by Alex Archer
“I didn’t do so well. In fact, as you were floating away down the Seine, I was being knocked out and carried to BHDC.”
“You were captured?” He slid a hand over hers, which startled her, so she pulled away and nearly knocked over the bottle in the process.
Chill, Annja. Have another drink.
“How did you get away?” Ascher asked. “Did they let you go?”
“Not exactly. I made a run for it. And they followed me to the home of a trusted ally. Much gunfire ensued. And a bit of nasty eye gouging.”
Annja inspected her fingernails. They were lined with half moons of dirt and blood.
She took another swig of brandy.
“Annja, I had no idea the star of Chasing History’s Monsters lived such an adventurous life. Do you get paid for risking your life?”
Not when she should be on vacation. Nor did she receive financial reward for any of the situations she had found herself in that involved fighting off thugs and saving the world. But she was occasionally able to use the experience as work related and write off the flight and hotel room. She doubted her producer, Doug Morrell, would approve of this adventure as fodder for one of the shows.
“Ascher, just…I’m not sure if I’m ready to tell you everything right now.”
“I understand. There is a loss of trust between us. I must earn it back. But you believe that I have been truthful with you now? About the danger BHDC presents?”
“Yes, they are dangerous, but in a creepy, twisted scientific way. This has become much more than a simple pleasure dig.”
“Oui. I’m so sorry, Annja. I did not mean for you to become involved in something so strange.”
He lay on the bed and stretched his arms up and behind his head. The stretch revealed his abs. Annja lingered for a moment on the sight. A man had to be disciplined to develop a body like his. She liked that about him. For every fault, he matched it with a surprising positive.
“I cannot, for the life of me, have imagined it would result in your being kidnapped. How can I make this up to you?”
“Hand over the map,” she said. And then she shook her head. “No. I’m sorry, too. This was your dig. You are as much a victim of BHDC, if not more so.”
Her eyes strayed higher on his torso. The rucked-up sweater revealed the scar where his kidney had once been. It was small, about an inch. It must be where the blade exited, because she’d seen the long scar on his back. Damn, that must have hurt.
“I have no right to waltz in and walk off with something that means as much to you as it does to me,” she offered. “But can I trust that we both want to keep the map from Lambert’s hands?”
Ascher nodded. “We are in accord.”
“Not that it matters anymore.” She finished the gyro and dug to the bottom of the bag for a few remaining fries. “I know what it is about the rapier that Lambert wants.”
“Of course, the map. Did you bring along the rapier?”
“Part of it,” she said.
Ascher choked on a swig of Armagnac.
“The map is not what Lambert wants. Because he’s got a copy,” Annja said.
“He does?” Ascher sat up, jostling the paper bag and Annja.
She slid off the bed and stepped into the little bathroom to wash her hands.
“Scanned and saved on his laptop,” she called out. “It’s a match to the one we have. Seems Nicolas Fouquet made copies of all Queen Anne’s correspondence. Lambert has been researching the same archives we have, only he discovered the original map. Or an original copy.”
Studying her face in the mirror, she decided she had seen herself looking much worse. Was that a bruise at the edge of her jaw? Must be from Lambert’s slap. Heh. She’d battled thugs and avoided grenade and gunfire, and yet a simple slap succeeded in marking her.
“That makes sense,” Ascher said as she returned to the confines of the bedroom. “I read about Fouquet’s fastidious records in my studies. So the copy, is it missing—?”
“The same as ours. The lower left corner where a navigational key might normally be found. And after viewing the scan, which was much clearer than your black-and-white copy, I began to wonder if it was designed that way, with the piece missing. Which led me to the Bibliothèque Nationale, on François Mansart’s trail.”
“Mansart? The seventeenth-century architect? Annja?”
She stopped, midwobble, and caught herself against the door frame. “What?”
“You should sit down. You don’t look well.”
“Was that stuff old?” She eyed the almost empty bottle. Empty? “Christ, Ascher, I think you really did get me drunk.”
“Nonsense, Annja, you drank but half the bottle.”
“Half? Yikes,” she said as she sat in the only chair in the room.
“You do not indulge often?”
“Diet Coke is more my speed. So what was I saying?” The room had begun to spin. The movement challenged her. She did not like to be out of control of her senses. “Mansart,” she whispered. “The library. Hand me my backpack, will you?”
She tugged out the laptop and attempted to power up. No WiFi. And did it matter? All she really wanted to do was sleep.
Ascher finished the Armagnac and set the bottle on the floor. “Do you ever take a moment, Annja? You are always on the go, focused on the adventure. You are welcome to shower here. Perhaps I could massage your shoulders for you.”
“Ascher, let the dog loose, okay?”
“I do not understand.”
“The cad,” she explained further. “He doesn’t have a chance with me, so take off the leash and let him roam elsewhere.”
“My flirtations did not scare you off from meeting me, so you must have appreciated them,” he said.
She shrugged, not willing to agree, but knowing he was right. Their online conversations had served to fill a missing part of her that she didn’t have the time to pursue in the real world, at least not in real time. The missing part? A relationship.
Sure, a boyfriend might understand her job required much world travel. But how many men would understand when she couldn’t talk about the extracurricular activities that saw her fighting evil? Hey, honey, I’m home. I killed a bunch of bad guys and saved the world today. Supper ready?
The idea of such a relationship made her smirk. She wondered what it would be like married to a superhero. Not that she considered herself super or a hero.
“Annja, if I were trying to seduce you right now, I’d be over there, whispering into your ear and touching your brandy-stained lips,” Ascher said.
Annja drew a tongue along her lower lip. Despite the huge sandwich she had consumed—rather, devoured—she could still taste the Armagnac glazing her lips. Wasn’t a full stomach conducive to warding off a good drunk? Why did she feel so woozy?
“Yes, that plump, chewable lip,” Ascher said.
So watching her gobble down food hadn’t put him off? The man was either blind or desperate. She sensed he had moved to the end of the bed, and glanced away from the laptop screen to find he offered another bottle of the wicked brew.
“Ascher, I’m the one who should be getting you drunk so I can steal the map from you.”
“You wouldn’t steal a thing, Annja. I know you better than you do yourself.”
He was right. It wasn’t fair, but he was right. At least on the matter of stealing. Not her scene.
“You can have it.” He slid off the bed to stand, yet still they were about half a foot apart. “I want to see how adventurous a woman you are.”
Warmth spread all over her body, making her loose, relaxed and open. It was time to start drinking ice water.
“Do you know what BHDC is involved in?”
Ascher shrugged. “Cloning human body parts. Did you see my kidney while you were there?”
“Wouldn’t have been surprised if I had. Lambert heads a corporation dedicated to biohistorical research. They claim the DNA from famous figures and…I don’t know. I can’t imagin
e that you could clone a historical figure. But they collect the DNA anyway.”
“DNA pirates? Such exotic mischief.”
“Mischief? I thought it was the Brits who were masters of understatement. It is morally wrong. They’ve done experiments, Ascher. They’ve attempted to clone humans.”
“You have proof?” he asked.
She didn’t have tangible proof. Oh, to have pocketed one of the documents she’d read in BHDC’s files.
“Of course.” Ascher nodded. “Trust yet to be earned. I will never stop trying to seduce you, Annja. But I respect you. Maybe, it is, I want you to seduce me, eh? We Frenchmen do have our own fantasies about the American woman.”
Annja leaned closer to him and said, “I’ve never seduced a man in my life.”
“Then I will be your first. You are doing an excellent job so far.”
“I haven’t done a thing,” she said.
“The way you devoured that meal made me wish you were devouring me.”
“I think I’ll take you up on that offer of a shower now.”
His expression changed so quickly, Annja knew she had said something wrong.
19
Jacques had put a tail on Annja Creed, though he wasn’t sure he shouldn’t do the fieldwork himself after all the mishaps. He’d heard back from the crew who had followed Roux out of Paris to the old man’s mansion. Four men went down, with one dead. Reports told that a woman had assisted Roux.
So Roux and Annja Creed worked together?
How, and why? Had Roux arrived in his office to distract him with the decoy coat of chain mail while Creed sneaked around BHDC? It was possible. But that would mean the mail did not belong to Joan of Arc, which disturbed him more.
If it was genuine, then he couldn’t imagine why Roux would put forth something so valuable, without then expecting Annja to find something in return.
And whom was the mysterious modern sample from?
His men had allowed a woman—who had entered the facility without a weapon—to get away. Though how she’d gotten the sword she’d used to defeat Theo was another mystery. One he would solve.
And then there was Ascher Vallois. He and Creed were working together, though why was another frustrating question.
Annja Creed certainly had her allies in Paris.
“Such an enigma, that woman.”
She hosted a popular television show about monsters. Jacques had downloaded a few episodes to watch. She wasn’t as voluptuous or vacuous as the blond hostess, Kristie something-or-other, but she was more credible. She worked a lot of historical detail into her stories and featured short interviews with scientists, historians, archaeologists and other experts to verify her research. The woman was no slouch.
Jacques could not figure out her interest in d’Artagnan’s sword, and, ultimately, the treasure. It didn’t seem a feasible show topic; there were no monsters involved in the musketeer’s history. Was it merely her fascination for history?
“Idiot! Of course, anyone would have an interest in the prospect of treasure,” he told himself.
BHDC thrived because of found treasure. It was their sole means of finance. And the best way to obtain it? Stalk the serious treasure hunters and swoop in when the booty was brought up. Mad Bloody Jack was still riding the seas, even without the trusty Evil Gentleman Tobias at his side.
Jacques owed much to his brother’s memory.
From the moment Toby had breathed his last breath, Jack had begun to dream, imagine and design his own future—a future without sickness. He took science courses and advanced biology classes offered in high school. Then he’d met Andrew Harrison, his head geneticist, in his second year of college. Andrew had turned him on to the possibility that DNA manipulation could serve the human race.
Therapeutic cloning became his passion, to create life for those in need. Genetic cloning had been a natural progression, a sideline to his goal. And it paid the bills. Most of them. But until BHDC could show proof they’d actually successfully cloned a human, their clients would remain the few and desperate.
So plunder was needed to finance the bulk of expenses.
And while he should step back and allow the spoils to the victors—there were bigger caches of plunder to be claimed elsewhere—Jacques Lambert could no longer risk not following through. Both Vallois and Creed knew too much.
Hell, he’d spilled information when she’d been in his office. He’d come off as intelligent, in possession of knowledge very few could have. Jacques had never spent much time around an attractive woman. He never had the leisure to date or consider a relationship. Did a pretty woman so easily loosen his lips?
And now Creed had looked upon sensitive documents. He couldn’t be sure exactly which ones she’d read, but all the papers in the locked file were for no eyes but his own and those of the research lab.
Perhaps it was time to pack up and move on. Britain’s cloning laws were much more lenient than they were in France. Though there was his difficulty with Tony Blair in 2002. The former prime minister did not take kindly to biopirates. Jacques Lambert couldn’t easily waltz back into England without MI-5 sniffing onto his trail.
“Jacques.” He smirked at the moniker and wrapped his arms across his chest. “Jack, boy, you’ve come so far, don’t let them bring you down now. You are so close. Toby would be proud. Father will be suitably shown up. Old bastard. I have what it takes to change the world. To make a difference. And I will.”
But first, he had to devise a backup plan. A means to keep Annja Creed from going to the authorities. And the only plan that made sense involved shutting her up for good. It wouldn’t be easy. She was a celebrity. And crafty.
The intercom buzzed and, noticing it was a line from the lab, Jacques clicked on. “Yes?”
“I’ve begun to synthesize the samples you sent down,” Andrew Harrison said. His head genetic engineer was a keen scientist with a bold daring that Jacques appreciated. Andrew had lost a sister due to lack of donor for a heart transplant. They understood one another.
“Where you able to extract DNA from the chain mail?”
“It appears so. I won’t know for another twenty-four hours. I’ve put a rush on the job, as you requested.”
Jacques knew it took time to synthesize and isolate DNA, but the PCR process did run quite smoothly, and billions of copies of the DNA strand could be produced.
“You’re doing the other sample at the same time?”
“Of course. I’ll ring you as soon as I’ve results.”
“Good. Thank you, Andrew. You are indispensable.”
Jacques clicked off.
He had surrounded himself with a very small but trusted team of colleagues. Jacques needed no one else to keep BHDC running smoothly, albeit out of sight of the law. And to protect him from curious eyes. They all had lost someone to medicine’s lack of concern. First do no harm? Rare was the surgeon or medical practitioner who honored that code.
On the other hand, Annja Creed was the sort of adventurous, intelligent woman he could use on his team. She could prove an asset. If he could show her a reason to want to join his quest.
“Time to look up your history, Annja. Do you have relatives you’d die to protect? If you do, I will find them.”
IT WAS GENEROUS of Ascher to rent her a room, and not expect that she’d want to share with him, Annja thought.
Head still spinning from the brandy, she headed immediately for the shower. After she’d soaped away the past forty-eight hours of adventure, she wrapped one of the hotel’s thick terry robes around her body and made a beeline for her backpack.
The shower refreshed her, but she still felt woozy. However, there were things she needed to get processed before the alcohol completely stole her thoughts.
She tugged out her notebook and began to write down everything she could remember from the files at BHDC. There had been a lot of indecipherable medical terminology, and even the few sentences and terms she had recognized had been difficult to pi
ece into understanding.
Yet the overall, albeit slightly blurry, picture pointed to human cloning.
It disturbed her to recall the woman she had listened to in the café as she’d chatted with a friend about the upcoming birth of her baby. If there was a clone in her belly, did she know? Had she freely entered into a contract with BHDC in order to gain a child she may have pined over for years because of infertility? And if so, had she ordered a little Marie Antoinette or perhaps gone the modern route and applied for a Brad Pitt?
And if the mother had knowingly gone into the process, had she been informed that cloning wasn’t a mastered science? That no successful birth had survived beyond a few minutes? And should it actually survive, that the possibility of her having a baby who would grow to resemble whom she hoped, was impossible? And that she would not be getting a clone that would think and act like the original?
Annja couldn’t imagine that any woman would take that risk. To volunteer to be a guinea pig for cloning? No sane woman would do such a thing, knowing the results would lead to premature delivery and/or complications leading to death.
And with the news stations occasionally reporting on how organs could be cloned—but not humans—who would believe BHDC’s cloning scheme could work?
On the other hand, innocent people were duped out of thousands daily by false Nigerian widows’ Internet scams.
Annja sighed. People were that gullible, and always would be.
She had to believe the pregnant woman was being used by Jacques Lambert to further his experiments without knowledge of the risks.
“Poor girl,” she murmured. “Can’t imagine what it must be like to want a baby so badly.”
Doing a quick sketch, Annja worked the woman’s face onto a page in her notebook. She should have followed her from the café, gotten some solid information, like a license plate number or even a name.
This had become too big, Annja realized. When innocent humans were involved, she had to seek help from authorities. But without a name of the mother or a shred of tangible evidence against BHDC she felt lost.
Roux had been no help whatsoever.