Hunt Through Napoleon's Web (5 page)

The table was lit by a pair of candles in tiny glass holders. Gabriel couldn’t help but admire Sammi’s features in the flickering light, the play of shadow over her tanned skin (so much darker than most redheads he knew—and yet the red looked natural). Her eyes were an even brighter blue than he remembered from his first glimpse of her in the apartment. She wore a small medallion of some kind on a gold chain around her neck, and as she leaned toward him it dangled in the inviting darkness between her peach-shaped breasts.

“What is that?” he asked, indicating the medallion.

“This?” She lifted the chain with one finger, let the piece dangle in the light of the flame. “This is nothing, really. I wear it for sentimental reasons. It once belonged to my mother, who is no longer with us.”

“It looks old.”

“More than two hundred years,” she said. “It’s a French coin from around 1800. A franc. An old franc, from Napoleon’s time.”

Gabriel thought about the print of Napoleon on the wall of Lucy’s apartment, defaced by blade and marker. The old boy seemed to be turning up everywhere. But that was what it meant to come to France, of course. Two centuries later, his influence was still palpable.

“Speaking of Napoleon, do you know why my sister had that print up on her wall?” Gabriel asked. “Had she developed an interest in history?”

“Cifer? No. History was my specialty, not hers. I gave her the print for her birthday. I told her once she reminded me of Napoleon. Small, but very, very brilliant.”

“I’m surprised I never noticed the resemblance,” Gabriel said.

“Well,” Sammi said, in a tone of consolation, “you are not French.”

The wine arrived then, and Gabriel went through the performance of sniffing the cork and swirling the wine and satisfying the waiter by pronouncing it good enough. When the waiter left, Sammi took one swallow and burst out laughing. “It’s awful!”

“It is,” Gabriel said. “Worst I’ve had in years.”

“But, but—why didn’t you send it back?”

“I’m not here for the wine,” he said.

They found each other’s eyes, and neither looked away for some time.

“Can you tell me,” Sammi said, “is Cifer in serious danger?”

“I don’t know,” Gabriel said. “I hope not. But she may be. A group calling themselves the Alliance of the Pharaohs claims to have kidnapped her. Have you ever heard of them?”

“God in heaven,” she said. “I remember our Mediterranean History professor mentioning them. That’s the class Lucy and I were in together.”

“Really? Your professor mentioned them? My brother Michael—he has two degrees in history, and he’d never heard of them.”

“That’s because they’re not historical,” Sammi said, “they’re entirely modern. A sect operating in present-day Egypt. Very radical. Made up of intensely passionate Egyptian nationalists. Among other things, their aim is to repatriate any Egyptian artifacts and treasures they see as having been stolen by other countries.”

“Stolen’s a bit strong,” Gabriel said. “Most of what’s in museums was legally obtained.”

“Most is not all,” Sammi said, “and ‘legally obtained’ is in the eye of the beholder. And in their eyes a great wrong has been committed. One they feel calls for revenge.”

“The thefts in Istanbul—”

“And from the Louvre, yes. We discussed them in class. Our professor didn’t approve of the tactic—”

“By ‘tactic’ you mean beheading the security guards?”

“—but he seemed sympathetic to the desire for Egypt to have her artifacts back. But then, he was Egyptian himself.”

“Do you suppose he’d be willing to talk to me? I’d like to know more about this group before I meet with them.”

“I wouldn’t know how to contact him—he was a
visiting professor only, he went back to Egypt at the end of the semester. But, Gabriel,” she said, reaching out and taking hold of his hand, “surely you are not going to meet with members of this group. Of all people, not you.”

“Why ‘of all people’?” Gabriel said.

“For heaven’s sake, what are you known for? How many precious artifacts have you taken out of Egypt and her neighbors and brought back to the United States? If this group has two enemies, it must be you and Howard Carter. And Howard Carter they can no longer kill.”

“I may not be quite as easy to kill as they think,” Gabriel said.

Sammi’s voice shook when she spoke. “But don’t you see? That is why they took Cifer. With her life in the balance, how could you dare to fight them?”

“I’ll think of something,” Gabriel said, with more confidence than he felt. “Listen, did you find anything when you searched Lucy’s apartment? Anything that might be helpful?”

“Just this.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a small plastic bag. It contained the other half of the broken glass syringe, the half with the plunger. “It was on the floor in the bedroom.”

Gabriel nodded. “I found the other half behind the bed. Can I take it Lucy isn’t a drug user?”

“Hardly! She doesn’t even like to drink very much.”

“Then it must have been the kidnappers,” Gabriel said. “Some sort of knock-out drug, maybe.”

“We’ll find out,” Sammi said. “Before I picked you up, I called a man I know who has a pharmacy and he agreed to run some tests. In fact—” She took out her cell phone and looked at the clock on its display. “We’d better get going, it’s almost eleven.”

“He stays open till eleven?”

“Jean? No, he closes at seven; eight on weekends. But that’s for ordinary customers. For me . . . he’ll make an exception.”

Gabriel tried to read the expression he saw in her eyes. “Sounds like he might prefer if I stayed in the car,” he said.

“I am sure he would,” Sammi said. “But I would not.” And she squeezed his hand once more.

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.”