Hunt Through Napoleon's Web

Chapter 5

La pharmacie was closed, of course, but Sammi rang the bell and after a moment, a light went on in the back. Someone came to the door, flicked a switch, and the metal security gate rolled up slowly. Then the door swung open.

The chemist was a man in his forties, the sort you could tell had been fit once but hadn’t kept at it, so that now he was glad to have a bulky pharmacy apron to hide behind. He was mostly bald and had a pair of glasses hanging on a chain around his neck. He smiled warmly at Sammi, greeted her in French, and, wrapping his arms around her, kissed her on both cheeks. Her body language revealed all—to Gabriel. The chemist seemed oblivious to the discomfort she showed in his embrace.

“Jean, I’d like you to meet my friend from America, Gabriel Hunt,” she said after sliding out of his grip with a facility that would have made her late father proud. “Gabriel, this is Jean.”

The chemist’s smile vanished when he shook Gabriel’s hand. “I am pleased to meet you,” Jean said, sounding the farthest thing from pleased.

“Likewise,” Gabriel replied. “Thank you for seeing us so late.”

The man sniffed. “For my Samantha, anything. Come this way.”

They followed him through the shop and into the back, turning down a corridor and passing through it into a windowless room that held Jean’s lab and workspace. It was filled with mortars and pestles, measuring instruments, test tubes, beakers, and other instruments of his trade. Through the open doorway to an adjoining supply room Gabriel could see metal shelves piled high with containers of prescription drugs. An older woman in a caftan and headscarf stood by a deep metal sink in the corner of the room, rinsing out glassware and setting each piece mouth-down on a rack to dry.

“Kasha,” Jean said. He had to repeat it before the woman looked up. “You can finish that later. Later. Thank you.” The woman turned off the water, dried her hands, and stepped out.

“So, what can I do for you this evening, my dear?” Jean asked.

Sammi pulled out the plastic bag and handed it to him. “We need to know what was in this syringe.”

“ ‘We,’ ” Jean said, frowning. Or perhaps he had only said “Oui,” Gabriel wasn’t sure.

The chemist opened the bag and carefully removed the broken hypodermic, then slid his glasses onto his nose. He muttered something that Gabriel didn’t catch.

“Excuse me?”

Jean looked down his nose at the American. “I said if there is still residue in it then it shouldn’t be a problem. However, there is none visible to the naked eye. Give me a moment. Why don’t you have a seat in my office, Mister Hunt?” He pointed to another door across the hall, next to a flight of stairs that led to the second floor. “Kasha can make you some tea.”

“Thank you, Jean,” Sammi said, “that’ll be lovely. Come.” And she took Gabriel’s arm before Jean could protest that he hadn’t mean for both of them to go.

His office was a small room dominated by a large metal desk and a ceiling fixture set up to direct its light at the framed diploma on the wall. Gabriel glanced at it briefly, then sat in one of the two guest chairs. “So,” he said. “How well do you and Jean know each other?”

“Not as well as he would like,” Sammi said.

“That much is clear.”

“He’s not a bad guy,” Sammi said, her voice dropping to a whisper, “he just doesn’t understand that I’m not interested in—” She stopped when Kasha appeared in the door with a tray in her hands. There were two bone china cups and a steaming teapot. “Thank you, Kasha, that smells wonderful.”

“It is touareg,” Kasha said softly. “I recall how you liked it last time.”

It did smell good, the steam thick and minty, with an undertone of wormwood. It reminded Gabriel of the tea he’d had in Morocco while hiding out from two rather aggressive members of the Royal Gendarmerie. As he’d been unable to leave his host’s cellar for nine days, he’d had plenty of time for drinking tea. It had been the only good part of that whole incident.

Gabriel stood to take the tray from Kasha, but his jacket pocket began buzzing before he could. “Excuse me,” he said, and fished out his phone. Sammi took the tray from her instead. “It’s Michael,” Gabriel said. “My brother. I sent him a picture of the writing on the print, the Arabic characters. I figured he’d be able to read them.”

“Was he?” Sammi poured them each a cup of tea, then handed the pot and tray back to Kasha.

“Take a look.” He swung the phone’s screen in her direction and tapped the screen to enlarge the image. Michael had annotated the photo in his meticulous handwriting.

“ ‘This is the thief who resides in hell,’ ” she read. “What does that mean?”

Gabriel saw that Kasha also was looking at the screen. Her knuckles were white where she clutched the handles of the tray. “Do you know what it means?” he asked her.

“No sir,” she said. If possible, her voice had gotten even softer. “I do not know. But surely it . . . it cannot mean anything good. Pardon me.” And she carried the tray out.

“Do you think it refers to Lucy?” Gabriel said.

“More likely it would refer to the man in the picture,” Sammi said. “Don’t you think? If this is the Alliance of the Pharaohs, well . . . perhaps he is no Howard Carter or Gabriel Hunt, but Napoleon certainly took his fair share of artifacts out of Egypt. And we’re not talking ‘legally obtained,’ either.”

“But they can’t think any of those artifacts might be in Lucy’s possession,” Gabriel said. “That makes no sense.”

“How about in your possession? Or your Foundation’s?”

Gabriel shook his head. “Nothing. Of Napoleon’s? Absolutely nothing.”

“Perhaps,” Sammi said, “it’s not something you have. Perhaps it is something they want, and they think you can get it for them.”

“Why would they . . . ?” But Gabriel didn’t finish the sentence. The answer was obvious. Why would they think Gabriel Hunt could find something for them—some ancient treasure, say, that had once been stolen from Egypt by Napoleon Bonaparte and lost over the two centuries since? Because that’s what Gabriel Hunt did. And the price of his worldwide fame—notoriety, if you will—was that everyone knew it.

“It’s possible,” he conceded. “I guess I’ll find out soon enough.”

“We both will,” Sammi said. “As soon as we get to Cairo.”

“We?” Gabriel said—and he hoped she knew he wasn’t saying “Oui.” “We are not going to Cairo. I am going to Cairo; you are staying right here, where you’re—”

“Where I’m what,” Sammi said, “safe? Like your sister was safe? While you go off to Cairo by yourself and get yourself killed, and Cifer too, while you’re at it? Not on your life.”

“No point in all three of us getting killed,” Gabriel said.

“How about all three of us surviving? That’s more the sort of thing I had in mind.”

“You wouldn’t be—” Gabriel began, but she raised an index finger curtly to silence him.

“You are not about to say, I hope, that I would not be able to take care of myself,” Sammi said, “that you would have to watch out for me—you are not about to say something along those lines, are you, not after I was the one who rescued you from the police, not to mention deftly escaping from your clutches back at your sister’s apartment and doing so without your having the faintest notion of how I accomplished it? Surely, Mister Hunt, you’re not about to suggest that I would need your protection?” And she smiled at him through savagely clenched teeth.

“Of course not,” Gabriel said.

“Good.”

“So what were you going to say?”

Gabriel paused. “Nothing important.”

“I thought so,” Sammi said, crossing her arms over her chest.

Well, Gabriel thought, if she wants to come, let her come. A former street rat like this . . . if he tried to stop her she’d probably just follow him anyway. And who knows what sort of trouble she’d get into then.

“You can come,” he said, and this time it was his index finger that rose warningly, “but only if you follow my lead. Do you understand?”

Jean chose that moment to enter the office. “I have the results,” he announced.

Sammi and Gabriel looked at each other.

“After you,” Sammi said.

The chemist led them back to his lab room and pointed toward a row of stoppered test tubes. Next to them, the flame of a Bunsen burner tickled the bottom of a flask. “You were correct, chérie,” Jean said, facing Sammi and turning his shoulder to Gabriel. “There were still some traces of a chemical compound in the hypodermic. Sodium pentothal.”

“Isn’t that what they use to put people to sleep?” she asked.

“It can be. It is commonly employed as a component for the induction phase of general anesthesia. In the past it was known as a truth serum.”

“Pentothal could also be used to make someone compliant, right?” Gabriel asked. “Someone who was putting up resistance?”

Jean glanced back at him over his shoulder. “Yes, in small doses. A large dose might be fatal.” He turned back to Sammi. “Now, my dear, how can I be of further help? Can you tell me where you found this? Who was injected with it? How it came to be shattered . . . ?”

“I’m sorry, Jean,” she said. “I can’t. Not yet. I will tell you more when I can, I promise.”

“But this could be quite serious,” Jean said. “In a case like this, I really ought to notify the authorities—”

Sammi put a hand on one of his meaty wrists. “Don’t.”

“But if you do not tell me at least a little about what you are—”

“For my sake, please.”

Jean considered this, then heaved a mighty sigh. He took his glasses off and let them hang against his chest. “For you, Samantha. Anything.”

She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. The man’s bald head turned red and he stammered something to her in French that Gabriel didn’t catch. Sammi just laughed and said, “Jean!”

“Until next time,” Jean said. And turning to Gabriel: “Monsieur.”

His tone was as frigid as the inside of an ice chest, but Gabriel ignored it. The man’s earlier words were still echoing in his head. A large dose might be fatal.

Kasha watched Gabriel and Sammi leave the shop from her second floor bedroom window. When they were out of sight, she picked up the telephone beside the bed and dialed a number in Morocco. She spoke a few sentences in Arabic, waited until the man on the other end acknowledged her report, and then hung up.