by Alex Archer
Scanning down the hall to each direction, Annja then scampered over to the door. It wasn’t marked. A biometric scanner positioned on the wall near the handle blinked red—then suddenly it turned green.
The door pushed open.
Annja, hidden by the steel door, dodged a look around it. The person in a white lab coat headed toward the reception area. She slipped around and sneaked inside the stairwell as the hydraulics eased the door shut.
Cinder-block walls enclosed the stairwell. A fire extinguisher hung behind the door. The stairs didn’t go down, so she stepped lightly up two short flights to the next floor.
There was no window on the steel door. Caution slowed her motions. Biting the edge of her lip, she pressed the hydraulic bar and peered out. She saw low lighting on the plain white walls and a glossy linoleum floor. There was no one in sight. Her intuition suggested it was probably a private floor.
Slinking down the hallway, she noted biometric scanners outside every windowless door she passed. The feeling that she crept toward doom skittered up her spine.
At the same time, a scurry of excitement pushed her onward. Digging for bones was fun. But skulking for secrets was a thrill. And while she was no expert sleuth, her experience with asking questions about artifacts and discovery of their origins could help her here. It was all about the who, what and why.
Ten feet ahead, the hallway turned both left and right. Pressing herself close to the wall, Annja peered around one corner. The coast was clear. And down the other direction a door opened.
Annja crossed the hall and pressed herself against the opposite wall. She listened, and heard footsteps, softening as they walked away from her.
She dared a look around the corner. Another hydraulic door was halfway closed. The back of another person wearing a lab coat walked away from her.
Dashing around the corner, Annja didn’t think she’d manage to catch the door, so she willed her sword to hand. Plunging the tip into the crack of space between door and frame, she caught it.
The person who’d left the room stopped, about thirty feet up the hall.
Breathing through her nose, Annja tilted the sword outward to open up the door so she could fit her fingers inside. Pulling it open, she slipped inside as the person turned around.
Had she been seen? Not sure if the person had made her—or they could be heading back to this room for something forgotten—Annja remained by the door, back to it, and hands pressed flat to the wall.
She counted ten seconds. Heartbeats pulsed madly in her ears.
Closing her eyes did not help to increase her hearing. She couldn’t hear beyond the swish of the overhead fans. Aware of the temperature change, Annja shrugged a hand up her sleeveless arm.
A minute passed. Reasoning that if someone was returning it would have happened by now, Annja turned her focus to the room she stood in.
Scanning the four upper corners of the ceiling, she sighted two cameras. She hadn’t assumed she was walking around unnoticed. Perhaps Lambert watched her on his laptop at this very moment. This would be a quick reconnaissance.
The room was twenty feet wide and about twice as long. Three aisles of silver metal file cabinets stretched before her. To even begin to guess which would offer the most intriguing information would take too long.
She needed visuals. Hard evidence. She wasn’t sure what she expected to find. Clones? Bodies suspended by wires and fed through intravenous tubes? Jars with fetuses preserved in alcohol?
“You don’t see that many movies,” she muttered.
Turning to inspect the wall behind her, Annja noted a particular case of steel file cabinets to her right. It was the only standing file with a lock. And yet the top drawer was open about half an inch.
“Like candy left out for a child.”
Stepping lightly, she gave the nearest camera one last glance, and then tugged open the top drawer of the file cabinet. It was stuffed with manila folders and neatly filed documents.
She scanned the file tabs. Each was marked with a six-digit number. Two or three letters preceded some of the numbers. A holographic device the size of a dime ended each label. She guessed it must be a scannable recording device. She wasn’t up on advanced technology, but nowadays, anything was possible.
A clear label, like Cloned Humans, would have been helpful, but utterly ridiculous.
She tugged out one file and scanned the first page inside. There were no names, only case numbers, which matched the file tabs. Lists of medical abbreviations read like hieroglyphics to her. Yet hieroglyphics she could eventually decipher. This, not so much.
“‘Genetic markers,’” she read aloud one of the only lines she could understand. “‘Matches verified.’” More indecipherable abbreviations and codes.
Another file, followed by others, each offering the same impossible-to-discern evidence. The sixth file slowed Annja’s pace and she read further.
“Implantation date? Now this is interesting.”
“‘Subject, gravida 1, implanted on 08/14/07. In vitro successful. Embryonic and fetal development normal.’”
She scanned down the page, glossing over all the stuff she couldn’t understand. There were comments about general health noted on three different dates, which Annja assumed coincided with doctor’s visits at BHDC.
“‘Gestation premature at thirty-three weeks. Cesarean delivery.’” At the very bottom were measurements and weight. And the designation—female. “A baby?”
And yet, the final notation disturbed her the most. “‘Survived sixty-eight minutes. Complications due to—”
The door to the room slammed open. Annja shoved the file back into the drawer.
“I’ve been expecting company,” she said. Reaching out to her right, she curled her grip around a reassuring solidness. “What took you so long?”
WHEN HE RETURNED to find his office empty, Jacques rushed to the door, only to find it wouldn’t open. Something large lay on the other side, blocking his exit. His downed man.
Dispatching security, Jacques then went to his desk and tapped in a few commands on the laptop to activate the security program. He had access to all of the building’s cameras from his command station.
“She knocked out my biggest guard, and now she’s infiltrated the records room.” He pounded the desktop. “Just who are you, Annja Creed?”
Switching to full screen, he found the correct camera. Annja stood with her back to him, rifling through a file drawer. The most important one. The information contained in that file cabinet would threaten his future, his very dream for a future.
Jacques ran a hand over his hair. Fine perspiration formed at his temples. A lump rose in his throat. “How did she get into that? How did she even gain access to the third floor?”
Jaw held tight, he resisted pounding the computer monitor. He’d been so eager to acquire the DNA evidence that Roux offered, he’d grown overconfident of his hold on his uninvited visitor in this room.
The video showed Annja turning suddenly. The top of Theo’s head showed at the bottom of the surveillance video.
And then the most remarkable thing occurred.
Theo drew his pistol to aim, but the woman brought a sword down across his forearm, disarming him.
A sword?
“Where the hell did she get that? From my collection?”
But she hadn’t held it a moment ago. Both of her hands had been flying through his private files. Unless she’d stashed it beside her somewhere…
“But—” Jacques tapped a finger on his lower lip. She didn’t bend to retrieve it. It is almost as if…it appeared from out of nowhere. “Impossible.”
She swung again, bringing the sword tip to Theo’s throat, and pressing him backward. They left camera range, and Jacques switched to another view.
He did not recognize the weapon she wielded as one from his collection. It was double-edged, utilitarian and looked…medieval, but that was about all he could determine from the grainy security feed.<
br />
Would she slay Theo on camera? She must be aware she was being videotaped. Surveillance cameras were mounted in plain sight in the records room.
“Who is this woman? I thought she was a television personality.”
The blade slashed. Annja swung up her free left fist, and clocked Theo under the jaw. As the behemoth security guard fell, Jacques saw the delicate line of blood across his throat. She had not cut to kill, but merely to threaten.
He focused on the sword—no, definitely not from his collection. She swung it high, prepared to strike again, but when her victim hit the floor, she lowered her right arm, sword in hand—
It was gone.
The weapon had literally vanished from her grasp. It had not fallen to the floor. She had not sheathed it behind her back or at her hip. Nor had she set it aside.
It was gone.
And Annja Creed made her escape.
Too stunned to react quickly, Jacques murmured, “What a remarkable weapon. If it really does come from out of nowhere…”
He swung around the desk and marched to the door. “I must have that sword.”
16
Annja ran through the reception area, giving a frantic wave to the receptionist, who rose, moving around the steel desk, but was yanked abruptly to a stop as her headset was still attached to the telephone.
She noted one woman seated in the reception room on a couch. Young, blond and sporting a big belly. Pushing through the front door, Annja scanned down the street to the left. No traffic, not a single car parked on the street. To the right, the back of a woman in a navy-blue dress swayed in the midday sun.
Veering to the right and slowing to a fast walk, Annja quickly paralleled the woman, turning to offer her a smile. She received a glowing smile in return. The woman rubbed a hand over her generous belly.
Annja continued walking. Two pregnant women?
Where the hell was BHDC? Turning and searching the cityscape, she couldn’t pick out any familiar landmarks, which was normally easy in Paris.
To her right, the angry rush of traffic revealed the périphérique circled close by. It was the main freeway that enclosed the city. That meant she was somewhere near the outskirts of the city proper.
A cross street ahead offered two cafés and a magazine shop. A man walking a dog paused to buy a newspaper from an outdoor vendor.
Annja slid a look back toward BHDC—no thugs yet. The pregnant woman sent her another smile. Annja made a dash for the magazine shop.
Once inside, she offered a “bonjour” to the man behind the counter, then picked up a glossy copy of Vogue and pretended to read it, while she kept her focus outside. The pregnant woman strolled without a care, and she turned down the street, perhaps to go into one of the cafés.
Now someone did emerge from the BHDC building. Not Jacques Lambert, but a tall man holding a pistol in plain sight. He looked both ways, then headed the opposite direction Annja had taken.
“Idiot,” she muttered. Returning the magazine to its stack, Annja decided she was in need of a cup of coffee.
THE PREGNANT WOMAN in the navy dress met a girlfriend in a coffee shop that boasted decadent truffles behind a curved glass counter. She acknowledged Annja with a bright smile as she entered. Annja gave a little wave as if to say “Ah, such a coincidence, we just saw each other on the street,” and then went to the counter and ordered a coffee with three creams.
On interior surveillance of her surroundings she noted the aisle behind the counter stretched back to a door, propped open, most likely to a courtyard where a trash bin was kept. It could be contained, but she was betting money that it opened to an alley. An escape route, should it come to that.
While she waited for the sales clerk to retrieve a fresh carton of cream, Annja read the small placard on the front of the register. It featured a picture of a cathedral she recognized, but couldn’t quite name at the moment. Tour Mansart’s Greatest Works it advertised.
“Mansart,” she muttered. “Why does that…?”
“Mademoiselle?” The clerk handed her a cup.
“What cathedral is this?” she asked, pointing to the advertisement.
“Ah?” The clerk reached around and peeled the taped notice from the register. “Oh, this expired last week. It is a tour of François Mansart’s works. This is Val-de-Grâce.”
“Right, the cathedral that Queen Anne had commissioned so she could baptize her son?” That was about all Annja recalled of the historical monument.
“Exactly. I am an admirer of the architect, so I posted the tour. You have been to Val-de-Grâce?”
“No. So he was seventeenth century?”
“Oui. Designed many famous sites and mansions until Mazarin had him publicly ridiculed by declaring him wildly extravagant and to be having an affair with the queen. None of it was correct. But he suffered for it, and never worked again. Pity. So many wonderful things he could have yet created.”
“Mansart and Queen Anne,” Annja said under her breath. She took a sip of the coffee, and glanced to check her pregnant woman was still there. “Mansart?” she said.
Instead of Maquet.
Could that have been the word Lambert had scrawled along his copy of the map? Historically, the architect fit into the picture. Too well.
“Do you know anything about the tunnels that run under the city?” she asked, making the query light and not too serious.
The clerk shrugged. “I know that Mansart had to reinforce many of the tunnels beneath Val-de-Grâce due to cave-ins during the construction. Paris sits upon a complex network of tunnels. I am surprised the whole city does not collapse!”
“Don’t tell that to those who ride the Metro,” Annja said with a laugh. She offered a tilt of her coffee cup and a thankful nod. “Very interesting to consider. Merci.”
She took a chair two tables away from the chattering women and placed her back to them to maintain a good view of the street before her. Lambert’s thug could double back and check out this end of the street. At least she hoped he did. What kind of thug was he if he didn’t?
So. Mansart. This could be a lead. But she couldn’t do anything about it until she got back to her car and her laptop.
The coffee served to zap her consciousness sharply. After being knocked out and transported—and then what she’d seen in the BHDC building—Annja wasn’t sure it hadn’t all been a weird nightmare.
She took another sip of the cream-whitened brew. No, she was thinking clearly. She’d read horrible things in the files back at BHDC. And the woman sitting not ten feet away from her had probably come from the building. Was she being seen by a BHDC doctor? Did they operate an actual fertility clinic?
Annja found it hard to believe biopirates could be so generous. That’s what they were—evil men stealing genetic material from unsuspecting women. The fertility clinic was a front. Had to be. It provided a means to their research.
Was the woman chatting in animated glee with her friend a guinea pig?
“It’s such a treasure.” The pregnant woman’s words carried over to Annja. “Michel and I have been trying for years. Such marvels medicine can perform.”
Her friend agreed, and the two shared a giggle.
Annja swallowed back a huge rise in her throat. Yes, a baby would be a treasure to an infertile couple. But what kind of baby was she carrying? A clone? A mini-Marie Antoinette?
“Have you picked out names?” the friend asked.
A few more giggles.
If BHDC experimented with cloning they would need stem cells. Stem cells were not easy to come by, and illegal if gained through improper means and methods.
Though it was a guess, and a wild one at that, she scared herself with her thoughts. Did BHDC harvest eggs from infertile mothers, with the promise of fertility treatments? Perhaps a few eggs were set aside and used for cloning research. The mother would never miss them.
That made Annja wonder if BHDC actually did perform fertility treatments. Why bother after they’d go
tten the stem cells they sought?
But there were pregnant women coming out of the woodwork around the place. Was that their payment for participating in a research they could never know was illegal?
“Are they carrying clones?” Annja muttered over her coffee cup.
The files she’d scanned had detailed failed births and infants dying but moments—sixty-eight minutes—after birth. BHDC was a clone factory of sorts. And they hadn’t yet mastered their trade.
ANNJA PUT DISTANCE between herself and BHDC. The street where the café sat ended at what appeared to be a cathedral. It made perfect sense. There were hundreds of churches and cathedrals in the city.
She walked toward the cathedral, hoping to orient herself from there. The scent of the river carried through the air, so the Seine must be close. Perhaps a few blocks away, though the French didn’t call them blocks.
The street veered to the left and right to circle the cathedral. Annja stopped at the corner across from the courtyard. For the first time she spotted a street sign.
“Rue Jeanne d’Arc,” she read the sign. “Who would have thought?”
The utter serendipity of the moment struck her, and she smiled. “I guess I just have to accept the fact that I’ll always be where I should be. Cool.”
An open-air market edged the courtyard before the cathedral, which she now saw was Notre-Dame-de-la-Gare. Our Lady of the Station. Probably the cathedral had little to do with Joan of Arc, but, compelled, Annja walked forward and took the steps until she found herself standing inside the dark quiet of the grand structure.
The air held an ancient and musty aroma. Looking back outside toward the market, a wistful wonder overcame Annja for what it must have been like to be so young, and so determined to fulfill a holy quest whispered by God. It had to have been too much for Joan, for one so young. She had faced her destiny fiercely.
“As I should mine,” Annja said.
She held out her right hand, opening it to receive the sword, but did not will it to this realm of reality where she stood. There was no need. The knowing was all Annja required to feel the power of it. Immense power hummed in the sword. Ancient wisdom, united with desperate determination. A bold confidence seasoned with the barest desire for the soul’s freedom. And always, valor.