Magic Lantern (Rogue Angel) (26 page)

“So I’ve heard. But you know yourself that I’m lethal when prompted to be.”

“And then there is this Asian contingent that tried to kidnap Miss Creed.” Georges tapped his chin with his forefinger. “I suppose you know who they are?”

“I believe they were with Puyi-Jin, a Chinese—” She stopped when she saw Georges wince. “Have you heard of him?”

“Have you had dealings with Puyi-Jin before?”

“No. He’s new to me.”

“A very bad man. Is his interest in Miss Creed separate from your business with Laframboise?”

“They’re tied together.”

“Either one of those men would be daunting by himself, yes?”

Fiona smiled. “It is our good fortune, though, that Laframboise was working for Puyi-Jin and betrayed him.”

Immediately, Georges brightened. “Ah, then we can use this to our advantage.”

“I was hoping so.”

“You’ve always been such a fascinating woman, Ms. Pioche.” Georges turned toward the wall and took a small knife from his pocket. “I’m afraid getting to your armory won’t be quick if you should need it in a hurry.” The blade glinted as he pried molding from the corner of the wall, then from a decorative beam three feet away. “This wall adjoins the apartment in the next room, but the occupants living there have no idea what this space conceals.”

When Georges finished removing the molding, he inserted the knife behind the wallboard and quickly pried the section out of place. He set the piece of wall aside and the lamplight played over the lubricated sheen of the weapons hanging on the wall. A dozen handguns and an equal number of assault rifles and shotguns hung from pegs. Boxes of ammunition sat neatly organized at the bottom of the space.

“The ammunition is color-coded for the weapons.” Georges pointed to the small colored dots on the boxes and the matching colored stripes on the butts of the handguns and rifles and shotguns. “For speed.”

“Wonderful.” Fiona took out a pair of thin gloves, then selected a pistol and cut-down belt holster. She loaded the weapon’s magazine and slammed it home. Methodically, she worked the action, stripped a bullet into the receiver, then popped the magazine and replaced the bullet. Satisfied, she tucked the weapon and holster at the small of her back.

Fiona looked back at Annja and Edmund. “Would you care to make a selection?”

Edmund shook his head. “No. I don’t know the first thing about pistols.”

“Well, we’ll have to attend to that, won’t we, Professor. And for you, Annja?” Fiona held out another pair of gloves. “Mustn’t leave any prints, so don’t touch the weapons without gloves on. Unless the situation calls for it.”

Knowing Fiona wouldn’t be satisfied until she picked something, Annja pulled on the gloves, then stepped forward and surveyed the pistols. After a moment, she found one she easily recognized. She plucked the Baby Desert Eagle 9 mm from the wall, then took time to load the weapon. Unlike Fiona, she didn’t put a round under the hammer. She chose another of the cut-down belt holsters.

“Anything else?”

“No, thanks. I’m good.” Annja stepped back.

Fiona chose a chopped semiautomatic shotgun with a shoulder sling. Meticulously, she loaded the shotgun, worked the slide and fed a last shell into it. Then she slid the weapon under the bed.

“I’ll be taking this room, if that’s all right.”

Annja nodded.

Smiling, Georges clapped his hands. “Then, perhaps, we could return to the kitchen. I’ve laid in an excellent selection of wines, if I must say so myself. And I can show you the information I have on Laframboise.”

* * *

HEAD SWIMMING A LITTLE FROM the wine, Annja settled into bed. Georges had departed, slightly tipsy but as professional as ever, in the company of Hasan and a couple other young men who looked capable of violence. Fiona had retired to her room, and Edmund was curled up asleep on the couch. His body wasn’t used to being pushed so hard for so long.

Aches and pains plagued Annja, too, most of them from the car wreck, but she knew from past experience that she’d probably feel just fine in the morning. Since she’d found the sword, her recuperative powers had surpassed Olympic standards.

Hasan had brought them their luggage a couple hours after their arrival, and had stayed around for the wine. He had been watchful and intelligent, and Annja had recognized almost immediately that he was a street kid who paid attention. She had known kids like that while she’d been at the orphanage in New Orleans. Hasan, no matter where he was—West Africa or Paris—was a survivor.

So was she.

Dressed in gym shorts and a Yankees jersey, Annja opened up her computer and dug into the alt.history sites, hoping for more information. Several of the entries were just basic information on the magic lanterns, a few focused on different illusionists scattered across two hundred years of legerdemain, and there was even a flame war regarding Criss Angel’s ability to do real magic.

Ni hao, Lantern Girl,

Don’t mind the two rockheads arguing above. Apparently they didn’t see Criss Angel’s interview with Larry King when he said he didn’t believe in magic. *Sigh*

Anyway, I was writing because the lantern you’ve got in this picture looks a lot like one I heard about while visiting one of my friends in Shanghai. Their family has some kind of legend about that lantern, about how they were disgraced by an ancestor or something. You know how big that is in Asian culture.

I’m adding a picture of the lantern my friend’s grandmother told me about. The pic is in black and white and it’s not very clear, but maybe this helps?

New Shanghai Girl

A surge of excitement stirred Annja as she clicked on the attachment. The photograph was large and it took a while to download, but when it had, the image was big enough to blow up and examine.

At first blush, the lantern resembled the one Edmund had bought. Then again, all lanterns looked a lot alike.

What most interested Annja was the two men in the photograph. Neither of them was Anton Dutilleaux, but they stood in front of a small building that had signs in the windows advertising banking in English, French and Chinese.

Her excitement grew.

26

“You think this is where Anton Dutilleaux worked?” Edmund looked doubtful.

Sitting at the dining room table the next morning, Annja stared at her computer studying the old Chinese picture. She spooned up another bite of key lime pie yogurt, not the most breakfasty yogurt ever made, but she liked it. “I don’t know.”

“Doesn’t really look like a bank, does it?”

“Banks didn’t always look like banks back then. China was expanding, growing rapidly. It took time for construction to catch up.” Fiona poured milk over her cereal. She was already dressed for the day in pants and a loose pullover to cover her pistol. A thick folder sat at her elbow. “You have to remember, Professor, Shanghai was a budding community back then. Trade was opening up along the Yangtze River. The customs office was moved to Shanghai from Songjiang in the 1730s.”

“Seventeen thirty-two.” Annja’s response was immediate and she didn’t know she’d said anything until the others stopped to look at her. “Sorry. I suppose saying the 1730s was close enough.”

Fiona smiled. “You must worry Roux to death with everything you know. He remembers events and people, but he’s not one to keep dates in mind.”

“I didn’t exactly know the date until I refreshed what I knew last night.” Annja said that, but she’d also been blessed with a near-photographic memory.

Annja glanced at the lower right side of her computer screen. It was 8:13 a.m., a lot earlier than she’d expected to get up, and much earlier than she suspected Jean-Baptiste Laframboise would be up. Still, it was better to get a lead on her quarry.

Edmund leaned back in his chair and sighed. “I truly don’t know how your head can hold all that information without exploding.”

She glanced at him. “Name the Romantic poets.”

“William Blake, Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Percy B. Shelley, John Keats, Matthew Arnold and John Clare.”

“And why were they called Romantic poets?”

“Because their work contrasted sharply with previous literary styles, philosophy, the church and the problems and promise of industrialization.” Edmund shook his head. “I get your point. I know the facts of my field as well as you know yours—history.”

Annja swallowed another spoonful of yogurt. “But my field—history—touches your field—literature. The same period we’re talking about? The one with these Romantic poets? That took place at the same time Shanghai was becoming a major trade franchise in China. Lord Byron died in the 1820s in the Greek War of Independence, didn’t he?”

Edmund frowned. “He did. From illness. In 1824 at the age of thirty-six while preparing to battle with the Greeks against the Turks.” He paused. “You know, I hadn’t before thought of the relationship that period in Europe had with China.”

Fiona stirred her cereal and spooned up a bite. “Yet Europe and the United States were bent on invading China through Shanghai at the same time to open up the opium trade, which they primarily owned and operated down in India.”

Annja set the empty yogurt container aside and picked up a piece of toast. “Enough of the history lesson. Where are we going to find Laframboise?”

Fiona poured a cup of strong tea from the carafe on the table, then stirred in milk. “What do we know about him?”

“That he’s a violent killer.” Unconsciously, Edmund touched his bruised face.

Fiona waved that away. “He made a momentous decision to betray a very dangerous enemy. He’s also come into possession of an artifact that might possess magical properties. We know from his upbringing, from his mother’s interest in the arcane, that Laframboise is a man given to a belief in the supernatural. His world has been turned upside down. So where would he go?”

Annja glanced at the thick folder at Fiona’s elbow. Georges had provided the information last night, and all of it concerned Laframboise and Puyi-Jin. She had a digital copy of the same information on her computer hard drive. Fiona liked hard copy. Last night she had spread it out around her and looked at photographs and documents. Judging from her responses and observations about the materials, Fiona was a much better hunter of men than Annja was. She was a remarkable woman.

“Getting out at all will be dangerous for him.” Edmund steepled his forefingers under his chin. “He knows Puyi-Jin is looking for him. The attack on Annja last evening would have told him that. The story was all over the news last night and this morning.” He nodded at the television against one of the living room walls.

Annja had picked the story up on her computer in her room last night. So far, the Parisian police and the Département de la Sûreté, the equivalent of the FBI, known locally as the Sûreté, hadn’t identified Annja.

They had identified the Asians involved in the kidnapping attempt. They were all known Puyi-Jin gangsters. No one had a clue why the attack had taken place.

They had been lucky the story was so vague.

Fiona nodded. “The danger is something Laframboise will accept, though. That’s the price he pays for doing business. What is the least known thing he’s got on his hands at the moment?”

Annja understood where Fiona was headed now. “The lantern.”

“Yes. Now that he has his hands on it, he’ll want to know more about it. Where will he go?”

“A museum.” Edmund sounded certain of himself. “Like me, he’ll want to verify the authenticity of the lantern.”

“I mean no disrespect, Professor, but Laframboise would take the lantern to a museum or auction house only if he were interested in the financial value of the piece. He’s not interested in that, is he?”

“No.”

Annja tapped at her computer and called up the file on Laframboise. She found what she was looking for quickly. “He’s going to be more interested in the mystical aspects of the lantern.”

Fiona set her teacup on the saucer on the table. “And where is he going to go to find out about that?”

“Georges has listed three fortune-tellers here in Paris that Laframboise sees on a regular basis.”

“None of them will be able to satisfy Laframboise, because whatever knowledge they have is going to be incomplete at best.”

Edmund tapped his fingers on the table nervously. “We have no way of knowing which one he’ll see.”

“On the contrary, I think he’s going to see them all. He has no choice.”

“Then we stake out these three people?”

“Georges has already put eyes on them. I asked him to do that last night.”

Annja was impressed.

“So we’re going to try to intercept Laframboise when he goes to see these people?” Edmund didn’t sound happy.