The History Thief: Ten Days Lost (The Sterling Novels)

by Joseph Nagle

  But it wasn’t to be.

  As she stared up the tower, Senator Door caught a glimpse of the priest’s movements. Wholly unaware of what she was seeing and, pointing upward, she curiously asked the president of France, “What is that?”

  Gazing into the tower, both the president and the senator focused their eyes on what was above. It was too surreal to be believed. One of the senator’s entourage, a member of the United States Secret Service, comprehended it before any of the rest.

  With a shout, he dove for the senator.

  From behind the duct tape affixed across his mouth, the priest was smiling.

  He felt as if he was floating.

  He felt the wind in his hair.

  He felt unburdened by his pain.

  He no longer cared about the detonator in his hand; he no longer cared about anything.

  He felt at peace.

  The same moment that the Secret Service man grabbed the senator, the priest landed on them both. A split second later, the detonator landed at their sides. The green light turned red. Throughout the grand Gothic chapel, a wireless signal instantly activated the charges. The explosives attached to the buttresses detonated simultaneously, as did the gas in the floor and walls.

  From a distance and across the river, witnesses would later tell of an explosion that appeared nuclear. The walls violently exploded in all directions, and the buttresses gave way. The ceiling crashed instantly to the ground as rubble.

  Not one soul in its interior survived, and many more on the outside met the same fate.

  The senator was dead; the president of France, too.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  RER PLATFORM

  PARIS, FRANCE

  The platform for the Réseau Express Régional—the RER—was empty. This was good, Charney thought.

  Everyone had been above, waiting for a glimpse of the American senator and a wave from the French president. He heard the rumble; it started slowly. He closed his eyes and waited. He knew it would end soon.

  Charney stood underneath the blue Sortie sign that pointed to Place Saint-Michel. A small trickle of sweat beaded at the base of his left sideburn. As the sweat rolled down the side of his cheek, it tickled him slightly and he slapped at it.

  In the distance, coming from the darkened tunnel, the metallic screeching of the MI-84’s brakes along the train track interrupted his concentration. The fast-approaching train brought with it a growing breeze that did very little to cool the tension flowing through him. At the very moment the train had pulled up before him and stopped, he heard the muffled sounds of the explosions turn into a loud roar. The lights on the platform flickered wildly, and the place where he stood shook forcibly. Cascades of dirt and dust streamed downward from the ceiling. For a moment, he worried about the ceiling caving in on him.

  It didn’t.

  Charney let out a slow breath laced with relief.

  He opened his eyes and saw that the train’s doors were open, inviting him on board. With a smile, he obliged.

  For a moment, he thought that the train wouldn’t move, given the destruction that occurred above. That moment of worry ended as quickly as it began when the train’s doors closed and carried him from the platform.

  Notre Dame was no more.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  RER LINE B

  AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS

  RER Line B would take him to the Aulnay-sous-Bois, a commune northeast of Paris. It was a rough part of town: full of clochards, thugs, and those humans that the rest of society often spit at and cast aside. Although Charney could easily drift among the upper class, he carried himself depending on his surroundings. There was an edge in him, told through the sharpness in his glare and heard in the low, gravelly tone of his voice, which instantly emerged in the Aulnay-sous-Bois. It had been his home his entire life; it was a part of him that he could not shed.

  Much of the destruction to the Aulnay-sous-Bois from the riots four years ago was still evident in the pockmarked walls, condemned buildings, and the burns stained into the streets from the many cars set alight. It pained him deeply to see his home in such a way.

  For thirty years, the inhabitants of the Aulnay-sous-Bois had been treated as less than equal, as nothing more than the servants for the rest of Paris. For thirty years, rage against the machinations and shameful tactics of the police had morphed into anger, into an indescribable resentment of Parisian authorities by the residents of the Aulnay-sous-Bois. The pent-up rage had reached a choking point one hot summer evening when the shakedown of a local teen by the police had led to the teen’s death; he had been cuffed to a fence and beaten repeatedly. Two men had happened upon the brutal scene and tried to interfere. Their attempts led to their deaths, too.

  Both men had been found shot in the back.

  That’s when the riots began.

  For nearly three weeks, the rioting continued unabated and grew in its intensity. The rioting started to spill into other, more respectable neighborhoods of Paris. President Jacques Morabend, then the Minister of the Interior, had ordered the riot police to use the Karcher Treatment: to wash the streets of the thugs.

  The police were relentless in their attacks; many of the neighborhood’s inhabitants were made their victims. Men, women, and children: it didn’t matter. The police didn’t discriminate when choosing their targets. When the violence was over, seventeen more had perished.

  Some were Charney’s friends; one was his lover.

  The police had marched cowardly upon the neighborhoods behind a column of armored vehicles. They were outfitted in full riot gear and firing tear gas and anti-riot munitions at both the thugs and the unarmed civilians.

  The bullets were supposed to be rubber, but many of the more unscrupulous of the police had replaced some of their rubber bullets with real ones.

  Annette—his lover, his beloved—had just left work and was heading home: to their home. She had no idea that the riots had spilled onto their block. All she had wanted to do was get into their building and away from the danger. A policeman had fired as she ran to their front door. The bullet tore through her back, perforating her lung from behind. To make it worse—if it could have been any worse—they had left her there, stepping over her body as they continued down the block. The key to the front door was still in her hand.

  Her death had been slow and painful. Cerebral hypoxia induced myocardial infarction due to asphyxiation. That’s what the doctor had said. She had drowned in her own blood.

  Charney lowered his head when he thought of Annette. She was so beautiful. He missed her tremendously. Never would he touch her smooth skin again nor feel her breath fall on his. Never would he hear her voice, kiss her lips, or hold her hand. Instead, she lay rotting, interred six feet under the earth. Clenching his fists tightly and biting down so hard that he could hear the grating of his teeth, he whispered quietly, “Finally—that pig!—Morabend is dead! Rest well, my love.” His lower eyelids were lined with tears readying to fall. It was as close to feeling an emotion—any emotion—that he could.

  The train approached his stop, and Charney stood and wiped his eyes. Outside, the streets were silent. By now, everyone knew of Notre Dame’s destruction, of the deaths of the president and the senator. The country and the world would be in shock. It was a fitting tribute to his Annette. Hammurabi had written “an eye for an eye,” and Notre Dame was just the start.

  The walk to his home was uneventful; the line of prostitutes that normally adorned his entryway was missing. The only person there was the man Charney paid to keep an eye on his front door. The man was dressed in worn-out, dirty clothing, not unlike the rags that Charney wore when impersonating the sleeping clochard under the Pont Neuf. He was dirty and beyond unkempt. He seemed oblivious to his master’s approach.

  Charney was standing over the man, but said nothing.

  Without as much as opening his eyes, the dirty man’s voice cracked when he said, “Interesting night, monsieur.”

  It wasn’t
a question that hissed through his cracked, dirty lips. It was a statement made matter-of-factly.

  A slight smile was evident in the upturned corner on the left side of Charney’s mouth. But the clochard didn’t see it. Charney replied, “What makes you say that, old man?”

  “The last time the whores were gone longer than ten minutes, the Bois was on fire. I don’t see a fire and the whores ain’t here.” He reached around, scratched his backside, and repeated, “Must have been an interesting night.”

  Charney looked around; the streets were missing the evidence of any sign of life. He looked down at the old man and asked, “How’s my home?”

  “No different than when you left.”

  Stepping over the man, Charney didn’t say a word and climbed the short stone staircase to his front door.

  Under his breath, when Charney was out of earshot, the old man said, “Except for the visitor that waits for you.” He let out a raspy chuckle and then rolled over onto his other side. In his hand was the twenty-euro note Charney’s visitor had given to him to keep quiet.

  Charney opened a small steel door that covered an electronic keypad. Punching in a sequence of numbers, a green light flashed. Charney then inserted a key into his front door: a heavy, steel-backed door that weighed more than a large man.

  His building was four stories tall and took up half of the city block. He owned the entire building; its insides had been renovated to a standard fit for royalty. From the outside, the building was unassuming and looked no different than any of the other rundown buildings in the neighborhood. However, the walls had been reinforced to withstand the blasts from any handheld, and some mounted, rocket launchers; the windows were made of double-paned bullet-resistant Lexan, and the communications systems were closed-circuited and scrambled. His home was designed for his protection.

  The entire first floor served as a garage for his many vehicles. All were armor-plated and outfitted with the same bullet-resistant windows as those on his home.

  The second floor was for his training. It was complete with a climbing wall, fully stocked gym, and firing range: he didn’t need to leave his home to perfect his body and craft. The third floor was his living quarters. It was nearly ten thousand square feet and adorned with impeccable furniture, appointments, and fixtures. However, the grandest part of the building was on the fourth floor; it was here that Charney housed the majority of the relics and artwork that he had stolen or acquired. It was his personal Louvre: catalogued on the fourth floor were priceless works worth a small fortune.

  He had been named the History Thief by the press; it was a moniker he thoroughly enjoyed.

  He had a place reserved for his masterpiece on the fourth floor. There, a pedestal had been carved of Parian marble, the same marble that covered the entire floor of his living quarters. The pedestal stood empty awaiting his last theft. Placed neatly around the pedestal, and carved from the same type of Parian marble, but much older, were items that took Charney nearly ten years of painstaking work to acquire: a large wing, two arms, and the beautiful head of a woman; they were priceless artifacts for which the Louvre would pay a king’s ransom, and they were thought to have been destroyed long ago. Missing was the body to which the pieces belonged—a body that was one of the Louvre’s most prized possessions.

  The third-century BC Winged Victory of Samothrace, a sculpture of the goddess Nike, adorned a pulpit—exactly like the one Charney had recreated in his home—and was a prominent and major focal piece for the world famous museum.

  Often, Charney would visit the Louvre and stare at the statue and be reminded of Annette. It had been her favorite. Over time, the sculpture had become her. Stealing it would be his final illicit act, a gift to her and his own masterpiece.

  When Annette was killed, he dreamed that somehow the statue had absorbed her spirit. All he could see was Annette when he stared at Samothrace. It had to be his. When his mission was complete, it would stand in his home, reunited with the missing pieces that he had painstakingly acquired, her wings and arms spread open and wide. He dreamed that she was coming to him, inviting him into her embrace.

  Shaking the thought from his mind, Charney reached down and felt the hard outline of his current success as it pressed into his side and through the sack he carried. He wished that the Crown of Thorns could be added to his collection, but it would not be. His profession—and lifestyle—required the occasional injection of income, and the theft of the crown would add five million US dollars to his Swiss offshore account.

  Over the years, his benefactor had given him a number of jobs. The two had never met, and Charney knew nothing about the man—he wasn’t even sure if he was a man. But the benefactor always paid, and his taste in art and artifacts was beyond admirable.

  The five million he would earn did not include the five hundred thousand dollar advance needed to gather the materials to do the job; it was an amount higher than normal. But this job had been different; the benefactor wanted the American killed.

  The death of France’s president was an added benefit, a punishment for Annette. He would have killed the man for free.

  The work undertaken to steal the Crown of Thorns had been dangerous and time-consuming, and it was just the first of two jobs. Stealing the crown had been a nearly impossible task, and the next job was nearly as challenging. It would pay another five million dollars. When both jobs were finished, he would never need to steal for another man again. He would focus his efforts only on his masterpiece, and then he would retire.

  Charney climbed into the waiting elevator that would take him to his third-floor living quarters. The doors opened, and instantly he knew that he wasn’t alone. His senses were on fire, lit by smells in the air foreign to his personal space.

  Slowly, he moved across the floor of his marble foyer with long, purposeful strides. He lowered himself closer to the oversized, semitranslucent, pure-white tiles and gazed across them, looking for anything that didn’t belong, a sign of the person that had boldly invaded his home.

  Charney reminded himself that he would have to have a chat with the dirty old man that used his stoop as a bedroom.

  From one room to the next he moved. Nothing was out of place; nothing told him of who was in his home or where they were. Moving closer to the wall, he flipped one of the six switches on a panel. Looking no different than the switches for lights, there was a similar panel installed in most of the rooms in his home.

  Instantly, all of the doors and windows were bolted shut; no key could unlock them. Simultaneously, a barely perceptible whisk permeated the air and was followed by a thin layer of ubiquitous smoke over the floor. Charney crouched low and waited. He was standing in an open area that was exactly in the center of the third floor. He had designed the floor plan himself, so that this very spot would allow him to see down every hall of his home.

  Patiently, he waited. He knew that it wouldn’t take long.

  Scanning left, right, behind, and in front of him, what he looked for soon appeared.

  Down the hall—the one that led into his bedroom—the thin layer of smoke began to ripple slightly. Everywhere else it hovered flat. Someone’s movements, their breathing perhaps, had caused the thin layer of smoke to undulate and give away his or her location.

  He smiled and stood.

  Instead of heading toward the bedroom, Charney went the opposite way. Part of his home’s custom design had been to install false walls that he could walk behind. Meant to be used for emergencies, he could use them to get into his bedroom without using the hallway.

  Deftly, he secreted through the passageways and was soon in his own bedroom closet. Looking through the slats in the closet door, he saw atop his bed the naked curves of his intruder: the body belonged to Jeannette. She was nearly as beautiful as her sister. Their love for Annette, and the dark chasm that her death created, had bonded them together. In her, he saw Annette, and in him, she saw the only thing left behind when her sister was killed. Annette was their mutual
connection, and they both knew it; they both wanted it this way. When their bodies intertwined and the beat of their hearts rose, it made missing her easier. It made them both feel as if Annette were not dead, if only for a moment.

  “Are you going to stay in there all night, or do you plan on watching me make love to myself?” Her voice was sultry and seductive, a trait that she shared with her dead sister. Whenever she spoke, especially in bed, Charney would often close his eyes and imagine that it was Annette’s voice that he heard.

  Without speaking, he stared at her naked body. He traced his eyes over her dark hair and followed it to her bare shoulders. Mentally, he drew a line down her arm and over the curve of her hips. She was even shaped like Annette.

  Opening the closet door, he emerged. He was naked, too.

  “How did you know I was in there?”

  “She told me of your passageways. Besides, I could hear your breathing getting heavier.” She almost purred as she spoke; it had been the same with Annette.

  Charney closed his eyes and saw Annette’s smile; he imagined the voice to be hers. Opening his eyes, he walked closer to his bed; her arms were outstretched for him as he said, “I seem to have forgotten. This was her home, too.”

  The two of them never said Annette’s name out loud; it was an unspoken rule that they both simply understood and diligently followed. It was too painful otherwise, or perhaps it would make it feel wrong.

  Charney lowered himself into Jeannette’s arms and closed his eyes, seeing only Annette’s face. Inhaling deeply, he let the smells of her perfume invade his senses. It was the same smell that he had encountered when his elevator door had opened a few minutes ago. It was the same smell of the perfume that Annette always wore.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CITRONELLE

  RESTAURANT 3000

  M STREET NW

  WASHINGTON, DC