The Gilded Seal (43 page)

AVENUE DE L’OBSERVATOIRE, 14TH ARRONDISSEMENT,

PARIS

23rd April— 10:27 p.m.

There. It was done. Besson placed the canvas in the crate,

flicked the light off and shut the mirror behind him.

He’d rarely worked as hard or as fast to get something fi n-

ished on time. Especially something as unusual as this. He

just hoped it was what Tom wanted.

The sound of the front doorbell trilled through the apart-

ment. Besson checked his watch with a frown. Maybe they

were back early. Good. He was as intrigued as the rest of them

to learn exactly what Ledoux had been hoping to find in that

book. He unbolted the door and swung it open with an eager

smile.

“Henri Besson?”

A Japanese man was standing on the landing wearing

jeans and a thigh-length brown leather coat. He had a square,

flat face and a broad scar across the bridge of his nose that

looked as if it was still healing. The point of his chin was

covered with stubble into which he had shaved a narrow ver-

tical bar, separating the two sides of his face. A large purple

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3 2 3

birthmark covered his left cheek as if a bottle of ink had been

carelessly spilled across him and then left to dry.

To his left stood another man, bald and dressed entirely in

black apart from a spotless white tie. Even though his face

was concealed by a white surgeon’s mask hooked behind

each ear, Besson could still make out his eyes, pale green and

cold as a mountain spring. His smile faded.

“Who are you? How did you get in here?”

“My name is Leo. I represent Mr. Asahi Takeshi,” the man

announced, bowing slightly in the direction of the masked

man at his side. “He is here about a painting.”

“Then he can call me in the morning like everyone else,”

Besson said impatiently.

“He is here about one of your paintings,” Leo continued

calmly. “
La Nappe Mauve
? Perhaps you remember it?”

“
La Nappe Mauve
was painted by Chagall,” Besson said

warily.

“Not the version my employer was sold.” Leo’s voice hard-

ened. “As you know, that was painted by you.”

Besson slammed the door shut and threw the deadbolts

home. But before he could move, the wood around the lock

splintered in three, then five places, the muffled whisper of a

silenced gun just about audible. Transfixed, he watched as a

couple of firm kicks sent the mechanism spinning across the

floor. A hand reached in through the hole, felt for the bolts

and loosened them. The door swung open, framing the two

men. Takeshi’s hands were clasped behind his back and, even

though he still had his mask on, Besson was almost certain

he was smiling.

Four men streamed through the doorway and grabbed

Besson. He struggled as far as he could with his good arm,

but it was more for show than with any real hope of escape.

He’d seen this game played out more times than he cared to

remember. He could only hope it ended quickly.

“In here—” The man who’d introduced himself as Leo led

them toward the clean room. A butterfly knife danced into

the hands of one of the men as he gouged a jagged tear in its

plastic walls. The others stretched the folds open and dragged

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t w i n i n g

Besson through. He noticed that two of the men were miss-

ing the little fingers on their left hands.

“Tie him down.”

Besson felt himself being lifted on to the inspection table

and his wrists and ankles being zip-locked to the metal fi x-

ings. They’d come prepared for whatever was about to hap-

pen. They’d planned his death. A light snapped on, searing

the gloom. Besson turned his head to it, blinking. A video

camera. He swallowed hard.

Takeshi stood behind his head so that Besson was staring

straight up at him, the surface of the mask rippling every

time he breathed, his bald head blocking out one of the over-

head lights like a large moon that had passed in front of the

sun.

“Did you really think you would escape?” Leo’s voice

echoed from the other side of the room.

“All I did was paint what they told me to,” Besson insisted,

his eyes still locked fearfully on Takeshi’s.

“That’s what Quintavalle said.”

“That was you?” For a fleeting moment, Besson’s surprise

drowned out his fear and he raised his head, straining to see

Leo at the foot of the table. “You killed him because of a

painting?”

“We killed him because he stole from Mr. Takeshi.”

“I killed him because, like you, he made me look a fool,”

Takeshi spoke for the first time, the words delivered in a

measured, controlled tone that was at once soothing and

coldly menacing. Besson lay down again.

“What are you going to do to me?” he asked Takeshi re-

signedly.

“Me? Nothing. I’m just here to watch.”

Takeshi stepped back with a nod and two of his men ap-

proached. One of them was holding a wooden spoon which

he forced between Besson’s lips, pressing his tongue fl at to

the floor of his mouth and making him gag. The other was

holding a tin of red enamel paint that he opened with the

blade of his knife.

Besson felt his head being tilted back so that his throat was

lifted and exposed. The second man placed the edge of the

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3 2 5

tin against his bloodless lips and, like a priest giving com-

munion, carefully poured the paint into his open mouth.

He felt the thick liquid glooping over his teeth and sliding

to the back of his throat. He felt the wooden spoon pressing

his tongue out of the way so that the paint could fl ow unim-

peded down his throat and up along his nose and, when he

could hold his breath no longer, into his lungs.

He felt it hardening like concrete.

C H A P T E R S E V E N T Y- F O U R

PALAIS GARNIER, 9TH ARRONDISSEMENT, PARIS

23rd April— 10:35 p.m.

Ledoux’s no idiot.” Ketter looked as though he might actu-

ally laugh. “This is one of Napoleon’s personal copies.

It’s worth double what he paid.”

“That’s not why he bought it,” Tom said confi dently.

“There must be something else.”

“I’ve got a couple of other examples here,” Ketter volun
-

teered. “We can compare them, if you like.”

He shuffled off toward the bookshelves, reappearing a few

moments later carefully carrying a similar-looking book un-

der his arm.

“This is from a set with an impeccable provenance. If your

version is different in any way, this will reveal it.”

He placed the books side by side and slowly leafed through

them looking for any differences in the text, font or layout,

again using a fresh tissue to turn the pages. It was a painstak-

ing process, the silence filled by the opera’s distant echo, but

one that Ketter pursued with unwavering concentration,

pausing only to sip water from a small glass that he kept on

the floor so as not to risk spilling it over one of the books.

“It’s a match,” Ketter eventually announced with a weary

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3 2 7

sigh. “Of course there are some forensic tests I could do to be

certain, but these will take . . .”

He tailed off as he bent forward over the leather cover,

then reopened the book and examined the spine carefully.

“This has been rebound,” he said slowly.

“It’s not original?” Jennifer asked.

“It’s all original,” he reassured her. “But the leather bind-

ing has been taken off and reattached. I hadn’t noticed be-

fore, but you can see here and here, that the stitching is

slightly different and that the paper has been lifted and then

stuck back down.”

Tom studied the places Ketter had indicated on the inside

cover and across the top of the spine, but to him they looked

no different from the other book.

“Take it off,” he instructed him.

“Are you sure?” Ketter glanced up uncertainly. “This is an

extremely valuable book. Personal items of Napoleon’s hardly

ever come up for auction.”

“I don’t care what it’s worth. In fact you can keep it when

we’ve finished,” Tom insisted impatiently. “Just take it off.”

“As you wish.” Ketter shrugged.

Delicately gripping a scalpel between his thumb and fore-

finger, he made a series of incisions along the inside cover,

the blade slicing through the downy paper with a faint rasp-

ing noise. Once released, he gently peeled the leather binding

away from the rest of the book, hacking through a few sin-

ewy strands of cotton which clung stubbornly to the pages.

Shorn of its cover, the book looked strangely naked to Tom; a

shivering mass of white paper exposed, like a newborn baby,

to the cold light of the world for the fi rst time.

“Look—” Ketter pointed to a small strip of paper, perhaps

an inch across and six inches long, which had been glued to

the inside of the spine. Ketter glanced up at them excitedly,

his impassive demeanor momentarily, at least, forgotten.

“What does it say?” Archie moved around the table to get a

better look.

“Don’t touch it,” Ketter cautioned anxiously. “It could

tear.”

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t w i n i n g

“Can you open it?” Tom asked.

“I can try.”

Ketter picked up his tweezers and slowly lifted one edge

where it had been folded down. This in turn uncovered an-

other flap that he also delicately folded back.

“What are they?” Tom frowned at the faded ink drawings

that had been revealed.

“They’re symbols,” Jennifer breathed. “Hieroglyphs.” She

quickly counted them. “Twenty-six in all.”

“It’s a key,” Tom guessed. “One for each letter of the al-

phabet.”

Jennifer nodded. “So an owl must be an A. The snake a B.

The hand a C. Look—”

She grabbed a piece of paper and jotted down the letters of

the alphabet and then roughly sketched the corresponding

symbol set out on the small piece of paper.

“There are hieroglyphs on the obelisk,” Archie reminded

them.

“What obelisk?” Ketter frowned.

“It’s better you don’t know,” Tom answered as he unhooked

his backpack from his shoulder and retrieved the obelisk

from inside, placing it on the table.

“The symbols repeat themselves,” Jennifer said slowly, as

she examined the obelisk’s decorated surface.

“What’s the first one?” Tom asked.

“A sort of semi-circle.”

“That’s an L,” Tom confirmed from the list Jennifer had

laid out.

“Then an owl. That’s an A.”

“Then a hand,” Archie volunteered.

“C,” read Tom.

Slowly the words took shape, although it was often unclear

where one ended and the next one began.

“
It’s French,” Tom informed them, before reading the

message back slowly.
“La clé au sourire vie a l’interieur de

chacun.”

“The key to the smile lives inside each of us,” Ketter trans-

lated with a frown.

“Oh, very deep.” Archie rolled his eyes.

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3 2 9

“The smile?” Jennifer said slowly. “Do you think it’s refer-

ring to the
Mona Lisa
’s smile?”

“Is that what this is about?” Ketter looked slightly faint.

“Maybe it’s saying her smile means different things to dif-

ferent people,” Archie suggested, less fl ippant now.

“Or something even simpler.” Tom picked the obelisk up

and carefully felt its weight. “If the key lives inside each of

us, why not in this too?”

“In the obelisk?” Jennifer gave a half laugh. “You’re kid-

ding, right?”

With a shrug, Tom lifted the obelisk above his head and

flung it to the floor. It smashed into three pieces like the mast

of a stricken ship dashed on the rocks, hundreds of small

fragments of porcelain skating across the concrete.

“What the hell are you doing?” Archie cried disbeliev-

ingly. “If Raf nicked that, it wasn’t so that you could . . .” He

tailed off as Tom bent down and then triumphantly held out a

small bundle of material about the size of a box of matches

that he had retrieved from inside the obelisk’s square base.

Ketter was silent, his eyes bulging, although Tom wasn’t

sure if that was surprise at what he had just witnessed or the

mess on his fl oor.

He placed the package down on the desk and carefully

unwrapped it. It came open to reveal a small key decorated at

one end with a gilded N surrounded by laurel leaves.

“The key to the smile,” Jennifer breathed excitedly.

“Forget the key. Take a butcher’s at this—”

Archie smoothed out the material that the key had been

wrapped in, tilting the desk light so they could all see the

faint lines and occasional words that had been drawn on to it.

“It’s a map of Paris,” said Tom after studying it for a few

seconds. “Look, there’s the Seine and the Ile St. Louis.”

“And this must be where we need to get to—” Jennifer

pointed at a spot that had been circled in red.