by Alex Archer
“I have not been subjected to half so many horrors and trials of endurance as she must have experienced. I can do this. For as long as I must,” she pledged.
Clasping her hand over her heart, Annja looked through to the sanctuary. Vast arches and the vaulted ceiling made her so small. She did not enter. But she did whisper what felt like a prayer for the unborn child in the belly of the woman she had watched in the café.
“I pray it’s not one of Jacques Lambert’s experiments.” And then she crossed herself, as she had not done for a long time.
The nuns from her New Orleans orphanage would be so proud.
Stepping back outside, she figured there must be a Metro station close by. Scanning the neighborhood, she saw a familiar site to her right. The library.
Not far from where she stood, the familiar four book-shaped buildings of the Bibliothèque Nationale appeared just over the building tops.
Skipping down the cathedral steps, Annja fixed her path to rue Charcot and headed toward the library. She thought she probably had enough change in her pocket to gain access. And her reader card should be on file. She’d gone through the obligatory interview with a librarian a few years ago to get that. The library was very particular about whom they allowed to access their information.
Keeping a keen eye to her periphery, Annja picked up her pace.
Jacques Lambert would not allow her such an easy escape, she felt sure. The cameras had recorded her rifling through documents. And her fighting the thug with a sword that she’d summoned out of thin air.
If only she’d had time to nab some of the paperwork. It was up to her to get evidence into the hands of the proper authorities before the bad guys caught her first.
Yes, bad guys, she thought. BHDC was attempting to clone humans. The documents she had read proved that. She couldn’t guess how many fetuses had been destroyed or damaged in the process. And what about actual births? The one file spoke of cesarean delivery. She wasn’t a medical genius but she knew enough to know that what was going on there was a bad thing.
But where to go? Without evidence, would the French police jump on this and take immediate action? Who was she to decide what was the best option? Would Roux know what to do?
She’d tried his cell phone, but Henshaw said he was out. Her next-best choice, but probably useless considering she wasn’t in the States, was Bart McGilly.
Annja dialed his number.
“Hey, Annja, long time no hear. The connection isn’t good. Where are you?” Bart asked.
“Paris,” she replied.
“City of love. I wish I was there.”
And she wished he was, too.
“I have a dilemma and was hoping you might have some words of wisdom.” She relayed the entire adventure to him and what she’d seen at the BHDC offices.
To his credit, he didn’t tell her she was in over her head. That was Bart. They were friends first, and always. Though she sometimes suspected he considered her more of a little sister. She could never quite place him as a brother. He was too attractive for that.
“I don’t know how the European laws operate, Annja, I’m sorry. I’d suggest you go to the police with your suspicions, but without hard evidence, it could be difficult. They’re more likely to nod their heads politely and scoot you out the door.”
“That’s what I thought. But if I can get evidence?”
“Then you go to the police, go directly to the police, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Because I suspect if you find evidence, you’ll also find a hell of a lot of bad luck. You watch your back, Annja.”
“Always do.” She hung up, not feeling any more sure of the situation, but also relieved just from talking to a friendly voice.
While she was tucking her phone away, it rang.
She checked caller ID. It wasn’t an unidentified number, so it wouldn’t be Lambert. Ascher Vallois? Last she’d seen, he’d been hightailing it away from her, map in hand.
So you are unaware of what you have?
Lambert’s insinuation haunted her. What did she have? The navigation device? But what was it? Would looking into François Mansart answer that question?
She crossed a street that stretched before the massive library.
“What have you gotten yourself into?” she asked herself as she found a shady spot and sat down on a public bench to answer the call. “Hello.”
“Annja, you are not harmed?”
The urgency in Ascher’s voice was completely feigned. If he had really been concerned he would have stuck around to help her fend off the bad guys.
On the other hand, she was thankful he’d gotten away, and she had been the one to encourage him to do so. Not that the map mattered to Lambert, but she felt sure, had he gotten Ascher in hand, he may have been less another kidney right now.
“As little as possible,” she replied. “And what of you? I won’t even ask if the map is intact. Rain, wind or flood could not destroy that hermetically sealed artifact.”
“Get over it, Annja. It’s a copy. Where are you?”
“Just outside the Bibliothèque Nationale.”
“So I have been jumping boats and fleeing bad guys while you have had your feet up reading books?”
Oh, the fool. Annja squeezed a fist so hard her fingernails dug into her palm. “I haven’t gone inside yet. Been a little too busy to get any reading done.”
“Where have you been?”
“Inside BHDC.”
“What?” Was he really so surprised that the thugs back at the river could have overwhelmed her and taken her captive?
Maybe. The man had far too much confidence in her. It should have never gone down this way, but Annja was thankful that her capture had allowed her to learn more about BHDC.
“We need to talk, Vallois, and I need to take another look at that map,” she said.
“I’m staying in the Fifth Arrondissement, in a cozy hotel kitty-corner to Notre-Dame.”
“Is my rental car still parked out there?”
“It is still there.”
“Good. I’ll be there…soon.” She had no idea how long it would take at the library, or if they’d even allow her admittance. “I might stop and get something to eat on my way. I’m starving.”
“No, I will feed you, Annja. Please, it is the very least I can do,” he said.
It was the very least. Patting a few loose strands of her hair from her face, she briefly wondered how awful she looked after a day of fighting, capture and escape, and then decided she didn’t care.
“I’ll be there in a few hours. Don’t go anywhere.”
“Will you bring the rapier?”
“I don’t have time to get to it right now. It’s safe, Ascher. It’s…”
Lambert was still eager to get the sword, even knowing the DNA evidence was no longer useable. He collected swords, but that didn’t make obtaining it worth critically wounding a man. So there must be something about the sword….
You are unaware of what you have.
“Annja?”
“I changed my mind. I’m going to get the rapier. I’ll meet you at your hotel in about four hours?”
“Excellent. I will have food.”
17
The reading room was charmingly quiet and the perfect way to unwind after the day she had been through. Annja chose a table toward the corner of the room and near a window, and thanked the librarian when she arrived ten minutes later with a cloth-covered box tied with thin canvas ribbon.
“Must be a group project?” the librarian said in French as she set the box before Annja on the table.
“Why do you ask?”
“This is the second time in less than a fortnight I’ve retrieved this information.” She smiled, and Annja caught a glint of wild waiting for escape in the pupils of her soft blue eyes, disguised behind proverbial thick black-rimmed glasses. “François Mansart is a popular man this month.”
“Yes, a project,” Annja agreed, sliding a hand over
the aquamarine cover of the box. “Do you recall the person who previously requested this material? Man or woman?”
“A woman,” she verified. “I did not get her name. She requested Nicolas Fouquet, as well, if I recall correctly.”
“A study in seventeenth-century scapegoats,” Annja provided. “Both were persecuted by Cardinal Mazarin.”
“Let me know if you’d like me to bring out the information for Fouquet. We do close in a little over an hour. Good luck.”
Luck? She’d need an act of God to find something within an hour. Unless the work had already been done for her. If whoever had previously requested this information had been on the same quest Annja followed, the pertinent information could be on the top.
Annja set the cover of the box aside and peered into the depths. She hadn’t requested any of the larger architectural drawings that could be viewed only by microfiche. The map, if it was in the library’s possession, should be the same size as the one she and Ascher had found in the sword.
“And if someone was here recently…” One of Lambert’s hired treasure hunters, she suspected.
Pulling on the soft white gloves the library had provided, Annja glanced toward the glass-enclosed office where three librarians worked. Two sets of eyes studied her. To be expected.
Carefully, she began to sort through the contents, which included small sketches of buildings, a few garden designs, but nothing completed that would lend to an actual draft of building designs.
She expected that the documents should be laid in the order they were last viewed. But it appeared as though they were not. In fact, they were ordered by sketches, then a few letters, which she did not take the time to read, and then…“This is it.”
The document she touched pushed the breath from her lungs.
Annja drew out the small paper, about half the size of normal notebook paper. She recognized the design drawn in detail with black ink.
“The Batz-Castelmore coat of arms.”
The three-dimensional drawing displayed the coat of arms upon a round disk, which curved over to form thick edges. Immediately, she knew what she held. An exact reproduction of the pommel fit to the rapier Queen Anne had gifted to d’Artagnan.
Or perhaps the original design for the pommel.
“Mansart designed the rapier? Curious.”
Though the man was never originally a trained architect—relatives taught him stonemasonry—she did not see any evidence that he designed weapons in this collection.
“Anything is possible. The man designed a freaking cathedral—he can make a small decorative rapier,” she muttered.
To the left of the drawing a simple jagged circle had been drawn, the same size as the pommel, perhaps a few millimeters smaller in circumference. Annja traced the jags, unsure what it signified, but sensing the answers lay in her hands.
Bending over the table, she stared at the picture. If she looked long enough would the truth reveal itself, as if lemon oil were applied to secret handwriting? Why had the whole process of navigating the map been made so difficult?
“Difficult to one who doesn’t know the secret. The queen probably handed d’Artagnan the sword and said, ‘By the way, this is how you use it.’” Which would have led him to riches. However, Annja knew better. “Or not.”
Glancing inside the box, she sorted through a few more documents, and nearly let out a whoop when she touched the map.
“Here it is,” she gasped.
She held an exact version of the very map she and Ascher had found. Including the same missing corner.
“This must be the original. Or, one of two originals?”
If Mansart had indeed drawn the map, he would perhaps see to making a copy for himself. And then there was the copy that Lambert had said he’d found in Fouquet’s files. Of course, the financier would have made a copy of this bit of intriguing evidence to come into the queen’s hands.
Though, Annja recalled her conversation with Jacques Lambert—he hadn’t been sure the map had been found in Fouquet’s files. Perhaps his treasure hunter, a woman, had been in here less than two weeks earlier? She’d found this map in Mansart’s files and hadn’t documented its origin, or Lambert hadn’t cared, once he’d had the map in hand.
Standing straight and rotating her neck, Annja worked out a few kinks. As if preparing for the big challenge, she drew in a few breaths and shook out her arms and fingers.
Keenly observed by three sets of eyes, she repressed a smirk and leaned over both documents, placed side by side.
They were definitely created by the same hand. The drawing style was crisp, clean, and the methods of shading utilized a small pen-point stippling that was exact on both documents.
And suddenly Annja noticed the obvious.
She placed the drawing of the pommel over the map. Moving the right side that contained the simple jagged-line circle over the missing corner on the map proved it fit exactly.
Flipping back and forth between the two, Annja determined the jags on the circle could be rotated to match perfectly the jagged edges of what she’d originally thought to be a torn edge. But it wasn’t torn; it had been carefully cut to fit as if a jigsaw.
“Incredible.”
She had a match. But what had she matched?
Sliding the pommel drawing so the actual design lay over the torn corner, Annja now looked at the coat of arms, upside down. And there, at the bottom of the curve, directly below the point of the herald, was the letter N.
“North.”
She traced her finger around the pommel. “West and east and south!” she said.
Wincing, Annja clenched her fingers over the edge of the table in an attempt to keep from looking toward the glass office. Three pairs of eyes admonished her for her outburst, she felt sure.
The door creaked open. She was busted.
But it didn’t matter. She had figured it out.
“Mademoiselle?”
“Sorry. Got a little excited.” She gestured to the drawings. “I don’t suppose I can make a copy?”
“You’ve little time to hand copy the documents now. Perhaps you can return tomorrow?”
Right. No photocopying privileges here. But she didn’t need a copy, because she had the real thing.
“I think I have what I need. Merci.”
IT APPEARED Roux was just returning home as Annja pulled up the circular drive before his mansion. He paused on the stairs and turned to wave at her.
Parking and rushing out to meet him, Annja decided an explanation about her less than chic condition wasn’t necessary. He’d seen it before, and if he did comment it would be trite.
“Find your treasure?” he asked, inviting her in and following as she marched toward his den. “You’re in a hurry, Annja.”
“I’m racing against BHDC to find this treasure, Roux. And I just figured out the key piece in the puzzle. Where’s d’Artagnan’s rapier?”
“Still in my study on the desk where you left it,” he said.
“You didn’t lock it away? This house is not burglar proof. I remember well the time it was broken into by crazed monks.”
“I’ve enhanced my security since the Brotherhood of the Silent Rain. But you’re right, I’ve been busy. There it is. Safe and sound.”
She lifted the rapier by the hilt and tilted the blade downward. If Lambert still wanted the sword—even though he had a copy of the map—then something about it must be valuable. The worth of it as an artifact would never bring more than a few thousand euros. Maybe tens of thousands. Chump change to an organization like BHDC.
She tilted the hilt to inspect the pommel.
Roux joined her. His presence put her to unexpected ease, the first time today she’d released her tight shoulders to breathe out an exhale. If she could afford a few moments to do some yoga poses, she should. A little downward-facing dog would stretch out her back muscles.
“I’m sure the musketeer never wielded that blade in a duel,” he commented over Annja’s
shoulder. “It was a prize he valued, to be sure.”
“Why wouldn’t a musketeer, who was very obviously strapped for cash, and constantly in debt, not seek to claim the riches he held in his very hands? Have I been foolish to believe very few are even aware of the treasure, when perhaps it has been pursued through the centuries by curious treasure hunters?” Annja asked.
“Would there not have been mention of it in a historical text or included with the treasure-hunting sites online if that were the case?” Roux said.
“Perhaps.” She’d checked the major treasure hunting sites, such as GeoCache and Treasurenet.com. Nothing on d’Artagnan’s sword.
She glided her fingers in admiration over one flat side of the blade. It was much thinner and more flexible than her own sword. Not a weapon designed for battle. This was a gentleman’s sword, designed more for show than duel. Though certainly the tip was sharp and would go nicely through a man’s torso, if needed.
“Why would the queen give the man a map without a key?” Annja wondered. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Unless the key was to hand?”
She met Roux’s blue eyes. They glittered with mischief. “Yes, to hand.” She tilted the hilt toward him to display the pommel. “Take a look.”
Roux tilted the pommel upward with a touch of his finger. “What am I looking at?”
Annja took a look herself and saw the crest was still crusted with dirt. Tracing her fingernail along the raised crest impressed into the pommel, she cleaned out some of the dirt still embedded within the heavy gold disk. What she needed was a small brush archaeologists used to clean away fine particles. But the appearance of a small N along the outer rim gave her a thrill.
“I don’t understand why a corporation focused on genetic cloning would have an interest in an ancient sword,” Roux commented. “The value is not so great—ah.”