by Alex Archer
The shopkeeper was saying something else, but Sarah had missed part of it, caught up in the mesmerizing sound of nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo.
“—the divine life state, the true path of enlightenment. We read in the doctrine of Three Thousand Realms in a Single Moment of Life, by Ichinen Sanzen, that—”
Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo…
“—Buddhism is practiced here, in the back room, in the shop, out on the streets of Rouen. It is practiced everywhere in daily life. It is not relegated to some mystical place high on a mountaintop.”
Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo…
“We overcome all of society’s obstacles. We defeat, spiritually and intellectually, those things that—”
Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo.
Sarah replaced the book she was holding and drifted closer, her feet moving in time to the chant.
“I think this one will do nicely for Aunt Vicki, don’t you?” the customer asked the little boy, who was still watching the twins. It was a rosy-pink Buddha incense burner with a grin spread wide across its fat face. “And I suppose we should get her some incense to use with it.”
Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo…
The shopkeeper looked around the twins to the woman and her boy. “May I recommend the Auroshikha varieties? The cones of lemongrass, French lavender and ylang-ylang are especially pleasing.”
Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo…
“So global warming would be history if everyone was Buddhist, right?” Gaetan said, drawing the shopkeeper’s attention again.
“I suppose you could look at it that way.” The man nodded thoughtfully. “Here we teach our members how to apply Buddhism to their daily lives and to promote its spread through society.”
“That’s exactly why we showed up,” Luc said.
“To join us?”
He shook his head.
Sarah walked over to the customer. “Lovely little boy.”
The woman looked up from the incense assortment. “Michael. His name is Michael, and he just turned three.”
“American,” Sarah said. “Sounds like you’re from Boston.”
The woman smiled. “New York, actually. My husband is teaching a semester at the business school in the city. He wants to live here full-time.” She paused. “You’re American, too.”
“From Boston.”
“Visiting? Studying…”
“Are you a Buddhist? One of these sect members?”
“Not exactly,” the woman answered, surprised at the change in their conversation. “But I come here a lot. I like the way they think.”
“You would do well to leave now,” Sarah said.
Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo…
The woman gave her a curious look. “See here. I’ll shop where I want, read what I want, and I’ll—”
Sarah pulled out the SIG Sauer she’d concealed beneath the flap of her jacket. She pointed it at the woman’s forehead and pulled the trigger. It made a spitting sound with the silencer. Blood and brains splattered out the back of her skull, dotting the array of incense burners and some of the books. The woman’s body dropped and the boy started to cry.
Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo…
“Casse-toi!” the shopkeeper hollered, his mouth dropping open. He wasn’t able to get anything else out—in one fluid movement, Gaetan reached into the folds of his long raincoat and pulled out a saber, raising the blade and slicing through the man’s throat. The twins jumped back to avoid the spray of blood.
Sarah stepped around the wailing boy to the front door, locked it and flipped the sign around to read Closed.
“What about the boy?” Luc asked.
“He’s three,” Sarah said. “Too young to read.”
Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo…
The people chanting in the back room must have been able to hear the boy, but were too caught up in their chanting to come check.
“Let’s move.” Leading with the gun, she stepped through the curtain and started firing. Gaetan was next in and rushed a tall Japanese man who looked to be making a martial arts move. Gaetan finished him in two swipes. Luc joined them a heartbeat later, drawing a saber with his left hand and an antique katana in his right.
“May we finish this for you?” Luc asked Sarah as he slashed a young woman, who dropped to her knees and clutched her stomach, as if trying to hold herself together. But Luc swung at her again, cutting off her head with the katana.
“Certainly.” Sarah thrust the SIG Sauer back in her waistband and watched the twins appreciatively. She counted twenty-eight people in the room—she’d taken out five right away, which left twenty-three for the twins. The ones who lived past the first few seconds were still screaming for help and mercy. One old Japanese man rocked back and forth on a rug, continuing to chant. Gaetan finished him.
The sabers and katana glistened in the light of a few dozen candles. They seemed to whistle as the twins continued to slay the people assembled. The brothers were fencers who’d competed at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Gaetan had narrowly missed medaling. Now they ran a small fencing school near Dr. Lawton’s warehouse. Sarah knew they favored foils, but sabers were more effective for killing, because they had a slashing edge.
“That didn’t take long,” Luc said. He looked at his watch, then knelt and wiped the blood off the blades. “In and out in less than a half hour. Honjo Masamune served me well.”
“Hopefully, I will gain my named sword soon,” Gaetan said.
“Hey, me, too,” Sarah said.
“Security camera,” Gaetan pointed out. “Got to find the feed.” He returned to the front room.
“Make sure they’re all dead,” Sarah told Luc. “No one except that little boy gets to keep breathing.” Then she followed Gaetan. He was rummaging around under the counter.
“Found it.”
“Can you erase us?”
He was fiddling with some of the controls. “Oh, hell,” he said. “I’m not familiar with this model.” He yanked at the machine and pulled it loose. “Let’s just take it with us.”
“Computer?”
Gaetan shook his head. “Primitive operation. Just a calculator, cash box and ledger. Oh, and the iPad. Looks like he was playing solitaire.” He slipped the ledger and iPad under the same arm as the security-system hardware. “Might have some links saved on it, find some other Buddhist hot spots in Rouen.”
“Finished, Luc?” Sarah fixed her gaze on the boy. He’d stopped crying. He was sitting next to his mother, patting her hand and asking if they could go home now. “We need to get out of here, guys. We’ve got more stops to make tonight. And you’ve got a chartered flight to catch before sunup.”
“It’s a shame you won’t be coming with us, Sarah.”
She shrugged. “I guess Dr. Lawton’s got other plans for me. That’s okay. But before we do anything else…my stomach’s growling and I’ve got a hankering for a foot-long. There’s a sandwich shop the next street over. A cold-cut combo would do nicely.”
She grabbed the cash box on the way out.
Chapter 16
Annja passed the taxi stand and got on the public bus after landing at the airport in Burgos. The Spanish city was colorful, and she took it in as she watched people get on and off at the stops: Belorado, Segovia, Avenida de Castilla y León, San Roque. She stepped off at Glorieta de Logroño, as it was the closest to the hotel she’d booked.
She’d never been to Burgos before, but she’d done her research. It had less than two hundred thousand residents and was a principal city in the northern part of the country. If she could manage it, she hoped to take in the cathedral of Burgos, Cartuja de Miraflores and Huelgas Reales Monastery while she was here. And she intended to visit the new Museum of
Human Evolution, expected to become one of the most-visited museums in the country. She might as well see something more than the inside of an auction house.
Annja left her suitcase at the hotel and took off shopping. She needed something appropriate for tonight’s event, and nothing she’d brought to France for her shoot would do. After the fight at the train station in Paris, the cocktail dress needed some repairs. This “vacation” was getting expensive.
She started with a pair of bronze leather shoes, four-inch heels designed by Sergio Zelcer: the equivalent of two hundred American dollars. The dress, one of Cristóbal Balenciaga’s designs, was four times that amount…on sale. It was a soft print of buttery shades with dark brown accents. Annja didn’t need to be extravagant, but others at the auction would be wealthy, and she had the role of a well-to-do American television personality to play.
A ballroom near the civic center had been set up for the affair, with high-backed velvet chairs arranged around the stage near the center. Annja managed to get in by plying her celebrity status, and the attendant at the door gave her a paddle with a number on it. She was guest 181, but didn’t care about the other one hundred seventy-nine—she was looking for only one name on the list. Archard Gihon, the man who had purchased the rare Japanese sword. But the attendant held the sheet too closely for Annja to see more than a few names on it, none of which she recognized. She selected a seat toward the back, where she could get a good view of the people trickling in.
She’d discovered that most of the bidders would be from various parts of Spain, with others invited from France, England, Sweden and the United States. They made an elegant crowd in their tuxedos and designer dresses, with a smattering of mink wraps thrown in. The majority were in their sixties, Annja observed.
A waiter moved through the aisles, offering white wine and champagne. She took a glass and pretended to sip at it, eyeing people over the rim.
“Bidding is to be in euros,” an owl-faced man in a burgundy tuxedo announced as he strode to the podium. “But accommodation will be made for those preferring to deal with pesetas.”
Another waiter came by with more drinks, but Annja nodded him politely on his way. Alcohol clearly loosened purse strings.
“Lot number one is an oil painting from the Cuzco School,” the auctioneer began in Spanish. A man to his right repeated everything in English. “Spectacular in its condition.” It featured cherubs placing a gilded crown on Mary.
Annja’s attention drifted from the rest of the auctioneer’s description. She concentrated on the people who continued to dribble in. She was glad she’d spent the money on her new clothes; the designer outfit helped her blend in.
There didn’t seem to be a particular theme to this auction. Every kind of object was being put up for sale, mostly from museums that were cleaning out their displays, the announcement had read. Making room for more acquisitions and raising funds for renovations.
Next up was something fairly recent: a twentieth-century bronze garniture and candelabras, gaudy and gold and pulling in only a few hundred euros. It was followed by a set of French commodes, which set an elderly woman in the third row to tittering. Her companion bid the toilets up to four hundred eighty thousand pesetas—three thousand euros—before the auctioneer gaveled it vendido, sold.
A variety of French furniture came next, and Annja saw that a few French bidders—one who ran a string of hotels, she heard whispered—competed. Antique tables and chairs, consoles, sofas. She shifted in her chair, half bored, half anxious, picking up a few names here and there when the auctioneer identified the bidders. No Archard. If this was all for nothing… Annja gritted her teeth.
Wall hangings, antique mirrors, tapestries, sketches and watercolors were paraded before the guests, not a piece going unsold.
“¿Por que estás aqui?” The man next to Annja leaned over. He was in his late forties, tanned and solidly built.
“Espadas,” Annja answered. “I am interested in the swords.”
His eyes widened. “Ah, American?” he said quietly. “You are the American television archaeologist. Miguel said you had asked to attend. I am Fernando.” He extended his hand, and she took it, feeling calluses that didn’t suit his refined attire. “I dabble in digging, a hobby.”
His smile was warm and beautiful. “Pleased to meet you,” she murmured.
“Shh!” A reed-thin man in front of them drew his finger to his lips.
Sorry, she mouthed.
Bidding was heated for a selection of fifteenth-
century Spanish pottery and Alcora ceramics. Conversely, an array of nineteenth-century glass pieces, including two boules d’escalier, went for very little.
Among the odder pieces were a child’s “rocking boat” that dated to 1910, a pair of mid-eighteenth-
century Spanish fauteuils with provenance, an art deco bronze lantern and a set of Royal Doulton tobacco jars from 1900.
“For those with military interest,” the auctioneer’s translator said next.
Annja sat up, glancing around the room.
“Now we will get to your swords, yes?” Fernando said. “Perhaps you will let me buy one for you?”
“Shh!”
Annja was glad the reed-thin man kept him from saying anything else.
“First up is this German breastplate circa 1580.” It was pitted, as if it had taken a lot of blows in battle. It went for three thousand euros. Annja doubted it was worth nearly that much, especially in that condition, but the bidder had been enjoying several glasses of wine.
“A sixteenth-century sailor’s knife,” the auctioneer’s translator continued. “Fine condition, if simple. See how it is pierced so it can fold, yet it could also function as a deckhand’s tool.” It brought only one hundred euros. Annja nearly raised her paddle, knowing it was a very good price and thinking she could donate it to a museum in New York. But better to not draw attention.
She took another sip of her wine, waving away a waiter who came to offer her a fresh glass.
The next item came with a lengthy explanation. The more elaborate the presentation, the higher the bids tended to range.
“In the second half of the nineteenth century, change swept throughout the world,” the translator droned. “Industries, including for Toledo etched cutlery, came to the fore and brought out a renewed interest in arms and armor. Some artisans rendered masterpieces that rivaled the sword makers of the Renaissance. Anton Konrad of Munich, Germany, was one such designer. We have for your bidding pleasure one of his more noted works.”
Annja leaned closer to Fernando so she could see between the people in front of them. It was a broadsword from the sixteenth century. A monitor overhead magnified the lavish embellishment of mulberry motifs in relief. She put it at a little more than three feet long.
“Would you like that one?” Fernando whispered, drawing another quiet reprimand.
Annja shook her head. A portly man named Javier won the bid at sixteen thousand euros.
Another sword was brought out, a rapier with shell guards etched with classical figures and foliage in a Brescian pattern. The work ended in fleur-de-lis motifs on the guard’s quadrants.
“This blade is Spanish,” the translator said. “Signed by Francisco Ruiz. From 1650.”
Bidding closed at one hundred forty thousand euros.
“Ah, Miss Creed, I fear this next sword is beyond even my price range,” Fernando said.
“I present a sword of El Cid,” the translator proclaimed. The auctioneer launched into a lengthy explanation, reading from a series of cards.
“Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, better known to the world as El Cid, was born into a small village not very far from Burgos. A knight, a warrior, educated and brave, he was the right hand of Don Sancho and fought battles in Zaragoza, Zamora and Coimbra. He was exiled in 1081 from Castille, but returned to Burgos six years later. He was exiled again in 1089.”
A handful of bidders got up to leave, including the couple who had purchased th
e collection of French commodes.
“El Cid is credited with furthering the Christian religion. He surrounded himself with poets, living magnificently in Valencia.”
The sword was brought out to a subdued murmur of appreciation.
“On the tenth of July, 1099, El Cid passed from the world, and the Christian community mourned him. He is buried in the cathedral in Castille. One of his swords is here today.”
A blade that was more a work of art than a weapon was placed on a table covered in dark red velvet.
“Tizona,” the auctioneer said. “A sword important enough to have a name.”
Annja wondered if her own sword was named.
“In the poem El Cantar de Mio Cid, we learn that the sword Tizona frightens unworthy opponents. It is said to have a divine power. Though forged in Córdoba, it has Damascus steel in its blade and bears two inscriptions. The first reads ‘Io soi Tisona fue fecha en la era de mil e quarenta.’ ‘I am Tizona…’”
Annja lost the rest of what he said when she heard someone whisper, “Archard.” She looked for the speaker.
“The second inscription reads ‘Ave Maria, gratia plena. Dominus tecum,’ which is Latin for ‘Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with you.’ We will start the bidding at five hundred thousand euros.”
Fernando stretched an arm behind Annja, and she got up and moved to the back of the room near the door, leaving him openmouthed and staring after her. She stood next to the attendant who had checked people off the guest list. She studied each man who raised his paddle and bid.
“One million euros.”
The auctioneer nodded and then announced, “One million euros to Archard Gihon of Paris.” She saw
him then.
“Do you know this Archard Gihon?” she whispered to the attendant.
He shook his head. “First auction I have seen him at. I understand he and his associate are collectors of antique weapons. They requested invitations.”
“They?”
The attendant sighed. “A professor Charles Lawton of Rouen.”
“One-point-five million euros to William Sandoval,” the auctioneer announced.