only for Patrick to go by his apartment and retrieve two flashlights and his PAMAS G1 with two extra clips of ammunition, it still seemed to Lang that the Metro took forever to deliver them to Saint Denis. The station was one of the few he had seen that was dirty, littered, and streaked with graffiti, a preview of the shabby neighborhood it served. The small number of passengers disembarking the train here appeared to be of North African descent, the women with heads covered and the men bearded.