by Tom Wilde
“Yes. Then what will you do?”
“As a friend of mine is fond of saying, I’ll be practicing some premeditated self-defense.”
I crossed the street and headed around the next block, angling toward my goal as fast as my leg would allow until I was just around the corner from where the van was parked. I resisted the temptation to try and get a look around the corner as I readied my weapon, sliding my belt free and holding the ends close to my body. The ballistic-grade material of the belt is affixed to a plain-looking buckle forged out of five and a half ounces of stainless steel, and it is the most versatile weapon in my personal armory. It can be employed as not only a weighted flail or a garrote, but it can also block attacks and entrap opponents. All I had to do now was get close enough to use it.
The wait seemed to take forever and was punctuated by the arrival of a motorcycle rider who just had to be driving down the street at that moment, but as the whine of the bike’s engine receded, I heard the sound of a car door opening up around the corner. I slipped around the edge of the building and caught a flash of a man in a blue jumpsuit stepping out on the street with his back to me. I also got a glimpse of Rhea standing on the sidewalk, smiling like the Cheshire cat. The man in the blue suit was raising something black in his hands as I spun my belt in a scything uppercut that smashed into his forearm.
Something the size and shape of a small rifle popped up in the air as I slid my free hand up the belt and looped it over the man’s head, jerking it into a flat garrote. I cranked on the torque, clamping his arteries shut to black out his brain. The lancing pain in my side was converted into angry strength as I pulled him in close to keep him from flailing around. That’s when I heard a muffled shot as the man’s back slammed into my chest, and he collapsed, dead weight in my hands.
As his body fell, I saw Rhea, the smile frozen on her face as she held the gun in her hands and the spent brass cartridge bounced on the sidewalk. “Hurry,” she hissed. “Get him inside the van.”
By combat-trained habit I scanned the area for witnesses as I bent down. With an effort that felt like it was tearing me in two, I lifted up the lifeless body as Rhea opened the side of the van. It was all I could manage to drag the corpse inside until I had him flat on the back floorboards. Meanwhile Rhea climbed in, shut the door, and moved to the driver’s section. The interior of the vehicle was dark and the widows frosted with condensation. I was on my knees on the back bench seat, and it didn’t take but a moment to look around and see that Caitlin wasn’t here.
I closed my eyes and struggled to get my heart rate down to close to human levels. The hope that had kept me moving sank inside me like a stone, and I suddenly realized that I didn’t give a damn about the treasure anymore. All I wanted was to find Caitlin and get her out of all this, and then everyone else, every single one of these murdering bastards, could all go to hell together for all I cared. I was dimly aware that Rhea had been exploring the map box in the front seat, and I heard soft, electronic beeping sounds. “What are you doing up there?” I whispered.
“I found my phone. I’m letting my people know where I am. Now let’s go; we’ve got to get moving,” she said softly.
I didn’t like the sound of that—one of her was more than I wanted to contend with, lethal as she was. “You didn’t have to kill this man,” I said.
Rhea made a small sound of surprise. “Is this a joke? I thought you were in the process of strangling him; I just thought I’d save you the trouble. Besides, these men are killers, or have you forgotten what they did to my poor Ajax?”
“No. But there’s been enough killing. It should end now.”
“What about your wife?”
Lights from a passing car rolled through the van, diffused by the frosted glass. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“I think she’s alive. Look.” Rhea held up a small black purse, the one Caitlin had carried with her. “If they had killed her, I doubt they’d be holding on to this,” Rhea explained. “I think they took her with them, possibly to use as a hostage. So now you need to take me where they are.”
“And just what do I need you for?”
“I have the gun.”
I laughed, quietly and darkly. “So what? All those things are good for is killing people. Or was that a threat, is that it? You’re just going to add me to the collection in here?”
“No,” she said almost pleasantly. “No threat. But you’d be a fool not to take me with you. I’ll do whatever needs to be done for us to win, my dearest.”
I was glad it was dark, so Rhea couldn’t see me shudder from the chill she gave me with her deadly, seductive voice. “All right,” I said, glad to hear my voice sounding steadier than I was. “Let’s get going.”
“Where?”
“It’s high time we went to church.”
CHAPTER NINE
Rhea and I didn’t leave right away. Mindful of blood and fingerprints, we checked out the van and the corpse inside. I couldn’t help but notice how young the dark-haired man looked. The body was dressed in the blue jumpsuit of a Paris sanitation worker, and we found a hard hat to complete the disguise. I didn’t risk going through the pockets. Using the red beam of my button-sized flashlight, I checked out the rest of the van, finding a tarp in the back that I used to cover the body. I took charge of Caitlin’s small purse and checked the contents, placing her pen, sunglasses, comb, lipstick, passport, and wallet into my various pockets, along with the purse itself, stuffing the shoulder chain into the now-empty bag, hoping I wouldn’t make noise now when I moved, and then replaced my belt.
The carbine Rhea had commandeered was a real oddity. I held my flashlight while she checked it over. Essentially, it was a Glock 9mm pistol, but someone had attached a barrel extension/silencer and a skeletal stock to it, along with a laser sight and flashlight that damn near blinded me when Rhea activated it for a split second. Rhea expertly disengaged the stock to shorten the weapon, then nodded to me that she was ready to go. I’d considered taking her out of the picture at this point, knowing her now for a cold-blooded killer who’d doubtless murder me as soon as she felt I was no longer convenient to her plans. But since she was content to fight our mutual enemies for now, I decided to keep her with me. Although, as far as I was concerned, she was no longer an attractive woman; she was to me an ‘oni’, a Japanese demon hidden inside a beautiful human form.
We got out of the coffin on wheels and closed it up. The rain-washed air was a relief from the death reek of the vehicle. I skidded the keys of the van under the car parked behind it as I checked out the streets. The ornate, black iron lampposts put out far too much light, illuminating both the landscape and us in the process. “Follow me across,” I said. “And if we get caught by anyone outside the church, be prepared to play the part of Stupid American Tourist.”
“I’m half British,” Rhea said with a quiet laugh as she tucked the pistol into the top of her skirt and covered it with her suit jacket. “I’m sure I can manage.”
We checked for traffic, then crossed the cobblestone street toward the front of the Chapel du Val de Grâce. We walked quickly across an open area on the other side of the street that offered no cover, other than a short, square font with running water off to the left. There was a black iron portcullis gate separating us from the front courtyard, but I could clearly see the Greco-Roman façade of the domed church beyond. Like every other building in the crowded, jigsaw city of Paris, the church was attached to other buildings that ran from its sides, like wings, but I was happy to see that the chapel itself appeared to be darkened within. As we got closer, I was less pleased with the gate and fence—tall and crowned with gold-colored spear points flanking the golden-wreathed apex of the gate itself—and I doubted that my damaged body was equal to the task of climbing over, until I saw the broken lock on the gate. It looked like Ombra and his crew had just cut themselves a way in.
With a last look over my shoulders to the countless windows of the buildings across the street, I mu
scled the gate open, gritting my teeth at the loud way it groaned, until Rhea and I could slip through. Over to the left was a statue and pedestal, an island of cover in the open courtyard, and I motioned Rhea in that direction. I had to admire the way the woman moved, gliding toward the statue on the balls of her feet, making almost no noise. We didn’t draw any fire, which was especially good since I suddenly came to a dead stop when my eyes lit upon the name on the base plate of the monument: Larrey, the man mentioned in the letter hidden inside the eagle, the man who Napoleon trusted to be the guardian of his secret treasure. “What is it?” Rhea hissed. “What do you see?”
I wasn’t about to share any more information than I had to, and other than seeing Larrey’s name in Fouché’s letter, I didn’t know a thing about him. I just nodded at the full-figured bronze above us and whispered, “I love fine art.”
Rhea gave her head a small shake, an eloquent statement that she thought she was in the presence of insanity. “What’s the next move?” she asked impatiently.
I took a quick look around the pedestal toward the church as I recalled the map from the eagle. The main doors of the church were up a set of steps past the Ionic columns, but the map I’d seen had indicated additional doors on either side at ground level, and I could see one set from where Rhea and I crouched behind the marble base of the statue. “Head for the steps, get close to the building. What we want is on the other side of the main entrance.” Without a word, Rhea raced off to the stairs. When she was under the carved image of the Virgin Mary, I smiled at the dichotomy of the sight and then took off after her. Once we were up the stone steps, we could see that the large, ornate double doors had already been forced open. I could feel my anger rising at seeing all this casual destruction by Ombra and his men. I really wanted to make someone pay for these acts of sacrilege.
Rhea got her pistol out, and I followed her inside, pulling the damaged door closed behind me. It was dimly lit inside, and all of a sudden the chasm-like enormity of the Baroque edifice enfolded my senses as the heady aroma of aged incense evoked memories of childish whispered prayers. Rhea and I crept up the grand hall, scanning for movement in the shadowed, arched recesses along the sides. Another black metal gate separated the entry hall from the main domed interior; it too had already been forced open. As I crossed into the expanse of the heart of the cathedral, I looked up and into an enormous, rounded sky filled with frozen, painted images—a reflected God’s-eye view of heaven. Below and ahead I could see the main altar, designed and adorned in a way that reminded me of the Ark of the Covenant, and I promised myself then and there that someday I would return to this place, if no one killed me in the meantime.
Pulling the image of the secret map from my memory, I motioned Rhea to head toward the archway off the rotunda to the right. The inlaid marble floor caught the slightest sound of our movements and sent them echoing off through the cathedral until we found ourselves in a smaller, circular room. The dark wooden door with the splintered lock ahead of us left no doubt as to the path we needed to follow.
We crept up to the doorway, and I shined the beam of my small red flashlight inside. The crimson glow revealed the large rectangular sacristy, and across from us were a pair of open doors near a pile of broken tile. Crossing over, I could see that a jagged, man-sized hole had been chopped through the marble floor, revealing a narrow set of steep, rough-carved stone steps heading downward. I took the lead, crouching low as I slowly descended, until I reached the bottom and my little flashlight illuminated a low-ceilinged cavern. A cavern whose walls were lined with thousands upon thousands of human bones.
I knew then where we had found ourselves—we were in the guts of the Catacombs of Paris. Hundreds of miles of Roman-era limestone quarries had been converted into convenient tombs back in the 1800s, and millions of human remains had been placed below the streets of the growing, expanding city. As far as I knew, no one had ever mapped all the vast expanse of the underworld here. It was as if Rhea and I had just been cast out of the realm of heaven above and pitched onto the doorsteps of hell.
Everything was different down here in the depths. The temperature had dropped drastically during the descent, turning my wet clothes into a clammy shroud. The aroma of incense was gone, replaced by a dank, acidic smell, and the limestone walls of the narrow tunnel seemed to absorb any sound. I’d been in places underground before, from the Catacombs of Rome to the ancient cisterns of Istanbul to the buried cites of Cappadocia and the Valley of the Kings, but this macabre monument to the dead was like nothing I had ever encountered before. Still, to be fair, it was probably the way my deadly companion seemed to take the sights in stride that chilled me more than the air.
The bones lay in slanted piles against the wall, like occlusions inside a monstrous artery, leaving only a narrow path in between. Here and there, a time-aged skull stared blankly back amidst the human rubble. This branch of the Parisian catacombs must have been sealed up and neglected for uncounted years, an undisturbed tomb. Until now.
But it was the narrow path between the bones that proved the most interesting. Ancient dust had settled on the ground, and now displayed the recent footprints impressed upon it. My heart leapt when I saw the smallest set of prints that had to be Caitlin’s.
By force of habit, I found my button-sized compass and checked our bearings. The needle told me the tunnel was running to the south. The red glow of my little light was swallowed up in the blackness beyond the narrow, low-arched tunnel lined with human bones. I crouched and moved ahead into the confined passage, feeling Rhea’s presence as she followed in my shadow. I was counting steps as we quietly progressed, careful to avoid treading upon the ossified remains, and scanning ahead as we followed the trail of footprints in the dust—until I dimly saw an area beyond that opened up into an enclosed crossroads. The footprints in the area ahead formed a confused pattern, with one set leading off to the left and the main group to the right. The moment I saw that, I started running.
My move wasn’t as crazy as it sounds. The single set of prints told me that Ombra had left a guard behind and I was now caught in a trap, stuck inside a narrow killing zone with no cover. All I had with me now was my small flashlight and my other close-combat weapon: my pen. Now, in the purely physical sense, the pen is by no means mightier than the sword, but if you haven’t got a sword handy and know what to do with it, a pen can be just as deadly, multiplying the power of your strikes into the nerve centers and vulnerable spots of an opponent’s body. The one I carried was an oversized model made from aircraft-grade aluminum, and I had been trained to use it with telling effect. I charged ahead, needing to get to the intersection before any gun-wielding opponent could come around the edge of the tunnel and kill us both, and I barely won the race.
A shadow leapt around the corner to my left and I was painfully blinded by a flash of light, but it was too late to stop me. I crashed into the man and swept his gun aside with my left arm as I rammed the end of my pen in a powerful thrust to his stomach, forcibly bending him over so that all the air in his lungs coughed out explosively. I couldn’t see if he still held the gun; I just knew I had to take him down now or die. I wrenched my hand free of his folded-up midsection and ran my other hand blindly up his spine until I reached his head, knocking off his plastic hard hat. I swung my pen down in an ice-pick hammer blow that concentrated all the force of my strike into a keyhole-sized pile driver slamming into his skull.
I felt the man’s body collapse and drop like a sack of rocks onto the ground, blowing up a small cloud of dust. A brief bolt of light burned my eyes again as the concussive sound of the silenced shot slapped my ears—Rhea delivering a coup de grace, spraying the air with the smell of burnt gunpowder. Everything went black and I leaned back until I was crouched against the stacked bones of the wall. I kept my eyes closed, struggling to control my breathing and my reawakened pain while straining to listen for any sounds of approaching danger. But everything stayed as black and silent as a deeply buried grave.<
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“Blake?” I heard Rhea whisper. I didn’t respond, and instead pulled out my lighter, having lost my button flashlight during the encounter. The light from the flame revealed yet another dead man in another blue jumpsuit, facedown in the dust. Before I could bend down, I saw Rhea’s hand snatch up the man’s pistol. I recovered my flashlight and exchanged its light for the open flame. I kept the red light cupped in my hand as I looked at the wild and terrible vision of Rhea standing there, surrounded by countless human bones and holding both pistols. I silently held out my free hand, and she smiled, handing one of the guns to me with a gracious gesture.
I took a moment to check out the weapon, another Glock outfitted with a silencer. I wiped off the powdery dust and then checked the magazine and chamber, seeing the weapon was ready to fire. It was about time I got my hands on a firearm, I thought, seeing how everyone else in the world seemed to have one. In the red glow of my light I nodded to Rhea, indicating the tunnel to the right that bore the signs of Ombra’s group, diminished by one set now, but still including Caitlin’s footprints.
Buried below the ground, I had lost all sense of time, and our journey down the claustrophobic mausoleum seemed endless, until I heard a faint, flat metallic sound. I extinguished my flashlight, and through the absolute blackness saw a glimmer of light ahead. Step by slow step, Rhea and I crouched and shuffled our way along as I kept one hand on my gun and the other touching the rough, cold bones of the wall next to me. The slight sounds and brief flicker of light appeared to be a thousand miles away. Moving like lost souls sneaking out of hell, we finally crept up to a jagged, man-sized hole broken into the tunnel wall to the right, among strewn, discarded bones.
I got down on hands and knees and took a cautious look around the edge of the cut-away entrance. I was looking down into a large vaulted chamber below me at the bottom of a narrow set of stone stairs. The room was lit up by the greenish glow from a chemical light stick that was set on top of an old wooden box. Through the dim, surreal lighting I could see the chamber was crowded with dark, time-stained wooden chests. A pair of shadowed figures crouched among the boxes, bent to the task of forcing them open. Then my eyes fell upon Caitlin, sitting on the ground as still as a statue. Her black evening dress was now almost white with limestone dust and I could see she was bound hands and feet and gagged with metallic-looking tape.