Callsign: King - Blackout

9

Fiona had caught a final glimpse of the tall man entering the side entrance of the Louvre, but her attempt to follow was immediately thwarted by a security guard. He haughtily informed her, in halting and heavily accented English, that the ticket window at Passage Richelieu was closed and that entry was only possible at the Pyramid entrance or from the Carrousel du Louvre-an underground shopping mall that connected the museum with several other noteworthy landmarks.

“You let that other guy through,” Fiona had protested.

“Mr. Carutius? He has official business. He is not a tourist.” Like you. The guard had made no effort to hide his irritation at having to explain himself to a lowly American visitor, and a child at that.

“What kind of business?”

“He is the administrator of the special exhibit.” The guard then made a shooing gesture and stepped back to his post.

It had taken nearly half an hour for Fiona and Sara to make their way back around to Place du Carrousel and through the line to the ticket window; plenty of time for Sara to demand an explanation. It occurred to Fiona that King might not have told Sara about the man who now seemed to be calling himself “Carutius.”

“It’s Hercules,” she said simply. “You know about him?”

Sara’s expression was guarded. “You mean Alexander Diotrophes, the leader of the Herculean Society?”

So he has told her. “That was him I saw, going into the museum.”

Sara gave her a pinched expression. Fiona could sense the looming question, Are you sure? But instead Sara said, “The Louvre has one of the largest collections of antiquities in the world. It’s not so strange that Diotrophes would have business here. It’s got to be a coincidence.”

“Whenever he’s around, there’s trouble,” Fiona declared.

“That’s not exactly a compelling rationale for chasing after him,” Sara countered. Nevertheless, King’s girlfriend made no move to pull Fiona out of the line. Instead, when her turn came, she forked over fourteen Euros-as a minor, Fiona’s ticket was free-and grabbed a brochure containing a rough map of the complex.

“Where’s the special exhibit?” Fiona tapped her foot impatiently as Sara unfolded the pamphlet, flipped it around then back again. “Well?”

“Fi, there are half a dozen special exhibits: The Mariette Collection; the Da Vinci sketches; the relics of Saint Caesarius of Arles; the Bamiyan Buddhas…Where do you want to start?”

Fiona let out a low growl. “How should I know?”

Sara blinked at her impassively for a moment, but then seemed to grasp Fiona’s frustration. “Look, most of these exhibits are in the Sully Wing. That’s the closest section to us right now. We’ll work our way through them one by one, okay?”

Fiona nodded gratefully and walked beside Sara as they made their way from the lobby. Her eyes roamed the faces of museum patrons, searching for Hercules-Diotrophes, or Carutius or whatever he was calling himself-but there was no sign of the man. He would be hard to miss, standing a head taller than most men, with his distinctive hair and beard. Yet, as much as she was focused on her search, her eyes were drawn to the elaborate decor of the former royal palace and to the objets d’art displayed everywhere, which surprised her.

She’d never been particularly interested in classical art. Her own heritage had ingrained in her an appreciation for a much different style of expression, one that was to her way of thinking more honest, much more in harmony with the natural world and deserving of more honor than these paintings and sculptures with which the rest of the world seemed so enamored. But despite the fact that she had entered the museum for a very different reason, she found her gaze almost magnetically attracted to the displays and her pace began to falter.

She quickened her step, catching up to Sara as the latter reached the entrance to a gallery sporting a banner advertising the relics of Saint Caesarius of Arles. Sara ventured a few steps inside. “Big guy, right?” she said. “I don’t see him.”

Fiona did not answer. She knew she should be surveying the scattering of visitors, looking for Hercules, but she found herself unable to look away from a marvelous box of gold encrusted with jewels and positioned directly in front of the entrance. Something about the beautiful reliquary absorbed her attention, filled her with an almost transcendent euphoria…

“Fi?”

Fiona shook her head, breaking eye contact with the relic box, and the feeling receded. “No, he’s not here.”

“Let’s try the Da Vinci sketches, next.” Sara seemed not to have noticed the girl’s fascination with the reliquary. “That’s the kind of thing Diotrophes would be interested in, right?”

Fiona nodded dumbly and followed along, but she now kept her gaze on the floor, purposefully resisting the urge to visually take in her surroundings. She was only peripherally aware of the route Sara navigated, and in the back of her mind, it occurred to her that if they became separated, she wouldn’t have a clue how to find her way out. A few moments later, Sara stopped and Fiona looked up to see another gallery awaiting their inspection.

The large room was a veritable maze of freestanding display cases, each containing pages of vellum, adorned with delicate script and what looked like pencil sketches. Above the cases were enlarged reproductions of select images, the subjects ranging from detailed human figures to elaborate machines, and not a few bizarre creatures that looked to Fiona like they might contain hidden figures in the illustrated folds of skin and fur-like something from a child’s Find It puzzle. Fiona experienced a mixture of relief and disappointment as she gazed at the enormous prints; they did not produce the reaction she had felt in the other gallery.

And then her eyes fell on the original sketches.

She barely heard Sara say: “I don’t see him here, do you?”

Fiona worked her mouth, trying to form the question that had bubbled into her head but it was an effort. “Sara, you know your sensory whatever-it-is? How you can ‘see’ smells and stuff?”

Sara Fogg had been diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder; her sensory neural pathways didn’t always function the way they should, causing her to experience stimuli in unpredictable ways-to ‘smell’ colors or feel twinges of pain when seeing certain objects. Fiona had heard Sara and King talk about it from time to time, but she didn’t really understand the details.

“Sure.” A note of concern haunted Sara’s answer.

“Is it contagious?” Fiona pressed.

“Absolutely not. Fi, what’s wrong?”

Fiona gazed at the Da Vinci sketches, her eyes flitting back and forth as if trying to take all of them in all at once. The drawn images seemed to burst off the parchment and the carefully scripted notes glittered like magical runes in a Tolkien novel, imparting mystical knowledge that she could not read, but somehow intimately understood.

“I think I must have it too,” she said after a breathless moment. “Because these pictures are singing to me.”