Chapter 58

 

 

PARIS, FRANCE

1502. Hrs.

 

Calla slumped to the stairs. The Paris police inspector, a caramel skinned, gray-eyed robust man in his forties, named Salvert finished his interview with witnesses. He wore civilian clothes, possibly jostled into action after being informed of unusual criminals in his commune. He thanked Nash as they spoke in a quarantined area at Alexandre Dumas station. “Merci, monsieur Shields.”

“Pas de problème, Inspecteur Salvert. Contact French ISTF if you need help with this, I suspect you might,” Nash said. He joined Calla and Jack. “They’re working for Mason.”

“You mean the twins?” Calla said.

Nash nodded. “Actually, they’re triplets.”

“Come again,” Jack said.

“They’re triplets according to ISTF files that I’ve come across, but I would need to look into this further,” Nash said.

Calla examined the Rajput warrior, having been heavily sedated by Nash’s gun. “Do they know where Mason is?”

Nash shook his head. “Too easy. If I know Mason, he sent them and they don’t know it.”

Calla drew the folded bundle from her bag and eyed the strip of cloth covered with ancient script. Nash watched as her fingers handled the paper and the microchip. “What’s that there?”

“This is what we found at Champollion’s tomb,” she said.

Nash grinned. “So the trip there was not to pay homage to anyone we know.” He took the items from her hands. “What’s this microchip? It’s old, like some of those first used at the NSA years ago.”

“I’m not sure. We'd have to scan it. The cloth however, is scripted with ancient writing. It’s old. I need to date it,” Calla said.

“Should we stop by the Louvre? You could ask one of their curators to help with dating materials?” Nash added.

“True. I could ask Madame Josseline Foss. We’ve worked on several projects together, but I have a better idea.”

Jack shot from the stairs as police carried the assassins off on stretchers. “Man, you two speak a language of your own. How can you know such a simple cloth has that much historic significance?”

Nash and Calla shook their heads at him, amused. “The same way you can make sense of bytes.”

 

The trio stepped out of the Metro station into the October afternoon. Calla hailed a taxi. A cream-colored Peugeot nosed to a halt as a chatty Parisian driver swung the door open for them.

“Marché aux Puces de St. Ouen, s’il vous plait,” said Calla as she and Jack took the backseat and Nash sidled to the front.

“Where are we going?” Jack said.

“I asked him to take us to Paris’s largest flea market.”

“Don’t tell me selling it is your best idea?” Jack said.

Calla managed a smiled as the taxi accelerated into Paris traffic. “No, I know a man there who looks at artifacts. I don’t want the Louvre to question the origin of this cloth.”

 

The taxi cruised through the nineteenth arrondissement, and sidled into a busy street at the top of St. Puces market at Porte de Clignancourt. Assumed to be the biggest flea market in the world, the seven or so hectares grouped more than a dozen flea markets, a complex of thousands of open stalls and shops on the northern fringe of the city. What had begun as a scavenged, rag-and-bone shantytown on the fringes of the city limits, was systematized into a series of bounded villages, some entirely covered and others open-air, bordering streets and several boutiques of antique trade.

The market sold everything from relics to classic cameras, furniture to ceramics, new to vintage clothing, books, prints and kitchenware. A gigantic garage sale in the eighteenth district of Paris that had something for everyone. Designers, tourists and bargain hunters, motivated by the activity, flocked to the alleys of the Paris flea market to take in the latest trends.

The inquirers from London stepped out of the cab and proceeded toward the stalls until they reached the main street of the market, the rue des Rosiers. Turning left, vendors barraged them bellowing their offerings. Calla watched as smaller merchants proved a greater desire to sell to them. They marched further inland to the antiques sections of the 120-year-old market and stopped at an art shop–past the high-end Marché Paul Bert section and into a motorcar garage, the Marché Serpette, offering its top of the range interior design merchandise. Several eighteenth-century, imitation portraits were mounted at the entrance, with dated cellos and violins. A few Persian rugs hung suspended on the ornamental walls.

“This is it,” Calla said.

They meandered into the interior of a classic furniture shop and Calla greeted an attentive teenager who perched over an eighteenth-century desk toying with a smartphone.

“Est ce que monsieur Fabien Chastin est la?” Calla asked, wanting to know whether a man called Fabien Chastin was around.

“C’est mon grand-père,” said the teenager who switched into English when she caught the puzzled frown on Jack’s face. “That’s my grandfather. He’s in the back.”

“May we see him?” Calla asked the spirited girl.

“Calla Cress!”

The deep-throated voice bellowed from behind the teenager coming from an older man of plump build with dark skin, dark eyes and short, lank black hair. His full lips curled into a hospitable smile as he moved over toward Calla and kissed her on both cheeks. “What brings you here?”

“Fabien, it’s been a long time.” She glanced back at her companions. “Meet Jack, and this is Nash.”

Fabien dipped his head. “Enchanté. Delighted.”

Calla took a step toward them. “Guys, Fabien used to work at the British Museum in London specializing in ‘Portable Antiquities and Treasure’, an initiative to record archaeological objects discovered by members of the public in England and Wales.”

“Oh, and a job it was too. Here, I work for myself,” Fabien said.

Calla glanced round the tiny space. “You have a remarkable shop. It allows you to finish your research. Listen, Fabien, I wonder whether you could help me with something.” She hauled out the artifact she’d discovered earlier in the day and set it in Fabien’s thick hands.

“What’s this?” Fabien asked.

“I’m hoping you can date the cloth. And help me with some of the symbols. They are out of my preferred centuries.”

Fabien ran his fingertips over the fading cloth. For the first time, Calla beheld the intricacies of the figured fabric as Fabien examined it. “This is incredible. I don’t recognize the symbols. They’re quite large but it could be an old letter. Maybe a manuscript, or a legal document crafted on fabric.”

Calla shot Jack and Nash a hopeful look, as Fabien took the artifact with him through the door behind the counter. “Come with me.”

He took them round the back to his congested office–a tools and easel room filled to the brim with restoration equipment, arranged around a suction table for larger artwork. A work lamp and a myriad of heated spatulas, magnifying glasses and radiocarbon dating equipment lay on the cramped table. The men watched as Fabien and Calla threw on latex gloves and laid the organic sample across the well-lit table.

The curators clipped a small section of the cloth and submerged it into nitrogen and waited for a reaction as they mixed the contents.

“This usually takes longer than you have time for, but I’ll do my best,” Fabien said.

“We’ll take what we can get, Fabien.”

An hour later, Fabien drew off his gloves. “Still early to determine, but here’s my take. I think it’s from the seventeenth century. It’s an old type of figured fabric. Possibly first made of silk in Damascus. The fabric contains satin and the surface’s design flows in the opposite direction from that in the background.”

“What does that tell us?” Nash asked.

“It was used mostly for furnishings, table linen, towels that sort of thing. It was rarely used as a dress fabric and even less as a calligraphic fabric.”

“Merci, Fabien,” Calla said. “Then it is from Champollion’s time. The Rosetta stone was found in 1799. I initially thought the cloth could be from the time of the Rosetta Stone, around 196 BC, given its charred and delicate state.”

“No, it is definitely seventeenth century. But I also think it’s in pieces. A bigger part is missing. You only have about a square inch. Here, I’ll keep a sample of it, just a few threads,” he said carefully clipping off a microscopic section. “And if I think of anything else I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks, Fabien.”

“Not a problem. It’s definitely European, similar to manuscript scrolls used then for more elaborate artwork around here.”

“That’s what I imagined, Fabien. Thanks for your confirmation,” Calla said.

 

The three friends stepped out into the market’s congested alleyway.

Jack rested a hand on her shoulder. “It confirms one thing. We’re looking for two other pieces like this. Your mother must’ve really taken inspiration from the Deveron Manuscript.”

“Do you blame her?” Nash said. “It was a well-kept secret for thousands of years.”

They traipsed to the pavement terrace of a nearby café and slid under a shaded canopy. The waiter took their orders.

“Just a tea for me,” Calla said.

Nash and Jack both ordered café au lait.

“I wonder if ISTF files . . .” began Calla.

She fired up her tablet and logged on to ISTF’s network. Her eyes fell on her flashing in box, to an incoming e-mail from a sender she didn’t recognize. “Wait, there’s a message here.”

Nash leaned over. “From?”

She opened the email. “Mason. Mason Laskfell.”

 

 

 

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

 

Mason observed Calla’s face, tight and grim. The message had been delivered with precision. Nothing could make her apprehend the technology with which he’d used to pry on her activities. His fingers flashed across his keyboard firing off a second message.

 

 

I understand you seek information on your

mother Nicole Cress.

Meet me at the Eiffel Tower in an hour if you want to know what really happened to her.

This offer is only good for an hour.

Come alone.

 

 

Would she meet him? Calla fired off a reply:

 

Where are you?

 

He responded.

 

 

That’s unimportant.

Don’t bring your tailing companions.

You have one hour.

 

 

 

1511 hrs.

 

He was watching her. How? She wasn’t sure. She drew in a sharp breath and turned to Nash showing him her correspondence with the criminal. “Mason ‘s watching us now. He must be here.”

Nash took the tablet from her hands. “I can’t let you go alone.”

“But I have to.”

Jack motioned forward, his hands settling on the table. “Do you think it’s really him? Let me see if I can trace it.”

He took the machine in his hands and flashed a new message.

 

This is a setup. Mason.

 

Mason responded.

 

You’ve never seen a picture of her have you?

There’s a man who worked with her in Paris

and he has her picture on his wall.

 

Hope over to Galleries Chevalier in the fifth arrondissement. Give the owner your name. He’ll give you a photograph.

 

Decide then whether you want to know.

If so, come to Trocadero, on the viewing

platform of the Eiffel Tower.

 

The clock is ticking!

 

“It’s a trap,” Nash said.

“What does he stand to gain from giving you this information, Cal?” Jack asked.

“I wouldn’t do it, Cal. Find your mother on your terms. How does he know you’re after your mother?” asked Nash.

Jack glanced her way. “Calla, don’t go.”

She peered outside. “I can handle Mason.”

Nash hunched his shoulders and bent his mind to the futility of the argument.

 

The Galleries Chevalier stood in the heart of the fifth arrondissement, on the left bank of the River Seine, dominated by esteemed universities and institutes of higher education. Owned by a dealer of museum-quality, twentieth-century decorative arts, it specialized in French Art Nouveau, furniture and objects, lamps and French cameo glass.

Calla moseyed past the well-displayed objects toward a man of hefty build, dressed smartly in a vividly colored suit. He arched behind a walnut-stained, French-style desk, with dovetailed drawers and a tooled leather top.

With eyes firmly on the stocky man, Calla approached the desk. “Bonjour monsieur. Vous avez un message pour Cress.” She wanted to know whether he had a message for her.

His eyes pored into her for close to three seconds. Stroking his chin, he regarded her carefully. “Vous êtes Calla Cress?”

“Yes, I’m Calla Cress?”

“This way.”

He directed her through the main gallery hall and toward the end of a row of original photographs mounted on pristine, ivory-colored walls. “That’s her. I think she’s what you’re looking for.”

Her eyes meandered to a wall-mounted, black-and-white photograph of a woman whom, had Calla not known better, would have thought was an image of her own face. The woman, like her had a mane of dark locks cascading down her back. She sat at a café table, skimming out into the streets of Paris. The tightness around the woman’s lips suggested she was in deep contemplation.

“She looks like you,” said the man, his French accent deep and melodic.

“I don’t understand. How do you have this?” Calla said.

“The previous owner of the gallery acquired this picture and his one stipulation was to leave it here. The picture was never to be sold out of the gallery.”

“Who was the owner?”

“I believe it was . . . let me see. I may have more information in my files.”

They plodded back toward the front desk and the man reached behind the counter. He tossed an envelope on the desk. “That’s a framed copy of the same image ordered just a few days ago. I’m not sure who sent the order.”

She ripped it open and her eyes caught sight of the woman. Nash, who’d stayed in the cab, skimmed into the gallery behind her. “Is that her?”

Jack stepped forward. “Except for the lines around her mouth, you’re the spitting image of your mother, Cal.”

Calla raised her eyes at them, sensing a sudden shiver of uncertainty. “It’s the first time I’ve seen her.”

Nash interrogated the man behind the bar in French. “Who gave this to you?”

“The replica was mailed here three hours ago by messenger.”

Jack pursed his lips, his frame leaning against the wooden desk. “Mason knows where we are and what we are up to. We need to be careful.”

Nash’s fingers took Calla’s arm with gentle authority. “Still sure you want to meet him?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Mason’s on the run. He has few places to hide. I can handle his manipulation.”

Nash straightened his shoulders. “I know you can. But he’s telepathic too. I’m still coming with you.”

Jack jerked upright. “Me, too.”

“No,” she said. “Just me.”

Nash peered into her eyes, his jaw tightening. “I’m sorry. I can’t let you. I don’t care what you say. I’m coming.”

“Okay. Just keep your distance when we get to the Eiffel Tower.”

She gave them a brief nod. “Let’s go.” Before moving to the door, she paused and zipped her head around to the gallery owner. “Excusez moi monsieur, who was the previous owner of this gallery?”

“Someone who let my uncle run it for him. A monsieur Stan Cress.”

 

They hailed a cab and Calla instructed the driver. “Champ de Mars Brassiere, avenue de la Bourdonnais, s’il vous plait.”

“Why are we going to a café away from the Eiffel Tower’s viewing point?” Nash asked.

“Mason will know if I’m with you. That way you guys can stay out of sight. I’ll stay in communication using this smartphone app. You’ll know where I’m at all times.”

“Fine,” Jack said. “Make sure you activate it and switch it to global positioning locating and have the microphone on. That way we’ll be able to hear anything that goes on.”

 

 

They headed out in a cab toward the Champs de Mars, a sizable, public green space and formerly the site of a French Revolution massacre, the fusillade du Champ-de-Mars. Huddled between the Eiffel Tower to the northwest, and the military academy, the École Militaire to the southeast, the cab gravitated past the grassy park, dropping the men off at the café before edging up toward Trocadero hill.

Calla marched onto the Palais de Chaillot plaza, across from the Seine River and Eiffel Tower. With the time approaching four o’clock, the fourteen degrees Celsius felt like eight as a steady wind from the south caressed her face. Trocadero hill included more than just the plaza. It had two theaters, a restaurant and several museums, yet its most visited area was the watching plaza across the Tower.

Calla glimpsed forward the length of the grounds leading to the Eiffel tower as she rested her hands along the edge of the platform. The wallowing cacophony stemming from the array of fountains drowned the drones of the tourists, as they streamed up and down the renowned hill.

Jack and Nash observed from the Champs de Mars Brassiere, a crowded café on one corner of avenue de La Bourdonnais, near enough to the Eiffel Tower to observe its environs, yet far enough to remain discreet.

Calla understood why Mason would pick such a place—public and perhaps the most tourist-infested place in the world. She glanced behind her at the busy street turning her eyes toward the Eiffel Tower. Where would Mason hide himself in this crowd? Would he be bold enough to show his face in public, even as he remained the most hunted fugitive in Europe?

She ambled past tourists from Japan and a group of students from the Sorbonne as they trailed behind an eager Art History professor.

 

 

Nash peered through a pair of mini binoculars. He’d not wired Calla. Mason would expect that, yet a panic button remained on her cell phone and she could alert them if necessary. She just had to press nine and the cell phone would alert not only Jack and Nash but ISFT.

Nash sent her a text message.

 

Any sign of him?

 

She replied.

None.

 

 

Calla slumped against the edge of the concrete border of the viewing platform, overhearing an argument between a Swedish couple on their honeymoon. Distracted by the squabble, a man zipped in front of her and dropped a smartphone in her hands.

“What the—” She called after him. “Hey!”

He charged past the crowds, disappearing past the fountain as Calla plowed behind him, bumping into startled tourists. Calla studied the phone in her hands. She noticed a text message. Thin, sleek, state-of the art, a flexible LCD screen flashed menacing words.

 

I TOLD YOU TO COME ALONE!

 

The communication disappeared and the screen opened a live video feed on the smartphone’s interface. Calla gasped, nearly dropping the phone in the fountain as her gaze shot toward the café. The image recorded Jack and Nash at a table.

Waiting for her.

She fumbled with her own cell phone her fingers searching for the panic button. The phone slipped out of her hand and splattered into the fountain. Armed only with the stranger’s phone, a chill shivered through her senses as she caught his next message.

A countdown timer.

She set off at a run in the direction of the café and glanced down at the remaining seconds.

 

9...8...7...6...

 

“No!”

 

5...4...3...

 

Does Mason have the...?

“Coward!” The October wind scoffed up her voice as it cut across her face. She took one more peek at the counter.

2...1...

 

Silence.

 

 

 

EIFFEL TOWER VIEWING POINT

PARIS, FRANCE

1615 hrs.

 

Stillness.

The plaza and the drones were muted by the heaviness in her chest. A flock of doves shot from her feet as she thrust in a dash toward the café. Her limbs trudged with heaviness, as if they no longer belonged to her.

With her heart thrashing against her ribcage—boisterous and overpowering, the sounds around her diminished. Her thoughts were on one thing.

She waited.

No detonation came.

Foot-travelers hustled along the sidewalk, undeterred by the proceedings churning in her mind. Calla assailed down the stairs, jolting into confused pedestrians. The café seemed further than the ten meters between her and the front entrance. The faster she ran, the quicker her breath zapped out of her lungs.

Three ambulances zipped past her and screeched to a halt at the brasserie.

How?

Seven seconds passed before she crossed the street to the café’s outdoor terrace. Smoke oozed out of every window of the café, as men and women tore out of the space coughing and shielding their nostrils with napkins and items of clothing.

There’d been no blast. What is this thing?

Curious passer-bys gasped at the panorama of tormented café-goers. Calla scrutinized the dust cloud. It wasn’t fire smoke.

She shook with anger, her hands unclenched in the pockets of her slacks. It had been a chemical or biological explosion.

Subtle.

Deadly.

A silent bomb. They’d disarmed many at ISTF for the five global governments. Whoever it was, had access to ISTF or was igniting a careless, missile of terror.

Calla scurried through the front entrance, slithering past medical staff who attended to several coughing victims. Other authorities attempted to evacuate the brassiere through every available exit.

“Non! Mademoiselle!”

She swiveled her head round. The commanding gendarme of the national police jostled her out and back onto the sidewalk. “C’est très dangereux, mademoiselle!”

I know it’s dangerous! I need to find my friends. Her thoughts countered the rough policeman’s words who’d warned her of danger. Calla stood outside, paralyzed by that sense of futility unable to know whether Jack and Nash were hurt. Yet again, she’d jeopardized the lives of her friends.

 

 

 

Calla closed her eyes. Could I? Maybe?

She concentrated. What was it the doctor had said? The boy with x-ray vision? The same x-ray vision she possessed that penetrated solid surfaces. This came from inherited DNA that profited from genetic enhancement of her operative ancestry. Operatives in their research and development labs, she’d been told by Vortigern, had engineered a special silicon chip. The chip had obtained energy, much like that contained in the carbonados they’d found while in search of the Deveron Manuscript—a map encrypting the location of three hidden carbonados. The operatives had guarded the document for centuries until it disappeared during the Cold War.

The chip engineered by the carbonados, when implanted under her skin, realigned the molecules in the epidermis and her central nervous system. When her body sensed contact against gravity, the chip acted like an engine, reversing the natural physics of gravity. A side effect, that gave her eyes x-ray vision.

She would try.

 

Though she’d not used the ability in the last six months, Calla shut her eyes and her mind before drawing in a deep breath. Her mind unlocked, releasing penetrating vision beyond human capacity. It made no difference whether her eyes were opened or closed.

Open, she could see through objects better, and those she could see, she could also hear. Her attention steered to the door, then past the few emergency staff, using the bar’s countertop as a place to hold medication for the troubled victims. Is this how far Mason would go this time?

“There’s no one else here,” she heard a female paramedic say to the two paramedics who stood by one wall. “Everyone’s been treated and accounted for, I think?”

The man in front of her replied in French. “Thank God, no one else was hurt. It was a good thing we were on standby and could react to the toxic gas.”

“What was it?”

“Not sure, but possibly a very sophisticated bio-warfare program.”

“Contact la Sûreté. The Department of Territorial Security will love this.”

Calla squinted. Where are you guys?

She observed as one paramedic treated a blond woman with oxygen. Smoke began to subside in the café.

“Are there no more customers?” a policewoman asked the bar tender in French.

“No, we weren’t full. It’s the post-lunch hour and we only had a few tables going.” The man paused. “Come to think of it, there were a couple of guys here at this table by the window. English speaking, but I’m not sure if they left.”

“Has the bill been settled?” she asked the tall waiter.

He swung round the counter and checked his machine. “No . . . they may have evacuated when the smoke hit. It happened so fast.”

He turned her focus to the table Jack and Nash had occupied only minutes earlier.

It had to be.

Nash’s coat still hung over the back of the handcrafted chair. “No, maybe they left before the blast, then again I’m not sure.”

Calla shivered despite the warm coat she wore. She blinked twice. Had she not known the way he liked to trend dark colors over natural tones and his broad shoulders, allowing a strong, masculine form, it easily could’ve been anyone else’s coat.

No! Not Nash!

A brief shiver rippled through her. Trembling with fury at what Mason was capable of, her vision broke through a wall divider where two telephone cabins stood, behind an Internet terminal. Her eyes settled on the masses on the floor. There next to Nash, Jack’s head faced the concrete wall, with his back to her.

No oxygen had gotten to them.

No treatment.

No paramedics.