Her thought from a few minutes earlier came back to her.

It had to be something Sykes would immediately think of, something that was important to both of them.

Three even sections.

Could it be that easy?

Reaching out with one finger, she pressed firmly on the squares in the first section and traced the letter C.

A sharp click sounded.

“Did you hear that?” the abbot asked, excitement in his voice.

She had. It meant she was on the right track.

She did the same thing in the center section, but this time traced an Srather than a C.

Another click.

Grinning now, she moved her hand to the final section and traced the letter A.

CSA. The Confederate States of America.

Something near and dear to both of them.

The square in the exact center of the mosaic slid aside with a sharp snap, revealing a depression beneath.

It was just large enough to fit the average person’s finger.

Intrigued now, the abbot reached out a hand, intending to press the location, but Annja pulled the box out of his reach.

“Wait,” she said. “It could be booby-trapped.”

She’d run into more than a few of those in her years as an archaeologist and wouldn’t have put it past the box maker to build a trigger into an obvious location like this one.

It would be a good way to lose a finger.

She snagged a pencil off the abbott’s desk and used the eraser end to poke the center of the depression.

Nothing happened.

She tried again.

Still nothing.

“Perhaps the pencil isn’t wide enough?” the abbot suggested.

She tried a third time, but with two pencils held together rather than one.

The box just sat there, silently gloating at them.

After everything she’d been through so far, there was no way was she going to let a stupid wooden box beat her.

She bent over, closer to the table, and stared at the depression in the lid. From that angle it was clear that rather than being smooth, as she’d originally suspected, it was beveled in a simple pattern.

It looked familiar somehow.

She stared at it for a long moment, trying to give it shape and form, to understand what the object that would fit into it might look like.

Suddenly she got it.

“Yes!” she cried, startling the abbott. Getting up from the table she went over to her backpack and dug in the pocket for the envelope containing the ring she’d found during her sojourn into the catacombs the night before.

Parker’s ring.

With the break in at the museum, she hadn’t had the chance to properly catalog and store it. In fact, she’d almost forgotten she still had it.

Taking it out of the glassine envelope she’d stored it in, Annja held the ring up to the light and examined the stone. It appeared to have the same basic shape as the depression in the box. And it was the right size, too.

Annja would bet anything that both Parker and Sykes wore identical rings!

She stepped up to the table and without hesitation pressed the stone atop the ring into the depression in the lid of the puzzle box.

A sudden clicking and whirring erupted from the box, like the sound a windup toy makes when it has been released. Panels across the surface of the box popped open, twisted and turned with the help of mechanical gears buried deep inside the contraption, and these in turn opened others. It took a good three minutes for the box to stop rearranging itself on the table in front of them, and by the time it was finished Annja could see a definite crease where the top separated from the rest.

When she was reasonably confident that the box wasn’t going to start rearranging itself again, she reached out and separated the two pieces.

Inside, in a velvet-lined chamber, another envelope rested much like the one she’d taken from the pocket of Parker’s sack coat.

Just to be safe, she poked that with a pencil as well before reaching in and picking it up.

Inside was a single sheet of stationery.

In the cellars of the wine god

Lies a key without a lock

That will lead you to the place

Where the two mouths meet

There you’ll find the Lady

Left alone and in distress

You must secure her when you’re able

And take Ewell’s Rifle from her crest

Take the rifle to the place of Lee’s greatest failure

Where the Peacock freely roamed

Find the spot where my doppelgänger rests

eternal

Deep beneath the loam

Disturb him in his slumber

Wake him from his rest

To find that which you are seeking

Use the key to unlock the chest

Another puzzle.Annja was seriously starting to dislike this guy.

“Not what you were expecting?” the abbot asked. Grimacing, Annja replied, “No, not quite. I’d been hoping for the answer but this is just another piece of the puzzle.”

“But one more than you had before, no?”

The abbot was right; it was one more piece of information than she’d had before. For that she should be thankful.

“Yes,” she said, smiling at him. “You’re right. And I’d do well to remember it.”

She thanked him for his time and asked if it would be all right if she kept the letter.

“Please, take the box, as well. It is yours now—my duty as caretaker has been fulfilled.”

They put the puzzle box back inside the chest it had been stored in and wiped down the chest with a towel the abbot fetched from another room. Once she could carry it without getting her clothes covered with dust, she shook hands with the abbot, picked up the box and followed the monk he’d summoned to lead her back to the front door.

As she got in her car, Annja was full of excitement over what she’d learned. The trip had been well worth the drive. With the information she now had, she could conclude that Parker had been in Paris to carry out some kind of secret negotiation on behalf of President Davis. Not only that, but she could also make a pretty good case that the money from the Confederate treasury hadn’t been stolen by brigands at all, but had actually been rerouted by Parker himself to assist with the mission assigned to him. It was the kind of discovery that could make someone a superstar in the field of archaeology practically overnight and Annja wasn’t at all displeased by the idea. People recognized her on the street thanks to her hosting gig on Chasing History’s Monsters,but she’d much rather gain the respect of her academic peers than the adoration of the viewing audience any day of the week.

Then again, if she found the treasure itself, she could have both!

She was so distracted by thoughts of the future that she nearly ran into a group of six monks walking behind her car as she backed out of the parking space. Thankfully, they were paying more attention than she was and were able to skip out of the way quickly enough. Embarrassed, she gave a little wave of apology, drove back to the gate and headed down the mountain.

She’d been driving for about ten minutes when something started nagging at her. Something about the monks she’d nearly run over. It was right there, on the edge of her awareness. She reached for it…only to have it slip away.

The feeling left her for a moment and she’d convinced herself that it was just a result of her lingering sense of embarrassment for having almost run them over, when the sense that something was terribly wrong overcame her again. The image of her sword flashed before her eyes, as if urging her to make the connection. She concentrated, trying to make the feeling come further into focus. Something about the monks…

She had it!

The scene unfurled before her again on the movie screen of her mind—the monk skipping back away from her car as she got too close, the hem of his dark brown robe riding up over his feet, revealing the pair of dark black boots he wore beneath.