by Steve Berry
“Can you fire a gun?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the road.
“Where is it?”
“Under the seat. I took it off the guy last night. There’s a full clip. Make ’em count. I need a little space from those guys behind us.”
She found the pistol and lowered her window. He saw her reach out, aim toward the rear, and fire five rounds.
The shots had the desired effect. The Renault backed off, but did not abort its pursuit. He fishtailed around another curve, working the brake and accelerator as years ago he’d been trained to do.
Enough of being the fox.
He swerved into the southbound lane and slammed on brakes. Tires grabbed the wet pavement with a screech. The Renault shot past in the northbound lane. He released the brake, downshifted to second, then plunged the accelerator to the mat.
The tires spun, then shot the car forward.
He wound the gearshift through to fifth.
The Renault was now ahead of him. He sent more gas to the engine. Sixty. Sixty-five. Seventy miles an hour. The whole thing was curiously invigorating. He hadn’t seen this kind of action in a while.
He swerved into the southbound lane and came parallel to the Renault.
Both cars were now doing seventy-five miles an hour on a relatively straight part of highway. Suddenly they crested a knoll and arched off the pavement, tires slamming hard as rubber re-found the soaked asphalt. His body jerked forward then back, rattling his brain, his shoulder harness holding him in place.
“That was fun,” Stephanie said.
To their left and right stretched green fields, the countryside a sea of lavender, asparagus, and grapes. The Renault roared up beside him. He stole another glance to his right. One of the short-hairs was climbing out of the passenger-side window, curling himself up and over the roof for a clear shot.
“Shoot the tires,” he told Stephanie.
She was preparing to fire when he saw a transport truck ahead, filling the Renault’s northbound lane. He’d driven enough of Europe’s two-laned highways to know that, unlike in America where trucks drove with reckless abandon, here they moved at a snail’s pace. He’d been hoping to find one closer to Limoux, but opportunities had to be taken when offered. The truck was no more than a couple of hundred yards ahead. They would be on it in a moment, and luckily his lane ahead was clear.
“Wait,” he said to her.
He kept his car parallel and did not allow the Renault a way out. The other driver would have to either brake, crash into the truck, or veer right into the open field. He hoped the truck stayed put in the northbound lane, otherwise he’d have no choice but to find a field himself.
The other driver apparently realized his three options and veered off the pavement.
He sped past the truck down the open road. A glance in his mirror confirmed that the Renault was mired in the tawny mud.
He swerved back into the northbound lane, relaxed a bit, but kept his speed, eventually leaving the main highway, as planned, at Limoux.
They arrived in Avignon a little after eleven AM. The rain had stopped fifty miles back and bright sunshine flooded the wooded terrain, the rolling hills green and gold, like a page from an old manuscript. A turreted medieval wall enclosed the city, which had once served as the capital of Christendom for nearly a hundred years. Malone maneuvered the Peugeot through a maze of narrow streets into an underground parking lot.
They climbed stairs to ground level and he immediately noticed Romanesque churches, framed by sunbaked dwellings, the roofs and walls all the tint of dirty sand, the feel clearly Italian. Being the weekend tourists were out by the thousands, the colorful awnings and plane trees in the Place de l’Horloge shading a boisterous lunch crowd.
The address from Lars Nelle’s notebook led them down one of the many rues. As they walked Malone thought of the fourteenth century, when popes exchanged Rome’s Tiber River for the French Rhône and occupied the huge palace on the hill. Avignon became an asylum for heretics. Jews bought tolerance with a modest tax, criminals lived unscathed, gaming houses and brothels flourished. Policing was lax and roaming after dark could be life threatening. What had Petrarch written? An abode of sorrows, everything breathes lies. He hoped things had changed in six hundred years.
Royce Claridon’s address was an antiques shop—books and furniture—the front window filled with Jules Verne volumes from the early part of the twentieth century. Malone was familiar with the colorful editions. The front door was locked, but a note taped to the glass stated that business was being conducted today on the Cours Jean Jaurès, part of a monthly book fair.
They learned directions to the market, which sat adjacent to a main boulevard. Rickety metal tables dotted the treed square. Plastic crates held French books as well as a smattering of English titles, mostly movie and television picture volumes. The fair seemed to draw a different type of patron. Lots of trimmed hair, glasses, skirts, ties, and beards—not a Nikon or camcorder in sight.
Buses lumbered past with tourists on the way to the papal palace, the groaning diesels drowning out the beat of a steel band playing across the street. A Coke can clattered across the pavement and startled Malone. He was on edge.
“Something wrong?”
“Too many distractions.”
They strolled though the market, his bibliophilic eye studying the wares. The good stuff was all wrapped in plastic. A card on top identified a book’s provenance and price, which he noticed was high for the low quality. He learned from one of the vendors the location for Royce Claridon’s booth, and they found it on the far side, away from the street. The woman tending the tables was short and stout, with bottle-blond hair tied in a bun. She wore sunglasses and any attractiveness was tempered by a cigarette stuck between her lips. Smoking was not something Malone had ever found appealing.
They examined her books, everything displayed on a tattered home entertainment center, most of the clothbound volumes in ratty condition. He was amazed anyone would buy them.
He introduced himself and Stephanie. The woman didn’t offer her name, she just kept smoking.
“We went by your shop,” he said in French.
“Closed for the day.” The clipped tone made clear that she did not want to be bothered.
“We’re not interested in anything there,” he made clear.
“Then, by all means, enjoy these wonderful books.”
“Business that bad?”
She sucked another drag. “It stinks.”
“Why are you here then? Why not out in the country for the day?”
She appraised him with a suspicious eye. “I don’t like questions. Especially from Americans who speak bad French.”
“I thought mine was fair.”
“It’s not.”
He decided to get to the point. “We’re looking for Royce Claridon.”
She laughed. “Who isn’t?”
“Care to enlighten us on who else is?” This bitch was getting on his nerves.
She did not immediately answer. Instead, her gaze shifted to a couple of people examining her stock. The steel band from across the street struck up another tune. Her potential patrons wandered off.
“Have to watch them all,” she muttered. “They will steal anything.”
“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll buy a whole crate if you’ll answer one question.”
The proposal seemed to interest her. “What do you want to know?”
“Where is Royce Claridon?”
“I haven’t seen him in five years.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“He’s gone.”
“Where did he go?’
“That’s all the answers one crate of books will buy.”
They clearly were not going to learn anything from her, and he had no intention of giving her any more money. So he tossed a fifty-euro note onto the table and grabbed his crate of books. “Your answer sucked, but I’ll keep my end of the bargain.”
He wa
lked over to an open trash bin, turned the container upside down, and dumped the contents inside. Then he tossed the crate back on the table.
“Let’s go,” he said to Stephanie. They walked off.
“Hey, American.”
He stopped and turned back.
The woman rose from her chair. “I liked that.”
He waited.
“Lots of creditors are looking for Royce, but he’s easy to find. Check out the sanatorium in Villeneuve-les-Avignon.” She twirled an extended index finger at her temple. “Loony, that’s Royce.”
TWENTY-SIX
ABBEY DES FONTAINES
11:30 AM
The seneschal sat in his chambers. He’d slept little last night as he pondered his dilemma. Two brothers guarded his door and no one was allowed inside except to bring him food. He didn’t like being caged—albeit, at least for now, in a comfortable prison. His quarters were not the size of the master’s or the marshal’s, but they were private, with a bath and a window. Little danger existed that he’d climb through the window, the drop beyond the sill was several hundred feet down a sheer mass of gray rock.
But his fortunes were sure to change today, as de Roquefort was not going to allow him to roam the abbey at will. He’d probably be held in one of the underground rooms, places long used for cool storage, the perfect spot to keep an enemy isolated. His ultimate fate was anybody’s guess.
He’d come a long way since his induction.
Rule was clear. If any man wished to leave the mass of perdition and abandon that secular life and choose communal life, do not consent to receive him immediately, for thus said Saint Paul: Test the soul to see if it comes from God. If the company of the brotherhood is granted, let the Rule be read to him, and if he wishes to obey the commandments of the Rule, let the brothers receive him, let him reveal his wish and desire before all of the brothers and let him make his request with a pure heart.
All of that had happened and he’d been received. He’d willingly taken the oath and gladly served. Now he was a prisoner. Accused of false charges leveled by an ambitious politico. Not unlike his ancient brethren, who’d fallen victim to the despicable Philip the Fair. He’d always thought the label odd. In truth, the Fair had nothing to do with the monarch’s temperament, since the French king was a cold, secretive man who wanted to rule the Catholic Church. Instead, it referred to his light hair and blue eyes. One thing on the outside, something altogether different on the inside—a lot like himself, he thought.
He stood from his desk and paced, a habit acquired in college. Moving helped him think. On the desk lay the two books he’d taken from the library two nights ago. He realized that the next few hours might be his last opportunity to scan their pages. Surely, once they turned up missing, theft of Order property would be added to the list of charges. Its punishment—banishment—would actually be welcome, but he knew his nemesis was never going to allow him off that easily.
He reached for the codex from the fifteenth century, a treasure any museum would pay dearly to display. The pages were scripted in the curvy lettering he knew as rotunda, common for the time, used in learned manuscripts. Little punctuation existed, just long lines of text filling every page from top to bottom, edge to edge. A scribe had labored weeks producing it, holed up in the abbey’s scriptorium before a writing desk, quill in hand, slowly inking each letter onto parchment. Burn marks marred the binding and droplets of wax dotted many of the pages, but the codex was in remarkably good shape. One of the Order’s great missions had been to preserve knowledge, and he’d been lucky to stumble across this reservoir amid the thousands of volumes the library contained.
You must finish the quest. It is your destiny. Whether you realize that or not. That’s what the master had told Geoffrey. But he’d also said, Those who have followed the path you are about to take have been many, and never has anyone succeeded.
But did they know what he knew? Surely not.
He reached for the other volume. Its text was also handwritten. But not by scribes. Instead, the words had been penned in November 1897 by the Order’s then marshal, a man who’d been in direct contact with Abbé Jean-Antoine-Maurice Gélis, the parish priest for the village of Coustausa, which also lay in the Aude River Valley, not far from Rennes-le-Château. Theirs had been a fortuitous encounter, for the marshal had learned vital information.
He sat and again thumbed through the report.
A few passages caught his attention, words he’d first read with interest three years ago. He stood and stepped to the window with the book.
I was distressed to learn that the abbé Gélis was murdered on All Saints’ Day. He was found fully dressed, wearing his clerical hat, lying in his own blood upon his kitchen floor. His watch had stopped at 12:15 AM, but the time of death was determined to be between 3 and 4 AM. Posing as the bishop’s representative, I spoke with villagers and the local constable. Gélis was a nervous sort, known to keep windows closed and shutters drawn, even in summer. He never opened the presbytery’s door to strangers, and since there was no sign of forced intrusion, officials concluded that the abbé had known his attacker.
Gélis died at age seventy-one. He was beaten over the head with fire tongs then hacked with an ax. Blood was copious, splatters on the floor and ceiling were found, but not one footprint lay among the various pools. This baffled the constable. The body was intentionally laid out on its back, arms crossed on the chest, in the common pose for the dead. Six hundred and three francs in gold and notes, along with another one hundred and six francs, were found in the house. Robbery was clearly not the motive. The only item that could be considered evidence was a pack of cigarette papers. Penned on one was “Viva Angelina.” This was significant since Gélis was not a smoker and detested even the smell of cigarettes.
In my opinion, the true motive for the crime was found in the priest’s bedroom. There, the assailant had pried open a briefcase. Papers remained inside but it was impossible to know if anything had been removed. Drops of blood were found in and around the briefcase. The constable concluded that the murderer was searching for something and I may know what that could be.
Two weeks prior to his murder, I met with Abbé Gélis. A month before that, Gélis had communicated with the bishop in Carcassonne. I appeared at Gélis’s home, posing as the bishop’s representative, and we discussed at length what troubled him. He eventually requested that I hear his confession. Since in truth I am not a priest, and therefore not bound by any oath of the confessional, I can report what was told me.
Sometime in the summer of 1896, Gélis discovered a glass vial in his church. The railing for the choir had required replacing and, when the wood was removed, a hiding place was found that contained a wax-sealed vial holding a single sliver of paper, upon which was the following:
This cryptogram was a common coding device popular during the last century. He told me that six years earlier the abbé Saunière, from Rennes-le-Château, found a cryptogram in his church, too. When compared, they were identical. Sauniére believed that both vials had been left by the abbè Bigou, who served at Rennes-le-Château during the French Revolution. In Bigou’s time, the church in Coustausa was also served by the priest from Rennes. So Bigou would have been a frequent visitor to Gélis’s present parish. Saunière also thought there was a connection between the cryptograms and the tomb of Marie d’Hautpoul de Blanchefort, who died in 1781. Abbé Bigou had been her confessor and commissioned her headstone and marker, having an assortment of unique words and symbols inscribed thereon. Unfortunately, Saunière had not been able to decipher anything, but after a year of work Gélis solved the cryptogram. He told me that he was not entirely truthful with Saunière, thinking his fellow abbé’s motives unpure. So he withheld from his colleague the solution he had determined.
Abbé Gélis wanted the bishop to know the complete solution and believed he was accomplishing that act by telling me.
Unfortunately, the marshal did not record what Gélis said. Perha
ps he thought the information too important to write down, or maybe he was another schemer, like de Roquefort. Strangely, the Chronicles reported that the marshal himself disappeared a year later, in 1898. He left one day on abbey business and never returned. A search yielded nothing. But thank the Lord he recorded the cryptogram.
The bells for Sext began to ring, signaling the brothers’ noontime gathering. All, except the kitchen staff, would gather in the chapel for Psalm readings, hymns, and prayers until one PM. He decided to have his own time of meditation, but was interrupted by a soft rap at the door. He turned as Geoffrey stepped inside, carrying a tray of food and drink.
“I volunteered to deliver this,” the younger man said. “I was told you skipped breakfast. You must be hungry.” Geoffrey’s tone was strangely buoyant.
The door remained open and he could see the two guards standing outside.
“I brought them some drink, too,” Geoffrey said, motioning outside.
“You’re in a generous mood today.”
“Jesus said the first aspect of the Word is faith, the second is love, the third is good works, and from these come life.”
He smiled. “That’s right, my friend.” He kept his tone lively for the two pairs of ears just a few feet away.
“Are you well?” Geoffrey asked.
“As well as can be expected.” He accepted the tray and laid it on the desk.
“I have prayed for you, Seneschal.”
“I daresay that I no longer possess that title. Surely, a new one was appointed by de Roquefort.”
Geoffrey nodded. “His chief lieutenant.”
“Woe be unto us—”
He saw one of the men outside the door collapse. A second later, the other man’s body went limp and joined his partner’s on the floor. Two goblets clattered across the flagstones.
“Took long enough,” Geoffrey said.
“What did you do?”
“A sedative. The physician provided it to me. Tasteless, odorless, but fast. The healer is our friend. He wishes you Godspeed. Now we must go. The master made provisions, and it’s my duty to see they’re accomplished.”
