Raiders

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The Raiders and Dr Eva Starling stepped off the airstair and set foot on French soil. More precisely, it was the asphalt of Orly Airport’s private aviation apron. In the far eastern reaches of the sky, a fragile pink blush was the first sign of daybreak. Mason was last off the plane, hefting his canvas bag up over his shoulder. The steel tube containing the Istanbul asset poked out the top and caught the morning sun.

“What’s in the tube?” Ben asked.

“Confidential,” Mason said bluntly.

“Sounds mysterious.”

“No mystery, just highly valuable. Until it’s returned to its rightful owners, it goes where I go.”

The air was already warm, and as they piled into the car, Ella Makepeace tied her hair back and tried to relax. “How far to the museum?” she asked.

“Not far,” Caleb said. “We’re less than fifteen Ks away, almost due south of the place. According to this app we’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Without traffic,” Milo said. “I lived in Paris for three years and believe me when I say the roads won’t be this forgiving when we get over the Périphérique.”

Zara sighed and looked at Milo. “You’re such a pessimist, baby.”

“Not a pessimist, but a realist.”

As he said this, Zara mouthed the same word, perfectly lip-synching him. “Heard it so many times before, Miley.”

“Miley,” Virgil said with a chuckle. “I like that.”

“Any word from Gaston?” Mason asked Virgil.

The New Yorker nodded his head. “Just got a text right now.”

“Who’s Gaston?” Eva asked, looking at the entire crew one by one for an answer.

She was met by silence.

“Well? Come on, you guys!”

“Gaston Majerus,” Mason said. “One of Virgil’s former lecturers.”

“I see,” Eva said. “Helpful.”

“He works at Les Invalides,” Virgil said. “It’s waste of his talent, really. He’s a brilliant classicist but somehow he ended up curating. He also writes a mean verse in memoriam stanza.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a quatrain in iambic tetrameter.”

“Huh?”

“He writes poetry,” Ella said. “Virgil struggles with simple words.”

“Poetry, huh?” Eva said. “He is French, I guess.”

“He’s not French,” Virgil said. “He’s a Luxembourger. Never call him French.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Eva said.

Much to Caleb’s annoyance, Milo was right, and just under thirty minutes after they had driven out of Orly they were pulling up outside Les Invalides. By now, the sun had broken the horizon but was still low and the city was shrouded in the last remnants of the dawn twilight.

Majerus was a sight to behold with his cream linen suit, flamboyant silk scarf flung casually around his neck and a trilby hat set at a coquettish angle on his head. “Virgil,” he cried out, extending his arms. “So good to see you, mon ami.”

They kissed on each cheek and Zara and Caleb exchanged a raised eyebrow.

“Thanks for being here, Gaston,” Virgil said.

“I came the instant you called. I said to Bernard, that I must make haste.”

Eva leaned into Milo. “Bernard?”

“My parrot.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No kidding,” said Virgil.

“And here I am. Now, we go to the archives. This museum holds some of the greatest collections of archives relating to Napoleon in the entire world.”

“What’s the book?” Virgil said, pointing to a small leather bound journal in Gaston’s hand.

“It’s the memoirs of Bon-Adrien Jeannot de Moncey,” Gaston said. “He was the first Duke of Conegliano, Peer of France and Marshal of France.”

“A little light bedtime reading?” Milo said.

Gaston raised an eyebrow. “De Moncey was the governor of Les Invalides when Napoleon’s ashes were returned here. I thought it may be of some use to us.”

They made their way up the museum’s steps and entered a cavernous hallway.

Mason followed Gaston Majerus and Eva Starling as they made their way along the corridor and headed toward the archives. The Texan woman had already impressed him a great deal with her knowledge and calmness under fire, but now she went and did it all over again as she struck up an effortless conversation with Majerus in what sounded like fluent French to him.

“So what are you looking for exactly?” Gaston asked.

“Ultimately, we’re searching for a codex,” Eva said. “We think Napoleon found it in Egypt during his campaign there. We think the codex will contain a map leading us to Thoth’s Book of Spells.”

“So, nothing much then,” Gaston said, aghast.

“Nothing so far, that’s for sure,” Ella called out.

“And you think this codex is in here?”

Eva shrugged. “We hope so. You said this is where most of Napoleon’s personal belongings were stored after his death, right?”

Gaston gave a haughty nod.

“So it’s got to be here, then.”

The task ahead of them was daunting. The archives were of a scale that Mason hadn’t previously dared to imagine, and even the section dedicated to Napoleon looked almost infinite. Long lines of metal shelving units stretched away into the gloomy, musty space; each one was stuffed with box files and a hundred other types of container — all of them filled to capacity with papers relating to the great emperor. More than that, the place was stacked with the emperor’s personal belongings — chairs, tables, wardrobes, old clothes, chests, everything he had accumulated on his travels.

Mason silently admitted to himself that he had made an error in calculating how long the Paris leg of the mission would take. When Ambrose Lloyd had told him that Napoleon had hidden the map from the British and that they would find it in the museum he had reckoned on no more than an hour.

Now he realized this assumption was idiotic, and that even with all seven of them hunting through the paperwork they would be here for hours. No problem in itself, he considered, but the concern was the usual one: SPIDER and the Hidden Hand. Two forces of dangerous, highly trained killers who wanted him and his crew dead and the codex in their possession.

Two hours into their search, Gaston took Ella and Ben Speers upstairs to the restaurant bar and returned half an hour later with a tray of coffees and pastries. Like Mason, the others smelled the warm, buttery-chocolate delights before they saw them and when Ella and her ex stepped into their section of the archives they were all over them like vultures.

Milo disgusted everyone by cramming an entire croissant into his mouth in one go while simultaneously snatching up a hot cup of coffee just so he could pocket one of the pains au chocolat, but he’d worked harder than anyone else and was quickly forgiven.

Mason brought his coffee to a stack of boxes in the corner and sat on his own for a few moments, just watching his friends. They always blew him away by how fast they could mobilize and how versatile they were, but on this mission they had impressed him more than ever. Not that they were getting a raise.

As they reached the top of the fourth hour, Eva sighed and crashed down on top of a large chest. “We’ve been through everything and it’s just not here, dammit.”

“Let me see that inventory,” Virgil said.

He walked over to Gaston and the Luxembourger handed it to him. As he ran his finger up and down the lists, a frown began to form on his face. Lifting his eyes from the papers he pushed his glasses up on his forehead and started to scan the archive room. “No, no…”

“What is it, Virgil?” Mason asked.

The young man looked over at the group and a broad smile formed on his scrawny face. “This inventory isn’t right,” he said. “Something’s missing!”

“If something’s missing then that must be where the codex is!” Ella said.

“Exactly! It says here there were two cassones but there’s only one — the one Eva’s sitting on.”

Gaston flicked through the small journal once again. “And yet the entry in de Moncey’s notes mentioned that it was definitely two Florentine cassones that Napoleon picked up when he was crowned King of Italy at the Duomo di Milano.”

“What the hell was he picking up casseroles for?” said Milo.

Virgil sighed. “Cassone, not casserole. It’s a marriage chest used to carry the personal belongings of a bride on her wedding day. It’s going to be pretty spectacular if it caught the eye of Bonaparte — right, Gaston?”

The Luxembourger nodded. “I taught you well.”

Caleb shook his head. “You mean we’ve just been wasting our time?”

“Bugger it!” Mason said. He turned to Gaston. “I thought you said this place stored everything Napoleon had?”

Gaston looked crestfallen for a few seconds and was unable to speak, then his face lit up with the realization of what had happened. “Wait a minute! I know where the missing chest is!”

Zara sighed. “We’re waiting.”

“In Rome!”

“In Rome?” Mason said “What the hell?”

“Damn, baby,” Zara said. “What the hell’s it doing in Rome?”

Gaston said, “Throughout history Rome was traditionally seen as the center of culture in Europe, for all the obvious historical reasons, but that all changed during the reign of Napoleon.”

“If you ask me,” Ben said wearily, “it doesn’t sound like you know what you’re talking about.”

“How dare you!” Gaston said. “How was I to know what you were seeking wasn’t to be found in this room, but was instead in the other cassone?”

“I guess so.” Ben didn’t sound convinced.

Milo faced Gaston. “You said everything changed during the reign of Napoleon — how?”

Gaston puffed his chest out. “The Emperor desired the consolidation of all the most important religious and historical records of Europe. For historical reasons these records and archives were collected and stored in Rome, naturellement, but Napoleon decided they should be brought here to France, to Paris, because he wanted to make this city the cultural center of Europe.”

“Sure makes sense from an egomaniac point of view,” Caleb said.

“He started seizing the Vatican’s archives in 1799 during his initial Italian campaign, but he went much further, gradually taking the archives and records of the other lands he conquered.”

“And that’s why it’s in Rome,” Ben said. “Now I get it.”

“Oui… c’est très simple,” Gaston said nonchalantly. “When Napoleon died, the Pope demanded that the archives be restored to Rome, but not all of them made it. It proved to be too expensive for the Catholic Church to transport them all back, so many of them were left here in France, and there was much confusion. But you see, the codex you seek is inside the other cassone, and the other cassone was returned with the archives that went back to Rome. Today, it can only be in one place — the Vatican Secret Archives.”

“Oh, that’s okay then,” Virgil said. “I’m guessing they’ll just let us stroll in and take whatever we want. They’re not the most secretive place on Earth at all.”

“Listen,” Mason said firmly. “We’ll do what we have to do to secure the codex, and then…”

His words were cut short by an enormous explosion which lifted him from his feet and blasted him across the archive room.

“Grenade!” Caleb yelled. “Dive!”

And then all hell broke loose.