Swordsman's Legacy

by Alex Archer

  Annja called up her sword and met the challenge. She aimed for his left shoulder, but Lambert’s dodge placed his heart in harm’s way. Annja felt the blade enter Jacques Lambert’s body. A warm splatter of blood spotted the back of her hand. The heart tremored—she felt the throb ride her blade—and she quickly withdrew.

  Blood spilled from Lambert’s chest.

  “No!” She had not intended to kill him.

  Abandoning her sword, Annja caught him as he wobbled forward.

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way,” she muttered frantically.

  He would never have killed her. The man merely enjoyed the duel, in matching his skills against hers. He had said he’d not wanted her dead.

  “You’ve killed me?” he gurgled. Blood dribbled from his mouth.

  Annja helped him lay down on the tarmac. A cursory glance found the road empty, but the sirens, which had momentarily receded, were closing in. They must be tracking the fire without a destination address.

  “Quick.” He gripped her arm. “Go inside. Get my heart!”

  “Your—what?”

  “I’ve cloned all my organs.” A cough of blood spattered her bare knee.

  “The building is ablaze,” she said. If she risked reentry, exit would not be possible.

  The man had cloned his own organs? This was too much. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Words of my…father,” Lambert whispered. He coughed on his blood. “It is…never so simple. I need…Toby.”

  The man had created an empire in the memory of his lost twin brother. Had his vision not been corrupt, perhaps the medical community would have embraced BHDC’s research in therapeutic cloning. There was so much about Jacques Lambert that was right.

  Had she done the right thing?

  Of course not. She hadn’t wanted to kill him.

  “Toby?”

  Annja, embracing a sudden welling of sympathy, squeezed Lambert’s hand and leaned over him. “Toby would have been proud of your research, and your desire to help children as your brother could not have been helped.”

  He breathed, nodded, and his head fell limp in her hands. Annja lowered his skull to the ground. The police sirens sounded but a block or two away.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  A dead body. Blood on her clothes and hands. Not a situation Annja wanted to be caught in.

  Standing, she took off for the alley across the street, and ran into the narrow darkness until she arrived at a Dumpster. Pressing her back to the hard steel container, she bent forward and gasped to clear her lungs.

  At the end of the alley, sirens wailed.

  Shaking her head, she struggled with what she had done. Many times before, she had killed to protect herself, to protect others, to protect the world from evil.

  So why, this time, did guilt clutch her heart? Jacques Lambert was a delusional man, yet his research—the legal research—could have helped many.

  It would happen someday, the therapeutic cloning. And it would be legal and right.

  She nodded, summoning her wits about her. Now was no time to freak out. She had to believe that her sword would not strike at any who did not deserve it.

  And if she thought of the other benefit, then things were almost right. The BHDC building was going up in flames. And with it, Lambert’s death would keep the secret of her sword.

  Annja turned and clung to the steel lip of the Dumpster. Some of the action at the end of the alley was visible.

  Not far behind the police, a black Renault pulled up across the street from the burning building. A man jumped out from behind the driver’s seat to look over the destruction. He shoved a hand through his tousled hair. He wore pajama bottoms and a housecoat over his bare chest.

  Annja crouched and peered around the edge of the Dumpster to see inside the car. A woman, who looked to be screaming—make that moaning, desperately—reached out for her husband. He ducked his head inside the car, raising his hands in an I-don’t-know-what-is-happening gesture.

  Annja recognized the woman. The pregnant woman she had followed from BHDC the other day. Her moans were labor. Obviously, she had come to the one place the BHDC doctors had recommended.

  The husband managed to snag a police officer, who, after frantic gesticulations, spoke into his walkie-talkie. Summoning an ambulance to take the laboring woman to the hospital?

  If only she could go to her. How to find out the woman’s name? To know if her baby would survive Jacques Lambert’s experiments.

  27

  Ascher had been the one to alert the police.

  Annja didn’t hang around long. It was never wise to remain at the scene of a murder. Until the fire was extinguished, no one could know if there were salvageable documents. Some thing that might clue the police to the travesties that had occurred behind the steel doors of BHDC.

  Surely, Jacques had employees who would carry the torch for him in his absence. At the very least, Annja could rest assured this particular lab had been destroyed.

  How many more were attempting to clone human beings?

  It was a race to play God that could never be extinguished. But if the media reported on it properly, then more people could be educated about what genetic sciences could and couldn’t do. No parent would seek to replace a dead child, knowing the personality could never be duplicated.

  And perhaps, with education, the political arena could be taught that stem cells donated by couples going through infertility treatments were a viable means to valuable research that could save thousands.

  So long as that research continued to be policed.

  ANNJA STOPPED BY the hotel across from Notre-Dame and checked out. Her notebook and laptop were still there in the small closet where she had stashed them. Bart McGilly called while she stood looking from her hotel window over at the centuries-old beauty of the cathedral.

  “I appreciate you looking into the cloning laws for me, Bart, but it’s too late. Lambert…died in the fire.”

  “Unfortunate, but probably better in the long run. You coming back to American soil anytime soon?”

  “Not for another week. I just got an assignment from my producer. I’m off to Ireland to chase faeries.”

  “I’d laugh, but for some reason I think you’re serious,” Bart said.

  “I hope not. Belief in faeries? So not going there. Thanks, Bart. We’ll lunch at Tito’s when I get back to Brooklyn. My treat.”

  “Excellent. I miss you. Talk to you later, Annja.”

  She hung up. A twinge of regret poked her briefly. As much as she loved him, she knew she wasn’t the woman for him.

  “Don’t go there, Annja,” she told herself.

  On the other hand. She had caught herself a fine Frenchman, without even trying. Everything about Ascher Vallois appealed to her, once she got past his initial deception and theft of the map. He had only done what any desperate man might do.

  “Hope that last kidney is all right,” she muttered. “Poor guy took a beating these past few days. Bet I could beat him in a race across the city.”

  And climbing, leaping and dodging, she thought, remembering their parkour run. Now, that was definitely something she would try again. Without the thugs on her tail next time.

  BEFORE RETURNING to her car, Annja detoured to the Hôtel-Dieu, which was right across the street from Notre-Dame. It didn’t take long to locate the woman who had given birth last evening. Annja stood in the doorway to the guest waiting room. From her position she could see the nursery viewing window. The woman she’d followed the other day to the café stood before the window with her husband. Both cooed and waved at one of the bundled infants behind the glass.

  A healthy baby girl, she’d overheard them whisper. Their dreams had been answered after years of unsuccessful fertility treatments.

  Annja could foresee no possible way of sleuthing her way into the nursery to check the baby’s records—the nurses were like tigers on the prowl, very protective of their tiny charges.
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br />   Was it her responsibility to inform them the mother had been a guinea pig in an illegal cloning operation? Could she do that to a helpless infant? Force it to endure medical tests to prove it was a clone? How did one prove it was a clone? Wouldn’t DNA tests appear as any other normal human?

  If word got out, the media would have a heyday. The baby’s parents would be kept from her. She would become an orphan, surrounded by a strange circus of media, medical and scientific personnel.

  A little girl lost, yet surrounded by a curious and inadvertently cruel world. And yet all she would crave was to be held by her parents.

  Sniffing, Annja tilted her head away from the scene. She swiped the back of her hand across her cheek. She wasn’t crying. Maybe.

  It wouldn’t change things to mourn over what was missing from her life. There were plenty of children and adults in this world without parents. The world was a cruel place. The baby behind that glass would have to learn to suck it up if she wanted to survive.

  But survival would be much easier in a loving family.

  As for alerting the medical staff of the baby’s possible genetic beginnings…?

  Annja felt not knowing this truth was best for everyone involved.

  ROUX HELD d’Artagnan’s rapier en garde as Annja entered the study. He was being playful, his left hand propped at his hip and a jaunty defiance crooking his grin.

  Annja wasn’t feeling the humor.

  She called Joan’s sword into her hand and swept it before her, slicing the air and speaking a warning to back off or risk injury.

  “You in the mood for duel?” Roux challenged. He drew up the rapier before his face and looked at her, the blade drawing a line between his steely eyes. “You wouldn’t risk damaging an artifact, would you?”

  Stalking right up to him and sweeping a low slash that should have cut him off at the ankle—had he not jumped into the air—Annja gave him the silent answer. The old man was spry, she’d give him that.

  “Why the angry energy today, Annja? Didn’t the treasure hunt go well?”

  “We found it. Maybe.”

  Dodging his lunge, she guessed he wouldn’t poke her with the blade, but then again, one could never be too sure about Roux.

  She would never completely trust him. And this new information about his skulking about at BHDC only served to remind her that Roux did have his own purposes.

  “What’s going on with you and Lambert?” she asked. “I know you’ve been to see him. He was very cagey about knowing something about me. Something that would change my world.”

  “When did he say that to you?” The duel forgotten, Roux let down his guard and almost lost an ear, had Annja not stopped her slash but an inch from his scalp. “Annja, dear, hold your venom. You really wish to do me harm? I’m not in collusion with the man, if that’s what you believe.”

  “You hadn’t even heard of BHDC until I told you days ago. What was it I said that had you running to Jacques Lambert? I can guess, but that would just be too awful.”

  “And what do you guess?” Completely oblivious to its value, he pressed the point of the rapier into the toe of his leather shoe, propping his palms casually over the hilt, which still lacked the pommel. “That I’m curious about you, and the sword, and the whole she-has-inherited-Joan’s-quest thing?”

  She didn’t want to ask. She didn’t want to know.

  Yes, you do.

  What good would knowing serve? There was nothing to know.

  “Did you bring Lambert a DNA sample from Joan of Arc? Was that her chain mail?”

  Lifting up a belligerent chin, his silence told Annja all she needed.

  “And mine?” she whispered. She didn’t want that answer. Not in a thousand years could she want that answer. Roux had obtained a sample of her DNA? From what?

  “Lambert was to call me the moment he had results. I’ll ring him up right now, if you wish me to.”

  “Too late.” She thrust out her right arm, splaying her fingers to release the blade. It disappeared.

  “It is a wondrous thing,” Roux said, reverence making his words husky. “The sword and its attachment to you. Don’t you wish to know? What if you are—?”

  “Not listening.” Annja spun and stalked toward the door. “Can I trust you’ll send the rapier on to the museum in Lupiac?”

  “Yes, Annja, but—”

  Still walking, she turned and fished out the pommel she had carried in the pocket of her jeans. Giving it a toss, she lobbed it right into Roux’s palm.

  “BHDC burned to the ground this morning. All research and DNA evidence went up in smoke with it,” she said.

  “No, that’s—” Noticeably shaken, Roux dropped his gaze along the floor. His hand shook. The rapier blade curved violently, then he snapped the blade out to cut the air. He suddenly looked every bit the five hundred years he had lived. “Her mail—I suppose that was lost?”

  Annja nodded.

  “I was so close.”

  “Close doesn’t count,” she said.

  “Don’t you want to know?”

  Annja swallowed back the first word that came to her tongue, and instead shook her head negatively. “Sorry you lost the chain mail, Roux. Thanks for…” For opening up a whole new mystery for me to ponder. “We’ll meet again. I look forward to it. Bonsoir.”

  He waved and stepped back to sit on the edge of his desk.

  Annja did not look back. She fought the urge to turn and race up to him and embrace him as a daughter would her father. The man simply wanted answers. She understood his pining. But she couldn’t give him what he wanted.

  And she wasn’t ready for what he wanted to offer her.

  ASCHER TUGGED a T-shirt over his head as Annja arrived at his hospital room. He was getting dressed to check out. She’d scanned his chart, hanging outside the door. They’d sewn up the bullet wound and prescribed him Vicodin for the pain.

  “Annja!”

  “You’re looking rested, Vallois.”

  “And you’re…”

  He scanned her attire; she was still dressed in the clothes she’d worn all day yesterday, which had included their adventures in the bowels of the city. Blood stained her hip, and dirt and soot scuffed her jeans. She hadn’t seen a comb in ages, and she was tired.

  “Ready for a real vacation,” she provided.

  “Sorry about that. Next time I invite you to Paris it will be strictly for leisure.”

  “Did you say leisure or pleasure?”

  “Pleasure? You would accept the invitation?” he asked.

  “You’ll have to wait and see.”

  An enthusiastic wink preceded his crossing the room to pull her into a hug. It was a friendly we-survived-a-great-adventure kind of hug, which relieved Annja. She was in no condition, physically, to volley any flirtations.

  “Did you get the box?” he asked.

  The man did have a one-track mind. Focused on riches, as usual. “It went up in flames with the entire BHDC headquarters.”

  “What? After all our work?”

  “We did spend a lot of time tracking the elusive thing. I did get a chance to look it over, though. I’m guessing it was a sort of trinket box, put out to advertise The Three Musketeers. It had All For One, One For All carved around the box top.”

  “But that means…this was all a wild-goose chase?”

  “I don’t think so.” She sat on the canvas folding chair next to his hospital bed. It felt good to sit and not be tense. And to not have to stand before Roux and face his disappointment. “I think there really was a treasure, but someone claimed it and left the box there in its place.”

  Ascher settled on the edge of the rumpled hospital bed, white sport socks in his hands. He let out a heavy sigh. “Dumas?”

  “No. He died a pauper.”

  “Like our Charles de Castelmore. It had to have been in the mid-to late-nineteenth century if what you say about the box is true.”

  “Yes, which rules out any of d’Artagnan’s contempora
ries, including Fouquet and Mazarin.” Annja zipped open her backpack and pulled out a notebook where most of her notes on the lost sword and this whole adventure were scribbled. “But Auguste Maquet…”

  “Who forced Dumas to sign a document guaranteeing to pay him wages—”

  “Which he was never paid because Dumas was in financial straits—”

  “Died a rich man,” Ascher concluded.

  “Exactly.”

  She found the page where she’d copied the notation regarding Maquet’s building a home in Dourdan and living rather well, much to the surprise of his friends and family. No one was sure how he managed it—for all were aware Dumas had stiffed him the owed monies.

  Pleased she’d solved the riddle—though it was only conjecture—it fit well enough into her idea of history. Annja waited for Ascher’s reaction.

  “You’re wishing you never invited me to the dig, I bet.” She walked over to the window. Fading wooden roof slats protected the bird market on the street across from the hospital.

  “Never.” From behind, he put his arms around her waist. “I did lose a treasure that could have financed a new addition to my fencing school.”

  “You’ll find a way. You’re an industrious man. Besides, the treasure was long gone before we got there,” she said.

  “I also lost a kidney.”

  “You can survive with one. You’ll be fencing in no time.”

  “But I did get the girl.”

  She turned in his arms. “Sort of.”

  “You are going to leave me for another adventure?”

  “I’ve already got a new assignment. I have to be in Ireland by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “That gives you twenty-four hours. The Chunnel will shoot you to the British Isles in less than two hours. You can stay the day and have lunch with me at the Eiffel Tower?”

  “Isn’t that a little touristy?”

  “So you’ll stay?”

  “A girl should never refuse a free meal,” she said.

  Epilogue

  Nineteenth century

  Alexandre had a way about him. He could divert a man’s attentions and get him to work. Work furiously. Work desperately. Putting words to paper.