Rogue Angel 49: The Devil's Chord

by Alex Archer

  At the back of the manor was another door, open. The gate that had been screwed into the limestone wall had been forcibly removed and tossed aside with little regard. Garin’s work, Annja assumed.

  Shaking her head at the man’s blatant ways, she stepped into the estate’s cool darkness. Inside was a small room she assumed had once been the mudroom or storage area. The walls were bare and the stone floors littered with decades of dust and debris. An old pipe jutted up from the floor, but had been broken off around the eight-inch mark. The place must have been retrofitted with plumbing in the early twentieth century, as many of these old manor homes had done.

  Shoeprints led through to another small room, and still another after that to a vast area that could have been either a ballroom or receiving foyer. Annja brushed her hiking boot over the floor and saw hardwood beneath the dust. Couldn’t be the original. On the other hand, it was possible. Not all estates of the time period had marble floors.

  Roux entered and his gaze seemed to take in everything from floor to ceiling.

  The heavy thud of what sounded like a man jumping up and down drew Annja’s attention to another doorway. It was another receiving room, she guessed, and she made for the next room. The light in every room was dim. The sun hugged the horizon outside. They wouldn’t have more than another fifteen or twenty minutes before flashlights were necessary.

  Garin let out a yelp. A spectacular crash had Annja rushing into an adjoining room. A billow of dust subsided to reveal a new hole in the floor where the boards had broken and fallen into whatever lay beneath.

  Annja crept up to the hole, cautious that she might go down, as well. Giving the broken boards a few test pushes with her foot, she then leaned over the gap. She couldn’t see anything below, but she could hear a man groaning.

  “I’m good!” Garin called up, but the voice sounded less than sure of that.

  “Leave it to that bloke to fall into a hole where there isn’t even a hole,” Roux muttered as he walked up to Annja. “What’s down there?” he called into the dark chasm.

  After a few seconds, a dim light cast about from below. Garin must be using a cell-phone light because it was too small and didn’t beam far enough to be a flashlight.

  “A chest and some rocks.”

  “A chest?” Annja called back. “Like a storage chest? Old furniture?”

  “A traveling chest. Ladders. A broken table. And stacks of limestone. It’s roomy down here. It’ll fit another couple people.”

  “Ladies first,” Roux offered.

  Judging the drop to be about ten feet, Annja sat on the edge of the floorboards and pushed off, landing in a roll that brought her shoulders up against a stack of limestone that wobbled with the impact.

  Garin grabbed her hand and drew her away just as the stones tumbled and crashed on top of the chest.

  “Good one, Creed,” he mocked. “You may have just destroyed the prize.”

  “Thanks for all your help. Nice catch, buddy.”

  “Really? Annja, you’re a big girl. But if you’d wanted me to catch you, you should have said so.”

  She grimaced and slapped her cargo pants to get rid of some of the dust. Unbuttoning a pocket on her thigh, she drew out the Maglite and flashed it around.

  Roux bent his head down through the hole. “Anything?”

  “Yes, I’m fine,” Annja said. “Thanks for the concern. You’re not coming down?”

  “Someone has to pull you up.”

  “Good thinking.”

  Garin pulled off a limestone block from the top of the chest. It landed heavily on the dirty floor. The blocks looked as though they’d be used for a wall or even a walkway. The property seemed extensive and there were likely paths leading to all points.

  Garin shrugged off his suit coat and tossed it onto the broken table. “Keep the spotlight on the stones.”

  She did so, and he shifted a few more away from the chest. The top of the chest had been crushed, and one side, as well. When it was cleared of the stones, Annja kneeled before it and tried the lid. The old bronze lock had been broken in the crash and the chest opened easily.

  “Let me,” Garin said. Annja made room for Garin to kneel next to her.

  What must have once been fabric sifted to dust as Garin held up a candlestick. He set it on the ground carefully.

  He lifted a mass of the decayed fabric, and even as it fell apart in his hands, he managed to place the bulk of it next to the candlestick. A wooden box followed, and Garin smiled from ear to ear. He handed it to her to open. Inside were a few silver coins. French deniers. Annja recognized the principal coinage from the medieval ages.

  “We’ll have to trace who the owners are of the contents of this chest,” she remarked.

  “Uh-huh.” Garin put the box down without further consideration. “But this—” he reached in with both hands and picked up the next item “—is finders, keepers.”

  The sketch drawn by Leonardo could not have detailed the item more accurately. In Garin’s hands was the music box that Annja had initially remarked possessed a certain steampunklike design.

  A time-shifting device? She’d curb her skepticism for now. She’d been burned many times before for not believing.

  “You got it?” Roux asked from above. As he shifted positions, more dust fell like rain.

  “Yes,” Annja answered, elated with the find. Finally, the pieces of this puzzle were coming together.

  “Pass it up. Then it’s your turn.”

  Chapter 28

  Garin tossed the music box up to Roux. The old man caught it with ease.

  “Careful!” Annja exclaimed.

  “Yes, yes,” Roux muttered.

  Annja dug around inside the chest for further treasures. She cleared away the rest of the tattered fabric from a few books, none of them notebooks similar to the one attributed to Leonardo. One was actually a shipping log. It would take patience and better light to decipher the tiny script, though.

  A few more loose coins sat at the bottom of the trunk. They must have fallen out of the box. If she had a camera along, she’d snap a shot and make a note of the findings to report to the appropriate agency. But circumstances being what they were, she made a mental list of the contents.

  “Roux!” Garin called. “I’ll toss Annja up and you grab her hand.”

  “Toss me?” She snorted. “I don’t think so.”

  “You know what I mean. I’ll give you a leg up.” Garin clasped his hands together and bent to show her that he’d give her a boost.

  “What about one of those ladders?”

  “Annja, don’t be ridiculous. They’re ancient—they’d never hold any weight.”

  “Fine.”

  She and Garin waited for Roux to come into view above and show that he was ready for Annja, but no helping hand appeared. Annja probably didn’t require a hand up, but it would make things easier.

  “Where is that old man?” Garin asked, clearly irritated.

  “Roux?” Annja called.

  They both listened. Nothing.

  “You think he left?” she asked.

  “Of course he did. I didn’t see that one coming, or rather, I should have anticipated it. The wily coot. He’s probably halfway back to the car right now. Come on. Step up onto my hands. We’ll get you out of here.”

  “Then how will you get out?”

  “I’ll jump.”

  Annja nodded. Stepping onto Garin’s hands, she then straightened her body and arrowed her arms over her head to make as narrow a form as she could. The target above seemed so small now.

  “Ready?”

  “Go!” she said.

  Bending her knees as Garin lowered his hands, she straightened with the lift, and the boost he gave her sent her soaring just high enough to grip the opening and pull herself up and partly onto the floor. Kicking furiously, she launched herself forward to drag herself completely away from the hole. She coughed and sneezed violently from being so close to the dusty ground.
>
  Garin’s hands immediately slapped the rough, broken edges of the floorboards. Wood creaked and he cursed, dropping back down into the depths. Annja coughed from the plume of dust and dirt that rose in his crashing wake.

  “I’m going to need a wider opening!” he hollered.

  “Will do!”

  Setting to work, Annja tore away more of the busted floor. It gave easily and she was thankful. She hauled a few boards to the side of the room and could hear a chuckle from below.

  “Just be thankful I don’t leave you down there,” she muttered.

  “I’d find a way out and then hunt you down.”

  “I know! Such a joy having you as a friend.”

  Garin popped up through the opening in the floor, his arms reaching, and she helped drag him forward until he was able to roll onto his back. “A friend, eh?”

  “Well...for today, anyway.” She waited for him to get to his feet and catch his breath.

  “I know where the old man is headed.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Rouen.”

  Annja was not surprised. Rouen was the town the coordinates on the drawing had indicated. Rouen was the town in France where the English had burned Joan of Arc at the stake. And now with a time-shifting device in hand, apparently Roux had some history he felt compelled to adjust.

  And hadn’t Evan mentioned Rouen to her earlier? She felt certain he had. If only she’d paid more attention... “Let’s go,” she said. “Maybe we’ll be able catch up with Roux at the airport.”

  “If we’re lucky,” he said. “If we’re lucky.”

  * * *

  AS THEY HEADED away from Lake Como, Annja recalled something Roux had said to her a day or two earlier. I don’t want to share it. Meaning, he didn’t want to include anyone else in whatever was found, even Garin.

  Should she be worried about Roux? About the music box? She should have thought twice before tossing the artifact into Roux’s clutches.

  Chastising herself wouldn’t change things, though.

  “How can we be sure Roux is headed toward Malpensa?” Annja asked as they drove the A8 toward the airport. The road, lined sporadically with tall trees, power lines and businesses, reminded her of a standard Midwestern freeway back in the States. Malpensa was the largest of three airports that served Milan.

  “We can’t. But does it matter? We’ve got to take the quickest route to try to catch him. We’re just following at the moment.”

  “You don’t strike me as a follower, Garin.”

  He smiled and flashed her a look, his attention veering briefly from the road.

  “So I seem to be on your team now?”

  “You’re never on anyone’s team, Annja. Except maybe that of the tired and poor. The huddled masses—”

  “I think you’ve spent too much time at the Statue of Liberty lately. I just like to do what’s right, when I can. And where a possible artifact such as this is concerned?”

  “I’ll get the box back, Annja. I’m not going to let Roux get away with this one.”

  A surprising act of selflessness. But Annja wouldn’t for one second buy that Garin didn’t have his own plans for the device.

  “How long have you known about Roux’s quest for this artifact? Do you believe in time travel?”

  “It’s a time shifter, Annja.”

  “So I’ve been told. Numerous times. Huge difference from time traveling, I’m sure. Really? Why would you want to go back in time?”

  “I don’t. And I don’t believe the thing works. But on the off chance that it does? It’s in the possession of the one man who could change history, Annja. I’ve known about his search since the day he met Scout Roberts, or Evan Merrick, or whoever he is. I keep tabs, you know.”

  “You both do. It disturbs me, and then it doesn’t.”

  “Yes, well, keeping tabs has been a lifesaver on more than a few occasions. This time? It could mean preventing a catastrophic change to history as we know it.”

  “Such dramatics. Cue the ominous movie score.”

  Garin frowned.

  A shrug was the only appropriate response.

  “With Roux headed to Rouen,” Garin said, “you know what that means.”

  The landscape rushed by as Annja nodded and tapped the window. Did Roux believe he could stop Joan’s execution? Did he not understand the consequences if he actually managed it? He didn’t strike her as a man who was overly concerned with the nuances of things. And it must have been a horrid experience for him to have witnessed a person who was so special to him be burned at the stake. But to go back and change the course of everything that had happened afterward was mind-boggling.

  Annja dismissed all of it; she knew what she believed. The notion of changing history was absurd. The same was true of time travel. At least the way they were considering it now.

  She had to concede to time traveling a lot in the sense that when she was on a dig site, she would sit back and wonder about the origins of a mysterious skeleton or object she’d uncovered. What and who had that person been in his or her lifetime? A peasant? Merchant? King or queen?

  “It is possible,” she felt the urge to say. “But only through history and science and the knowledge we gain by studying the past.”

  “Works for me,” Garin said. He shifted gears and turned into the Milan Malpensa Airport terminal.

  Annja used her phone and went online to check the schedule of outgoing flights.

  The only flight to France had left ten minutes before they got to the airport. Bad timing. But Garin showed no signs of worry as he drove beyond the main parking lot, toward a smaller terminal where private jets waited. Of course the man would never fly with others, not even first-class.

  “Roux didn’t take a private jet here?” she wondered.

  “I don’t know. Not on our team, remember?”

  “I’m not really on your team, Garin.”

  “You don’t have to remind me. But just know, I’m the one you should be cheering for this time.”

  Annja would reserve judgment on that. For the time being, she would stick with Garin because he knew Roux better than she did, and he had the insights to the music box and cross that could be their only advantage.

  She thought back to where they had left Evan in the warehouse in Milan. Garin had taken the Lorraine cross and still had it now. Meanwhile, Roux had the notebook. And now Roux also had the music box. Without a piece on the board, would Evan now leave the game?

  “Let me see the cross,” Annja asked.

  Garin reached into his suit coat and then slapped the outside pockets. He swore.

  “Don’t even tell me,” she said. “Sitting at the bottom of a hole on some Sheetrock?”

  “I don’t think so. That old coot! We argued in the gardens.”

  “What’s new?”

  “He shoved me. I shoved back. We had a tussle. I think he stole it from me.”

  “You’d better hope so. Otherwise we should go back to Lake Como right now.”

  “He’s got it,” Garin decided and punctuated his anger with a growl.

  Chapter 29

  Roux disembarked from the domestic flight, which he had chosen specifically because Garin Braden would be trying to follow him. He’d only had a ten-minute head start, so he expected Braden to catch up. But by then, Roux wanted to have figured out the time-shifting device.

  As he was looking for the exit, a fellow passenger bumped into him, but quickly apologized.

  “Désolé,” the man offered and straightened Roux’s jacket in an attempt to make nice.

  Roux walked on, clutching the brown paper bag to his chest. The bag had been the quickest and easiest solution he could find to hold, if not hide, the music box and notebook.

  And inside his pocket he had the cross that Garin hadn’t been the wiser—

  “No!”

  Roux spun around, trying to catch sight of the man who had bumped into him. He’d worn dark clothing, but Roux hadn’t paid much at
tention to his face. A good distance away, leading to the parking lot, he saw someone run through the sliding glass doors.

  “Stop!” Roux’s shout served its purpose. The first face to turn toward him was the man running outside. Blond hair, square jaw and a glint at his ear that must be an earring.

  Roux raced down the carpeted aisle, doing his best to dodge other travelers. Had Garin sent someone ahead to trouble him until Garin himself could get here? But why not also take the two artifacts—the music box and notebook? If not Garin, then Evan? He wouldn’t have known Roux was in possession of both artifacts....

  “Should have ended that man when we had the chance,” he muttered, rushing through the open doors leading to the parking lot. He looked left and right.

  The blond man hopped into the passenger side of a waiting dark blue sports car and it peeled away from the curb. Roux dashed toward the row of cabs, eyed a limo that was idling and its driver helping a customer with her bag.

  No time for explanations.

  Roux pulled open the driver’s door and slid behind the wheel, tossing the brown paper bag onto the seat next to him. The aggravated driver volleyed French curses at him as he sped away.

  Roux shifted into gear and negotiated the labyrinth of vehicles ahead of him. He’d lost sight of the sports car, but it wouldn’t be headed out of town, so he veered onto the exit toward town.

  The city of Rouen had changed, and it hadn’t. A man could still navigate merely by knowing the location of the Seine, which was to his right.

  And ahead, he spied the navy blue sports car.

  * * *

  SEATED IN A COMFY leather chair in the airport’s private lounge, outfitted with gourmet food and cocktails—she was surprised there were no sexy women to serve Garin’s every need—Annja dug out her laptop. She was pleased to have a Wi-Fi connection.

  She’d been in Rouen on a few occasions. One particular time a nasty professor with a Charlemagne complex had been trying to steal her sword for his collection. He’d sought twelve swords to complete his plans to rule the world and had employed some deadly minions who hadn’t a care for human life to achieve his goal. Ultimately, though, cancer had beat him to world domination.