“I love a good mystery. So the stone is worth what, exactly?” When dealing with an expert, you have to work to keep them on track, like putting blinders on a horse.
“As a precious gem, it has one price tag. But as a piece of tragic history, its value is almost incalculable. You may have stumbled on one of the most astonishing artifacts in history.”
I swelled again. “I’d like to think it was more than just a stumble.”
“Monsieur, have you ever heard of La Noche Triste?”
“Is that another jewel?”
“It means ‘The Sad Night,’ Ethan,” Astiza said. “In Spanish.” Did I mention one reason I loved the girl was because she was bright as a penny?
“I’ve had a few of those, I’m afraid.”
“La Noche Triste, Monsieur Gage, was when the Aztecs managed to briefly drive the Spanish out of their capital in Tenochtitlán. They rose in a fury, overcoming the volleys of conquistador muskets with fearless numbers. Jade club against Spanish steel! Hernán Cortés lost hundreds of men and most of his artillery, but also something even more significant. As he retreated on the causeways that led across a lake from the spectacular city, his men lost the captured treasure of Montezuma. They died with it in the waters of Lake Texcoco.”
“You think this stone is part of a larger treasure?” He had my attention.
“Look in the book here. Legend describes that one of the Aztec emperor’s treasures was a spectacular emerald from the jungles of South America, the size and cut of this gem. It was a small but distinct part of riches that would dwarf those of our own kings: a bounty of gold, jewels, and silver such as Europe had never seen. There were great golden and silver wheels said to predict the future of the universe. Gold collars that could bend a proud warrior with their weight. A metal alligator, with gems for eyes and crystals for teeth. Silver birds; golden idols. If this is really part of the Aztec emperor’s hoard, it means at least part of the treasure was not just lost, but at some point found. And then lost again.”
“What do you mean?”
“When the Spaniards reconquered Mexico City, no mention was made of the wealth the retreating soldiers had desperately hurled into the lake. And ever since, there has been speculation. One story is that the Indians recovered the precious goods and took them on a perilous journey to forgotten mountains to the far north of Mexico. If so, no one knows where the burial place is.”
“One story?”
“Another is that the Spaniards forced the Indians to dive and salvage the treasure for shipment to Spain, putting to death the native slaves so that no word would leak to other European powers. A galleon with the recovered hoard set out in secret for the Spanish homeland, but disappeared in a hurricane. This single gem was kept by the only survivor, a cabin boy.”
“So the rest of the lot is at the bottom of the ocean?”
“There were rumors that escaped slaves, called Maroons, eventually salvaged what was lost by diving in the shallows of the reef where the galleon was dashed. Some of the loot was melted, lost, or stolen, but much was reportedly hidden. Just why is not clear. And that’s the last anyone heard of the hoard until an announcement was made that this emerald was on its way to the pope. But it never arrived, making some wonder if Montezuma’s treasure existed at all. Some say the entire story is a myth.”
“Until now.”
“Exactly. Does this mean the wreck was salvaged? And if it was, what became of its contents? Have blacks passed down its secret whereabouts, each generation to another, waiting until they rise as a nation and can reclaim it? Now here is famous Ethan Gage, hero of the pyramids, explorer of the American wilderness, appearing with a token in his hands. Is this but a precursor of more astonishment to come? Do you have a ship’s hold of Aztec treasure in your apartment?”
“If I did, I’d have more than an apartment, wouldn’t I?”
He smiled. “Even this single gem will buy you more than an apartment, Ethan Gage.”
“I certainly hope so.” He still hadn’t given an appraisal.
“And if it’s from the lost treasure of Montezuma,” Nitot went on, “it may buy us both a palace, you as source and me as dealer. It becomes not just adornment, but historic majesty imbued in stone. So I must ask your permission to leave the emerald here while I consult more texts concerning its provenance. If we can establish its identity, its value goes up astronomically. The question becomes whether you are merely wealthy, or fabulously wealthy.”
This was just the kind of talk I wanted to hear. No wonder this Nitot sold to dukes and duchesses; he certainly knew the trigger to pull for a mercenary like me. Aztec treasure! My, I’d never even been to Mexico.
But leave the stone? We were skeptical. “How can we trust you with its safekeeping?” Astiza asked.
“Madame, this is not a stone one pawns without notice. To steal it, I’d have to flee the lucrative life I’ve built for myself and try to sell a jewel that would instantly mark me as a thief. Don’t worry, there’s more profit in being honest. Let me make some inquiry so we know its true value.”
“We are, as I said, in a hurry,” I reminded.
“Then come back in one week. Soon, all of us may be famous.”
I knew I was onto something when I spied that green egg on Karamanli’s turban. After all my years of fruitless treasure hunting, at last I was to be compensated, and more generously than I’d guessed! Yes, we were brilliant, and about to be richer than I dreamed.
I turned to my new bride. “This is better luck than I ever hoped.”
Chapter 6
Luck is fickle.
I’ve come near to drowning more times than I care to remember, and I’ve decided it’s the “near” part that makes the experience so unpleasant. If one truly drowned, consciousness would be mercifully lost, and the victim would pass to other worlds. But I have the habit of never quite succumbing, and thus revisit the experience in all its horror. Which was precisely the intention of a renegade secret policeman named Leon Martel. One week after my first visit to Nitot’s shop, he had my ankles roped, I was suspended upside down from a butcher’s hook, and an iron collar was locked to my neck. He was methodically lowering me into a trough of cold water.
“I regret the necessity, Monsieur Gage,” he told me as I sputtered. “My ambition is to become a gentleman, but you are notoriously uncooperative.”
“No, I’m not! I’m just confused!”
And down I’d go again.
I’d hold my breath as long as I could, suspended so my hair just grazed the bottom of the tin. Finally I’d writhe in growing terror, explode a gush of bubbles that sucked water into my lungs with searing pain, and then be lifted, coughing and gasping. The idiot leaned close with garlic breath and asked, “Where is the lost treasure of the Aztecs?”
“I’d never heard of it until last week!”
Down I’d submerge once more.
There were at least two reasons I should have suspected something like this was about to take place.
First, my luck always falls short of true fortune, so why did I expect to neatly sell my fabulous emerald the way an ordinary man might? Treasures have been elusive every time I’ve touched them.
Second, Nitot’s jewelry shop was uncharacteristically quiet when we returned as scheduled to learn the history of our stone and receive payment. Its front was closed to customers, and it was only by tapping on the window that a clerk let us in. Astiza was once more impatient, nervous about leaving Harry to play with his toys. She’d argued that people kept looking at us in odd ways, and that she’d seen the same scrutinizer three different times. I suggested that they were looking at her. “You’re too modest,” I reassured. “You’ve no idea how lovely you truly are.”
“Let’s beg off sick and go some other time. The portents aren’t aligned.” She was superstitious as a sailor.
“And leave a king’s fortune with Nitot? Now there is something to worry about. You’re the one who’s in a hurry. If you’re so conce
rned about impending war, the best thing is to conclude our bargain and be off to America.”
Merchants are usually affectionate when money changes hands, but the clerk avoided my eye when he allowed us into the shop, scurrying to his bench.
“Where’s Nitot?”
“In the back, monsieur.” His eye was pressed to a loupe to watch a diamond as if it might get away. Of course I’d already spent my new fortune in my imagination several times over, and was oblivious to the odd atmosphere. My naive assumption was that our sale was so monumental that the jeweler wanted privacy to let me scoop up my gold.
I had purchased a small magnifying glass hung on a cord around my neck as I’d hung the jewel. I’d prudently studied my stone before surrendering it for appraisal, and would examine it again. I didn’t want Nitot switching emeralds and then backing out of a sale. So I was being clever and cautious, in my own modest way. Just not clever and cautious enough.
To Astiza I’d given Napoleon’s N pendant to advertise our importance and discourage any sales nonsense about “decorating my ornament.” It actually looked good on her, and except for the fact it came from a megalomaniac, I rather liked the piece.
Now she put her hand on my arm. “I should have stayed with Horus,” she whispered. “Paris always smells wicked to me.”
“That’s just the fish market and the plumbing. Let’s finish our business.” Our boy had also been playing quite happily with thimbles and spools, rolling the latter into the former while his nursemaid watched. I doubted he missed us a whit.
So we returned to the back room. “Marie-Etienne?” I called. I thought he could have set out little cakes or a decanter of brandy to celebrate, but the room was gloomy. The clerk, oddly, moved behind us.
“Are you here?” I repeated.
The door slammed shut and shadows became animated. Half a dozen ruffians in tricorn hats and heavy black cloaks, dark as morticians, materialized from the gloom. The workshop was suddenly as crowded as a privy at the opera when the singing has gone on too long.
“Damnation. Robbery?” I was so surprised that I was momentarily stupid. Then I realized we didn’t have the jewel to rob and felt momentarily cheered. “I’m afraid we have nothing of value, gentlemen.”
“Not robbery, Monsieur Gage,” said their leader. “Arrest.”
“Arrest?” I groaned with annoyance. Even though I try to do the right thing, people are constantly trying to incarcerate me. I make a poor prisoner, having a knack for escape. “For what this time?”
“Withholding information from the French State.”
“Information?” My confusion was growing. “About what?”
“A significant archaeological discovery, the Green Apple of the Sun.”
Were they greedy gendarmes or impatient historians? “It’s exactly such information that I’m seeking, not that I have. And arrest on whose authority?”
“Minister Fouché.”
“But he is no longer minister of police. Don’t you read the papers?”
“He should be.”
When Joseph Fouché had arrested me the year before, he was one of the most powerful men in France, his ministry the stronghold of Napoleon’s military dictatorship . . . but by his very success Fouché had become dangerously powerful, and Bonaparte had temporarily dismissed him. Napoleon liked to keep his acolytes off-balance. However, the ambitious policeman had left behind a police organization more efficient and insidious than the world had ever seen, and the reassignment of their superior to the legislature had apparently not dampened his investigators’ conspiratorial instincts. This bunch had decided to act as if their boss had never changed.
“And you are?”
“Inspector Leon Martel,” the ringleader said, his heavy cavalry pistol pointed at my midsection. His colleagues also had guns out. Their piggish gaze lingered a little too long on Astiza’s figure for my taste, and for policemen these seemed a loutish bunch. I tensed for the worst. “You must share with us what you know.”
While Fouché had the sly, thin-lipped look of a lizard, Martel had the bright concentration of a cat, hazel eyes giving him a look of feline cunning. “You came into possession of a valuable jewel, and we require answers on its history.”
“I know nothing. And where is my valuable? Where’s Nitot?”
“It’s been confiscated, and the jeweler has been sent home.”
“Confiscated? You mean stolen?”
“It is you who stole it first, monsieur, from the pasha of Tripoli.”
“Help! Thieves!” I cried.
“No one can hear you. The real employees have been ordered to leave the shop for the day. You’ve no allies or hope of rescue.”
“On the contrary, the first consul is my friend and patron,” I warned. “Look at my wife’s neck. She wears his pendant.”
He shook his head. “He’s no patron when you hide secrets critical to the future of France. Present your wrists for manacles, please.”
I’ve learned that hesitation with unpleasant people only encourages them; it’s best to establish immediately where the relationship stands. I was also heartily tired of people pointing firearms at the lover who was now my wife, and mother of my child. So I did present my wrists, but only to lock my fists together like a hammer and launch them fiercely up under Martel’s annoying pistol, knocking its muzzle toward the ceiling. The gun went off, flew like a juggler’s pin, and I kept swinging, ramming my fists into the bastard’s nose. Martel howled, quite satisfyingly, with pain. Astiza, as quick-witted as me, fanned her cloak like a batwing in front of the scoundrel’s henchmen, packed too tight in our closet of a room. I leaped after the cape, plowing into the lot while more pistols went off, gun smoke roiling. The renegade gendarmes and I crashed together into the bank of jewel drawers, toppling them and spilling baubles everywhere.
By some miracle no one was hit, though a quite-expensive cloak was ruined with half a dozen bullet holes. But the nice thing about muzzle-loaders is that everybody’s weapon was now empty. “Run for Harry!” I shouted as we thrashed and cursed on the floor, the jeweler’s workbench turning over. And then, as I clawed for one of their pistols in hopes of using it as a club, hands grabbing my throat and ankles, something struck my head, and everything went black.
Chapter 7
I awoke in a vaulted cellar of smoky stone, suspended upside down like an unhappy possum and annoyed that the police, if that’s who they were, wanted me, since I knew not a whit.
As I woozily came to, I got an upside-down look at my assailants, including Martel, recognizable because he had a bandaged nose and foul expression. Corruption had hardened him. His jaw was shovel-shaped, as if in the habit of digging into others’ affairs, and his skin was cribbaged from some kind of pox. I theorized this cruelty of fate made flirtation difficult and kept him in bad humor; people who don’t have frequent congress are sour and mean. Martel’s Gallic skin was dark from sun and weather, and his thick, unruly hair was barely controlled by a cord on his queue. Dark brows met over his now-broken nose, heavy lips tended toward a sneer, and his face had the overall grimness that comes from a desperate childhood, too much drink and disappointment, or both. He was the sort of man who either guards a prison or inhabits it. Not a cat, I decided, but a feral rodent. While useful to superiors, he can never be one of them because his edges are too rough. I could tell Martel knew that, and it gnawed at him. He could rise only so high.
“Where did the emerald originate, Gage?” His breath was like that of a diseased Neapolitan whore who subsists on cheap wine and suspect foods like tomato and eggplant. Italians, I’d learned, would eat anything.
Not that I necessarily know anything about diseased Italian whores.
“Where’s Astiza?” I countered.
It seemed a reasonable question, but one of his henchmen hit me with a carriage whip for asking it. I yelped. Martel stuck his bandaged nose in my face again. The man needed a good toothbrush, and a pick, too. “What do you know of the flying m
achines?”
“The what?” It occurred to me that I’d been captured by lunatics, which is always more dangerous than the merely covetous. “Say, did my wife get away?”
The switch struck again, which I took to be an answer in the affirmative. They were angry at how things had gone, which was encouraging. But they also plunged me into cold, filthy water, which was not.
I didn’t even have time to take a breath that first time, and began choking immediately. They hauled me back up as I wheezed and coughed, shaking my head like a dog so I could spray their breeches. It was all the defiance I could muster.
“Who the devil are you?” I gasped. “You’re not just thieves. You’re worse.”
“We’re the police, I told you. Inspector Leon Martel. Remember that name, because in time I’ll make you pay for my nose with your own, unless you tell me what I want to hear. The fact we’ve lost our patron in the ministry doesn’t erase our loyalty to France. We act on our own for the good of the state.”
A criminal with a badge is the very worst kind. “Your superiors have no idea what you’re up to here?”
“They’ll thank us for it.”
It’s never good when evil thinks it’s doing the right thing.
“I do know one secret,” I tried. “I have friends trying to build a steamboat, which is a vessel powered by one of Watt’s clamorous engines. It’s going to be demonstrated for Napoleon on the Seine this summer. I wouldn’t care to fetch the boiler wood myself, but it may prove a brilliant investment opportunity, though personally I can’t see the logic, yet men like you wagering on the idea at this opportune stage—”
I was plunged down into the water again.
Their questions hammered at me. How had I learned about the jewel? Where was the treasure of the Aztecs? What did I know about flying machines? Oh, they were balmy, all right, and not a little happy to keep me so rattled that it gave them an excuse to dunk me again and again. They were having a jolly good time of it, whereas I experienced the shock of cold water, the dark and helplessness, the agonizing holding of breath, the terrible sensation of drowning, excruciating resurrection back to the light . . . how precious is the air we so take for granted! Searing pain of lung, raw throat, leaking nostrils, the dread of extinction . . .
The Emerald Storm Page 4