The Pharaoh's Secret

54

Paul and Gamay’s departure from Benghazi was delayed almost twenty-four hours when the airport was closed due to the growing violence. The pilots were as eager to leave as the Trouts. The plane was already fueled and was cleared for takeoff within the hour. It was now over the Mediterranean, cruising at thirty-seven thousand feet.

The Challenger 650 had a large cabin, as far as corporate jets went, a feature that made it look stubby on the ground but was a boon to taller people like Paul once they got on board.

“I’ll take this over that broken-down old DC-3,” he announced.

“I don’t know,” Gamay replied. “That old plane had a kind of rustic charm.”

“Rusting charm, is more like it,” he corrected.

Sitting across from each other in cream-colored leather seats, Gamay and Paul enjoyed a thick, brindle-patterned carpet at their feet soft enough to warrant the removal of shoes.

They opened their laptop computers, placing them on the tray tables and logging on to the encrypted NUMA website.

“I’ll work on the history of Villeneuve,” Paul said, “see if I can find any repository of his effects or any clue as to what he might have done with the papers D’Campion sent him.”

She nodded. “And I’ll work on the correspondence between the two men that Kurt had uploaded to the NUMA site. Hopefully, my college French will come rushing back. And, if not, I’ll use the translation program.”

The quiet of the cabin and the three-hour flight gave them time to do a great deal of work. Halfway through, Gamay had her legs folded up under her on the seat, her hair pulled back and the look of someone cramming for final exams.

Paul looked up from his laptop. “For a man who lived such an interesting life and played such a pivotal role in history, there isn’t much on Admiral Villeneuve.”

“What have you found?”

“He came from a family of aristocrats,” Paul said. “By all logic, he should have met the guillotine with Marie Antoinette and the others. But, apparently, he supported the Revolution early on and was allowed to keep his position in the French Navy.”

“Perhaps he was a charmer,” she suggested.

“Must have been. After the disaster at Aboukir Bay, he was captured by the British, returned to France and accused of cowardice. And yet, of all people, Napoleon defended him. He called Villeneuve a lucky man. Instead of a court-martial, Villeneuve was promoted to vice admiral.”

Gamay sat back. “A surprising change of fortune.”

“Especially considering he’d all but single-handedly stranded Napoleon in Egypt, which made his defeat inevitable.”

“I wonder if his luck has something to do with this ‘weapon,’” Gamay said. “You know, Aboukir Bay borders the town of Rosetta. I’ve found in D’Campion’s letters several references to artifacts they took from there. Some of them seem to have trilingual inscriptions, like the Rosetta stone itself. One of D’Campion’s first attempts at translation mentions the powers of Osiris to take life and give it back again. What if Villeneuve was promising this weapon to Napoleon from the time of his first release?”

Paul considered that. “Always promising. Getting himself promoted to vice admiral and then leading the fleet into another disaster before coming back to Napoleon once more and claiming he’d made a breakthrough at last?”

“It’s the boy who cried wolf,” Gamay suggested.

“By then, I’m guessing, Napoleon didn’t want to hear it anymore.”

Gamay nodded. “But Villeneuve couldn’t stop himself. His letters talk of destiny and desperation. A chance to rewrite his own personal history. But by the last letter in D’Campion’s file, Villeneuve is talking more fearfully: he thinks that Napoleon no longer believes the claims.”

“When did he send that?”

“The nineteenth of Germinal, XIV,” she said. “According to the computer, that is… April ninth, 1806.”

“Less than two weeks before he was killed.”

“Napoleon was known for rash action,” Paul added. “And absolute disdain for anyone or anything that tried to rein him in. When the invasion of England was called off, he decided to march east and invade Russia instead, just to have someone to conquer. Of course, that was nothing less than a disaster. But Villeneuve holding this weapon over his head seems like the kind of thing Napoleon would put up with for only so long.”

She checked her watch. “We’re landing soon. Any idea where we should start?”

Paul sighed. “There’s no library of Villeneuve’s papers, no museum or monument to his memory. About the only things I’ve found are a few newspaper clippings from twenty years ago referencing a woman named Camila Duchene. She tried to sell some papers and artwork she claimed to have discovered in her family home, works allegedly belonging to Villeneuve and some other noble.”

“What happened to them?” Gamay asked.

“Laughed off as fakes,” Paul said. “Villeneuve wasn’t known to be an artist. But, interestingly enough, her ancestors owned the boardinghouse where Villeneuve had been living in the weeks before his death.”

Before anything else was said, the pitch of the engines changed and the aircraft began to descend. The pilot’s voice came over the speakers. “We’re approaching Rennes. We’ll be landing in approximately fifteen minutes.”

“That gives us fifteen minutes to find any trace of Madame Duchene,” Paul suggested.

“My thoughts exactly.”