Day Of Atonement
Alex Archer
A reckoning that will destroy them all…Trials, persecutions, false accusations, the Inquisition–for archaeologist and TV host Annja Creed, the current episode they're taping for her show is a fascinating one. But while Annja is filming the last segment in France, a vicious "accident" nearly kills her. It looks to be unintentional…until a man calling himself Cauchon claims responsibility.The name Cauchon strikes a chord in the exceptionally–some might say unnaturally–long memory of Annja's friend and mentor Roux. Discovering the old man's secret years ago, Cauchon wanted to blackmail Roux before fate put the matter to rest. Or so Roux thought. Now this powerful fanatic has turned from seeking out the divine to meting out "justice." Vengeance. And he will single-handedly resurrect the violence of the Inquisition to ensure that Annja and her friend are judged and found guilty. With so much at stake, Annja may soon find that friendship can be fatal.
A reckoning that will destroy them all…
Trials, persecutions, false accusations, the Inquisition—for archaeologist and TV host Annja Creed, the current episode they’re taping for her show is a fascinating one. But while Annja is filming the last segment in France, a vicious “accident” nearly kills her. It looks to be unintentional…until a man calling himself Cauchon claims responsibility.
The name Cauchon strikes a chord in the exceptionally—some might say unnaturally—long memory of Annja’s friend and mentor Roux. Discovering the old man’s secret years ago, Cauchon wanted to blackmail Roux before fate put the matter to rest. Or so Roux thought. Now this powerful fanatic has turned from seeking out the divine to meting out “justice.” Vengeance. And he will single-handedly resurrect the violence of the Inquisition to ensure that Annja and her friend are judged and found guilty. With so much at stake, Annja may soon find that friendship can be fatal.
The floor was cold and damp against her face.
There was a familiar smell.
“A crypt,” Annja said, without realizing she’d spoken the thought aloud.
“Most perceptive.” It was a woman’s voice.
The light began to move. The woman placed an oil-filled lantern on top of a great stone sarcophagus close to where Annja lay bound.
“How long was I out?” Annja asked.
“Four hours, nearly five. You must have the constitution of a horse. That dose should have put you out for much longer, unless he managed to screw that up, too.” The woman’s eyes flicked to a dark heap in the corner.
“Is he dead?”
She nodded. “I should hope so.” She made the shape of a gun with her fingers and thumb and mimed putting a bullet through his brain.
Did she really value life so cheaply? “And me? Am I just another loose end to be put out of my misery?”
“Oh, no, not at all. You’re far more important than that. I am sure my brother will tell you all about it.”
“Brother?”
“Enough with the questions. You’re almost as bad as your friend. The pretty one. Garin.”
“I suppose you killed him, too.”
“Of course not. He’s been most helpful.”
Annja thought of everything Roux had told her about the midnight visit and the theft from the vault and muttered, “I’ll kill him.”
“Not until we’re finished with him.”
Day of Atonement
Alex Archer
THE (#ulink_1dc5690d-72a2-56a8-aba8-9e39b53c147d)
LEGEND (#ulink_1dc5690d-72a2-56a8-aba8-9e39b53c147d)
...THE ENGLISH COMMANDER TOOKJOAN’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
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1 (#ulink_db9ec850-0566-5bd8-85f9-3cf718e79817)
On a winter’s nightTwenty years ago
“You have my attention,” Roux said.
The young man who sat across from him had been insistent, refusing to be put off no matter how many times Roux ducked the meeting. His excuses had become more and more elaborate, but that only made the young man try harder. That dogged persistence paid off. Eventually. The old man had been tempted to arrange the sit-down in a very public space, given the personality type that kind of persistence hinted at. There were some people he didn’t invite into his home, but Roux was tired. The search for the fragments of the blade wasn’t going well, with what he thought might be the final shard eluding him still, so just this once Muhammad could come to the mountain, or, in this case, chateau.
He regretted that decision now. Something about the intense young man’s scrutiny was decidedly uncomfortable. It wasn’t so much the stare as it was the slight twitch of his lower lip, like it was fighting back the urge to smile. It made his skin crawl. One thing the years had done for Roux was to offer an education in human nature. He liked to think himself a reasonable judge of character. This boy—because that’s what he was, really, a boy in man’s clothing—was somehow off.
So he waited, knowing the young man had something to get off his chest, and equally sure he didn’t want to hear it.
“I thought I might, eventually.”
“So how can I help you?”
“I suspect it’s more a case of how I can help you.” He settled a briefcase on the Louis XIV coffee table that acted as a barrier between them.
Roux winced as the young man pushed the case back an inch and thumbed the locks. It was all he could do not to reach out and slap the stupid boy. The table was a priceless work of art; the briefcase was not. “I wasn’t aware that I needed any help,” Roux said.
“Then allow me to enlighten you, Mr. Roux.” He drew a manila folder out of the briefcase. Roux had seen a million of these over the years. In his experience, they never contained good news when they were hand delivered like this. He sank back into his chair and feigned disinterest. The young man didn’t need to know his curiosity had been piqued.
Roux picked up the business card the young man had given him when he first turned up at his door. The name was the same as the one in Roux’s appointment diary. Patrice Moerlen, freelance journalist. After the seventh call he had done his due diligence and had some of his people run background checks on the man that would have made the CIA envious, and by the time he had finally agreed to the sit-down Roux knew everything there was to know about Patrice Moerlen, and had his own dossier almost twice as thick as the folder the journalist pulled from his briefcase.
“I saw this picture of you in a magazine,” he said, handing over the first clipping.
Roux had seen it before.
He had been disappointed that the photograph had been published, but it couldn’t be helped. The photograph had been taken at a charity event organized by an old friend, and obligations to the social compact necessitated he attend, because that’s what friends did. He’d been promised it was going to be a low-key gathering, but the late addition of one of those Hollywood darlings with too-blond hair and an impossibly plastic smile and her politico beau had transformed it into an irresistible honeypot for the paparazzi.
“Not the most flattering, I’ll grant you, but hardly a crime against humanity,” Roux said. “I rarely accept invitations to events like that, but you know how it is. Sometimes it’s hard to say no.”
“I understand,” the young man said, smiling. “The thing is, seeing it, I couldn’t help but think your face looked familiar.”
“I have one of those faces,” Roux said, not liking where this was going. “Isn’t that what they say? It’s embarrassing sometimes because everyone thinks they’ve seen me before, or that I remind them of someone else.”
“Which is what I thought at first. In my line of work I see a lot of faces. So I decided to check, just to be sure.”
“So.” Roux offered a slight smile. “Who did you think I reminded you of?”
“No one in particular, not some celebrity at least. But I had this nagging feeling that I’d seen you in another picture.”
He picked the next piece of paper from the folder and handed it over.
Roux remembered the picture being taken, even if he had forgotten the joke that had put a smile on everyone’s lips a long time ago.
The young man picked out the faces one by one.
“Bobby Kennedy, JFK and someone beside them, a third man, who you must admit bears a striking resemblance to you.”
“There’s certainly a resemblance,” Roux said. “But I hate to disappoint you. I never had the privilege of meeting either of the Kennedys.”
He looked the journalist straight in the eye and lied, daring him to call him on it.
“That’s a shame. But maybe this one is a little more familiar?”
Another picture.
This one was slightly out of focus, but Roux remembered the night well.
He’d forgotten a lot of the others in the photograph, but knew the man on the right—Paul Reynaud, the president of France. It had been taken a few months before the outbreak of World War II. Roux stood behind Reynaud’s shoulder. He had been less cautious then, less concerned about being seen in public because the proliferation of cameras was nothing like it was today, and the chances of being caught and remembered from one image to the next were almost nil.
Only now Roux had been remembered, and the journalist had followed a trail of photographs into his past and found him impossibly unchanged despite the seventy years between the first and last picture.
“It could be the same man.” Roux offered a noncommittal shrug. He needed something to throw the young journalist off the trail, a conclusive spanner in the works that would destroy his faith that it was Roux in the photograph.
“I’m absolutely sure it is, Mr. Roux. It’s you, after all.” He produced another picture, a sepia-tinged photograph of the Russian royal family. Roux was there again. “Do I really need to show you more? I have them. Plenty of them. Enough, I’m sure, to convince you.”
“I’m not sure what you’re trying to say,” Roux told him. “You can’t possibly think these are all of me? They date back nearly a hundred years. That’s impossible.”
“And yet that’s you in each of those pictures, unable to resist the allure of power, rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous. As you say, there’s more than a hundred years between some of these photographs and yet there you are in all of them. And, most interestingly, you haven’t changed a bit. I would ask you what the secret of your young skin is, but I’m assuming it’s not some moisturizer.” His smile was more of a wince.
“A good story, but for one fatal flaw. That’s not me in those pictures, no matter how similar the men are. With the billions of people in the world, it’s hardly surprising that some of us wear recycled faces, is it? How could it be me?”
“You’re denying it?” the journalist asked, gathering the pictures.
“I’m simply pointing out that you are mistaken.”
“And that’s your final word?”
Roux rubbed a hand over his face, a gesture that could easily have been interpreted as having something to hide rather than simple exhaustion. “I really don’t think there’s anything else to say.” He pushed himself to his feet, indicating their meeting was over. He wasn’t about to sit and debate the impossibility of longevity, never mind immortality, with the young man when the only thing he risked was betraying himself with some careless word that would only strengthen his case.
“Then you’ll have no objection to me running the story, then?”
“What story?” That brought him up sharply. He’d reacted just a little too quickly to the threat. An innocent man wouldn’t have barked out those two words quite as fiercely. He forced himself to sound amused. “There is no story.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. We’ll let the members of the public make up their own minds, shall we? Isn’t that the joy of a free press?”
“I’m not sure I’d call making up some fanciful story anything more than irresponsible, Mr. Moerlen. It certainly isn’t journalism.”
The reporter inclined his head slightly, as though conceding the point. “I’m going to be in Paris for a couple of days. Think about it. I’ll leave these copies of the photographs with you so you can go through them at your leisure. I do hope you will decide that you’d like to talk to me about this miracle, Mr. Roux. You have my number.”
The man got to his feet and held out his hand.
Reluctantly, Roux shook it.
The more he made of the situation, the harder it would be to brush it aside as some bizarre flight of fancy. People didn’t live forever. It was impossible. But then, so much about his life was impossible. He needed time to think about this. It would be easy to pull a few strings and make sure that the story was squashed before there was any danger of it being printed. No one made it to Roux’s age without collecting an awful lot of favors owed in the checks and balances of life. It helped that the story sounded utterly preposterous.
He stood at the front door and watched as the young man drove away in the small Fiat, white crystals of fog gathering in the night. He could taste snow on the breeze. Maybe not tonight, or tomorrow, but soon, Roux thought. He usually liked this time of year because it was all about the end of things, something he’d experienced so much without having faced it himself.
As the fog folded around the journalist’s car, Roux made his way to his study and started to make the calls.
2 (#ulink_6f1fa99d-120b-5434-917c-0bcb2971e8ff)
“You absolute bastard!”
Roux had ignored Moerlen’s calls and, when they finally appeared to stop, assumed he’d gotten the message: there wasn’t a serious magazine or newspaper in the world that would touch the story. A few of the editors had humored Moerlen and admitted that yes, it was curious, wasn’t it? But curious or not, it wasn’t for them. A few that Roux knew personally had laughed in the young man’s face.
Roux said nothing.
Instead, he allowed the journalist to vent his frustration over the phone. He was doing the man a favor, even if he didn’t appreciate it. By letting him get it out of his system it minimized the chances of him doing something stupid. Sooner or later Moerlen would find some small circulation magazine that liked the unexplained and unexplainable, which would buy the story and might even run it, but no one took that kind of nonsense seriously.
“It’s not going to work. You can’t gag me, no matter who you know. I’ll find someone who will publish this story. The truth will come out.”
“Look,” Roux said patiently. “I don’t know what you think you know, but believe me, you don’t. There is no story to sell. Let it go. Get on with your life. Don’t make an enemy of me, son,” Roux said, deliberately patronizing the man on the other end of the line.
“You think you are so clever, don’t you? You think that you have it all worked out. What you don’t get is that the whole world will want to know your story. How can someone live for so long without aging? I’m not naive enough to think you signed some kind of pact with the devil, but something is going on. That is you in those photographs. I know it is. I’ll prove it.”
“I’m sorry that you’ve wasted time on this,” Roux said, signaling an end to the conversation, but the man refused to go.
“Fine. I’ll begin my story by telling everyone how I’ve been muzzled. That makes for a compelling beginning. How someone—you—didn’t want this story out in the public domain. That just makes it more interesting, doesn’t it? Think about it. The fact that the truth is being suppressed is more interesting than the truth itself. Why would you want this kept secret unless you had something to hide? You can try to ridicule me and make me look like a fool, but I won’t be silenced. There are other ways to tell this story. This is the modern world now. Information wants to be free. There are bulletin boards and chat rooms that would devour this type of thing, giving it a life of its own. All I have to do is log in and start to tell the world everything I know. It’s not about money anymore. It’s about the truth. You’ve misjudged me, Mr. Roux, if you think that all I care about is money. I didn’t turn up on your doorstep trying to blackmail you. I came looking for answers.”
“And that was a mistake,” Roux said, then hung up.
Moerlen was right; the world was changing, and changing faster than it had for decades before. It was already smaller than it had been even twenty years ago with the pernicious invasion of television, but now with so many people having access to computers and those machines somehow connecting like some giant message network, it was so much more dangerous for a man like him.
This was escalating too quickly. The risk now was that it would slip out of his control. There were strings he could pull, more favors he could call in, but once the story had a life of its own there was no way he could put that genie back in the bottle. And that was what those bulletin boards and chat rooms promised to do.
Which meant he had to find another way to stop the story.
He needed to speak to someone who understood this electronic world, and the very real damage that could be done if he were to be exposed. There was one obvious choice, but given that they hadn’t talked for longer than Moerlen had been alive, it wasn’t exactly an easy call to make. The last time they’d been together Garin Braden had tried to kill him. The same thing had happened the time before. A third time and he’d start to take it personally.
He dialed the number, but he was forwarded straight to voice mail.
“Call me,” he said, then hung up.
There was nothing more to say.
Garin—his former pupil—would recognize his voice, and understand just how important it was that they talk simply because he’d swallowed his pride and reached out.
He thought about ignoring the situation and hoping the mess would just go away. The more he fought against it, the more obvious it was he had something to hide, after all. But what if it didn’t go away? What if those damned photographs led to more journalists banging on his door, asking more and more questions he couldn’t answer? He hadn’t asked for this life, even if, looking around him at the riches he had assembled across the centuries, it might look like a blessing rather than a curse. All it would take was the wrong person digging deep enough and everything would begin to unravel. The last thing he wanted to do was to have to begin a new life somewhere else. It was getting harder and harder to do that in this era of powerful computers and international cooperation.
His world, and Garin’s, was in danger of falling apart.
He punched a number on his phone again.
“Mr. Moerlen,” he said before the man on the other end of the line had had a chance to say hello. “You are right, we should meet. I will be in Paris in a couple of hours.”
“I’m so glad you’ve come to your senses, Mr. Roux. But things have changed since the last time we spoke.”
“How so?” Roux asked, not liking the sound of this.
“Remuneration, Mr. Roux.”
“Ah, so despite all of your protestations, this is about money, then? I’m disappointed.”
“Don’t be. I’m a child of the modern age. The modern age, as I’m sure you have noticed, is an expensive place to live. Let’s make it the top of the Eiffel Tower shall we?”
Moerlen named a time and hung up.
Roux wondered how much this was going to cost him. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the money. He had plenty of money, but would it ever be enough to guarantee his privacy? Pay the blackmailer once and then what? Expect him to be good for his word and never turn up on the doorstep again looking for another handout? Blackmail was a dirty business. There could never be an end to it.
Which, unfortunately for Moerlen, meant it needed to end very differently.
* * *
IT WAS A long climb.
There were a dozen tourists already on the viewing platform by the time Roux reached it.
There was no sign of Patrice Moerlen.
Roux’s plane had been refueled and would be ready to leave Orly Airport at a moment’s notice if things went the way he assumed they would. He would need to distance himself from the city for a while. A glance at his watch, an eerily precise Patek Philippe chronograph, showed that he was almost five minutes early. He hated to be early for anything; time spent waiting around was time wasted. Perhaps it was because he had so much of it he hoarded it?
A couple of tourists glanced in his direction, no doubt wondering why he had made the dizzying climb up the iron stairs and wasn’t leaning over the rail to take in the view across the city.
“Are you afraid of heights?” a small boy with a thick American accent asked him. “You can’t fall out you know. You’d have to climb and jump because of the railings, so it’s really safe.”
Roux forced a smile.
“That’s good to know.”
The boy’s mother took hold of his arm and pulled him away, muttering something about not talking to strangers.
Roux checked his watch again. Ninety seconds. Still no sign of Moerlen. And no sign of him on the stairs below, working his way up to the platform. This wasn’t good. He couldn’t control the situation. He didn’t like it when he couldn’t control the situation. The elevator doors opened behind him.
Another handful of tourists emerged, but the journalist wasn’t among them.
As the last of them stepped onto the platform, his phone rang.
He still wasn’t used to the fact that technology had advanced so quickly over the past few years that it was possible to carry a phone around wherever you were in the world, even if reception was patchy.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“I’m at the foot of the tower.”
“I’m not in the mood for games, Mr. Moerlen. You said the observation platform,” Roux said. “I am on the observation platform, you are not. How am I supposed to trust you if you can’t even keep this simple agreement? This does not auger well for our relationship.”
“What can I say? I changed my mind. I wanted to know how serious you were. Now I know.”
“Serious? I’m trying to save you from wasting any more of your life, and in the process ending your career, but it looks like you are intent on leading me off on some wild-goose chase. I don’t appreciate being treated like an idiot.”
“Save me?” Moerlen had the temerity to laugh at him. “Save yourself, you mean. You misjudged me, Mr. Roux. It was never about the money. I’ve only ever been interested in the truth. And you’ve just given it to me. Goodbye.”
Roux pressed against the viewing window, knowing there was no hope of being able to spot the damned journalist so far below.
People milled around like so many ants on the ground below. He’d read somewhere that if a person dropped a centime on its edge from this height it would cut through a man, splitting him in two. He had a problem. If he didn’t do something about Moerlen now, he might not get the opportunity again before it was too late. He had to stop that story getting out. His privacy afforded him a certain standard of living. Exposed, his life could never be the same again. It really was as simple as that. Moerlen, consciously or not, had forced his hand.
Behind him, the elevator doors began to close. He moved quickly. Two strides, three, and he reached out, sliding his hand between the doors before they could shut. He stepped inside. The silence was punctuated by the occasional disapproving tut from the woman whose boy had spoken to him before.
Roux said nothing.
He waited out the short descent, then pushed his way through the doors before they were fully open, elbowing between the next wave of tourists eager to make their way up to the observation platform without the climb.
He couldn’t see Moerlen; not that there was any guarantee the journalist had ever been there, no matter what he’d said. But if there was the slightest chance he was there, maybe watching from the safety of a nearby café to note how Roux reacted to his taunt, he had to try everything he could. If the guy wanted him to beg, then he’d beg. If he wanted to negotiate some exclusive deal to his story, then he’d negotiate it, but only if he could control it. That was what it was all about now—control.
He tried the journalist’s number again, listening for some telltale ring and all the time he turned through three hundred and sixty degrees, scanning the faces around him. Moerlen didn’t answer.
But Roux could hear a phone ringing.
He moved his own cell phone away from his ear and started to walk toward the sound.
He pushed through a family, barging between mother and father and sending the kids scattering. The commotion caused heads to turn. Roux saw one in particular, a reflexive glance followed by the fight or flight instinct kicking in.
The man ran.
“Wait!” Roux shouted.
More heads turned in his direction, everyone in the crowd thinking the call was for them.
The man didn’t stop.
He ducked his head and quickened his pace, pushing through the gathered tourists as he aimed for the open spaces of the square and the streets beyond where he hoped to disappear.
Roux tried to keep up with him but people kept getting in the way, clustering around the shadow of the tower, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the world. He shouted again, his voice carrying over the heads of the tourists, but Moerlen had worked himself into open space and began to run.
He had no intention of talking.
Moerlen offered another frantic glance over his shoulder to be sure he was leaving Roux behind. There was nothing the old man could do. He couldn’t keep up. In that moment, caught looking back, Moerlen’s foot slipped and his ankle turned as he reached the road, stumbling on the curb. He couldn’t stop himself as fear had him staggering out into the line of oncoming traffic.
A horn blared, harsh, panicked, but it was too late.
Bones and metal met in a collision. There could only ever be one outcome.
The car—a blue Peugeot—slammed on its brakes and started to slide. The car behind it, slower to react, rammed into its trunk to a cacophony of crunching metal and breaking glass.
Moerlen was the only one who didn’t make a sound.
But then, dead men had little to say.
Roux watched as people rushed toward the journalist, the first few to help while others gathered around, horrified. Roux heard someone call out that he was a doctor, the words parting the throng like the Red Sea to allow him through. Roux followed in his wake, knowing that the idiot was dead. It had never been meant to end this way. Yes, he had wanted him stopped, but he hadn’t wanted him hurt.
A woman in a heavy knit cardigan knelt over Moerlen, her hand on his throat.
She looked up at the crowd.
There was a moment when she might have said anything else, when it could have played out differently, but then she told them, “Il est mort.” And it was final.
Roux had known it from the angle of the fall, the way his body twisted on the black surface of the Parisian road.
This wasn’t what he’d wanted. All he’d wanted was a quiet life, the journalist out of it. Peace. It wasn’t a lot to ask, just to be left alone.
Roux heard the Doppler-effect sound of sirens approaching, still streets away. Someone had to have called for help. The crush of bodies eased, people moving back as if the man’s condition might be contagious. The doctor knelt beside the body.
There was a briefcase lying in the middle of the road, having spun out of the dead man’s grip.
The photographs were almost certainly still inside.
Moerlen had been emphatic that they weren’t his only copies. It was irrelevant if they were or weren’t. If the police opened that case and saw all of those versions of the old man’s face, it could only lead to questions. Roux worked his way around the crowd to the briefcase and picked it up, careful not to draw attention to himself.
As the paramedics arrived, he slipped away through the slowly thinning crowd.
3 (#ulink_5ed99401-f935-57b3-af94-f49959e21b8f)
On a winter’s nightThe present
It was minus seven degrees, closer to minus fifteen with the windchill factored in.
The extreme conditions presented their own problems for filming, including static discharge ruining shot after shot. It was just bone-chillingly cold, and Annja Creed was going snow blind with the swirling flakes twisting and churning in the air as they turned the world to white.
They were outside the tent, standing in the last bluster of the storm. An hour ago it had been like Snowmageddon out there. Now, there was air between the flakes and she could see the high walls of the castle, meaning it was the perfect time for the establishing shot of the medieval site in the heart of winter.
Annja had visited Carcassonne before, more than once, but on her previous visits the weather had always been positively tropical in comparison.
“You ready to go again, Annja?” Philippe Allard, the cameraman, asked, hoisting his camera onto his shoulder.
“Let’s do this,” she said, moving back into position.
On her mark, she waited for the thumbs-up to say that she was good to go.
She took a deep breath, letting it leak out slowly in a mist that wafted up across her face and earning her a scowl from her cameraman. His thumb went up. Annja started talking to the camera as if she hadn’t taken a three-hour break waiting for the worst of the storm to pass. An observant viewer might spot that the snow on the hillside was deeper, but their brains would quickly fill in the gaps and gloss over that inconsistency.
She knew that chunks of the footage would be cut, with other images overlaid on the soundtrack. They’d gathered plenty of fantastic material over the past couple of days. And honestly, once she was back in the studio, a fair amount of the commentary would end up being rerecorded because she was a perfectionist and couldn’t stand to watch a segment that was any less than that. So yes, you put in the work on location, but you did it knowing that, when it was all edited together, some of it would end up on the cutting room floor. Subzero conditions or no.
“Overlooked by the medieval fortress, the Cité de Carcassonne, the land behind me, has been the site of a settlement since Neolithic times. The Romans were among the first to really capitalize on its strategic position, and occupied the same hilltop until the fall of the Western Empire and the incursion of the Visigoths.” She missed a beat as the red light went off, and the cameraman lowered his lens.
“Something wrong, Philippe?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but don’t you think it’s all a bit…” He shrugged.
“Weak?” Annja suggested. “Sloppy?” She inclined her head. “How about dull? Or, heaven forbid, boring?” She folded her arms in front of her and shifted her weight, waiting to hear what he had to say.
“Wordy,” Philippe said eventually, making it sound like one of the greatest crimes that could possibly be perpetrated on TV.
She grinned. “Wordy?” Wordy she could cope with. Wordy was just another way of saying that she was talking too much and using long words. Sometimes long words were just fine. It wasn’t like she was about to parade around in a bikini trying to sex-up history in the snow.
“Want to change places?” Her grin was sly. “I’m happy to have a go behind the camera. I’m sure Doug would approve.” Doug Morrell was Annja’s producer.
“Well, my mom always said I had a face for television.” He grinned right back. “You know, what with the whole sun shining out of my ass thing, I’m definitely special.”
“No arguments from me.”
She held out her hand for the camera.
“Are you serious?”
“Why not? Consider it your audition tape.”
“More like the Christmas gag reel.”
Even so, Philippe handed over the camera and waited on the mark while Annja got the camera on her shoulder and started recording.
“Over my shoulder,” he said, waving vaguely in the direction of the fortress, “you can see a prime example of intimidation architecture. The people who built this place really didn’t like visitors, and wanted to make them work for it, giving them a long, steep hill to climb when they wanted to drop by for a friendly croissant.” He grinned. “Unsurprisingly, baguette wielders who made it that far almost certainly ended up with a pot of black coffee poured on their heads from the handy murder holes.” He bowed to Annja. “See? Food and murder. That’s what people want.”
She shook her head. “Okay, okay, I get the point. You’re hungry. Let’s wrap it up for today and go get something to eat.”
“And there was me thinking subtlety was dead.” Philippe took the camera from her.
“My treat. Go take a dip in the pool first. Warm up and work the kinks out of your muscles and concentrate on making yourself look pretty. I want to go for a drive.”
Philippe raised an expressive eyebrow.
“I feel the need for speed,” she said with a grin.
He didn’t need telling twice.
Five minutes later the tent was broken down, the gear stashed in its flight case and loaded into the trunk of their rental car.
The banter didn’t slow down during the drive back to the hotel. One thing this local hire was good at was talking. Flirting, really. Philippe had that roguish charm that all Frenchmen seemed to have, and an accent to die for. Of course she was going to buy dinner. She was a modern woman laying down a flirtatious gauntlet of her own. All work and no play makes Annja a dull girl, she said to herself, sweeping down the narrow road into the town proper.
The snow had gathered on the surface, reducing traction.
Annja drove carefully, enjoying the process of driving stick on a road that really wanted her to work for the privilege of driving down it.
She parked outside the hotel, and made a promise to meet Philippe in an hour. He double tapped on the roof to let her know he’d gotten the gear out of the trunk. She caught a glimpse of him looking at her—trying not to be seen to be looking—as he went inside.
France certainly had its plus points.
Annja turned up the music, pushed herself farther into the driver’s seat and opened up the engine.
She would have killed to be on a motorcycle instead of cooped up in a car, icy wind in her hair, red-lining it around the country roads… There was nothing like the freedom of a bike on open road, but for now the car would have to suffice. The local radio station was running an eighties marathon, which helped, offering up cheesy driving tunes. An hour in her own company would do her the world of good. Jane Weidlin sang about driving in the rush hour. The juxtaposition was brilliant. Snowcapped hills and empty roads couldn’t have been farther from the choking urban slow-death that was Manhattan’s rush hour.
She drove with only the vaguest idea of where she was heading, but it wasn’t as if it would be difficult to find her way back to the town. It was pretty much a case of all roads lead to Carcassonne around here. Worst case, she had the satnav app on her phone to fall back on, assuming she could get a signal in the mountains with the snow worsening again.
Twenty minutes from the hotel, she’d passed a grand total of four cars on the road, and seen the same number coming the other way.
That had changed less than a minute later.
A glance in her rearview mirror offered the glint of a silver car—a Mercedes—half a mile or so behind her. The driver didn’t seem to be in a hurry, but the power of the big car was deceptive, the distance between them closing fast.
A signpost on the hard shoulder promised a right-hand fork that would work its way back around to Carcassonne, so she took it. It wasn’t exactly hot-date territory, but tall, dark and brooding was better than room service for one.
The side road led her onto a second, narrower lane that hadn’t been plowed, forcing her to slow down to stop the rear wheels fishtailing on the icy surface. Snow topped the old stone walls and high hedges lining the road. Annja dropped her speed again, down to thirty, tapping her fingers on the wheel in time with the beat of Simon Le Bon’s vocal promising he was on the hunt, after her.
She joined in with the chorus, remembering another time in France, another wolf. The Beast of Gévaudan, right at the beginning of this whole mad life she was now living.
The road curved up ahead. There were no tracks in the virgin snow. The sound of it crunching under her tires was a constant undertone beneath the music.
The snow-laden trees dumped their burden in a whisper ahead of her, and as the fine dusting settled, she saw a battered red tractor lumber across her line of sight. Even though her vehicle was going slowly, the sheet of ice under the snow meant that Annja wasn’t going to be able to stop in time. She felt the wheels lose their grip and the car start to slide. Thinking fast, she turned into the slide, pushing the rental up onto the grass at the edge of the road, the passenger’s side scraping through the leaves of the hedge, barely inches from the unforgiving impact of the wall.
Even so, there was precious little room to spare, and if the driver of the tractor didn’t do likewise she’d end up forced into the wall.
Annja gritted her teeth, wrestling with the wheel as it wanted to turn relentlessly back toward the oncoming tractor.
The music cut out as she lost the signal.
The only sound inside the car was the scrape of leaves against the fender.
The tractor moved over to the side, leaving Annja just enough room to squeeze through without wrecking the rental. The hood shivered under the impact of another snow dump from overhanging trees. She nearly jumped out of her skin. Her reactions were good. Better than good. She had an almost preternatural control of her body, and even in the unfamiliar car, driving an unfamiliar stick shift, she was able to ramp it up less than an inch from the wall, and scrape along the hedge lining it, without totaling the car, and come out on the other side.
That was close, she thought.
Too close.
She eased on the brakes and came to gradual stop twenty feet down the road, and turned in her seat to see if the farmer was okay. He seemed to have taken the near-collision in his stride, not that she could see his face.
Maybe it was an everyday occurrence? After all, the tractor looked plenty beat-up.
And as far as Annja knew, maybe it was.
The tractor rumbled on its way relentlessly.
It disappeared out of sight, greeted by the sound of a blaring horn. The Mercedes. It was considerably wider than her rental car, and wasn’t going to have a lot of success getting around the tractor. She guessed that this was what counted as congestion in this part of the world.
Annja drove even slower for the next couple of miles, bringing the needle down under the twenty mark, and keeping her eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead, expecting the unexpected to be lurking just around the bend. The snowfall thickened in the air ahead. The wipers were hypnotic, swinging back and forth, back and forth, but as fast as they went they couldn’t cope with the gathering swirl of the snowstorm.
A quick glance at the dashboard clock promised she’d have just about enough time to sneak a shower before she hooked up with Philippe for dinner.
She didn’t see another vehicle until the huge castle was in view on the horizon, a blur in the white. The lane began to widen. It was only then that she realized just how tightly she’d been gripping the wheel.
Annja glanced in the rearview mirror. The silver Mercedes had managed to work its way around the tractor and was back on her tail. She could see the thin-faced driver leaning into the steering column, and a brute of a man crushed into the passenger seat beside him. The Mercedes drew up close behind her as she reached the next junction. She took advantage of the moment to study the two men in her mirror.
The driver revved his engine, meeting her gaze in the mirror. Annja didn’t look away. She was in that kind of mood.
She used the blinkers to signal a right and eased out, taking the road back toward Carcassonne.
The Mercedes followed.
Of course, it was the logical way to go, back into the town. That didn’t mean they were following her.
The snowplows had been out on this stretch of road, making the going decidedly less treacherous.
After a hundred yards, she pulled over to the side of the road, allowing the Mercedes to overtake her, but even as it did, she knew it was just as easy to follow someone from in front as it was from behind. She watched the Mercedes disappear into the swirling white of the snow.
There was something really off about the whole encounter.
4 (#ulink_6e55db59-88c4-5b93-8cb7-95fa90913afe)
The call came out of the blue.
Garin listened to the voice on the other end of the line, unsure whom he was talking to and incredibly curious as to how he had managed to get hold of his private number. Both problems were tempered by the fact that the man had a job that he was interested in. It wasn’t every day a gig turned up that piqued his interest, and this time it wasn’t all about the money.
“Obviously, given the nature of the artifacts I am looking to acquire, this is a sensitive undertaking,” the voice said. “But I have been led to understand that you are the man for the job.”
“Well, I’d say that rather depends on a combination of things, but right now I’m listening, which puts you ahead of the game. So, let’s put the bush over there and stop beating about it, shall we?”
“By all means.”
“What you are looking for?” After the lure of the cloak-and-dagger approach, the worst thing that could happen now was that voice would spoil everything by asking for something mundane. There was nothing more disappointing. There was no joy in locating something bland, even if it involved a great deal of money. It was all about how you valued time, and sure, Garin had more of it than most, but his time was the most precious commodity he possessed, meaning giving it up had to be worth something. And even then he might be inclined to refuse. No, the thrill of the chase, the great hunt, the glittering prize…they were all part of the package. If one of them were missing from a job, the likelihood of him getting out of bed to deal with it were poor.
“The initial task is a relatively simple retrieval job. I would like you to locate the private papers of Guillaume Manchon, a court scribe at the church court in Rouen for the years 1430 and ’31.”
Manchon? The name rang a distant bell, but that was nothing next to the Klaxon the date and place set off in his head. The year 1431 was burned in his memory; it was the end and the beginning of all things. It was the date of Joan of Arc’s trial and execution and the beginning of the curse that saw him walking this earth more than five hundred years later.
“You have my attention,” he said, which was true. Anything that pointed back in that direction was intriguing.
“I had rather hoped I might. Alas, the papers are no longer there, so you will need to be, ah…creative. Guillaume made his notes in French, and they were later translated into Latin with five copies made. The French original and three of the transcribed Latin copies are in private collections, and unfortunately getting access to them is next to impossible.”
“So by retrieval you mean theft?” Garin decided to come straight out with it. Breaking the law wasn’t a deal breaker for a man like Garin Braden. More often than not a brief flirtation with the dark side only added to the thrill.
“Ah, no, no. Actually, I want you to find me one of the missing copies.”
“How can you be so sure that they still exist? Do you have a lead on one of them? Evidence, perhaps, that there is another copy that hasn’t been destroyed?”
“Sadly, no. I am laboring purely under the apprehension that what is lost can be found, and that you are the right man to track them down.”
“Remind me again who recommended me?”
“Remind? I didn’t actually say a first time. Suffice it to say it was a most impeccable source or I wouldn’t be talking to you now.”
“That’s really not saying very much, is it?”
“And yet it speaks volumes, if you care to think about it for a moment.”
Garin wasn’t so sure.
“Okay, let’s assume this mysterious benefactor knows his stuff and that I am indeed the man for the job. Why do you want these papers? What’s so fascinating? What makes them special, apart from the fact they’re nearly six hundred years old obviously?” More often than not, the answer to that question was more money than sense, with the buyer willing to throw cash at some mythical El Dorado.
“Please, don’t take me for a fool, Mr. Braden. I am sure that you know full well why a scholar such as myself would be interested in documents created in Rouen in that particular year.”
“Do I?”
“Put it this way—if you don’t, then I will have to reconsider the recommendation, and believe that I have made a gross error in judgment.”
“So these documents relate to the trial of Joan of Arc?”
He could almost hear the man’s smirk as he said, “That’s more like it. No need to be coy. As I said, these papers are just the first of several artifacts I am seeking. In the interests of full disclosure, I will email a complete list once we have agreed upon a fee for your services.”
Garin’s mind raced to an extortionate figure; after all, if the man was as determined to get hold of these artifacts as he sounded, he was ripe for a little extortion. “Three million, plus expenses,” he said, plucking the number out of thin air. He expected the man to counter with a lower offer and a back-and-forth of offers and counters to follow. It didn’t.
“Dollars or euros?”
“Euros,” he said without missing a heartbeat. “And this is purely for the papers. Anything else I turn up is extra.” It was a fishing expedition, of course. The hook baited, he wanted to see just how desperate the man was to get his hands on these lost words. “If I can’t find them, you don’t pay me. Fair?”
“Of course.”
The man hung up without another word.
Garin was glad that the caller could not see the smile that had spread across his face.
He wasn’t smiling because he was looking forward to the challenge of the hunt, though that would normally be the case. Garin wasn’t the kind of man who chased legends. He left that sort of thing to Annja Creed. He wasn’t interested in history’s monsters. He had gone toe-to-toe with more than his fair share of them. No, he was smiling because he knew the exact location of one of the two missing transcriptions of Guillaume Manchon’s papers.
They were currently locked up safe and sound in a vault in Roux’s house.
Sometimes it was just too easy.
5 (#ulink_bebe43c2-a297-5ffd-b74d-b634e9800b82)
By the time Annja had left the hotel with her cameraman, the sun had started to sink in the sky. The late-afternoon chill had turned into full-on cold.
She couldn’t dislodge the thought that the two men in the Mercedes had been following her. Had it been Brooklyn instead of the South of France she would have been worried about carjacking, or that insurance scam where people deliberately rammed into you for the claim. But without them mysteriously reappearing on her tail, there was nothing for her to actually worry about.
“Are you okay?” Philippe asked as they drove away from the restaurant. The food had been good, rustic farmhouse fare. Good, plain, healthy, but tasty, too. Farm fresh. It had been his recommendation. She was always happy to take advantage of local knowledge when it came to food, stay off the tourist track, keep it cheap, keep it wholesome. “You seem distracted.”
“It’s all good,” she promised. “Just thinking.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
She chuckled at that. “Isn’t it always?”
They were heading back to the site to take a few night shots with the castle lit up in the distance. It was always good to hit the atmospheric stuff when the sun was down. It added to the mystique.
Philippe kept talking, telling more stories about growing up in the area and days on the farmhouse where his grandma would stain her toes purple crushing grapes and his grandfather would nurture cheese that smelled almost exactly the same as his grandma’s purple feet. Annja smiled, jealous of the trappings of a normal childhood. Every few minutes she’d glance in the rearview mirror, only for her heart to skip a beat if she spotted the shape of a car behind them, silver or not. She had to snap out of it; she was jumping at silver ghosts.
The spot they’d been filming at earlier was covered in three inches of fresh snowfall, though mercifully the night was clear and crisp, not so much as a flurry to be seen. What had worked during the day wasn’t as suitable for the night shot, and she’d never intentionally put herself in the exact same position—that would only serve to make the segment look like some weird time-lapse photography experiment. They moved around, looking for a better angle where the spotlights accentuated the harsh old stones and served as a great reminder of just how old the fortress was.
“Inside could work,” Philippe suggested. “A different aspect, very mean and moody. It would give the shoot an air of foreboding.” He opened his case as he talked, pulling out the camera and beginning the prep work before they started shooting properly.
“I get what you’re saying, but a distance shot, looking up at me with the wall rising to tower over me and really highlight the insignificance of man in this harsh winter landscape, could look pretty impressive.”
“You’re the boss,” he said, hoisting the camera onto his shoulder.
Annja skimmed through her rough notes, familiarizing herself with the facts even though she’d read them dozens of times and knew them inside out. It was a compulsion. She could recite this stuff in her sleep. That was just the way her mind worked. She couldn’t wipe it away even if she wanted to.
She swept her hair from her face, took a deep breath and gave him the nod.
The moment the red light glowed in the dark beside his face she was in her element. The spotlight on the side of the camera threw her features into stark relief, the perfect accompaniment for the tale of murder, witchcraft and heresy she was about to tell.
“In his book Practica inquisitionis heretice pravitatis—Conduct of the Inquisition into Heretical Wickedness—the Inquisitor Bernard Gui wrote a section related to sorcerers and diviners and the invokers of demons.” She considered that for a moment. “His work proves beyond the shadow of any doubt that the Inquisition was concerned with the idea of witchcraft one hundred and sixty-five years before the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum, and refutes the notion that paganism in France had been suppressed by the year 1000…”
“Look out!” someone shouted.
Almost too late, Annja launched herself away from the wall, barely managing to shove Philippe aside as a huge piece of masonry hurtled down from far above, shattering on impact as it cracked the ancient flagstones. Philippe stumbled backward, desperately trying to cling to his camera even with his balance gone. Annja reacted faster, already looking up at the top of the wall, at a loss to understand how the huge slab could have fallen, and not seeing anyone on top of the wall who might have thrown it.
“Are you all right?”
She turned to see an older man in a wheelchair.
The woman pushing him had turned an unhealthy shade of white.
Annja offered a wry smile. “Thanks to you,” she said, dusting herself off.
“I don’t even know what possessed me to look up,” he said. “I was just enjoying listening to your recounting of our ancient history. I assume it’s for a news bulletin? Has something happened?”
“Oh no,” she said, realizing his misunderstanding. “I work for an American cable TV show called Chasing History’s Monsters. We’re filming a segment about Bernard Gui, the Inquisitor.”
The man offered a polite smile that spoke volumes. There was no reason why he should have heard of the show, and despite his cultured English there was a strong trace of Italian in his accent. She noticed that his left hand was trembling, just a slight tremor. He saw the direction of her gaze and offered a rueful smile. “My affliction,” he said, meaning the tremor, but it could equally have been a reference to the macabre history of the place.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s perfectly all right, my dear. I’m just glad my big mouth could save the day and that you and your colleague are in one piece.”
Before she could thank him, he craned his neck and said something rapidly, in Italian, to the woman behind him. She turned him around without a word, and as she wheeled him away, the old man offered the briefest of waves. Annja watched the woman struggle with the wheelchair in the snow, following the tracks they’d made a few moments earlier as they returned the way they’d come.
Philippe was still checking the lens and various attachments on his camera for damage when Annja went to help him back to his feet; she rather liked the fact he’d stayed down on his butt in the snow, more worried about the camera than he was about himself.
“Did it survive?” she asked.
“Looks like the spotlight’s broken, meaning we can’t shoot in the dark, but otherwise everything looks good. It could be worse. Still, it means we’re not going to be getting anything else done tonight.”
“Okay, let’s draw a line under today and start from scratch tomorrow.”
6 (#ulink_9b99e83b-82c8-5f07-b913-2fd475c3eae2)
The call was unwelcome when it came, just as most telephone calls were, as far as the old man was concerned.
Roux sank into a large leather recliner. He had been doing his best to try to enjoy the old black-and-white movie on the huge flat-screen TV, which was the room’s one and only concession to modern living. The buttery leather of the armchair was almost enough to transport him back the two hundred years to the time it had been made. Casablanca was quite possibly the greatest film ever made, and Ingrid Bergman the most beautiful woman ever to grace the silver screen. She was certainly one of the most beautiful women he had ever met, and he had met his share of beautiful women across the centuries. Even as fashions changed what people professed to be beautiful, there was never any mistaking true beauty. Of course, the fair lady had only ever seen him as an old man, but Roux had had the privilege of watching her age with grace and poise, and seen her slowly fade while he had remained the same.
That was the nature of his existence.
He’d been forced to drift out of her life before she noticed he wasn’t aging as she had.
Although she would always be the lovely woman captured on celluloid.
The temptation to ignore the call was great. He hated to have his privacy invaded. He couldn’t understand the obsession that the modern generation had with always being available. Time alone with one’s thoughts was precious. He had an answering service. It would be easy enough to check any messages once the movie was over. But the caller was persistent, dialing again. And again when he ignored it a third time. It could, of course, be Annja. Or Garin—he always had impeccable timing.
Roux paused the image on the screen with Bogart and Bergman close to a kiss that might never happen.
He didn’t recognize the number.
“Yes?” One word, not offering his name or number. There were few people who knew how to get hold of him. He wasn’t in the habit of sharing his secrets, and he considered the sanctity of his own home the most precious secret of all.
“Have you heard from Annja?”
He didn’t recognize the voice, despite the obvious familiarity the opening gambit suggested. “I’m sorry, who is this?” The old man had met a lot of people during his long life. Some, quite simply, didn’t make enough impact to be worth remembering.
“My name? My name is Cauchon.”
“What do you want?”
“Want? Nothing. I just thought you might want to be sure your precious Annja is safe, that is all. Consider it a public service.”
The phone clicked and fell silent before it was replaced by the dial tone.
He didn’t like it.
Forget the fact that the stranger had found his number, forget the fact that he knew his connection to Annja, which was hardly public knowledge. Why would someone call to ask if she was safe if not to goad him because the person knew for certain that she was anything but?
Roux punched in her number and waited for it to ring at the other end.
It seemed to go on forever.
Cauchon.
The name was in there somewhere, locked away in some dim, distant memory. No more than that. Truth be told, he’d made a habit of forgetting the names and voices of those people who, when it came right down to it, meant nothing.
It was harder to forget those who did.
“Hi,” Annja’s perpetually perky voice answered, and he felt a wave of relief even though he knew she was more than capable of looking after herself.
“Annja,” he said, only to be interrupted by the rest of the message.
“Sorry, I can’t take your call right now—you know what to do.”
Voice mail.
The devil’s own damned invention. Knowing that he could leave a message was no help.
He hung up.
She’d see that he’d called and would call him back. He didn’t contact her unless it was important. That was the nature of their relationship. It wasn’t about frivolity and social niceties. There were no “How are you doing?” calls or “Happy Birthday” moments.
Of course, now that he was rattled, there was no way he’d be able to concentrate on anything other than Annja, so there was no real point in pressing Play and waiting to see if this time maybe Bogie would get the girl.
His phone rang a few seconds later, jerking him back into reality.
Roux answered, half expecting it to be this Cauchon calling to mock him again. “Yes?”
“You called?” Annja said, sounding like she was right behind him. He felt like a weight was lifted off his shoulders. And again, he couldn’t say why he’d been worried, not really; she was a force of nature was Annja Creed. He felt stupid for worrying.
“Ah, yes, sorry, my dear,” he said, offering an easy deflection. “I must have dialed the wrong number. Fat fingers and all that.”
“No worries,” she said, then paused as if she was on the verge of saying something, but decided against it.
“Is everything all right?”
“Well, yes, I guess. I mean, nothing’s actually wrong, but it probably depends on your definition of all right.”
“Talk to me, Annja. Right now. Tell me what’s going on.” He didn’t care if she could hear the edge in his voice.
“It was the weirdest thing. We were filming less than an hour ago…”
“Are you still in Carcassonne?”
“Yes. I was doing a piece to camera below the walls of the fortress, and somehow a huge chunk of masonry came crashing down. It could have been pretty nasty.”
He closed his eyes. “But you aren’t hurt?”
“We’re fine. The camera took a battering, but we’re not even talking cuts and bruises. It was a lucky escape.”
Roux didn’t say anything. His mind raced. Cauchon’s call took on a darker meaning, taking it beyond the strange into threatening. It wasn’t a coincidence. Live six hundred years and a person learns that there’s no such thing. It’s all cause and effect. He almost told her about the peculiar call, but there was no point in worrying her before he knew what the hell was going on.
“And you’re sure it was an accident?”
“There was no one on the ramparts, if that’s what you mean. Don’t worry. It’s not like I haven’t done this before,” she said. “Maybe I’ll come up and visit you at the chateau when we’ve wrapped things up here. We’ll spend Christmas in front of an open fire roasting chestnuts and toasting marshmallows or whatever the French do.”
“Sounds lovely,” he promised her.
She hung up.
He needed someone to try to trace where Cauchon’s call originated, but no doubt it had run through a dozen satellite relays and masking services to make that all but impossible, but if anyone could do it, it was Garin.
7 (#ulink_292eeb80-e48b-5433-8b1b-e337d44a6605)
“Roux, you old bastard, what an unexpected and, if I might say so, delightful pleasure,” Garin said, laying it on thick. The universe worked in mysterious ways, he thought, smiling to himself. He’d been agonizing over what excuse to use as a pretext to call the old man, even going so far as to suggest a good old-fashioned Christmas dinner at the chateau, just the three of them. “What can I do you for?” Apart from liberate Guillaume Manchon’s papers from your vault. Though, if he stole Guillaume Manchon’s papers during a cozy visit, the wagging finger of suspicion would point toward him—but it always was. And Roux would forgive him; he always did.
They were peas in a pod—him and the old man. Partners in crime. They were, even without the blood bond, family. They needed each other. What was a little theft and profiteering against a backdrop as profound as that?
“I need your help,” Roux answered.
Interesting, Garin thought. The old man never made a habit of asking for anything lest he be beholden to someone. He’d negotiate, blackmail or manipulate Garin into getting what he wanted before he would say please. This wasn’t exactly uncharted territory, but it was seldom-ventured waters. He knew Roux well. There were a lot of things he was unable or unwilling to try to deal with, including technology and murder.
“So who do you want killed?” he laughed, only half joking.
“It’s the exact opposite…”
“You want someone brought back to life? I’m good, but I’m not even that good.”
“Shut up, Garin.”
“Is that any way to ask for help?”
“I’ve already asked. I’m not asking twice. Now stop being an ass. I’ve just had a most peculiar telephone call…”
“A mouth breather? I hate those.”
“I need you to see if you can trace the call.”
“I’m assuming this won’t be as simple as hitting last-number redial? You have tried that, right? I know you’re not exactly down with the kids.”
“I’m not an idiot.”
“Time?”
“Twenty minutes ago, maybe a little less,” Roux said. The old man was using that annoyingly matter-of-fact tone he always had when he was worried. That was the giveaway. There was no banter. No back and forth. He was genuinely worried. That meant Garin, in turn, was fascinated—because anything that worried the old man was worth digging into.
“On this number? Not the main line of the house?”
“This number. Can you do anything?”
“Probably. There are ways and means. Nothing’s truly hidden in this modern world. I’m going to assume this wasn’t a crank call, so what is it all about?”
“The caller wanted me to believe he had hurt Annja.”
Garin fell silent for a moment. That changed things. Annja was neutral territory. They were both protective of her. She was the glue that kept their dysfunctional family together. The implications zipped through his mind like a runaway train. First, it wasn’t impossible that someone had joined the dots and learned of the connection between the two of them. It wasn’t a secret, but it wasn’t public knowledge, either.
Then there was the fact the old man was paranoid and didn’t share this number with anyone, including the phone company who serviced it, having used his charms a long time ago to seduce the operator and have the private number “lost.” That meant the caller had gone to a hell of a lot of trouble to track down a number that to all intents and purposes hadn’t existed for the best part of fifty years. Third, which was completely selfish in origin, if the mysterious caller knew about Annja, odds were that they’d found the connections between the old man and him. That made it personal. That was a world of inconvenience he’d rather avoid.
“I’m on my way,” he said, realizing he’d just been given the key to the house.
“There really is no need to come running,” Roux said. “Just find out where the call came from. If you want to impress me, find out who made the call. Let me know when you have any news.”
The old man had hung up before Garin could bluster about how he was heading over no matter what he said. Of course, that didn’t mean he had to sit on his hands.
Garin was good with machines. He understood their universal language in a sense that far surpassed his knowledge of most things in this life. Most, but not all. He smiled at the woman who stood in the bedroom doorway, shadows not leaving much to the imagination.
“I just have to make this call. I’ll be right there. Why don’t you get started without me?” She turned on her heel. He enjoyed how her curves were accentuated by the soft light. Simple things offered the greatest pleasures in life. That was a life lesson worth hundreds of years, right there.
Another was, why sit hunched over a computer trying to track a call when there was a delicious woman waiting to do unspeakable things to you in the bedroom?
He made the call.
The drowsy voice on the other end of the phone didn’t sound pleased to hear from him. Garin looked at the clock and then remembered his favorite hacker was half a world away. Instantly making the time zone adjustments, he apologized and said, “Sorry. I figured you’d have the phone turned off if you were crashing.”
“Garin,” was all the hacker could manage for a several seconds.
“I’ve got a job for you.”
“Usual rates?”
“Do it right and I’ll throw in a nice bonus,” Garin said, and started to fill him in on what he needed.
“Leave it with me,” the hacker told him. “Assuming the caller tried to mask his whereabouts, I’ll set about stripping away his anonymity. That’s always the fun part with these guys. First, I’ll send a crawler into the satellite stream and try to backtrack the signal. That should give us a rough location pretty quickly, then I’ll start narrowing the focus. Give me a couple of hours. But you know the odds are it’s a burner phone and there’ll be nothing to find at the other end apart from the batch number.”
“That’s not a dead end. Batches go to shops, shops have CCTV. Get me everything you can, starting with a location. I’ll take it from there.”
He hung up and made another call. He would need to have his plane ready within the hour. That gave him plenty of time to finish what he’d started in the other room and to shower before he left for the airport.
8 (#ulink_69443889-56bf-55b2-961d-be41402128e1)
Cauchon pulled the SIM card from the phone and snapped it in two.
It was becoming increasingly difficult to keep the smile from his face. He had Roux exactly where he wanted him. For the time being, at least, and that was a fact worthy of celebration.
Roux would speak to the girl. She would tell him about the near-miss and the falling rocks at Carcassonne, and the old man would know it wasn’t accidental. He would know that she had been lucky—lucky to have been warned just in the nick of time that she was in the path of the masonry, sent falling at his word. And for that moment Roux would know Cauchon had had her life in his hands and could easily have snuffed it out had he so wanted.
The change in the tone of Roux’s voice as he’d mentioned Annja’s name had been delicious. It was all the confirmation he had needed to know he was right. He had never intended to kill the young woman, just shake her up, and only then so that she could pass the scare on to the old man so he would realize his mysterious caller meant business.
The old man was going to pay.
Cauchon played his fingers across the row of SIM cards he had lined up on the table in front of him, each one still attached to the credit-card-size retainers.
He had no intention of making it easy for Roux. That would only serve to take the sport out of it. Cauchon knew Roux wouldn’t turn to the police. That was an avenue that was never open to him. Far more likely was him taking matters into his own hands. Cauchon welcomed the idea. Let the old bastard fight back. Breaking him then would be so much more satisfying.
It didn’t matter if the girl herself believed that the incident was actually an accident. No doubt Roux would disabuse her of that notion when he talked to her, and that would keep her looking over her shoulder, on edge. Uncomfortable.
Cauchon was banking on the belief that Roux was protective of her. He had plenty of reasons to believe he was right.
He watched the hands of the clock on the wall slowly turn.
He wanted to give the old man time to find out what had happened and then more time to think about the call, to let his words get under his skin. He wanted him to start worrying, to imagine what might happen next. He wanted him to be constantly worrying, doubting, looking at strangers and thinking, Are you the one trying to get to me?
And then he wanted to visit the man’s worst nightmares upon him.
9 (#ulink_f6060d85-43ad-58bd-9601-659955267a40)
They drove back to the hotel in near-silence, Philippe constantly tuning the radio in search of a song that wasn’t going to get on his nerves. Obviously it wasn’t about the music. It didn’t matter what he found. Nothing matched his mood. Annja resisted the temptation to lean over and kill the radio. She concentrated on the road, checking her rearview mirror a couple of times more than she normally would have.
As much as she didn’t want to admit it, Roux’s call had disturbed her. She knew he was always concerned about her well-being, but that the first thing he said was to question whether the incident at Carcassonne was an accident…that was a little paranoid, even for him. So she was watching, even if she wasn’t sure what she was watching for. Of course it had crossed her mind that the falling masonry could have been something other than a freakish accident, especially as Roux had chosen that moment to call her. Annja had been in the old man’s orbit enough not to believe in coincidence. He hadn’t misdialed as he’d said. He was checking up on her. And once her mind started down that path she knew it wasn’t an accident.
She thought about the silver Mercedes.
Cause and effect? Or seeing patterns where there were none?
“What do you want to do about food?”
“I like the way you think.” She grinned.
Philippe shrugged and started to fiddle with the radio again. “I’m French. We love good food and good company.”
“And I sure could use a drink.” Annja tried to stay focused, but her thoughts kept going back to her conversation with Roux.
“Now I’m liking the way you’re thinking,” Philippe murmured as he glanced out the side window. Clever. She could be friends with this one, she decided.
“I think we might even stretch it to sharing a bottle,” she suggested.
It wasn’t long before her mind was elsewhere though, as the horn of a car traveling toward them on the other side of the road blared, causing her to admit she’d drifted toward the middle of the road. Instinctively, she jerked to correct the drift, overcompensating and yanking the wheel too hard in the other direction, which had the seat belts bite hard into their shoulders.
“Whoa, there, speedy. I know you want me, but let’s get to the bar in one piece, eh?”
“You wish,” she snapped back, regretting it the moment the words left her mouth. She tightened her grip on the wheel and eased her foot off the accelerator. “Sorry, it’s been a weird day.”
“All the more reason to end it with a friend,” Philippe said, and she realized he was right.
“I need to blow off some steam.”
“I think I can help with that,” the cameraman said with a wry smile.
“I’m sure you can.”
10 (#ulink_b7c528fe-58c8-5b17-9848-a03bd1d53255)
Garin was in the air within the hour.
He leaned back in the seat as soon as he was able to switch to automatic pilot. He wouldn’t normally have taken the stick himself. It was late, he’d been working hard all day, then playing harder, but there was something about being up in the clouds, surrounded on all sides by the stars, the lights blinking on the wings, the city laid out below in a landscape of molded light, that clung to the world. It was one of the most beautiful sights, so completely manmade, unlike many of the other spectacular things he’d seen in his life.
It was a sight he could never grow tired of.
Up here, away from the world, he could think.
His hacker had already come through with the information Roux was looking for, but he wasn’t going to pass it on to the old man yet. Information was as good as currency. And given he wanted something in exchange for it, he wasn’t about to say anything until they were face-to-face. Garin was good at reading people. That particular skill had made him a lot of money. He was also good at exploiting weaknesses and vulnerabilities. He fully intended to make himself indispensable to the old man and, once he was on the inside, pull the strings.
Garin was determined to get his hands on Guillaume Manchon’s papers, but not simply to hand over to his mysterious client. He wanted to know what was in them himself. Knowledge. If it wasn’t money, it was knowledge that greased the wheels in this life. And then he’d decide if they were worth more than the agreed sum, and just how desperately his buyer wanted them. It wasn’t personal. It was purely business. Roux would understand one day.
Garin had been surprised at the ease with which the hacker had traced the source of the call and turned up the information the old man was looking for, but then, a location was worthless in this day and age when you could circumnavigate the globe in twenty-four hours. The caller would have moved. Potentially a long way. Even so, he’d paid the hacker a hefty bonus to keep on digging and see what else he could turn up.
Now he was more interested in his own questions, like what it was that had gotten Roux spooked about the call, and how it was connected to Annja and the medieval town of Carcassonne. Because there was always a connection. Nothing in life was random when it came to trouble—especially the kind of trouble Roux brought to the party.
It had been a while since Garin had last heard from Annja, but that was hardly a surprise, given that he was once again persona non grata thanks to a little greed on his part. He couldn’t exactly remember what it was he was supposed to have done, but obviously it had offended her sensibilities. She didn’t approve of the way he lived his life. He didn’t take it to heart. But it would be best for both of them if she would just learn to shrug things off. Nothing was that important in the grand scheme. And it wasn’t as if he actively set out to piss her off; that was just an unconsidered consequence of his actions. Surely the fact he didn’t mean to do it should count for something?
He glanced at his watch. He was making good time.
The radio burst into life with a request from the airport.
The short hop had taken an hour, and the time had rushed by so quickly that he’d almost missed the twenty-minute descent and wound up bringing the jet down a little more sharply than intended. With no passengers to complain about the steep angle of descent and hitting the runway hard, he wasn’t worried. He’d called ahead, so his car was already waiting for him in the parking lot.
He allowed himself a smug, satisfied smile; it felt good to be him.
Next stop, the chateau.
Once he was inside those doors, in Roux’s inner sanctum, the rest would be child’s play.
Garin lived for this kind of stuff.
Even after all these years, he enjoyed it when the apprentice could get one over on the master.
But then, it was all a game to him, and money was just a way of keeping score.
11 (#ulink_a845d708-92d1-5fee-bc4f-87da1e4c3e48)
Roux never seemed surprised to see him.
It was as if he knew Garin wouldn’t do as he was told.
The old man’s expression was utterly unsurprised when he opened the door to find him on the doorstep.
“You have news?” Roux asked as he ushered him inside.
“Carcassonne,” Garin said, pausing just long enough to make sure that he was well inside Roux’s home before he said it. He had to make sure the old man couldn’t just close the door in his face now that he had what he wanted. He wouldn’t have put it past him. They had a peculiar relationship these days. Once upon a time Garin had been the student, Roux his mentor, master. He knew the old man better than anyone alive—better than himself probably. He knew he wasn’t averse to using people to get what he wanted, then discarding them when he had it.
That one word shook the old man.
Without another word he led the way through passageways of priceless oil paintings and previously lost antiquities into his study. The wealth assembled in the house was beyond counting. Roux crossed the room, straight to the old freestanding globe beside his leather-inlaid desk, and opened the world up to get at the drinks inside.
“I take it you are thirsty?” Without waiting for an answer, he uncapped a bottle of brandy aged to the point of musky perfection. He handed a snifter to Garin and sat in the leather armchair beside the guttering coals of the open fireplace. Garin sniffed at the liquid, knowing it dated back to the time of Napoléon.
“All right, now that we’re being all civilized, do you want to tell me what’s so special about Carcassonne?” he asked.
“Annja’s there,” Roux said as though that answered everything.
“So?”
“So, think. I get an anonymous call asking if I’ve heard from her. When I eventually get hold of her, I find that she’s had a near-miss with half a castle wall, and both the phone call and the near-catastrophe originate from Carcassonne.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that—two events, same town. So you think your caller fired a warning shot? But was it meant to kill her, or screw with you?”
“I don’t know. Yet. But we have to work under the impression that option number one is true, and just hope the answer to number two is the reality we’re actually facing.”
“Motive? Why would someone want to kill Annja? Revenge?” There were any number of people she’d crossed in the past who could come looking for some kind of payback. It wasn’t impossible even if it was improbable. But who, then, would tie her to Roux? That changed everything in Garin’s mind. It surely meant the trail ran instead from him to her. They hadn’t exactly broadcasted their relationship. Roux was the kind of man who lived his life in the shadows even if his protégé was one for living in the spotlight.
“Possibly, but I’m inclined to send the questions the other way. Who would want to draw me out by threatening her? Who would have the wherewithal to get hold of my phone number and orchestrate something like this?”
“It’s not that hard to get hold of a telephone number. Telecommunications companies don’t exactly have the most effective security systems in place, even given your special arrangements, so we can assume he bribed someone, or has an element of technological know-how. The thing is, it didn’t take long to source the call, did it? So he can’t be that clever.”
“I suppose not,” Roux said thoughtfully. He raised his snifter to his lips and took a slow swallow, then rolled the remaining brandy around the glass. “Of course, it would be a lot easier if the caller already knew the number, or knew someone who did.”
Garin could feel the old man’s stare burning into him.
“You can’t really believe that I have anything to do with this?”
Roux said nothing.
“Do you really think so little of me?”
Roux said nothing.
“Seriously, this has nothing to do with me. I was in bed with a beautiful woman when you called. I would tell you who so you could corroborate this, but I didn’t get around to getting her name. I’ve got nothing to do with this. Come on, Roux, we go back a long way. You know I wouldn’t hurt Annja.”
“No, but you’d screw with me, so if you knew she was never in danger?”
“She’s one of us, Roux. She’s just like you and me. It’s the three of us against the world.”
“Is it? Is that how you really see things? I thought it was, but after the Pass of the Moor’s Last Sigh it’s hard to believe you sometimes. I think the things you want are very different from the things we want.”
“Okay, so I like the finer things in life. I would say that’s not a crime, but obviously sometimes it is. But you know me. You know I’d never hurt her.” It was true, and he was very delicately dancing around the fact that he’d come here with every intention of stealing from the old man. The objects of his nefarious intention were only a few feet away in his hidden vault. There was wealth beyond imagining in that vault, not just in monetary value, either. The old man was a hoarder. He had works of art and irreplaceable antiquities all around the house. He wasn’t worried about prying eyes seeing those, so he didn’t keep them under lock and key. It was only things that could lead back to who he really was that ended up in the vault. Secrets.
“You may be telling the truth,” the old man said, but he didn’t sound entirely convinced. Garin was a gambling man. He knew a safe bet when he saw one. Roux still thought he was behind the whole scheme. Old habits died the hardest. Garin had to force himself not to look over the old man’s shoulder at the vault.
He could almost taste the money heading his way once he had his hands on Guillaume Manchon’s papers. It would only become a tough choice if, after examining them, Garin found something incriminating in the writings that tied them back to Joan of Arc’s execution, and that was almost certainly not the case, even if Manchon had recorded their names. Lots of Frenchmen had been called both Roux and Braden in the intervening years.
“Okay, worry about me if it makes you happy, but what do you want to do?” The old man shrugged for an instant, revealing the years that lay behind his eyes. “My instinct is to go and find her.”
“Which, for argument’s sake, if it were me behind the call, is exactly what I’d expect you to do, so you’d be walking right into the trap.”
“But you’ve convinced me it isn’t you,” Roux said with irritating smugness. “So, if the caller is in Carcassonne, and Annja is in Carcassonne, that’s exactly where I want to be.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that. But we don’t know who’s behind this. The number’s dead, so it’s either a burner phone or they’ve just destroyed the SIM card and we’re going to be chasing shadows once we touch down.”
“Then we make ourselves the bait to lure him out,” Roux said. “If he wants me, I’ll give him the chance to come at me and hope he makes a mistake.”
“And you wonder why I think you have a death wish sometimes, old man? You have no idea who you’re going up against, what he looks like, nothing.”
“I’ll recognize the sound of his voice.”
“Great, let’s hope he offers a nice convenient threat before he cuts your head off.”
“So you’d rather sit here and wait to see how things play out?”
“Yes. Think, Roux. If this guy really has it out for you, he’ll call you to taunt you again, won’t he?”
“And what if the next time it’s because Annja’s dead?”
“Have you met that woman?”
Roux shook his head. “How do you live with a lifetime of regret when your lifetime might never end?”
“I hate you when you get like this.”
“You mean when you know I am right?”
“Okay, fine. He’ll call or he won’t. He’ll make another attempt at Annja or he won’t. He’ll be waiting for you, though, that’s for sure. And that’s like putting your head in the noose and taunting the damned hangman.”
“Or perhaps, just perhaps, going to Carcassonne means we are in the safest place in the world, as he’d expect us to sit here and wait for his call and is lining up an attack on the house.”
“Not if he knows you, old man.”
“So you stay here, answer the phones, while I go out and risk my life for our mutual friend.”
And there was an offer that was almost impossible for him to refuse: Roux out of the house, and him having the run of the place and all the time in the world to infiltrate the vault and liberate Guillaume Manchon’s papers. The temptation was incredible. But he could hardly say yes. Instead, Garin moved to take control of the situation by seeming to agree with Roux.
“All right, all right. I’ll make you a deal. If he hasn’t called by the morning, we head to Carcassonne, okay? There’s nothing we’d be able to do tonight, anyway, so a few hours aren’t going to kill us. Get some rest. We’ll head out at first light.”
Roux agreed, but there was an obvious element of reluctance in his voice.
He made a show of looking at his watch, no doubt calculating how long it would take them to get there.
“We’ll be there in no time at all. Don’t fret, old man. It’s not like a few hours will make a difference.”
12 (#ulink_de4a3d01-d040-562e-9eeb-c98335c35a17)
Morning.
Annja had had a restless sleep and the bottle of Pouilly-Fumé hadn’t helped. She had a dry-wine hangover and needed to get some air.
It felt like weeks since she’d been out for a proper run, really pushing herself. She had her gear with her, including a good pair of running shoes, so she got dressed, pulled her hair into a ponytail, stretched the kinks out of her muscles in a warm-up, then hit the streets. She pounded the pavement for a predawn hour, nothing but the wind in her face and the bite of the icy air in her lungs to keep her company until the first birds started to sing.
And then she kept on running, glad she’d resisted the temptation that Philippe presented, even when the wine had been flowing. It was always a mistake to mix work and sex. Always.
The ice glistened on the road ahead of her as the sun rose.
There was nothing like being out before the rest of the world woke up; it was like sharing a secret with the universe.
It was the best hour of the day, because it was just her and nature.
She kept on running, pushing herself to go faster as she reached the hills, and whenever she was presented with a choice of the hard way or an easy way, Annja chose the hard way every time. It felt like a metaphor for life as well as being a grueling workout.
Ninety minutes later she was in the shower, steam venting up out of the drain where the hot water hit the cold tiles, then she toweled herself dry, dressed and went down for breakfast.
The dining room wasn’t busy. Half a dozen people were keeping very much to themselves. She stocked up on a continental breakfast—fruit, muesli, yoghurt and a wonderfully fresh brioche—before she headed out to the car.
The run had cleared her head and taken the edge off her stress, as it always did. Even so, she checked over her shoulder as she slid the key into the lock, looking for the Mercedes.
She was past the point of being afraid. Very little in life scared her these days—in part because Joan of Arc’s mythical blade was only an arm’s length away in the otherwhere, just waiting for her to reach for it, but more because of the way her own body had changed during the few years since she’d first reached out to take it. She wasn’t the New Yorker she had been, and even back then she’d been a together, strong, independent woman. Now, though, the strength of the ages ran through her veins. She could run farther, faster, fight harder, and had lightning-fast reactions. Now she was a daunting foe for anyone. She’d handled the worst the world could throw at her, and came away from it feeling indestructible. Maybe this is how it feels to be bitten by a radioactive spider, she thought, grinning, as she slid into the driver’s seat.
If the guys from the Mercedes were interested in her, then let them come. It was as simple as that. They’d regret it. People who tried to mess with her always did.
That was why she was in the car in the first place, taking control of the situation.
She was using herself as bait to lure them out—or discount them as an actual threat and put the dumb notion out of her mind once and for all.
Annja took the road out of town, heading into the countryside. It was still early, meaning it was what passed for early-morning rush hour in these parts.
She checked the mirror.
There was nothing back there.
It wasn’t the possibility that they were watching her, but the fact that she had no idea of who they were that bugged her. She didn’t like not knowing.
Annja was barely half a mile outside the town when she caught the glint of sunlight on silver behind her.
She smiled to herself, and muttered, “Come out, come out, whoever you are.”
Even without being able to see the shape clearly, she knew it was the silver Mercedes, and with no other cars on the narrow road it caught up with her quickly. She slowed, imperceptibly at first, gradually allowing the Mercedes to close the gap and invite it to pass her. But that wasn’t the intention of the Mercedes’s driver, and she knew that. Annja would have felt more in control if she were behind the other car, if she was the hunter rather than the hunted in this game of cat-and-mouse. But beggars couldn’t be choosers.
She eased her foot off the accelerator, but kept clear of the brake. She didn’t want the flare of the brake lights to betray the fact she knew they were back there until it was obvious.
As they drew closer, they slowed, too, tucking in fifty yards behind her, matching her speed, a sure sign they were indeed following her and this wasn’t just the most ridiculous case of the universe having fun at her expense.
The road ahead was straight as far as the eye could see, the pavement shimmering with frost haze where the sun reflected off the surface.
Her hands felt slick on the wheel. Her heart beating just that little bit faster, the thrill of the extra adrenaline pumping through her veins.
She pulled over to the side of the road, put the car into Neutral and released her seat belt. She didn’t kill the engine, letting it idle.
She wasn’t going anywhere until she knew what was going on.
If the Mercedes raced by, she’d just follow it. Simple as that.
The other car reduced its speed, no more than ten miles an hour, as it drove by. The passenger, the giant brute of a man, held her gaze without blinking as the driver pulled up in front of her car.
The passenger door opened and the big man climbed out.
Police? It was possible, but it was a nice car for an unmarked gendarmerie vehicle, which made it unlikely it was local law enforcement. She had come across enough of them all over the world to know when it was the law keeping an eye on her. It was a sixth sense now.
The man reached down for her door handle before she thought to lock it from inside. She reached for the button just as he tugged hard at the handle, as though brute force would be enough to beat her and the lock. When the door didn’t open, he banged against the window with the side of his fist.
Annja took a breath. It was that moment, the single point between fight and flight. She inched the window down a crack.
“What do you want?”
“Miss Creed,” the man said in a gruff voice, taking a step away from the car.
“Yes,” she said.
“Get out of the car.”
“No,” she said, not making an argument of it, but simply stating that there was a line she wasn’t stupid enough to cross just because he said so. “Not until you say please.” She used humor to show she wasn’t frightened, no matter how physically intimidating the giant was. And towering over the roof of the car, he was like a mountain more than a mere mortal.
“Please,” he said, laboring over the word, like it was something unfamiliar to his lips. Annja saw by the way he clenched and unclenched his fists that he was pumping himself up for an explosive confrontation. She almost felt sorry for him. It wasn’t as though he could know what he was letting himself in for. She was ready.
He used one ham hock of a hand to pull back the edge of his leather jacket to reveal the butt of a pistol tucked into the waistband of his jeans, removing all doubt as to his motivation. So much for the hope he was an overzealous autograph hunter. The odds of a peaceful outcome whittled down to zero as the driver opened his door, emerging from the Mercedes to join his hulking companion.
She needed to act quickly.
Dealing with them one at a time was preferable to taking them on together. It was simple mathematics. She had seconds to make the parity count. Annja moved fast, unlocking her door and slamming it open, far harder than she needed to, forcing the mountain to stumble back a couple of paces. He actually moved pretty well for such a big man, which was disappointing. She slid out from behind the wheel, climbing out of the car just as he reached for his gun. In a fair fight he would have drawn down on Annja before she was halfway out of the car, but this wasn’t a fair fight. Annja was fast. Even if he knew who she was, he had no idea just how fast she was.
Before he could raise the muzzle in her direction, she had reached into the otherwhere, her fingers curling around the familiar grip of her sword. Her entire body thrilled to the touch of the ancient blade, her blood resonating with the weapon on some primal level as she pulled it free of its resting place. Sunlight glinted from the keen steel edge that never dulled. She brought it down hard, slashing through the air in a savage arc that drove the mountain back two more steps, stunned by the impossibility of what had just happened.
It didn’t matter how big he was, or how many bullets he had in his magazine, he was afraid. She had seen that look often enough in the past. The sword had a way of making big men shrink down to size.
She moved the blade through a kata, whipping her wrist about to control the vicious dance of steel.
The man released the first shot.
Annja was barely three steps away from him, but it was all the room she needed to bring the ancient sword to bear, deflecting the bullet off the flat blade and sending it whistling away harmlessly in a shower of sparks. The sound of the ricochet rang through the air, echoing over the fields on either side of them.
The second shot nicked the blade, lodging itself in the body of the rental car behind her. He didn’t have time for a third. Annja slashed the tip of the sword close to the mountain’s great barrel of a chest, slicing through the leather jacket and parting the cotton T-shirt beneath without breaking his skin.
“See how easy it would be for me to gut you?” Annja said, completely matter-of-factly, her breathing deep, calm, controlled.
He stumbled back, stubbornly trying to fire again.
Annja shook her head. The blade, moving faster than the eye could possibly follow as more than a silver shimmer in the air, slapped against his gun hand, springing his fingers apart in a cry of pain.
The gun went flying, another shot drilling harmlessly into the ground.
She looked down at it, then up at the mountain, knowing he was nursing a couple of broken fingers. He wouldn’t be firing a gun again in a hurry. At least, not with his right hand. He followed the direction of her gaze, looking down between his legs in time to see Annja’s foot come up. He buckled as she made contact, doubling him up. It didn’t matter how big a man was, how many steroids he pumped into his veins or how many reps he did in the gym. He couldn’t strengthen that one very frail human weakness no matter how hard he tried. Her adversary fell to his knees howling with pain. Annja launched herself into a vicious roundhouse that connected with the side of his head and stepped back to watch as the mountain’s face plowed into the dirt at her feet.
He was out cold.
“Stay right there,” the driver said. He looked ruefully at his unconscious comrade, obviously glad he wasn’t in his shoes. He had his own gun aimed squarely at the center of Annja’s mass, but wasn’t in a hurry to fire. He’d just seen what she was capable of. Why would he think his bullets had a better chance of finding their mark than the mountain’s?
Annja held her sword in front of her, balanced lightly in her grasp, moving forward onto her toes. He was close enough she could hurl the blade at him, cleaving his head from his shoulders before he could get down behind the safety of the car. But killing him wouldn’t give her any answers. And it wasn’t her style.
“There was no need for that,” he said, doing his best to sound reasonable. “We just want to talk to you.”
“Of course you do,” she said. “People always come up to me wanting to have a nice little chat with a gun in their hands.”
“Look, I’m sorry. It wasn’t meant to go down like this. If you’d just come with us, we could have done everything nice and calmly.”
“And why on earth would I want to go with you? I think you better start talking fast.”
“Why? Because we were asking nicely.”
She shook her head. “You didn’t ask at all. Your brute tried to strong-arm me. I’d hate to see what you call nasty. So, what do you want to talk to me about? I’m sure you’ve noticed that you have my undivided attention right now.”
“Not me. I was only asked to pick you up.”
“I’m already fed up with the way you answer questions. Who asked you to pick me up?”
“It doesn’t matter who.” He shrugged. “Not to me. I’m just doing my job.”
“Ah, the good old staple. ‘I’m just following orders,’ is that it? I think I’ve heard that before somewhere.”
“Look, there’s no need to get hostile about this. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt, especially me, okay? So why don’t you just drop that thing and get into the car. We can just do what we’ve got to do and everyone can be happy.”
“Happy? You seriously think I’m about to get into a car with you? What kind of happy pills have you been popping? Give me some answers and I’ll consider following you in my car,” she said, with no intention of following him. But if he believed her, maybe she’d get a few details.
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