[JJ06] Quicksand

by Gigi Pandian

  “Come on,” I said, leading a bleary-eyed Lane to the couch. “Where do you keep the blankets around here?”

  “Closet,” he murmured, already lying down.

  I found a narrow closet next to the front door, disguised by a hanging mirror. I brought back a plaid wool blanket, but I needn’t have bothered. He was already asleep. At least I thought so. But as I placed the blanket over him, his lips moved.

  “Did you say something?” I whispered.

  “The desk,” he said, opening his eyes. “Don’t forget about the desk. It may tell us something.” He told me the name of the desk at the Louvre, so I could look it up. “Any more questions for now?”

  “Since you’re awake,” I said, “There’s a question I’ve been dying to ask. How did you choose the painting for the diversion?”

  “You mean because it risked getting damaged?” He grinned. “I’ve always hated that painting.”

  CHAPTER 24

  While Lane slept, I got to work. I made myself another cup of tea, then sat down at the table with the laptop. Before I tackled research, there was something more important I had to do.

  I needed to get back in touch with Sanjay sometime soon, lest he call the National Guard—or whatever the French equivalent was. The last time I was abroad and didn’t call him for more than a day, he hopped on a flight to India. To be fair, in that case he believed he had evidence that a treasure I was tracking down was also being sought by a killer. But Sanjay had always been one to overreact. I hoped that because he was currently in the midst of preparing for a magic tour, he wouldn’t have time to consider doing anything drastic, but I wanted to be sure.

  With Lane’s word of warning, I knew my email couldn’t contain any information about what was going on. I logged onto my email on the laptop and sent him a brief message telling him that France wasn’t a bust after all, as I’d written to him shortly after arriving, and that I was going to enjoy a few days relaxing before flying home.

  I was about to log off and get to work when I saw an email from Tamarind.

  J,

  Why aren’t you posting photos of Paris?

  Things are boring here. Thanks for asking. What’s with the radio silence?

  Most importantly, why did you let Naveen take over your classes while you’re gone??? He changed your syllabus—the nerve of that man!!!!!!!

  Scratch that. It’s true about Naveen, but that’s not the most important thing. How’s Paris??? Send photos! You should do this thing where you pose in front of the Eiffel Tower making it look like your finger is on top of it.

  T

  I shouldn’t have opened the email. I couldn’t worry about Naveen or my students. I sent her a quick reply saying I had a spotty internet connection but that all was well.

  I forced myself to push all thoughts of Naveen Krishnan from my mind. Whatever was going on at home could wait. I glanced at Lane, sleeping like the dead on the couch.

  I closed the laptop and found a paper notebook and pen in the junk drawer where Lane had salvaged his cigarettes. Making myself a list, I came up with four main avenues of research to pursue:

  First, the clue itself. Cementarium claustri ad cryptam. Stonemasons, cloisters, and a crypt. Without more to go on, the words didn’t tell us anything. I had to set aside that piece of the puzzle for now.

  Second, the Indian elephant and tiger motif in both a French illuminated manuscript and in a letter written by a clerk from the East India Company. How were the two connected? We wouldn’t be able to get the parchment painting dated, so that was a dead end. And Indian rulers loved pageantry, so there were far too many riches involving tigers and elephants to narrow it down that way.

  Third, the East India Company’s connections to the religious community in France. Before seeing this parchment, I hadn’t known there was such a connection. The letters North had might help connect the dots, but I had no way to see them. I’ve never fooled myself into believing I have anything close to a photographic memory, but when I focus on something, I give it my all. I remembered the date in the letter from the Englishman: 1793. But North had been careful not to show me anything too revealing.

  Lastly, the desk at the Louvre where the parchment had been hidden. This was my best lead, because the parchment was deliberately placed inside the desk’s secret hiding place.

  I knew close to nothing about the history of furniture, but from Lane I knew it was a high wooden desk with an angled top that was once used by monks in a scriptorium. The Louvre maintained a comprehensive website of its art, and I quickly found the desk in question. The information didn’t specify the provenance, but it was a desk once used by Benedictine monks circa 1100, before the Louvre acquired it during the French Revolution.

  Switching browser tabs to look up where monks might have had such a desk, I saw that I’d forgotten to log out of my email. A new message was waiting for me. Sanjay had written back already. It was only around 6 o’clock in the morning in San Francisco. Did he ever sleep?

  This illusion is killing me. Up all night again. I need a break. Why don’t you send me a mentalist puzzle for a break?

  I froze. If North was still monitoring my email, this was bad. Why had I thought it was a good idea for me to write to Sanjay in code from Paris? Of course, I knew the reason. At the time, I didn’t realize the lengths North was willing to go to.

  I tried to breathe. Was this what hyperventilating felt like?

  I read the email again. Sanjay didn’t actually say the word “code.” Nor did he say anything about our previous coded communication in which he’d directed me to Sébastien Renaud. I was overreacting.

  But my mini freak-out gave me an idea. If I was right that the message on the piece of parchment was there to provide a clue, then there was no point in it being so obscure. It had to tell us something specific. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been worth hiding. I pulled up the image of the parchment of faded calligraphy and zoomed in.

  I looked first at the painting. I didn’t know much about the artists who painted illuminated manuscripts, but to me it didn’t look like the animals and the man wrapped in the elephant’s trunk were the work of a skilled artist. The animals were recognizable, but that’s about all that could be said for them. As for the poor fellow being squeezed by the elephant’s trunk, his open mouth indicated agony, but there weren’t any identifiable details to suggest he was a specific historical figure.

  Scrolling down to the text, I was struck by the differences between the inks Lane had pointed out. Where the animals remained vibrant, the Latin lettering had almost completely faded into the paper. I adjusted the contrast to get a better look.

  “There’s another word,” I whispered to myself.

  At the beginning of the string of words was additional lettering we’d missed because it was so faded it was nearly invisible.

  Sequere. Follow.

  These were directions from the cloisters. “Follow stonemasons of cloisters to crypt.”

  I’d solved it! Oh. Damn. Once I thought about my breakthrough for more than two seconds, it was clear I hadn’t solved a thing. Which stonemasons? Where was this cloister and crypt? How did a treasure end up there? Was it truly an Indian treasure as the painting suggested? I’d been wildly speculating when I told Lane I was sure the piece of parchment led to a bigger treasure. My head spun with everything we didn’t know.

  I took a swig of tea, which had gone cold. I’d forgotten about it in the last hour spent delving into research. I stood up from the table and stretched. I was itching to go for a run to clear my head, but it didn’t seem wise to leave the apartment. Instead, I turned to the bookshelves in search of a break. A few cheesy adventure novels by H. Rider Haggard, like King Solomon’s Mines, were nestled in the corner of one shelf. I devoured those books as a guilty pleasure, but I’d never mentioned it to Lane. Severa
l Jorge Luis Borges books lined one shelf. He hadn’t told me he read Borges, too. I picked up a dog-eared book.

  “After you mentioned Borges on the train to Aberdeen last year,” Lane’s voice said from behind me, “I thought I should give him a try.”

  “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “You cried out a minute ago.”

  “I did?”

  “I thought you might have made a breakthrough.” He tossed the blanket aside and got up. “As exhausted as I am, I couldn’t get back to sleep. Probably for the best anyway, since I’ve got these contact lenses on.”

  “I thought for a second that I’d figured something out, but it doesn’t tell us anything. I’m afraid I may be leading us on a wild goose chase.”

  “Metaphors and philosophy,” Lane said, looking at the book in my hand. “It’s interesting you enjoy these books. I thought you liked things to be more straightforward. Finding the truth in history and teaching it to college students, not getting caught up in messy, unanswerable questions.”

  How did he know me so well in such a short space of time? “You’re right, but Borges’ motif of the labyrinth is about as straightforward as you can get. It’s winding, but unlike a maze that leads off in too many different directions and includes dead ends, a labyrinth leads you exactly where you need to go.”

  “Which one do you think we’re trapped in right now, Jones?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  CHAPTER 25

  “What did you find out while I slept?” Lane asked.

  I handed him my list and told him that I’d placed the 12th century desk from a Benedictine monk scriptorium acquired by the Louvre during the French Revolution. “I must have inadvertently exclaimed aloud when I saw this additional faded word telling us to follow the stonemasons.”

  “Not bad for an hour’s worth of work.”

  “Weren’t you listening? We don’t know anything! I don’t even know if you were right to listen to me. Maybe I’m crazy.”

  “You’re not crazy.”

  “You know what I am? Hungry. I didn’t realize it until just now, but I’m starving. I don’t think I’ve eaten all day.”

  “I don’t think it would be good for us to go out to eat together.”

  “I figured as much. Do you have any canned food in this miniature kitchen?”

  “Hey, don’t knock the kitchen. It’s where I’m going to cook us dinner when I get back from the market.”

  Lane turned to grab a canvas shopping tote from a hook on the back of the door with one hand while he ran his other hand through his hair. When he turned toward me again, he was a different man. He was the stooped, disheveled man who rode the metro and walked up the stairs while speaking in a British accent. Chameleon, indeed. No wonder North liked the moniker.

  “Who are you?”

  “Right now?” The voice was hesitant, almost scared. “I’m an unassuming Englishman originally from the small town of Nether Wallop.”

  I laughed. “Knowing English village names, I bet that’s a real place.”

  “Most assuredly.”

  “And what’s your name?”

  “I’m far too shy to get to know the neighbors, so they don’t know my name, only that I’m a quiet neighbor.”

  “You’re spooky, is what you are.”

  “I say, the quiet gentleman from Nether Wallop isn’t spooky. Odd, perhaps, but spooky is going a bit far.” With a wide-eyed expression of false outrage, he grabbed the door handle.

  “Hang on. Aren’t French shops closed on Sundays?”

  “Not in modern day Paris. Unless there’s a strike. Which, to be fair, is a frequent occurrence in this country. But the nearby market does close early, so I’d better get going if we want to eat.”

  Breaking character, he grinned and blew me a kiss on his way out the door.

  I rested my back against the door and closed my eyes. What are you doing here, Jaya Jones? Instead of thinking about buying a plane ticket home or figuring out the treasure North was after, all I could think about was Lane shopping for fresh food from a Paris market—as long as there wasn’t a strike.

  My eyes popped open. The French had always had a tradition of protesting, going all the way back to the French Revolution. It was the same timing as both the letters North showed me and the Louvre’s acquisition of the desk. The 1790s. The illustration had been painted on the old parchment by monks and hidden inside a French scriptorium desk at the same time Trenton Smith had written home to England from India—about the same treasure.

  I flung open the apartment door and ran onto the landing overlooking the staircase leading down. The twisting stairs were empty. Lane was already gone.

  I ran back to the apartment and opened the computer. There was one incredibly important religious site with cloisters and a crypt that I knew had come under siege and had its belongings seized during the French Revolution. And it was right next to Saint-Malo, the town where Dante had purchased chocolates.

  Mont Saint-Michel.

  One of the most iconic sites in France, Mont Saint-Michel was constructed on an island off the coast of Normandy. It had been a monastery, a scriptorium, and a prison. Because of its strategic location surrounded by dangerous tides and quicksand, it had been a relatively secure fortress during periods of history that were anything but secure.

  I began to research in earnest to fill in the details about the Mont. I could barely contain my excitement as I read about the hilly island off the northern coast of France in Normandy that was transformed into Mont Saint-Michel after a local bishop had a dream in the year 708. Saint Michael appeared to the bishop in his dream and asked him to build a monastery. It was a difficult process, building on a rocky hill rising out of the ocean, but several miracles were attributed to making the seemingly impossible construction a success.

  Looking at pictures of the castle-like Mont, it was easy to see why it had spiritual significance. The island had an ethereal look to it, rising out of the fog and surrounded by the ocean during high tide, but allowing people to pass during low tide. To this day, people died in the waters surrounding the Mont, either by getting caught unawares in the dangerous tides that seemed to come out of nowhere, or by stepping into quicksand that was deceptively the same color as solid sand. I shivered at the thought. The Mont tricked people, painting a perfect picture of calm tides and pristine sand, yet both were an illusion. Danger lurked just beneath the surface.

  The monastery attracted many monks who wanted a place of solitude, and it also became a major destination for Christian pilgrims. Over the years, the significance of the site grew, and the abbey grew in size accordingly. More and more rooms were built over the centuries, and ramparts were constructed surrounding the Mont to protect it from invaders. The island monastery and village held fast through different rulers, wars, and periodic mudslides and fires. Through it all, the monks continued their work of serving God through prayer—and creating illuminated manuscripts.

  Why wasn’t Lane back with those groceries yet? The more I read, the more sure I became that this was what we were looking for.

  Buildings on the Mont were frequently damaged through both natural and man-made disasters, and they were rebuilt with current architectural techniques, leading to a hodgepodge of styles that combined thick Romanesque walls with ornate Gothic arches. With that history, there were plenty of opportunities for treasures to be hidden within its walls.

  Even now, the site was often in a state of disrepair and in need of renovation. In fact, a huge renovation project was currently underway. Much of the Mont was currently surrounded by scaffolding. The majority of the renovations were scheduled to be completed the following month.

  That was it: our ticking clock.

  The renovations were why North had to act now—and why we did, too.

&n
bsp; CHAPTER 26

  When Lane walked through the door twenty minutes later, vegetable greens poked over the top of the shopping bag and he carried two cups of coffee in his hands. I took both cups of coffee from his hands, set them down, and threw my arms around his neck.

  “If I’d known the reaction that good French coffee would evoke, I would have gone earlier. You should appreciate how difficult it is to find somewhere that offers coffee ‘to go’ in Paris.”

  “I’ve got it,” I said, letting him go and bounding on the balls of my feet. “I know where North is going and why there’s a ticking clock that made him rush into this.”

  “Slow down. I don’t think you need this coffee after all.”

  I filled Lane in on what I’d pieced together.

  “You said Dante had a lot of things in his pockets,” Lane said. “A lot more than chocolates from Saint-Malo.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And I’m sure there are other religious sites that were sacked during the French Revolution.”

  “But not one that’s so old and sprawling, is known for its famous illuminated manuscripts, and that’s currently undergoing a major renovation wrapping up next month. There are tons of workmen and scaffolding around right now. Once the renovations are complete, it will be nearly impossible to do any secret digging for a hidden treasure. This ticking clock explains all of North’s odd behavior that’s out of character. He had no choice but to act more recklessly than usual.”

  “You could be right,” Lane said, but he didn’t look convinced. “It’s only a couple hours drive. Worth checking out.”

  “How are we going to rent a car? I thought you wanted to stay under the radar?”

  Lane left the bag of groceries in the kitchen, then disappeared into the hall closet and returned with a UK passport. It was his face on the ID, but the name was “Al Monkshood, Jr.”