The Gilded Seal (47 page)

lapsed, the bleached bones spilling on to the ground like an

avalanche across a valley floor. In others, the skulls had

crumpled under the weight, their faces cracked in half.

“We must have come through into some hidden part of the

ossuary,” Blanco guessed, seemingly underwhelmed. Tom

guessed he had seen this type of place before.

“What ossuary?” inquired Archie, clouds of dust rising off

him as he disconsolately patted his ripped and stained suit.

“They moved human remains here from central Paris in

the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to try and

stop the spread of disease,” Tom explained.

“Eight million people,” Blanco confirmed with a nod.

“The entire city is built on empty graveyards.”

The tunnel narrowed again, and then gave on to a wide,

triangular chamber. They paused at the entrance, their fl ash-

lights revealing that a single passageway led off from the cen-

ter of each side of the triangle, while opposite them, at the

apex of the room, was a white shape.

“That’s it,” Tom breathed. “The Altar of Obelisks.”

The tip of the triangle had been squared off and lined with

white marble engraved with a dense web of hieroglyphs that

glinted as they caught the light. In its center was a scrolled

black marble plaque.

Directly below the plaque and flush to the wall was a sim-

ple altar, its top lip overhanging the base by a few inches and

surmounted at each end by two large black obelisks, perhaps

three feet high. The altar’s base, meanwhile, was embroi-

dered with a starkly symmetrical pattern of black marble

roundels, each engraved with different Egyptian symbols—a

pyramid, a sphinx, a scarab, even a profile of Anubis. Tom

read the Italian words etched into the plaque in gold.

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t w i n i n g

“Per me si va tra la perduta gente . . .
This way to join the

lost,” he translated. “It’s Dante. Part of the inscription at the

entrance to hell.”

“He’s an old favorite down here,” Blanco sniffed.

“I’m not sure about the gates of Hell, but this must open

something,” Tom observed, holding out the key recovered

from inside the obelisk.

“Take a look at this—” Archie pointed at the front of the

altar.

Squatting down, Tom saw what he meant. One of the black

roundels was different from all the others. Instead of featur-

ing an Egyptian symbol, this one was engraved with an N

surrounded by a ring of laurel leaves. The same symbol they’d

found on the key.

Tom tried to push it and then slide it first to one side, then

to the other. It wouldn’t move. Nor did it come loose when he

attempted to lever it forward with the blade of his knife.

“Try twisting it,” Archie suggested.

“What do you mean?”

“Like this—” Grabbing the edges of the roundel impa-

tiently, Archie turned it as if it were a doorknob. It moved a

quarter of a turn to the right and then came loose in his hands,

leaving a circular hole.

“There’s a lock,” Archie exclaimed, shining his fl ashlight

into the recess. “Give me the key.”

Tom handed it to him and he slipped the key into the nar-

row slot and turned it, the mechanism initially resisting be-

fore reluctantly giving way.

Standing up, Tom grabbed the altar’s edge and gave it a

firm tug. It swung back easily, skating over the top of the

steps, a large counterbalanced hinge on the left- hand side

making the massive marble construction appear as if it

had no weight at all. It revealed a small alcove sized to fi t a

coffi n.

“
Putain
,” Blanco swore in surprise from behind them,

scrambling forward for a better look.

“It’s not there,” Archie said in a disappointed voice.

“Something’s there,” Tom corrected him as he reached in

to retrieve the object he had caught sight of right at the back

t h e g i l d e d s e a l

3 5 5

of the recess. He carefully lifted it out and then blew on it,

the dust clearing to reveal a plaster cast of a human face.

“What the hell’s that?” Archie frowned, his tone caught

somewhere between surprise and disgust.

“It’s a death mask,” Tom replied. “They were pop ular as

mementos back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I

saw Dante’s in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence once.” He

gazed down at the mask’s sunken cheeks, balding forehead

and protruding nose. It struck him that there was a strange

echo of weary despair in those silent, blanched features.

“That’s not Dante.” Archie gave a fi rm shake of his head.

“That’s Napoleon.”

“Yes,” Blanco agreed, stepping forward for a better look.

“That’s Napoleon Bonaparte.”

He reached forward to touch the mask’s powdery surface,

but Tom suddenly grabbed his wrist, causing him to cry out

in pain.

“What’s up?” Archie called.

“Turn off your light,” Tom said grimly. “Now look at his

fingers,” he nodded at the luminescent stains on Blanco’s

thumb and forefinger. “It’s some sort of phosphorescent paint.

He’s been leaving a trail behind us.”

Tom twisted Blanco’s arm back behind him, pressing his

face down against the altar. Then he searched through his

pockets until he found a small tube of paint that was missing

its lid.

“It takes a few minutes of contact with the air before the

chemicals work,” Tom explained, reading off the label. “That’s

why we didn’t see him rubbing it on to the walls.”

“I can explain . . .”

“Who’s this for?”

“It’s in case we got lost,” Blanco protested.

“Bullshit. You could fi nd your way out of here with a bag

over your head. Who’s paying you?”

“No one,” he shouted angrily, writhing furiously to free

his arm.

Tom pressed forward and with a sudden jerk, snapped his

wrist. Blanco screamed and was suddenly still.

“Who?”

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t w i n i n g

“I don’t know his name.” The words came in a jumbled

whimper. “He turned up just before you. All I had to do was

mark the way.”

“Milo,” Archie said through gritted teeth. “He must have

found out we went to see Ketter and forced him to talk.”

“How long have we been here?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes?” Archie guessed.

“Then we can’t go back the way we came in,” Tom said

grimly. “He must be right behind us.” He released Blanco’s

arm and pulled him upright. “We need a way out.”

Clutching his wrist, Blanco fixed Tom with a hate-fi lled

glare.

“I don’t know these tunnels.”

“Then you’d better get to know them fast, or I’ll break

more than your wrist.”

Blanco stared at him angrily, then gave a sullen shrug.

“Let me see the map again.” Tom laid it out on the altar

and Blanco leaned over it. “We must be right next to the main

ossuary,” he said eventually. “We should be able to break

through here. From there, we can follow the signs back up to

the street.”

“Which way?” Archie nodded toward the two passages

that led off each side of the chamber.

“Left,” Blanco muttered.

They sprinted into the tunnel, Tom pushing Blanco ahead

of him past another series of skull-filled openings, until they

arrived at a further dead end. As Blanco looked on, cradling

his wrist, Tom and Archie attacked the wall, hammering and

kicking and hauling stones out of their way until there was a

large enough gap for them to squeeze through. Behind them,

Tom could hear the sound of running feet and raised voices.

“Follow the black arrows,” Blanco pointed at the wall once

he was through. “The black arrows always lead to the exit.”

They sprinted down a tunnel past yet more burial chambers,

small plaques indicating which graveyards they had originally

been removed from, until they came to a place where the tun-

nel ceiling had partially given way and been shored up by sev-

eral wooden beams. Blanco pulled them back.

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“Temporary repairs,” he whispered. “Be careful. It doesn’t

take much to bring it down.”

Tom edged around the narrow gap between the two beams.

One of them groaned, a faint trickle of loose earth sprinkling

to the ground like sand trickling inside an hourglass.

“Quick,” Tom called, the voices behind them so close now

that he could almost decipher their muted echo. “It could go

any minute.”

Archie dived through after him, but, as he squeezed past,

his suit snagged on a nail. Struggling to free himself, he

kicked out, only for his foot to inadvertently catch one of the

beams and send it spinning to the ground.

“Shit!” he swore, then reached back for Blanco. “Come

on.”

Before he could move, the roof suddenly gave way with a

pained roar and Blanco’s face vanished in a billowing cloud

of dust and stone.

“We need to get him out.” Tom coughed, his eyes stream-

ing as he pulled Archie clear of the rubble.

Archie shook his head. “He’ll have to take his chances

with Milo,” he said, dusting himself down.

“That’s not taking a chance,” Tom said in a grim voice.

“It’s a death sentence. We can’t leave him.”

“We

can’t exactly go back in for him either,” Archie

pointed out. “Not unless you want to take your chances with

Milo too.”

There was a pause as Tom considered their options. In the

end, he knew that Archie was right.

“Then let’s just get out of here,” he conceded.

They sprinted on through the tunnels, following the black

arrows until they reached a gate. Tom sprung the lock, the

bare earth and darkness suddenly giving way to smoothed

concrete and electric lights.

“We must be in the section they open to the public,” Tom

guessed.

“You mean people pay to see this shit?” Archie shivered.

They came to another gate and then, a short way beyond it,

a spiral staircase that led into a small room at street level.

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t w i n i n g

The door there was also locked, but again Tom soon had it

squeaking open.

They emerged gratefully on to the street. It had been rain-

ing; the pavements formed a shimmering black mirror under

the streetlights, while a pair of carved lions dripped water

from their frozen manes. A couple of taxis were waiting

hopefully at a neighboring rank. Tom felt the tightness in his

chest lifting as the fresh air hit his lungs and the night sky

soared far above.

“Let’s boost a car and get to the meeting point,” he sug-

gested. “We’re late and Jen will be worried.”

C H A P T E R E I G H T Y- O N E

THE CATACOMBS, PARIS

24th April— 1:32 a.m.

Don’t tell me. They got away.” Milo’s finger was an-

grily tapping his trigger, feeling the tight spring fl ex-

ing slightly under his touch.

“They collapsed the roof,” said Djoulou. “We haven’t got

the equipment to get through.”

“Damn!” Milo spat in disgust. “How the hell did he know

we were coming?”

“Maybe you should ask
him
.” Eva threw Blanco to the

floor, his wrist still clutched protectively to his chest.

“Kirk left him behind?” Milo crouched next to him and

lifted his chin with the barrel of his gun. “That’s unlike him.

What did you do?”

“He saw the paint,” Blanco protested weakly. “I didn’t tell

him anything.”

“Not even a way out?”

Blanco’s eyes flicked guiltily to the fl oor.

“Colo nel, look at this—” Djoulou pulled on the altar and

revealed the alcove behind it. “It’s empty.”

“Of course it’s empty,” Milo snapped without looking

around. “What do you think Kirk’s been doing down here? The

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question is what was in it?” Again, he lifted Blanco’s chin

until his eyes met his.

“A mask . . .” Blanco stammered. “A plaster cast of a man’s

face. Kirk said it was a death mask.”

“Whose?”

“They said it was Napoleon,” he replied hesitantly. “I only

got a quick look, but it looked like him.”

Eva frowned at Milo.

“A dead end, or another clue?”

“I’m not sure. Either way, we’re not going to solve it down

here.”

“What about him?” Eva nodded at Blanco.

Milo paused, then nodded toward the altar.

“Since he likes down here so much, he can stay.”

“No,” Blanco wailed as Djoulou and one of his men

dragged Blanco toward the altar.

“Please no!” he shrieked as they forced him into the nar-

row alcove, kicking his flailing arms and legs so that he

would pull them out of the way.

“I’m begging you, no,” he sobbed as they swung the altar

shut.

The mechanism locked with a firm clunk, extinguishing

his screams.

C H A P T E R E I G H T Y- T W O

PLACE ST. MICHEL, 7TH ARRONDISSEMENT, PARIS

24th April— 2:01 a.m.

Jennifer stepped from the shadows of the doorway she had

been sheltering in and signaled as they drew up.

“Sorry we’re late,” Tom called through the driver’s window.