In the meantime, she had a lot of work to do.

8

About the time that Annja was examining the sword, Blaine Michaels, a direct descendant of the man who had fired the shot that had taken Captain Parker’s life, received a phone call at home from the same computer technician he’d spoken to earlier that afternoon.

The information he received was more complete this time around, outlining what had happened in the tunnels earlier that morning.

“You’re certain that they said the skeleton came from inside the catacombs and not the Metro tunnel itself?”

“Yes, sir.”

Michaels grunted, most decidedly not thrilled with those circumstances.

“And the Creed woman?”

“Because the skeleton was dressed in the uniform of a U.S. soldier, the police contacted the embassy and asked to have a representative present. Apparently the Creed woman was suggested by someone on the ambassador’s staff and was brought in to represent their interests.”

He didn’t bother to correct the misinformation in his subordinate’s report; he had better things to do with his time than explain the difference between the Confederate States and the United States. It was the fact that they had discovered the body at all that had him on edge.

He didn’t exactly know why. After all, the body had been down there in the dark for more than a hundred years. There was nothing that could tie his family or the organization as a whole to the crime, if it could even be called a crime at this point, and there was little enough to be done even if they could.

Relax, he told himself.

But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t. After struggling against it for some time, he got up and made his way to his study. Locking the door behind him, he moved over to the safe, knelt in front of it and dialed the combination lock. Opening the door, he reached deep into the back, past the stacks of cash and bearer bonds, and took out his great-grandfather’s journal.

The old man had recorded the events of the night in question in considerable detail, just as he’d been taught to do. As the current head of the society, Blaine had done the same thing himself many times, making note of the steps he’d taken and the motivations behind them so that the one who followed in his footsteps—his son, most likely—would understand how those actions fit into the society’s long-term plans.

He wasn’t troubled by what had happened that day, at least with regard to the actions the society had taken. Anyone who crossed them would meet a similar fate. No, what was troubling were the goals they’d failed to meet—namely, determining where the traitor had hidden the treasure promised to them. His great-grandfather had been unable to force the information from the traitor before killing him and all of their searches to date had ended with nothing to show for them.

Blaine Michaels had been haunted all his life by his great-grandfather’s failure. Those in the society had long memories and there had been considerable opposition to his rise to power as the group’s current leader, but he’d been determined to win back the position of power his great-grandfather had forfeited in the face of his failure.

More importantly, he was determined not to let history repeat itself.

And that, he realized, was the source of his unease.

He couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that there was something they had missed that night, something that might have provided the clue they needed to figure out just where the treasure had been hidden.

Blaine knew that the original meeting had quickly devolved into an argument, which in turn led to violence. A running gun battle through the catacombs had ended with both men wounded, the traitor mortally so. Time had been of the essence in getting his great-grandfather to safety. Afterward, there was confusion about where, exactly, the traitor’s body had been left behind and the searches that followed had been unable to locate it in the hundreds of miles of twisting tunnels beneath the Paris streets. Eventually, his great-grandfather had been forced to step down from the position of leadership and the incident had been swept under the rug as a total failure.

But now, it seemed, there was a chance to correct the errors of the past. If the body held information that might lead them to the missing treasure, then he couldn’t afford to pass up the chance to find it.

Decisive action. Yes, that’s exactly what the situation needed.

Satisfied he’d come to the right conclusion, he reached for the phone.

DECIDING TO CALL IT a night, Annja and Bernard gathered all the notes and photographs they’d produced during the day, transferred them to Bernard’s office down the hall and then locked the lab behind them. “Tomorrow morning, then?” Bernard asked.

“Sounds good,” Annja replied. “And give some more thought to getting me in to see the abbot, will you?”

Bernard smiled. “Your persistence is what makes you such a good archaeologist,” he said, and then, before she could object to his playful teasing, he added, “but yes, I will. You have my word.”

Satisfied, she rode the elevator up to the ground floor. The museum had closed for the day and the halls were empty and silent around her. She paused for a moment at the entrance to a hall devoted to Egyptian artifacts, breathing in all the history that surrounded her, and was struck with the odd sense of being at home.

Yeah, and if you don’t get out and have a life one of these days, you’ll end up a stuffed mummy just like those in there, she thought wryly.

She’d been working straight through since leaving the dojo earlier that morning and only had a few more nights left to enjoy Paris, so it was time to get out and see the sights.

No sooner had she decided to take a break, however, than she found her thoughts returning to the whereabouts of the missing bullet. The gunshot wound had almost certainly killed Captain Parker and it should have been there with his remains. Not having the bullet irked her; it was like finishing a puzzle only to find out that you’re missing one last little piece. It was a tiny detail, she knew, but an important one, and she was just detail-oriented enough to want to put it to rest.

You’ve spent all day on this, she thought, what’s another hour or so?

The spent bullet was probably lying on the floor of the chamber near the wall against which Parker’s skeleton had been resting. It shouldn’t be all that hard to find.

Go on, take a quick look. If you find it, great, and if not, at least you’ll know you gave it a shot, she thought.

Decision made, she caught a cab over to the Metro station they’d used to gain access to the catacombs earlier that day. The trains were still being rerouted around the station due to the construction and so her footsteps echoed off the walls as she descended the steps.

A uniformed police officer was waiting for her at the turnstiles, alerted to her presence by the noise of her footsteps. Obviously bored with the duty he’d been assigned, he told her the station was closed and only looked up at her when she thrust the pass under his nose that she’d been given by Laroche.

“You’ll be wanting to go into the tunnels, then?” he asked.

“Yes, I shouldn’t be long.”

“But it’s after dark.”

Annja didn’t see how that was relevant. She was going underground, where it was always dark. What difference did it make that the sun had gone down?

Rather than get into it with him, though, she simply said, “Yes, it is,” and smiled sweetly at him, hoping her charm would get him to open the gate.

What she really wanted to do was to laugh at his superstitious attitude, for the things she’d faced since acquiring her sword made the idea of roaming around in the tunnels beneath the Paris city streets seem like child’s play, but she knew that doing so would kill any chance she had of getting through the gate.