[JJ06] Quicksand (20 page)

CHAPTER 38

I slept for three hours. A few minutes before five o’clock in the morning, the ancient hotel room door creaked open. I shot awake.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” Sébastien said in the darkness.

“You were outside? Where did you go?”

“I wanted to see when they would return.”

“You didn’t get any sleep?”

“I’ve never wished to spend time sleeping.”

“So you waited outside their rooms.”

“They returned to get some sleep. But we only have a few hours before the legitimate workmen will be arriving for the day.”

“Then let’s go.” 

The floodlights lit our walk along the winding paths from our cabin hotel room up to the abbey. A thick fog had descended in the few hours during which I’d slept. I was tempted to believe Dante’s story of ghosts who roamed these walkways. It was the perfect atmosphere for them. My heart skipped a beat as we rounded a corner and came upon the tiny St. Pierre church and cemetery. Standing outside the church, a statue of Joan of Arc looked eerily real through the hazy fog.

We walked on. The sound of a creaking gate caused us both to stop in our tracks.

“The wind,” Sébastien whispered. He pointed at the low iron fence that encircled the tiny cemetery of the church, as its squeaking gate clattered shut.

“Then why are you whispering?”

“This would make a perfect backdrop for a horror movie, no?”

“If I were superstitious, I’d slap you. Come on. Let’s keep going.”

A scream rang out.

I clutched Sébastien’s sleeve. I felt his body tense as well. He pulled me down, hiding us in the shadows of a low wall.

“Please tell me I imagined that,” I said. In the dead of night, sounds echoed through the empty streets. I couldn’t tell if the scream came from a man or a woman. In the foggy darkness in front of a cemetery, there was something else about the voice I didn’t want to admit to myself. It sounded almost inhuman.

“I regret to say,” Sébastien whispered back, “you did not imagine that cry.”

The wail came again.

Sébastien put his head in his hands. “
Un chat!
”

“What?”

He lifted his head. He was laughing. “A cat, Jaya. It’s a cat.”

“But...” He was right. If a feral cat had cried out back home in Golden Gate Park, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But here, inside this remote fortress on the coast of France that had survived for over 1,000 years, in front of a cemetery shrouded in fog, surrounded by quicksand and the ocean’s unrelenting tides, the simplest explanation of a 21
st
century cat hardly seemed the most appropriate.

Wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, Sébastien stood up and offered me his elbow. “Let’s get out of here.”

It wasn’t a fear of ghosts that had my heart racing as we neared the abbey. On the quest for a historic treasure from the country of my birth, with the promise of also achieving justice for Lane’s missing friend, I felt more alive than I had in months. Back at home, Naveen Krishnan was no doubt doing irreparable harm to my carefully constructed courses, yet being here seemed so much more important. Teaching history was the life I’d worked so hard to achieve. Why wasn’t it enough?

Lost in my thoughts, I didn’t notice any more inhuman howls from cats or other creatures. Before I knew it, we were back at the abbey and Sébastien was opening the main door with the extra key Lane had made.

We didn’t know the shortcuts between rooms in the labyrinthine abbey, so we stuck to the main route. I paused on the west terrace that looked out over both the ocean and the mainland. The fog stretched as far as the eye could see. I could barely see the sandy ground beneath us. I realized why. Water now encircled the Mont. I hadn’t paid attention to the tide tables, but the warning sign at the base of the Mont wasn’t easily forgotten. It gave the high and low tides of each day, because the height of the tides varied greatly throughout the month.

With a last glance at the ocean, I led the way into the abbey.

The fog was thick enough to obscure some of the floodlights, so we used flashlights the whole way. I wasn’t sure if it was only my imagination or whether the fog also made the shuffling sound of our footsteps echo more loudly that night.

Stepping into the outdoor cloisters, I stopped abruptly, in awe of the sight before me. Fog had seeped into the garden that lay at the center of the contemplative square, above which ancient gargoyles looked on protectively.

I turned my flashlight upward. The light shone across the intricate limestone carvings above the miniature granite columns that braced the cloister’s walkways.

I hadn’t noticed before how few of the carvings were still intact. The jagged remains of stone carvings had been preserved. I smiled to myself, pleased that “renovation” didn’t mean a modernization that forgot the past.

Sébastien cleared his throat.

“It’s nearly impossible for a historian to pull away,” I said.

“I wish we had more time. It will be daylight soon.”

We continued onward, walking with purpose until we reached the crypt where we’d found North the previous day shortly before closing time.

“
Zut!
” Sébastien cried out. He set his small black backpack on the floor.

“What’s the matter?”

“This scaffolding is in a different place than where they were working yesterday.”

“I noticed that. But that’s a
good
thing. It means they don’t know where exactly to find their buried treasure. It means we have more time—”

“Perhaps,” Sébastien murmured, rubbing his chin.

“What are you thinking?”

“This is but one of at least three crypts, and they do not have the engineering equipment to properly determine where secret hiding places might be.”

“That’s exactly why we thought we could find the treasure before them,” I pointed out, “with your engineering knowledge.” I motioned to the backpack he’d brought, which contained basic engineering measurement equipment.

He nodded but didn’t look at me. He pointed his flashlight around the vaulted ceiling, his thoughts obviously elsewhere.

“The entrance to a secret room could even be inside one of these massive columns.” I lay down on the stone floor and spread my arms and legs as if I was making a snow angel, illustrating my point. “These things are almost as wide I am tall.” 

“It could be anywhere,” Sébastien mumbled to himself.

I sat up and leaned against the column. “Shouldn’t we get to work, then?”

“Jaya,” Sébastien said, coming over to sit next to me. “If the thieves had narrowed down the search for us, then yes, I could most likely use my knowledge and tools to find a false wall. But even if we assume this
Gros Piliers
crypt is the correct one, it is simply not possible to cover so much space in this grand a room. Not in the amount of time that we have.”

I sat up. “There has to be a way. I can’t let them get away with whatever they did to Hugo and destroy the Mont in search of this treasure.”

“That’s not what I’m most afraid of.”

“What do you mean?”

“These are smart men,” Sébastien said. “They, too, must realize the futility of their situation. As I’ve said before, desperate men do desperate things. I’ve lived for nearly nine decades. I have seen both the best and the worst in men. Most men are not truly bad. But under the right circumstances...Almost anyone can be forced to act in desperate ways.”

“We’re not giving up.”

“No. But this requires a different plan.”

“Do you have one in mind?”

“If you’re up for driving the Porsche while I catch a wink of sleep, I do.”

CHAPTER 39

The round-the-clock shuttle bus deposited us at Sébastien’s Porsche shortly before daybreak. After stepping into the passenger seat, he typed an address into his phone, then set the phone into a dashboard dock.

“Follow these directions,” he said, “and we’ll be there in less than two hours.”

There wasn’t much traffic on the road, so I opened up the engine and we flew through the French countryside. Sébastien rolled up his coat to use as a pillow, and promptly fell asleep. Shifting gears in bare feet and passing a tractor, I didn’t even need coffee to feel awake.

As we approached our destination, I thought for a moment that we were returning to Sébastien’s house. But instead, the GPS system led me a different direction, out of a roundabout. We were heading toward central Nantes.

I glanced at Sébastien, who was snoring softly. Asleep in the reclined seat, he looked older. Though I still didn’t think he looked ninety, without the facial expressions that showed his joie de vivre, the deep lines on his face showed him to be the elderly man that he was.

Traffic slowed as we approached the center of the city. In the stop-and-go traffic, Sébastien stirred.

“She likes you,” he said, returning his seat to an upright position. He ran a hand through his wild hair, resulting in an even taller white bouffant.   

“The car? I like her, too.”

The navigator led me alongside the Loire river that ran through the center of the city. We had approached from the north, so I drove along the north side of the river until I could cut across on a narrow bridge. In spite of the chilly weather, there were just as many bicycles as cars on the road.

“
C’est bon
,” Sébastien said. “We’re almost home.” With those joyous words, he again looked decades younger than his years.

“Unless there’s a vortex inside that carousel ahead, we’re nowhere near your house.”

“That carousel marks the beginning of my second home.”

“In an industrial warehouse?”

“You don’t recognize it yet, from the photographs at my house?”

A moment later, the creature that appeared showed me where we were. I slammed on the breaks as a forty-foot elephant came into view.

Luckily, the bridge was nearly empty of cars. Though I’d seen the photographs and illustrations of the giant mechanized elephant at Sébastien’s house, the images didn’t do justice to the wooden elephant that roamed the park. Far more detailed than a statue on wheels, the animal was made up of hundreds of separate sections of wood, intertwined to replicate the real movements of an elephant.

“The Grand Elephant,” Sébastien said. “If you return to driving, you may park up ahead.”

I put the car in gear and cruised by the elephant just as it roared and blew a burst of steam from its trunk, much to the delight of a small group of children running alongside it.

“No need to rush,” Sébastien said, as I zoomed into a parking space, the tires squealing. “You’ll have plenty of time with the elephant. It will take several hours to gather what we need from this studio. My barn is my personal studio. As an emeritus staff member at
Les Machines de L’Île:
The Machines of the Island, I have access to this shared studio. There’s much more equipment here.”

“What
is
this place?” I asked on the short walk back to the path of the elephant. The area looked like a combination of old warehouses, a Victorian carousel, a wondrous arboretum, and a Twilight Zone episode with children trailing the surreal elephant.

“This area used to be shipyards,” Sébastien explained. “It is the project I told you about at my house that revived the area. After years of disuse, a group of engineers and artists got together and created this testament to the meaning of life. The animals are man-made creations, yet with simple materials and engineering—not computers—they move and interact with us. One of my greatest joys is watching the expressions on people’s faces as they watch the animals come to life.”

“We missed the elephant.” I heard the disappointment in my voice as we reached the front of an open warehouse.

“He’ll be back shortly. He likes to walk through the whole park.”

“Are there more mechanical animals like him?” Now that we were closer, I could see that the warehouse was more than it seemed. A mechanical tree filled with real plants stood next to a gift shop and café, and a strange assortment of plants peeked out from behind closed doors. Families stood in line in front of an entrance to get inside.

“None of the creations are quite like the Grand Elephant, but yes, there are others. A giant heron made of wood and steel, not quite as large as the elephant, flies through this building, carrying two children with it.”

“So there are mechanical people, too?”

“Ah, no. The children are very real. There are two baskets the heron carries as it flies through the sky.”

I shook my head. I knew I should be thinking about foiling North’s plans, but in this wonderland I felt as if I’d left the real world far behind.

“It’s as if I’m in another time,” I said, “but not one that exists.”

“As you young people might say, it is a ‘mashup’ of Jules Verne and Leonardo da Vinci’s imaginations. It began with an exhibition called The Clever Mechanicals that toured the world in the early 2000s, and the idea caught on. Inventors came here to continue thinking up modern versions of classic creations, and to have it all be sustainable. I was asked to consult, and I never left.”

“I can see why.”

“
Bof!
”

“What is it?”

“The elephant in The Clever Mechanicals exhibition,” he said. “I haven’t thought of that original elephant in quite some time. But with you here, it reminded me
—he was called
The Sultan’s Elephant
. This country of mine has had a long history entangled with India.
Alors!
” He rubbed his hands together. “We don’t have time to sit around speaking of the philosophical implications of colonization. I must get to work. There’s an extra bed in the studio, if you’d like to get some sleep while I gather materials.”

I shook my head. “What I need is to go for a run. I don’t think I’ve ever been somewhere more perfect for it.”

I donned my running clothing and shoes, and set off to explore the Machines of the Island.

One side of the old warehouse had been converted into the theme park of mechanized animals and self-sustaining plants, leaving the other side as a working studio for the dozens of artists and engineers whose ingenuity made these creations a reality. But I wasn’t ready to be indoors.

Instead, I followed the path of the Great Elephant, whose slow progression was trailed by children clapping with glee. I caught up with it as it rounded the back of the park. It was even larger than it looked from the car. Many times the size of a real elephant, this mechanical animal transported not one but dozens of people on an elephant ride. His leather ears flapped in the wind, as his jigsaw-puzzle trunk twirled and blew steam at the children on the ground. Wheels and a motor were visible on the back side of the creature, but if you stayed in front of it, you could imagine that the intertwined pieces of wood making up its legs had brought the wooden beast to life.

Passing the elephant, I ran onward, circling the large concrete park. On the far side stood a three-story carousel, grander than the small one I’d seen on our approach. Winding around it, I caught glimpses of the fantastical creations that spun slowly around. Instead of horses, this carousel was full of piranha skeletons and sea monsters.

I was tempted to stop and get myself a ticket, but I had too much pent-up energy. I continued running until I was too tired to worry about anything besides getting myself a snack.

I ordered a baguette sandwich in the café next to the warehouse and thought about what to do while waiting for Sébastien. I called Lane on our burner phones, but he didn’t answer. I was tempted to check email, bu
t I half expected that using the modern invention would set off a series of alarms here in this fantasyland. As I ate my sandwich, savoring the delicious sweet pickles the menu called cornichons, the Grand Elephant passed by. Watching the ingenious creation, I felt that anything was possible.

I entered the exhibit hall and was about to watch the heron come to life, when I caught a glimpse of Sébastien’s untamable hair. He ran into the room and grabbed me. He was running so quickly that he skidded on the concrete floor as he came to a stop.

“No time to explain,” he said, his voice out of breath. “Head for the car. Get it running. I’ll meet you there.”

“What are you—”

“Run, Jaya,” he said. “For the love of God. Please
. Run
.”