by Jack Du Brul
It was nearing 6:00 P.M. when the auction wound down for the day. Mercer’s internal clock said it was 10:00 in the morning, but he was tired enough to only think about getting to his hotel. He’d been awake for twenty hours and had a morning meeting at the Ecole des Mines on boulevard St. Michel near the Luxembourg Gardens.
He found Jean-Paul again at the center of a group of people in the reception room outside the salon. Because of bidder 127 and an excessive price paid for a Gustave Eiffel drawing, Derosier had made a small fortune today and was beaming.
“Mercer, what a day. I think this is a record for me and the big stuff isn’t being sold until tomorrow.” He turned to introduce the man next to him. “Oh, this is my chief of security, Rene Bruneseau.”
Bruneseau had a compact build and the bearing of an army drill instructor. His receding hair was cropped short and made the heavy brows over his dark eyes more prominent. His head was blocky, more Slovak than French, with chiseled features blurred by excessive stubble. He wore an ill-fitted suit dusted with cigarette ash and his teeth were stained a coffee brown.
“Pleasure to meet you,” Mercer said, then addressed Jean-Paul. “Looks like bidder 127 is going to keep you in frog legs, snails, and other garden pests you French insist on eating.”
“Speaking of which, we must go out for dinner, or at least a drink.”
“Sorry, not this time. I’m going to my hotel and crashing.”
“Staying at the Crillon, as usual?”
“No. My travel agent had a client cancel a reservation at a hotel on the Left Bank near the Montparnasse Tower.” The 690-foot-tall office building was considered a blight on the city that photographers deftly avoided when shooting Paris. “She conned me into taking it over so her client wouldn’t lose his deposit.”
“Slumming?” Jean-Paul teased.
“She guaranteed it was four stars, or was it four cockroaches?”
“Mr. Derosier,” Bruneseau interrupted, his voice rumbling from deep within his barrel chest, “I will get the Lepinay journal for Dr. Mercer and then I must see to that problem we talked about before.”
Jean-Paul’s urbane veneer cracked for a second before a smooth recovery. “Oh, yes, right. The Lepinay journal.”
There were forty or fifty auction-goers still milling around the reception room. It was odd that Jean-Paul would mention the book after telling them it wasn’t for sale. “Sure you guys want to be blurting out that you were selling it after all?” Mercer asked.
“Oh, merde. I forgot.” Derosier looked around to make sure no one overheard. “My mind’s elsewhere.”
“Thinking about those frog legs already?” Mercer joked. Jean-Paul didn’t respond for a moment. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m sorry. Ah, here comes Rene.” The security chief had the journal wrapped in brown paper.
Mercer caught the eye of one of the tuxedoed attendants and asked him to get his steel sample case from the cloakroom. He’d left all his luggage at the reception desk when he’d arrived. While he waited, he pulled out one of the blank checks he kept in his wallet and filled in the information, including the four-thousand-dollar price. He handed it over with an exaggerated flourish. “With my thanks from the Bouncing Check National Bank.”
Once he had his case, Mercer slit the book’s paper wrapper with a pocketknife. He studied the scuffed leather cover for a moment, feeling a tingle of excitement. He didn’t consider Gary’s “final puzzle piece.” What filled him with anticipation was the opportunity to gain some insight on a brilliant engineer who was decades ahead of his time. Slowly, he opened the diary. The journal was handwritten in faded black ink on heavy rag bond that felt as thick as a wallpaper sample. Godin de Lepinay had written in a confident, looping script. Mercer read just a couple of lines, translating in his head as best he could, and knew that he needed to pick up a French-English dictionary before his flight. He slid the journal into the case and snapped the lid closed.
“Can’t wait to start reading it, eh?” Jean-Paul said, correctly reading Mercer’s rapt expression.
“I think you two should go get a drink together,” Rene Bruneseau suggested.
“Come on, Mercer, what do you say?”
Mercer shook his head. “I’ve got a suite at the Victoria Palace Hotel with a bed they promise me is big enough to play soccer on. I’m meeting another old friend in the morning and then I leave for Panama in the afternoon. You’ll be coming to the States when Sotheby’s has that big auction in December. We’ll have time then, I promise.”
“I understand.” Jean-Paul stuck out his hand just as a customer approached. Before he was engaged in this next conversation he called out Mercer’s name once again. “Just watch yourself.”
It was such an odd thing for him to say that Mercer asked him for what.
“Oh, with the rain we’ve had for the past few days, the sanitation department’s been dropping the ball all over the city. Traffic is a nightmare and your cab driver’s going to try to rip you off on the ride to your hotel.”
Mercer laughed. “I can play ugly American with the best of them.”
He retrieved his luggage from the cloakroom, slinging the garment bag’s strap over his shoulder and clutching the matching suitcase in one hand and his metal attache in the other. Outside, the rain hissed under the tires of the cars moving in starts and jerks along rue Drouot. He didn’t have an overcoat and the cold rain trickled down the back of his neck. Across the street, he thought he saw Rene Bruneseau, but the figure ducked into a sedan without looking back.
It took ten minutes to find a cab because rush hour was in full effect, and like all other city dwellers, Parisians hated being rained on more than anything. He told the Algerian driver to head toward Place Denfort-Rochereau across the Seine, and settled into the battle-scarred Peugeot. Paris had never held him enthralled so he closed his eyes while the car fought its way across the city. He barely glanced up at the floodlit Notre Dame Cathedral as they motored across the Ile de la Cite. The cab driver mercifully didn’t try to engage him in small talk. The storms had snarled traffic so badly that he needed all his concentration to avoid the fender benders that erupted around them.
The streets on the Left Bank were a leftover of the city’s medieval past, a warren of obtuse intersections that made Mercer think of a demented maze. The driver seemed sure enough, yet had to take several detours to avoid street department trucks parked near overflowing storm drains.
Through the arcs cleared by the windshield wipers, Mercer could see the yellowed stonework of the seventeenth-century observatory. He remembered that the sprawling Luxembourg Palace, the home of France’s senate, would be right behind him.
He twisted around to see if he was right and just had time to brace himself as a pair of stabbing headlights surged toward the rear of the cab, blinding him to the sight of a large truck barreling toward them. The impact came an instant later, a rending crash that pancaked the taxi into the car in front. The chain reaction shot through several other stalled cars. Caught unaware, the Algerian driver had his face slammed into the steering wheel. He slumped unconscious into the footwell, taking his beaded seat cover with him.
Mercer had cushioned the impact by clutching the driver’s seat and allowing his arms to flex like shock absorbers. Unhurt but rattled, he leaned far over the seat to check on the driver when his door was suddenly wrenched open. What the hell?
Thinking it was a Good Samaritan lending a hand, Mercer had a second to acknowledge that the person reaching into the vehicle was young, dressed in an army surplus jacket, and that his hair had been shorn off in a skinhead style. Then the punk yanked Mercer’s briefcase from the seat. He held an automatic pistol in his free hand.
The thief paused for an indecisive moment before hissing in French, “Give me your wallet or you’re dead.”
The kid was counting on the gun paralyzing his victim, but Mercer had faced armed men before. His reactions were instantaneous and focused. He had one leg in a cocked
position that the mugger neither saw nor expected. Mercer kicked out, pinning the thief’s arm against the open door frame. The blow lacked the power to break bone and the punk managed to keep his grip on the black pistol as he pulled free. A crowd of pedestrians who had witnessed the accident began to gather. The heroin-thinned thief took off with the sample case under the forest of umbrellas they held aloft.
Mercer launched himself out of the taxi even as the rational side of his mind questioned his actions. His feet moved as if of their own volition, finding grip on the wet sidewalk even though his loafers should have slid out from under him. The kid didn’t look back as they raced down rue Denfort under a canopy of trees that lined the road and reflected the glow from the streetlamps. He had no reason to expect his victim would pursue him.
The gap between the two shrunk with each pace, Mercer driven by an enraged desire to retrieve his case and the Lepinay journal. Fifty feet short of the next crosswalk, Mercer was just five yards back and gaining. A four-door Mercedes screeched to a halt at the intersection, and the rear door was thrown open. The kid’s getaway car? A Mercedes?
Horns sounded.
The thief put on a burst of speed, adrenaline giving him that last bit of energy to reach his target. Mercer was certain that if he could trip the kid, the idling car would take off. The race would end long before they reached the corner. Mercer was just a few yards back, his attention focused first on his case and then on a spot between the punk’s shoulder blades.
The thief broke stride suddenly, his body torquing before he fell flat onto the sidewalk without trying to check his fall. He skidded for a yard or two, Mercer’s attache slipping from his limp hand, the pistol sliding next to it. Mercer pulled himself to a stop, hunching over the still form. His breath exploded in the moist air and his heart thumped hard enough to pound in his ears. He could see one side of the teenager’s face had been scraped raw by the rough cement sidewalk. Rain sluiced stringy trails of blood toward the gutter from under the body.
Then Mercer saw a slick black exit wound from a bullet that had punched a hole through the side of the kid’s chest. Although he hadn’t heard it, he realized the shot had come from their right.
Mercer looked up from the body, all his senses now keyed to his surroundings. Hard-won experience gave his eyes that extra bit of acuity, his body that extra bit of strength, his mind that extra bit of clarity. The front door of the waiting Mercedes sedan swung open. From the dim interior came flashes from silenced weapons. Bullets split the air over Mercer’s head. Screams rose over the din of congested traffic and the distant honking of an approaching siren. He scrambled to grab his case and the pistol and ran for the entrance to the nearest building.
Out of the corner of his eye Mercer spotted three armed men jump from the Mercedes. Unlike the kid who’d swiped the case, these gunmen moved with a well-trained grace and all were Asian. A worker stood at the building’s steel-and-glass door, locking up for the night. Without looking at where he was, Mercer shoved the man aside and dodged into the dim interior.
Even as he sought defensive cover, the connection came clear. Far from a random mugging, this was an elaborate robbery attempt to get the Lepinay journal and hide evidence of who really wanted it. But who had killed the thief? It made no sense that the Asians in the sedan had gunned down their own man. The bullet had come from a yet-unseen assassin.
There was no time to consider the implications that Jean-Paul Derosier or Gary Barber might have set him up. With only seconds before the attackers burst through the door behind him, the memories of previous combat served to push Mercer on.
A set of circular stairs were sunk into the floor on one side of the room, backed by a stone wall that looked like it had stood there for centuries. Light spilling in from the street made the round opening look like the entrance to Hell itself. That sudden image sent a chill along Mercer’s spine. He’d just figured out where he was.
In the late eighteenth century, Paris was being overwhelmed by the stench of its overflowing cemeteries, and outbreaks of disease from decomposition were rampant. In an effort to clean up the city, officials decided to dig up and then re-inter millions of the dead in the old limestone quarries that had been excavated during Roman times. They ended up filling a hundred miles of tunnels with the skeletal remains of six million people in what became the largest repository of bones in the world. Part of this extensive catacomb was open to the public as a mile-long walking tour, and Mercer found himself trapped at its entrance. His only way out led through the twisting maze of what Parisians called l’empire de la mort. The empire of the dead.
He had no time to find light switches, so he rummaged behind a counter and grabbed two large flashlights. He stuffed one into his coat pocket and held the other in the same hand as his briefcase to keep the gun free. He dodged to the circular stairs and descended into the abyss. At the bottom of the corkscrew stairs, the flashlight revealed a long tunnel lined with rough stone. He turned off the light again when he heard a door open above him. He ran with his knees bent, his shoes making no more than a whisper against the gravel floor. With his fingers brushing the wall, he came to a left bend in the passageway and checked his surroundings again with a quick burst from the flashlight. Another straight tunnel led farther into the subterranean realm, and again he ran on.
Three more times he came to sharp corners before breaking out into an underground chamber. For as far as the flashlight cut the gloom he saw neat stacks of skeletal remains piled like cordwood. Age had yellowed the bones and some were cemented together by minerals in the water that dripped from the limestone ceiling. Countless thousands of empty skulls watched him as he crossed the gallery. He hoped the painted markings in the roof led to this horror show’s exit.
Halfway to the next section of the catacomb the lights suddenly snapped on. They were artfully placed spots that highlighted the chamber’s more grisly aspects-walls of femurs, crosses made of tibias, abstract sculptures of skulls and pelvises. Mercer noted all this in a frantic glance. His pursuers would be coming and his lead was maybe a minute.
He was certain that the gunmen had seen him pick up the gun, so he doubted he’d shoot more than one in an ambush. And once contact was made, they’d be able to outflank him. But he decided that two against one was still better than facing three. From behind a wall of bones he was able to see the tunnel leading back to the surface. A constant patter of water seepage dripped from the low roof.
The countless firefights he’d been in gave him if not confidence, at least self-control. He managed to slow his breathing and cut short the raging questions. He concentrated solely on survival. He took a moment to check the automatic pistol he’d recovered, a small Beretta 9mm. The action was stiff, as if it hadn’t been oiled in years, and the brass shells were pitted and tarnished.
Just my luck to be mugged by a discount goon, Mercer thought bitterly. The click of a misfire would betray his position as surely as an accurately placed shot.
A crunch of gravel sounded over the drips and a shadow passed just beyond the entrance tunnel. Mercer raised his pistol in a two-handed grip, waiting, his eyes staring into the murky light. In a burst, the three assassins rushed into the chamber, their silenced weapons shooting tongues of flame as they laid down covering fire. The wild shots turned bone to powder with each impact. Mercer couldn’t face the onslaught and stayed behind his barrier, waiting for them to pause. A row of skulls above him looked down as if laughing.
The muted echoes of that first barrage died away and Mercer heard voices. He had no way to be sure, but it sounded like Chinese to him. It wasn’t much of a stretch to realize they were employees of bidder 127. They were trying to steal the one item that he hadn’t been able to buy at the auction. How they knew Mercer had it laid the blame firmly at Derosier’s feet.
Mercer ducked his head around the jagged stack of femurs. The gunmen were hidden. An explosion of bone dust erupted next to his shoulder and he could feel the passage of a ricochet. He’
d been spotted. More rounds poured in, high-velocity bullets that tore into the wall of human remains. Mercer shuffled back around the far side of the island of bones. Chips of yellowed skeleton were blown from the stack. A figure stepped out of the shadows, creeping steadily forward on soft-soled shoes. Mercer took aim before he was spotted and eased the trigger.
The gun bucked and the unsilenced blast sounded like a cannon in the nightmarish confines. The bullet took the assassin center-mass and dropped him instantly. Keeping low, Mercer moved down another alley where the neatly stacked bony fragments were separated by body part, not individual. Tibias in one section, scapulas in another, a ten-foot stretch of nothing but ribs.
He found an arched doorway and dashed through. No shots chased in his wake as he passed some sort of altar and into another ossuary chamber decorated with obelisks from Napoleonic times. A square stack of bones that reached to the ceiling was dated 1804 and looked like a mausoleum.
There weren’t as many lights on in here, but Mercer kept his flashlight off, moving more with touch than sight. He looked at the gravel floor and cursed. His footprints were visibly the freshest in the room. No matter where he searched for cover, the two remaining gunmen would know where he was hidden. The floor was too rough to discard his shoes, so he had to come up with an alternative. He walked the perimeter of the chamber, keeping his ears attuned to the sound of pursuit. Three-quarters of the way around, he realized that there was only one entrance. He’d staggered into a dead end. And then he spotted what could be his salvation, a wooden door embedded in the limestone wall that kept tourists from exploring deeper into the catacombs. He had no idea what lay on the other side. It could very well be a storage closet, but it was his only alternative.
No amount of pushing would move the locked door, and once Mercer shot the handle off the gunmen would be on him. He held the Beretta at an angle so the bullet would ricochet away, turned his head, and fired. The old iron lock crumbled and the unbalanced door creaked open. Mercer wrenched the door closed after him. There were no lights in this area, so he kept his flashlight on as he raced past more stacks of bodies, running first right then left as the tunnel bored deeper into the earth. His mind began drawing a mental map of his progress, an automatic skill developed through years of mine work. He was confident that if he survived he’d be able to retrace his steps.