The Paris Vendetta Page 19

  MALONE LEFT LE GRAND VÉFOUR AND GRABBED A TAXI OUTSIDE the restaurant for a short hop south to the Louvre. He paid the driver and crossed beneath a grand archway into the Cour Napoleon, immediately spotting the signature geometric glass pyramid that served as a skylight for the museum’s entrance below. The classical façade of the Louvre engulfed the massive parade ground on three sides, while the Arc du Carousel, a pastiche of a Roman arch with rose marble columns, stood guard at the open east end.

  Seven triangular granite basins surrounded the glass pyramid. On the edge of one sat a slender man with thin features and thick sandy hair touched by gray at the temples. He wore a dark wool coat and black gloves. Though the afternoon air had warmed from the morning chill, Malone estimated it was maybe the high 40s at the most. Thorvaldsen had told him the man would be waiting here, once he obtained the book. So he walked over and sat on the cold edge.

  “You must be Cotton Malone,” Professor Murad said in English.

  Taking a cue from Jimmy Foddrell, he’d been carrying the book out in the open, so he handed it over. “Fresh from the Invalides.”

  “Was it easy to steal?”

  “Just sitting there waiting, like I was told it would be.”

  He watched as Murad thumbed through the brittle pages. He’d already studied them during the two cab rides and knew where the perusing would stop. The first halt came halfway through, where the manuscript divided itself into two parts. On a blank page, which acted as a divider, was written:

  He watched as the professor’s forehead crinkled and a frown signaled reluctance. “I didn’t expect that.”

  Malone blew warmth into his ungloved hands and watched the frenetic hustle and bustle in the courtyard as hundreds of tourists came and went from the Louvre.

  “Care to explain?”

  “It’s a Moor’s Knot. A code Napoleon was known to use. These Roman numerals refer to a specific text. Page and line, since there are only two sets. We would need to know the text he used in order to reveal the specific words that form a message. But there’s no third line of numerals. The ones that would identify the right word on the right line.”

  “How did I know this wasn’t going to be easy?”

  Murad grinned. “Nothing ever was with Napoleon. He loved drama. This museum is a perfect example. He exacted tributes from every place he conquered and brought them here, making this, at the time, the world’s richest collection.”

  “Unfortunately, the Allies took it all back—at least what was here to find—after 1815.”

  “You know your history, Mr. Malone.”

  “I try. And it’s Cotton. Please.”

  “Such an unusual name. How did you acquire it?”

  “Like Napoleon, too much drama in that explanation. What about the Moor’s Knot? Any way to solve it?”

  “Not without knowing what text was used to generate the numbers. The idea was that the sender and receiver would have the same manuscript to compare. And that missing third set of numerals could be a real problem.”

  Thorvaldsen had fully briefed him on Napoleon’s will and the relevance of the book that Murad held to that final testament. So he waited while the professor finished his appraisal of the remaining pages.

  “Oh, my,” Murad said when he reached the end flaps. The older man glanced up at him. “Fascinating.”

  He’d already studied the curiously twisted handwriting, in faded black ink, same as the ink used to pen the Roman numerals.

  “You happen to know what that is?” he asked.

  Murad shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  SAM CAME TO MEAGAN’S DEFENSE. “APPARENTLY, SHE DOESN’T need much proof of anything. I’d say you being here is more than enough.”

  “Well, well,” Stephanie said. “Mr. Collins has finally started thinking like a Secret Service agent.”

  He did not appreciate her condescending attitude, but he wasn’t in a position to protest. She was right—he did need to start using his brain. So he said, “You’ve been monitoring her website. Mine, too. God knows how many others. So there has to be something going on here. Something that has caught everyone’s attention.”

  “It’s simple,” Stephanie said. “We want the members of this Paris Club in jail.”

  He didn’t believe her. “There’s more here than that, and you know it.”

  Stephanie Nelle did not answer him, which only reinforced what he believed. But he couldn’t blame her. No need to tell them anything more than was necessary.

  He watched as people bundled to the cold kept streaming up from below on the stairs. More paraded in and out of elevators that rose through the open ironworks to the second platform. A boisterous lunch crowd entered the nearby restaurant. A frigid breeze eased through the brownish gray metal that spiderwebbed up all around them.

  “If you want to be privy to that meeting tomorrow,” Meagan said, “I doubt you’re going to get any listening devices installed. My source tells me that the club sweeps their rooms clean before, during, and after meetings.”

  “We won’t need them,” Stephanie made clear.

  Sam stared at her, and she returned his glare with a grin he did not like.

  “You two ever waited tables?”

  FORTY

  ELIZA WAS ACTUALLY ENJOYING HER LUNCH CONVERSATION with Henrik Thorvaldsen. He was an intelligent, quick-witted man who did not waste time on small talk. He seemed an eager listener, a person who absorbed facts, cataloged them in proper order, then swiftly drew conclusions.

  Just like herself.

  “Napoleon realized,” she said, “that war was good for society. Like nothing else, it mobilized his best thinkers to think better. He discovered that scientists were more creative when a threat was real. Manufacturing became more innovative and productive. The people more obedient. He discovered that the citizenry, if threatened, would allow just about any violation from government, so long as they were protected. But too much war is destructive. People will only tolerate so much, and his enemies made sure there was far more than he ever intended, and he ultimately lost all ability to govern.”

  “I can’t see how war would ever be termed a good thing,” Thorvaldsen said. “There are so many things wrong with it.”

  “There is death, destruction, devastation, waste. But war has always existed. How could something so utterly wrong continue to thrive? The answer is simple. War works. Man’s greatest technological achievements have always come as the result of war. Look at the last world conflict. We learned to split the atom and fly in space, not to mention countless advances in electronics, science, medicine, engineering. All while we slaughtered one another on an unprecedented scale.”

  He nodded. “There is truth in what you say.”

  “It’s even more dramatic than that, Herre Thorvaldsen. Look at American history. Its economy is as rhythmic as a clock—a cycle of boom, recession, and depression. But here’s a fact. Every one of America’s cyclical depressions has occurred during a period of inadequate military spending. There were depressions after the War of 1812, the Civil War in the 1860s, and the Spanish-American War at the turn of the 20th century. The Great Depression of the 1930s came at a time, after the First World War, when America went into isolationism and literally dismantled its military. It took another war to bring it out.”

  “Sounds like a subject you have studied.”

  “I did and the evidence is clear. War makes the stable governing of society possible. It provides a clear external necessity for society to accept political rule. End war and national sovereignty will eventually end as well—this was a concept Napoleon understood. He may actually have been the first modern leader to grasp its meaning.”

  The dining room at Le Grand Véfour was beginning to empty. Lunchtime was drawing to a close, and she watched as patrons said their goodbyes to each other and slowly departed.

  “Napoleon planned to transition not only France,” she said, “but all of his conquered territory from a war state to a peace-ori
ented society. But he recognized that to do it, he’d need adequate substitutes for war. Unfortunately for him, none existed in his day.”

  “What could possibly take war’s place?”

  She shrugged. “It’s difficult to find, but not impossible. The idea would be to create an alternative enemy. A threat, either real or perceived, against which society rallies to defend itself. Mass destruction by nuclear weapons, for example. That was what the Cold War was all about. Neither side ever did much to the other, but both spent billions and billions in preparation. Government flourished during the Cold War. The American federal system expanded to unprecedented levels. Western civilization escalated to new heights from 1950 to 1990. Man made it to the moon thanks to the Cold War. There’s an example of a worthy substitute to war.”

  “Your point is well taken.”

  “There are other examples, though less compelling. Global warming, perceived food shortages, control of fresh water. In recent years these have been tried. But they have not, as yet, either risen in actuality or been perceived as a sufficient threat.

  “Massive programs that drastically expand health care, education, public housing, and transportation might work. But they would have to be all-encompassing, engrossing the entire population in their success, expending resources at obscene levels. It’s doubtful that this could occur. Even a small war expends massive amounts of resources. Military spending and preparedness is wasteful beyond measure, and no social-welfare program could ever compare, though the various national health care and social security programs around the world do waste money at extraordinary levels. But in the end, they simply can’t waste enough to make the venture a viable substitute for war.”

  Thorvaldsen chuckled. “Do you realize the absurdity of what you’re saying?”

  “Perfectly. But transitioning to world peace is a difficult endeavor. Ignoring the challenge of governing for a moment, there’s the matter of channeling collective aggression.”

  “As the Romans did? In the Colosseum? With gladiators and games and sacrifice?”

  “The Romans were smart. They recognized the concepts I’m explaining. In a peace-based society, if social disintegration is to be avoided, alternatives to war have to be created. The games offered that to the Roman people, and their society flourished for centuries.”

  She could see that he was interested in what she was saying.

  “Herre Thorvaldsen, it was long ago realized, even by ancient monarchs, that their subjects would not tolerate in peace that which they would willingly accept in war. This concept is particularly true today, in modern democracies. Again, look at America. In the 1950s it allowed the trampling of its First Amendment when the threat of encroaching communism was thought real. Free speech became unimportant when compared with the imagined danger of the Soviet Union. Even more recently, after the September 11 attacks in 2001, laws were passed that, at any other time, Americans would have found repulsive. The Patriot Act suppressed liberties and invaded privacies on an unprecedented level. Surveillance laws curbed civil liberties and restricted established freedoms. Identification laws came into being that, heretofore, Americans found repugnant. But they allowed those violations so that they could be safe—”

  “Or at least perceive themselves to be safe.”

  She smiled. “Precisely. That is exactly what I’m talking about. A credible external threat equals expanded political power—so long as the threat remains credible.”

  She paused.

  “And within that formula, there exists the potential for great profit.”

  MALONE POINTED AT THE BOOK PROFESSOR MURAD HELD AND the curious lines of writing. “Henrik isn’t going to like that we don’t know what that is.”

  Murad continued to examine the anomaly. “I have an idea. Let’s go inside the Louvre. I need to check something.”

  THORVALDSEN WAS ABSORBING ALL THAT ELIZA LAROCQUE WAS explaining. She’d obviously invested a lot of thought into what she was planning. He decided to steer her back toward Ashby.

  “You haven’t asked me a thing about your security problem,” he said in a kindly voice.

  “I assumed you would tell me when ready.”

  He sipped his wine and arranged his thoughts. “Ashby is nearly thirty million euros in debt. Most of that is unsecured, high-interest personal loans.”

  “I have found Lord Ashby to be straightforward and quite dedicated. He’s done everything I’ve requested of him.”

  “Lord Ashby is a thief. As you well know, a few years back he was involved with a group of illicit art collectors. Many of the group ultimately faced justice—”

  “Nothing was ever proven regarding Lord Ashby.”

  “Again, none of which exonerates him. I know he was involved. You know he was involved. That’s why he’s part of your club.”

  “And he’s making excellent progress doing what I requested. In fact, he’s here, right now, in Paris, following up on a promising lead. One that could lead straight to our goal. And for that, Herre Thorvaldsen, I might be willing to forgive a gracious plenty.”

  MALONE FOLLOWED PROFESSOR MURAD INTO THE GLASS PYRAMID and down a series of escalators. A low rumble of noise seeped from crowds waiting to enter the museum. He wondered where they were headed and was grateful when the professor bypassed the long lines at ticket counters and headed into the bookstore.

  The two-story shop was packed with information—thousands of books for sale, all arranged by country and period. Murad headed for the expansive French section and several tables stacked with tomes relative to the Napoleonic Age.

  “I come here all the time,” the academician said. “It’s a great store. They carry so many obscure texts that ordinary places never would stock.”

  He could understand that obsession. Bibliophiles were all alike.

  Murad hastily searched the titles.

  “Can I help?” he asked.

  “I’m looking for a French volume.” His eyes kept raking the table. “It’s on St. Helena. I almost bought it a few weeks ago but—” He reached down and slid out one of the hardbacks. “Here it is. Too expensive. So I settled for admiring it from afar.”

  Malone smiled. He liked this man. Nothing pretentious about him.

  Murad laid the volume down and thumbed through the pages. He seemingly found what he was searching for and asked Malone to open the book from the Invalides to the page with the curious lines of writing.

  “Just what I thought,” Murad said, pointing to the book they’d come to see. “This is a picture of some notes from St. Helena, written during Napoleon’s exile. We know that his steward, Saint-Denis, rewrote many of Napoleon’s drafts, since the emperor’s penmanship was atrocious.” Murad pointed. “See. The two samples we have here are nearly identical.”

  Malone compared the books and saw that the script was indeed similar. The same rounded M’s——and stilted E’s— The flare at the base of the F’s—. The odd-shaped A’s——that looked like slanted D’s.

  “So Saint-Denis wrote what’s in this Merovingian book?” he asked.

  “No, he didn’t.”

  Malone was puzzled.

  Murad pointed to the open Louvre book. “Read the caption beneath the photo.”

  He did—and now realized. “That’s Napoleon’s handwriting?”

  Murad nodded and pointed to the Merovingian text. “He personally wrote what’s in this book, then left it specifically in Saint-Denis’ charge. That makes this writing significant.”

  He recalled what Henrik had told him about the conversation between Ashby and Caroline Dodd. A letter she’d located, also written in Napoleon’s hand. Unusual to see the emperor’s handwriting, she’d told Ashby.

  He mentioned that to Murad.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” the professor said. “Henrik briefed me, too. Mighty curious.”

  He studied the fourteen lines of odd letters and other random markings written by Napoleon Bonaparte himself.

  “There’s a message here,
” Malone said. “There has to be.”

  THORVALDSEN DECIDED TO SINK THE KNIFE DEEPER INTO ELIZA Larocque and asked, “What if Lord Ashby can’t deliver that which you want?”

  She shrugged. “Few, besides my ancestor, have ever searched for Napoleon’s cache. It’s generally regarded as myth. I’m hoping they are wrong. I don’t think it will be Ashby’s fault if he fails. He’s at least trying.”

  “While deceiving you about his finances.”

  She fingered her wineglass. “I admit, that’s a problem. I’m not happy about it.” She paused. “But I’ve yet to see any proof.”

  “What if Ashby finds the cache and doesn’t tell you?”

  “How would I ever know?”

  “You won’t.”

  “Is there a point to your badgering?”

  He saw that she’d heard the hint of an unspoken promise. “Whatever he’s after, here, today, in Paris, seems important. You yourself said it might hold the key. If I’m right about him, he’s going to tell you that he wasn’t able to retrieve whatever it is—that it wasn’t there or some other such excuse. It will be for you to judge whether that be truth or a lie.”

  FORTY-ONE

  MALONE LEFT DR. MURAD AT THE LOUVRE, AFTER PHOTOCOPYING the two pages in the Merovingian book with Napoleon’s writing and leaving the copies with the professor. He needed to keep the book.

  He grabbed a taxi, crossed the Seine, and headed to the Eiffel Tower. Beneath the ironworks, among a bustling crowd of visitors waiting in line to ascend the elevators, he spotted Stephanie, Sam, and another woman—Meagan Morrison.

  “Good to see you’re okay,” he said to Sam. “Of course, you didn’t listen to a thing I said in the museum.”

  “I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing.”

  “Actually you could and should have.”

  Malone faced Morrison. She was exactly as Stephanie described—short, anxious, attractive, and interesting.