Magic Lantern (Rogue Angel) (36 page)

“People have been searching that chamber where Dutilleaux was killed for years.” Edmund shook his head. “The story about the curse and the possible treasure brought out all the fortune hunters. If anything was there, it would have been found.”

“Yet no one ever admitted to finding anything.”

“Perhaps the treasure had been lost in one venture or another.”

“And it may still be there waiting. You and Xiaoming both believe Anton Dutilleaux was a good man, Edmund. Do you think he was the kind of man to steal from his partner?”

“I want to believe in Dutilleaux, Annja. But this was over two hundred years ago. Whatever was there is surely lost.”

Acting on impulse, Annja placed two of the lenses in the dragon’s mouth.

The images created a confused jumble on the wall, and the red snakes ran rampant.

Carefully, Annja adjusted the lenses, gently turning them in the dragon’s mouth until they overlapped each other. Then, slowly, the snakes lined up and made longer snakes.

Annja picked up the third lens and fitted it into place. Again, she twisted and adjusted. The glass ground and squeaked against the groove. Then, after a moment, the red snakes on the third lens lined up with the others and made a solid line.

“It’s a map.” Edmund’s voice was a croak.

Annja nodded. “It
is
a map. Probably through the catacombs, and hopefully to where Dutilleaux left the treasure he and Tsai Chien-Fu collected.”

“But there are nearly two hundred miles of tunnels and rooms beneath Paris.” Edmund shook his head. “You’re still looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“Dutilleaux was killed in 1793, right?”

“Yes.”

“The catacombs would have been smaller then. The work of moving the bodies didn’t start until 1786 and continued until 1814. I think we can start at the beginning—Place Denfert-Rochereau, which was called the Barrière d’Enfer when Dutilleaux was alive. I can match this up to a map and see what we have.”

Walking over to the wall, Annja examined an interlocking image on one side. Lines from at least two of the lenses came together there and formed the barest outline of a gate.

Fiona joined her. “That is your starting point, you think?”

“The Barrière d’Enfer remains the main entrance to the catacombs. It was located inside the old Wall of the Farmers-General. The wall was originally built to keep merchants from evading taxes, and they called it the Barrière d’Enfer.”

“The barrier of hell.” Fiona smiled. “I imagine merchants didn’t think highly of the tax collectors.”

“And once the catacombs opened up, the name took on a whole new connotation.” Annja tapped the gate. “That could be the marker for the wall.”

“If this is a true map, then there has to be a legend. In order to follow the route, you have to have a reference, a scale to estimate the distance.”

Annja searched the combined image projected on the wall. Fiona was right. Dutilleaux wouldn’t have made the map without a key.

Xiaoming came close and studied the image, as well. She spoke briefly with Fiona. Judging from the intonation, it was a question. Fiona replied and gestured with her hands, showing different sizes. The woman peered more closely, then pointed to something.

“This one.” Her English was heavily accented, but she got her point across. “One equals eighty-eight.” Her finger indicated three characters.

Annja didn’t recognize either one of them. One of the characters was a single vertical line, which might have represented the number one, the next looked like the Roman numeral III only with the right crossbar missing and turned on its side. The second number was next to the same symbol, sitting upright to the III with the lower crossbar missing.

“What is that?”

Understanding the question, Xiaoming spoke to Fiona, making her grin.

“That is your key. We were looking for numbers written in English. These are written in Chinese. Very old Chinese, actually. Suzhou numerals.”

Annja closed her eyes. “Missed that. The Suzhou numerals were also called the
huama
system. It was used in the Chinese markets before Arabic numbers replaced them.”

Edmund shook his head. “Maybe you’ve heard of it, but I haven’t.”

“The Suzhou numerals were based on the rod numeral system involving horizontal and vertical strokes. There were two different styles, the traditional and the Southern Song. The Southern Song replaced symbols for the numerals four, five and nine to reduce the number of strokes necessary to make the symbol. Like changing the symbol for the number four from four vertical or horizontal strokes, depending on which way you were writing on the paper, to an X. That was quicker and more efficient.”

“Eighty-eight seems like a strange number to use as a base.”

Annja traced her finger over the combined lines, following the path along and counting marked divisions that showed in the changes of snake scales. “The number eight is considered a lucky number. It sounds like the Mandarin word for
prosper.
Same in Cantonese. The Summer Olympics in Beijing started on August 8 in 2008, at eight minutes after 8:00 p.m., just for that reason.”

Annja followed the winding trail to its final destination. There was no marking, just the end. “And if we can follow this correctly, if Anton Dutilleaux’s hiding place has been left undisturbed, we’ll find the treasure.”

Fiona already had her phone out. “I’ll have Ollie get us back to Paris.”

Annja stepped back from the map again and took in the bigger image. Excitedly, she realized they were in the final stages of the hunt.

“You’re smiling pretty big there, Annja Creed.”

Self-consciously, Annja turned to Edmund. He was smiling, too. “This is magic to me. Tracking something down through history, finding stories that were thought forgotten. This is what I live for.”

“I see that.” Edmund glanced back at the image projected through the dragon’s mouth. “Do you think it’s still there?”

“I don’t know. I hope so. We’ll see soon enough.”

37

Sixteen hours later, jet-lagged this trip, Annja got out of the SUV in an alley not far from the public entrances to the catacombs. She wore black and wore a black watch cap to keep her hair out of sight.

Similarly dressed, Fiona walked at her side. Edmund brought up the rear but did so reluctantly.

They’d landed in Paris at 7:00 p.m. and decided to wait till after midnight to begin their search of the catacombs. Georges had equipped them with urban exploration gear—primarily flashlights, gloves and durable clothing—and small-arms weapons.

So far, there had been no news about Jean-Baptiste Laframboise.

Annja led the way down the narrow alley and flicked her flashlight beam around. Cats and rodents exploded out of the shadows and disappeared. The pervasive smell of rot formed a thick miasma in the alley, pouring off the garbage bins.

Edmund flicked his beam around, as well. “What are you looking for?”

“Markings on the wall. They’ll show us the way into the catacombs.”

“I thought we were going to enter through Place Denfert-Rochereau.”

“It’s locked up this time of night, and we’re going to be wandering off the tourist routes. Exploring the catacombs on your own isn’t legal. If we get caught, we’ll be arrested by the catacombs police, the
cataflics.
”

“Great. Probably not a good idea to explore at night, either.”

Fiona patted Edmund on the shoulder. “During high noon, the catacombs will still be dark, Professor.”

“Still…I’d feel better if we were underground during the day.”

Annja spotted the markings she was looking for in a space behind a bakery. Urban explorers were obsessed with the vast underground and had developed symbols to help their fellow explorers. Annja had been down in the catacombs before and was acquainted with some of it, but she’d spent some time on Skype with a few people she’d explored with before to bring her up to date. They’d given her this location.

There wasn’t much room behind the bakery, but a manhole cover gleamed under her flashlight beam. She checked around and found a brick with more markings. She removed the brick and took out a crowbar that fit into the manhole slot. Working carefully, she pulled the manhole up and placed the heavy cover aside.

“Those markings told you the crowbar would be there?” Edmund held the flashlight on the wall as Annja returned the tool and replaced the brick.

“Yes. They’re left there by
cataphiles.
” Annja aimed her flashlight beam down into the manhole. “Urban explorers whose focus is the catacombs.”

“How do you know about them?”

Annja grinned up at Edmund as she climbed into the manhole. “This isn’t my first trip down here.”

Annja shifted her flashlight, gripped the iron rungs mounted on the wall and started down into the waiting darkness. Climbing into the catacombs was frightening, but she relished the adrenaline spike.

* * *

JEAN-BAPTISTE LAFRAMBOISE knelt in the shadows across from the alley where Annja Creed and her companions descended into the underground labyrinth. He watched them through the lenses of night-vision binoculars. Campra, in black Kevlar hung with weapons, knelt next to him.

“Have you ever been in the catacombs before, Gilbert?”

Campra shifted slightly. “No.”

“I don’t care for it very much. I may be a touch more claustrophobic than I care to admit.”

“I’ve been underground before,” Campra said in a monotone. “Out in Africa and the Middle East, a lot of people use catacombs for defense, storage, shelter from the heat…and to bury their dead.”

Laframboise checked his watch after the professor was the last to disappear. Someone reached back up and replaced the cover. “We’ll give them a five-minute head start.”

“They can cover quite a distance in five minutes. They’ve already been to Shanghai and back in the past twenty-four hours.”

That was true. In fact, they’d gotten lucky catching Annja Creed and her companions coming back into the country. Laframboise’s people had been watching for the group to try to leave Paris, not return.

Campra shifted again. “Do you think Creed has solved the riddle of that lantern?”

“Why go down into the catacombs otherwise?” Laframboise glanced over his shoulder at the man. “Are you certain your device will work underground?”

“I’ve used the tracking chips under similar circumstances.” Campra held up the small computer-tablet-size device. “As long as we stay within a quarter klick of our target, I can find them.”

When they’d first captured Professor Edmund Beswick, Campra had insisted on injecting the man with a subcutaneous RFID tracking chip in the event that he escaped. The insertion wound hadn’t been any more noticeable than any of the other damage the man had suffered in London.

Laframboise checked his watch again. “All right. Let’s go.” He led the way across the street. Campra and the other men followed after him. He was excited about the thought of learning what secrets the lantern hid, what the
hope
was that Magdelaine de Brosses had talked about, but he kept remembering how the fortune-teller had promised him that the lantern would be his death.

But his greed drew him on.

* * *

AS ALWAYS, THE ORDERLY STACKS of corpses on either side of the catacombs inspired Annja with dread and awe. She played her flashlight beam over the wall of yellowed bones. Leg and arm bones lay neatly stacked. Skulls with missing teeth and missing lower jaws sat on top of the walls or were interspersed among the other bones. Given the neat order to the bones, it was almost possible to forget that the bones had at one time belonged to six million people. They seemed like something artificial, like a movie set.

“Oh, my,” Edmund said softly into the emptiness.

Annja turned her beam onto the wall nearest Edmund, deliberately not shining the light on him. “Are you okay?”

“I will be. This is all…just a bit much.”

“On several levels. On one hand, these are the remains of a lot of people. On the other, a lot of work went into bringing them here.” Annja started forward, her voice echoing eerily around them. “Legend has it the priests worked at night so no one would see them disinterring and transferring the dead. The priests supposedly sang the burial service while transporting the bones.” She smiled at Edmund’s discomfiture. “Must have been a sight.”

“Okay, that’s enough.” Fiona stepped between them. “After everything I’ve seen, I don’t blanch easily, but I’ve only been down here once before, and I promised myself I’d never come again.”

Annja grinned and continued down the tunnel. She had the map in her head. During the flight back from Shanghai, she’d studied what she knew of the catacombs and what she could pull up on the internet and through various urban-explorer sites. Some of the people she’d been in contact with had been very helpful.