by Gabriel Hunt
He started tearing away the loose branches covering the front of the cave, Sammi working beside him to open up enough room for them to squeeze inside. They got some help from a stray gunshot that splintered a particularly thick branch just inches away from Gabriel’s hand. “Go,” Gabriel said, pushing Sammi toward the narrow hole they’d opened, and she slipped in sideways. Gabriel stole another glance back. The gun battle was still raging; for the moment, no one had the luxury of paying attention to them. He squeezed into the cave after Sammi. The noise of gunfire was instantly muted, replaced by the echoing sound of Sammi panting in the darkness beside him.
“Is it safe here?” she asked.
Was it safe, she wanted to know.
It was safer, certainly—for now.
But Gabriel had a feeling they’d just walked into Napoleon’s Web.
Chapter 20
The entrance they’d come through was actually an abscess in the ground that narrowed to a tunnel through which only one person at a time could fit. Gabriel went first, with Sammi following directly behind him. He grabbed a flashlight from his rucksack and switched it on. The cave was dark, damp, and had a familiar smell of . . . yes, bat guano. “Watch your step,” he said. “It’s going to be slippery.”
“All right.”
“There are also supposed to be traps,” Gabriel said.
“Traps?”
“Three of them. According to the Alliance’s documents. Dreamed up by Napoleon himself and built to his specifications by his court engineer.”
“You’re not serious,” Sammi said.
“They seemed to be.”
He moved forward slowly. Where the flashlight’s beam landed, he saw insects scurry away, and he could feel some crunching underfoot as well. The tunnel continued, branching and forking into a maze of twisty passages, all alike. Gabriel pressed forward, taking the rightmost fork each time, just to make it easier to backtrack if it proved necessary. And it did—twice they reached dead ends and had to retrace their steps.
But eventually they reached a larger, open space, obviously man-made, that was about the size of a large bedroom. It had been carved from the stone of the hillside, the walls and ceiling shored up with vaults of rock. The noise of their footsteps echoed loudly even after they came to a stop.
“Strange,” Sammi said, and her voice reverberated: strange—strange—strange . . .
Gabriel heard a movement behind them, a swift scraping of stone against stone. He spun to face the entryway just in time to see it sealed up with a deafening thud as a stone slab slid into place from above. He ran up to it, searched along the base and sides for handholds, anything he might get a grip on and use to lift it. There weren’t any—and even if there had been, the slab must have weighed half a ton at the least.
“My god,” Sammi said, running up behind him, “did I do—” The echoes of her voice came back at her in a cacophonous crescendo, louder even than before they’d been sealed in, the repeated syllables crashing over one another. She covered her ears and let the end of her sentence remain unspoken.
Gabriel looked up as the echoes began to fade. He remembered another cave he’d been in, a cave of ice near the South Pole where the echoes of his party’s voices had shaken loose a rain of stalactites, razor sharp and deadly to the touch. At least there were no stalactites here.
But there was also no vent to the outside, as far as he could tell, and therefore no source of air. If they couldn’t find a way out of this room . . .
He clapped once and heard the concussive sound rebounding from wall to wall. Like being inside a drum.
“Look,” Sammi said very quietly, and she pointed at the far wall as the room picked up her whispered word and threw it back at her: look—look—look—look—look . . .
Gabriel shined the light where Sammi was pointing. On the wall, chiseled into the rock, was an inscription in French:
Lui seul avec la voix et la qualité d’un français pourrait entrer.
The wall itself appeared to be constructed from several rectangular blocks of stone similar to the one that had sealed off the entryway. Beyond the blocks would be . . . another passage? Only one with the voice and quality of a Frenchman may enter. Enter—not exit. Clearly this was the way they had to go. Gabriel pressed against the stones with his shoulder. He couldn’t budge them.
He leaned close to Sammi until his lips were pressed against her ear. “Any ideas?” he said in the tiniest voice he’d ever managed.
She shook her head.
Gabriel studied the stone wall more closely. He moved his fingers along the seam between the stones, tracing the outlines of each slab. There were no hidden levers or catches—not that he could find, anyway. There had to be another way to open it.
The voice of a Frenchman?
“Bonjour,” he said, with his mouth close to the wall.
And he heard something, a quiet scraping of metal deep inside the wall. He braced himself against the stone blocks again and shoved, hard, but nothing happened.
“Bonjour,” he said again, more loudly, and heard the echoes of his voice careen around him. Clearly, speaking was having an effect—but he had no idea what he needed to say. “Vous êtes un tres jolie mur . . . ouvrez, s’il vous plait . . .” He pushed against the stones as hard as he could, and though he could hear the internal mechanism moving within the wall, he might as well have been pushing against a mountain for all the good it did.
“You try,” he said to Sammi, and she did, speaking in French while he continued pushing—but if anything the mechanism seemed to respond even less to her voice than to his.
“It reacts to sound,” Gabriel said, having returned to Sammi’s side. He spoke quietly, but didn’t whisper. The danger now didn’t seem to be that their voices would trigger a bad outcome; the danger was that they would fail to trigger a good one. “My voice more than yours, and—” He paused for a second. “Français plus que l’Anglais.”
“French more than English,” she said, and sure enough, the scratching of metal within the wall was less pronounced. “How is it possible? This was built when, in 1800?”
“Something like that.”
“But it would require sophisticated technology—”
Gabriel shook his head. “Sounds are just vibrations—and each has its own distinct vibration. That’s how record players work, right? The record vibrates the needle differently to produce each sound. Why couldn’t someone in Napoleon’s time have built a reverse record player, where each sound uttered makes a needle vibrate a bit differently? If the mechanism were sensitive enough . . .”
“But in 1800?” she said, forgetting to speak quietly. They waited for the echoes of her voice to die down. “They didn’t even have record players then,” she whispered.
“They had music boxes,” Gabriel said. “And automata with bellows inside to make them sing. And wasn’t de Martinville already working on the phonautograph in Paris?” Gabriel had been asked to find one of the Frenchman’s original devices by the Louvre once—it consisted of a horn into which you spoke or sang and a cylinder turned by a crank that caused each sound that entered the horn to be uniquely transcribed by a stylus scratching against the wall of the cylinder . . .
“I think that was later,” Sammi said, “more like 1850.”
“Well, then someone else in France must have had the idea before him,” Gabriel said, “since it seems to be what we’re dealing with here.”
He walked up to the wall and tried speaking the same word—Ouvrez—in different pitches and at different volumes. The lower his voice, the more the mechanism seemed to activate. But the movement remained purely internal—none of his attempts made the stones shift so much as an inch.
What had de Martinville’s first phonautograph transcription been? A children’s song. But which one? Frere Jacques? No. He remembered. “Au clair de la lune,” he sang, “mon ami Pierrot . . .”
This time the stones of the wall did shift slightly, rising a fraction of an in
ch off the ground, as if somewhere inside the wall a counterweight was being lowered.
“More!” Sammi said, and she joined in as well. But even their two voices combined, and redoubled by the echoes, were not enough to get the stones more than an inch off the ground. Gabriel thought of trying to get his fingers in under the stones—there was just about enough room. But that would be a good way to lose a couple of fingers, and a lousy way to get the passage open. Maybe if they had something in their rucksacks that could act as a crowbar or a lever . . . ?
“That was better,” Sammi said, when their voices had died down and the stone blocks had settled once more. “They moved.”
“Not enough,” Gabriel said.
“No, but I think singing was right—we just need to figure out the right song.”
“And how are we going to do that? There are thousands of French songs. How are we supposed to know which one was Napoleon’s favor—” Gabriel fell silent, and the room fell silent a minute later.
“What is it?” Sammi said.
He answered her only with a confident smile. He put a finger to his lips, then cleared his throat and began to sing.
La victoire en chantant
Nous ouvre la barrière
Victory, singing, opens the barrier for us . . .
La Liberté guide nos pas
Ed du Nord au Midi
. . . Liberty guides our steps; and from North to South . . .
La trompette guerrière
A sonné l’heure des combats
The war trumpet has sounded the hour of battle. With an enormous wrenching sound, the two central stones in the wall were hauled upward, vanishing into the dark roof of the cavern. The stone blocking the entryway shot up as well, leaving them with a choice of exits.
But what sort of choice was it, really? Return to the scene of the gun battle empty handed?
And never know what lay beyond this room?
Gabriel gestured for Sammi to go through the opening while he continued to sing the Chant du Départ, Napoleon’s hand-picked replacement for the Marseillaise. It hadn’t caught on as the national anthem—but by god, he’d made it the anthem of his vault back on Corsica.
Gabriel eyed the stones warily as he passed under them, still singing, but they showed no sign of being about to come down again. Once he was on the other side, he stopped, and they stayed up—until, presumably, the next unfortunate soul came along and triggered the trap.
“How in the world did you come to know that song?” Sammi said. “I thought I was the historian.”
“A good magician never reveals his secrets,” Gabriel said, and led onward.
Chapter 21
The new tunnel they were in looked much the same as the one that had led into the echo chamber. With flashlights in hand, Gabriel and Sammi ducked their heads and walked along in single file. The passage twisted and turned and at one point became so constricted that they had to crawl through on their hands and knees. They emerged on the edge of a chasm, the lip wide enough to stand on but not much more than that. Past this ledge, the ground dropped away as if cut by a knife, and there was no indication that there was another ledge anywhere on the far side. Across didn’t seem to be an option—only down.
Gabriel leaned over and shined his light toward the bottom. He estimated it was approximately thirty yards to the cavern floor. Not terrible for an experienced climber—but possibly a challenge for Sammi.
“Think you can do it?” he asked her.
“Of course. Don’t be silly.”
“All right. I’ll go first.” He removed the various tools he needed from his rucksack and laid them on the ledge. He uncoiled the rope and searched for an adequate place to anchor it. There was nothing suitable, so he took a piton with an eye and hammered it into the ledge itself. Not trusting the single piton, Gabriel grabbed two more and drove them into the rock as well. He then threaded the rope through all three eyes and tied a sturdy knot. He tugged on the rope as hard as he could to make sure the pitons would hold. Gabriel then tossed the rest of the rope over the ledge. He wasn’t sure if it was long enough to reach the bottom, but it would have to do.
Gabriel showed Sammi how to put on her harness and then fastened a Petzl stop to it with a locking carabiner. He prepared his own harness the same way. Once they were in their gear and ready to go, he gave her a quick lesson on how to use the Petzl stop as a descender.
“You control your descent by applying friction to the rope that’s threaded through here.” He showed her how to do it. “To be safe, you want to keep it pretty tight. And take your time. We’re not in a race.”
“We don’t know that,” Sammi said. “The Corsicans could come after us at any point. Or the Egyptians.”
“Only if they know the Chant du Départ.”
“The Corsicans would,” Sammi said.
“Then maybe we are in a bit of a race,” Gabriel admitted. “Still. Slower but alive is better than quick and dead.”
He took hold of the rope and threaded it into his Petzl stop. “I’ll tell you when to start down.” He then climbed over the ledge, feet first and facing the wall. He loosened the descender and slipped down several feet. Stopping, he took his flashlight and shined it all around him. There was nothing in the pit except vertical stone walls. He continued the descent and then called for Sammi to follow when he was twenty feet below the ledge. He watched as she hesitantly climbed over, dropped down and hung on the rope by her harness.
“Just hold on to the rope and use the descender.”
“All right.” She loosened the Petzl enough to inch down a few feet.
“Good,” Gabriel said.
She opened it again, wider this time—and screamed as her harness slid down the rope at a terrifying speed. Gabriel looked up at her rapidly approaching form.
“Squeeze the Petzl!” he shouted.
She managed to do so, stopping with her feet inches from Gabriel’s head.
They each took a moment to breathe.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
“You all right?”
“I think so.”
“Take all the time you need. I’m going to keep going and get a little distance between us.” He loosened his descender and rappelled down several feet. If he’d been on his own, he could have gone the whole way down in one go—he’d had plenty of experience with vertical caving and didn’t need to proceed in starts and stops. But he didn’t want to leave her hanging there alone.
When he was thirty feet below her, Gabriel called for her to continue. She carefully loosened the Petzl and moved down. She got the hang of it after a few tries and was soon rappelling with confidence. Gabriel reached the end of the rope and saw the bottom ten feet below him. He unfastened the Petzl and free fell to the floor, rolling as he landed.
“I’m down,” he called as he stood. He shined the light up at Sammi and saw her some fifty feet above him. “Take it easy, you’re doing great.”
He warned her when she got near the end of the rope and explained how to unfasten the descender and drop, legs first, to the ground. She landed beside him and sprang back up.
“You okay?” he said.
“My head still hurts,” Sammi said, “but that has nothing to do with the climb.”
“When we get out of this, I’m going to buy you the biggest bottle of aspirin you’ve ever seen.”
“Such a romantic,” Sammi said.
Their flashlights revealed an opening in the wall at the bottom of the pit. The passage beyond led into darkness too deep for their lights to make more than a small dent. Gabriel walked in and inched forward carefully, his free arm extended to one side and his feet testing the ground before placing each step.
Once again, the passage twisted, narrowed, widened, forked. It was remarkable just how complex the internal structure of this cave system was. Gabriel was a seasoned caver and even he was having a hard time holding a mental map of the space in his head. He couldn’t help thinking some of the branches and fork
s must have been man-made, added solely to get would-be treasure hunters who were lucky enough to make it this far well and truly lost.
It took them more than a half hour of spelunking before they finally came to the opening of another vaulted chamber. If the first one had struck Gabriel as being the size of a large bedroom, this one seemed more like a good-sized living room.
And it was full of treasure.
“My goodness, Gabriel . . . what is all this?”
Their lights reflected off glittering, shiny, sparkling objects made of gold and silver, jewels of all types, caches of old swords and rifles, even framed paintings. Diamonds, emeralds, rubies . . . coins, gold bricks . . . fine art . . . weapons . . .
Gabriel reached out to touch an antique carbine rifle that must have been from Napoleon’s army—and stopped.
On the ground in front of it, a clothed skeleton lay horizontally, a spear skewered through its rib cage.
“Don’t touch anything,” he said, pulling his hand back. Sammi pulled hers back as well; she’d been about to pick up an elaborately filigreed gold cup.
He pointed the light directly at the skeleton. Swinging it around the rest of the room, he located several more. In all, there were half a dozen skeletons, each still wearing the tattered remnants of its clothing; these remains, from periods that must have spanned a hundred years, were the only clues to the identity of the unfortunate men who had made it this far and no farther. Every corpse had a spear stuck through it. Gabriel looked around the room and then pointed his flashlight up toward the ceiling. It was a latticework of small circular holes.
He rummaged in his sack and found the strap that had held the rope in a coil. He balled it up and tossed it across the room at one of the paintings. The buckle of the strap jostled the frame—and a spear shot out of the ceiling. It struck the stone floor directly in front of the painting and ricocheted away.