Gabriel's Horn (25 page)

“Ms. Creed,” Elton McPhee greeted as Annja entered the Holy Constantinople Museum of the Apostles. From the way he’d rushed up to her, he’d been waiting for her arrival. “It’s so good to meet you. I never miss an episode of your show. Fascinating. Simply fascinating.”

“Sure,” Annja said. Even after many similar encounters, she still wasn’t quite certain how to respond when dealing with the attention
Chasing History’s Monsters
brought her.

McPhee was a heavyset man with thinning blond hair and round-lensed glasses that matched his round face. He looked pale enough that Annja assumed he rarely went outside.

The museum was a simple affair and had a modest selection of exhibits. A large mosaic of Constantinople as it had been before the Ottoman invasion filled one wall behind the counter.

“And who are your companions?” the museum curator asked.

Charlie stepped up before Annja could say anything.

“I’m Charlie,” the old man announced, and took McPhee’s hand, though the curator seemed somewhat loath to let him have it.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Professor Charlie,” McPhee said.

“He’s not a—” Garin started to say, but Annja quieted him with a look. Garin sighed in displeasure, then turned and walked away.

“Thank you,” Charlie said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, too. We’re here to save the world.”

For a moment McPhee stood frozen. Then he noted the medical bracelet on Charlie’s arm.

“Of course you are,” McPhee said quickly after his discovery.

Annja ignored all of it. As long as they got to see Thomopoulos’s sketchbooks, nothing mattered.

Charlie folded his arms behind his back. He walked away and began inspecting the exhibits out in the main hall.

“Is he all right?” McPhee asked in a quiet voice.

“He’s fine,” Annja assured the curator.

McPhee tapped his wrist. “Because he, uh…”

“A private joke,” Annja said. “He can be a little eccentric.”

McPhee nodded. “Sure. Sure. I understand. Many people in the field tend to get that way after a while. Can I get you anything?”

“I’d really love to see the Jannis Thomopoulos collection.”

“Of course. I’ve already moved everything we have to a viewing room.” McPhee swept an arm forward. “This way, please.”

McPhee was organized. Annja saw that at a glance. The workroom was small, but the curator had made the best of it. Books and statues shared table space. Paintings, the few the museum had, hung carefully on the walls.

Annja walked through it all to get a sense of it and to see if anything leaped out at her. The paintings seemed to be generic, as did the statues.

“Our collection of paintings and statues is modest, of course,” McPhee apologized. “But we’re fortunate in some respects. Thomopoulos’s real worth hadn’t been discovered before the museum had most of these pieces. Later, they became harder to acquire.”

Garin picked up a statue of an archer.

“Please,” McPhee said tensely as he rushed over to take the statue and place it once more on the table. “Please, don’t touch anything.”

For a moment Annja thought Garin was going to strike McPhee. She stepped forward to block any attempt, but Garin blew out an impatient breath and nodded.

Annja settled into one of the chairs and donned a pair of gloves McPhee provided. There were at least fifty sketchbooks, all hand bound with paper that had survived hundreds of years without yellowing. That particular secret of making paper seemed to have vanished somewhere in time.

She turned the pages reverently. She knew she held history, unique and important, in her hands. The thoughts and ideas that were passed on from one generation to another were as important as a piece of pottery or armor. No artifacts told history and the lives of people like a book.

She had to focus on what she was there to find because each turn of the page threatened to lose her in history.

* * * *

Nearly three hours later, her back stiff and hunger gnawing at her stomach, Annja found the journal that contained the sketches of the Nephilim. She’d almost missed it because there wasn’t a fully drawn sketch on the pages. Rather, it held pieces of the finished painting. If Annja hadn’t seen the representation of the one that Ilse Danseker had been murdered for, she wouldn’t have found it.

Breathing shallowly, her head about to explode from excitement, her eyes burning from strain, Annja leaned forward, placed the book on the table and took her digital camera from her backpack.

“You found something?” Garin asked. He sat at the head of the table, a position he’d automatically assumed.

“Yes.”

Garin came to join her. Charlie did the same.

“Where?” Garin demanded.

“Here.” Annja took pictures with her camera.

“There’s no painting there.”

The page only held bits and pieces of drawings.

“You’re trying to see the whole painting,” Annja said. “Thomopoulos didn’t render his sketches that way.”

“He drew separate images of them.” Charlie grinned. “You did very well, Annja.”

“Thank you.”

“This is stupid,” Garin growled. “I still don’t see what either of you are talking about.”

Charlie leaned forward. “May I?”

Annja nodded and handed him the book. She dug her computer out and attached the camera to it through a USB cable. Then she brought the computer on-line.

“Here,” Charlie said. “This is the face of the Nephilim.” He pointed at the coldly handsome face that sat disembodied on the page.

“All right,” Garin said grudgingly, “I’ll admit there is some resemblance.”

“There’s more than a resemblance,” Annja said. “It looks drawn to scale.”

“How do you know that?” Garin asked.

“The thumbprint beside the face.” Annja brought up the pictures she’d taken and quickly saved them.

Garin had to lean close to see it. But it was there. Annja had noted the ghostly image and Charlie had seen it, as well. Finally, so did Garin.

“All right, there’s a thumbprint,” Garin admitted. “That doesn’t mean it was drawn to scale.”

“But it does,” Charlie said. “Artists often use their thumbs or a brush as a measuring tool to calculate sizes. There’s no other reason for the thumbprint to be there.”

“Is that important?”

“It tells us these other drawings are drawn to scale, as well,” Annja said. “And that is
very
important. If you’re going to draw a map, as you said Roux believes this picture holds, then scale is everything.”

“I saw that painting,” Garin said. “There was no map.” He looked over her shoulder at the image she was using.

Annja had captured the image from a CNN headline broadcast that had covered the Ilse Danseker murder. She’d lifted it from a repeat broadcast online that had been saved in high definition.

After she captured the Nephilim’s face from the photo she’d taken, Annja superimposed it over the image of the Nephilim she’d taken from the television broadcast. She had to shrink the image down to get it to fit properly. She paid attention to the percentage of shrinkage she’d had to employ.

Then she grabbed one of the pieces that had been around the face at the center of the page.

“What are you doing?” Garin asked.

“I think this belongs on the painting.” Annja shifted the piece around on the painting image.

“Why?”

“Because it was on that page.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Garin said.

“I think it does. I think all of those images were drawn to scale for a reason.”

Garin looked at the painting image. “It’s not part of that painting.”

“Not now,” Annja agreed. “But I think it once was.”

“You’re wasting time and—”

“There,” Charlie interrupted quietly. He pointed to a corner of the screen. Part of a design in the stone floor matched part of the image on the piece Annja was trying to manipulate.

Annja moved the piece into position, shrank it down and grabbed the next piece. It held a matching design in the painting, as well.

Garin became silent.

“I’m very good at puzzles.” Charlie smiled.

There were nine pieces in all scattered around the painting. It only took Annja a few moments to blend them into the digital capture of the forged painting Ilse Danseker had purchased.

“Whoever created the forgery saw the original painting,” Garin said.

“I think so, too,” Annja agreed. “However, the original painting is no longer original.” She nodded at the adjusted image she’d created. “Thomopoulos, for whatever reason, painted over the original and hid these pieces.”

“He did it to hide the legacy that was contained in the painting,” Charlie suggested.

“What legacy is that?” Garin demanded.

“One of the most powerful objects in the world,” Charlie said.

“What?”

“It’s not for me to say,” the old man replied.

“Gabriel’s Horn,” Annja said, remembering Dr. Krieger’s research.

Charlie looked at her. Then he smiled. “Yes.”

“What does Roux want with it?” Garin asked.

“The horn,” Charlie said softly, “has the power to unmake the world.”

37

“Roux,” Jennifer said, “you need to slow down and think things through.”

Roux regarded the woman. He remembered all of their years together, and some of the happiness they’d had. It had been hard to leave Jennifer. She was fiercely proud and extremely confident.

But the time had come those years ago, and it was either move on or reveal more about himself to her than he was comfortable doing. If he’d looked younger, he might have been able to give her more years.

In the end, though, Roux knew from experience, it would only have gotten harder to leave her.

“I
am
thinking things through,” he told her as he shoved another pistol into the pocket of the coat he wore. “I know where the painting is, Jennifer. I can’t leave it out there.”

“This could be a trap.” Jennifer folded her arms and regarded him defiantly.

“I don’t think it is.” Roux believed the story Bogosian had told about the location of the Nephilim. The painter had been given no room to lie, and Roux had put him in considerable pain.

“Then you’re a fool if you think you can just walk in there and buy it.” Her voice sounded ragged.

“The man who has the Nephilim doesn’t have any idea what he truly has,” Roux said. “He’s an art collector. He has an interesting piece. I have more than enough money to acquire it from him.”

“What if he doesn’t want to sell it?”

Roux knew wealth meant more to most people than simply owning something. “He’ll sell it to me,” he said confidently.

“What if he doesn’t?”

Roux smiled. “Then getting it will be a little harder. Not impossible.”

“Let me go with you.”

“You’ve done enough.”

“You shouldn’t be alone.”

“What I shouldn’t do,” Roux said patiently, “is allow you to risk your life any more than you have.”

Tears welled in Jennifer’s eyes. “You’re being bullheaded.”

“I am.” Roux gently stroked her face with his forefinger. “But I care about you.”

“This isn’t dangerous. You said it’s not dangerous.”

“I know. But I need to do this myself.” Roux drew his hand back. “Wait here. I’ll call when I have the painting. Then we’ll go celebrate.” He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “Be well until I return.” He left without a backward glance.

* * * *

“How does the map work?”

Annja felt pressured by Garin’s question, but she knew that came more from herself than from him. After saving the reconstructed image, she lifted the pieces off again, put them into a new file and started manipulating them.

“I don’t know. Yet.”

Garin leaned in closer to her. She was aware of his cologne and the heat coming off his body. She didn’t know if those things were attractive or threatening.

“If it’s a puzzle once,” Garin said, “maybe it’s a puzzle twice.”

“Now you’re an expert?” Annja mocked.

“I’m just saying.” He sounded as irritable as a bear awakened from hibernation.

Anxiety coursed through Annja. She pushed the pieces together. She realized there was no way all the pieces fit as one thing. She studied them and saw other ways they fit together.

Five of the pieces lay together in an interlocked design.

They’re complete, she told herself. Accept that. Now what do you do with the other four pieces?

Slowly she began putting them together. It was harder. She could get any three of them together but she couldn’t get the fourth to drop into place. The fourth piece had a section of design that fit over the other three pieces, and also allowed it to fit with any of the other two.

“It doesn’t go there,” Garin said. “It has to be something by itself.”

His words triggered a sudden understanding. Working smoothly, Annja fit three of the pieces together, then placed them over the last piece.

All the designs fit exactly.

“A hidden room,” Annja whispered, understanding. “Wherever this is, it has a room below.”

“But where is this?” Garin asked.

Annja looked at the grouping of the first five pieces. “This looks like a cross.”

Another memory clicked into place.

Annja walked out into the main museum lobby and looked at the mosaic of Constantinople on the wall. She searched the buildings represented there.

McPhee hurried over from one of the exhibits he was working on. “Is there something I can assist you with, Ms. Creed?”

Annja pointed at the cross-shaped building near the center of the city. “What church is that?” she asked.

“That’s the Church of the Holy Apostles,” McPhee answered immediately. “It was built in 330 by Constantine the Great. It was supposed to be a repository of the twelve apostles of Jesus. Unfortunately, at least this is what legend tells us, only the relics of Saints Andrew, Luke and Timothy were ever housed there.”

“Is that shape unique in the city?” Annja asked.

“Yes. Why?”

“The church fell, didn’t it?” Annja said. Bits and pieces of the story came back to her.

“It did. After the invasion of the Ottoman Turks the church was destroyed and a mosque was built on the site. It was called Fatih Carmi, the Mosque of the Conqueror. Most people know it simply as Fatih Mosque.”