23

THE HISTORY OF THE PARIS Catacombs was a study in pragmatism, with the growth of the city and the overwhelming of its cemeteries, the fouling of the water and the smell prompting church and city officials to find another place in which to house Paris’s dead. The miles of abandoned mining tunnels beneath the city proved to be the perfect place so that, over time, Parisians saw the systematic growth of their own personal underworld. There were more than six million people interred beneath the streets of Paris, and miles of uncharted tunnels and caverns beyond those in use. It was those less charted sections, specifically where the rock carvings began, that interested Jack.

The air cooled quickly, then dampened. The smell of stagnant water filled the air. Lights placed at intervals revealed the steps as Jack and Espy descended into the earth. Soon Jack heard water running somewhere close.

Up ahead, disappearing into the long tunnel at the bottom of the stairs, were three people, teenagers. Behind Jack and Espy were two women. They looked like tourists, here to gawk at the dead, in a place that seemed so unearthly precisely because of its baseness, its nearness to the very stuff of which everyone was made.

The Catacombs were a tourist destination, with areas gated off to guide the curious through chambers holding bones in numbers sufficient to form entire walls, some with designs fashioned through judicious placement of the bones.

When they reached the bottom of the steps, Jack and Espy followed the long tunnel through the rock, the evidence of the old mine showing in tool marks and bore holes. They walked for a long while, until the tunnel opened up into a chamber. There, Jack was struck full force by what had been in the back of his mind since they’d made the decision to come here. The similarities that existed between this place and the massive chamber beneath Trubetskoy Bastion could be no coincidence.

The similarities left him wondering about the possibility that the creation of the Catacombs was perhaps less about city planning than about recreating a motif—of fashioning a replica of something that already existed in the organization’s history. It was an interesting question, but ultimately an academic one. At the moment, he and Espy had more hands-on concerns.

Fortunately there were fewer visitors than he’d anticipated, which meant they were able to distance themselves from others’ eyes in short order. That accomplished, Jack pulled out a packet of folded papers from the pack slung over his shoulder. Stepping under one of the lights, he unfolded the paper and tried to get his bearings.

Most of the tunnel system was off-limits to tourists, with gates serving to direct visitors along approved paths. Past those barriers existed a less organized ossuary, areas not suitable for public viewing. Even beyond those sections, though, were tunnels that extended far beyond the influence of the macabre role forced upon them—places where few had explored, miles of winding tunnels, caverns and drop-offs, which had remained mostly intact since the ceasing of the mining operation.

The pages Jack held constituted a series of maps, none complete, most with sections entirely speculative. He hoped that by using pieces from all of them, he could establish a more or less accurate path.

He started off in what he thought was the right direction, choosing a tunnel to the right, following the track lighting until the tunnel emerged into a smaller chamber, where several skulls atop an ossuary wall watched their passage.

They walked for a long while, negotiating the labyrinthine system. The air seemed to grow thicker the farther they went. Water seeped from the stone. Finally they came to a rusted iron portcullis that blocked their way. Beyond it, the meager light tapered to nothing. Jack slid his pack to the ground, pulled out a flashlight, and handed it to Espy. When Espy shined the light past the iron grating, Jack saw a tunnel much like the one they were in.

A double loop of heavy chain secured the portcullis, a rusted padlock holding it together. Even with bolt cutters it took a few minutes before Jack could remove the lock. Once the chain was unwound, he grabbed hold of the grate and pulled. It didn’t budge. Espy placed the flashlight on the ground and, coming alongside him, added her hands to the task. Even so, it took a good bit of straining before the gate moved.

Once through, Espy kept the light in front of them, the beam picking up little beyond stone and more stone. But as the tunnel emerged into one of the ossuary chambers, Jack saw why visits from the general public were discouraged. As Espy sent the light around, it revealed a scene from some dark story. Entire skeletons lay haphazardly across one another, some still clothed, others with patches of flesh visible, mummified by the conditions of the Catacombs.

Sobered, they continued on. Before long, Jack could tell they’d left the graveyard far behind. The tunnels they were now passing through were the suspect ones on his maps. They came upon forks and branches that followed no particular pattern. Not long after that, he found it.

The rock carving looked old, yet the workmanship was solid, the lines clean. But it was the image itself that aided the dating. The shepherd and crook image indicated the beginning of the High Middle Ages.

Jack ran his hand along the edges, feeling the weight of years. But he didn’t linger. After a quick look around the tunnel, he and Espy moved on. They found the next one maybe a hundred steps farther on—an exact representation of the image of the three angels on page seventeen of Flamel’s book.

“They’re distance markers,” Espy said. “They have to be.”

The only way to test that theory was to keep walking. Not long after leaving the second wall carving, they reached a place where the path before them forked. Jack looked down at the map.

“That’s not supposed to be there,” he said.

Espy smirked and took the right fork, and since she had the flashlight, Jack followed. When the light picked up a third image, roughly the same distance as that between the first two, he and Espy exchanged grins.

The next hour passed in much the same fashion, Jack’s only concern the possibility of losing the flashlight. At times, the going was slow, the ground uneven. He took Espy’s hand as they navigated their way around a pit, the bottom of which Jack couldn’t see, even as his wife shined the light straight into it. By the time they reached the eleventh image, Jack felt as if he’d walked the entire length of the city. Still, he felt his energy level rise as they started off again because he knew they were nearing the end of it.

But when the appropriate distance passed and the last rock carving failed to appear, he frowned.

“Did we miss it?” he asked.

“Maybe there aren’t twelve,” Espy said. “It was guesswork on our part. For all we know, the eleventh was the final marker.”

“It’s possible,” Jack said, though what his wife was suggesting didn’t feel right. “At least half of the carvings have New Testament subject matter. And the number eleven isn’t significant in Christian numerology.” He looked around but didn’t know what he was looking for. “Let’s keep going.”

They began walking again and, almost as if they’d passed some final test designed to demonstrate their commitment to the task, the last of the wall carvings solidified before them. Jack knew it was the last because it wasn’t alone. Around the edges of the carving—that of a pair of dragons entwined—were smaller versions of the previous eleven.

He and Espy moved closer, drawn to something that few eyes outside of the Priests of Osiris had ever seen. Flamel saw it. Jack guessed the alchemist was of their ilk.

“Look,” Espy said. She pointed at one of the smaller carvings, where a hole about the size of a finger looked to have been drilled through the bottom of the panel. Jack looked at the others and saw the same thing. Jack was reminded of his earlier premise—that this place was a replica of sorts, simulating the older holy place of the order in Saint Petersburg.

“A finger key,” he said. “Like the one in Trubetskoy Bastion.”

Espy had started to reach toward a panel when Jack grabbed her hand.

“This isn’t exactly like the other one,” he said. “They can’t expect someone paying them a visit to have eleven fingers.”

Understanding came to Espy and she withdrew her hand. “So how does it work?” she asked.

Jack weighed the options, comparing the locking mechanism with others he’d seen, and those that would have been appropriate for the time period. It had to be a simple mechanism.

He considered the available data, most of which had come from a man who believed he could discover something that would produce an unlimited quantity of gold. Flamel was a mystic, a dreamer. Yet Jack knew he was also technically minded. He was once a chemist. There was his work as a scrivener; he did the exacting work of preparing and preserving manuscripts. His directions in Le Livre des Figures Hiéroglyphiques were clear and precise, everything orderly.

“It’s a tumbler lock,” Jack said. “It requires the right combination.”

“And we’re supposed to get that how exactly?”

Jack thought it a good question, but he was becoming convinced that Flamel had wanted someone to know the answer. Maybe Flamel, like the Chambers family, was on the outs with the organization he served.

“I think somebody told us the combination,” he said.

He didn’t have the laptop and he doubted he would get a signal anyway, but he remembered the pages of the book. He knew the order. The panels were arranged differently on the wall.

He inserted a finger into a hole corresponding with the first picture featured in the book, gratified to feel something slide in. He repeated the process with the next nine holes, his excitement growing with each accepting slide. When he’d depressed ten of the sliders, he stopped. Espy, waiting for him to finish the job, gave him a puzzled look.

Jack looked at the wall. There was no way to tell what was on the other side. It was possible—even probable—that he and Espy were walking into a trap. But if he’d only learned one thing about himself over the years, it was that he would always open the door.

He raised his hand and slid a finger into the eleventh hole.

For a moment, nothing happened. Jack frowned and traded a look with Espy. Then, just as he was about to take a step closer, the wall in front of him shifted, the panels that made up the tumbler lock sliding away, drawing back to reveal another layer of stone.

At first, Jack didn’t know what it was he was looking at, only that it wasn’t a secret chamber holding the bones of the prophet Elisha. Instead he saw a single panel circled by markings—carvings that Jack couldn’t identify, much less read. The carvings surrounded a small, narrow opening—a slit into the stone. Jack reached into his bag and pulled out a cloth, using it to wipe the dust from the markings. He took a step back.

“Can you read that?” he asked.

Espy moved closer and studied it. Finally she shook her head. “I don’t know what that is.”

Jack grumbled to himself and stepped up to the wall again. He’d been expecting a big reveal, not another puzzle, and he found his patience wearing thin. He ran his fingers along the markings. They looked vaguely hieroglyphic, but he could tell they weren’t Egyptian. He stood there for a long while, the silence of the cavern creating a bubble in which he was free to think, free to try to make—even force—connections between the volume of data he’d accumulated over the years. He was too close to be denied by a line of characters he couldn’t decipher.

He lost track of how long he stood there. Neither could he have identified when the first vague recollections began to touch at his consciousness. What came first was the image of precious gems: rubies, a black opal. Even with these, though, it took a while longer before he made the connection. And when he did, he started to laugh. In the silence of the chamber, the sound was overly loud, yet Jack didn’t care. There was no one around to hear him.

He moved his hand from the markings to the hole in the rock around which they circled. And as he touched the place, his laughter grew.

Espy was watching him, a puzzled, even concerned look on her face. Jack shook his head, eyes glittering. He turned away from the wall and took Espy by the hand. He began to lead her back the way they’d come.

“Let’s go,” he said.

The look Espy gave him was one of disbelief, and the only thing it did was bring a fresh round of mirth to Jack. Once he could speak, he squeezed her hand.

“We have to call your brother,” he said. “He’s never going to believe this.”

“You’re joking,” Romero said.

“Not even a little,” Jack said.

After so long belowground, the open air seemed fresher than Jack remembered. He and Espy stood near the Catacombs’ entrance, the sights and sounds of Paris descending into evening unfolding around them.

“You mean to tell me that you need a dagger I purchased almost twenty years ago so that you can recover ancient bones hidden beneath the streets of Paris?”

The doubt in Romero’s voice almost made Jack laugh again, but he kept his emotions in check.

“Do you believe in providence?” Jack asked.

“Of course,” Romero said. “No one could spend as much time with you as I have and not believe in it.”

Jack didn’t begrudge Romero his doubt. While he’d seen it with his own eyes, it was difficult to believe that the markings on a subterranean lock in Paris matched the markings on a dagger he and Romero had tried to purchase in Brazil almost two decades ago. It was that sort of synchronicity that buoyed Jack’s faith, that made him believe in a God for whom nothing was an accident.

“It’s the dagger you bought—or stole—from Paulo,” Jack said. “I’m certain of it.”

He heard Romero muttering. Jack knew his friend still had it. It was one of the highlights of his collection, difficult to part with because of how hard it’d been won.

“The dagger’s the key,” Jack said. “I need it if I’m going to find the bones.”

Romero went silent, and Jack knew the man was searching for a reason to argue. Jack waited while the process worked itself out. He had no doubt Romero would send the dagger; he would send it for the betrayal of telling Quinn Chambers where to find the bones.

“How could the Cavalcanti dagger be the key?” Romero asked. “It’s been in my possession for almost twenty years. And before that, it spent the better part of two hundred years in a grave. If it’s the key, then no one has been in that room in a very long time.”

“Unless there’s more than one,” Jack said. “The Cavalcanti dagger is either the original or a copy.”

Jack heard more grumbling, but he knew he’d won. Romero owed him.

“And how do you propose I get the dagger to you?”

“FedEx,” Jack answered. “They have a next-flight service. If you have it ready for pickup within the hour, I can have it in my hand within twelve.”

He heard a snort through the phone.

“It will cost me near five hundred at next-flight rates,” Romero said.

“So I’ll owe you,” Jack came back.

He gave Romero the address and, after ending the call, kept the phone in his hand. After thinking things through, he looked at Espy.

“How do you feel about inviting the boys to this party?” he asked.

Espy nodded. “I think they’d like Paris.”

Jack quickly called another number. “I’ve got them,” he said when McKeller answered. “I’m sure you understand that I can’t get them through customs. You’re going to have to come to Paris.”

McKeller responded with a sardonic chuckle. “You must think me a fool.”

“The CIA doesn’t hire fools,” Jack replied. “But I do think you’re desperate. And I think you need the bones badly enough that you’re willing to bring my children here so that we can make the exchange.”

“You’ve overstepped, Dr. Hawthorne. You’re playing fast and loose with your sons’ lives.”

“I don’t think I am. You bring the boys to Paris by tomorrow. I’ll call you and arrange for a very public meeting place. I give you the bones; you give me my boys. You can have as many people with you as you think you need to make sure I don’t pull anything. Believe me—you won’t see the bones if Alex and Jim aren’t with you.”

He ended the call before McKeller could speak again.

“Now we wait,” he said to Espy.