Cradle Of Solitude
Cradle Of Solitude
Alex Archer
One mystery could change the fate of a nation…The skeletal remains of a confederate soldier, hidden deep within the Paris Catacombs. The legend of a long-lost Confederate treasure. An aged scrap of paper that reads simply, Berceau de solitude–Cradle of Solitude.It was sheer dumb luck, really. Archaeologist Annja Creed happened to be in Paris when the bones of the soldier were discovered. But this was no ordinary soldier–this man was the keeper of a treasure that could have affected the outcome of the American Revolution. Somewhere, the treasure waits to be claimed.Now Annja is unraveling a 150-year-old mystery and a trail of clues that will lead her across the ocean and deep into the heart of the Old South. But she isn't the only seeker of this treasure. Someone else wants it–bad enough to kill anyone who stands in their way….
“Do you have any idea why the thieves would be interested only in our Confederate friend’s remains?”
Annja frowned. “That’s all they took?”
“They were only interested in the skeleton and the documentation pertaining to it that you and Professor Reinhardt assembled. Nothing else was touched, including items of considerable value that were in plain view in Dr. Reinhardt’s office.”
That put an entirely different spin on things. Breaking and entering to steal museum pieces worth millions was one thing; doing so just to make off with the recently recovered remains of a Confederate captain no one even knew existed was another.
Her thoughts turned immediately to the shadowed figure she’d encountered in the catacombs the night before.
There was more going on here than she’d realized.
Cradle of Solitude
Rogue Angel
Alex Archer
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
THE LEGEND
…THE ENGLISH COMMANDER TOOK JOAN’S SWORD AND RAISED IT HIGH.
The broadsword, plain and unadorned, gleamed in the firelight. He put the tip against the ground and his foot at the center of the blade. The broadsword shattered, fragments falling into the mud. The crowd surged forward, peasant and soldier, and snatched the shards from the trampled mud. The commander tossed the hilt deep into the crowd. Smoke almost obscured Joan, but she continued praying till the end, until finally the flames climbed her body and she sagged against the restraints.
Joan of Arc died that fateful day in France, but her legend and sword are reborn….
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
1
Richmond, Virginia
April 2, 1865
The choir had just begun the “Hallelujah” chorus when the door to the church flew open with a bang. Confederate President Jefferson Davis, seated at the front of the church next to his wife, Varina, turned and watched as a man raced down the center aisle toward him.
That he had come from the front lines was obvious; his face and hands were covered with dirt and soot, while his uniform looked as if it hadn’t been washed in a month. A bloodstained scrap of bandage encircled his head just below the hairline, but since it didn’t seem to slow him, Davis guessed that the wound it covered was at least a few days old. Rank insignia on his uniform indicated the man was a captain, though Davis couldn’t remember the man’s name.
Reaching him, the soldier leaned against the end of the pew, took a moment to catch his breath and then stammered, “G-G-General Lee’s line at Petersburg has broken, sir, and he intends to fall back and evacuate the city immediately.”
Shocked murmurs erupted as those within earshot repeated what was said to those around them. Even the Episcopalian minister presiding over the day’s worship services came down from his lofty perch on the pulpit to hear the news.
Davis ignored everyone but the messenger.
“How long can Lee hold them, Captain?”
The man shook his head. “Not long, sir. He bid me to urge you to hurry. He can give you a few hours, but expects that the enemy will be inside the city limits by nightfall.”
Nightfall. That gave them five, maybe six hours at most. If they were going to get the government out of Richmond, never mind save what was left of the treasury, they had to get started immediately.
“Convey my regards to General Lee and tell him that we will execute our retreat plan. Godspeed, Captain.”
As the messenger hurried from the church, Davis turned to his wife and made his apologies. There was no way he could sit through the service now, not with the evacuation of the entire city to plan and carry out in less than half a dozen hours. He caught the eye of his aide-de-camp and the two of them rose and rushed down the aisle.
Time was of the essence and Davis didn’t intend to waste any of it.
Fifteen minutes later the president was ensconced with the vice president and several members of his cabinet in the living room of the house on the corner of Twelfth and K streets that served as both the executive mansion and his family residence. An evacuation plan had not been established, for neither Davis nor any of the other members of his administration had foreseen the fall of the city. The rest of the day would be spent trying to correct that oversight. The executive mansion held thousands of documents that might give the Union a leg up in their push to destroy the Confederacy and aides were immediately set to the task of burning as many of them as possible. The vast warehouses of stockpiled supplies also had to be dealt with, for to allow them to fall into Union hands and be used against the very soldiers they had been intended for was completely unacceptable. Orders were given to deal with the problem. Perishable foodstuffs would be given away free of charge until sundown to any who arrived at the warehouses to claim them. The casks of rum and other liquors would be smashed open and poured out in the streets, to keep the public from indulging in a drunken frenzy when they most needed to keep steady heads on their shoulders. But it was the order to burn the tobacco warehouses that pained Davis the most, for the crop inside them represented the future for so many of the citizens he had sworn to protect. Losing their harvest would be devastating.
Of course, it paled in comparison to losing their homes. But at least he would do what he could to see that as many of them escaped ahead of the Union Army as was possible.
Lee was just going to have to hold on.
The night loomed ahead of them, growing more threatening by the minute.
THE TRAIN WAS LATE.
Captain William Parker sat astride his horse near the end of the platform and stared worriedly down the tracks into the darkness. He could hear the Union guns in the distance, shelling Lee’s lines, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before the order was given for the retreat. The general could only hold out so long and he was already well beyond the time frame he’d given the president. Soon the front would fall, the Confederate troops would retreat through the city streets, and Richmond would fall into Union hands. When that happened, the chances of getting out of the city at all, never mind getting out with their cargo intact, would shrink considerably.
Where the hell is that train?
He turned and looked back at the squad of men he’d commandeered to help him carry out his mission, shaking his head at the sight. With every able-bodied soldier doing their damnedest to keep the Yanks from entering the city limits, he’d been forced to make do with a group of midshipmen off the Patrick Henry, the thirteen-hundred-ton side-wheel gunboat he’d converted into a floating school for the Navy. Some of the “men” in his command weren’t more than twelve years old!
God help me. How am I supposed to guard the treasury with schoolboys?
Thankfully, the plan was simple enough. A single rail line still stood open between Richmond and Danville. With two trains at their disposal, President Davis and his staff would be on the first one out, with Parker and his special cargo following in the other. Once in Danville, they’d go their separate ways.
Parker had no illusions as to why he and his cargo—about seven hundred thousand dollars worth of gold ingots, gold coins, silver bricks and Mexican silver dollars—were on the second train. If things became difficult farther down the tracks, the unspoken hope was that the Union soldiers would be more interested in the treasure than in securing the president, thereby allowing Davis to evade capture and escape.
It was a good backup plan, made better by the fact that it actually had some hope of success, and Parker approved of it despite the risk to himself and those under his command. The Confederacy might be able to replace the treasury, but it wouldn’t recover from the capture of its beloved president.
A glance at his pocket watch told him that it was past eleven. The fact that they’d made it this late in the night without being overrun by the enemy was another of General Lee’s miracles. He’d dug in just outside the city and withstood charge after charge, buying them the time they needed, doggedly determined to keep the Yanks off the streets of the capital as long as possible. Lee’s predicated deadline of nightfall had come and gone and still the Army of Northern Virginia held out. Parker didn’t know how he did it; he was just thankful they had a man like Lee on their side.
But even Lee could not keep it up much longer.
A rumbling sound broke his reverie and he looked up to see the locomotive coming down the tracks toward them, smoke pouring from its stack. His feelings of relief quickly turned to concern, however, when the engine drew closer and he saw the condition of the train.
Getting here hadn’t been easy, it seemed. Great dents marred the smooth curve of the boiler and the sides of the cab had been shot full of holes. The roof of the tender had been torn away entirely, most likely the result of a well-placed cannon shot, and the engineer manning the coal shovel had a bloody bandage wrapped around his head and covering one side of his face. The cars beyond hadn’t fared much better.
The train had already slowed considerably by the time it reached Parker and he watched it roll on and continue for a few more yards before coming to a stop with the hiss of brakes and a cloud of steam. No sooner had it done so than Army officers swarmed inside, checking it over. When the okay signal was given the boarding began, starting first with the president and his cabinet, followed by what was left of their staff.
Parker didn’t have time to watch the parade, however, for the second train arrived on the heels of the first and he had work to do.
“Quickly now!” he shouted to the boys in his command and they snapped to, unloading the heavy chests from the wagons and carrying them aboard the train, stacking them against the rear wall of the car to which they’d been assigned.
Halfway through the job one of the midshipmen stumbled, dropping the sack he carried and spilling silver coins over the edge of the platform onto the tracks below.
Parker grabbed the boy as he readied himself to climb down and retrieve them.
“No time, son,” Parker said. “Some lucky fool will no doubt pick them up, but it’s not going to be you or me. Back to work now.”
It took them just shy of an hour, but at last all of the cargo was loaded and the rest of the cars were filled with as many of the people fleeing the city as they could possibly pack into them. Parker gave up his seat to another passenger, finding a place on the roof of the car alongside his second in command, Lieutenant Jonathan Sykes, and two midshipmen whose names he couldn’t dredge up from memory in his exhausted state.
No sooner had he settled himself onto the roof of the car than the train lurched into motion without warning, the usual whistle being dispensed with so as not to alert the enemy to their escape. The train moved slowly at first, sluggishly pulling away from the platform, and Parker found himself silently urging it on, as if his thoughts could somehow propel the train faster down the tracks.
Refugees lined either side of the tracks, moving forward through the darkness like the wandering tribes of Israel headed for the promised land. Parker was thankful it was too dark to see their faces, for his own despair and dismay were enough for him; he didn’t need to witness anyone else’s.
As they rolled across the bridge at the city limits, Sykes suddenly shouted, “Look!”
Parker followed his pointing finger back toward Richmond and saw an angry red glow lighting the sky. The thunder of distant explosions reached his ears as the glow grew brighter, spreading across the horizon.
Richmond was aflame.
“Damn Yanks have fired the city!” One of the midshipmen cursed.
Parker knew better, but he didn’t bother correcting the young man. Morale was bad enough; the men in his command didn’t need to know that the fire was the result of a direct order from the president, designed to ensure that nothing of value would be left for the Union troops to use against them. The warehouses along the waterfront had been full of powder and shot, too much to be moved swiftly, and rather than allowing it to fall into the hands of the enemy, Davis had ordered the entire lot to be set alight.
With the skyline glowing brightly behind him and the enemy’s guns echoing in the distance, Parker set his gaze forward and settled in for the ride.
2
It was only one hundred and forty miles from Richmond to Danville but the slow-moving train, overburdened as it was with excess cargo and the need to constantly stop and repair the track in front of it, required the night and most of the day to get there. A light rain was falling as they pulled into the station, but Parker was so tired that he barely even noticed.
The president’s party had come and gone by that time, but orders had been given and four wagons were waiting alongside the platform, guarded by a pair of infantrymen. They approached as Parker disembarked and one of the men handed him a folded piece of paper.
The note was from George Trenholm, secretary of the Treasury, ordering Parker to use any and all means necessary to evade the Union troops in the area and see his cargo safely to the old U.S. Mint in Charlotte, North Carolina. It also let Parker know that the Union cavalry had been spotted in the area and that he was to avoid contact wherever and whenever possible.
Parker laughed aloud upon seeing the final order.
What does he think I’m going to do? Stage an attack on General Sheridan’s cavalry column with a handful of midshipmen and half a dozen muskets?
The very notion was absurd. Still, these were desperate times and Parker had little doubt there would be some in his position who might just be daring enough to do something like that. Sometimes a bold move at just the right moment…
He shied away from the thought, before he could be tempted. Glory be damned, he told himself. Get the treasury to Charlotte. That’s the goal.
But Charlotte was a long way off and the chances of meeting the Union cavalry on the main road seemed pretty high. Sticking to the lesser known byways and backcountry roads would decrease his chances of running into the enemy but it would also slow him down.
Opt for speed and take the main road, praying they didn’t run into anything they couldn’t handle, or take the slower, surer route and chance arriving too late to do any good with the money they had in their care?
It was a difficult choice and one that needed some thought.
Concerned that a wagon train full of bulging money sacks and wooden chests stamped with the words Richmond Loan and Trust would be too tempting a target, Parker sent his men out to scavenge for containers they might use to hide the contents of their true cargo. It took well over two hours to make the switch, but when they were finished the treasure was hidden in barrels and crates that had once held sugar, flour, tea and other consumables. With the lids hammered tight, there was nothing to tell the casual observer that the financial future of the Confederation was contained within.
By the time the wagons were loaded and the men ready to head out, Parker had made his decision.
The money they carried was needed to keep the regiments in the field equipped with enough food, powder and shot to continue operating, never mind being able to pay the men for their service. They’d take the fast road and hope they arrived in time to do some good with the cargo entrusted to them.
They were in decent spirits when they left Danville behind, despite the steady rain. Parker, Sykes and one of the midshipmen, Daniels, were in the lead wagon, while the other men were split evenly among the rest. They kept a tight formation and managed to make decent progress for the first hour, covering nearly ten miles, but then the weather took a turn for the worse. What had started as a light drizzle turned into a downpour, soaking the men to the bone and turning the road into little more than a muddy track. It became difficult to see that the horses pulling each wagon were tied to the back of the one before them, ensuring that none of them fell behind and got lost.
They barely managed another mile during their second hour on the road and Parker was starting to consider where they might find a place to hole up for the rest of the night when they were confronted by several figures who suddenly loomed out of the rain ahead as they rounded a bend in the road.
“Whoa!” Parker cried, and pulled up quickly on the reins, stopping them a few dozen yards apart.
At this distance it was hard to see anything for certain, but Parker thought there were at least a dozen men in the party ahead them. Three or four on horseback, it seemed, and another ten or so on foot.
They weren’t significantly outnumbered, which was good, but given the level of experience of the men under his command, even that wouldn’t be too much of a blessing.
He glanced at Sykes. The other man held his musket lightly, the muzzle pointed forward. Not enough to be overtly threatening, but ready to be used if things went south.
Sykes must have sensed his attention, for he turned his head and gave Parker a slight nod, letting him know he was ready for whatever was to come.
He was a good man, Parker thought.
Before Parker could do anything, however, one of the riders ahead kicked his horse into motion. Parker let him close half the distance between them and then shouted, “That’s far enough. Identify yourself or my men will open fire!”
The rider pulled his horse up short.
“Easy, Captain,” the man called out. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
Parker knew the voice, but sheer surprise kept him from responding right away, and while he struggled to find his voice the other man unveiled the lantern in his free hand, letting the light fall upon him.
Even through the downpour Parker recognized the face of their benefactor, secretary of the Treasury, George Trenholm.
Still, Parker was cautious. “Be ready for anything,” he told Sykes as he handed over the reigns. “If this looks like a trap, get the wagons out of here as best you’re able.”
Sykes never took his eyes off the men ahead of them. “You can count on me, sir.”
Parker climbed down from the wagon and walked forward to where Secretary Trenholm was waiting for him. As he drew closer the other man dismounted, as well, which helped put Parker at ease.
Trenholm extended his hand and the two men shook.
“Good to see you, Captain. I was starting to think we’d missed you.”
“The rain, sir. You know how it gets.”
Parker didn’t know much about Secretary Trenholm’s history, but it seemed a safe bet that the man had never had to lead a wagon train through a torrential downpour. Trenholm came from money, and old money at that.
But war has a way of leveling social classes, Parker knew, and he found it mildly ironic that the two of them were to meet here, in the midst of a muddy track that could barely be called a road, the rain beating down on both their heads with equal abandon.
Oblivious to his subordinate’s thoughts, Trenholm went on. “There’s been a change of plans, Captain. I’m to escort you to an important meeting where you will receive your new orders. If you would come with me…”
Parker frowned. “My men, sir?”
“About a hundred yards up the road there’s a place where they can get off the main thoroughfare and wait for your return. I’ll leave several of my own men to stand guard with them. On a night like tonight, I doubt they’ll run into any difficulties.”
Trenholm was probably right, but that didn’t make Parker feel any better about leaving his men in the middle of nowhere, particularly given their level of inexperience. Still, an order was an order.
“Yes, sir. Give me a moment to explain the situation.”
He returned to Sykes and let him know what was going on. The young lieutenant wasn’t thrilled with the situation, either, but there was very little that they could do about it. Parker ordered him to keep his eyes open and wait for his return.
One of Trenholm’s men loaned him a horse and five minutes later they were under way. Trenholm led him a mile or so through the woods on a narrow track that was little better than a game trail really, until they came to a clearing. Parker could see that several campaign tents had been erected there and men in Confederate uniforms were moving about.
Trenholm took him to a larger tent set slightly off from the others and asked him to wait inside.
“Someone will be along shortly to give you further instructions.”
Ever the dutiful soldier, Parker complied.
He found the tent was sparsely furnished, with just a pair of camp chairs on either side of a makeshift table made from a few scraps of wood and a blanket-covered cot off to one side. It was warm inside, thanks to a camp stove that was burning in the far corner, and Parker soon found himself literally steaming as the heat sucked the moisture out of his clothes.
He didn’t mind. Being out of the rain, even if only for a few minutes, was a welcome relief.
When, after fifteen minutes, no one had yet arrived to deliver his new orders, he dragged one of the camp chairs closer to the stove and sat down.
I’ll take a few minutes of rest, that’s all, he thought.
He must have dozed off, however, for he came awake with a start when he heard someone enter the tent behind him. He leaped to his feet and spun about.
He didn’t know who he expected to see waiting there for him, but President Jefferson Davis himself was not on his list of possibilities.
So surprised was he that for several long moments all he could do was stand and stare. The president didn’t seem to notice.
“Thank you for coming so quickly, Captain,” he said as he laid the books and papers he was carrying on the desk and hung his coat on the back of the other chair before dragging it closer to the stove. “Please, sit down.”
Parker nodded, then found his voice at last as he waited for Davis to sit down before doing so himself. “Thank you, Mr. President.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Davis said, his expression darkening at some private thought. “Not until you’ve heard why I’ve called you here, at any rate.”
An aide came in bearing two glasses of brandy on a tray. He gave one to the president, then offered the other to Parker.
Drink in hand, President Davis turned to him and said, “I have a very special assignment for you, Captain.”
3
Paris, France
Present day
Annja came out of the dojo’s locker room drying her long hair with the towel she kept in her gym bag for just that purpose. She was startled to find a man waiting outside the door for her. He was of medium build, with a short, dark beard, and was dressed in a nicely fitted suit of a deep chocolate brown.
He stepped forward as she approached.
“Excuse me. Miss Creed?”
He had a strong French accent.
“Yes?” she replied.
She searched her memory, but she was pretty sure she didn’t know him. Having strangers approach her was nothing new. People often recognized her from Chasing History’s Monsters, the cable television show she cohosted, but something told her this guy wasn’t a fan looking for a quick autograph.
“Please forgive the interruption. I am Commissaire Laroche, of the Police Nationale.”
Annja knew the Police Nationale was the main civil law enforcement agency in France. Commissaire was a commissioned officer rank, sort of analogous to a senior detective in the United States. In other words, this guy was a heavy hitter in the local police community. Annja was alarmed. She’d stayed out of trouble while on vacation and hadn’t done anything to elicit interest from the police.
This time around, at least.
Seeing he had her attention, Laroche continued. “I’m looking for some assistance with a—how do you say…peculiar? yes?—situation. Your name was given to me by Monsieur Garrison at the embassy.”
That, at least, was a name she recognized. She’d met Billy Garrison at a press junket she attended on behalf of the show the last time she’d been in Paris. He was on the ambassador’s staff and had taken her to dinner a few nights later, but there hadn’t been any spark and she’d declined his offer for a second date.
Being dateless was preferable to listening to Billy ramble on about French politics for hours again. Thanks, but no thanks.
“May I see some identification, Commissaire?”
He bowed slightly, an outdated but courtly gesture. “Of course, Miss Creed. And please, call me Henri.”
He handed over a leather case that contained his badge and ID. She glanced at it, confirmed that the man in the picture and the one standing in front of her were one and the same, then handed it back.
“Thank you. One can’t be too careful these days….”
“Of course, of course,” he replied, waving off her apology.
“So how is Billy?” she asked, more to gauge the inspector’s reaction to him than anything else.
He didn’t disappoint. “Monsieur Garrison is as long-winded as usual,” he replied, giving her a tight smile.
Yep, that was Billy.
“So what’s this peculiar situation that you need help with, Henri?” she asked.
Laroche hesitated, glancing over her shoulder as he did so. “Perhaps we might take this outside?” he asked.
When she followed his gaze and found the rest of the dojo’s students watching their discussion, Annja readily agreed.
She accompanied him out the door into the bright spring sunshine and fell into step beside him as he walked slowly up the street, explaining as he went.
“For the past several weeks construction teams have been working on the southern line of the Metro, widening the existing tunnels to make room for the new branch that will be added to the system in May.”
Annja was aware of the project, for the construction workers with their bright orange reflective vests were a familiar sight on the trains in and out of the area.
Laroche went on. “Late yesterday afternoon the floor gave way beneath a work crew in one of the newly expanded tunnels. Thankfully, only two of the men sustained injuries and in both cases they were minor ones. When the dust cleared the crew discovered that they had fallen into a previously unknown second tunnel, running parallel beneath the first. Further exploration revealed several antechambers just beyond, each one filled with stacks of human bones.”
Annja could scarcely believe what she was hearing. A previously undiscovered section of the catacombs? Her heart skipped a beat at the thought.
Prior to the creation of the catacombs in the mid-1700s, the dead of Paris were buried in small cemeteries alongside local churches. But as the city grew, the cemeteries ran out of space. Mass interments became common, often without caskets, and over time this led to the contamination of ground water as the bodies decomposed in the earth.
To deal with the problem, city officials moved to outlaw all burials within the city limits from that point forward. Existing graves were exhumed and the remains were relocated to a series of abandoned limestone quarries that were, at that time, on the outskirts of town. The process of disinterring the bones from their original resting places was carried out with reverence for the dead as well as consideration for the living. The quarry space was blessed, the long trains of carts moving the bones were accompanied by priests and the activity was always conducted at night. No attempt was made to identify or separate the individual bodies, but each set of bones was marked with a plaque indicating the cemetery from which they originated and the year they were moved. By 1860, when the relocation was completed, some five to six million skeletons had been moved to the catacombs.
Eventually, the city expanded and what had once been outside the city limits now lay hidden beneath its streets. Annja knew only a small section of the massive tunnel network was accessible to the public. That left close to two hundred miles of tunnels and caverns extending like a spider’s web beneath the city that only a handful of people had ever seen.
“Most of the men on the crew had seen the catacombs at one point or another in their careers so the rooms full of bones were not at all surprising to them,” Laroche said. “However, the discovery of a fully intact skeleton, partially buried beneath a pile of those older bones, was.”
Annja considered that for a moment. “Sounds like a job for the police rather than an archaeologist,” she said.
“Ordinarily, I’d agree with you,” Laroche replied, “but this particular discovery turned out to be a bit more complex than first thought.”
They paused, waited for the light to change, then crossed, continuing walking along the other side of the street.
“When the crime scene unit arrived, it didn’t take them long to determine that the job would be better off in the hands of a forensic anthropologist. While arrangements were being made to bring one in, word of the find was also sent to the American Embassy.”
Annja was surprised. “The embassy? So your mysterious skeleton is that of an American?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
That’s like saying you’re kind of pregnant, she thought, but when she pressed him on it Laroche wouldn’t explain any further.
“I’d rather not prejudice your opinion,” he said as they turned left onto another thoroughfare. Caught up in the puzzle he was laying out before her, Annja barely noticed where they where headed.
“What’s my opinion got to do with any of this?” she asked.
Laroche smiled. “Because of the nature of the find, it was agreed that a representative from the United States should be present when the skeleton is excavated. Mr. Garrison suggested that you would be ideally suited for the task.”
“Is that so?”
Laroche grinned devilishly. “Oui. In fact, it sounded like he said something about you preferring the company of the dead over that of the living, but perhaps I misheard him.”
He is so going to pay for that one, Annja thought, before realizing that in order to carry out her threat, she’d have to see him again.
Perhaps he wasn’t as dim-witted as she’d taken him to be.
Putting the thought aside for the time being, she focused on the opportunity being offered to her. “So are you asking me to get my hands dirty or will this be strictly observational in nature?”
“You can get as dirty as you like, Miss Creed.”
“Am I being brought on as an official consultant?” she asked.
Reading between the lines, Laroche said, “The embassy has agreed to cover your costs and to provide a reasonable fee for your time. Monsieur Garrison would not discuss the specific details with me, but stated he would be happy to take your call so he could provide you with the specifics.” So Billy wasn’t so dim-witted, after all, she thought.
“Well, when do you want to get started?” Annja asked, chuckling to herself.
Laroche slowed, and then stopped. “As a matter of fact, I was hoping you would be free right now.”
Startled, Annja glanced around, only then realizing that they were standing in front of a Metro station. A pair of sawhorses stood in front of the entrance, holding a sign noting in French that the station was currently closed for repairs.
This time Annja laughed aloud. “You certainly know how to show a girl a good time, Henri!” she said. “You’ve piqued my curiosity and given me an intriguing puzzle to boot. How could I say no?”
“Excellent!” Laroche said.
They descended the stairs and entered the station proper, where Laroche used his badge to get them past the police officer stationed there.
Once past the turnstiles, Annja followed Laroche onto the subway platform and over to the far end, where a selection of equipment was stored under a tarp. The detective removed two lanterns from beneath the cover, turned them both on and passed one to Annja. Then he led her off the platform and onto the track.
The air was cool in the tunnel and Annja was glad she’d had the foresight to grab a sweatshirt when she’d left her hotel that morning. At the moment the change in the temperature felt refreshing after the heat of the bright sun above, but it wouldn’t be long before the chill seeped into her bones if they spent any length of time down below.
She was starting to suspect they would.
As if hearing her thoughts, Laroche spoke. “The entrance to the catacombs is several hundred yards ahead. I’m sorry, but there is no alternative but to walk.”
Annja smiled at his apologetic tone. “Walking’s something an arcaheologist gets used to very quickly. It’s no problem at all.”
They kept to the center of the track, where the pathway was reasonably clear of debris and the chance of one of them turning an ankle was reduced. Not that the chances of doing so were all that great in the first place; the subways in Paris were far cleaner than those back home in Brooklyn.
Annja had spent much of her professional life clambering around inside crumbling ruins and forgotten old tunnels, so the weight of all that earth above their heads didn’t bother her in the slightest. The same couldn’t be said about her companion, however. No sooner had they started down the tunnel than the conversation dried up and his repeated glances at the roof over their heads let her know just how uncomfortable he was. Figuring he’d say something if it got to be too much, Annja kept her thoughts to herself and simply walked along in his wake.
They’d been underground for about fifteen minutes when a faint glow could be seen coming from around a bend in the tunnel ahead of them. The light grew brighter as they approached, until, rounding the curve in the tunnel, Annja could see that it was coming from a set of portable arc lights that had been erected on stands near a hole in the tunnel floor. Several people were milling about, but didn’t appear to actually be doing much of anything.
Waiting for the boss to return, Annja thought.
It turned out she was right. As soon as the group caught sight of the two of them approaching, they settled down and waited to be told what to do.
“Please wait here for a moment,” Laroche said, and then stepped over to confer with his people. After listening to an update from one of his subordinates, the detective issued a flurry of orders, sending his people scurrying off in a variety of directions on several different tasks. Doing so seemed to help him forget the weight of all that earth above and it was a steadier man who rejoined her a few moments later.
“I’m told that Professor Reinhardt from the Museum of Natural History is already waiting for us below. As the official representative from my country, he will be in charge of the project, though any actions that impact the remains directly must be approved through you. Will there be a problem with that?”
Annja shook her head. Bernard Reinhardt was an old friend. She’d worked with him on several projects and tried to find time to say hello whenever she was in Paris. His conduct in the field was impeccable; she couldn’t have asked for a better partner.
“Let’s get to it,” she said.
Stepping over to the ladder that extended out of the hole in the tunnel floor, Laroche swung himself onto its rungs and started downward.
Annja gave him a moment, and then followed.
4
Lights had been strung along the ceiling of the tunnel and in their glare Annja could easily see the differences between this tunnel and the one above. It was narrower, for one, with walls of hewn limestone rather than concrete, and with a ceiling that was a good two feet lower than the previous passageway. Where they had been able to walk two abreast with room to spare in the tunnel above, down here they were forced to move single file down the narrow corridor. It was also quiet. Gone were the faint sounds of distant trains rumbling through the walls; the limestone surrounding them seemed to swallow up even the slightest echo, devouring it before it could move more than a few inches from its source.
The most striking difference, however, was the sense of age that filled the rough-hewn walls around them. This tunnel had been around for a long time, that much was obvious, and Annja found herself wondering just what it had seen and been witness to over the years.
“This way,” Laroche said as he led her down the tunnel. They’d only walked a dozen or so yards before the opening to a chamber loomed on their left. The string of lights led inside and Laroche and Annja followed them.
Entering the room, Annja stopped short, her eyes widening at what she saw.
The entire chamber was fashioned of bones.
Human bones.
Tibias and femurs by the thousands were stacked neatly side by side, interspersed regularly with rows of skulls, their empty eye sockets staring at her as if in accusation. Here and there the skulls had been arranged in artistic patterns, a cross being the most common. There were no intact skeletons, the goal of the arrangement clearly having been to make the best use of the space available, and Annja could only assume that the rib cages, spines and other bones that would have made up the rest of each skeleton had been used to fill in the spaces behind the larger bones. Most of the stacks rose to a height of about 5 feet and from what she could see they were a few yards deep in some places. To her left was a plaque noting the year the bones had been interred as well as the cemetery from which they had come.
Clearly they had entered the original catacombs.
“Annja!” an exuberant voice cried, pulling her away from her study of the skulls before her. She turned to find her colleague, Professor Bernard Reinhardt, emerging from the chamber just beyond, his hand extended in welcome. The smile on his face was outmatched only by the size of his handlebar mustache, which stretched a good inch past his cheeks on either side.
Reinhardt was a large, portly man in his early sixties, though he had the exuberant energy of a man half his size and age. He’d been known to work right through the night and into the next day while on an important dig, putting most of the graduate students who worked with him to shame. In the narrow confines of the underground passageway he appeared twice as big as usual and Annja found herself having to stifle the urge to back away as he thundered toward her. He was dressed in a thick flannel shirt, jeans and solid pair of hiking boots, a far cry from the three-piece suit, complete with pocket watch and chain, that he liked to wear while at the museum.
Annja had met him several years before while in Paris for a symposium during which he’d delivered a presentation on the Saxon conquest of Normandy. She’d been so impressed with his quick mind and engaging delivery that she’d introduced herself after his talk. Despite the obvious difference in their ages and educational backgrounds, their shared love of European history had turned them into colleagues with genuine respect for each other’s specialties.
“Hello, Bernard,” she said, ignoring his outstretched hand and giving him a quick hug, which earned her a hearty embrace.
“It is so good to see you, Annja,” he said, releasing her. “Have they told you why you are here?”
“Just that they’ve discovered something of interest to both your government and mine,” she replied.
Bernard grinned. “Well, then, if they didn’t spoil the surprise, I’m not going to, either. This way, my dear.”
He turned and led her through several other chambers, each one similar to the last. The stacks of bones seemed to go on and on; everywhere she looked, the walls were covered with them. Not that Annja was surprised. She’d heard it estimated that there were more than six million skeletons interred down here in the dark.
That’s a lot of ghosts, she thought.
Ahead of her, Bernard came to a halt at the entrance to a side chamber.
“Is this it?” she asked.
He nodded, then extended a hand, as if to say, After you.
Her lantern held high, Annja entered the chamber.
The room was small, no larger than ten square feet, she estimated, and so it didn’t take her long to pick out what she’d been brought there to see.
The skeleton was seated with its back against the wall of the antechamber, its legs stretched out before it. A cavalry saber was gripped in one hand, in the other, a Colt revolver. At first glance both weapons appeared to be in excellent condition. So, too, was the uniform the skeleton wore—wool trousers and a light shirt, both partially covered by a long frock coat that hung to midthigh. The three bars that designated the rank of captain had been sewn onto the coat’s collar. A kepi hat was still perched atop the skull where it rested against the back wall.
The dirt and dust that had settled on the remains of the clothing made it difficult to determine the exact color of the uniform, but there was no mistaking the brass emblem of a wreath pinned to the front of the hat. The arms of the wreath rose on either side, surrounding the three letters nestled between them.
CSA.
As she stared at the emblem in surprise, Annja finally understood what Laroche had meant. They weren’t questioning that the remains belonged to an American. Not at all. They were questioning his status because the America he’d belonged to no longer existed.
The Confederate States of America.
5
Annja walked over to the skeleton and settled into a crouch before it, her gaze moving slowly and carefully, taking in the details. Behind her, she heard Bernard step into the room.
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” he said, his voice hushed, as if in reverence for the dead man before them. “To think he’s been down here for a hundred and fifty years, just waiting for someone to come along and find him.”
Annja nodded. She was amazed that anyone had done so, frankly. The chances of the construction team finding the adjacent tunnel, never mind following the right series of chambers to wind up here, several hundred yards from the entrance, were astronomical.
“Any idea who he was?” she asked, looking back at her colleague.
Bernard shook his head. “Not a clue. But that’s why we’re here, my dear, to solve the mystery.”
And a mystery it was. Annja couldn’t think of a simple reason why a Confederate soldier, a captain no less, would have been wandering around down here in the catacombs miles from any known entrance. Had he simply gotten lost? Stumbled around in the dark, unable to find his way back out, until eventually he’d succumbed to a lack of food or, more likely, water?
If that was the case, what was he doing with a cutlass and pistol in hand? Just who, or what, had he been defending himself against?
An interesting puzzle, to say the least.
And just the kind of thing that Annja lived for.
She reached into the bag at her side and pulled out her digital camera. She rarely went anywhere without it and it was times like this when she was thankful she’d adopted the habit. Eventually, she knew, they were going to have to remove the skeleton from the catacombs and take it back to Bernard’s laboratory for proper examination, but there were a lot of things they needed to do before that and documenting the site as they’d found it was the first priority. The position of items in relation to others and the context in which they were found were just as important to an archaeologist as the items themselves. The photographs would help them establish a record of where each item was in relation to all the others, allowing them to reconstruct the site down to the finest detail if necessary as their investigation progressed.
She started by taking several wide-angle shots, panning her way around the room until she had covered it all. They would be able to make a panorama-style shot from the photographs showing the entire room and even use them to create a three-dimensional computer model.
When she was finished with that task, she focused on the skeleton itself. She took several shots to establish its position against the wall, then moved in for close-ups. She’d taken about a dozen pictures and was about to call it quits when the light from the flash bounced off the uniform the skeleton wore and highlighted something she hadn’t previously noticed.
Bernard must have seen her sudden tension.
“What have you got, Annja?” he asked as she leaned in closer to get a better look.
“Not sure yet,” she murmured, her gaze on the skeleton in front of her.
As the flesh beneath it had decayed, the uniform coat had folded down upon itself, hiding small stretches of fabric between the folds. The light from the flash had thrown back an oddly shaped shadow from one of them, suggesting that there was something else there. Annja withdrew a pen from her pocket and gently lifted the edge of the folded material, revealing what lay beneath.
The blackened edges of a bullet hole stared back at her.
Gently, Annja used her pen to lift the coat’s edge away from the shirt beneath. The dark stain that covered the yellowed linen shirt beneath answered one question that had been nagging at her.
The soldier, whoever he was, hadn’t wandered down here, gotten lost and eventually died of thirst, as she’d first hypothesized.
He’d been shot in the chest.
And from the looks of it, he’d died pretty quickly thereafter.
This hadn’t been an accident; it was murder.
Bernard crouched beside her and she showed him what she found.
“See the rounded edges of the bullet hole?” she asked, pointing with the end of the pen. “And the way the fabric is still intact all around it, rather than stretched or torn?”
Bernard nodded. “The musket ball was moving so fast that it didn’t have time to do much damage to the material as it passed through. Must have been close range, then.”
“Just what I was thinking, as well.”
She sat back on her haunches and stared at the dead man in front of her. “He wasn’t here by accident. We’re too far away from any easily accessible entrance for that to be the case. He came here deliberately, perhaps to meet someone…”
“And whoever it was gunned him down where he stood,” Bernard finished for her.
“It’s no longer an interesting archaeological puzzle,” Annja said as she climbed to her feet. “Now it’s a homicide investigation.”
The police, however, wanted nothing to do with such an old murder. After a few quick calls back to headquarters, Laroche approached and informed Annja and Bernard that they were still in charge of the investigation, that their skills were going to be more valuable in terms of identifying the victim and perhaps even his murderer than anything the police could bring to bear on the problem.
Homicide or not, it was their problem to solve.
Several technicians from the museum arrived, summoned earlier by Bernard when he’d realized what it was they were dealing with. The technicians had a portable specimen case with them, essentially a long, flat box that looked like the case for an electric keyboard, and carried several toolkits of different shapes and sizes. Annja stepped out of the way to give them room to work in the narrow confines of the antechamber.
One of the technicians withdrew a video camera from the case he carried and, switching on the high-powered light attached to it, began to pan his way around the entire room in unwitting mimicry of what she had done earlier with the still camera.
When he was finished, he nodded at one of the other team members, who opened another case and began assembling an odd-looking device from the parts inside.
Annja was expecting the skeletal removal to be a long, drawn-out process of removing each bone piece by piece and then placing them into the specimen case, so she was surprised when the man she was watching picked up the device he’d been assembling and moved over to stand next to the skeleton. The device looked like a fire extinguisher, though the canister was blue rather than red, and the operator wore it hanging from his shoulder on a strap. The other end of the hose running out of the top of the cylinder was attached to a gunlike device in his right hand. He turned and aimed the gun at the skeleton.
“Hey! Wait a min—”
She didn’t get any further. The technician squeezed the trigger and began spraying a fine white mist over their mystery man. The mist settled on the skeleton for a moment and then ballooned up into a white foamlike substance that hardened in seconds. Less than five minutes later the entire skeleton was wrapped in a cocoon of hardened foam.
Annja turned to Bernard and asked, “What, exactly, is that stuff?”
The older man smiled. “Do you like it? It’s a new tool my staff and I have come up with in order to transport delicate artifacts.”
He stepped over to the skeleton. “The foam is genetically engineered and completely biodegradable. Flash a UV light on it and it fades away to literally nothing.
But in the meantime—” he reached down and rapped on the foam with his knuckles “—knock, knock, it’s as hard as steel.”
Something that hard must weigh a ton, Annja thought.
“How are you going to move it?”
Bernard eyed the cocooned skeleton with something like genuine affection. “That’s the beautiful part. It’s light as a feather.”
It was, too. With one technician at the feet and another at the head, the skeleton was gently lifted off the ground and placed inside the specimen box with barely an effort.
“Will wonders never cease?”
She was impressed. That foam could have saved her hundreds of hours of effort on earlier digs.
“How long have you been using it?”
Bernard’s expression went sheepish and he mumbled something under his breath.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,” Annja said.
“That was our, um, first field test.”
If he hadn’t been on the other side of the specimen case, she would have throttled him where he stood. As it was she had to settle for giving him her best glare and vowing to make him pay for using one of her digs as his guinea pig.
They closed up the specimen case and, with one person on either end, carefully lifted it up and carried it out of the room. It wasn’t heavy, but the close confines of the tunnel made it awkward and they took turns carrying it back out to where the catacombs intersected the Metro line. Bernard spent a few minutes talking with Laroche before returning to Annja’s side.
“Help will be here shortly,” he told her.
Ten minutes later a pair of Metro workers arrived, pushing a small handcart along the subway tracks. The newcomers showed one of the museum techs how to operate the cart, the specimen box was loaded on it and, as a group, they set off on the last leg of the walk back to the surface.
As they emerged from the steps leading to the underground, they found a small crowd had gathered around the station entrance, attracted by the museum van that was parked haphazardly on the curb. A few people pointed in her direction and more than one began taking pictures with their cell phones.
As she glanced away, Annja thought, These are not the droids you are looking for. Move along. The memory brought a smile to her face.
Bernard must have noticed, for he asked, “What’s so funny?”
Trying to explain Star Wars humor to a French archaeologist was an exercise in futility so she just shook her head. Thankfully, Bernard let it go, as he was needed to help get the specimen case properly situated into the rack designed to hold it inside the van. Annja glanced once more at the crowd nearby, wondered just what it was that had drawn them and then climbed into the front seat to wait for the others to finish.
A DARK-HAIRED MAN in his mid-forties, dressed in blue jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, glanced at the picture he’d just taken with his cell phone from across the street. He grunted in satisfaction. It wasn’t the best image, but it was good enough. The woman’s companion, Professor Bernard Reinhardt, was well known to them, but she was a mystery. The photo would help them identify her and from there they could assess just what kind of threat she posed to their plans.
Satisfied, he sent the image as part of a text message, dropped his phone into his pocket and started walking down the street.
He hadn’t gone more than a few blocks before the phone rang in response.
“Michaels,” he said, answering it.
The voice on the other end was younger, full of cockiness. “Next time give me something difficult, will ya? Her name’s Annja Creed. She entered France on the fourteenth with an American passport.”
American? Interesting, Michaels thought.
“What’s she doing in Paris?”
“She’s the host of a cable television show that features monsters, myths and legends entitled, appropriately enough, Chasing History’s Monsters.”
Myths and legends. Michaels didn’t like the sound of that. Their contact in the police department had tipped them off that Reinhardt had been called in to examine something discovered during the excavation of the new Metro line. That had brought Michaels down there this morning. His organization had protected certain secrets for generations and any new find, particularly in this area, raised the possibility that some of those secrets might be exposed. He couldn’t allow that to happen.
He hadn’t been concerned at first. They received tips like this at least a handful of times per month and the majority of them led to nothing. Normally he would have sent one of his men to check it out, but he’d been in the area when the call had come in and had decided to deal with it personally. If nothing else, it gave him a chance to stretch his legs and enjoy the change in the weather.
But then he’d seen the crowd that had gathered and watched as the crew removed a large specimen case from the tunnels below and his disinterest changed to concern. A fateful meeting had taken place in this area more than a hundred years before and it wouldn’t bode well for certain people if the facts of that meeting came to light. It was his job to prevent that from happening.
The presence of the American television host certainly had the potential for complicating matters.
“Is she here representing the network?” he asked the man on the other end of the phone.
There was a pause. “I’m not sure yet.”
Michaels didn’t like uncertainties; they tended to create problems later on down the line. His silence must have adequately conveyed his displeasure, for the other man quickly amended his statement.
“I’m working on it, though. I should have an answer shortly.”
“Good. And her relationship with Reinhardt?”
“I’ll have that for you shortly, as well.”
“Next time, call me when you actually know something.”
Ending the call, Michaels slipped the phone back in his pocket and continued down the street to where a black Mercedes waited for him at the curb. As the driver started to get out to open the door for him, Michaels waved him off, climbed in the backseat on his own and then instructed the other man to take him back to the office.
Without a word the driver slid the big car into traffic smoothly and headed off. As they cruised past the van from the museum, Michaels could see the Creed woman sitting in the front seat, seemingly lost in thought while waiting for the rest of the team to finish loading the equipment in the back.
It would be a shame to have to mess up that pretty face, he thought as they drove away.
6
After unloading the specimen case from the van, Dr. Reinhardt had his students carry it downstairs to one of the basement labs. There, he and Annja lost no time getting to work.
They transferred the foam-wrapped skeleton to the top of the long examination table in the center of the lab. Because the skeleton had been in a seated position when it was encased in the foam, they placed a board behind its back for support. Next it was photographed and filmed, just as it had been down in the tunnels. The images would later be combined with the earlier ones to help establish the chain of control over the artifact throughout the examination process. For now, though, Annja took over filming with the video camera as Bernard plugged in a portable UV lamp and prepared to remove the protective foam from the skeleton.
“Ready?” he asked, his fingers poised over the lamp’s power switch.
Annja nodded. She knew she didn’t need to remind him how angry she’d be if the foam had damaged the bones in any way.
She thought about the captain. That’s how she was thinking of him now. She didn’t know who he was yet, but she hoped to uncover his identity in the process of their investigation. She wanted to put a name and maybe even a face to the remains. In the meantime, the title would remind everyone that this had once been a living, breathing person and therefore deserved their respect.
Bernard hit the switch on the lamp and it began humming slightly.
For a few minutes the sound was the only outward evidence that the device was even working. The light it emitted was not visible to the human eye, but eventually the foam began to bubble and break down. It reminded Annja of the head atop a soft drink after being dispensed from a soda fountain.
As the foam broke down, Bernard gently lowered the inclined backboard, inch by inch, until the skeleton rested flat on the examination table, the bones still arranged mostly in the same position in which they’d been discovered.
That’s pretty damn slick, Annja admitted to herself.
Bernard was obviously thinking the same thing, for he threw a huge grin in her direction. It was as if the foam had never existed.
Very carefully, they began separating the bones from the clothing. Each one was carefully measured and then photographed from multiple angles before being placed on another lab table for Bernard to examine more carefully. While he did that, Annja turned her attention to the clothing.
She started with the heavy jacket that had been worn over the uniform. Known as a regimental sack coat, it had a stand-up collar and six CSA buttons running down the front. It was made of wool and had held up pretty well in the cool atmosphere and low humidity of the catacombs. She had no doubt it had once been dyed gray, but the vegetable dye that was used in those days tended to break down quickly and the coat looked more brown than gray at this point.
The blood from the chest wound that had killed their subject had stained the inside of the coat and sealed the lip of the interior pocket closed. When she carefully pried it open, she discovered an envelope inside.
Annja felt her heart starting to beat faster.
Picking up a pair of rubber-tipped tweezers from the selection of tools on the table beside her, she gently inched the envelope out and placed it on a nearby light box where she could examine it in more detail.
“I’ve got something here, Bernard,” she said, and waited for her partner to join her before continuing.
They took multiple photographs to document the specimen. Then, with Bernard’s help, Annja carefully opened the envelope and withdrew the single sheet of paper it contained.
The paper was yellow and brittle with age. Worried that even the slightest pressure might cause an unwanted tear, Annja took her time, unfolding each section using the tweezers. When she had the page lying flat on the light board, she laid a piece of clear laminate over the top, much like the cover on a microscope slide. The laminate would allow her to view the paper clearly, without worrying about accidentally damaging the surface of the letter itself. She breathed a sigh of relief once it was in place.
With the protective cover in place, Annja clamped it down on each corner and then flipped the switch that activated the light board.
When illuminated from below, the ink appeared in sharp contrast to the faded surface of the paper, making it easier to see.
It was a letter.
Annja skimmed through the text, her eyes widening with each line. Upon reaching the signature she gasped in surprise. She heard Bernard whisper, “Mon Dieu,” mere seconds later.
The letter identified the bearer as Captain William Parker, Confederate Navy, and assured the recipient that not only did the captain have the letter writer’s complete confidence but that he was also empowered to act on his behalf with respect to an agreement involving mutual support and satisfaction.
The letter wasn’t addressed to anyone in particular and Annja puzzled over that for a moment until she realized that it had apparently been intended to be hand-delivered to its recipient. That was unfortunate, because knowing who the recipient was might have allowed them to trace things back in the other direction and gain some insight on what Parker, if that was indeed who it was, had been doing in the catacombs.
There was no doubt about where the letter had originated, however, for it had been signed in a thin, spidery script.
Jefferson Davis
President
Confederate States of America
Bernard broke the stunned silence first.
“What was a naval captain bearing a letter of introduction from the president of the Confederate States of America doing in the Paris catacombs?”
Annja shook her head. “I haven’t got a clue, but I promise you this—we’re going to find out!” she said excitedly.
She got up from the examination table and headed over to where she’d set up her laptop computer on a nearby desk. Firing up the web browser, she went to Google and typed Captain William Parker, Confederate Navy into the search bar.
The search produced more than a million hits.
The first one on the list was a short biography from the Naval Historical Center created by the U.S. Department of the Navy. She read parts of it aloud to Bernard, who was using a magnifying glass to examine the letter in more detail.
“Born in New York in 1826…graduated from the Naval Academy and served aboard the Yorktown off the coast of Africa…promoted to lieutenant in 1855.”
She jumped ahead a few lines, focusing in on his wartime service.
“Abandoned the North for the South in 1861 by joining the Confederate Navy. Commanded the gunboat Beaufort during the battle of Roanoke Island in 1862 and also saw action at Hampton Roads and Drewry’s Bluff that same year. In October of 1863 he was promoted to captain and took command of the Confederate Naval Academy, situated aboard the steamboat Patrick Henry in Richmond.”
So far, nothing really unusual, Annja thought. As commander of the Naval Academy, Parker might have had some interaction with the members of the president’s cabinet. But there was nothing that indicated he would have moved in the same social or political circles as the president himself.
Annja kept reading.
“After the war he served as captain of a Pacific mail steamship, was president of Maryland Agricultural College for a time, and even took a post as minister to Korea. He died in Washington in 1896.
“He’s best known for his role in guarding the Confederate treasury during the evacuation of Richmond following Lee’s defeat at Chancellorsville and rumors still persist about his involvement in the disappearance of the treasure.”
“What do you mean disappearance?” Bernard asked.
Annja was already typing Lost Confederate Treasure into Google. This time there were about three hundred thousand hits and she quickly skimmed through several articles to get a sense of the story.
“Apparently Captain Parker was given the difficult job of getting what was left of the Confederate treasury out of Richmond ahead of the invading Union troops. Like President Davis and his cabinet, the treasury made it out of the city aboard one of the last few trains headed for Danville. Once in Danville, the treasure was loaded onto a wagon train, which then set out under Parker’s command, headed for the old U.S. Mint in Charleston. Apparently it never made it. The treasury, all seven hundred thousand dollars of it, disappeared en route.”
Bernard frowned. “Treasure or no treasure, it would seem we’re no further along than we were before finding the letter because there’s no way that man—” he pointed over at the skeleton “—can be Captain Parker if what you’re saying is correct.”
Annja agreed. The letter must have been stolen or given to someone else, an aide perhaps, in order to prevent Parker from falling into just the kind of situation that had killed their subject.
Unless…
She stared at the floor, thinking it through.
When she didn’t say anything for a few minutes, Bernard gently shook her arm.
“What is it?” he asked.
She shrugged. “It’s nothing, really—a hunch, just a long shot….”
But Bernard knew that look and wouldn’t let her off without an explanation. “Out with it. What are you thinking?”
“All right. This is totally off the wall, I know,” she said, “but what if you’re wrong? What if that really is Captain Parker?”
Her colleague’s frown grew deeper. “But how is that possible? Given what you just read to me, I’d say he had a rather public face after the war.”
That was true, but something about the idea nagged at her and she wasn’t ready yet to let it go.
“I don’t know,” she told him. “Maybe he was charged with carrying out some kind of secret negotiation for the president and someone else took his place. Decoys were often used. When the war ended, and Parker didn’t come back, the impostor had to keep impersonating him to keep the secret from getting out.”
Bernard laughed at the idea even as he walked back to his station, and after a moment, Annja couldn’t help but laugh along with him.
It sounded crazy, even to her. After all, the simplest explanation to any problem was often the correct one, to paraphrase the principle behind Occam’s Razor. In this case, it was far simpler to believe the letter was either a forgery or, if it was authentic, that it had been stolen from Parker at some point near the end of the war.
And yet…
It would be a much more interesting story if my theory was right, she thought.
Crazy or not, there was one thing she could do to begin getting at the truth, at least.
Pulling her cell phone out of her pocket, she hit the speed dial and waited for the phone to be answered thirty-six hundred miles away in New York City.
“Doug Morrell’s office.”
“Hi, Doug, it’s Annja.”
Doug Morrell was her producer on Chasing History’s Monsters. He was younger than Annja, more than a bit self-involved and had little to no actual knowledge of historical events prior to the previous decade, but had somehow managed to land his current position regardless of that fact. It probably had to do with his uncanny knack for capitalizing on historical issues and turning them into the kind of television fodder fans of the show ate like candy.
He could be highly annoying, but he had also covered her back on more than one occasion. In an odd way, Annja counted him as one of her friends.
“Who do we know at the Smithsonian?” she asked him.
“What’s this we stuff? Apparently you don’t know anyone. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be calling me.”
Annja had a lot of contacts at the Smithsonian but she’d called on so many people for favors over the years, and knew she’d probably need more in the future, so she wanted to use the show’s contacts if at all possible. Besides, this discovery was of historical significance and had nothing to do with the unusual adventures she was constantly being drawn into. “I meant we as in we the show, not as in you and me,” she told Doug.
“Of course you did. But since you, meaning you, yourself and, well, just you don’t know anyone at the Smithsonian and, miracle upon miracles, I do, this would seem to be an ideal time for me to extract some payment for all the phenomenal episodes I’ve been forced to squelch thanks to your lack of interest and participation.”
He can’t be serious, she thought.
She needed him to focus, and that meant she had to nip this in the bud right away.
“Trust me, Doug,” she said, “no one would have bought the amphibious chupacabra episode. Those injuries were from jellyfish stings, plain and simple.”
“That’s funny. I seem to remember your area of expertise was Renaissance history, not marine wildlife. Or at least it was, last time I checked.”
“It doesn’t take an expert to know that was a stupid idea, Doug.”
“Right. Next you’ll be telling me that you don’t like the ghost shark idea, either.”
She didn’t have to respond to that one; her silence said it all.
“Oh,” Doug replied, indignant. “So that’s how it’s going to be, is it?”
Apparently he’d woken up on the wrong side of the bed that morning. Sighing, Annja said, “Look, Doug, we both know that—”
The dial tone pulsed in her ear.
She pulled the phone away, shook it and listened again.
He’d hung up on her!
“Why that little…jerk!”
Ignoring Bernard’s chuckles from the other side of the room, Annja hit the redial button.
“Doug Morrell’s office.”
“You hung up on me!”
“See that? I knew there was a reason we paid you to host the show. You’re remarkably observant.”
Honey not vinegar, Annja, honey not vinegar, she told herself.
She tried a different approach.
“I’m sorry, Doug. I’d be happy to discuss the ghost shark episode with you when I get back to the States,” she told him, ignoring the fresh round of chuckling that erupted from the other side of the room.
“I want a favor.”
“What?”
“I’d be happy to put you in touch with my contact at the Smithsonian, but it’s going to cost you a favor.”
I know I’m going to regret this, she thought. She sighed. “What is it?”
“Oh, no. I don’t mean right now. Just sometime in the future. You’ll owe me a favor, that’s all. Deal?”
“Owe you a favor? Are you out of your mind?”
“It was good talking with you, Annja. Enjoy the rest of your vacation and I’ll—”
“Fine,” she said, biting off her anger along with the end of the word. She knew she shouldn’t have laughed at the chupacabra thing but owing Doug a favor? No good could possibly come of this.
“What do we need the Smithsonian to do for us?” Doug asked.
Gritting her teeth, she said, “I need to have a letter authenticated.”
“Why didn’t you just call them up and ask yourself? It shouldn’t take more than a few months.”
Annja was shaking her head. “It’s not that simple, Doug. I’m helping the French police with an investigation in the catacombs—”
“Whaaat? The catacombs? You’re running an investigation in the catacombs and you didn’t tell me? I’ll send a crew over immediately.”
“It’s not like that, Doug. There’s nothing here of interest to the show. The authorities stumbled on the skeleton of a man in a Civil War uniform and—”
He interrupted her again. “Wait, I thought the catacombs were full of skeletons. What difference does it make that they found one in a French uniform?”
“The American Civil War, Doug, not the French. The French didn’t have a civil war.”
How he managed to run a show about historical subjects with such a limited view of world history constantly astounded her, but he took her correction in stride, seemingly without a second thought.
“American, okay, got it. Union or Confederate uniform?”
“Confederate. But that’s really beside the point.”
He didn’t seem to hear her. “This is good, Annja, real good. We can turn this into a world-class episode, just leave it to me.”
Knowing Doug, he’d find a way to suggest that the Paris catacombs were full of Civil War zombies, getting ready for the second rise of the South. Leaving it to him was the last thing she intended to do.
“Doug, we’re not doing an episode on this. I just need the letter authenticated.”
“Who’s it from?”
“The letter?”
“Yes, of course the letter. Try to keep up, Annja.”
I swear, one of these days I’m going to run him through with my sword, she thought. “Jefferson Davis.”
“Confederate President Jefferson Davis?”
Maybe he did know something about history, after all. Either that or he was quick with Wikipedia.
“The one and the same.”
There was silence for a moment. “Annja?”
“Yes, Doug?”
“Let me be sure I’ve got this straight. You discovered a skeleton, dressed in the uniform of a Confederate soldier, carrying a letter from President Davis, in the midst of the Paris catacombs and you don’t think there’s anything of interest there for the show?”
Annja had to admit he had a good point.
In the end, Doug agreed he would use whatever cachet the show had to get someone at the Smithsonian to examine the letter as quickly as possible. In return, she agreed to send over a copy of the video footage they’d taken to date so that it could be cleaned up and potentially used in an episode about discovering the skeleton at a later date.
Once that was settled, they agreed to check in with each other if anything significant developed and ended the call.
Not thirty seconds after getting off the phone, Annja realized that she probably could have just called up the embassy and asked Billy Garrison to get it done for her, given that she was officially working on a government matter, anyway.
But that would, of course, require talking to him and he’d have wanted to get together to discuss the situation in more detail, say, over dinner and drinks, and she’d have felt obligated to do so in order to get the letter properly authenticated and…no. Doug was the better option.
Owing Doug a favor couldn’t be all that bad, could it?
After a moment, she decided that, yes, it could be all that bad. Doug was the guy who had once asked her to pretend to be dead for a few weeks to milk the sales of the commemorative DVD set he’d put out when she’d been incorrectly reported dead.
Dutifully ignoring Bernard’s chuckles, Annja got back to work.
7
After examining the sack coat, Annja turned her attention to the pistol and sword Parker had been holding when he’d died.
The gun was a single action revolver, which she recognized as a Colt 1851 Navy Revolver from the engraving of a naval battle on the cylinder. The gun had been popular at the time of the Civil War. Her research told her that famous Navy Revolver users included Wild Bill Hickok, “Doc” Holliday and General Robert E. Lee.
Drawing back the hammer, she discovered that three of the six chambers still held percussion caps, indicating that they were loaded and ready to fire.
Apparently Parker’s enemy hadn’t been the only one who’d gotten a shot off at the fateful meeting, she thought.
She emptied the revolver, carefully storing the percussion caps, bullets and powder in separate vials, eliminating the chance of an accident while she examined the weapon.
When she was finished with the revolver she turned her attention to the sword. Since she’d miraculously inherited Joan of Arc’s famous sword, bladed weapons had become a passion for Annja and she immediately recognized this one as a Shelby cavalry sabre, named after General Joseph O. Shelby, leader of the Iron Brigade. When the Confederacy fell, Shelby, one of the few Confederate generals who had never been defeated in combat by Union troops, took his entire command to Mexico rather than surrender. The cavalry sword he’d carried throughout the war, a common enough model produced by the Ames sword company, was renamed in his honor after the war.
The blade was about forty inches in length and bore the CSA, or Confederate States of America, inscription, as did the brass guard. The grip was leather, wrapped with twisted brass wire. The entire weapon seemed to be in excellent shape and Annja gave it a few experimental swings through the air to get the sense of it. It was well-balanced, though shorter and lighter than the weapon she was used to using.
Putting the weapon back down on the examination table, she moved over to the rest of Parker’s clothing.
He’d been wearing leather cavalry boots rather than the usual leather brogans, but Annja wasn’t surprised by this, as Confederate footwear had been notoriously bad. The boots were in fairly good shape, but didn’t tell her anything new about their owner. The same was true for the regulation trousers that she examined next.
The shirt was a bit more interesting, if only because it held the evidence of the gunshot that had ended Parker’s life. There was a bullet hole in the front of the shirt, just to the left of the sternum, but no corresponding hole on the back. This meant the bullet hadn’t passed completely through his body, as she might have expected at such close range, but had remained lodged somewhere inside his chest. It was a good reminder that modern weapons were far more powerful than those of a hundred years ago and she told herself to keep that in mind as she examined the evidence of Parker’s demise.
Annja wished they had the bullet to examine, as it might have been able to tell them something about the gun that had been used. That could have narrowed their avenues of inquiry a bit, but she’d been unable to find it among Parker’s remains.
It’s probably on the floor of the antechamber. Maybe I’ll go back and try to find it later, she thought.
Annja was about to put the shirt aside when she noticed an odd double stitch along one of the seams. She ran her fingers over the cloth at that point and felt something there, just beneath the surface.
It was small, no more than an inch long and less than a quarter-inch thick, and it hadn’t gotten there by accident. Whatever it was, someone had taken a bit of trouble to hide it inside the seam of the shirt.
“I think I’ve got something,” Annja said, and when Bernard came back over to her station as he had done before, she showed him what she had found. They both agreed that it merited further investigation. They photographed the shirt from a variety of angles, wanting to preserve a record of its condition before they altered it in any way, and then they x-rayed it, as well. The latter was inconclusive, however; it showed the object and confirmed its rectangular shape, but it didn’t provide any information as to what it might be.
They were going to have to take a look for themselves.
Scalpel in hand, Annja carefully cut each of the threads that held the seam closed and then, using the flat of the blade, she lifted the edge of the cloth, revealing what was hidden inside—a folded piece of paper. Annja held the pocket of cloth open with the scalpel while Bernard used a pair of tweezers to tease the paper free of its hiding place and move it onto its own examination plate.
With the aid of a low-power magnifying glass Annja could see that two edges of the paper were evenly cut, while the others were ragged, indicating it had been torn from a larger source.
A few words had been written on the small slip of paper in a hurried scrawl. Using the magnifying glass, Annja read them aloud.
“Berceau de solitude.”
Annja didn’t need Bernard to translate. She knew the words were Cradle of Solitude, but she hoped he might have some insight on what it meant, because she didn’t have a clue.
“Only place I know by that name is a monastery in the Pyrenees,” he told her.
“A monastery? Can you think of any reason it might be connected to our mysterious friend here?” she asked.
“Not particularly. If memory serves, it started out as a convent in the early 1500s, was abandoned about a hundred years later and then was bought by a sect of Benedictine monks just before the French Revolution. They’ve been running the place ever since.”
Benedictine monks. She couldn’t think of any obvious connection between the religious order and the Confederacy, but it wasn’t her area of expertise. Still, there had to be a connection, for no one went through the kind of trouble Parker had to hide a piece of paper if it wasn’t important.
The monastery was the key to this mystery.
She was sure of it.
“Is it far from here?”
Bernard shrugged. “Four, maybe four and a half hours by car. There’s a train that runs in that direction, as well, but you’d have to find transportation up the mountain. Not much sense in going, though.”
“And why’s that?”
“It’s closed to the public. Outside visitors have to be approved in advance by the abbot and the process takes several months. I spent some time there a few years ago examining one of the books they have in their library and I remember the process being an absolute nightmare to get through.”
“So you’ve met the abbot?”
“The abbot, hmmm. Abbot Deschanel. Yes, I have. A charming man, actually.”
“Would he remember you?”
“I should think so,” Bernard told her. “We spent several evenings discussing a variety of topics over a glass of wine or two and I…” He paused, finally putting two and two together. “Oh, no.”
Annja smiled at him sweetly. “What?”
“You want me to call over there and try to get you in to see the abbott without going through the standard process.”
“You’d do that for me?” she replied, letting her eyes go wide and feigning innocent surprise.
Bernard laughed. “I’m supposed to believe that the idea never even occurred to you, right?”
“You can believe what you want. But now that you’ve brought it up I think it’s an excellent idea.”
“It’s been more than a hundred years, Annja. What do you expect to find?”
She shrugged. “I don’t have any idea. But I’m sure something will occur to me once I’m there. There has to be a reason that Parker went through all the trouble of hiding the name of the monastery inside the seam of his shirt. That doesn’t just happen by accident.”
Bernard considered that statement. “You think he knew he was going to run into trouble,” he said slowly, thinking it through, “and he took precautions in case he did?”
“I do. And I think somewhere in that monastery is the answer to just what kind of trouble he was expecting. If we know that, we might be able to figure out just what he was doing here in France in the first place. Isn’t that the point of all this?”
She knew she was stretching things a bit. The authorities hadn’t been all that clear on exactly what they wanted her and Bernard to do. Identify the body if at all possible, sure, but given the state of the skeleton they probably didn’t expect them to have all that much success. Turning the skeleton over to the museum had pretty much achieved what the police had most likely wanted to achieve, which was passing the buck on to someone else. Now that the skeleton wasn’t in the catacombs and potentially slowing down the construction of the Metro tunnel, the details really weren’t all that significant to the police.
But they were to Annja. Now that she was involved, she was determined to find out all she could about Captain Parker’s fate, if indeed the skeleton really was his.
She thought it was. Regardless of how outlandish the idea sounded when said aloud, at this point she was all but convinced that she was right. She wasn’t sure why she felt that way, as the evidence was scant at best, but something deep inside rang true at the thought. That meant tracking down what had actually happened to him might possibly lead them to the missing Confederate treasure, as well. And that was definitely a prize worth pursuing.
In order to do that, she had to get inside the monastery.
“So you’ll do it?” she asked.
Bernard, however, wasn’t convinced. “I’ll give it some thought,” he said.
Deciding she wasn’t going to get any more out of him at this juncture, Annja let the matter rest for the time being. She’d hit him up again before leaving that afternoon once he’d had a chance to think it over.
In the meantime, she had a lot of work to do.
8
About the time that Annja was examining the sword, Blaine Michaels, a direct descendant of the man who had fired the shot that had taken Captain Parker’s life, received a phone call at home from the same computer technician he’d spoken to earlier that afternoon.
The information he received was more complete this time around, outlining what had happened in the tunnels earlier that morning.
“You’re certain that they said the skeleton came from inside the catacombs and not the Metro tunnel itself?”
“Yes, sir.”
Michaels grunted, most decidedly not thrilled with those circumstances.
“And the Creed woman?”
“Because the skeleton was dressed in the uniform of a U.S. soldier, the police contacted the embassy and asked to have a representative present. Apparently the Creed woman was suggested by someone on the ambassador’s staff and was brought in to represent their interests.”
He didn’t bother to correct the misinformation in his subordinate’s report; he had better things to do with his time than explain the difference between the Confederate States and the United States. It was the fact that they had discovered the body at all that had him on edge.
He didn’t exactly know why. After all, the body had been down there in the dark for more than a hundred years. There was nothing that could tie his family or the organization as a whole to the crime, if it could even be called a crime at this point, and there was little enough to be done even if they could.
Relax, he told himself.
But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t. After struggling against it for some time, he got up and made his way to his study. Locking the door behind him, he moved over to the safe, knelt in front of it and dialed the combination lock. Opening the door, he reached deep into the back, past the stacks of cash and bearer bonds, and took out his great-grandfather’s journal.
The old man had recorded the events of the night in question in considerable detail, just as he’d been taught to do. As the current head of the society, Blaine had done the same thing himself many times, making note of the steps he’d taken and the motivations behind them so that the one who followed in his footsteps—his son, most likely—would understand how those actions fit into the society’s long-term plans.
He wasn’t troubled by what had happened that day, at least with regard to the actions the society had taken. Anyone who crossed them would meet a similar fate. No, what was troubling were the goals they’d failed to meet—namely, determining where the traitor had hidden the treasure promised to them. His great-grandfather had been unable to force the information from the traitor before killing him and all of their searches to date had ended with nothing to show for them.
Blaine Michaels had been haunted all his life by his great-grandfather’s failure. Those in the society had long memories and there had been considerable opposition to his rise to power as the group’s current leader, but he’d been determined to win back the position of power his great-grandfather had forfeited in the face of his failure.
More importantly, he was determined not to let history repeat itself.
And that, he realized, was the source of his unease.
He couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that there was something they had missed that night, something that might have provided the clue they needed to figure out just where the treasure had been hidden.
Blaine knew that the original meeting had quickly devolved into an argument, which in turn led to violence. A running gun battle through the catacombs had ended with both men wounded, the traitor mortally so. Time had been of the essence in getting his great-grandfather to safety. Afterward, there was confusion about where, exactly, the traitor’s body had been left behind and the searches that followed had been unable to locate it in the hundreds of miles of twisting tunnels beneath the Paris streets. Eventually, his great-grandfather had been forced to step down from the position of leadership and the incident had been swept under the rug as a total failure.
But now, it seemed, there was a chance to correct the errors of the past. If the body held information that might lead them to the missing treasure, then he couldn’t afford to pass up the chance to find it.
Decisive action. Yes, that’s exactly what the situation needed.
Satisfied he’d come to the right conclusion, he reached for the phone.
DECIDING TO CALL IT a night, Annja and Bernard gathered all the notes and photographs they’d produced during the day, transferred them to Bernard’s office down the hall and then locked the lab behind them. “Tomorrow morning, then?” Bernard asked.
“Sounds good,” Annja replied. “And give some more thought to getting me in to see the abbot, will you?”
Bernard smiled. “Your persistence is what makes you such a good archaeologist,” he said, and then, before she could object to his playful teasing, he added, “but yes, I will. You have my word.”
Satisfied, she rode the elevator up to the ground floor. The museum had closed for the day and the halls were empty and silent around her. She paused for a moment at the entrance to a hall devoted to Egyptian artifacts, breathing in all the history that surrounded her, and was struck with the odd sense of being at home.
Yeah, and if you don’t get out and have a life one of these days, you’ll end up a stuffed mummy just like those in there, she thought wryly.
She’d been working straight through since leaving the dojo earlier that morning and only had a few more nights left to enjoy Paris, so it was time to get out and see the sights.
No sooner had she decided to take a break, however, than she found her thoughts returning to the whereabouts of the missing bullet. The gunshot wound had almost certainly killed Captain Parker and it should have been there with his remains. Not having the bullet irked her; it was like finishing a puzzle only to find out that you’re missing one last little piece. It was a tiny detail, she knew, but an important one, and she was just detail-oriented enough to want to put it to rest.
You’ve spent all day on this, she thought, what’s another hour or so?
The spent bullet was probably lying on the floor of the chamber near the wall against which Parker’s skeleton had been resting. It shouldn’t be all that hard to find.
Go on, take a quick look. If you find it, great, and if not, at least you’ll know you gave it a shot, she thought.
Decision made, she caught a cab over to the Metro station they’d used to gain access to the catacombs earlier that day. The trains were still being rerouted around the station due to the construction and so her footsteps echoed off the walls as she descended the steps.
A uniformed police officer was waiting for her at the turnstiles, alerted to her presence by the noise of her footsteps. Obviously bored with the duty he’d been assigned, he told her the station was closed and only looked up at her when she thrust the pass under his nose that she’d been given by Laroche.
“You’ll be wanting to go into the tunnels, then?” he asked.
“Yes, I shouldn’t be long.”
“But it’s after dark.”
Annja didn’t see how that was relevant. She was going underground, where it was always dark. What difference did it make that the sun had gone down?
Rather than get into it with him, though, she simply said, “Yes, it is,” and smiled sweetly at him, hoping her charm would get him to open the gate.
What she really wanted to do was to laugh at his superstitious attitude, for the things she’d faced since acquiring her sword made the idea of roaming around in the tunnels beneath the Paris city streets seem like child’s play, but she knew that doing so would kill any chance she had of getting through the gate.
Thankfully, her official pass seemed to be enough. He gave her a look that clearly said he thought she had a few screws loose upstairs but he didn’t say anything as he unlatched the gate and let her in.
She jogged through the station and down to the same platform where Laroche had taken her. Arming herself with a lantern just as they had earlier in the day, she climbed down onto the tracks and set off toward the break in the tunnel that marked the entrance to the catacombs.
More sawhorses had been set out at the site since she’d been there earlier, their blinking orange lights bouncing down the tunnel and letting her know she was getting close. She followed the glow like a trail of bread crumbs until she reached the spot where the workers had broken through into the older passageway inside the catacombs.
She was relieved to see the ladder she’d used earlier was still in place and she quickly descended into the lower tunnel. At the bottom of the ladder she paused, glancing back up the way she had come. For a moment she thought she’d heard something, but the sound didn’t repeat itself.
Probably just a rat, she thought, and shuddered.
She brushed it off and continued on her way.
The cemented tunnel had given way at the bottom of the ladder to the smooth limestone of the catacombs themselves. The antechamber where they had found Parker’s remains was just ahead and she found herself hurrying the last few dozen feet to its entrance, eagerness spreading through her veins like a drug. As she entered the room the thousands of skulls stared back at her, eerie in their eternal silence, but her attention was solely focused on what she’d come here to find and she barely noticed.
She moved over to the spot where the skeleton had been found and got down on her hands and knees. Resting the flashlight on the floor so that its beam filtered across the area she intended to search, she began hunting for the missing bullet. When she’d gone over the entire area in one direction, she went back again in the other, crisscrossing her initial efforts so she could be assured that she hadn’t missed a spot.
When that failed to turn up what she was looking for, she moved her attention over to the wall against which Captain Parker’s remains had rested. Perhaps the shot that had killed him had actually passed through his body completely, even though they hadn’t found evidence of an exit wound. It was something that wasn’t completely outrageous if it had happened at close range. Perhaps the bullet had embedded itself in the wall instead of falling to the floor when the body decayed.
Searching the wall, however, proved to be much harder than the floor. Comprised as it was of hundreds of human skulls, there were too many nooks and crannies and shadowed surfaces that could be hiding the impact point of the bullet. With just the beam of her flashlight to illuminate the wall’s surface, there was no way she was going to find something that small amid all the stacked human bones.
Better to come back in the daytime with a team of grad students and a full bank of lights, she told herself, and decided to really call it quits for the night. The beam of her flashlight swept across the floor as she turned away and out of the corner of her eye she caught the glint of something reflecting back at her.
She turned in that direction and carefully made her way forward, shining the beam of her flashlight ahead of her, searching for whatever it was. When she reached the wall she slowly spun in a circle, still searching, knowing that whatever it was had to be here somewhere.
It couldn’t just get up and walk out on its own.
There!
It was a heavy gold signet ring set with a dark colored stone. It was lying on the floor near the wall directly across from where they had found Parker’s remains and it was partially obscured by the collapse of several loose bones, which explained why she and the rest of Bernard’s team had missed it.
She kept the flashlight beam trained on it as she walked over, not wanting to lose sight of it, and then bent to pick it up.
She turned as she straightened up, ring in hand, and she caught sight of the dark form standing behind her. He was so close and it was so unexpected that she flinched back in surprise.
The move saved her.
The fist that came hurtling out of the darkness struck her on the edge of the jaw rather than in the center of her throat, where it would have crushed her larynx. Instead, the force of the blow picked her up and flung her backward, tossing her against the carefully piled bones lining the wall behind her. The whole mess came tumbling down around her in a hard rain, bones bouncing off her head and shoulders in an unyielding waterfall that threatened to knock her unconscious.
She knew if that happened it was all over, so she fought back against the grayness threatening her sight and struggled to extricate herself from the jumbled pile of human bones.
The scrape of a shoe against the stone floor let her know her attacker was moving toward her. She had seconds at best, but the fall had knocked the wind out of her and the blow to the head had her thoughts ringing like a church bell in a steeple, messing with her concentration.
Get up! her mind screamed at her, but it was like swimming against the current, her body not quite obeying the commands her mind was giving.
In the darkness she sensed rather than saw a dark shape bending over her and the sudden spike of adrenaline that poured into her system wiped away the haze.
Her right hand folded around the hilt of a sword that hadn’t been there seconds before as she willed it into existence from the otherwhere. She swung out with a savage yell like that of a falcon on the hunt. The sword slashed, almost with a mind of its own, and she felt it slice through the flesh of the man’s arm.
Blood splashed across her face and whoever it was howled in pain and drew back, giving Annja the time and space she needed to scramble to her feet. She kicked away the bones of some forgotten French citizens as she did so, wanting solid ground beneath her already shaky feet for the fight to come.
Ambushing a woman in the dark was one thing but fighting that same woman, now angry and armed with a sword she knew how to use with a finesse born of hours of practice, was something else. Rather than move in and press his advantage, her attacker turned and ran, his footfalls echoing off the stone around them.
Annja took off after him.
He only had a few seconds head start, and so she should have been able to catch up to him quickly, but her head was still pounding and the lack of a light source quickly had her steps faltering and slowing to a stop after only a few dozen yards. Getting lost in the dark was not something she wanted to experience, no matter how badly she wanted to know who it was that had followed her down here or why they’d attacked. Wandering for hours through pitch-dark tunnels until she fell down an unseen chasm or died of thirst was not on her list of happy endings.
In the distance, her attacker’s footfalls faded away to silence.
She took a moment to catch her breath and gather her thoughts. She realized, with no little surprise, that her left hand was still clenched tightly around the ring that she’d picked up off the floor.
Thank goodness for small favors, she thought.
Not wanting to lose it after all this, she slipped it into her pocket to look at later. With her hand against the wall to use as a guide, she made her way carefully back down the tunnel until she could see the thin beam of light from her flashlight spilling out of the entrance of the antechamber.
She stepped into the room, retrieved her flashlight and decided that she’d had enough excitement for one day. Sword still in hand, she cautiously retraced her steps back up to the subway tunnel and from there to the station itself. She kept on the lookout for any sign of her attacker, but didn’t see or hear anyone along the way. Before entering the station she released her sword back into the otherwhere, for coming out of a dark tunnel carrying a sword in hand didn’t seem like the safest way to reacquaint herself with the police officer on duty.
As it turned out, she needn’t have worried. The guard was nowhere in sight.
That’s not a good sign, she thought uneasily.
He wouldn’t have left on his own without being relieved; at least, she couldn’t imagine him doing that knowing full well that she was in the tunnels. That meant that something had happened to him.
He probably ran into the same bastard that I did.
If that was the case, he could be lying somewhere unconscious, perhaps even seriously injured. She couldn’t leave without looking for him.
It didn’t take very long. She found the police officer lying against the far side of the ticket booth, a thick trickle of blood leaking from the swollen lump on the side of his head. His breathing was steady enough, she was relieved to discover. Annja used his radio to make an Officer Down call to headquarters. When they asked her to identify herself, she broke the connection. The officer was starting to stir so she got up, and walked off without a backward glance. It wasn’t the most Good Samaritan–like thing to do, but all she wanted was to return to her hotel and take a hot bath to ease the aches and pains out of her muscles. She wouldn’t get that if she had to spend the next three hours downtown answering questions.
Back at her hotel, she had room service send up hot chocolate and some croissants. While she waited, she took the ring from the pocket of her jeans, cleaned it off and held it up to the light for a good look.
It was a man’s signet ring, just as she’d thought. The stone set in its face was a deep crimson in color that seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it. It had been gently cut, with a beveled face and eight short sides. The gold itself was unadorned. She suspected it was Parker’s, but it could also have belonged to whomever he had been meeting there. There was no way of telling at this point. She slipped the ring into a little glassine envelope and then tucked it inside one of the zippered pockets of her backpack.
Her snack arrived, so she signed the check, locked the door behind her and devoured the food. Then she headed into the bathroom where she had drawn a bath. She stripped off her clothes and climbed into the water for some relaxation. She’d been going nonstop ever since she’d left for the dojo that morning and her body was telling her to take it easy or else. The hot water soothed her tired limbs the same way the hot chocolate had her throat.
When she was clean and relaxed, she climbed into bed and was asleep in what felt like seconds.
9
Given the type of activity that went on at the Museum of Natural History on a daily basis, as well as the priceless nature of some of the artifacts that were cleaned and restored within its walls, the lab there had a highly sophisticated alarm system designed to prevent unauthorized entrance to the facility. The alarm was the pride of the museum’s director, for he had spent nearly two years on the research and testing that went into selecting the product they had finally decided to install. It was, the manufacturer said, the best of the best and perfect for protecting a facility such as this.
The three men who entered the lab at half past two that morning went through it like butter.
The fact that they had the sixteen-digit code that was needed to render the alarm system inoperable made things a bit easier.
Once inside the lab, one of the men moved to the drawer containing Captain Parker’s remains. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t pull out any of the other drawers looking for the right one, but went immediately to his intended target, like a man who knew precisely what it was he was looking for and where it could be found. He opened the canvas duffel bag he was carrying and started placing the captain’s remains into the sack.
As he was doing so, his two companions were carefully scouring the lab for any trace that the long-missing Confederate soldier’s remains had ever graced the building with its presence. Papers, thumb drives, video cards—if it could possibly contain any information about the discovery of the dead man’s remains it was picked up and dropped into a sack identical to the first. Within ten minutes the three men had searched the entire lab and removed everything that might possibly contain any information relative to the discovery of Captain Parker’s body. When they were finished the leader gave a quick nod to the other two and what had once been a carefully organized search-and-retrieval mission turned into a free-for-all as they set about ruthlessly destroying everything they could get their hands on. Computer monitors were thrown to the floor and then stomped under foot. Desks were overturned and the contents of their drawers scattered throughout the room. High-tech spectrometry equipment costing hundreds of thousands of dollars was covered with foam from the wall-mounted fire extinguishers and then smashed with what was left of the desk chairs.
It became like a game to them, seeing who could cause the most destruction in the shortest amount of time. It wasn’t long before the room was practically unrecognizable.
Finally, their energy spent and their job complete, the three men left the same way they came in, with no one the wiser.
10
When Annja arrived at the museum early the next morning, she was met with a scene of confusion. Several law enforcement vehicles were parked outside the entrance and when she tried to use the temporary pass Bernard had given her to gain access, she was politely informed by a uniformed officer that she would have to wait.
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Alex Archer
One mystery could change the fate of a nation…The skeletal remains of a confederate soldier, hidden deep within the Paris Catacombs. The legend of a long-lost Confederate treasure. An aged scrap of paper that reads simply, Berceau de solitude–Cradle of Solitude.It was sheer dumb luck, really. Archaeologist Annja Creed happened to be in Paris when the bones of the soldier were discovered. But this was no ordinary soldier–this man was the keeper of a treasure that could have affected the outcome of the American Revolution. Somewhere, the treasure waits to be claimed.Now Annja is unraveling a 150-year-old mystery and a trail of clues that will lead her across the ocean and deep into the heart of the Old South. But she isn't the only seeker of this treasure. Someone else wants it–bad enough to kill anyone who stands in their way….
“Do you have any idea why the thieves would be interested only in our Confederate friend’s remains?”
Annja frowned. “That’s all they took?”
“They were only interested in the skeleton and the documentation pertaining to it that you and Professor Reinhardt assembled. Nothing else was touched, including items of considerable value that were in plain view in Dr. Reinhardt’s office.”
That put an entirely different spin on things. Breaking and entering to steal museum pieces worth millions was one thing; doing so just to make off with the recently recovered remains of a Confederate captain no one even knew existed was another.
Her thoughts turned immediately to the shadowed figure she’d encountered in the catacombs the night before.
There was more going on here than she’d realized.
Cradle of Solitude
Rogue Angel
Alex Archer
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
THE LEGEND
…THE ENGLISH COMMANDER TOOK JOAN’S SWORD AND RAISED IT HIGH.
The broadsword, plain and unadorned, gleamed in the firelight. He put the tip against the ground and his foot at the center of the blade. The broadsword shattered, fragments falling into the mud. The crowd surged forward, peasant and soldier, and snatched the shards from the trampled mud. The commander tossed the hilt deep into the crowd. Smoke almost obscured Joan, but she continued praying till the end, until finally the flames climbed her body and she sagged against the restraints.
Joan of Arc died that fateful day in France, but her legend and sword are reborn….
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
1
Richmond, Virginia
April 2, 1865
The choir had just begun the “Hallelujah” chorus when the door to the church flew open with a bang. Confederate President Jefferson Davis, seated at the front of the church next to his wife, Varina, turned and watched as a man raced down the center aisle toward him.
That he had come from the front lines was obvious; his face and hands were covered with dirt and soot, while his uniform looked as if it hadn’t been washed in a month. A bloodstained scrap of bandage encircled his head just below the hairline, but since it didn’t seem to slow him, Davis guessed that the wound it covered was at least a few days old. Rank insignia on his uniform indicated the man was a captain, though Davis couldn’t remember the man’s name.
Reaching him, the soldier leaned against the end of the pew, took a moment to catch his breath and then stammered, “G-G-General Lee’s line at Petersburg has broken, sir, and he intends to fall back and evacuate the city immediately.”
Shocked murmurs erupted as those within earshot repeated what was said to those around them. Even the Episcopalian minister presiding over the day’s worship services came down from his lofty perch on the pulpit to hear the news.
Davis ignored everyone but the messenger.
“How long can Lee hold them, Captain?”
The man shook his head. “Not long, sir. He bid me to urge you to hurry. He can give you a few hours, but expects that the enemy will be inside the city limits by nightfall.”
Nightfall. That gave them five, maybe six hours at most. If they were going to get the government out of Richmond, never mind save what was left of the treasury, they had to get started immediately.
“Convey my regards to General Lee and tell him that we will execute our retreat plan. Godspeed, Captain.”
As the messenger hurried from the church, Davis turned to his wife and made his apologies. There was no way he could sit through the service now, not with the evacuation of the entire city to plan and carry out in less than half a dozen hours. He caught the eye of his aide-de-camp and the two of them rose and rushed down the aisle.
Time was of the essence and Davis didn’t intend to waste any of it.
Fifteen minutes later the president was ensconced with the vice president and several members of his cabinet in the living room of the house on the corner of Twelfth and K streets that served as both the executive mansion and his family residence. An evacuation plan had not been established, for neither Davis nor any of the other members of his administration had foreseen the fall of the city. The rest of the day would be spent trying to correct that oversight. The executive mansion held thousands of documents that might give the Union a leg up in their push to destroy the Confederacy and aides were immediately set to the task of burning as many of them as possible. The vast warehouses of stockpiled supplies also had to be dealt with, for to allow them to fall into Union hands and be used against the very soldiers they had been intended for was completely unacceptable. Orders were given to deal with the problem. Perishable foodstuffs would be given away free of charge until sundown to any who arrived at the warehouses to claim them. The casks of rum and other liquors would be smashed open and poured out in the streets, to keep the public from indulging in a drunken frenzy when they most needed to keep steady heads on their shoulders. But it was the order to burn the tobacco warehouses that pained Davis the most, for the crop inside them represented the future for so many of the citizens he had sworn to protect. Losing their harvest would be devastating.
Of course, it paled in comparison to losing their homes. But at least he would do what he could to see that as many of them escaped ahead of the Union Army as was possible.
Lee was just going to have to hold on.
The night loomed ahead of them, growing more threatening by the minute.
THE TRAIN WAS LATE.
Captain William Parker sat astride his horse near the end of the platform and stared worriedly down the tracks into the darkness. He could hear the Union guns in the distance, shelling Lee’s lines, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before the order was given for the retreat. The general could only hold out so long and he was already well beyond the time frame he’d given the president. Soon the front would fall, the Confederate troops would retreat through the city streets, and Richmond would fall into Union hands. When that happened, the chances of getting out of the city at all, never mind getting out with their cargo intact, would shrink considerably.
Where the hell is that train?
He turned and looked back at the squad of men he’d commandeered to help him carry out his mission, shaking his head at the sight. With every able-bodied soldier doing their damnedest to keep the Yanks from entering the city limits, he’d been forced to make do with a group of midshipmen off the Patrick Henry, the thirteen-hundred-ton side-wheel gunboat he’d converted into a floating school for the Navy. Some of the “men” in his command weren’t more than twelve years old!
God help me. How am I supposed to guard the treasury with schoolboys?
Thankfully, the plan was simple enough. A single rail line still stood open between Richmond and Danville. With two trains at their disposal, President Davis and his staff would be on the first one out, with Parker and his special cargo following in the other. Once in Danville, they’d go their separate ways.
Parker had no illusions as to why he and his cargo—about seven hundred thousand dollars worth of gold ingots, gold coins, silver bricks and Mexican silver dollars—were on the second train. If things became difficult farther down the tracks, the unspoken hope was that the Union soldiers would be more interested in the treasure than in securing the president, thereby allowing Davis to evade capture and escape.
It was a good backup plan, made better by the fact that it actually had some hope of success, and Parker approved of it despite the risk to himself and those under his command. The Confederacy might be able to replace the treasury, but it wouldn’t recover from the capture of its beloved president.
A glance at his pocket watch told him that it was past eleven. The fact that they’d made it this late in the night without being overrun by the enemy was another of General Lee’s miracles. He’d dug in just outside the city and withstood charge after charge, buying them the time they needed, doggedly determined to keep the Yanks off the streets of the capital as long as possible. Lee’s predicated deadline of nightfall had come and gone and still the Army of Northern Virginia held out. Parker didn’t know how he did it; he was just thankful they had a man like Lee on their side.
But even Lee could not keep it up much longer.
A rumbling sound broke his reverie and he looked up to see the locomotive coming down the tracks toward them, smoke pouring from its stack. His feelings of relief quickly turned to concern, however, when the engine drew closer and he saw the condition of the train.
Getting here hadn’t been easy, it seemed. Great dents marred the smooth curve of the boiler and the sides of the cab had been shot full of holes. The roof of the tender had been torn away entirely, most likely the result of a well-placed cannon shot, and the engineer manning the coal shovel had a bloody bandage wrapped around his head and covering one side of his face. The cars beyond hadn’t fared much better.
The train had already slowed considerably by the time it reached Parker and he watched it roll on and continue for a few more yards before coming to a stop with the hiss of brakes and a cloud of steam. No sooner had it done so than Army officers swarmed inside, checking it over. When the okay signal was given the boarding began, starting first with the president and his cabinet, followed by what was left of their staff.
Parker didn’t have time to watch the parade, however, for the second train arrived on the heels of the first and he had work to do.
“Quickly now!” he shouted to the boys in his command and they snapped to, unloading the heavy chests from the wagons and carrying them aboard the train, stacking them against the rear wall of the car to which they’d been assigned.
Halfway through the job one of the midshipmen stumbled, dropping the sack he carried and spilling silver coins over the edge of the platform onto the tracks below.
Parker grabbed the boy as he readied himself to climb down and retrieve them.
“No time, son,” Parker said. “Some lucky fool will no doubt pick them up, but it’s not going to be you or me. Back to work now.”
It took them just shy of an hour, but at last all of the cargo was loaded and the rest of the cars were filled with as many of the people fleeing the city as they could possibly pack into them. Parker gave up his seat to another passenger, finding a place on the roof of the car alongside his second in command, Lieutenant Jonathan Sykes, and two midshipmen whose names he couldn’t dredge up from memory in his exhausted state.
No sooner had he settled himself onto the roof of the car than the train lurched into motion without warning, the usual whistle being dispensed with so as not to alert the enemy to their escape. The train moved slowly at first, sluggishly pulling away from the platform, and Parker found himself silently urging it on, as if his thoughts could somehow propel the train faster down the tracks.
Refugees lined either side of the tracks, moving forward through the darkness like the wandering tribes of Israel headed for the promised land. Parker was thankful it was too dark to see their faces, for his own despair and dismay were enough for him; he didn’t need to witness anyone else’s.
As they rolled across the bridge at the city limits, Sykes suddenly shouted, “Look!”
Parker followed his pointing finger back toward Richmond and saw an angry red glow lighting the sky. The thunder of distant explosions reached his ears as the glow grew brighter, spreading across the horizon.
Richmond was aflame.
“Damn Yanks have fired the city!” One of the midshipmen cursed.
Parker knew better, but he didn’t bother correcting the young man. Morale was bad enough; the men in his command didn’t need to know that the fire was the result of a direct order from the president, designed to ensure that nothing of value would be left for the Union troops to use against them. The warehouses along the waterfront had been full of powder and shot, too much to be moved swiftly, and rather than allowing it to fall into the hands of the enemy, Davis had ordered the entire lot to be set alight.
With the skyline glowing brightly behind him and the enemy’s guns echoing in the distance, Parker set his gaze forward and settled in for the ride.
2
It was only one hundred and forty miles from Richmond to Danville but the slow-moving train, overburdened as it was with excess cargo and the need to constantly stop and repair the track in front of it, required the night and most of the day to get there. A light rain was falling as they pulled into the station, but Parker was so tired that he barely even noticed.
The president’s party had come and gone by that time, but orders had been given and four wagons were waiting alongside the platform, guarded by a pair of infantrymen. They approached as Parker disembarked and one of the men handed him a folded piece of paper.
The note was from George Trenholm, secretary of the Treasury, ordering Parker to use any and all means necessary to evade the Union troops in the area and see his cargo safely to the old U.S. Mint in Charlotte, North Carolina. It also let Parker know that the Union cavalry had been spotted in the area and that he was to avoid contact wherever and whenever possible.
Parker laughed aloud upon seeing the final order.
What does he think I’m going to do? Stage an attack on General Sheridan’s cavalry column with a handful of midshipmen and half a dozen muskets?
The very notion was absurd. Still, these were desperate times and Parker had little doubt there would be some in his position who might just be daring enough to do something like that. Sometimes a bold move at just the right moment…
He shied away from the thought, before he could be tempted. Glory be damned, he told himself. Get the treasury to Charlotte. That’s the goal.
But Charlotte was a long way off and the chances of meeting the Union cavalry on the main road seemed pretty high. Sticking to the lesser known byways and backcountry roads would decrease his chances of running into the enemy but it would also slow him down.
Opt for speed and take the main road, praying they didn’t run into anything they couldn’t handle, or take the slower, surer route and chance arriving too late to do any good with the money they had in their care?
It was a difficult choice and one that needed some thought.
Concerned that a wagon train full of bulging money sacks and wooden chests stamped with the words Richmond Loan and Trust would be too tempting a target, Parker sent his men out to scavenge for containers they might use to hide the contents of their true cargo. It took well over two hours to make the switch, but when they were finished the treasure was hidden in barrels and crates that had once held sugar, flour, tea and other consumables. With the lids hammered tight, there was nothing to tell the casual observer that the financial future of the Confederation was contained within.
By the time the wagons were loaded and the men ready to head out, Parker had made his decision.
The money they carried was needed to keep the regiments in the field equipped with enough food, powder and shot to continue operating, never mind being able to pay the men for their service. They’d take the fast road and hope they arrived in time to do some good with the cargo entrusted to them.
They were in decent spirits when they left Danville behind, despite the steady rain. Parker, Sykes and one of the midshipmen, Daniels, were in the lead wagon, while the other men were split evenly among the rest. They kept a tight formation and managed to make decent progress for the first hour, covering nearly ten miles, but then the weather took a turn for the worse. What had started as a light drizzle turned into a downpour, soaking the men to the bone and turning the road into little more than a muddy track. It became difficult to see that the horses pulling each wagon were tied to the back of the one before them, ensuring that none of them fell behind and got lost.
They barely managed another mile during their second hour on the road and Parker was starting to consider where they might find a place to hole up for the rest of the night when they were confronted by several figures who suddenly loomed out of the rain ahead as they rounded a bend in the road.
“Whoa!” Parker cried, and pulled up quickly on the reins, stopping them a few dozen yards apart.
At this distance it was hard to see anything for certain, but Parker thought there were at least a dozen men in the party ahead them. Three or four on horseback, it seemed, and another ten or so on foot.
They weren’t significantly outnumbered, which was good, but given the level of experience of the men under his command, even that wouldn’t be too much of a blessing.
He glanced at Sykes. The other man held his musket lightly, the muzzle pointed forward. Not enough to be overtly threatening, but ready to be used if things went south.
Sykes must have sensed his attention, for he turned his head and gave Parker a slight nod, letting him know he was ready for whatever was to come.
He was a good man, Parker thought.
Before Parker could do anything, however, one of the riders ahead kicked his horse into motion. Parker let him close half the distance between them and then shouted, “That’s far enough. Identify yourself or my men will open fire!”
The rider pulled his horse up short.
“Easy, Captain,” the man called out. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
Parker knew the voice, but sheer surprise kept him from responding right away, and while he struggled to find his voice the other man unveiled the lantern in his free hand, letting the light fall upon him.
Even through the downpour Parker recognized the face of their benefactor, secretary of the Treasury, George Trenholm.
Still, Parker was cautious. “Be ready for anything,” he told Sykes as he handed over the reigns. “If this looks like a trap, get the wagons out of here as best you’re able.”
Sykes never took his eyes off the men ahead of them. “You can count on me, sir.”
Parker climbed down from the wagon and walked forward to where Secretary Trenholm was waiting for him. As he drew closer the other man dismounted, as well, which helped put Parker at ease.
Trenholm extended his hand and the two men shook.
“Good to see you, Captain. I was starting to think we’d missed you.”
“The rain, sir. You know how it gets.”
Parker didn’t know much about Secretary Trenholm’s history, but it seemed a safe bet that the man had never had to lead a wagon train through a torrential downpour. Trenholm came from money, and old money at that.
But war has a way of leveling social classes, Parker knew, and he found it mildly ironic that the two of them were to meet here, in the midst of a muddy track that could barely be called a road, the rain beating down on both their heads with equal abandon.
Oblivious to his subordinate’s thoughts, Trenholm went on. “There’s been a change of plans, Captain. I’m to escort you to an important meeting where you will receive your new orders. If you would come with me…”
Parker frowned. “My men, sir?”
“About a hundred yards up the road there’s a place where they can get off the main thoroughfare and wait for your return. I’ll leave several of my own men to stand guard with them. On a night like tonight, I doubt they’ll run into any difficulties.”
Trenholm was probably right, but that didn’t make Parker feel any better about leaving his men in the middle of nowhere, particularly given their level of inexperience. Still, an order was an order.
“Yes, sir. Give me a moment to explain the situation.”
He returned to Sykes and let him know what was going on. The young lieutenant wasn’t thrilled with the situation, either, but there was very little that they could do about it. Parker ordered him to keep his eyes open and wait for his return.
One of Trenholm’s men loaned him a horse and five minutes later they were under way. Trenholm led him a mile or so through the woods on a narrow track that was little better than a game trail really, until they came to a clearing. Parker could see that several campaign tents had been erected there and men in Confederate uniforms were moving about.
Trenholm took him to a larger tent set slightly off from the others and asked him to wait inside.
“Someone will be along shortly to give you further instructions.”
Ever the dutiful soldier, Parker complied.
He found the tent was sparsely furnished, with just a pair of camp chairs on either side of a makeshift table made from a few scraps of wood and a blanket-covered cot off to one side. It was warm inside, thanks to a camp stove that was burning in the far corner, and Parker soon found himself literally steaming as the heat sucked the moisture out of his clothes.
He didn’t mind. Being out of the rain, even if only for a few minutes, was a welcome relief.
When, after fifteen minutes, no one had yet arrived to deliver his new orders, he dragged one of the camp chairs closer to the stove and sat down.
I’ll take a few minutes of rest, that’s all, he thought.
He must have dozed off, however, for he came awake with a start when he heard someone enter the tent behind him. He leaped to his feet and spun about.
He didn’t know who he expected to see waiting there for him, but President Jefferson Davis himself was not on his list of possibilities.
So surprised was he that for several long moments all he could do was stand and stare. The president didn’t seem to notice.
“Thank you for coming so quickly, Captain,” he said as he laid the books and papers he was carrying on the desk and hung his coat on the back of the other chair before dragging it closer to the stove. “Please, sit down.”
Parker nodded, then found his voice at last as he waited for Davis to sit down before doing so himself. “Thank you, Mr. President.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Davis said, his expression darkening at some private thought. “Not until you’ve heard why I’ve called you here, at any rate.”
An aide came in bearing two glasses of brandy on a tray. He gave one to the president, then offered the other to Parker.
Drink in hand, President Davis turned to him and said, “I have a very special assignment for you, Captain.”
3
Paris, France
Present day
Annja came out of the dojo’s locker room drying her long hair with the towel she kept in her gym bag for just that purpose. She was startled to find a man waiting outside the door for her. He was of medium build, with a short, dark beard, and was dressed in a nicely fitted suit of a deep chocolate brown.
He stepped forward as she approached.
“Excuse me. Miss Creed?”
He had a strong French accent.
“Yes?” she replied.
She searched her memory, but she was pretty sure she didn’t know him. Having strangers approach her was nothing new. People often recognized her from Chasing History’s Monsters, the cable television show she cohosted, but something told her this guy wasn’t a fan looking for a quick autograph.
“Please forgive the interruption. I am Commissaire Laroche, of the Police Nationale.”
Annja knew the Police Nationale was the main civil law enforcement agency in France. Commissaire was a commissioned officer rank, sort of analogous to a senior detective in the United States. In other words, this guy was a heavy hitter in the local police community. Annja was alarmed. She’d stayed out of trouble while on vacation and hadn’t done anything to elicit interest from the police.
This time around, at least.
Seeing he had her attention, Laroche continued. “I’m looking for some assistance with a—how do you say…peculiar? yes?—situation. Your name was given to me by Monsieur Garrison at the embassy.”
That, at least, was a name she recognized. She’d met Billy Garrison at a press junket she attended on behalf of the show the last time she’d been in Paris. He was on the ambassador’s staff and had taken her to dinner a few nights later, but there hadn’t been any spark and she’d declined his offer for a second date.
Being dateless was preferable to listening to Billy ramble on about French politics for hours again. Thanks, but no thanks.
“May I see some identification, Commissaire?”
He bowed slightly, an outdated but courtly gesture. “Of course, Miss Creed. And please, call me Henri.”
He handed over a leather case that contained his badge and ID. She glanced at it, confirmed that the man in the picture and the one standing in front of her were one and the same, then handed it back.
“Thank you. One can’t be too careful these days….”
“Of course, of course,” he replied, waving off her apology.
“So how is Billy?” she asked, more to gauge the inspector’s reaction to him than anything else.
He didn’t disappoint. “Monsieur Garrison is as long-winded as usual,” he replied, giving her a tight smile.
Yep, that was Billy.
“So what’s this peculiar situation that you need help with, Henri?” she asked.
Laroche hesitated, glancing over her shoulder as he did so. “Perhaps we might take this outside?” he asked.
When she followed his gaze and found the rest of the dojo’s students watching their discussion, Annja readily agreed.
She accompanied him out the door into the bright spring sunshine and fell into step beside him as he walked slowly up the street, explaining as he went.
“For the past several weeks construction teams have been working on the southern line of the Metro, widening the existing tunnels to make room for the new branch that will be added to the system in May.”
Annja was aware of the project, for the construction workers with their bright orange reflective vests were a familiar sight on the trains in and out of the area.
Laroche went on. “Late yesterday afternoon the floor gave way beneath a work crew in one of the newly expanded tunnels. Thankfully, only two of the men sustained injuries and in both cases they were minor ones. When the dust cleared the crew discovered that they had fallen into a previously unknown second tunnel, running parallel beneath the first. Further exploration revealed several antechambers just beyond, each one filled with stacks of human bones.”
Annja could scarcely believe what she was hearing. A previously undiscovered section of the catacombs? Her heart skipped a beat at the thought.
Prior to the creation of the catacombs in the mid-1700s, the dead of Paris were buried in small cemeteries alongside local churches. But as the city grew, the cemeteries ran out of space. Mass interments became common, often without caskets, and over time this led to the contamination of ground water as the bodies decomposed in the earth.
To deal with the problem, city officials moved to outlaw all burials within the city limits from that point forward. Existing graves were exhumed and the remains were relocated to a series of abandoned limestone quarries that were, at that time, on the outskirts of town. The process of disinterring the bones from their original resting places was carried out with reverence for the dead as well as consideration for the living. The quarry space was blessed, the long trains of carts moving the bones were accompanied by priests and the activity was always conducted at night. No attempt was made to identify or separate the individual bodies, but each set of bones was marked with a plaque indicating the cemetery from which they originated and the year they were moved. By 1860, when the relocation was completed, some five to six million skeletons had been moved to the catacombs.
Eventually, the city expanded and what had once been outside the city limits now lay hidden beneath its streets. Annja knew only a small section of the massive tunnel network was accessible to the public. That left close to two hundred miles of tunnels and caverns extending like a spider’s web beneath the city that only a handful of people had ever seen.
“Most of the men on the crew had seen the catacombs at one point or another in their careers so the rooms full of bones were not at all surprising to them,” Laroche said. “However, the discovery of a fully intact skeleton, partially buried beneath a pile of those older bones, was.”
Annja considered that for a moment. “Sounds like a job for the police rather than an archaeologist,” she said.
“Ordinarily, I’d agree with you,” Laroche replied, “but this particular discovery turned out to be a bit more complex than first thought.”
They paused, waited for the light to change, then crossed, continuing walking along the other side of the street.
“When the crime scene unit arrived, it didn’t take them long to determine that the job would be better off in the hands of a forensic anthropologist. While arrangements were being made to bring one in, word of the find was also sent to the American Embassy.”
Annja was surprised. “The embassy? So your mysterious skeleton is that of an American?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
That’s like saying you’re kind of pregnant, she thought, but when she pressed him on it Laroche wouldn’t explain any further.
“I’d rather not prejudice your opinion,” he said as they turned left onto another thoroughfare. Caught up in the puzzle he was laying out before her, Annja barely noticed where they where headed.
“What’s my opinion got to do with any of this?” she asked.
Laroche smiled. “Because of the nature of the find, it was agreed that a representative from the United States should be present when the skeleton is excavated. Mr. Garrison suggested that you would be ideally suited for the task.”
“Is that so?”
Laroche grinned devilishly. “Oui. In fact, it sounded like he said something about you preferring the company of the dead over that of the living, but perhaps I misheard him.”
He is so going to pay for that one, Annja thought, before realizing that in order to carry out her threat, she’d have to see him again.
Perhaps he wasn’t as dim-witted as she’d taken him to be.
Putting the thought aside for the time being, she focused on the opportunity being offered to her. “So are you asking me to get my hands dirty or will this be strictly observational in nature?”
“You can get as dirty as you like, Miss Creed.”
“Am I being brought on as an official consultant?” she asked.
Reading between the lines, Laroche said, “The embassy has agreed to cover your costs and to provide a reasonable fee for your time. Monsieur Garrison would not discuss the specific details with me, but stated he would be happy to take your call so he could provide you with the specifics.” So Billy wasn’t so dim-witted, after all, she thought.
“Well, when do you want to get started?” Annja asked, chuckling to herself.
Laroche slowed, and then stopped. “As a matter of fact, I was hoping you would be free right now.”
Startled, Annja glanced around, only then realizing that they were standing in front of a Metro station. A pair of sawhorses stood in front of the entrance, holding a sign noting in French that the station was currently closed for repairs.
This time Annja laughed aloud. “You certainly know how to show a girl a good time, Henri!” she said. “You’ve piqued my curiosity and given me an intriguing puzzle to boot. How could I say no?”
“Excellent!” Laroche said.
They descended the stairs and entered the station proper, where Laroche used his badge to get them past the police officer stationed there.
Once past the turnstiles, Annja followed Laroche onto the subway platform and over to the far end, where a selection of equipment was stored under a tarp. The detective removed two lanterns from beneath the cover, turned them both on and passed one to Annja. Then he led her off the platform and onto the track.
The air was cool in the tunnel and Annja was glad she’d had the foresight to grab a sweatshirt when she’d left her hotel that morning. At the moment the change in the temperature felt refreshing after the heat of the bright sun above, but it wouldn’t be long before the chill seeped into her bones if they spent any length of time down below.
She was starting to suspect they would.
As if hearing her thoughts, Laroche spoke. “The entrance to the catacombs is several hundred yards ahead. I’m sorry, but there is no alternative but to walk.”
Annja smiled at his apologetic tone. “Walking’s something an arcaheologist gets used to very quickly. It’s no problem at all.”
They kept to the center of the track, where the pathway was reasonably clear of debris and the chance of one of them turning an ankle was reduced. Not that the chances of doing so were all that great in the first place; the subways in Paris were far cleaner than those back home in Brooklyn.
Annja had spent much of her professional life clambering around inside crumbling ruins and forgotten old tunnels, so the weight of all that earth above their heads didn’t bother her in the slightest. The same couldn’t be said about her companion, however. No sooner had they started down the tunnel than the conversation dried up and his repeated glances at the roof over their heads let her know just how uncomfortable he was. Figuring he’d say something if it got to be too much, Annja kept her thoughts to herself and simply walked along in his wake.
They’d been underground for about fifteen minutes when a faint glow could be seen coming from around a bend in the tunnel ahead of them. The light grew brighter as they approached, until, rounding the curve in the tunnel, Annja could see that it was coming from a set of portable arc lights that had been erected on stands near a hole in the tunnel floor. Several people were milling about, but didn’t appear to actually be doing much of anything.
Waiting for the boss to return, Annja thought.
It turned out she was right. As soon as the group caught sight of the two of them approaching, they settled down and waited to be told what to do.
“Please wait here for a moment,” Laroche said, and then stepped over to confer with his people. After listening to an update from one of his subordinates, the detective issued a flurry of orders, sending his people scurrying off in a variety of directions on several different tasks. Doing so seemed to help him forget the weight of all that earth above and it was a steadier man who rejoined her a few moments later.
“I’m told that Professor Reinhardt from the Museum of Natural History is already waiting for us below. As the official representative from my country, he will be in charge of the project, though any actions that impact the remains directly must be approved through you. Will there be a problem with that?”
Annja shook her head. Bernard Reinhardt was an old friend. She’d worked with him on several projects and tried to find time to say hello whenever she was in Paris. His conduct in the field was impeccable; she couldn’t have asked for a better partner.
“Let’s get to it,” she said.
Stepping over to the ladder that extended out of the hole in the tunnel floor, Laroche swung himself onto its rungs and started downward.
Annja gave him a moment, and then followed.
4
Lights had been strung along the ceiling of the tunnel and in their glare Annja could easily see the differences between this tunnel and the one above. It was narrower, for one, with walls of hewn limestone rather than concrete, and with a ceiling that was a good two feet lower than the previous passageway. Where they had been able to walk two abreast with room to spare in the tunnel above, down here they were forced to move single file down the narrow corridor. It was also quiet. Gone were the faint sounds of distant trains rumbling through the walls; the limestone surrounding them seemed to swallow up even the slightest echo, devouring it before it could move more than a few inches from its source.
The most striking difference, however, was the sense of age that filled the rough-hewn walls around them. This tunnel had been around for a long time, that much was obvious, and Annja found herself wondering just what it had seen and been witness to over the years.
“This way,” Laroche said as he led her down the tunnel. They’d only walked a dozen or so yards before the opening to a chamber loomed on their left. The string of lights led inside and Laroche and Annja followed them.
Entering the room, Annja stopped short, her eyes widening at what she saw.
The entire chamber was fashioned of bones.
Human bones.
Tibias and femurs by the thousands were stacked neatly side by side, interspersed regularly with rows of skulls, their empty eye sockets staring at her as if in accusation. Here and there the skulls had been arranged in artistic patterns, a cross being the most common. There were no intact skeletons, the goal of the arrangement clearly having been to make the best use of the space available, and Annja could only assume that the rib cages, spines and other bones that would have made up the rest of each skeleton had been used to fill in the spaces behind the larger bones. Most of the stacks rose to a height of about 5 feet and from what she could see they were a few yards deep in some places. To her left was a plaque noting the year the bones had been interred as well as the cemetery from which they had come.
Clearly they had entered the original catacombs.
“Annja!” an exuberant voice cried, pulling her away from her study of the skulls before her. She turned to find her colleague, Professor Bernard Reinhardt, emerging from the chamber just beyond, his hand extended in welcome. The smile on his face was outmatched only by the size of his handlebar mustache, which stretched a good inch past his cheeks on either side.
Reinhardt was a large, portly man in his early sixties, though he had the exuberant energy of a man half his size and age. He’d been known to work right through the night and into the next day while on an important dig, putting most of the graduate students who worked with him to shame. In the narrow confines of the underground passageway he appeared twice as big as usual and Annja found herself having to stifle the urge to back away as he thundered toward her. He was dressed in a thick flannel shirt, jeans and solid pair of hiking boots, a far cry from the three-piece suit, complete with pocket watch and chain, that he liked to wear while at the museum.
Annja had met him several years before while in Paris for a symposium during which he’d delivered a presentation on the Saxon conquest of Normandy. She’d been so impressed with his quick mind and engaging delivery that she’d introduced herself after his talk. Despite the obvious difference in their ages and educational backgrounds, their shared love of European history had turned them into colleagues with genuine respect for each other’s specialties.
“Hello, Bernard,” she said, ignoring his outstretched hand and giving him a quick hug, which earned her a hearty embrace.
“It is so good to see you, Annja,” he said, releasing her. “Have they told you why you are here?”
“Just that they’ve discovered something of interest to both your government and mine,” she replied.
Bernard grinned. “Well, then, if they didn’t spoil the surprise, I’m not going to, either. This way, my dear.”
He turned and led her through several other chambers, each one similar to the last. The stacks of bones seemed to go on and on; everywhere she looked, the walls were covered with them. Not that Annja was surprised. She’d heard it estimated that there were more than six million skeletons interred down here in the dark.
That’s a lot of ghosts, she thought.
Ahead of her, Bernard came to a halt at the entrance to a side chamber.
“Is this it?” she asked.
He nodded, then extended a hand, as if to say, After you.
Her lantern held high, Annja entered the chamber.
The room was small, no larger than ten square feet, she estimated, and so it didn’t take her long to pick out what she’d been brought there to see.
The skeleton was seated with its back against the wall of the antechamber, its legs stretched out before it. A cavalry saber was gripped in one hand, in the other, a Colt revolver. At first glance both weapons appeared to be in excellent condition. So, too, was the uniform the skeleton wore—wool trousers and a light shirt, both partially covered by a long frock coat that hung to midthigh. The three bars that designated the rank of captain had been sewn onto the coat’s collar. A kepi hat was still perched atop the skull where it rested against the back wall.
The dirt and dust that had settled on the remains of the clothing made it difficult to determine the exact color of the uniform, but there was no mistaking the brass emblem of a wreath pinned to the front of the hat. The arms of the wreath rose on either side, surrounding the three letters nestled between them.
CSA.
As she stared at the emblem in surprise, Annja finally understood what Laroche had meant. They weren’t questioning that the remains belonged to an American. Not at all. They were questioning his status because the America he’d belonged to no longer existed.
The Confederate States of America.
5
Annja walked over to the skeleton and settled into a crouch before it, her gaze moving slowly and carefully, taking in the details. Behind her, she heard Bernard step into the room.
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” he said, his voice hushed, as if in reverence for the dead man before them. “To think he’s been down here for a hundred and fifty years, just waiting for someone to come along and find him.”
Annja nodded. She was amazed that anyone had done so, frankly. The chances of the construction team finding the adjacent tunnel, never mind following the right series of chambers to wind up here, several hundred yards from the entrance, were astronomical.
“Any idea who he was?” she asked, looking back at her colleague.
Bernard shook his head. “Not a clue. But that’s why we’re here, my dear, to solve the mystery.”
And a mystery it was. Annja couldn’t think of a simple reason why a Confederate soldier, a captain no less, would have been wandering around down here in the catacombs miles from any known entrance. Had he simply gotten lost? Stumbled around in the dark, unable to find his way back out, until eventually he’d succumbed to a lack of food or, more likely, water?
If that was the case, what was he doing with a cutlass and pistol in hand? Just who, or what, had he been defending himself against?
An interesting puzzle, to say the least.
And just the kind of thing that Annja lived for.
She reached into the bag at her side and pulled out her digital camera. She rarely went anywhere without it and it was times like this when she was thankful she’d adopted the habit. Eventually, she knew, they were going to have to remove the skeleton from the catacombs and take it back to Bernard’s laboratory for proper examination, but there were a lot of things they needed to do before that and documenting the site as they’d found it was the first priority. The position of items in relation to others and the context in which they were found were just as important to an archaeologist as the items themselves. The photographs would help them establish a record of where each item was in relation to all the others, allowing them to reconstruct the site down to the finest detail if necessary as their investigation progressed.
She started by taking several wide-angle shots, panning her way around the room until she had covered it all. They would be able to make a panorama-style shot from the photographs showing the entire room and even use them to create a three-dimensional computer model.
When she was finished with that task, she focused on the skeleton itself. She took several shots to establish its position against the wall, then moved in for close-ups. She’d taken about a dozen pictures and was about to call it quits when the light from the flash bounced off the uniform the skeleton wore and highlighted something she hadn’t previously noticed.
Bernard must have seen her sudden tension.
“What have you got, Annja?” he asked as she leaned in closer to get a better look.
“Not sure yet,” she murmured, her gaze on the skeleton in front of her.
As the flesh beneath it had decayed, the uniform coat had folded down upon itself, hiding small stretches of fabric between the folds. The light from the flash had thrown back an oddly shaped shadow from one of them, suggesting that there was something else there. Annja withdrew a pen from her pocket and gently lifted the edge of the folded material, revealing what lay beneath.
The blackened edges of a bullet hole stared back at her.
Gently, Annja used her pen to lift the coat’s edge away from the shirt beneath. The dark stain that covered the yellowed linen shirt beneath answered one question that had been nagging at her.
The soldier, whoever he was, hadn’t wandered down here, gotten lost and eventually died of thirst, as she’d first hypothesized.
He’d been shot in the chest.
And from the looks of it, he’d died pretty quickly thereafter.
This hadn’t been an accident; it was murder.
Bernard crouched beside her and she showed him what she found.
“See the rounded edges of the bullet hole?” she asked, pointing with the end of the pen. “And the way the fabric is still intact all around it, rather than stretched or torn?”
Bernard nodded. “The musket ball was moving so fast that it didn’t have time to do much damage to the material as it passed through. Must have been close range, then.”
“Just what I was thinking, as well.”
She sat back on her haunches and stared at the dead man in front of her. “He wasn’t here by accident. We’re too far away from any easily accessible entrance for that to be the case. He came here deliberately, perhaps to meet someone…”
“And whoever it was gunned him down where he stood,” Bernard finished for her.
“It’s no longer an interesting archaeological puzzle,” Annja said as she climbed to her feet. “Now it’s a homicide investigation.”
The police, however, wanted nothing to do with such an old murder. After a few quick calls back to headquarters, Laroche approached and informed Annja and Bernard that they were still in charge of the investigation, that their skills were going to be more valuable in terms of identifying the victim and perhaps even his murderer than anything the police could bring to bear on the problem.
Homicide or not, it was their problem to solve.
Several technicians from the museum arrived, summoned earlier by Bernard when he’d realized what it was they were dealing with. The technicians had a portable specimen case with them, essentially a long, flat box that looked like the case for an electric keyboard, and carried several toolkits of different shapes and sizes. Annja stepped out of the way to give them room to work in the narrow confines of the antechamber.
One of the technicians withdrew a video camera from the case he carried and, switching on the high-powered light attached to it, began to pan his way around the entire room in unwitting mimicry of what she had done earlier with the still camera.
When he was finished, he nodded at one of the other team members, who opened another case and began assembling an odd-looking device from the parts inside.
Annja was expecting the skeletal removal to be a long, drawn-out process of removing each bone piece by piece and then placing them into the specimen case, so she was surprised when the man she was watching picked up the device he’d been assembling and moved over to stand next to the skeleton. The device looked like a fire extinguisher, though the canister was blue rather than red, and the operator wore it hanging from his shoulder on a strap. The other end of the hose running out of the top of the cylinder was attached to a gunlike device in his right hand. He turned and aimed the gun at the skeleton.
“Hey! Wait a min—”
She didn’t get any further. The technician squeezed the trigger and began spraying a fine white mist over their mystery man. The mist settled on the skeleton for a moment and then ballooned up into a white foamlike substance that hardened in seconds. Less than five minutes later the entire skeleton was wrapped in a cocoon of hardened foam.
Annja turned to Bernard and asked, “What, exactly, is that stuff?”
The older man smiled. “Do you like it? It’s a new tool my staff and I have come up with in order to transport delicate artifacts.”
He stepped over to the skeleton. “The foam is genetically engineered and completely biodegradable. Flash a UV light on it and it fades away to literally nothing.
But in the meantime—” he reached down and rapped on the foam with his knuckles “—knock, knock, it’s as hard as steel.”
Something that hard must weigh a ton, Annja thought.
“How are you going to move it?”
Bernard eyed the cocooned skeleton with something like genuine affection. “That’s the beautiful part. It’s light as a feather.”
It was, too. With one technician at the feet and another at the head, the skeleton was gently lifted off the ground and placed inside the specimen box with barely an effort.
“Will wonders never cease?”
She was impressed. That foam could have saved her hundreds of hours of effort on earlier digs.
“How long have you been using it?”
Bernard’s expression went sheepish and he mumbled something under his breath.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,” Annja said.
“That was our, um, first field test.”
If he hadn’t been on the other side of the specimen case, she would have throttled him where he stood. As it was she had to settle for giving him her best glare and vowing to make him pay for using one of her digs as his guinea pig.
They closed up the specimen case and, with one person on either end, carefully lifted it up and carried it out of the room. It wasn’t heavy, but the close confines of the tunnel made it awkward and they took turns carrying it back out to where the catacombs intersected the Metro line. Bernard spent a few minutes talking with Laroche before returning to Annja’s side.
“Help will be here shortly,” he told her.
Ten minutes later a pair of Metro workers arrived, pushing a small handcart along the subway tracks. The newcomers showed one of the museum techs how to operate the cart, the specimen box was loaded on it and, as a group, they set off on the last leg of the walk back to the surface.
As they emerged from the steps leading to the underground, they found a small crowd had gathered around the station entrance, attracted by the museum van that was parked haphazardly on the curb. A few people pointed in her direction and more than one began taking pictures with their cell phones.
As she glanced away, Annja thought, These are not the droids you are looking for. Move along. The memory brought a smile to her face.
Bernard must have noticed, for he asked, “What’s so funny?”
Trying to explain Star Wars humor to a French archaeologist was an exercise in futility so she just shook her head. Thankfully, Bernard let it go, as he was needed to help get the specimen case properly situated into the rack designed to hold it inside the van. Annja glanced once more at the crowd nearby, wondered just what it was that had drawn them and then climbed into the front seat to wait for the others to finish.
A DARK-HAIRED MAN in his mid-forties, dressed in blue jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, glanced at the picture he’d just taken with his cell phone from across the street. He grunted in satisfaction. It wasn’t the best image, but it was good enough. The woman’s companion, Professor Bernard Reinhardt, was well known to them, but she was a mystery. The photo would help them identify her and from there they could assess just what kind of threat she posed to their plans.
Satisfied, he sent the image as part of a text message, dropped his phone into his pocket and started walking down the street.
He hadn’t gone more than a few blocks before the phone rang in response.
“Michaels,” he said, answering it.
The voice on the other end was younger, full of cockiness. “Next time give me something difficult, will ya? Her name’s Annja Creed. She entered France on the fourteenth with an American passport.”
American? Interesting, Michaels thought.
“What’s she doing in Paris?”
“She’s the host of a cable television show that features monsters, myths and legends entitled, appropriately enough, Chasing History’s Monsters.”
Myths and legends. Michaels didn’t like the sound of that. Their contact in the police department had tipped them off that Reinhardt had been called in to examine something discovered during the excavation of the new Metro line. That had brought Michaels down there this morning. His organization had protected certain secrets for generations and any new find, particularly in this area, raised the possibility that some of those secrets might be exposed. He couldn’t allow that to happen.
He hadn’t been concerned at first. They received tips like this at least a handful of times per month and the majority of them led to nothing. Normally he would have sent one of his men to check it out, but he’d been in the area when the call had come in and had decided to deal with it personally. If nothing else, it gave him a chance to stretch his legs and enjoy the change in the weather.
But then he’d seen the crowd that had gathered and watched as the crew removed a large specimen case from the tunnels below and his disinterest changed to concern. A fateful meeting had taken place in this area more than a hundred years before and it wouldn’t bode well for certain people if the facts of that meeting came to light. It was his job to prevent that from happening.
The presence of the American television host certainly had the potential for complicating matters.
“Is she here representing the network?” he asked the man on the other end of the phone.
There was a pause. “I’m not sure yet.”
Michaels didn’t like uncertainties; they tended to create problems later on down the line. His silence must have adequately conveyed his displeasure, for the other man quickly amended his statement.
“I’m working on it, though. I should have an answer shortly.”
“Good. And her relationship with Reinhardt?”
“I’ll have that for you shortly, as well.”
“Next time, call me when you actually know something.”
Ending the call, Michaels slipped the phone back in his pocket and continued down the street to where a black Mercedes waited for him at the curb. As the driver started to get out to open the door for him, Michaels waved him off, climbed in the backseat on his own and then instructed the other man to take him back to the office.
Without a word the driver slid the big car into traffic smoothly and headed off. As they cruised past the van from the museum, Michaels could see the Creed woman sitting in the front seat, seemingly lost in thought while waiting for the rest of the team to finish loading the equipment in the back.
It would be a shame to have to mess up that pretty face, he thought as they drove away.
6
After unloading the specimen case from the van, Dr. Reinhardt had his students carry it downstairs to one of the basement labs. There, he and Annja lost no time getting to work.
They transferred the foam-wrapped skeleton to the top of the long examination table in the center of the lab. Because the skeleton had been in a seated position when it was encased in the foam, they placed a board behind its back for support. Next it was photographed and filmed, just as it had been down in the tunnels. The images would later be combined with the earlier ones to help establish the chain of control over the artifact throughout the examination process. For now, though, Annja took over filming with the video camera as Bernard plugged in a portable UV lamp and prepared to remove the protective foam from the skeleton.
“Ready?” he asked, his fingers poised over the lamp’s power switch.
Annja nodded. She knew she didn’t need to remind him how angry she’d be if the foam had damaged the bones in any way.
She thought about the captain. That’s how she was thinking of him now. She didn’t know who he was yet, but she hoped to uncover his identity in the process of their investigation. She wanted to put a name and maybe even a face to the remains. In the meantime, the title would remind everyone that this had once been a living, breathing person and therefore deserved their respect.
Bernard hit the switch on the lamp and it began humming slightly.
For a few minutes the sound was the only outward evidence that the device was even working. The light it emitted was not visible to the human eye, but eventually the foam began to bubble and break down. It reminded Annja of the head atop a soft drink after being dispensed from a soda fountain.
As the foam broke down, Bernard gently lowered the inclined backboard, inch by inch, until the skeleton rested flat on the examination table, the bones still arranged mostly in the same position in which they’d been discovered.
That’s pretty damn slick, Annja admitted to herself.
Bernard was obviously thinking the same thing, for he threw a huge grin in her direction. It was as if the foam had never existed.
Very carefully, they began separating the bones from the clothing. Each one was carefully measured and then photographed from multiple angles before being placed on another lab table for Bernard to examine more carefully. While he did that, Annja turned her attention to the clothing.
She started with the heavy jacket that had been worn over the uniform. Known as a regimental sack coat, it had a stand-up collar and six CSA buttons running down the front. It was made of wool and had held up pretty well in the cool atmosphere and low humidity of the catacombs. She had no doubt it had once been dyed gray, but the vegetable dye that was used in those days tended to break down quickly and the coat looked more brown than gray at this point.
The blood from the chest wound that had killed their subject had stained the inside of the coat and sealed the lip of the interior pocket closed. When she carefully pried it open, she discovered an envelope inside.
Annja felt her heart starting to beat faster.
Picking up a pair of rubber-tipped tweezers from the selection of tools on the table beside her, she gently inched the envelope out and placed it on a nearby light box where she could examine it in more detail.
“I’ve got something here, Bernard,” she said, and waited for her partner to join her before continuing.
They took multiple photographs to document the specimen. Then, with Bernard’s help, Annja carefully opened the envelope and withdrew the single sheet of paper it contained.
The paper was yellow and brittle with age. Worried that even the slightest pressure might cause an unwanted tear, Annja took her time, unfolding each section using the tweezers. When she had the page lying flat on the light board, she laid a piece of clear laminate over the top, much like the cover on a microscope slide. The laminate would allow her to view the paper clearly, without worrying about accidentally damaging the surface of the letter itself. She breathed a sigh of relief once it was in place.
With the protective cover in place, Annja clamped it down on each corner and then flipped the switch that activated the light board.
When illuminated from below, the ink appeared in sharp contrast to the faded surface of the paper, making it easier to see.
It was a letter.
Annja skimmed through the text, her eyes widening with each line. Upon reaching the signature she gasped in surprise. She heard Bernard whisper, “Mon Dieu,” mere seconds later.
The letter identified the bearer as Captain William Parker, Confederate Navy, and assured the recipient that not only did the captain have the letter writer’s complete confidence but that he was also empowered to act on his behalf with respect to an agreement involving mutual support and satisfaction.
The letter wasn’t addressed to anyone in particular and Annja puzzled over that for a moment until she realized that it had apparently been intended to be hand-delivered to its recipient. That was unfortunate, because knowing who the recipient was might have allowed them to trace things back in the other direction and gain some insight on what Parker, if that was indeed who it was, had been doing in the catacombs.
There was no doubt about where the letter had originated, however, for it had been signed in a thin, spidery script.
Jefferson Davis
President
Confederate States of America
Bernard broke the stunned silence first.
“What was a naval captain bearing a letter of introduction from the president of the Confederate States of America doing in the Paris catacombs?”
Annja shook her head. “I haven’t got a clue, but I promise you this—we’re going to find out!” she said excitedly.
She got up from the examination table and headed over to where she’d set up her laptop computer on a nearby desk. Firing up the web browser, she went to Google and typed Captain William Parker, Confederate Navy into the search bar.
The search produced more than a million hits.
The first one on the list was a short biography from the Naval Historical Center created by the U.S. Department of the Navy. She read parts of it aloud to Bernard, who was using a magnifying glass to examine the letter in more detail.
“Born in New York in 1826…graduated from the Naval Academy and served aboard the Yorktown off the coast of Africa…promoted to lieutenant in 1855.”
She jumped ahead a few lines, focusing in on his wartime service.
“Abandoned the North for the South in 1861 by joining the Confederate Navy. Commanded the gunboat Beaufort during the battle of Roanoke Island in 1862 and also saw action at Hampton Roads and Drewry’s Bluff that same year. In October of 1863 he was promoted to captain and took command of the Confederate Naval Academy, situated aboard the steamboat Patrick Henry in Richmond.”
So far, nothing really unusual, Annja thought. As commander of the Naval Academy, Parker might have had some interaction with the members of the president’s cabinet. But there was nothing that indicated he would have moved in the same social or political circles as the president himself.
Annja kept reading.
“After the war he served as captain of a Pacific mail steamship, was president of Maryland Agricultural College for a time, and even took a post as minister to Korea. He died in Washington in 1896.
“He’s best known for his role in guarding the Confederate treasury during the evacuation of Richmond following Lee’s defeat at Chancellorsville and rumors still persist about his involvement in the disappearance of the treasure.”
“What do you mean disappearance?” Bernard asked.
Annja was already typing Lost Confederate Treasure into Google. This time there were about three hundred thousand hits and she quickly skimmed through several articles to get a sense of the story.
“Apparently Captain Parker was given the difficult job of getting what was left of the Confederate treasury out of Richmond ahead of the invading Union troops. Like President Davis and his cabinet, the treasury made it out of the city aboard one of the last few trains headed for Danville. Once in Danville, the treasure was loaded onto a wagon train, which then set out under Parker’s command, headed for the old U.S. Mint in Charleston. Apparently it never made it. The treasury, all seven hundred thousand dollars of it, disappeared en route.”
Bernard frowned. “Treasure or no treasure, it would seem we’re no further along than we were before finding the letter because there’s no way that man—” he pointed over at the skeleton “—can be Captain Parker if what you’re saying is correct.”
Annja agreed. The letter must have been stolen or given to someone else, an aide perhaps, in order to prevent Parker from falling into just the kind of situation that had killed their subject.
Unless…
She stared at the floor, thinking it through.
When she didn’t say anything for a few minutes, Bernard gently shook her arm.
“What is it?” he asked.
She shrugged. “It’s nothing, really—a hunch, just a long shot….”
But Bernard knew that look and wouldn’t let her off without an explanation. “Out with it. What are you thinking?”
“All right. This is totally off the wall, I know,” she said, “but what if you’re wrong? What if that really is Captain Parker?”
Her colleague’s frown grew deeper. “But how is that possible? Given what you just read to me, I’d say he had a rather public face after the war.”
That was true, but something about the idea nagged at her and she wasn’t ready yet to let it go.
“I don’t know,” she told him. “Maybe he was charged with carrying out some kind of secret negotiation for the president and someone else took his place. Decoys were often used. When the war ended, and Parker didn’t come back, the impostor had to keep impersonating him to keep the secret from getting out.”
Bernard laughed at the idea even as he walked back to his station, and after a moment, Annja couldn’t help but laugh along with him.
It sounded crazy, even to her. After all, the simplest explanation to any problem was often the correct one, to paraphrase the principle behind Occam’s Razor. In this case, it was far simpler to believe the letter was either a forgery or, if it was authentic, that it had been stolen from Parker at some point near the end of the war.
And yet…
It would be a much more interesting story if my theory was right, she thought.
Crazy or not, there was one thing she could do to begin getting at the truth, at least.
Pulling her cell phone out of her pocket, she hit the speed dial and waited for the phone to be answered thirty-six hundred miles away in New York City.
“Doug Morrell’s office.”
“Hi, Doug, it’s Annja.”
Doug Morrell was her producer on Chasing History’s Monsters. He was younger than Annja, more than a bit self-involved and had little to no actual knowledge of historical events prior to the previous decade, but had somehow managed to land his current position regardless of that fact. It probably had to do with his uncanny knack for capitalizing on historical issues and turning them into the kind of television fodder fans of the show ate like candy.
He could be highly annoying, but he had also covered her back on more than one occasion. In an odd way, Annja counted him as one of her friends.
“Who do we know at the Smithsonian?” she asked him.
“What’s this we stuff? Apparently you don’t know anyone. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be calling me.”
Annja had a lot of contacts at the Smithsonian but she’d called on so many people for favors over the years, and knew she’d probably need more in the future, so she wanted to use the show’s contacts if at all possible. Besides, this discovery was of historical significance and had nothing to do with the unusual adventures she was constantly being drawn into. “I meant we as in we the show, not as in you and me,” she told Doug.
“Of course you did. But since you, meaning you, yourself and, well, just you don’t know anyone at the Smithsonian and, miracle upon miracles, I do, this would seem to be an ideal time for me to extract some payment for all the phenomenal episodes I’ve been forced to squelch thanks to your lack of interest and participation.”
He can’t be serious, she thought.
She needed him to focus, and that meant she had to nip this in the bud right away.
“Trust me, Doug,” she said, “no one would have bought the amphibious chupacabra episode. Those injuries were from jellyfish stings, plain and simple.”
“That’s funny. I seem to remember your area of expertise was Renaissance history, not marine wildlife. Or at least it was, last time I checked.”
“It doesn’t take an expert to know that was a stupid idea, Doug.”
“Right. Next you’ll be telling me that you don’t like the ghost shark idea, either.”
She didn’t have to respond to that one; her silence said it all.
“Oh,” Doug replied, indignant. “So that’s how it’s going to be, is it?”
Apparently he’d woken up on the wrong side of the bed that morning. Sighing, Annja said, “Look, Doug, we both know that—”
The dial tone pulsed in her ear.
She pulled the phone away, shook it and listened again.
He’d hung up on her!
“Why that little…jerk!”
Ignoring Bernard’s chuckles from the other side of the room, Annja hit the redial button.
“Doug Morrell’s office.”
“You hung up on me!”
“See that? I knew there was a reason we paid you to host the show. You’re remarkably observant.”
Honey not vinegar, Annja, honey not vinegar, she told herself.
She tried a different approach.
“I’m sorry, Doug. I’d be happy to discuss the ghost shark episode with you when I get back to the States,” she told him, ignoring the fresh round of chuckling that erupted from the other side of the room.
“I want a favor.”
“What?”
“I’d be happy to put you in touch with my contact at the Smithsonian, but it’s going to cost you a favor.”
I know I’m going to regret this, she thought. She sighed. “What is it?”
“Oh, no. I don’t mean right now. Just sometime in the future. You’ll owe me a favor, that’s all. Deal?”
“Owe you a favor? Are you out of your mind?”
“It was good talking with you, Annja. Enjoy the rest of your vacation and I’ll—”
“Fine,” she said, biting off her anger along with the end of the word. She knew she shouldn’t have laughed at the chupacabra thing but owing Doug a favor? No good could possibly come of this.
“What do we need the Smithsonian to do for us?” Doug asked.
Gritting her teeth, she said, “I need to have a letter authenticated.”
“Why didn’t you just call them up and ask yourself? It shouldn’t take more than a few months.”
Annja was shaking her head. “It’s not that simple, Doug. I’m helping the French police with an investigation in the catacombs—”
“Whaaat? The catacombs? You’re running an investigation in the catacombs and you didn’t tell me? I’ll send a crew over immediately.”
“It’s not like that, Doug. There’s nothing here of interest to the show. The authorities stumbled on the skeleton of a man in a Civil War uniform and—”
He interrupted her again. “Wait, I thought the catacombs were full of skeletons. What difference does it make that they found one in a French uniform?”
“The American Civil War, Doug, not the French. The French didn’t have a civil war.”
How he managed to run a show about historical subjects with such a limited view of world history constantly astounded her, but he took her correction in stride, seemingly without a second thought.
“American, okay, got it. Union or Confederate uniform?”
“Confederate. But that’s really beside the point.”
He didn’t seem to hear her. “This is good, Annja, real good. We can turn this into a world-class episode, just leave it to me.”
Knowing Doug, he’d find a way to suggest that the Paris catacombs were full of Civil War zombies, getting ready for the second rise of the South. Leaving it to him was the last thing she intended to do.
“Doug, we’re not doing an episode on this. I just need the letter authenticated.”
“Who’s it from?”
“The letter?”
“Yes, of course the letter. Try to keep up, Annja.”
I swear, one of these days I’m going to run him through with my sword, she thought. “Jefferson Davis.”
“Confederate President Jefferson Davis?”
Maybe he did know something about history, after all. Either that or he was quick with Wikipedia.
“The one and the same.”
There was silence for a moment. “Annja?”
“Yes, Doug?”
“Let me be sure I’ve got this straight. You discovered a skeleton, dressed in the uniform of a Confederate soldier, carrying a letter from President Davis, in the midst of the Paris catacombs and you don’t think there’s anything of interest there for the show?”
Annja had to admit he had a good point.
In the end, Doug agreed he would use whatever cachet the show had to get someone at the Smithsonian to examine the letter as quickly as possible. In return, she agreed to send over a copy of the video footage they’d taken to date so that it could be cleaned up and potentially used in an episode about discovering the skeleton at a later date.
Once that was settled, they agreed to check in with each other if anything significant developed and ended the call.
Not thirty seconds after getting off the phone, Annja realized that she probably could have just called up the embassy and asked Billy Garrison to get it done for her, given that she was officially working on a government matter, anyway.
But that would, of course, require talking to him and he’d have wanted to get together to discuss the situation in more detail, say, over dinner and drinks, and she’d have felt obligated to do so in order to get the letter properly authenticated and…no. Doug was the better option.
Owing Doug a favor couldn’t be all that bad, could it?
After a moment, she decided that, yes, it could be all that bad. Doug was the guy who had once asked her to pretend to be dead for a few weeks to milk the sales of the commemorative DVD set he’d put out when she’d been incorrectly reported dead.
Dutifully ignoring Bernard’s chuckles, Annja got back to work.
7
After examining the sack coat, Annja turned her attention to the pistol and sword Parker had been holding when he’d died.
The gun was a single action revolver, which she recognized as a Colt 1851 Navy Revolver from the engraving of a naval battle on the cylinder. The gun had been popular at the time of the Civil War. Her research told her that famous Navy Revolver users included Wild Bill Hickok, “Doc” Holliday and General Robert E. Lee.
Drawing back the hammer, she discovered that three of the six chambers still held percussion caps, indicating that they were loaded and ready to fire.
Apparently Parker’s enemy hadn’t been the only one who’d gotten a shot off at the fateful meeting, she thought.
She emptied the revolver, carefully storing the percussion caps, bullets and powder in separate vials, eliminating the chance of an accident while she examined the weapon.
When she was finished with the revolver she turned her attention to the sword. Since she’d miraculously inherited Joan of Arc’s famous sword, bladed weapons had become a passion for Annja and she immediately recognized this one as a Shelby cavalry sabre, named after General Joseph O. Shelby, leader of the Iron Brigade. When the Confederacy fell, Shelby, one of the few Confederate generals who had never been defeated in combat by Union troops, took his entire command to Mexico rather than surrender. The cavalry sword he’d carried throughout the war, a common enough model produced by the Ames sword company, was renamed in his honor after the war.
The blade was about forty inches in length and bore the CSA, or Confederate States of America, inscription, as did the brass guard. The grip was leather, wrapped with twisted brass wire. The entire weapon seemed to be in excellent shape and Annja gave it a few experimental swings through the air to get the sense of it. It was well-balanced, though shorter and lighter than the weapon she was used to using.
Putting the weapon back down on the examination table, she moved over to the rest of Parker’s clothing.
He’d been wearing leather cavalry boots rather than the usual leather brogans, but Annja wasn’t surprised by this, as Confederate footwear had been notoriously bad. The boots were in fairly good shape, but didn’t tell her anything new about their owner. The same was true for the regulation trousers that she examined next.
The shirt was a bit more interesting, if only because it held the evidence of the gunshot that had ended Parker’s life. There was a bullet hole in the front of the shirt, just to the left of the sternum, but no corresponding hole on the back. This meant the bullet hadn’t passed completely through his body, as she might have expected at such close range, but had remained lodged somewhere inside his chest. It was a good reminder that modern weapons were far more powerful than those of a hundred years ago and she told herself to keep that in mind as she examined the evidence of Parker’s demise.
Annja wished they had the bullet to examine, as it might have been able to tell them something about the gun that had been used. That could have narrowed their avenues of inquiry a bit, but she’d been unable to find it among Parker’s remains.
It’s probably on the floor of the antechamber. Maybe I’ll go back and try to find it later, she thought.
Annja was about to put the shirt aside when she noticed an odd double stitch along one of the seams. She ran her fingers over the cloth at that point and felt something there, just beneath the surface.
It was small, no more than an inch long and less than a quarter-inch thick, and it hadn’t gotten there by accident. Whatever it was, someone had taken a bit of trouble to hide it inside the seam of the shirt.
“I think I’ve got something,” Annja said, and when Bernard came back over to her station as he had done before, she showed him what she had found. They both agreed that it merited further investigation. They photographed the shirt from a variety of angles, wanting to preserve a record of its condition before they altered it in any way, and then they x-rayed it, as well. The latter was inconclusive, however; it showed the object and confirmed its rectangular shape, but it didn’t provide any information as to what it might be.
They were going to have to take a look for themselves.
Scalpel in hand, Annja carefully cut each of the threads that held the seam closed and then, using the flat of the blade, she lifted the edge of the cloth, revealing what was hidden inside—a folded piece of paper. Annja held the pocket of cloth open with the scalpel while Bernard used a pair of tweezers to tease the paper free of its hiding place and move it onto its own examination plate.
With the aid of a low-power magnifying glass Annja could see that two edges of the paper were evenly cut, while the others were ragged, indicating it had been torn from a larger source.
A few words had been written on the small slip of paper in a hurried scrawl. Using the magnifying glass, Annja read them aloud.
“Berceau de solitude.”
Annja didn’t need Bernard to translate. She knew the words were Cradle of Solitude, but she hoped he might have some insight on what it meant, because she didn’t have a clue.
“Only place I know by that name is a monastery in the Pyrenees,” he told her.
“A monastery? Can you think of any reason it might be connected to our mysterious friend here?” she asked.
“Not particularly. If memory serves, it started out as a convent in the early 1500s, was abandoned about a hundred years later and then was bought by a sect of Benedictine monks just before the French Revolution. They’ve been running the place ever since.”
Benedictine monks. She couldn’t think of any obvious connection between the religious order and the Confederacy, but it wasn’t her area of expertise. Still, there had to be a connection, for no one went through the kind of trouble Parker had to hide a piece of paper if it wasn’t important.
The monastery was the key to this mystery.
She was sure of it.
“Is it far from here?”
Bernard shrugged. “Four, maybe four and a half hours by car. There’s a train that runs in that direction, as well, but you’d have to find transportation up the mountain. Not much sense in going, though.”
“And why’s that?”
“It’s closed to the public. Outside visitors have to be approved in advance by the abbot and the process takes several months. I spent some time there a few years ago examining one of the books they have in their library and I remember the process being an absolute nightmare to get through.”
“So you’ve met the abbot?”
“The abbot, hmmm. Abbot Deschanel. Yes, I have. A charming man, actually.”
“Would he remember you?”
“I should think so,” Bernard told her. “We spent several evenings discussing a variety of topics over a glass of wine or two and I…” He paused, finally putting two and two together. “Oh, no.”
Annja smiled at him sweetly. “What?”
“You want me to call over there and try to get you in to see the abbott without going through the standard process.”
“You’d do that for me?” she replied, letting her eyes go wide and feigning innocent surprise.
Bernard laughed. “I’m supposed to believe that the idea never even occurred to you, right?”
“You can believe what you want. But now that you’ve brought it up I think it’s an excellent idea.”
“It’s been more than a hundred years, Annja. What do you expect to find?”
She shrugged. “I don’t have any idea. But I’m sure something will occur to me once I’m there. There has to be a reason that Parker went through all the trouble of hiding the name of the monastery inside the seam of his shirt. That doesn’t just happen by accident.”
Bernard considered that statement. “You think he knew he was going to run into trouble,” he said slowly, thinking it through, “and he took precautions in case he did?”
“I do. And I think somewhere in that monastery is the answer to just what kind of trouble he was expecting. If we know that, we might be able to figure out just what he was doing here in France in the first place. Isn’t that the point of all this?”
She knew she was stretching things a bit. The authorities hadn’t been all that clear on exactly what they wanted her and Bernard to do. Identify the body if at all possible, sure, but given the state of the skeleton they probably didn’t expect them to have all that much success. Turning the skeleton over to the museum had pretty much achieved what the police had most likely wanted to achieve, which was passing the buck on to someone else. Now that the skeleton wasn’t in the catacombs and potentially slowing down the construction of the Metro tunnel, the details really weren’t all that significant to the police.
But they were to Annja. Now that she was involved, she was determined to find out all she could about Captain Parker’s fate, if indeed the skeleton really was his.
She thought it was. Regardless of how outlandish the idea sounded when said aloud, at this point she was all but convinced that she was right. She wasn’t sure why she felt that way, as the evidence was scant at best, but something deep inside rang true at the thought. That meant tracking down what had actually happened to him might possibly lead them to the missing Confederate treasure, as well. And that was definitely a prize worth pursuing.
In order to do that, she had to get inside the monastery.
“So you’ll do it?” she asked.
Bernard, however, wasn’t convinced. “I’ll give it some thought,” he said.
Deciding she wasn’t going to get any more out of him at this juncture, Annja let the matter rest for the time being. She’d hit him up again before leaving that afternoon once he’d had a chance to think it over.
In the meantime, she had a lot of work to do.
8
About the time that Annja was examining the sword, Blaine Michaels, a direct descendant of the man who had fired the shot that had taken Captain Parker’s life, received a phone call at home from the same computer technician he’d spoken to earlier that afternoon.
The information he received was more complete this time around, outlining what had happened in the tunnels earlier that morning.
“You’re certain that they said the skeleton came from inside the catacombs and not the Metro tunnel itself?”
“Yes, sir.”
Michaels grunted, most decidedly not thrilled with those circumstances.
“And the Creed woman?”
“Because the skeleton was dressed in the uniform of a U.S. soldier, the police contacted the embassy and asked to have a representative present. Apparently the Creed woman was suggested by someone on the ambassador’s staff and was brought in to represent their interests.”
He didn’t bother to correct the misinformation in his subordinate’s report; he had better things to do with his time than explain the difference between the Confederate States and the United States. It was the fact that they had discovered the body at all that had him on edge.
He didn’t exactly know why. After all, the body had been down there in the dark for more than a hundred years. There was nothing that could tie his family or the organization as a whole to the crime, if it could even be called a crime at this point, and there was little enough to be done even if they could.
Relax, he told himself.
But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t. After struggling against it for some time, he got up and made his way to his study. Locking the door behind him, he moved over to the safe, knelt in front of it and dialed the combination lock. Opening the door, he reached deep into the back, past the stacks of cash and bearer bonds, and took out his great-grandfather’s journal.
The old man had recorded the events of the night in question in considerable detail, just as he’d been taught to do. As the current head of the society, Blaine had done the same thing himself many times, making note of the steps he’d taken and the motivations behind them so that the one who followed in his footsteps—his son, most likely—would understand how those actions fit into the society’s long-term plans.
He wasn’t troubled by what had happened that day, at least with regard to the actions the society had taken. Anyone who crossed them would meet a similar fate. No, what was troubling were the goals they’d failed to meet—namely, determining where the traitor had hidden the treasure promised to them. His great-grandfather had been unable to force the information from the traitor before killing him and all of their searches to date had ended with nothing to show for them.
Blaine Michaels had been haunted all his life by his great-grandfather’s failure. Those in the society had long memories and there had been considerable opposition to his rise to power as the group’s current leader, but he’d been determined to win back the position of power his great-grandfather had forfeited in the face of his failure.
More importantly, he was determined not to let history repeat itself.
And that, he realized, was the source of his unease.
He couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that there was something they had missed that night, something that might have provided the clue they needed to figure out just where the treasure had been hidden.
Blaine knew that the original meeting had quickly devolved into an argument, which in turn led to violence. A running gun battle through the catacombs had ended with both men wounded, the traitor mortally so. Time had been of the essence in getting his great-grandfather to safety. Afterward, there was confusion about where, exactly, the traitor’s body had been left behind and the searches that followed had been unable to locate it in the hundreds of miles of twisting tunnels beneath the Paris streets. Eventually, his great-grandfather had been forced to step down from the position of leadership and the incident had been swept under the rug as a total failure.
But now, it seemed, there was a chance to correct the errors of the past. If the body held information that might lead them to the missing treasure, then he couldn’t afford to pass up the chance to find it.
Decisive action. Yes, that’s exactly what the situation needed.
Satisfied he’d come to the right conclusion, he reached for the phone.
DECIDING TO CALL IT a night, Annja and Bernard gathered all the notes and photographs they’d produced during the day, transferred them to Bernard’s office down the hall and then locked the lab behind them. “Tomorrow morning, then?” Bernard asked.
“Sounds good,” Annja replied. “And give some more thought to getting me in to see the abbot, will you?”
Bernard smiled. “Your persistence is what makes you such a good archaeologist,” he said, and then, before she could object to his playful teasing, he added, “but yes, I will. You have my word.”
Satisfied, she rode the elevator up to the ground floor. The museum had closed for the day and the halls were empty and silent around her. She paused for a moment at the entrance to a hall devoted to Egyptian artifacts, breathing in all the history that surrounded her, and was struck with the odd sense of being at home.
Yeah, and if you don’t get out and have a life one of these days, you’ll end up a stuffed mummy just like those in there, she thought wryly.
She’d been working straight through since leaving the dojo earlier that morning and only had a few more nights left to enjoy Paris, so it was time to get out and see the sights.
No sooner had she decided to take a break, however, than she found her thoughts returning to the whereabouts of the missing bullet. The gunshot wound had almost certainly killed Captain Parker and it should have been there with his remains. Not having the bullet irked her; it was like finishing a puzzle only to find out that you’re missing one last little piece. It was a tiny detail, she knew, but an important one, and she was just detail-oriented enough to want to put it to rest.
You’ve spent all day on this, she thought, what’s another hour or so?
The spent bullet was probably lying on the floor of the chamber near the wall against which Parker’s skeleton had been resting. It shouldn’t be all that hard to find.
Go on, take a quick look. If you find it, great, and if not, at least you’ll know you gave it a shot, she thought.
Decision made, she caught a cab over to the Metro station they’d used to gain access to the catacombs earlier that day. The trains were still being rerouted around the station due to the construction and so her footsteps echoed off the walls as she descended the steps.
A uniformed police officer was waiting for her at the turnstiles, alerted to her presence by the noise of her footsteps. Obviously bored with the duty he’d been assigned, he told her the station was closed and only looked up at her when she thrust the pass under his nose that she’d been given by Laroche.
“You’ll be wanting to go into the tunnels, then?” he asked.
“Yes, I shouldn’t be long.”
“But it’s after dark.”
Annja didn’t see how that was relevant. She was going underground, where it was always dark. What difference did it make that the sun had gone down?
Rather than get into it with him, though, she simply said, “Yes, it is,” and smiled sweetly at him, hoping her charm would get him to open the gate.
What she really wanted to do was to laugh at his superstitious attitude, for the things she’d faced since acquiring her sword made the idea of roaming around in the tunnels beneath the Paris city streets seem like child’s play, but she knew that doing so would kill any chance she had of getting through the gate.
Thankfully, her official pass seemed to be enough. He gave her a look that clearly said he thought she had a few screws loose upstairs but he didn’t say anything as he unlatched the gate and let her in.
She jogged through the station and down to the same platform where Laroche had taken her. Arming herself with a lantern just as they had earlier in the day, she climbed down onto the tracks and set off toward the break in the tunnel that marked the entrance to the catacombs.
More sawhorses had been set out at the site since she’d been there earlier, their blinking orange lights bouncing down the tunnel and letting her know she was getting close. She followed the glow like a trail of bread crumbs until she reached the spot where the workers had broken through into the older passageway inside the catacombs.
She was relieved to see the ladder she’d used earlier was still in place and she quickly descended into the lower tunnel. At the bottom of the ladder she paused, glancing back up the way she had come. For a moment she thought she’d heard something, but the sound didn’t repeat itself.
Probably just a rat, she thought, and shuddered.
She brushed it off and continued on her way.
The cemented tunnel had given way at the bottom of the ladder to the smooth limestone of the catacombs themselves. The antechamber where they had found Parker’s remains was just ahead and she found herself hurrying the last few dozen feet to its entrance, eagerness spreading through her veins like a drug. As she entered the room the thousands of skulls stared back at her, eerie in their eternal silence, but her attention was solely focused on what she’d come here to find and she barely noticed.
She moved over to the spot where the skeleton had been found and got down on her hands and knees. Resting the flashlight on the floor so that its beam filtered across the area she intended to search, she began hunting for the missing bullet. When she’d gone over the entire area in one direction, she went back again in the other, crisscrossing her initial efforts so she could be assured that she hadn’t missed a spot.
When that failed to turn up what she was looking for, she moved her attention over to the wall against which Captain Parker’s remains had rested. Perhaps the shot that had killed him had actually passed through his body completely, even though they hadn’t found evidence of an exit wound. It was something that wasn’t completely outrageous if it had happened at close range. Perhaps the bullet had embedded itself in the wall instead of falling to the floor when the body decayed.
Searching the wall, however, proved to be much harder than the floor. Comprised as it was of hundreds of human skulls, there were too many nooks and crannies and shadowed surfaces that could be hiding the impact point of the bullet. With just the beam of her flashlight to illuminate the wall’s surface, there was no way she was going to find something that small amid all the stacked human bones.
Better to come back in the daytime with a team of grad students and a full bank of lights, she told herself, and decided to really call it quits for the night. The beam of her flashlight swept across the floor as she turned away and out of the corner of her eye she caught the glint of something reflecting back at her.
She turned in that direction and carefully made her way forward, shining the beam of her flashlight ahead of her, searching for whatever it was. When she reached the wall she slowly spun in a circle, still searching, knowing that whatever it was had to be here somewhere.
It couldn’t just get up and walk out on its own.
There!
It was a heavy gold signet ring set with a dark colored stone. It was lying on the floor near the wall directly across from where they had found Parker’s remains and it was partially obscured by the collapse of several loose bones, which explained why she and the rest of Bernard’s team had missed it.
She kept the flashlight beam trained on it as she walked over, not wanting to lose sight of it, and then bent to pick it up.
She turned as she straightened up, ring in hand, and she caught sight of the dark form standing behind her. He was so close and it was so unexpected that she flinched back in surprise.
The move saved her.
The fist that came hurtling out of the darkness struck her on the edge of the jaw rather than in the center of her throat, where it would have crushed her larynx. Instead, the force of the blow picked her up and flung her backward, tossing her against the carefully piled bones lining the wall behind her. The whole mess came tumbling down around her in a hard rain, bones bouncing off her head and shoulders in an unyielding waterfall that threatened to knock her unconscious.
She knew if that happened it was all over, so she fought back against the grayness threatening her sight and struggled to extricate herself from the jumbled pile of human bones.
The scrape of a shoe against the stone floor let her know her attacker was moving toward her. She had seconds at best, but the fall had knocked the wind out of her and the blow to the head had her thoughts ringing like a church bell in a steeple, messing with her concentration.
Get up! her mind screamed at her, but it was like swimming against the current, her body not quite obeying the commands her mind was giving.
In the darkness she sensed rather than saw a dark shape bending over her and the sudden spike of adrenaline that poured into her system wiped away the haze.
Her right hand folded around the hilt of a sword that hadn’t been there seconds before as she willed it into existence from the otherwhere. She swung out with a savage yell like that of a falcon on the hunt. The sword slashed, almost with a mind of its own, and she felt it slice through the flesh of the man’s arm.
Blood splashed across her face and whoever it was howled in pain and drew back, giving Annja the time and space she needed to scramble to her feet. She kicked away the bones of some forgotten French citizens as she did so, wanting solid ground beneath her already shaky feet for the fight to come.
Ambushing a woman in the dark was one thing but fighting that same woman, now angry and armed with a sword she knew how to use with a finesse born of hours of practice, was something else. Rather than move in and press his advantage, her attacker turned and ran, his footfalls echoing off the stone around them.
Annja took off after him.
He only had a few seconds head start, and so she should have been able to catch up to him quickly, but her head was still pounding and the lack of a light source quickly had her steps faltering and slowing to a stop after only a few dozen yards. Getting lost in the dark was not something she wanted to experience, no matter how badly she wanted to know who it was that had followed her down here or why they’d attacked. Wandering for hours through pitch-dark tunnels until she fell down an unseen chasm or died of thirst was not on her list of happy endings.
In the distance, her attacker’s footfalls faded away to silence.
She took a moment to catch her breath and gather her thoughts. She realized, with no little surprise, that her left hand was still clenched tightly around the ring that she’d picked up off the floor.
Thank goodness for small favors, she thought.
Not wanting to lose it after all this, she slipped it into her pocket to look at later. With her hand against the wall to use as a guide, she made her way carefully back down the tunnel until she could see the thin beam of light from her flashlight spilling out of the entrance of the antechamber.
She stepped into the room, retrieved her flashlight and decided that she’d had enough excitement for one day. Sword still in hand, she cautiously retraced her steps back up to the subway tunnel and from there to the station itself. She kept on the lookout for any sign of her attacker, but didn’t see or hear anyone along the way. Before entering the station she released her sword back into the otherwhere, for coming out of a dark tunnel carrying a sword in hand didn’t seem like the safest way to reacquaint herself with the police officer on duty.
As it turned out, she needn’t have worried. The guard was nowhere in sight.
That’s not a good sign, she thought uneasily.
He wouldn’t have left on his own without being relieved; at least, she couldn’t imagine him doing that knowing full well that she was in the tunnels. That meant that something had happened to him.
He probably ran into the same bastard that I did.
If that was the case, he could be lying somewhere unconscious, perhaps even seriously injured. She couldn’t leave without looking for him.
It didn’t take very long. She found the police officer lying against the far side of the ticket booth, a thick trickle of blood leaking from the swollen lump on the side of his head. His breathing was steady enough, she was relieved to discover. Annja used his radio to make an Officer Down call to headquarters. When they asked her to identify herself, she broke the connection. The officer was starting to stir so she got up, and walked off without a backward glance. It wasn’t the most Good Samaritan–like thing to do, but all she wanted was to return to her hotel and take a hot bath to ease the aches and pains out of her muscles. She wouldn’t get that if she had to spend the next three hours downtown answering questions.
Back at her hotel, she had room service send up hot chocolate and some croissants. While she waited, she took the ring from the pocket of her jeans, cleaned it off and held it up to the light for a good look.
It was a man’s signet ring, just as she’d thought. The stone set in its face was a deep crimson in color that seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it. It had been gently cut, with a beveled face and eight short sides. The gold itself was unadorned. She suspected it was Parker’s, but it could also have belonged to whomever he had been meeting there. There was no way of telling at this point. She slipped the ring into a little glassine envelope and then tucked it inside one of the zippered pockets of her backpack.
Her snack arrived, so she signed the check, locked the door behind her and devoured the food. Then she headed into the bathroom where she had drawn a bath. She stripped off her clothes and climbed into the water for some relaxation. She’d been going nonstop ever since she’d left for the dojo that morning and her body was telling her to take it easy or else. The hot water soothed her tired limbs the same way the hot chocolate had her throat.
When she was clean and relaxed, she climbed into bed and was asleep in what felt like seconds.
9
Given the type of activity that went on at the Museum of Natural History on a daily basis, as well as the priceless nature of some of the artifacts that were cleaned and restored within its walls, the lab there had a highly sophisticated alarm system designed to prevent unauthorized entrance to the facility. The alarm was the pride of the museum’s director, for he had spent nearly two years on the research and testing that went into selecting the product they had finally decided to install. It was, the manufacturer said, the best of the best and perfect for protecting a facility such as this.
The three men who entered the lab at half past two that morning went through it like butter.
The fact that they had the sixteen-digit code that was needed to render the alarm system inoperable made things a bit easier.
Once inside the lab, one of the men moved to the drawer containing Captain Parker’s remains. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t pull out any of the other drawers looking for the right one, but went immediately to his intended target, like a man who knew precisely what it was he was looking for and where it could be found. He opened the canvas duffel bag he was carrying and started placing the captain’s remains into the sack.
As he was doing so, his two companions were carefully scouring the lab for any trace that the long-missing Confederate soldier’s remains had ever graced the building with its presence. Papers, thumb drives, video cards—if it could possibly contain any information about the discovery of the dead man’s remains it was picked up and dropped into a sack identical to the first. Within ten minutes the three men had searched the entire lab and removed everything that might possibly contain any information relative to the discovery of Captain Parker’s body. When they were finished the leader gave a quick nod to the other two and what had once been a carefully organized search-and-retrieval mission turned into a free-for-all as they set about ruthlessly destroying everything they could get their hands on. Computer monitors were thrown to the floor and then stomped under foot. Desks were overturned and the contents of their drawers scattered throughout the room. High-tech spectrometry equipment costing hundreds of thousands of dollars was covered with foam from the wall-mounted fire extinguishers and then smashed with what was left of the desk chairs.
It became like a game to them, seeing who could cause the most destruction in the shortest amount of time. It wasn’t long before the room was practically unrecognizable.
Finally, their energy spent and their job complete, the three men left the same way they came in, with no one the wiser.
10
When Annja arrived at the museum early the next morning, she was met with a scene of confusion. Several law enforcement vehicles were parked outside the entrance and when she tried to use the temporary pass Bernard had given her to gain access, she was politely informed by a uniformed officer that she would have to wait.
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Alex Archer
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: One mystery could change the fate of a nation…The skeletal remains of a confederate soldier, hidden deep within the Paris Catacombs. The legend of a long-lost Confederate treasure. An aged scrap of paper that reads simply, Berceau de solitude–Cradle of Solitude.It was sheer dumb luck, really. Archaeologist Annja Creed happened to be in Paris when the bones of the soldier were discovered. But this was no ordinary soldier–this man was the keeper of a treasure that could have affected the outcome of the American Revolution. Somewhere, the treasure waits to be claimed.Now Annja is unraveling a 150-year-old mystery and a trail of clues that will lead her across the ocean and deep into the heart of the Old South. But she isn′t the only seeker of this treasure. Someone else wants it–bad enough to kill anyone who stands in their way….