[JJ06] Quicksand (11 page)

CHAPTER 21

“You’re sure?” Lane asked.

I hesitated. “Pretty sure.”

Lane swore and looked up at the descending snow. Easy for him to do. He was the one no longer wearing glasses. My own vision was obscured by droplets of melting snowflakes on my fake lenses. I shivered under the light rain coat that wasn’t meant for snow.

“This isn’t just a hunch because you don’t trust North?” he asked.

“I wish that were the case. But it all fits. It all points to—”

“Let’s get off the street and go somewhere we can talk privately.”

“Hiding in one of these cafes?” Within my field of view were three sidewalk cafes, two of which had set up plastic tarps and heat lamps to accommodate the French pastime of simultaneously smoking, drinking (either coffee or wine), and people-watching. Even in the light snow, the tiny tables with chairs that faced outward were half filled.

“That’s not what I had in mind.”

“Then where
are
we going?”

The brief smile in Lane’s face took some of the chill out of my bones. “A place that three days ago I thought I’d never be able to show you.”

Twenty minutes later, we emerged from a metro stop and walked down three side streets before Lane stopped in front of a run-of-the-mill Parisian apartment building—by which I mean beautiful architectural details surrounded each narrow window in the five story Baroque building, and a brass lion’s head greeted us at the front door. At home in San Francisco, the building would have been a historic landmark.

In the time we spent on the crowded metro, I was able to solidify my thoughts about what North was up to. I was more certain than ever that the hidden parchment meant something very different from what North had told us.

“Home sweet home,” Lane said as we climbed a narrow, twisting flight of stairs. Was it my imagination, or had he said it with an English accent?

“You’re living here?”

“For the moment.” It wasn’t my imagination. He’d taken on a British accent. He was also still walking in the stooped manner he’d assumed when we changed clothes before hopping on the metro. I wasn’t sure who Lane was putting on the show for, but I was tired of thinking.

With two separate keys, Lane unlocked a narrow door on the first landing. I stepped into an apartment that must have been 200 square feet, at most. It made me think of the small hotel room at The Fog & Thistle in Scotland. Lane and I had known each other for less than a week when we’d been forced to share that microscopic room with a sloping ceiling. Through a door that Lane would have to stoop to walk through lay a bathroom, the only separate room in the apartment. A small cut-out held a kitchenette with a fridge tucked under the counter, two stove-top burners, and a sink with a removable stainless steel cover so it could serve as added counter space in the tiny area. The largest pieces of furniture were a couch that looked like it doubled as a bed and a reclaimed wooden dining table with two chairs tucked underneath. Bookshelves and art lined nearly every square inch of wall space. Philosophy, art history, and mystery fiction filled the shelves, their spines cracked from repeated reading. Above the shelves hung reproductions of paintings from India and photographs of temple art in Cambodia. I wished I’d been there under other circumstances, and that I didn’t have to tell him what we had to do.

“It’s beautiful,” I said. As I spoke, an item on the largest bookshelf caught my attention. I lifted the small pewter frame. Inside the woven ivy design was a photograph of me. Lane had taken it in Scotland.

“What can I say?” Lane said, taking the picture of me from my hands and straightening up to his usual way of carrying himself. “I can’t resist beautiful things.”

Unsure of how to respond under our bizarre and urgent circumstances, I turned away. I dropped my bag on the hardwood floor, kicked off my shoes, and peeled out of my wet coat.

“My safe house North found was a decoy,” Lane said. “This is the real one. I never meant to live here for a long period of time, but...Life gets in the way of life sometimes.”

“I know. God, I know.”

“I wish...I wish a lot of things, Jones. But right now, you need to tell me what you mean that the parchment isn’t North’s end game. This apartment is safe. We can talk here.” Seeing me shiver, he turned the dial on a rusty radiator.

Standing so close to Lane, I hardly remembered what I was supposed to be thinking about. I took a step back and tucked my hair behind my ears. Even before he said so, I knew this apartment was safe. It had only one window, which was made of frosted glass. The glass was so thick I couldn’t tell if it faced an inner courtyard or the busy street from which we’d entered.

“I don’t know where to start,” I said, “so I’ll start at the beginning, before you ‘liberated’ that parchment from its hiding place. The East India Company letters North showed me
weren’t
just a test. He really did want my expert opinion as to whether the documents were authentic.”

Lane shook his head. “That doesn’t sound like North. Not if the letters would clue you in to something he was doing.”

“He would,” I said, “if he knew there was no way I could put it together with the theft he wanted you to do for him. Remember, one of the letters had been ripped in half. He didn’t want me to see it in its entirety.”

“But you saw something?”

“Nothing I realized was important at the time. He was careful to remove any references that would alert me to what he was doing with them. But—” I shook my head.

“What?”

“He set things up perfectly! I wasn’t thinking. I’d just stepped off a transcontinental flight, walked back into your life, was absorbing the fact that I was being blackmailed or coerced or whatever it was, and didn’t have much time...I did what any historian would do at first. I started with the author, date, and location—who, when, and where. These letters were written by a man working for the British East India Company who was in Pondicherry in 1793, when Britain had recently regained control of the city and the French East India Company was dissolving. The French were miserable colonizers compared to the British.”

“What does that have to do with the parchment I got out of the desk?”

“I’m getting there. Local Indian rulers got in the middle of the two European powers, backing different nationalities for political reasons. Tipu Sultan in nearby Mysore had the support of the French in his battles against the English. Tipu, who was both a military leader and a scholar, was a hugely important ruler during the 18
th
century. He had a vast estate of riches that were divided up after his defeat, including the famous Tipu’s Tiger automaton that’s now at the Victoria & Albert museum in London.”

“I’m not following.”

“You’re not supposed to. That’s why North thought it was fine for you to steal the manuscript page, because you never would have made the connection. Indian rulers often presented lavish gifts—treasures—to their European allies. In addition, when the British or French won a battle, they claimed Indian treasures as the spoils of war. That’s how men like Robert Clive accumulated so much wealth.”

“Clive of India,” Lane said, “whose gold coins sank on an East Indiaman ship before it reached England. But weren’t more of his stolen Indian treasures auctioned off for close to ten million dollars at Christie’s a few years ago?”

“At least that much,” I said. “Because they were once owned by such an important historical figure. He was instrumental in securing the British East India Company’s stronghold in India through his military moves against England’s rival for colonial control: the French. He was successful because of his brave leadership in battle—which was actually reckless, youthful bluffing that happened to turn out for the best because the French never believed he could be so stupid...but I’m getting off topic.” I warmed my hands over the radiator. When I looked up, Lane was smiling at me.

“I love it when you get carried away,” he said, unable to hide a smile.

“You’re not taking this seriously enough!”

“You’re shivering. I think you caught a chill outside. I’ll make tea.”

“How can you think about tea at a time like this?”

“You haven’t told me what I need to take seriously.” He filled an iron tea kettle with tap water and lit a gas burner with a match. “A letter from a homesick Englishman is hardly reason enough to think there’s more going on. And I know a thing or two about illuminated manuscripts. This page wouldn’t be particularly valuable, aside from the way North mentioned. You’ve been through a lot these last few days. I know it’s difficult to believe it’s over.”

“The illuminated manuscript page,” I said, trying to keep my voice even and not yell, “is what made the pieces fit together. Did you look carefully at the painting?”

“Animals with a person. That’s pretty common in illuminated manuscripts.”

“But this is a man wrapped in the trunk of an elephant, with a tiger circling at the elephant’s feet
.
Two animals more commonly associated with India than with France. And
two
references to those animals in two days. It’s related to the letters North showed me. It’s too big a coincidence. This has to be about something stolen from India that North is on the trail of.”

Lane stared at me, the color draining from his face, then shook his head. “You’ve over-thinking this, Jaya. It could be as simple as this fellow with a tiger obsession learned about the hiding place of a unique illustration, so the letter was the piece of information that told North where to find the parchment. That’s why North wanted you to give your expert opinion about whether the letters were real. You could be right that there’s a connection, but it’s one that’s easily explained.”

“I wish it was that simple, but it doesn’t follow. Why would a
single page
of a larger volume be hidden inside the desk from a scriptorium, unless there was some larger significance? North had a pretty weak explanation for all the effort that went into finding it. We’re missing something. I wish I’d had a chance to take a closer look at the parchment, but it was clear North didn’t want me to see it.”

“I think,” Lane said, “I can help with that.”

“Don’t tell me you have a photographic memory and can draw it perfectly.”

“Even better.” He reached into his pocket and held up a piece of electronic equipment smaller than his thumb.

“A miniature camera?”

“This is why I gave North’s video feed to the performance artist. I knew North would be amused, and therefore not care that I disobeyed him in this case. His weakness is that he has too much fun with his role. I knew he wouldn’t question my handing off the video camera, since he’d be getting a more entertaining show.” As he spoke, he extracted a miniature memory card from the camera, plugged it into a laptop, and tapped a few keys. “The real reason I wanted to ditch that streaming video was to take a better look at what I was stealing. It was a precaution in case I’d been misled about the value of what I’d taken and needed to get it back.”

He placed the laptop in front of me on the dining table that also seemed to serve as a desk, turning the computer so I could see the screen. A photograph of the illuminated manuscript page filled the screen. Though the colorful painting must have been more recent, the parchment itself looked like it could have been close to a thousand years old. The writing was so faded it was barely visible. I looked at it more closely.

“I’m going to need something stronger than tea,” I said, staring at the elephant, tiger, and their victim. My mouth was dry and it was difficult to speak. “This piece of parchment is a
clue
. A clue that leads to the real treasure North is after.”

CHAPTER 22

“Look at the writing,” I said. “Next to the painting, there’s only a single sentence of writing. It’s
a message
, not a page from a book.”

Lane stared at the image, then promptly kicked over an empty trashcan. It bounced off a bookshelf and skidded across the hardwood floor. “I should have seen the signals.”

“You couldn’t have known,” I said. “That was the point.”

“I appreciate you trying to make me feel better, but I screwed up.”

“Not for the reason you think. It’s only my background that made it possible for me to make the connection. That’s exactly why I was never supposed to see this. Did you see how North reacted when you handed him the parchment but it wasn’t stuffed into an envelope as he requested? He was flustered. That’s when he told us far too much information about his ‘eccentric’ client. It felt forced. Why the hard sell? The job was already done.”

“But I should have seen the problems with North’s behavior. I told you how he’s used to getting his way through his generous agreements. Bringing unwilling participants into this was out of character for him, especially bringing an outsider—you—into this. I was on such a high from pulling off the job without a hitch that I wasn’t thinking.”

“Well then, let’s start thinking now.”

“If I’d stopped to think sooner, maybe Hugo—”

“You can’t blame yourself. We don’t even know what happened to him.”

The kettle whistled and Lane stood up to make the tea, while I stared at the photograph. Though the paper was worn with age and the calligraphic writing faded, the painting of a tiger standing on top of a man was vibrant.

“How’s your Ecclesiastical Latin?” Lane asked, coming up behind me and handing me a mug.

“Mediocre at best.
Cementarium claustri ad cryptam.
Why isn’t this written in French? And don’t you have anything stronger than tea in this place?”

“Take a sip.”

I complied, finding the black tea generously spiked with brandy.

“Illuminated manuscripts from the 12
th
century were written in Latin,” Lane said.

“This can’t be that old.”

“It certainly is.”

“But the painting—”

“That painting,” Lane said, “was added
later
. You can tell because of the pigments, and also the subject matter, as you pointed out. But why would the text and paintings be from different centuries?”

“
Cryptam
sounds like a crypt,” I said, turning back to writing. “I wish I could ask Tamarind for help. She’d love a mystery involving a crypt. Oh! Can I get in touch with her now?”

Lane shook his head. “Not a chance. If you’re right that North is still looking for something related to this information, he’ll be keeping tabs on us. When you gave me your bag, I disabled your phone. North has no way to trace us now. And don’t even think about sending her an email from this computer, unless it’s to say how lovely Paris is.”

“Doesn’t turning off our phones raise his suspicion?”

Lane shook his head. “He knows I’d be careful.” He pulled open a kitchen drawer, revealing four cell phones of the same model but in different colors. He selected the black one for himself and handed me the red one. “Don’t get in touch with anyone you know, but we can communicate with each other.”

Pushing the gravity of the situation from my mind, I turned my attention back to the Latin. “
Cementarium claustri ad cryptam,
” I read.

Lane slid his fingers across the cell phone. “Translated, it approximates
‘
stonemasons of cloisters to crypt.’”

“Stonemasons who built cloisters and a crypt,” I repeated. “It’s all so medieval.”

Lane gulped the last of his spiked tea. “Hugo,” he whispered. “That’s why he was involved. Now that we know it involves a church with cloisters and a crypt—”

“Because Hugo was a priest?”

“His expertise was religious iconography. He
knew
this job involved something of larger significance. That’s why he sought me out! I’m the reason he’s probably dead.”

Lane stood and filled his mug with brandy, sans tea.

“You didn’t kill him.”

“Didn’t I? He risked his life to try to speak with me. If the bigger treasure North is after involves something a monastic community felt the need to protect, that explains why it’s a big enough deal—” He broke off and downed his brandy. He slammed the empty mug down, then squatted and rummaged through a drawer underneath the one with the cell phones. From the very back, behind batteries, flashlights, scratch paper, and several odd electronic devices I didn’t recognize, he pulled out a mangled box of cigarettes and a crystal ashtray.

“You think Hugo was involved in
this
job?” I asked while Lane lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.

“It would explain how Hugo found me at the Louvre. North isn’t in the habit of revealing details about jobs that a member of his crew isn’t involved in. We know now that we can’t take North at his w
ord. God, this must be a huge treasure if it’s enough for North to ruin his reputation over. What have I gotten you into? We need to get you on a flight home.”

“What are you talking about? We just figured out—”

“You held up your part of the bargain,” Lane said. “I’m willing to trade a tiny piece of art history that nobody will miss for your happiness and safety. But this theft is a bigger deal than I thought it was.”

“Which is exactly why I can’t go home. I don’t even know why I’m sitting here talking with you when I should be going to the police. It made sense at first to protect ourselves by going through with North’s plan, but this has gotten way out of hand.”

Lane crossed his arms over his chest and stared at me. “You want to go to the police after we robbed the Louvre?”

I slouched in my seat. “Point taken.”

“Even if we could get the police to believe us, what could we tell them? We haven’t figured out what any of this means. We don’t yet know what North is after—some sort of treasure that made its way from India to a crypt in France? And Hugo is a grown man who can do as he pleases. His disappearance wouldn’t be taken seriously as a missing person.”

“What about the blood I saw? Surely that suggests foul play.”

“I’m sure it’s been wiped clean by now.”

I groaned. “I wish I knew what to do. I feel like I’m being pulled deeper under water with every step I take. I’m stuck, and I don’t know how to get myself out.”

Lane left his cigarette at the edge of the ash tray and kneeled down in front of me. Taking my hands in his, he said, “Let me save you from the quicksand, Jones. I risked stealing from the Louvre so that you’d be safe. Please, let me handle this.”

My chest constricted and I found it difficult to breathe. “What are you going to do?”

He sighed and stood up, retrieving his cigarette and taking one last drag before stubbing it out. “Whatever I have to do. I need to find out what happened to Hugo and what North is really trying to steal. I can’t let him get away with this.”

“You don’t even know what
this
is. You need me to figure it out.”

“I can—”

“You can do what? When we first met, you were the one who convinced me of the importance of turning to an expert when it comes to piecing together history. I turned to you for help. Now you need me.” How could I go back to my apartment, my office, my life teaching history classes, all the while knowing I’d been complicit in losing an important piece of history to a murderer?

“I’m not getting on a plane,” I said. “I was part of the theft. It’s on my hands, too. I was stupid to agree to one small item being stolen, but it’s forgivable under the circumstances. What’s unforgivable is letting a historic treasure fall into North’s hands and not finding out what happened to Hugo.”

“Is there anything I can do to make you get on a flight home?”

“Yes,” I said. “We can stop North, get justice for Hugo, and find the treasure.”