Hunt Through Napoleon's Web

Chapter 18

Gabriel was glad for the chance to take a proper shower and change his clothes. He apologized to Sammi for not having anything on board she could change into.

“That’s all right,” she said, tousling his wet hair. “I’ll make do.” She shut the door between them. Gabriel heard the sound of the shower’s spray going on, then a zipper sliding down and a pair of shoes being kicked off. Then he heard the spray interrupted as she got in, followed by a low growl of contentment.

She’d be a while. Gabriel went up front to talk with Charlie.

“All due respect, Mister Hunt,” Charlie said, “you can’t just come running and expect me to take off on a dime. Not at a busy airport. Took a miracle to make it out of there without hitting anything.”

It was the longest speech Gabriel had ever heard from the man. He patted Charlie’s shoulder. “Didn’t take a miracle, just a great pilot.”

Charlie grumbled. But it was true—he’d seen Gabriel out of many a tight spot.

“Still,” he said. “Your brother wouldn’t like you taking risks like that. Or me, with Foundation property.”

“He ever complains to you about it,” Gabriel said, “you just tell him to talk to me.”

He sat in the copilot’s seat for the next hundred miles, watching Africa’s northwest coast disappear behind them and the south of Spain come into view. In the distance he could just make out the small humps in the water that were the Balearic Islands.

He thought about the ordeal Lucy had been through, and the one Sammi had. At least Lucy was on her way to Paris—that was one less thing to worry about, a big one. But Sammi was with him now, and he knew there was no way she’d agree to stay behind with the plane when they landed. He could tell her that Lucy had gone to Paris and would be looking for her there, encourage her to let Charlie fly her there, too—but he had a feeling she wasn’t going to let him face the Alliance on his own in Corsica any more than she had in Cairo. And the truth was it might be good to have her along. She was the historian, after all, not him, and her store of knowledge about Napoleon seemed likely to be more than a little useful if he wanted to get his hands on the Second Stone.

From the main cabin he heard the sound of the bathroom door opening, then footsteps padding toward the rear of the plane and storage compartments opening, one after another. When Gabriel went back, he saw Sammi standing with a blanket clutched around her, the fabric bunched in one fist.

“You really don’t have anything a girl could wear,” she said, and swung the compartment door shut. “Not even a spare stewardess uniform.”

“No stewardesses,” Gabriel said, coming toward her.

“Oh? What do you do if you get thirsty in the middle of a flight?”

“I go to the galley,” Gabriel said, “and forage for myself.”

“And if you get lonely,” she said, “in the middle of a flight? Do you take care of that for yourself, too?”

He stopped an arm’s length from her and looked her up and down, from her bare feet to her dripping auburn hair. “Miss Ficatier, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were offering me an alternative.”

She smiled at him. “Who says you know better?”

When she woke, pleasantly sore and in need of another shower, Sammi saw Gabriel over by one of the windows, sketching on a piece of paper. She went over.

Gabriel looked up. “Your clothes are probably dry by now.” After her shower, she’d rinsed them in the bathroom sink and hung them on the towel rod.

“I’ll put them on in a bit,” she said. “Unless you mind—”

“Not in the slightest,” Gabriel said, kissing the side of her breast, “and Charlie’s too much of a gentleman to peek.”

Sammi stretched, heard her shoulders crack. “What are you working on?”

“A map,” Gabriel said. “Doing my best to reconstruct it from memory. Amun had it in his office—”

“Amun!” Sammi exclaimed, snapping her fingers. “I knew there was something I needed to tell you. I know who he is!”

“So do I,” Gabriel said. “He’s the second-in-command of the Alliance of the Pharaohs.”

“Maybe—but he’s also the professor I was telling you about, the one who taught the Mediterranean History course we took. Omar Amun. Did you get my text message?”

“Your text . . . ?”

Then Gabriel remembered. Back in Cairo.

THAT’S THE PRO

That’s the professor.

“I got part of it,” Gabriel said.

“Well, they grabbed me while I was typing it,” Sammi said. “I wasn’t sure I even pressed ‘Send.’ ”

“What the hell is a history professor from Nice doing high up in an organization like the Alliance?”

“I don’t know,” Sammi said. “He was just a visiting professor . . . and he did talk a lot about ‘Egypt for the Egyptians’ and so forth, but . . .”

“But you didn’t think he’d cut anyone’s head off over it.”

“No,” Sammi said. Her face fell. “I feel . . . I feel terrible about the whole thing. I was the one who talked Cifer into taking his class—and I was the one who told him about you.”

Gabriel frowned. “What do you mean, told him about me?”

“There were only thirty seats in the class, and more than a hundred people applying. I thought it would help, that Cifer was the sister of the famous explorer, Gabriel Hunt . . .”

“I’m sure it did,” Gabriel said. “Especially once he realized he could get me to do the Alliance’s bidding by kidnapping her.”

“I didn’t know he would—” Sammi began, but Gabriel pressed a finger against her lips.

“You couldn’t have known,” he said. “It’s not your fault.”

“Except that it is. And now she is god only knows where, suffering god only knows what—”

“Shh,” Gabriel said. “Lucy’s fine.”

“What?”

“I got her out. She’s on a plane to Paris right now.”

“She’s . . . ? Really?” Sammi’s voice betrayed her excitement and relief. “You wouldn’t say that just to make me feel better—”

“Of course not,” Gabriel said. “Lucy’s fine.”

Sammi was startled to feel tears running down her cheeks. Gabriel drew her to his chest and she buried her face in his shirt. “I was so worried—so worried . . .”

He put his pen down and stroked the back of her head.

After a moment she looked up. “But if she really is fine,” she said, “and on her way back to France . . . why did you tell Charlie to take us to Corsica?”

“Let me tell you a story,” Gabriel said.

Charlie touched down smoothly at Campo dell’Oro Airport, located on the east side of the Gulf of Ajaccio, just north of the mouth of the Gravona River. The capital of Corsica sat on the western side of the island, a little south of the halfway median that bisected the country. It was the largest and most modern city in Corsica, though that wasn’t saying much—none of the municipalities were particularly large, and most were simple villages. Ajaccio had perhaps fifty thousand inhabitants. Among its few claims to fame was that it was the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte.

In the airport Gabriel tore a map from a pad of them at the car rental counter and compared it to the one he’d sketched out on the plane. He’d marked as many of the pinned landmarks as he could recall, particularly the ones near the spot where “the web” had been written in Arabic. It was an area in Southern Corsica near Filitosa, in the rough wilderness that Corsicans called the “maquis.” The last time he’d been to Corsica, Gabriel had gone to that region, pursuing a legendary urn rumored to have been buried beneath one of the clusters of menhirs—large, upright standing stones that had been carved around 1,500 BC. The urn had turned out to be a myth, but Gabriel’s photographs of the strange and paganistic menhirs had been good for a feature article in National Geographic.

If Napoleon had wanted to keep the Second Stone hidden, Gabriel thought, he couldn’t have chosen a better place for it—doubly so if he’d believed the stone to have mystical properties. Growing up in Corsica, he must have heard every fable and legend about the strange powers of this territory, and the endless maze of caves and rock structures buried in the hills certainly offered no shortage of hiding places.

With his money belt refilled from the stash on board the plane and a new Hunt Foundation credit card in his pocket, Gabriel had no difficulty renting a Renault Laguna 1.8 at the airport. He and Sammi drove it into the city and spent an hour and a half at a hardware store buying supplies: water and food, rope, climbing tools, flashlights, pickaxes. The final expenditure, because it was dark by the time they got out, was a hotel room for the night. At the front desk, Gabriel found himself confronted by the baleful eye of the manager, whose glance flicked from Gabriel to Sammi, from their naked ring fingers to their ankles, where no luggage stood. “Is monsieur certain he wishes but a single room, and not two? I can offer a most reasonable price on a second . . .”

Sammi stepped forward and matched the man glare for glare. “Monsieur is certain,” she said coldly in French, “and so is madame. One room will do, and I suggest you make it one without neighbors on either side if your guests are as sensitive about these things as you.”

The man handed over a key glacially. “Very well,” he said.

But in the end, the only noise they made in the room would have been inoffensive had their neighbors been librarians on one side and nuns on the other. A room service dinner of sadly overcooked steak and undercooked vegetables was followed by a phone call back to New York, where it was two in the morning but Michael nevertheless answered on the first ring.

“Have you heard from Lucy?” he wanted to know.

“I wouldn’t know,” Gabriel said. “I don’t have e-mail, and my phone’s . . .”

“Your phone is what?” Michael asked.

“Not so much a phone anymore as a collection of phone pieces. Lying somewhere in Cairo.”

Michael was silent for a moment, no doubt mourning the $30,000 piece of equipment. But only for a moment—his primary concern lay elsewhere. “If she couldn’t get you, she’d at least have called me, don’t you think?”

“I asked her to,” Gabriel said. “She didn’t make any promises.”

“Her plane landed hours ago,” Michael said.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Gabriel said. “If you want to worry about something, let me give you something else to chew on.”

Gabriel gave him Amun’s name and a quick summary of what Sammi had said about him. “I’ll have someone check him out,” Michael said. “See what I can find out. But, Gabriel . . .”

“Yes?”

“I’m going to try to find Lucy first. I know she doesn’t want to talk to me—and she doesn’t have to. But I need to know she’s okay. I have a bad feeling somehow.”

“You have a bad feeling about everything,” Gabriel said.

“And how often have I been right?”

“Not more than ninety-eight percent of the time,” Gabriel said.

Sammi came over as he was hanging up the phone. “Something wrong?”

“He’s worried about Lucy because she hasn’t called.”

“Well, don’t you think—”

“Sammi,” Gabriel said, “she hasn’t called him in nine years. She’s fine.” Silently he added, And if she’s not, we’re on the trail of the one thing that might help.

“They went to a hotel,” Naeem reported over his cell phone. “I can get the room number from the clerk, enter while they’re sleeping . . .”

“No,” Amun answered. “Do nothing of the sort. Do you understand? I am on my way. Just watch them—that is all. Do not touch them, do not speak to them. We need them alive.”

“You need Hunt,” Naeem protested, “and his sister. But the French woman . . . ?”

“Are you questioning me?” Amun said.

“Of course not,” Naeem said.

“Good,” Amun said. “Now do your job.”

Naeem tried to keep the frustration out of his voice. “Understood.”

They checked out of the hotel at dawn.

Corsica was a beautiful country, in a rough-hewn way. There was nothing soft about it. Mountainous throughout much of its middle, it was a country as rugged as any Gabriel had been to and not only physically. Although technically part of France, Corsica was more Italian in culture and sensibility, and its people had a quality all their own, strong and unsentimental, almost brutal. The word “vendetta” originated in Corsica, and the Union Corse—the Corsican mafia—had been a powerful force in daily life on the island for most of the past century. Even now, officially crushed, it still had its tentacles in businesses throughout the country. Corsicans were hard people, living in a hard environment.

Gabriel drove south toward Propriano and the small community of Sollacaro, which hosted the Filitosa site. If there was something to be found, this was where they had to start looking.

“They are headed toward the site,” Naeem reported.

“Excellent,” Amun said. “You know what to do if he makes it inside the Web.”

“What about the Corsicans who guard it?”

“Kemnebi will take care of them. He is assembling a team. If it proves necessary, we will intervene.”

“Understood,” Naeem said. Then after Amun had disconnected and the cell phone was safely closed, he said contemptuously, “If it proves necessary.”

They reached Filitosa by midmorning. It was in the middle of a dense forest that seemed to be untouched by modern civilization. Gabriel parked the car, took the pair of rucksacks they’d filled with their gear, and handed one to Sammi, who shrugged it on. Together they went into the Repository Museum building, where visitors bought tickets to visit the site. The museum contained a number of specimens excavated from various archaeological digs on the property. Glass display cases held artifacts such as obsidian arrowheads and pottery from the late Neolithic period. Gabriel led Sammi past the ranks of cases and straight to the outside path that led through an ancient olive grove to the first monument. Walking down the hill from there, they came to the monument, which consisted of menhirs with crudely carved faces erected around an open-air shrine. A number of hut platforms also surrounded the area.

Gabriel studied the map he had drawn. “We need to go to the very bottom of the hill, where the Western Monument and torri are located.”

“What’s a torri?”

“A type of circular stone structure. It’s thought they were used as temples. Come on.”

They continued along the path. Menhirs were arranged in a ritualistic circle near walls of stone that had once enclosed—what? No one knew. Gabriel had asked Michael once. It was obvious that the ancient Corsicans had used the structure for religious purposes, but historians weren’t sure what that religion was.

Beyond the monument was a fence—the end of the Filitosa property.

“We have to get over that fence without being seen,” Gabriel said. There weren’t too many people around—it was still early. They walked to a section of the fence partly concealed behind a stand of large olive trees.

“Okay, quick.” Gabriel held his hands together to give Sammi a boost. She placed a foot in his palm, caught hold of the top of the fence with both hands and nimbly hoisted herself up. In an instant she was down on the other side and had disappeared into the thick foliage. Gabriel was reminded of the way she’d vanished from Lucy’s apartment in Nice.

“Coming?” came an impatient whisper.

Gabriel took a look around to make sure no one had come into view, then pulled himself up to the top of the fence. Before he could put his leg over, he heard a telephone ringing somewhere beneath him—Sammi’s cell phone.

He vaulted over the top of the fence and dropped into the undergrowth, where Sammi was fumbling in her pocket. The phone rang again. Gabriel hissed, “Turn that thing—”

She flipped it open and answered in a whisper. “Oui?” She listened for a moment. “Yes, he is right here.” She handed the phone to Gabriel. “It is your brother. He says it is urgent.”

Gabriel took the phone. “Michael, once again, not a good time.”

“I was right, Gabriel,” Michael said, miserably. “She’s been kidnapped again.”

“What?”

“I said Lucy’s been—”

“How did it happen? In Paris?”

“No. She never made it on the plane.”

Gabriel’s hand tightened around the phone. “Damn it.”

“I just got another e-mail from the Alliance. It says you have to ‘deliver the Stone to us or your sister will die.’ ”

“They must know we’re here,” Gabriel said.

“You want me to call the police?” Michael said. “Interpol?”

“No. They’d be useless—or worse. These people are not amateurs. They’ll kill her if we give them a reason.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Get their goddamn stone for them.” He hung up. The look on Sammi’s face told him he didn’t need to relay the news. “Don’t worry,” Gabriel said, “we’ll get her back.”

“What if we can’t?”

Gabriel didn’t answer. He just took another look at his map, jammed it in his pocket, and headed toward a thick crop of trees.

The track led them deeper into the dark forest. Sunlight barely filtered through the tops of the tall pine trees. Twenty minutes of climbing over knotted roots and fallen and rotting tree trunks brought them to a small clearing that began where they were standing and ended a dozen feet away, at a wall of boulders. It was as tall as a three-story building, as wide as four buses driving bumper-to-bumper.

“Is this a natural formation?” Sammi asked, looking at the giant, irregular stones. “Or was there a rock slide . . . ?”

“Neither,” Gabriel said. “I think they were put here. Like the menhirs.”

“But these are enormous,” she said. “How could they even have moved them, never mind lifted them . . . ?”

“Nobody knows,” Gabriel said. “But here they are. And the map says we need to be on the other side.”

“I don’t see a way around,” Sammi said.

“There isn’t one,” Gabriel said. He was already undoing the closure of his rucksack and gestured to Sammi to do the same. “We’re going to have to go over.”

He took out a length of rope and tied one end to her waist, then fastened the other to his own. “I’ll go first. Just follow my lead. Place your feet exactly where I put mine. All right?”

She leaned in and kissed him, just briefly. “For luck,” she said.

“Let’s hope we don’t need it,” he said.

Gabriel shimmied up the first boulder, found a foothold, and then struck the pickax into the rock above him. That gave him something to grab. He hammered a spring-loaded camming device into the crack between two big rocks and quickly attached a carabiner to it, then secured the rope. Using this anchor, he was able to climb to a higher rock, repeat the procedure, and move on. When he was four boulders up, he called for Sammi to follow. She bounded up the first rock like a pro, carefully mimicked Gabriel’s footwork, and scurried onto the second. They were on their way.

It took them a little over forty minutes to reach the top of the boulders. “That wasn’t so bad,” Sammi said.

“We’re not done,” Gabriel said. “Now we go down.”

They reversed the process. Down generally took less time than up, but was more dangerous. When ascending during a rock climb, you can see what’s ahead. When you’re going down, you can’t.

“Take it slow,” Gabriel said. “Pay attention to every step. It just takes one—” Gabriel felt some loose pebbles slip beneath his sole and leaned in toward the rock face to regain his balance.

“Are you okay?”

“As I was saying,” Gabriel said.

They went the rest of the way slowly, cautiously, Gabriel wondering with every step whether Amun or Kemnebi or another of Khufu’s minions was watching them at this very moment, from the branches of a nearby tree or through the high-powered scope of a sniper rifle.

Sammi dropped to the ground beside him, a little out of breath. “How did I do?”

“You’re a natural.” Gabriel quickly packed the climbing tools and took out his handmade map. “Here is where it gets complicated. I’m not sure where we’re supposed to go next. Neither was the Alliance. The place we’re looking for—” he pointed to the area labeled in Arabic “—is somewhere around here, but exactly where . . . I don’t know.” He looked at the thick wall of trees directly ahead of them. “You’d think there would be a marker of some kind.”

“After two hundred years?”

“There’s apparently a group still in existence that’s devoted to keeping the secret.”

“Then wouldn’t they want to get rid of any markers?”

“Not if the markers are part of the secret they’re protecting,” Gabriel said.

Sammi studied the terrain in front of her. “Is this what you Americans mean when you say ‘can’t see the forest for the trees’?”

“Might as well be.” Gabriel began to walk along the tree line, studying the ground and the trunks. He found no signs of recent visitation, nor any indication of any man-made objects. He looked at the map again. “I don’t get it. It’s as if the trail stops cold.”

“Are you sure it really exists?”

He thought of the nonexistent urn he’d come to Corsica to find the last time. “I’m beginning to wonder.”

He put the map away and moved forward, through the trees. There was no trail, so the brush was difficult to step across. Sammi tailed behind him.

“Watch your step,” he warned.

As they continued deeper into the maquis, Gabriel systematically scanned their surroundings left and right. If they didn’t find something concrete soon, they’d have to turn back. What consequences that might have for Lucy, he didn’t know and didn’t want to contemplate. He could tell the Alliance that in his expert opinion the Stone didn’t exist, or at least the hiding place on Corsica didn’t. They might even believe him—but that wouldn’t stop them from killing him. Or Lucy.

Maybe if he could break her free again, get her back to New York—

He never had the chance to finish the thought, because at that moment he saw the menhir.

It was twenty yards in front of them and off to one side, hidden by an especially dense group of trees, a menhir similar to the ones behind them at Filitosa. Gabriel ran toward it, Sammi at his heels. He pushed aside a branch and stepped closer. This one wasn’t ancient. It was old—but not prehistoric. The stone wasn’t nearly as weathered, the features on the carved face at the top more distinct.

It was the face of a young man—a boy, really—and on the sides of the towering stone were the suggestions of a military uniform. The figure’s face was turned to the left, in profile.

“I don’t believe it,” Sammi said.

“What?”

She pointed up toward where the figure’s shoulders would have been if it were a full sculpture. “The insignia of the Military College of Brienne. He was not yet ten years old. This is Napoleon, Gabriel.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded. “It was when he first left Corsica. He came back during the Revolution, and once later, after returning from Egypt—but he was never again to make his home here for any length of time. This was the last age at which he was purely a Corsican—when he was still Napoleone di Buonaparte, not yet Napoleon Bonaparte.”

Gabriel walked around the menhir. “That tells us the trail exists. The question is, where do we go from here?”

Sammi followed the statue’s gaze to the left. “Maybe this way?”

“Makes as much sense as anything.”

They walked through the brush in that direction. A hollow log, the remnant of a fallen tree, lay across their path. Gabriel stepped over it, but as he set his foot down, something snapped.

“Don’t move,” Gabriel said.

Sammi looked around. “What is it?”

Gabriel was studying the log and the ground around it. He picked up a thin cord that had been attached to a spring mechanism. “It was booby-trapped.”

“But nothing happened,” Sammi said.

Gabriel shook his head. “Nothing we can see,” he said. He let the cord drop. “It triggered something. Probably an alarm.”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“Neither do I. Yet.” He drew his Colt.

They continued on in as close to a straight line as they could, through another thick grove of trees. On the far side, a narrow path opened up. Gabriel hurried along it until it widened into a clearing, roughly the same size as the one beside the wall of boulders. Only here there were no boulders, no wall—just a grassy slope, and in the side of the slope, an opening loosely concealed behind dead tree branches.

“Sammi, I think we may have found it,” Gabriel said. He heard something behind him, something heavy thudding to the ground. “Sammi?”

He spun around.

Silently and out of nowhere, six armed men had appeared between the trees. They all had guns—rifles and pistols—pointed at Gabriel. Sammi was lying facedown at the feet of a seventh man who held the butt of his rifle angled above the back of her head.

Gabriel let his gun fall to the ground and slowly raised his hands. The man standing over Sammi, his broad Corsican features ruddy, had dark eyes, gray-black hair, and a full beard. He stepped forward.

“You are trespassing,” he said. “You may not go farther. In fact, you will not leave this place alive.”