by K. T. Tomb
Thorin grinned and shook his head. “I think I should be hiring you to protect me. You got some balls, boss.”
“Yeah, well, I still might need you to bail my ass out, so don’t wander off.”
Chyna slipped out the door and started casually down the street until she came to the alley which would pass behind Antoine’s house. She hoped it was Antoine’s house. She continued down the alley until she was adjacent to the house. Please don’t have a dog. Antoine didn’t seem to have a dog. He didn’t need one. He had a security system that was far more effective than a dog. She was going to need a little extra time to disarm it.
“I’ve got a security system from hell,” she informed Thorin on her mic. “You may have to buy me a little extra time.”
“Copy. Pulling into the driveway now.”
It wasn’t Chyna’s first time disarming a security system. She did it while listening to the sounds of Thorin’s conversation with Antoine. In less time than she thought, she was through the back door and moving silently from one room to the next, praying that Antoine was alone.
“I’m in,” she whispered, realizing that Thorin would have had to take his earpiece out when he went to the door. Guess we’ll be playing this a little bit blind. She heard the front door close and then heard Antoine coming back down the hallway. She leveled the SIG and stepped around the corner, aiming it directly at his head.
“Hi Antoine,” she said in a cheerful tone. “Remember me?”
Chapter Twelve
Diary of the Queen
17 November 1770
So now, the Comtesse de Noailles can sleep easy in her bed at night for the unruly dauphine has learnt her role and assumed her gentile place at Versailles!
It has been exactly six months but at last, success! The hardest part for me has been the horrifying spectacle that is the Grand Couvert. Though it is the same every day, it doesn’t seem to be something I will ever get used to. I hate being watched and more so when it’s obvious that I am being judged by every one of our spectators. As a means of lightening the mealtime mood, I have requested that musicians be brought in for my enjoyment.
Eat. Change Clothes. Eat. Change Clothes. This is my grim summary of the afternoon of the dauphin and dauphine of France. How terribly boring and yet we suffer in silence. One would think that if anyone had the power to free themselves from this debacle it would be us. Hence the music… since I refuse to be bored out of my mind day in and day out.
When Louis and I sit down to dine, there are always spectators. The ladies with titles perch themselves on folding chairs on each side of the dining table while those without titles stand behind them. This is the Grand Couvert and apparently, it is a privilege to have the honor of watching the king and queen eat. I prefer not to be the scheduled mealtime entertainment, so now at least with music, the members of Louis and my respective households might be less bored.
After the meal, I often return to my rooms to change for my evening schedule. I try to keep the afternoons busy to compensate for the complete atrocity of mealtime. This is my favorite time of day. Often, there is a play or a small concert commissioned for the palace theatre. Sometime we attend the opera or a party.
Marie.
***
“You’re making a very big mistake, Chyna,” Antoine told her, being careful to keep his hands where she could see them. “I am a detective for the French National Police and I have a number of powerful connections in Interpol.”
“One of those connections wouldn’t be the FBI rogue Anthony Stewart, would it?” she asked.
“He was one of those connections until he went rogue, just like you said,” Antoine responded. “If you’re still connected with him, you’re walking a very thin and shaky line.”
“Well, Anthony and I are no longer associated, so I think my footing is firm enough. Make yourself comfortable on the sofa there, but just be careful how you move. I don’t want to mistake your actions for something that I perceive to be a threat to my person. My partner will be back in a minute.”
“Your partner,” he chuckled. “Hulk Hogan out there?”
“That would be the one. Here he is now.”
Thorin came in and took over watching Antoine, allowing Chyna to relax a little bit.
“So, Antoine, tell me about the crown,” she began as she slid into an adjacent armchair.
“What crown?”
“Do we really have to play this game?”
“I don’t have any crown. I don’t even know what crown you’re talking about.”
Chyna clicked her tongue. “You’re not doing very well, Antoine. You see, I have connections in Interpol too. They would be very interested to know that I have discovered that instead of finding the Jeweled Crown of Marie Antoinette and returning it to the Louvre, you’ve been holding onto it and hoping for a buyer to come along. I believe the price you’ve set it 15 million Euros. Am I right?”
“What do you want?” His eyes narrowed after hearing the price she quoted.
“I’d like to know what you and Anthony Stewart are up to,” Chyna replied.
“I’m no longer associated with Stewart,” he snapped.
“You said that, but how am I supposed to believe you, since the two of you were such good buddies before?”
“That was before he betrayed me,” he snarled.
Chyna had seen the look in his eyes before. She’d seen them in the mirror on the wall of a cabin outside of Deadhorse, Alaska. She knew that he was no longer associated with Tony, but she also knew that he wasn’t telling her the whole truth. Suddenly, however, an idea came to her. She could get the crown and burn Tony all at once and she could use Antoine to do it. She smiled as the idea took shape in her mind. Antoine was the perfect way to pull one of those Roadrunner moves on Tony.
“I just thought of a splendid idea. I want to burn Tony and I need the crown to do it. You want to burn Tony and you have the crown. What say we work together?”
“I don’t have the crown,” Antoine replied.
Chyna could tell that he was lying. “Antoine, lying to me isn’t a very good way to start off our new partnership.”
“How do I know that you’re on the level?” he asked.
“Well,” she said, rising from her seat and heading toward the door while Thorin kept Antoine under his gaze. “I guess you won’t know, but you’ll have plenty of time to think about it after I make a call to Interpol and let them know where they can find the Jeweled Crown that went missing from the Louvre about two years ago. They’ll be delighted to inform the French National Police that the lead investigator on the case found and kept the crown for himself so he could put together a very nice retirement fund.”
“Fine, but the crown doesn’t leave my hands until we’ve busted Tony.”
“Agreed,” Chyna responded.
“I’ll need assurances that you won’t tell your story to Interpol.”
“I’m thinking that once we have Tony, we can pin the theft of the crown on him. You’ll lose your retirement fund, but you’ll stay out of prison. That sounds like a pretty good deal to me.”
She turned back toward him and leaned in very close to his face as she spoke. “But I will need to see the crown before we shake on it, if you don’t mind.”
Chyna and Thorin followed Antoine into a library with books lining three of the walls. Antoine went to a specific book, pulled it out, activated a switch and the shelf slid several feet back, revealing a vault door to one side. He opened the vault, reached in, pulled out an item wrapped in purple velvet. He placed it on the desk and unwrapped it. It was, indeed, the Jeweled Crown of Marie Antoinette and it was stunning.
“Control, Two and Three,” Chyna said into her mic. “Abort what you’re doing. We’ve got a new plan.”
“Copy,” they all replied.
“What’s up, One?” Lana’s voice came through her earpiece.
“We’ve got the crown. We’ll meet you back at base.”
“You had a team
on this?” Antoine asked, knowing that he was screwed. The expression on his face sank.
“Don’t worry, Antoine,” she laughed. “We still have our deal. We’re still going to nail that son of a bitch.” She snarled as she said the last part, bringing the point home for Antoine.
“For your protection and mine, however, I’m going to have to bring you and the crown along with me.”
Antoine hesitated a moment as Thorin stepped toward him and took hold of his arm. The fingers of his massive hand nearly touched around Antoine’s bicep.
“Don’t worry. Thorin is now your new best friend,” she beamed.
Chyna rewrapped the crown in the velvet cloth, closed the vault door, activated the switch on the bookshelf and then turned back toward the other two, scooping up the crown and clutching it to her chest.
“Shall we?” she said.
Thorin escorted Antoine out to the car and slid him into the back. Chyna placed the crown in a canvas bag that she pulled out of the trunk, placed it on the front seat and slid into the back of the car beside Antoine, holding her SIG in her lap as Thorin started the engine and backed out of the driveway.
“That’s just for insurance until you realize that we really are partners,” she smiled.
Chapter Thirteen
Chyna was moving. Tony knew that she would. He was certain that she would move to recover the crown from any of three motivations: she believed him and was willingly helping him; she didn’t believe him, but couldn’t contain her curiosity and sense of duty; or she hoped that she’d be able to discover what he was up to, lead him into a trap and take him down. Of the three possibilities, he was pretty sure that she had gone with the last.
He deserved it. He’d been forced to treat her in a way that no one ought to be treated and he’d hated having to do it. He was sure that she would hate him forever or, at the very least, have difficulty trusting him again. The decision to make that sacrifice hadn’t been an easy one. It had been even harder to stick to it in Dresden and Cordoba. He’d overacted in both of those situations, fearful that even the slightest hint of how he really felt about her would blow his cover.
The iciness coming from her and the pure hatred he’d felt when he’d gone to speak to her in her bedroom had nearly undone him completely. In fact, as he’d walked away from her, he’d prayed that she would use that single bullet in the gun to end his miserable life, but she hadn’t. He wasn’t foolish enough to believe that her failure to kill him had anything to do with her feelings toward him. Chyna wasn’t a killer. She had and would take a life as a last resort, there was no questioning that, but the heart of a killer did not pump blood through her veins.
Tony could only hope that the necessity for either one of them to end the life of the other would never come. He pushed the thought out of his head before he started obsessing over it again. He had a much larger problem to solve. He was running out of time on delivering a crown and another final item, which he didn’t have in his hands, to a madman who had designs and the means to do great harm to the world and, if what he understood was true, maybe even gain complete control of it.
The man’s identity was still a little bit sketchy to Tony, in spite of his efforts and the best efforts of some of the finest minds he knew. He’d seemingly arrived out of nowhere, referred to himself as Louis Charles Bourbon, but was located somewhere in or near Belgrade. The security around him was so tight that getting any information about him was impossible, let alone trying to get near him.
The only entity that even had a chance was the Illuminati and Tony had been forced to take on a very distasteful role among them. Through his deep cover with the Illuminati, he had been contacted by Louis and he’d become the gopher, more or less, as he began to fill an order for particular items, all of which, ironically enough, Chyna had been tasked with finding. He grew to hate the fact that Chyna was mixed up in it all, especially after he’d fallen for her, but it was very difficult to avoid it. Chyna was the best there was at what she did and she was always going to be the one that was called in. It was a cruel turn of destiny that their roles had led them into their current situation.
He knew that the odds of him coming out of the operation he was pursuing alive were heavily stacked against him. He was certain that the reason behind the requirement that his final meeting with his client be personal was because the latter’s plan was to eliminate him. It was a risk he was willing to take to keep the world safe. He only wished that he would be afforded the opportunity to explain things to Chyna before he met his fate. He pushed Chyna out of his mind again. It was something that he had to do on a regular basis in order to remain focused on the task ahead of him. “It’s probably better this way,” he told himself as he dialed the contact number he’d been given for his client.
“You appear to have remembered our terms,” Louis said, answering the call.
“I do not forget my commitments,” Tony responded in a grave tone.
“Yet, you are not always entirely forthright,” Louis responded.
“I do not know what you are referring to,” Tony countered, though he knew full well that Louis would complain about the fact that the person delivering the Rosary of Isabella was out of his mind when he arrived with the artifact. Tony had known that Louis wasn’t stupid, but Tony had hoped that his client would handle the rosary and lose his mind, saving everyone involved a great deal of further trouble.
“You failed to inform me about the effect the rosary has on those who handle it,” Louis replied.
“I wasn’t aware that it had such an effect,” Tony lied.
“Your lie might have been very convincing to a lesser man,” Louis chuckled. “But I am not a lesser man.”
Tony ignored the comment and pushed forward. “I need to make arrangements for the delivery of the final items.”
“You have the items, then?” Louis asked.
“I wouldn’t be calling you if I didn’t,” Tony replied with confidence, in spite of the fact that he still did not have the crown. He prayed that Chyna would produce it in time for the meeting, which he was about to set up with Louis. “I am ahead of your deadline, actually. That ought to boost your confidence in me.”
“Being ahead of the deadline is inconsequential. You will still be delivering the final two items on June 20th at 8:00 p.m. You will be waiting at Hotel Zlatnik in Belgrade at that time, precisely, when my men come to escort you and the final items to our meeting. Is that understood?”
“It is understood.”
The call disconnected the instant the last syllable had left Tony’s lips. It was going to be damned hard to penetrate the man’s security. He was probably going in alone and was probably going to do nothing more than get himself killed while delivering the necessary items for Louis to take over the world.
“Pretty stupid fucking mess you’ve gotten yourself into, Tony,” he muttered to himself. He sighed heavily and then stared at his other phone as it started to ring.
Chapter Fourteen
Versailles, 15 November 1771
My dear mother,
I was touched by what you said about my birthday. I want above all to profit from your good advice, my dear mother. The letter from my brother Ferdinand gave me such pleasure that I cannot describe it; it seems to me that I love him even more for it; he will certainly be a good husband, and will make his wife happy. I do not believe I was wrong to give in to my immediate thought and tell the dauphin the little secret! I did not speak reproachfully; however, he was a little embarrassed. I am still hopeful; he loves me a great deal and does all I want and will succeed when he is less awkward.
I can certainly assure you that, although I showed you my sensitivity quite vividly, it was only sensitivity. The friends of that creature cannot complain that I treat them badly.
When I wrote to you, my dear mother, that I did not need advice on how to be polite, I meant that I had not consulted my aunts. No matter how much friendship I feel for them, I will never compare them to my
loving and respectable mother; I do not believe I am blind to their faults, but I believe people exaggerate them to you.
Although the queen's condition often makes me think of mine, I still share my dear sister's joy.
Since summer, the trips and hunting have prevented me from doing regular reading; however, I have read something almost every day.
I cannot tell you, my dear mother, how much I desire and hope to give you as much sanctification and joy from my marriage as my brother and sister have.
Marie.
***
“I think he bought it,” Antoine announced as he disconnected his call with Tony.
“I agree,” Oscar commented. He’d monitored the call on his headset, recorded and attempted to trace it. It was useless to try and trace it, which was what he had assumed before he even started, but it was worth a try. “No trace. Well, there was a trace, from South Africa to Madagascar to Fiji to Laos to…”
“We get the point, Oscar,” Chyna interrupted him. “When and where is the meet?”
“Varennes,” Antoine replied. “At 1:00 a.m.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Oscar laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Lana frowned. All eyes were turned to Oscar.
“That’s where they caught Louis XVI and Marie when they tried to escape to the Citadel of Montmédy. You see…”
“Save the history lecture, professor,” Chyna cut in. “We only have a few hours to get out there and get set up before Tony does. Before we do that, however, we’ve got to out-think him or we’ll walk right into a trap. Let’s brainstorm, people; that includes you, Antoine. Whether you like it or not, we’re all in on this together now. We’re going to nail this son of a bitch.”
