The Gilded Seal (44 page)

“The
Autel des Obelisques
,” Tom read the words under-

neath it. “The Altar of Obelisks. It certainly fi ts.”

“It can’t be Paris,” Ketter said with a firm shake of his

head. “None of these roads exist.”

They gazed at the map uncertainly, the steadily increasing

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pace and volume of the echoing music suggesting that, far

below, the opera was reaching its climax.

“You’re right,” Tom said with a frown. “Either we’ve got

the wrong city or . . .” He paused, struck by a sudden

thought.

“Or what?”

“Or we’re looking in the wrong place.”

“Where else is there to look?” Archie frowned.

“Underground,” Tom suggested excitedly. “This is a map

of the Paris catacombs.”

“If it is, I can introduce you to a guide,” Ketter offered.

“Lives down there now, as far as I can tell.”

“I don’t want to get lost,” Tom agreed. “Can you try and

set something up?”

“When for?”

“Now.”

As Tom and the others pored over the map, trying to work

out exactly how it related to the streets above, Ketter dialed

his contact and made some brief arrangements.

“Somebody called Franzy will meet you over at the Place

du Trocadéro at eleven,” Ketter announced. “Apparently there’s

an entrance near there. He’ll find you. But she can’t go.” He

pointed at Jennifer accusingly.

“What do you mean?” Tom sounded annoyed.

“No cops, no weapons. Those are the rules,” Ketter in-

sisted.

“There’s no way . . .”

“That’s fine,” Jennifer nodded. “You two go.”

“I thought we’d agreed to stick together?” Tom reminded

her. He’d made a deal and wanted to stick to it.

“We need to know what’s down there. This is the only

way,” she explained.

Tom shook his head but said nothing, knowing that she

was probably right. He felt for her though. Ketter was cutting

her no slack, despite the risk she had taken by coming with

them.

“That’s decided,” Ketter nodded. “Good. I will see you

out. You haven’t got much time.”

Covering his desk with a white cloth, Ketter led them back

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through the bookshelves, down through the trapdoor, past

the washbasins where they recovered their shoes and Archie

his lighter, to the false wall. He paused to check the video

monitors positioned to the left of the door and then pressed a

switch. With a hiss, the wall lifted into the roof and Tom,

Jennifer and Archie stepped out into the staircase.

Ketter watched as the wall clunked shut, then retraced his

steps to his office. He sat at his desk, gazing at the dismem-

bered book lying in front of him. A dark shape emerged from

the shadows.

“You see? I told you they would come.” Eva smiled, tying

her hair back. “I’m glad I stayed.”

“You need to leave if you don’t want to lose them,” Ketter

said sullenly.

“Why bother, when you’re going to tell me exactly where

they’re going?”

“That wasn’t what we agreed,” he insisted angrily.

“The deal’s changed.” She shrugged, flicking her Zippo

open and striking a light.

Ketter gazed fearfully at the guttering flame, then at the

books slumbering obliviously on the shelves behind her, and

nodded.

C H A P T E R S E V E N T Y- F I V E

23rd April— 10:49 p.m.

By the time they made it down on to the street the curtain

had come down and a few members of the audience were

already being chased down the front steps by the sound of

muffled applause. Several were humming snatched fragments

of the closing aria.

“We need to shift if we’re going to meet this bloke by

eleven,” Archie pointed out.

“I’ll head over to Henri’s,” Jennifer suggested. “Bring him

up to speed.”

“You okay with that?” Tom asked, his tone making it clear

that he suspected she wasn’t.

He was right. She was annoyed with Ketter’s instinctive

distrust of her, of being excluded. But then it was a feeling

she knew only too well. She’d always had to walk an uneasy

line between her white mother’s South Carolina farming

background and her city-dwelling father’s Haitian heritage.

Caught between two colors, two cultures, immigrant and set-

tler, city and country, North and South, she’d never been

fully accepted by either. It was the same now, the police pur-

suing her as a criminal, the criminals treating her with the

distrust and contempt they reserved for the cops. She was

trapped in a strange twilight world where she belonged ev-

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erywhere and yet nowhere at once. Only Tom, it seemed, was

making an effort to bridge the gap, to give her a sense of be-

longing, however temporary.

“It’s not like we have much choice,” she said with a re-

signed shrug. “Why don’t we meet at, say, one?”

“The Place St. Michel,” Tom agreed, flagging down a

passing taxi for her. “And you’d better take this—” He slipped

her his gun.

“Shouldn’t you . . . ?”

“You heard Ketter. No cops, no weapons. You’ll need this,

too. It’s the entrance code to the door downstairs.” He jotted

down a four-digit number on a piece of paper and handed it

to her. “Henri said he was finishing my painting tonight, so

he should be in.”

“Be careful,” she warned them, stuffing the paper into her

pocket.

“Aren’t we always?” Tom grinned.

The taxi’s radio was tuned to a lively phone-in debating

how good a painting the
Mona Lisa
actually was and whether

its theft wasn’t actually a blessing in disguise. The driver

made a half-hearted attempt to draw Jennifer into a similar

conversation, but with her hat pulled down low and her face

buried in her collar so she couldn’t be recognized, she pre-

tended to have fallen asleep. He gave up, leaving her to re-

flect on the day’s events.

It was hard to believe only fourteen hours had passed since

Ferrat had snapped a pair of cuffs on her wrists over break-

fast. So much had changed in that short period. Not only in

her mounting excitement at the discovery of clues that might

lead them to the real
Mona Lisa
, but also in what she felt

about Tom. She believed him when he said he was sorry and

that he hadn’t known she would be implicated in all this. She

believed him when he said he was trying to help her. That

didn’t mean she could entirely trust him, of course, but then

did she entirely trust anyone?

The traffic was light and it took them less than fi fteen min-

utes to make their way south through the Place de la Bastille

and over the river to Besson’s apartment. She punched in the

entry code and the front door clicked open, giving her access

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to a vaulted passageway and a second, glass door. She lo-

cated Besson’s buzzer on the wall to her left and pressed it. A

few moments later the door buzzed open. She frowned. Last

time he’d checked who it was. Maybe he’d guessed that, at

this hour, it could only have been her or Tom.

A few minutes later, the elevator jerked to an unsteady halt

on the fi fth floor. She got out, half expecting Besson to be

there to greet her. But the hall was empty and the front door

ajar, a faint glow running the length of the narrow gap where

the streetlights were shining through the apartment’s uncov-

ered windows. She knew instinctively that something wasn’t

right.

She took out the gun Tom had given her and cocked it, not-

ing the splintered lock as she stepped warily inside. Someone

had forced their way in.

“Henri?” she called. There was no answer.

Carefully checking behind her every few steps, she slowly

made her way through the offi ce to the lab, its sealed plastic

chamber glowing like a Chinese lantern. With a growing

sense of dread, she saw that one of its walls had been slashed

open.

She carefully stepped through the opening and then

stopped, her gun dropping. Besson had been strapped to the

inspection table by his wrists and ankles, a single light illu-

minating him as if he were a painting on a gallery wall. She

ran to him, but there was no mistaking the unexpected sym-

metry of his face, the right-hand side now mirroring in death

the flaccid, hollow-eyed, slack-cheeked paralysis of the left,

blood trickling from his nose and the corners of his mouth.

Except, she suddenly realized as she leaned closer and placed

her gun down next to him, it wasn’t blood at all but paint,

congealed into thick red clots and veins like candle wax.

She stepped back as a sudden, terrible question fl ashed

into her head. If Besson was dead, who had buzzed her in?

Instinctively, she reached for the gun, but a cloth was pressed

to her face before she could even consider an answer.

C H A P T E R S E V E N T Y- S I X

PLACE DU TROCADÉRO, 16TH ARRONDISSEMENT, PARIS

23rd April— 11:03 p.m.

The two squat wings of the Palais de Chaillot loomed like

sullen guard dogs on either side of them, each protec-

tively framing the sparkling thrust of the Eiffel Tower on the

other side of the river.

“Do you think we missed him?” Archie asked.

“I hope not,” Tom sighed, gazing out on the series of

stepped terraces and cascading fountains that led to the bridge

at the base of the hill below them. “I don’t want to have to fi nd

this place on my own.”

“Why not?”

“Sudden cave-ins, flooding, hidden drops into natural

wells, exposed electricity cables. Not to mention the risk of

getting lost.”

“We’ve got a map,” Archie reminded him. “It can’t be that

hard.”

“They’re over three hundred kilometers long,” a voice an-

swered. “I’m Franzy. You’re late.”

Franzy’s head looked too small for the rest of him, his eyes

so close together that the resulting permanent squint dis-

guised which direction he was looking in. He had long dark

hair that he’d bleached blond at the tips, and piercings through

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his nose, tongue and left eyebrow. And although it was hard

to tell in the dark, it seemed he was wearing eyeliner to

match his black jeans and Ramones T-shirt. The tell- tale

white headphones of his mp3 player were wound around his

thin neck, one bud still lodged in his ear, the other dangling

free and broadcasting a tinny hiss of drum beats and shrieked

vocals.

“We got here as fast as we could,” Tom apologized. “Did

Ketter tell you what we needed?”

“You need Blanco.” Franzy nodded, spitting his gum into

the air and deftly volleying it over the parapet with his right

foot. “You got nothing else to wear?” He nodded skeptically

at Archie’s mustard-colored suspenders and pinstripe suit.

“Problem?”

“Not if you don’t mind fucking your clothes up.”

He led them down the hill away from the esplanade and

then paused. Glancing to make sure no one was looking, he

crouched and hauled the manhole cover at his feet open with

a small metal implement.

“Get in,” he urged them.

Tom climbed down the ladder fixed to the wall of the ver-

tical shaft. Archie followed right behind him with Franzy

dragging the cover back into place as soon as he too was

inside. It settled with a solid thump that echoed around

them.

“This way.” A flashlight materialized in Franzy’s hands as

he led them off down a narrow passage. “And watch your

heads,” he added as a large pipe suddenly crossed the void at

about chest height, forcing them to scramble underneath it.

They continued in silence, the ground dry and uneven, the

temperature dropping, until a few minutes later they came to

a large blue tarpaulin that had been stretched drum- tight be-

tween the tunnel walls. Tom translated the large sign fi xed to

it for Archie’s benefi t.

“Building site. No access.”

Franzy lifted one corner of the tarpaulin and indicated

that they should crawl through the small gap. On the other

side a video camera mounted on a small desk bleeped into

life as soon as Tom stood up.

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“Motion sensitive, so we can keep track of who’s been

through here,” Franzy explained. From behind him the sound

of angry barking echoed up a tunnel lit with what looked like

a salvaged set of Christmas tree lights.

“Ignore the dogs,” he sniffed, brushing away the long hair

that was constantly falling across his eyes. “It’s a recording.

To scare the tourists away.”

“Tourists?” Tom queried.

“Kids mainly. Looking for a place to get high or fuck. This

is our world. We try and keep our distance.”

“Who’s ‘we?’ ”

“Up there they call us
cataphiles
. But we don’t like to

label ourselves. It’s too limiting. We want to be free.”

They arrived at a large door which opened as they ap-