The Bonaparte Secret

by Gregg Loomis

  At one time it had been the major’s hope that Egypt’s Bedouins would eventually be so successful in killing each other, there would be none left. But alas, they moved to the city and took up city ways, peacefully stealing and cheating each other instead of killing.

  But the men with the weapons at this site had not come to kill other Bedouins. In fact, the dead man and the one who had fallen into the hole weren’t Bedouins at all. Though the dead man, the one shot by the American, was beyond the major’s interrogation techniques, the living one was not. The fact he had broken a bone or two in the fall would ensure he would answer questions with less effort on the major’s part.

  Saleem was confident that before calls to evening prayer blared from the mosques’ minarets, he would know who these men were, why they had attempted to either drown or suffocate a dozen or so people, and other matters of interest, particularly who the American was.

  Antonio Rossi, the Italian in charge of this dig, had been cooperative but less than helpful. The American’s name was Henry Roth, supposedly an archaeologist from one of those big American universities, the one in California. Saleem had phoned this information into his staff for verification by Internet or otherwise, only to learn within minutes (1) there were several big universities in California, (2) none of them were currently involved in a dig in Alexandria, Egypt, (3) all but one had never heard of, much less employed, a Dr. Roth in their archaeological departments, and (4) the university that did employ a Dr. Roth (whose name was Harold, not Henry) insisted he had been on campus that very day.

  The major’s Dr. Roth was a guise, then.

  So, who was the American who had done the shooting and, if not one of the scientists, why was he here?

  The suggestion that Dr. Rossi’s complicity in allowing the American, posing as a reporter, to vanish would prevent him from ever obtaining another permit to dig in Egypt had elicited only scraps of information, the most useful of which was that he, the American, had arrived today.

  Assuming this elusive American had used the same name, all the police had to do was check the registrations reported by the city’s hotels.

  This American might or might not have committed a crime, but he certainly had information Saleem wanted, information he would get once the American was found.

  Le Metropole Hotel

  At the same time

  Lang entered the hotel and headed straight for the elevators. He had almost crossed the lobby when he noted the desk clerk frantically signaling to him. Lang detoured.

  The clerk gave Lang an obsequiously oily smile. “Wonderful news, Dr. Roth! I have personally had some things . . . how do you Americans say? Moved around? Yes, moved around. I had things moved around and your room will be available the rest of the week.”

  Lang had forgotten his earlier request. “I’ve had a change of plans. How quickly can you get my bill ready? It shouldn’t take long, as the room was prepaid.”

  The smile vanished as if by magic, to be replaced by a petulant frown. “Dr. Roth, I and my staff . . .”

  Lang held up a silencing hand, digging in a pocket with the other. “I can imagine the effort involved.” He produced a money clip and peeled off fifty American dollars. “Have my bill ready to pay by the time I get back here from my room and it’s still yours.”

  How hard could that be? He’d only had a single beer from the minibar.

  The return of the smile was like the sun peeking out from fading storm clouds. “Of course, Dr. Roth. Shall I send someone to fetch your luggage?”

  “Not necessary!” Lang called over his shoulder as he dashed to beat the closing doors of an elevator.

  In his room, he stuck a hand in his pocket, groping until he remembered the BlackBerry was no longer there. He cursed silently as he snatched his open bag from the closet and began to hurriedly repack the few items he had taken from it. That cop from the cemetery would be looking for Dr. Henry Roth in the near future, and Dr. Roth had sudden urgent business elsewhere.

  His bag nearly packed, he glanced into the spacious bath. He would have loved a soothing shower, letting steaming hot water remove the grit of the dig as well as the patina of mud from the rising water. No time. He’d have to settle for washing his face and a quick change of clothes. No telling when the local fuzz might show up.

  He splashed cold water on his face and, eyes closed, groped for a towel. He grabbed his discarded shirt and pants to cram them into his suitcase before zipping it shut. He felt something small and hard in a pocket. The thing Rossi had found in the corridor before the trouble had started.

  He took it from the pocket, opened the baggie and dumped the object into his palm. Sure looked like a button, but he couldn’t be sure because of all the dirt caked on it. His curiosity battled against his desire for a speedy exit. He needed to leave now, but when would he have the chance to find out what he was really holding?

  He stepped back into the bath, turned on the sink’s spigot and held the object under it. Using a thumbnail to help scrape away the grime, he soon saw metal tarnished the color of mint. No doubt it was a button, a brass button. On the front was the number twelve, surrounded by branches of . . . what? Olive? Laurel?

  He was not sure he could have told the difference between the two if he had held real leaves in his hand, but the design was one he had seen before.

  He turned it over, holding it up to the light to make out the letters. “Fonson & Co.” arched across the top. Under the loop by which the button would be attached, “Brux.”

  But where?

  No time now.

  Returning the button to its bag and both to his pocket, he zipped the single suitcase shut. Then he picked up the room’s phone, entering the number for the front desk.

  “Yes, Dr. Roth?”

  “I’d like for you to make a call for me.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  Lang took the limo driver’s card from his wallet, reading the number. “And would you tell him I need him in about five minutes?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  Downstairs, Lang retrieved his passport—or rather, that of Dr. Roth—and handed the clerk the credit card that had come with the passport. The clerk turned to put the plastic in one of those machines that stamps a receipt while he punched numbers into a telephone, presumably to verify the card. The procedure was one Lang had not seen in the U.S. for years.

  The desk clerk turned to face Lang, puzzled. “Visa says the card has been cancelled.”

  Cards issued by the Agency were never cancelled, at least not until the mission for which they were issued was complete. “I’d guess either you or the company made an error.”

  The clerk gave him a suspicious look. “Do you wish me to try again?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Lang looked at his watch. It had been over an hour since he had escaped from the cemetery. The cops would be looking for him by now. How much could the damn beer cost? “No, never mind.” He pulled a wad of bills from his wallet, counting out the Egyptian pounds.

  The clerk gave him a look that said his suspicions had been confirmed, took the money and stamped Lang’s copy of the bill. “Will there be anything else?” he asked in a tone that contrasted with his previous ingratiating manner.

  A man who had just had his credit card cancelled was a man unlikely to be a generous tipper.

  “Yeah,” Lang nodded. “I asked you to call the limo for me.”

  The desk clerk gave a sigh, at his patience’s end in dealing with this pretender. “The number has been disconnected.”

  Lang felt a hollowness in his stomach as though all nourishment had been sucked from his body. Some sort of electronic glitch could have fouled up the card, but the limo driver’s phone? Lang was not a believer in coincidences, and the cancellation of the card and disconnection of the phone had the earmarks of an operation being rolled up.

  But this one was in midstride.

  It wouldn’t be the first time the Agency had cancelled an affair early. Many operations could
be kept secret just so long before an overzealous member of some oversight committee leaked them to the Agency-hating press or the purpose of the business became averse to a sea change in policy. As the light of publicity hit the media, operatives scattered like cockroaches, seeking the safety of anonymity. Some didn’t make it. Jobs were lost, careers destroyed, all in the name of political expediency.

  This was not a problem for Lang. He no longer depended on foreign policy that shifted with each election. He did, however, need to know if Miles was covertly covering his backside as originally indicated. More important, were his people still keeping watch over Gurt and Manfred?

  Damn! If he had his BlackBerry, he could call Miles. He glanced at the row of house phones across the lobby.

  He was pondering the possibility when two cars pulled out of traffic and stopped in front of the hotel. All but one of the men getting out wore uniforms.

  Time to exit stage left.

  As the police entered the lobby, Lang had already reached the adjacent dining room, where a few guests were having an early dinner. Ignoring the maître d’s question as to his preference of tables and offer to keep watch on his single suitcase, he headed for the kitchen, nearly colliding with a waiter. The surprised cook staff watched him walk briskly to the rear and exit a door. He found himself in a short hall leading to a loading dock. In seconds, he was in an alley. Scabrous dogs competed with rats the size of cats among trash cans overflowing with rotting food that smelled bad enough to bring bile to the back of Lang’s tongue.

  A couple of the dogs growled defensively at the potential rival as he hurried to the daylight at the end. He reached a street just as one of the city’s aging yellow three-car trams made a stop at a corner fifty feet or so away. Yellow meant the tram was part of the east line, toward the terminal. Blue would have denoted west line, or so Lang remembered from the brief information he had read on the flight. Since the numbers and routes posted on the front were in Arabic script, he could not be sure of the destination. The important thing was to get away from here, not where he might be going.

  He was careful to approach the first car, not the middle, the one reserved for women. Reaching in his pocket for a handful of piastres, he climbed aboard and held out his palm for the motorman to select the fare. No doubt the man would include a generous tip for himself, but Lang was not in a position to haggle.

  The car was full, its worn seats crowded. Lang stood as the car clanked along its rails at a walk. Periodically, he twisted around for a glimpse out of the dirty windows. No one seemed to be following, and if he was having trouble seeing out, any pursuer would have equal difficulty looking in. At last, the tram reached Ramla, the main downtown terminal. If Lang remembered the city map, the bus depot was not far away.

  The bus depot reminded him of a stockyard he had seen in Texas: teeming, noisy and odoriferous. In fact, the stockyard smelled better. The good news was that the destinations were posted in multiple languages. It took fifteen minutes for him to reach the front of the line and purchase a ticket to Cairo. Other than a few municipal police vainly trying to keep order, he saw little in the way of an official presence. He had arrived at the depot before the security police had had time to post men at all departure points.

  A few minutes later, he boarded a bus that could have begun life as a 1950s Greyhound, definitely not one of the “Superjet” buses of the Arab Union transport company, with the impala on its side, which boasted all the comforts of air travel including videos and hostesses walking the aisle to sell high-priced snacks. He could not afford the luxury of waiting for more suitable transportation. Sooner or later the security police would be covering the bus terminal.

  The moment he shoved his bag into the overhead rack, he was assaulted by a cloying heat that only the movement of air through the open windows would diminish. The price of a ticket apparently did not include air-conditioned comfort. A quick glance toward the back, the women’s section, confirmed it did include toilet facilities, though how functional remained to be seen. Lang was glad he had not succumbed to the temptation to down another cold Stella before departing the hotel.

  His seat was on the aisle next to a bearded man wearing a white skullcap. His fingers constantly moved a string of beads through them as his lips moved in silent prayer. As Lang slid into his seat, the man paused long enough to give him the disdainful glare a true believer reserves for the infidel.

  Ah well, Lang hadn’t been looking for a chatty seatmate, anyway.

  As the bus rumbled through Alexandria’s outer slums, Lang remembered Rossi’s button. Hadn’t taken it to the museum, hadn’t exactly had time to. He took it out of his pocket, emptied it into his palm and frowned at the encircled 12 on the front and the inscription on the back.

  Where had he seen that before?

  The possibility dawned like an Old Testament prophet’s revelation. A long-ago visit to Les Invalides in Paris, site of Napoleon’s elaborate tomb. The upstairs of the former military hospital was a museum of French military glory with battle flags, uniforms and arms. Each room represented a different period. The largest by far was of the Napoleonic era, the rooms dwindling in size in proportion to France’s military prowess. World Wars I and II were little more than the average bedroom, Indochina and the siege of Dien Bien Phu by the Vietcong a closet.

  The largest display, that of the Napoleonic Wars, included some of the uniforms worn by Bonaparte’s troops. Lang had marveled at the diversity that had been implemented in 1811. Red pom-poms, for instance, on line troops, red plumes on the shakos of fusiliers, yellow lining on the lapels of others. He supposed the different battle dress had served as a form of communication, allowing the commander to actually see what parts of his army were where. The differences, though, even applied to the smaller details of the uniforms, like this button. Numbers had been fairly common, denoting the wearer’s organization, in this case the Twelfth Brigade.

  He turned the button over again. “Fenson & Co. Brux.” The Brux. was an abbreviation for the French word for Brussels, home, most likely, to Fenson & Co. He leaned back, trying to find what little softness remained in the shabby bus seat. Most of the seat’s foam stuffing had spilled out through a series of cracks and tears long ago, and the Browning in its holster was jabbing at his back. At the same time, he turned the significance of the button over in his mind. A Napoleonic uniform in what was possibly a Macedonian tomb that predated Bonaparte by over two millennia?

  The idea wasn’t as absurd as it first seemed. Someone had intentionally sealed off the main burial chamber, someone who had had to use a smoking candle or oil lamp. Hadn’t Napoleon spent time in Egypt? Of course he had. It was his troops, or one of the scientists, the savants, who accompanied them, who had found the Rosetta Stone. It was highly probable they had found and explored the tomb in Alexandria as well. But why close it off?

  He stared across his seatmate, now gently snoring, and watched the desert glide by, occasionally replaced by palmfringed green fields along the sluggish brown Nile. Where the river was hidden by levees, its course was marked by the triangular sails of feluccas, small craft virtually unchanged since the time of the Pharaohs.

  Lang forgot the scenery. It was time to devise a plan.

  From the diary of Louis Etienne Saint Denis, secretary to Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France

  Tuileries, Paris

  June 1, 1815

  The mob cheered the emperor today as they have each day since his return from Elba.1 He has all but completed the restoration of his officer corps who have, in turn, reorganized the Imperial Army, men who served with the emperor before and will gladly do so again.

  It is good to be away from Elba. We had barely arrived when we received news of the death of Joséphine.2 Though the emperor took his duties as the island’s ruler seriously, making many improvements,3 he soon tired of such banal chores and longed to return to the task he viewed as given him by fate, uniting all of Europe.

  Once, brooding upon this unfinishe
d task, he asked his mother what he should do, to which she replied he should fulfill his destiny. I know not if these words inspired him to complete his escape plans, of which few of us were aware.

  The Congress of Vienna4 has declared the emperor an outlaw and is raising armies to meet him. It will not be long before he must take to the field again. It was with this in mind, I believe, that he spoke to me last evening.

  After the usual polite inquiries into the health of myself, my wife and children, he remarked upon the uncertainties of war, a fact I suppose is much in his mind of late. I bespoke my certainty of his success in the coming campaigns.

  Then, he spoke most strangely, saying, “Saint Denis, you have been a loyal servant. It is in your name I leave that which is my most dear possession.”

  I took this to mean he intended to bequeath to me some treasure for my long service upon his death and endeavored to convince him I expected his demise no time soon. I much desired, though, to know the nature of this legacy to be bestowed upon me.

  He must have sensed my eagerness to know more, for he added, “It is upon the heel of a return from anonymity”

  At first, I thought I had not heard correctly, the phrase was so odd and seemingly out of context. Before I could further query, one of the emperor’s generals, I believe Marshal Ney, insisted upon an immediate audience.5

  1 At his forced abdication and May 1814 exile to an island off the Tuscan coast, Napoleon was given the duty of ruling it and its twelve thousand inhabitants. He arrived with his mother, his sister Pauline and one thousand men who agreed to go with him, including Napoleon’s mistress and their illegitimate son and Saint Denis. Napoleon’s second wife and their legitimate child refused to come or, for that matter, answer his letters. By means still not certain, he eluded over a hundred guards and a British frigate, escaped the next February and returned to Paris March 20, 1815. The recently installed Bourbon king, Louis XVIII, fled. The police sent to arrest Napoleon knelt before him and joined his army which, like the phoenix, quickly arose from the ashes of its own destruction.