The God Machine (35 page)

Franklin reached into his jacket and removed a small bottle of ink, a quill and a square piece of paper. With great care and precision, he began sketching the pattern. It took him several minutes to get it all down. When he
was nearly finished, he was jarred by a sudden noise in the hallway. Franklin froze.

For a moment the noise sounded like footsteps, then to his immense relief, it faded away. Heart hammering, he rushed to complete the schematic. Only a few lines remained, a few circles and… There was that noise again.

Franklin stuffed the paper, the quill and the bottle of ink in his pocket. He scooped up the portrait, almost knocking the candle to the floor in the process. Then he dashed toward the wall.

Someone was coming. He could hear footsteps clearly now. Franklin hooked the canvas back up on the wall. A halo of light appeared near the doorway. The painting was crooked. He tapped it once into place and turned just in time to see the Marquis d'Artois enter the room, followed by a servant carrying a candle.

“Are you phantom or real?” said the marquis. He approached through the shadows and, for the first time, Franklin noticed the flintlock in his right hand. It had an engraved ivory stock, a brass barrel and butt plate. And it was aimed right at his heart.

For a moment, Franklin said nothing. He stood there, mouth agape, as if the words had somehow lodged in his throat. They simply wouldn't come out. Then he started to giggle. He took a step forward. “My lord,” he said breathlessly. He lifted the wig off his head like a hat, and then dropped it back down again. “What a pleasant surprise.”

“The surprise is mine, sir,” retorted the Marquis d'Artois. “What are you doing in my home?”

“I was expecting another.” Franklin giggled again. He placed a hand on the wall and took a step closer. Then he pointed behind him, at the window. “You know, your hedges are in need of some trimming.”

“You're drunk, sir.”

“Indubitably.”

“Whom were you expecting… at this hour… in my home?”

“You'll have to tie stallions to each of my limbs and dismember me before I tell you her name.” Franklin put a finger to his lips. “Shhhh,” he spluttered loudly. “Or, perhaps I should say that the stars will first fall from the heavens.” He laughed. Then he waved his arm, adding, “Oh, for God's sake, either shoot me or put that thing away.”

“Are you implying Estelle—”

“Shhh,” Franklin said, interrupting him. “Not a word. I'm a gentleman, after all.”

The marquis did not lower his weapon. But, after a moment, his lips curved in a smile. “Why, sir, I'm flattered,” he said, laughing.

“You are?” Franklin stammered.

“But of course, Monsieur Franklin,” the marquis replied. “I'm French.”

It had been a narrow escape. Franklin remained with the marquis for another hour or so, sharing a pear aperitif and a few sordid tales that he would have preferred not to hear. Apparently the marchioness was far less demure than she seemed to be, like the mistress of the Duke of Milan in the painting. Finally, Franklin had made an excuse and departed. The marquis had his tale of the lecherous American, a few juicy
bon mots
to share with his friends. Franklin had the sketch in his pocket.

It was almost dawn by the time he got back to his apartments. Dr. Pringle was still snoring in his room. Franklin went immediately to his suite where he lit a lamp and started to search through his luggage. Moments later, he found what he sought. It was bundled up in a few turns of oilskin. He unwrapped the volume with care.

It had been almost thirty years since that fateful stormy night, when Simon Nathan, the chief rabbi of Philadelphia, had knocked on his door. Thirty years, and yet the hair still rose up on the back of Franklin's neck whenever he saw the Gospel of Judas.

He placed the codex gently on the bed and flipped open the cover. Then, he plucked out the drawing he had copied earlier that night. He pressed it against the frontpiece, adjacent to the original schematic. The lines and circles conjoined. They folded together. They had seemed like such divergent structures, independently whole, and yet now they were obviously singular. One. Of a piece.

Franklin looked out the window, at the rooftops of Paris, rouged by the first blush of dawn.
Finally
, he thought, with a sigh. He was running out of time. If he didn't hurry, there would soon be no need for the God machine.

K
OSTER AND
S
AJAN WALKED TOWARD
M
ONTPARNASSE
, hardly exchanging a word. Every once in a while, Sajan insisted on stopping abruptly. They would stall for a moment, duck down some alley or side street, or double back. When Sajan was finally satisfied that no one was trailing them, they jumped onto a train at the Montparnasse Métro station and headed west on the Six toward the 16
^th
Arrondissement.

Back in the eighteenth century, Passy had been a small village outside Paris, Koster told Sajan as they traveled. American diplomats tended to gravitate there, or to nearby Auteuil, as that village, too, was but a short distance from Paris and en route to Versailles. When the seventy-one-year-old Franklin arrived in Paris in 1777, he was invited to stay with Le Ray de Chaumont, an international merchant who had made a fortune trading with East India, and who was supplying the colonies with gunpowder. De Chaumont owned the sumptuous Hôtel de Valentinois. Indeed, it was so opulent—with its eighteen-acre garden overlooking Paris and the Seine—
that some called it a chateau. Franklin, who initially paid no rent to de Chaumont, first settled in an independent pavilion called the Basse Coeur. It was here that he lived and worked with the other members of the American mission to France—Arthur Lee, Silas Deane and, later, John Adams and John Jay. It was here, too, that he conducted experiments on electricity, and, in another building, set up a small printing press.

Franklin was astonishingly popular throughout his stay in France, Koster reminded Sajan. He was already well known in Paris from his previous visits in 1767 and 1769, and he had excellent contacts within the French intelligentsia, especially the Masons. He'd even received personal congratulations for his experiments on electricity from King Louis. Indeed, when he rode from Nantes to Paris in 1776, crowds lined the roads to acclaim him. John Adams was so amazed by France's admiration for him that he wrote:
“When they spoke of him, they seemed to think that he was to restore the golden age.”

The Métro train slowed as they approached the station at Passy. “Thanks to Franklin and his negotiations with Bonvouloir,” Koster concluded, “France provided not only arms, ammunition and troops to the colonists, but also the diplomatic recognition that helped America win her freedom. When the news of Franklin's death reached Paris in 1790, emotions ran so high that, in the middle of the French Revolution, the National Assembly adjourned for the day. The following year, rue Franklin was named after him. Even the great Thomas Jefferson said that succeeding Ben Franklin as ambassador to France was a lesson in humility!”

The train came to a stop and Koster and Sajan disembarked. They climbed the stairs to the streets. But as they took the last few steps into the open, Koster realized that nothing remained of those times. In the centuries since Franklin had lived here, the city had grown
up around Passy. All that was left was a plaque on a house at the corner of rue Raynouard and rue Singer. It mentioned that Franklin had once lived on this spot, but the original building was long gone.

Koster could see that Sajan was terribly disappointed. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Remember the code on the second piece of the map?”

“What about it?”

He pointed at the Hôtel de Valentinois, a massive stone structure built at the turn of the last century, with snug wrought iron balconies, six stories high. “This is the spot where Franklin mounted France's first lightning rod. This may be a relatively new building,” he added, “but did they change the lightning rod? Wouldn't they have preserved it if they could, as a historical curiosity? I tried to do some reading about it earlier online. As far as I can tell, it hasn't moved to some other location.”

Koster stepped toward the door. “Come on,” he urged her. “It won't hurt to look.”

A porter let them into the building. It was a private residence now, but the family was away for the summer. Sajan slipped the man twenty euros and they were soon climbing the last few stairs to the roof. The porter—an Algerian immigrant named Jamal—said he didn't know anything about any lightning rod by Ben Franklin, or by anyone else, for that matter. He was new, he insisted. They made their way out the door to the roof. It afforded them a breathtaking view of the city, with the river agleam to the south and the east, the Tour Eiffel to the northeast by the gardens of the Champs de Mars and in the distance, the dull smudge of Notre Dame. Between the cathedral's two towers, poking up near the easternmost flank of the Hôtel de Valentinois rose the lightning rod. Koster felt his heart miss a beat as he came up beside it. It was clearly quite old, but was it the one?

The lightning rod was mounted on a small granite
base. Koster circled it slowly. A large chunk of stone had been gouged out of one side, as if it had been damaged in transport to this new location. On the side facing the street, the granite was carved with what appeared to be animal figures. “Come here,” Koster said to Sajan. She was still talking with the porter by the door. “What was that quote from the Bible?”

Sajan told Jamal to wait for a moment and walked over to Koster.
“‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven,’”
she said.

“No, I mean the whole thing. The whole passage.”

Sajan sighed.
“‘I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.’”
she said.
“‘However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.’”

Koster took Sajan by the hand. He led her around to the rear of the lightning rod, the side facing the parapet. There, carved into the stone, was the unmistakable shape of a scorpion. And completely surrounding it, a snake, with its mouth biting its own tail. Along the outer edge ran a series of stars, twelve in total. And at the top of the stars the initials: BF. “Ben Franklin?” he said softly.

“‘Written in heaven,’”
she answered.

Koster knelt down by the base of the lightning rod. The metal pole jutted from the center of a solid granite slab which, in turn, lay over the stone with the carvings. On one side of the square base, on the opposite side of the carvings, Koster noticed a crack in the granite. No,
two
cracks. It was as if a small tile had been set in the block at some later date. He picked at the edges. The tile would not move. No matter what he tried, it was locked firmly in place. For a moment, Koster considered asking the porter for some tools, but then he thought better of it. No point getting the porter involved. “Savita,” he said. “Try looking for some sort of lever or button.”

Sajan ran her hand along the various carvings. She pressed every star. She plucked at the snake and initials. As she touched the tip of the stinger on the tail of the scorpion, Koster gave out a yell. “Right there,” he said urgently. “Press it again.”

She did so and the tile fell away in his hands. Koster peered into the opening. Something was stuffed in the hole: A small leather satchel, like a money purse. He opened it carefully with the tip of his pen. Sajan knelt down beside him.

“It must be,” she murmured, voice trembling.

And it was. As soon as he pulled the object out of the purse, Koster knew. The third piece of the map. He unfolded it gently and with each turn of the vellum, he became more and more certain. The last piece, with its own series of circles and squares and fine lines. Now all that remained was to put the three precious pieces together.

The porter approached them and Koster stuck the map in his jacket with haste. He replaced the small tile, blocking his movements from the other man's view with his body. Then he stood and took Sajan by the hand. “Oh, well,” he said to Jamal. “This isn't the one.”

The porter shrugged and turned toward the door. Minutes later, they were back on the street.