The Bonaparte Secret

by Gregg Loomis

  Outside, the buildings had the dispirited look of public housing. Behind chain-link screens, the few store windows displayed cheap household appliances against backgrounds stark enough to proclaim any hope of good fortune had long since departed. Scruffy cars were parked along the curb, many with flat tires indicating they had taken up permanent residence there. Lang immediately noticed the occasional pedestrians traveling in groups, who glared resentfully at him and Patrick.

  He was grateful for Patrick’s company.

  Turning the corner around a particular grim high-rise decorated with hanging bedsheets and other laundry despite the sporadic drizzle, they faced the Basilica of Saint Denis. It was like discovering a prize rose growing in a weed patch. Lit by a battery of floodlights, a single tower reached heavenward, oblivious to its dowdy surroundings. The church was a pleasing combination of Gothic and Romanesque built of what Lang guessed was white limestone, burnished to gold by the surrounding lights.

  “Is beautiful, no?” Patrick asked. “But what is your plan to get inside?”

  “Get inside?” Lang asked. “They lock the church?”

  “My friend, in this neighborhood, that which is not securely locked at night has been looted by morning.” He pointed to the left portal, two massive doors secured by a heavy chain and large padlock. “I think it would take some time to get through that.”

  Lang fished in his pocket, producing a ring of keys. “Then we’ll just unlock it.”

  “You have the key . . . ?”

  Lang held one up. At first glance, it resembled any ordinary key. Closer inspection revealed a series of bumps along one edge.

  “A bump key. Most people have no idea how simply the normal pin-tumbler lock can be defeated. Watch.”

  Lang approached the huge doors, noting with surprise the ornate carvings on the stone frame were signs of the zodiac, more pagan than religious. Holding the big padlock in one hand, he inserted the key and then sharply rapped the bottom of the lock against the wooden door. There was an metallic snap and the lock sprung open.

  Patrick was looking over Lang’s shoulder. “That is a very convenient thing to have in your pocket.”

  “Us former Boy Scouts come prepared. Now, lets get inside and close the doors before someone gets suspicious and calls the cops.”

  Patrick chuckled dryly. “It would take more than a suspicion to get the flics here at night. Even so, they will not come unless there are a number of them. The residents of Saint Denis do not like policemen.”

  Once inside, Lang reached through the cracked-open doors and managed to drape the chain back into position along with the open lock. It would require a detailed examination for a passerby to notice the church was no longer secured.

  The outside lights shone through huge, airy windows, creating a chiaroscuro of lofty arches soaring far above and columns with the circumference of redwoods marching in soldierly ranks. Lang regretted the outside lights did little to illuminate what he was certain would be exquisite stained-glass windows.

  Their footsteps echoing against the marble floor, the pair made their way past candles flickering in front of side chapels from which pained saints suffered a variety of martyrdoms.

  At last, Patrick tugged on Lang’s sleeve. “The entrance to the crypt.”

  The ambient light from outside created as much shadow as illumination. Still, no matter what Patrick had said about the indifference of the police, Lang hesitated to use his flashlight for fear someone outside might see the flicker. Extending a hand toward Patrick, he felt an iron rail about waist high. Behind it, Patrick seemed to be sinking into the floor. Only when the Frenchman was beneath the level of the church did he turn on his light, revealing a set of steps that ended somewhere in darkness.

  “It is OK to use the torch here,” Patrick said. “The crypt has no windows.”

  As Lang descended, he could feel a dampness and chill that made him pull his new overcoat more tightly about him. There was the smell that he associated with places where there was little air circulation, a mustiness reminiscent of dust and cobwebs. The sound of outside traffic vanished; the stillness was like a tangible curtain between present and past, demanding any speech be in whispers.

  Straight ahead, a low wooden door emerged from the gloom. There was no knob, only a rusted metal plate with a handle about two feet from the floor, below which its ancient keyhole yawned for a key far larger than the one in Lang’s pocket.

  “Someone’s afraid the occupants will escape?” Lang asked in surprise.

  “To keep out vandals?” Patrick suggested.

  “Locking the barn door two hundred years after the horse is gone,” Lang muttered.

  Patrick pushed on the iron plate with no result. Then he pulled the handle, surprising both himself and Lang when the door opened an inch or so toward them. Another tug and the door groaned on its hinges and opened another few inches. In seconds, the entrance stood open.

  “Look.” Patrick was pointing with his flashlight’s beam. “The key is on the inside.”

  Lang contemplated the iron key. The part outside the lock was nearly a foot long. “Either the residents insist on their privacy, or someone wanted to make sure the original key didn’t get swiped by some souvenir hunter.”

  Inside, he played his light to his left. Like icebergs in an Arctic sea of darkness, sarcophagi floated in random groupings. Most displayed recumbent likenesses of the original occupant. One, a large mausoleum, depicted a well-dressed royal couple contemplating their nude likenesses. Many had been chipped, cracked or otherwise defaced, the handiwork of revolutionary vandals two centuries past.

  It was clear the crypt, like the church itself, had been built in stages. He and Patrick had descended into the older portion, as evidenced by relatively crude barrel vaults. A short distance away, slender Gothic arches opened into dark emptiness.

  The previous resting places of Charles Martel and Saint Louis immediately attracted Lang’s attention. He was trying to find an angle with his light that would make the words carved below the latter’s effigy legible.

  “We are not here for a history lesson,” Patrick hissed. “We are here to look at this one.”

  The tomb of Louis XVI and his queen stood in the beam from Patrick’s light. It was easily identifiable. All other likenesses were prone, as though sleeping. The unfortunate Bourbon monarchs knelt in prayer, the queen facing Louis’ left side. The statuary was placed on a plinth about two feet in height so that even in prayer, both faces were roughly even with the viewer’s.

  Patrick ran the beam of his light over the carved marble. “There is nothing here but dust, no?”

  Kneeling, Lang was studying the base of the plinth. “There is dust, yes.” He rubbed his hand across the base’s surface, leaving a deep furrow. “And we can’t tell much in this light.”

  Patrick’s impatience was showing. “We can come back in the daytime when the lights are on down here.”

  “The Chinese may not wait that long.”

  The Frenchman sniffed his disagreement. “I do not understand why Bonaparte would have played such games, hiding things in churches.”

  Lang was running a hand over the effigy of Louis. So far, all he had produced were dust motes that seemed to sparkle in the light of the flashes. “Remember, the whole time he was on Elba, his wife, the Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria, the woman he divorced Joséphine for in order to have an heir, refused to return his letters. He had not even seen his son, who was, by the time of his escape, what? Four or five?”

  “So?”

  “I’m guessing, but I’d say Napoleon knew he was soon going to be fighting the combined armies of Europe and maybe his chances weren’t so good. For sure he knew that after his escape from Elba, any future exile would be much harsher, no thousand men to accompany him. In fact, he may have guessed he would be killed.”

  Patrick began to show a glimmer of interest. “Killed?”

  “Hair taken from Napoleon’s corpse was tested, oh, m
aybe ten years ago. There were definite traces of arsenic, probably administered in gradual doses.”

  “You can never trust the English.”

  “Perhaps. But also perhaps Napoleon wanted to make sure his prized possession was delivered to the son he never saw again. What better way than to hide it from those who wanted to destroy every trace of the French emperor, trust it to a friend to deliver at the appropriate time. A friend who for whatever reason was unable to do so.”

  “But a secret hiding place in a church?” Patrick was skeptical. “Why not just give this . . . this whatever to someone to deliver?”

  “Perhaps that wasn’t possible at the time. Besides, Napoleon was a master of the dramatic. You will recall, he took the emperor’s crown into his own hands to place it on his head himself.”

  “And you believe this treasured item to be the mummy of Alexander? Hardly a gift for a small boy, yes?”

  “A small boy in whose favor the emperor of France abdicated after Waterloo.”

  “But, my friend, Napoleon II never ruled.”

  Lang was examining the stature of Marie Antoinette. “His father could never have known that would be the case before being banished to Saint Helena. What better gift to leave his heir than the remains, and hence a legitimate claim to the legacy of the greatest warrior that ever lived?”

  Patrick shivered, whether from the increasing cold or boredom, Lang couldn’t tell. “All a very interesting history lesson. But this crypt is not a schoolroom. You have examined the statues and they have no secret, yes? Let us go before we die of pneumonia from the cold.”

  It was a tempting suggestion. Lang stepped back to survey the carving in its entirety. “What were Napoleon’s exact words? Something about ‘on the heel of a return from anonymity’?”

  “It is but a figure of speech, it . . .”

  Lang was circling the memorial. “The heel. You can’t see Marie Antoinette’s heels; they’re under the folds of her dress. One of Louis’ heels is covered by his cape.”

  Patrick’s bored expression, or what Lang could see in the reflection of his flashlight, seemed to change. “You do not think . . .”

  Reaching across the effigies, Lang grasped the heel of the marble shoe. “I can feel a crack between it and the rest . . .”

  He tried to twist it clockwise. The other direction produced a sharp click.

  Patrick jumped back in surprise. “Merde!”

  At his feet, a tray had popped open from the base of the plinth.

  Lamar County, Georgia

  The early-morning hours of the previous evening

  Gurt was having a problem keeping awake. On the interstate, the temptation would have been either to pull off for a few minutes’ snooze at a rest stop or visit one of the fast-food joints that lined the exits for a dose of caffeine. Either would have been a mistake. No doubt the FBI had wasted no time getting an all-points bulletin out for reports of any sightings of her, quite likely with the usual “Believed to be armed and dangerous” the Bureau routinely added for effect.

  The thought of herself, Manfred and Grumps as some latter-day Dillinger Gang made her smile in spite of her weariness. Or more appropriate, Bonnie and Clyde. Weeks earlier, Gurt had become enraptured by a series on the History Channel dealing with the Depression-era gangsters: Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, Ma Barker, Al Capone, as well as Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde. They all seemed much more interesting than their law-enforcing nemeses. Melvin Purvis and Eliot Ness were simply colorless, boring men. What kind of an American mother named her son Melvin, anyway?

  Those criminals had made the FBI what it was today, had forced reforms in law enforcement. But the 1930s Bureau was nothing like the sophisticated, highly technical machine with which Gurt had cooperated a couple of times while with the Agency.

  Now, millions, if not billions, of dollars worth of hightech equipment was being used to track her down. It would have been intimidating had she not realized that as long as she kept away from public places, did not use her cell phone or credit cards, she would he untraceable, no matter how many high-resolution satellites circled overhead, how many helicopters searched the highways or how many listening devices probed the ether for any communication from her.

  As long as he has a well-prepared hole, the rabbit always has the advantage over the hound. And this hole had been prepared to hide from enemies from her and Lang’s past, should they reappear. A simple wood-shake cabin of no more than fifteen hundred square feet housed a cache of at least a month’s food. A computer covertly routed through any number of others, a tract of land in middle-Georgia farm country owned by an untraceable offshore corporation. A series of well-hidden remote cameras set off by motion. Gurt had long tired of watching the parade of deer, beaver, fox and other creatures who regularly appeared on the realtime show, but she realized its potential value.

  Better than any electronics was the man who operated a small farm on the adjacent property, Larry Henderson. As a former marijuana grower whom Lang had defended from federal prosecution a few years ago, Larry not only was highly suspicious of strangers, particularly trespassing strangers, he was intensely loyal to Lang and knew how to handle the variety of firearms he owned. Plus, he and his wife pretty much knew whenever a new face popped up on the local scene.

  In Lamar County, he was better than Jake’s security service.

  Dillinger notwithstanding, Gurt wasn’t going to be caught at Chicago’s Biograph Theater or its middle-Georgia equivalent.

  At last, the truck’s headlights picked up the first of the series of NO TRESPASSING signs that delineated Larry’s property. The next driveway, nearly obscured by brush intentionally left uncut, would be the turn into the farm and the end of searching the sky and rearview mirror. Tomorrow, she would dispose of the truck and ask Larry to go into nearby Barnesville for any needed supplies.

  For the moment, all she wanted was not to wake Manfred when she carried him inside and to get some sleep herself. Both the late hour and tension had drained her.

  For the moment, she was safe.

  Basilique Saint Denis

  Lang shone his flashlight on the tray that had popped out of the plinth. “Spring release?”

  Recovered from his initial shock, Patrick knelt for a closer look. “Hardly room for a mummy.”

  Lang squatted, placing the light in his mouth while he used both hands to reach into the tray, and removed a wooden box. “If these are Alexander’s remains, I suspect it’s less than the full body.” He examined the metalwork. “The hinges are rusted shut.” He touched a keyhole. “And there’s no key. I don’t have anything with me that would open it. We may have to just force it . . .”

  He cut the sentence short as both men froze. There was no mistaking the sound of footsteps above.

  “Do you think the Chinese have already figured out what Bonaparte meant?”

  Lang pushed the tray closed and was searching for the best hiding place. “At this hour, I doubt we’re hearing early arrivals for mass.”

  Nearest the stairs, he spotted the congregation of tombs he had first seen, circled almost like a wagon train under attack. From the brief glance before cutting off his light, he fixed the position of the older part of the crypt, that closest to the staircase, in his mind.

  He tucked the box under his left arm. With his right, he slipped the Browning from its holster at his back.

  With Patrick’s hand on his shoulder, Lang groped his way toward the place he had chosen. The thin light filtering through the basilica’s windows from above spilled down the stairs, outlining vague shadows that had equal chances of being merely ethereal or hard, unforgiving marble. With the hand holding the Browning extended in front of him, Lang found something, a tomb, and pulled Patrick down beside him.

  They had no time to ascertain just where they were before footsteps echoed from the stone stairs. One, two, three, four shapes drifted down the stairs to merge with the darkness like specters descending into Hades. There were muted whi
spers, and two lights swept the gloom. Lang ducked, expecting to be caught like one of those unfortunate World War II British bomber pi lots pinned to the sky by a German searchlight. One beam swept over the sepulcher, painting the adjacent dusty sarcophagus with a brilliance it had not had in over a millennium. Lang got a flash of a reclining woman, arms crossed over her breast, with an animal, a dog, at her feet, before the light passed by.

  Next to him, Patrick was attempting to rise up enough to see. Lang tugged at his arms. Lips next to his friend’s ear, Lang whispered, “Wait.”

  He had a good idea what the Frenchman was thinking: four men, undoubtedly armed, with possibly a couple more keeping watch in the basilica above. Not good odds. If the undone lock on the church’s left door had not tipped the intruders off someone had been here before them, if they had entered by one of the two other portals, something else would. Lang tried to think. Had he unintentionally left some other sign of his and Patrick’s presence?

  Too late to worry now.

  Relying more on sound than sight, Lang guessed the newcomers had divided, two men with each light, as they edged deeper into the crypt. For the moment there was nothing to do but cower in the darkness amid the group of tombs.

  Slowly, the lights passed them by, traveling farther into the necropolis. Then there was a cry, something in a language Lang could not understand. Daring to raise his head above the stone figures, he saw both lights illuminating the Bourbon monument. Four men surrounded the statuary, the reflected light revealing Asian faces animated in conversation.

  Lang gave Patrick a gentle shove. Now was the time to get out of here.

  Patrick understood. Lang could see his dim outline on hands and knees, ruining his impeccably tailored suit, as he made for the exit. Lang followed, the box in one hand, Browning in the other.