The Bonaparte Secret

by Gregg Loomis

  Gurt had a brief picture of standing in the winter wind waiting for some unfortunate fish to find the worm-baited hook in the muddy water. “We will see.”

  Manfred’s face squeezed into a pout. He was old enough to recognize the expression as meaning he would likely be told no, later.

  A tapping on the garage door prevented potential unpleasantness.

  “Mrs. Reilly?”

  “In a moment,” she answered, recognizing the voice of Jake of the security service. The hapless Randy had been furloughed with the beginnings of a bad cold.

  “Let me in.”

  Turning off the lights that would have illuminated the garage like a theater’s stage, Gurt pushed the button to lift the door. “What . . . ?”

  Jake ducked under the door before it had fully lifted and pushed the “down” button with one hand, waving a device that looked like one of those used by security screeners at airports. “Just want to sweep your car.”

  “Sweep? Ach! Of course. For homing devices. I cannot see how someone could have gotten in here . . .”

  “You went to the grocery store yesterday. It’s possible we didn’t see someone hide a bug.” Jake was waving the device around the SUV’s perimeter, a Merlin of electronics with his magic wand, casting a contemporary spell. “Can’t be too careful.”

  Moments later, the Hummer backed out of the garage, tires crackling on ice, and the door rolled shut. There was a certain security in being in a vehicle that was larger than some pickup trucks. Its very mass was the reason she had selected a car whose appetite for gas was insatiable and whose very size made it difficult to park. Its weight, she felt, formed the maximum protection for Manfred, securely strapped in his child seat. He would be unharmed in a collision with anything smaller than an eighteen wheeler. As the SUV reached the street, a Cadillac Escalade pulled in behind and another took its place. Gurt knew four armed men were in the following vehicle. They would stay in her wake until certain she was not being followed. She had insisted a car remain in front of the house to give the appearance of normality. Over Jake’s protests, she had also demanded the escort be broken off at a prearranged place if there seemed to be no need for it.

  Four husky men in suits driving a shiny black SUV with tinted windows would draw as much attention in Lamar County as a painted fancy woman in the local Baptist church.

  In the car’s mirrors, Gurt saw lights blink once, a periodic signal that the vehicle behind was Jake’s. The security men followed her through a tortuous course that took advantage of Ansley Park’s meandering streets and byways. So far, no other vehicle had joined the two, but Gurt was not satisfied. She took another tour of homes to be certain.

  She made a left on Piedmont Road, one of the main streets of the northern section of the city. The traffic was moderate, making a tail difficult to spot. When she pulled through a service station to reverse course, only Jake’s vehicle followed.

  Once southbound on the interstate, she was relieved to note the ice had melted except for a few dark patches along the exit lanes. The rhythm of the tires soothed her and put Manfred asleep in his child seat. Grumps snored from the back. Every two minutes, the blink from Jake. He was still in place behind her. Twice she exited the expressway only to drive back up the entry ramp and reenter.

  No one other than Jake followed.

  Once outside I-285, the perimeter surrounding the city, traffic became decidedly lighter, but it still would have been difficult to notice a car following them.

  Aware of the problem, Gurt exited the four-lane, choosing a two-lane state highway instead. As shabby storage buildings and truck stops melted into a semirural landscape, there were a series of flashes in Gurt’s mirrors. Two plus two plus two.

  Jake had picked up a possible tail.

  As planned, she hit the accelerator, sending the big car rocketing down a short straightaway before braking for a curve. Jake’s headlights were fading quickly. He was slowing to block whoever might be following.

  Gurt rounded the curve, praying she was now south of the effects of the ice storm. At this speed, she would not have time to avoid the slick patches. She shifted into four-wheel drive. Thanks to modern technology developed on the Formula One circuit, she would sacrifice no speed and be less likely to wind up in a ditch. But she was no Michael Schumacher; sooner or later she would have to slow down if road conditions did not improve.

  She need not have worried—the decision was not hers.

  Accelerating out of yet another curve, her headlights painted what she first thought was some sort of mirage: Two cars were pulled across the road. One had the markings of a local sheriff’s department, its Christmas tree of lights flashing malignantly. The other was an unmarked sedan, its very anonymity threatening. As she streaked closer, she could see two men in uniforms. Four others wore dark windbreakers with yellow lettering: FBI.

  Charles de Gaulle International Airport

  Roissy (just outside Paris)

  10:42

  Lang was in the CDG 2, the airport’s second terminal, waiting for the Metro train into the city. He had much for which to be thankful. His passport had received no more than a glance, his bag had not ventured off on an excursion of its own and he was clear of Egypt. Apparently there was no international “want” on him, not yet anyway. He guessed Major Saleem would query the English authorities first, unwilling to admit the British Airways reservation had duped him.

  As soon as he cleared customs and passport control, he had retreated to the nearest men’s room to reassemble the Browning now comfortably at his back. He looked around, taking in the people sharing the platform. One or two tourists, noses in guidebooks, who had accepted the city’s miserable winter weather in exchange for deeply discounted airfares. Several businessmen armed with briefcases, suits sharply creased despite airline seats. Two families trying to quiet small children made restless by the inactivity of flight.

  The sight made Lang think of Manfred. He missed his son and really should not have cut Manfred off last night. Ah well, Paris was full of toy shops that would buy childish forgiveness. He smiled, visualizing the joy his son demonstrated when Lang came home from a trip.

  Yeah, so does Grumps, and you don’t have to bring him gifts.

  Two train changes and forty minutes later, Lang exited the Opéra station into the cold drizzle that characterizes Paris’s winters. His suitcase trailing behind him, he dodged traffic crossing one of the city’s busiest intersections, the place de l’Opéra, and entered a nondescript building facing the ornate Opéra Garnier. Inside, Lang passed an antique birdcage elevator to climb steps covered in worn carpeting. At the top he turned right, facing an old-fashioned glass door. He knew the opaque glass was the hardest bullet and blast proof available. He lifted his head, and the dim light reflected dully from the lens of a camera almost hidden in the shadows that hung from the ceiling like dull drapes.

  Had he any doubts that the person he sought was still here, they were resolved.

  A knock on the door caused it to silently open, leaving him facing another, this one of steel.

  “Oui?” a woman’s voice asked from a speaker.

  “Tell Patrick Louvere, Langford Reilly is here to see him.”

  The voice switched to English. “He is expecting you?”

  “I doubt that very much. Just tell him.”

  Patrick Louvere was head of Special Branch, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, DGSE, France’s equivalent of the CIA. The bulk of the counterespionage organization had years ago been moved to the fort at Noisy-le-Sec. Only Patrick’s division remained in the city. During Lang’s employment, the Agency had a long-standing distrust of its French counterpart. Operation Ascot, a plan to stir separatist action in Canada, had been devised by de Gaulle and carried out by DGSE’s predecessor. In 1968 the same organization had supplied arms to secessionists in Nigeria’s Biafra region to wrest control from U.S. and British oil companies at a cost of over a hundred thousand lives. All of that was lon
g before Lang’s time. He had worked with Patrick in the days of the Cold War and they had become close friends. It had been Patrick who had performed the sad duty of informing Lang that his sister Janet and her adopted son Jeff had died in a blast in the place des Vosges in the Marais section of Paris, where she was visiting a friend. Patrick had also helped cut a great deal of the red tape associated with shipping their bodies back to Atlanta.

  The steel door swung open, revealing a man in a dark suit of Italian cut, the creases of the pants razor sharp. His shirt was crisply starched and his shoes gleamed with polish. Lang and his first wife had often joked that Patrick had to change clothes two or three times a day to always look so fresh.

  The two men stared at each other for perhaps a half a second before Patrick’s salon-tanned face broke into a smile of perfect teeth. “Lang! It is the great surprise.”

  In the next second he held Lang in a bear hug of an embrace. Lang was thankful his friend remembered his aversion to being kissed by another man even if it was only on the cheek.

  Patrick stepped back as if to confirm it was, in fact, Lang he held in his arms despite the still-visible cuts and bruises from Haiti, injuries about which Patrick was too polite to inquire. “You have come unexpectedly to Paris, yes?”

  “I didn’t plan to be here until yesterday, yes.”

  “But you did not let Nanette and me know.” Patrick clucked his disapproval. “We would have made the big dinner, opened the finest wines.”

  “I hope we have time to go to dinner together.”

  The Frenchman dropped his arms to his side, nonplussed. “Surely you have the time to make the dinner, no? Nanette will be furious if you escape Paris without seeing her.”

  Lang glanced around, aware he was probably on several different cameras. “Actually, I have a bit of a problem I’d hoped you could help me with.”

  “A problem?” Patrick’s bushy eyebrows arched like a pair of dancing caterpillars. “A problem of the heart, a woman, perhaps? It is a subject we French know well.”

  Only then did Lang realize that Patrick didn’t know about Gurt and his instant family. “Er, not exactly. Can we go into your office to talk?”

  Twenty minutes later, Lang was finishing his story as Patrick ground out the butt of a Gitane despite the no-smoking signs outside his office. The French tended to view government attempts to regulate personal conduct as unworthy of notice.

  The part of the story the Frenchman found most interesting was that Lang was now living in what was domestic bliss with Gurt, a woman Patrick had more than once compared to one of Wagner’s Valkyries.

  “Your recent adventure explains something I thought strange.” Patrick clicked the keyboard on his polished desktop, intent on the computer’s monitor. “Ah, here we are! Your Federal Bureau of Investigation has asked Interpol and police in a number of nations to be on the lookout for you. Is that right, lookout?”

  In view of what Gurt had told him, this should not have been a surprise, but the words still hit Lang like a punch in the stomach. “Huh?”

  Patrick turned the screen so Lang could also view it. He was looking at a picture of a much younger version of himself, a photograph from his Agency days.

  Underneath was a caption.

  Wanted for questioning by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as suspected part of criminal conspiracy to defraud and related crimes. Possibly armed and dangerous. Use extreme care. Detain.

  Lang had never believed you could feel the blood drain from your face. Now he did.

  Patrick used a finger to pull down a lower eyelid, the French gesture of incredulity. “So, my friend Lang is a big-time criminal, maybe like Al Capone?” He pantomimed firing a tommy gun. “No?”

  Lang was far from amused. “No.”

  The Frenchman became serious. “It is a measure of how badly your government wants you that they would turn on you. The question is, why?”

  “There are a limited number of reasons why my government would want me and Gurt in custody,” Lang said. “The only one I can think of is they think we know something they either want to learn or don’t want to become public. As I told you, Gurt and I are the ones who gave our friend at the CIA this information about what’s going on in Haiti.”

  Patrick pulled the blue box from a coat pocket and shook out another Gitane. “So, you cannot simply swear to say nothing?”

  “You are in the business. Would you take someone’s word not to divulge that sort of information?”

  Patrick lit the cigarette with a gold Ronson, sending a plume of blue smoke toward the ceiling. “It is not the same. In France, just like your friends the English, we would have put you under oath and warned of our official-secrets act. Violations of the act are punishable by prison. In your defense of free speech, you Americans have no such laws. That is why the most delicate of international affairs sometimes appears up on the evening news. That is also why your own people are trying to find you and Gurt.” He chuckled. “All governments are more alike than different, professing free speech while trying to limit it by one means or another.”

  “I may or may not agree with your philosophy,” Lang said, “but I do need your help.”

  Patrick, opened his arms wide, another Gallic gesture, this one of expansiveness. “But of course! You will stay with Nanette and me. No point in risking giving your passport to some hotel clerk to report to the authorities. But our hospitality is not the reason you are in Paris?”

  “No, although I appreciate you risking problems with your government by not turning me over to mine.”

  Patrick laughed as he stubbed out the Gitane. “Your CIA wants you. I believe it is the best interest of France to keep you for me to debrief on the serious situation developing in Haiti. Unless there is some formal extra, extra . . .”

  “Extradition.”

  “. . . extradition request, France is not obligated to meet every American demand, no?”

  Lang was well aware of the glee the French took in frustrating its supposed allies, a tendency dating back to the Crusades and continuing through two world wars and the Cold War. He supposed there was a word for it. More important, for the first time, he was thankful for it.

  Patrick continued. “You have told me your story but you still have not told me of your reasons for being in Paris, since you assure me they are not romantic.”

  Lang stretched out in his chair and groped in his pocket, producing the small plastic bag. He dumped the button on Patrick’s desk.

  Puzzled, the Frenchman turned it over in his hand. “A button?”

  Lang nodded.

  “With number twelve on it. Twelve what? Could it be from the uniform of a flick in the Twelfth Arrondissement?”

  “I don’t think Paris cops have the specific arrondissement on their uniform buttons.”

  “But it is a military-type button, no?”

  Lang returned the button to the baggie and the plastic bag to his pocket. “I think so. I believe it is from the uniform of Napoleon’s Twelfth Brigade. I found it in an ancient tomb in Alexandria. Bonaparte’s savants must have employed the army to do the heavy lifting in their archaeological work. I think they, the savants, may have found, or at least thought they had found, Alexander’s tomb.”

  Patrick’s interest increased visibly. “And you think the tomb’s relics are what this man in Haiti, duPaar, wants in exchange for letting the Chinese set up a military base there?”

  “It’s possible. DuPaar wouldn’t be the first person to believe whatever country possessed Alexander’s mummy could never be defeated. It’s the kind of legend a deranged dictator would love. And I’m fairly certain the Chinese didn’t rob the church in Venice for Saint Mark’s remains. They thought they were getting Alexander’s.”

  Patrick pursed his lips, doubtful. “Alexander the Great in Saint Mark’s tomb? That is . . . what do you say . . . a pull?”

  “A stretch. But not as much as you might think.”

  Lang explained the theory set forth
in Chugg’s book.

  By the time he had finished, Patrick was shaking another Gitane out of the box. “And you believe if you can find these . . . ?”

  “If I can find the mummy, or whatever remains of it, or prove it no longer exists, duPaar will no longer tolerate foreign forces in his country.”

  Patrick took a thoughtful puff, smoke streaming from his nose. “And that would hardly endear you to the Chinese, my friend.”

  “Perhaps not, but if they no longer can keep a foothold in Haiti by reason of Alexander’s mummy, remains, whatever, they have very little incentive to continue efforts to get rid of me and Gurt. Like them or not, they are practical. Likewise, if the Chinese pick up their toys and go home, the U.S. government no longer has to worry about what I might say. In fact, they can take credit for avoiding a threat.”

  Patrick opened his center desk drawer, poking through it with a pen as though he anticipated he might encounter something venomous. “Nanette has a friend whose husband teaches history at the Sorbonne, a pudgy, officious little academic. Nanette tells me he has just finished editing for publication a diary of someone, Bonaparte’s personal secretary, I think. Supposedly, this lecturer in history discovered a number of previously unknown facts about the emperor. Ah! Here is his card!”

  Patrick held it between thumb and forefinger, the way one might hold a dead rat by the tail.

  Lang took it, scanning the spidery print. “I’m not sure what he can—”

  Patrick shut the drawer with a slam. “The man may be an ass but he has won several prizes for historic research. If Bonaparte’s savants found anything relating to Alexander, he would know about it.

  “I will call to let him know you will visit him.” Patrick consulted a large gold Rolex. “But first, the oysters at the Restaurant de la Place de l’Opéra are superb this time of year. They arrive daily from Honfleur. Come.”

  It was obvious Patrick was not going to focus on anything beyond lunch, not until he was sated with Norman mollusks.

  A rural highway in Georgia

  The previous evening