by Gabriel Hunt
“You need Hunt,” Naeem protested, “and his sister. But the French woman . . . ?”
“Are you questioning me?” Amun said.
“Of course not,” Naeem said.
“Good,” Amun said. “Now do your job.”
Naeem tried to keep the frustration out of his voice. “Understood.”
They checked out of the hotel at dawn.
Corsica was a beautiful country, in a rough-hewn way. There was nothing soft about it. Mountainous throughout much of its middle, it was a country as rugged as any Gabriel had been to and not only physically. Although technically part of France, Corsica was more Italian in culture and sensibility, and its people had a quality all their own, strong and unsentimental, almost brutal. The word “vendetta” originated in Corsica, and the Union Corse—the Corsican mafia—had been a powerful force in daily life on the island for most of the past century. Even now, officially crushed, it still had its tentacles in businesses throughout the country. Corsicans were hard people, living in a hard environment.
Gabriel drove south toward Propriano and the small community of Sollacaro, which hosted the Filitosa site. If there was something to be found, this was where they had to start looking.
“They are headed toward the site,” Naeem reported.
“Excellent,” Amun said. “You know what to do if he makes it inside the Web.”
“What about the Corsicans who guard it?”
“Kemnebi will take care of them. He is assembling a team. If it proves necessary, we will intervene.”
“Understood,” Naeem said. Then after Amun had disconnected and the cell phone was safely closed, he said contemptuously, “If it proves necessary.”
They reached Filitosa by midmorning. It was in the middle of a dense forest that seemed to be untouched by modern civilization. Gabriel parked the car, took the pair of rucksacks they’d filled with their gear, and handed one to Sammi, who shrugged it on. Together they went into the Repository Museum building, where visitors bought tickets to visit the site. The museum contained a number of specimens excavated from various archaeological digs on the property. Glass display cases held artifacts such as obsidian arrowheads and pottery from the late Neolithic period. Gabriel led Sammi past the ranks of cases and straight to the outside path that led through an ancient olive grove to the first monument. Walking down the hill from there, they came to the monument, which consisted of menhirs with crudely carved faces erected around an open-air shrine. A number of hut platforms also surrounded the area.
Gabriel studied the map he had drawn. “We need to go to the very bottom of the hill, where the Western Monument and torri are located.”
“What’s a torri?”
“A type of circular stone structure. It’s thought they were used as temples. Come on.”
They continued along the path. Menhirs were arranged in a ritualistic circle near walls of stone that had once enclosed—what? No one knew. Gabriel had asked Michael once. It was obvious that the ancient Corsicans had used the structure for religious purposes, but historians weren’t sure what that religion was.
Beyond the monument was a fence—the end of the Filitosa property.
“We have to get over that fence without being seen,” Gabriel said. There weren’t too many people around—it was still early. They walked to a section of the fence partly concealed behind a stand of large olive trees.
“Okay, quick.” Gabriel held his hands together to give Sammi a boost. She placed a foot in his palm, caught hold of the top of the fence with both hands and nimbly hoisted herself up. In an instant she was down on the other side and had disappeared into the thick foliage. Gabriel was reminded of the way she’d vanished from Lucy’s apartment in Nice.
“Coming?” came an impatient whisper.
Gabriel took a look around to make sure no one had come into view, then pulled himself up to the top of the fence. Before he could put his leg over, he heard a telephone ringing somewhere beneath him—Sammi’s cell phone.
He vaulted over the top of the fence and dropped into the undergrowth, where Sammi was fumbling in her pocket. The phone rang again. Gabriel hissed, “Turn that thing—”
She flipped it open and answered in a whisper. “Oui?” She listened for a moment. “Yes, he is right here.” She handed the phone to Gabriel. “It is your brother. He says it is urgent.”
Gabriel took the phone. “Michael, once again, not a good time.”
“I was right, Gabriel,” Michael said, miserably. “She’s been kidnapped again.”
“What?”
“I said Lucy’s been—”
“How did it happen? In Paris?”
“No. She never made it on the plane.”
Gabriel’s hand tightened around the phone. “Damn it.”
“I just got another e-mail from the Alliance. It says you have to ‘deliver the Stone to us or your sister will die.’ ”
“They must know we’re here,” Gabriel said.
“You want me to call the police?” Michael said. “Interpol?”
“No. They’d be useless—or worse. These people are not amateurs. They’ll kill her if we give them a reason.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Get their goddamn stone for them.” He hung up. The look on Sammi’s face told him he didn’t need to relay the news. “Don’t worry,” Gabriel said, “we’ll get her back.”
“What if we can’t?”
Gabriel didn’t answer. He just took another look at his map, jammed it in his pocket, and headed toward a thick crop of trees.
The track led them deeper into the dark forest. Sunlight barely filtered through the tops of the tall pine trees. Twenty minutes of climbing over knotted roots and fallen and rotting tree trunks brought them to a small clearing that began where they were standing and ended a dozen feet away, at a wall of boulders. It was as tall as a three-story building, as wide as four buses driving bumper-to-bumper.
“Is this a natural formation?” Sammi asked, looking at the giant, irregular stones. “Or was there a rock slide . . . ?”
“Neither,” Gabriel said. “I think they were put here. Like the menhirs.”
“But these are enormous,” she said. “How could they even have moved them, never mind lifted them . . . ?”
“Nobody knows,” Gabriel said. “But here they are. And the map says we need to be on the other side.”
“I don’t see a way around,” Sammi said.
“There isn’t one,” Gabriel said. He was already undoing the closure of his rucksack and gestured to Sammi to do the same. “We’re going to have to go over.”
He took out a length of rope and tied one end to her waist, then fastened the other to his own. “I’ll go first. Just follow my lead. Place your feet exactly where I put mine. All right?”
She leaned in and kissed him, just briefly. “For luck,” she said.
“Let’s hope we don’t need it,” he said.
Gabriel shimmied up the first boulder, found a foothold, and then struck the pickax into the rock above him. That gave him something to grab. He hammered a spring-loaded camming device into the crack between two big rocks and quickly attached a carabiner to it, then secured the rope. Using this anchor, he was able to climb to a higher rock, repeat the procedure, and move on. When he was four boulders up, he called for Sammi to follow. She bounded up the first rock like a pro, carefully mimicked Gabriel’s footwork, and scurried onto the second. They were on their way.
It took them a little over forty minutes to reach the top of the boulders. “That wasn’t so bad,” Sammi said.
“We’re not done,” Gabriel said. “Now we go down.”
They reversed the process. Down generally took less time than up, but was more dangerous. When ascending during a rock climb, you can see what’s ahead. When you’re going down, you can’t.
“Take it slow,” Gabriel said. “Pay attention to every step. It just takes one—” Gabriel felt some loose pebbles slip beneath his so
le and leaned in toward the rock face to regain his balance.
“Are you okay?”
“As I was saying,” Gabriel said.
They went the rest of the way slowly, cautiously, Gabriel wondering with every step whether Amun or Kemnebi or another of Khufu’s minions was watching them at this very moment, from the branches of a nearby tree or through the high-powered scope of a sniper rifle.
Sammi dropped to the ground beside him, a little out of breath. “How did I do?”
“You’re a natural.” Gabriel quickly packed the climbing tools and took out his handmade map. “Here is where it gets complicated. I’m not sure where we’re supposed to go next. Neither was the Alliance. The place we’re looking for—” he pointed to the area labeled in Arabic “—is somewhere around here, but exactly where . . . I don’t know.” He looked at the thick wall of trees directly ahead of them. “You’d think there would be a marker of some kind.”
“After two hundred years?”
“There’s apparently a group still in existence that’s devoted to keeping the secret.”
“Then wouldn’t they want to get rid of any markers?”
“Not if the markers are part of the secret they’re protecting,” Gabriel said.
Sammi studied the terrain in front of her. “Is this what you Americans mean when you say ‘can’t see the forest for the trees’?”
“Might as well be.” Gabriel began to walk along the tree line, studying the ground and the trunks. He found no signs of recent visitation, nor any indication of any man-made objects. He looked at the map again. “I don’t get it. It’s as if the trail stops cold.”
“Are you sure it really exists?”
He thought of the nonexistent urn he’d come to Corsica to find the last time. “I’m beginning to wonder.”
He put the map away and moved forward, through the trees. There was no trail, so the brush was difficult to step across. Sammi tailed behind him.
“Watch your step,” he warned.
As they continued deeper into the maquis, Gabriel systematically scanned their surroundings left and right. If they didn’t find something concrete soon, they’d have to turn back. What consequences that might have for Lucy, he didn’t know and didn’t want to contemplate. He could tell the Alliance that in his expert opinion the Stone didn’t exist, or at least the hiding place on Corsica didn’t. They might even believe him—but that wouldn’t stop them from killing him. Or Lucy.
Maybe if he could break her free again, get her back to New York—
He never had the chance to finish the thought, because at that moment he saw the menhir.
It was twenty yards in front of them and off to one side, hidden by an especially dense group of trees, a menhir similar to the ones behind them at Filitosa. Gabriel ran toward it, Sammi at his heels. He pushed aside a branch and stepped closer. This one wasn’t ancient. It was old—but not prehistoric. The stone wasn’t nearly as weathered, the features on the carved face at the top more distinct.
It was the face of a young man—a boy, really—and on the sides of the towering stone were the suggestions of a military uniform. The figure’s face was turned to the left, in profile.
“I don’t believe it,” Sammi said.
“What?”
She pointed up toward where the figure’s shoulders would have been if it were a full sculpture. “The insignia of the Military College of Brienne. He was not yet ten years old. This is Napoleon, Gabriel.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded. “It was when he first left Corsica. He came back during the Revolution, and once later, after returning from Egypt—but he was never again to make his home here for any length of time. This was the last age at which he was purely a Corsican—when he was still Napoleone di Buonaparte, not yet Napoleon Bonaparte.”
Gabriel walked around the menhir. “That tells us the trail exists. The question is, where do we go from here?”
Sammi followed the statue’s gaze to the left. “Maybe this way?”
“Makes as much sense as anything.”
They walked through the brush in that direction. A hollow log, the remnant of a fallen tree, lay across their path. Gabriel stepped over it, but as he set his foot down, something snapped.
“Don’t move,” Gabriel said.
Sammi looked around. “What is it?”
Gabriel was studying the log and the ground around it. He picked up a thin cord that had been attached to a spring mechanism. “It was booby-trapped.”
“But nothing happened,” Sammi said.
Gabriel shook his head. “Nothing we can see,” he said. He let the cord drop. “It triggered something. Probably an alarm.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Neither do I. Yet.” He drew his Colt.
They continued on in as close to a straight line as they could, through another thick grove of trees. On the far side, a narrow path opened up. Gabriel hurried along it until it widened into a clearing, roughly the same size as the one beside the wall of boulders. Only here there were no boulders, no wall—just a grassy slope, and in the side of the slope, an opening loosely concealed behind dead tree branches.
“Sammi, I think we may have found it,” Gabriel said. He heard something behind him, something heavy thudding to the ground. “Sammi?”
He spun around.
Silently and out of nowhere, six armed men had appeared between the trees. They all had guns—rifles and pistols—pointed at Gabriel. Sammi was lying facedown at the feet of a seventh man who held the butt of his rifle angled above the back of her head.
Gabriel let his gun fall to the ground and slowly raised his hands. The man standing over Sammi, his broad Corsican features ruddy, had dark eyes, gray-black hair, and a full beard. He stepped forward.
“You are trespassing,” he said. “You may not go farther. In fact, you will not leave this place alive.”
Chapter 19
“We’re not your enemy,” Gabriel said.
“Any man who sets foot here is my enemy,” the man said.
“There is a group in Egypt, the Alliance of the Pharaohs—Alliance Pharaonique. They’ve taken your men in the past, tortured them. And now they’ve kidnapped my sister. Said they would kill her if I didn’t find the Second Stone for them.”
The man didn’t budge. “Then I am very sorry for you. It is a terrible thing to lose a sister. But at least you will have the comfort of dying first.”
“Hang on,” Gabriel said, “nobody has to die. We all want the same thing—the group in Egypt stopped. Surely there’s a way to—”
At the man’s feet, Sammi groaned.
“Can I help her up?” Gabriel said. When the man didn’t respond, Gabriel added, “You can shoot us if you want. But until you do, I’m going to help her.”
“Is she armed?”
“No.”
The man nodded slightly. Gabriel bent and extended a hand to Sammi, and she pulled herself up. She was unsteady on her feet and she winced when she put a hand to the back of her skull.
“Who are you?” she said.
The men said nothing.
“They’re the group organized by Napoleon’s brother,” Gabriel said. “To protect the Second Stone. Am I right?”
“You are,” the leader said, “and it is the seal on your death warrant. You know too much to live.” He raised his rifle, and the men behind him followed suit.
Gabriel gauged the distance to his Colt. He couldn’t outrun seven bullets.
“Wait,” he said. “I have a proposition—”
“What proposition?” the man said.
Gabriel’s mind was racing, trying to come up with an answer to that question. He saw the man’s finger tighten on the trigger and began blurting out the first thing that came to mind, “We could make a—”
But Gabriel’s words were drowned out by a barrage of gunfire. Gabriel and Sammi both flinched and looked down at their own chests, but no bullets had struck them. Looking up, they
saw spots of crimson erupting across the leader’s torso. His eyes rolled up into his head and he dropped to his knees, the rifle tumbling from his dead hands. The other men turned shouting in the direction the gunfire had come from and began firing blindly themselves.
Men wearing burnooses over their faces poured out of the forest, shooting as they came. Gabriel recognized the one in the lead—he didn’t need to see Kemnebi’s face to know it was him. Gabriel pulled Sammi to the ground as bullets whipped over their heads. The remaining Corsicans took cover behind trees. Skilled at maneuvering in this environment, they quickly vanished to obtain secure positions from which to shoot.
Gabriel’s Colt lay a few feet away, next to the Corsican leader’s body. Gabriel darted toward it but was forced back by a spray of bullets. “Gabriel!” Sammi shouted. Turning, he saw that one of the Egyptians had run out from the trees and into the clearing, unsheathing a long knife as he came. With his other hand, the man pulled his burnoose away from his face, revealing a bruised jaw—and eyes burning with rage. Sammi rolled out of his path just as his blade descended, a bitter declaration in Arabic spraying from his lips. Gabriel lunged for his pistol, grabbed it, and rolled onto his back, firing at the attacker in one fluid motion. The Colt’s round slammed into the man’s shoulder, causing him to stumble—but he kept coming, knife swinging wildly. Gabriel squeezed the trigger again, aiming dead center on the purple and yellow bruise on the man’s face. The Colt jerked in his hand and the man went down, a spray of blood hanging in the air for an instant before pattering over his body.
Gabriel ran to Sammi in a crouch and pulled her toward the cave entrance.
Behind them, Gabriel heard the battle continuing fiercely, gunshots mixing with cries of pain, exclamations both in French and Arabic. The Corsican group may have been smaller in number, but they were managing to pick off the Alliance members. Gabriel glanced back and counted five bodies on the ground—besides the Corsican leader, the others were all Egyptian. It was what the Alliance got for attacking on the group’s home turf. But Gabriel couldn’t take much comfort from the fact, since if the Corsicans prevailed, it was what Gabriel and Sammi would get as well.
