Cradle of Solitude (9 page)

Any way it happened, the answer to a historic mystery was about to be solved.

All she had to do was open the puzzle box.

She thought about what she knew about puzzle boxes. Originating in the Hakone region of Japan in the late eighteenth century, puzzle boxes, or disentanglement boxes as they were sometimes known, were exquisitely crafted works of art that could only be opened by following a certain sequence of movements. Some were made up of multiple sliding pieces that, when moved, unlocked other pieces, which in turn released a side panel of the box, and so on, until the top was finally released, allowing the box to be fully opened. Others required putting pressure on certain locations in a specific sequence, which then released various panels that eventually unlocked the box. An individual box might require as few as two or as many as sixty-six moves to open it.

The trick, she knew, was finding the right starting point.

She picked up the box and examined it carefully. It was made of a highly polished hardwood—linden or perhaps cherry—and was lacquered to a fine finish. A mosaic of different colored squares covered the top, but the sides were free of decoration of any kind. Nor did it show even the slightest hint of any seams.

For all practical purposes, it looked like a solid block of wood.

Annja knew better, though.

She examined the mosaic, looking for a pattern that might provide a hint as to where to begin. When that failed, she began to press the colored squares in a variety of common patterns. Four corners. A cross in the center. Crisscrossing the middle.

Nothing.

She glanced up at the abbot, who was watching her curiously.

“It's a puzzle box,” she said, answering his unspoken question. “In order to open it, you have to follow a certain sequence of motions.”

He nodded sagely. “And how to do you know that you are on the right path?” he asked.

“You don't.”

“Ah, so the box mirrors life, no?”

She supposed that it did, though that didn't help her get it open.

Parker hadn't left any instructions telling Sykes how to open the box, so she knew that the key had to be something they both would have understood. Maybe a prearranged symbol or word? Maybe something that Sykes would associate with Parker, something that he would think of right away?

She ran through the obvious list of ideas—names of their wives or children, birth dates, their current ranks in the Navy. None of them worked.

She looked at the layout of the colored tiles on the lid again. The checkerboard was fourteen squares wide by eight squares high. The fifth and tenth vertical row were slightly darker than the others, subtly dividing the mosaic into three even sections four squares across by eight squares deep.

Three even sections.

Her thought from a few minutes earlier came back to her.

It had to be something Sykes would immediately think of, something that was important to both of them.

Three even sections.

Could it be that easy?

Reaching out with one finger, she pressed firmly on the squares in the first section and traced the letter
C.

A sharp click sounded.

“Did you hear that?” the abbot asked, excitement in his voice.

She had. It meant she was on the right track.

She did the same thing in the center section, but this time traced an
S
rather than a
C.

Another click.

Grinning now, she moved her hand to the final section and traced the letter
A.

CSA. The Confederate States of America.

Something near and dear to both of them.

The square in the exact center of the mosaic slid aside with a sharp snap, revealing a depression beneath.

It was just large enough to fit the average person's finger.

Intrigued now, the abbot reached out a hand, intend
ing to press the location, but Annja pulled the box out of his reach.

“Wait,” she said. “It could be booby-trapped.”

She'd run into more than a few of those in her years as an archaeologist and wouldn't have put it past the box maker to build a trigger into an obvious location like this one.

It would be a good way to lose a finger.

She snagged a pencil off the abbott's desk and used the eraser end to poke the center of the depression.

Nothing happened.

She tried again.

Still nothing.

“Perhaps the pencil isn't wide enough?” the abbot suggested.

She tried a third time, but with two pencils held together rather than one.

The box just sat there, silently gloating at them.

After everything she'd been through so far, there was no way was she going to let a stupid wooden box beat her.

She bent over, closer to the table, and stared at the depression in the lid. From that angle it was clear that rather than being smooth, as she'd originally suspected, it was beveled in a simple pattern.

It looked familiar somehow.

She stared at it for a long moment, trying to give it shape and form, to understand what the object that would fit into it might look like.

Suddenly she got it.

“Yes!” she cried, startling the abbott. Getting up from the table she went over to her backpack and dug in the pocket for the envelope containing the ring she'd
found during her sojourn into the catacombs the night before.

Parker's ring.

With the break in at the museum, she hadn't had the chance to properly catalog and store it. In fact, she'd almost forgotten she still had it.

Taking it out of the glassine envelope she'd stored it in, Annja held the ring up to the light and examined the stone. It appeared to have the same basic shape as the depression in the box. And it was the right size, too.

Annja would bet anything that both Parker and Sykes wore identical rings!

She stepped up to the table and without hesitation pressed the stone atop the ring into the depression in the lid of the puzzle box.

A sudden clicking and whirring erupted from the box, like the sound a windup toy makes when it has been released. Panels across the surface of the box popped open, twisted and turned with the help of mechanical gears buried deep inside the contraption, and these in turn opened others. It took a good three minutes for the box to stop rearranging itself on the table in front of them, and by the time it was finished Annja could see a definite crease where the top separated from the rest.

When she was reasonably confident that the box wasn't going to start rearranging itself again, she reached out and separated the two pieces.

Inside, in a velvet-lined chamber, another envelope rested much like the one she'd taken from the pocket of Parker's sack coat.

Just to be safe, she poked that with a pencil as well before reaching in and picking it up.

Inside was a single sheet of stationery.

Another puzzle.
Annja was seriously starting to dislike this guy.

“Not what you were expecting?” the abbot asked. Grimacing, Annja replied, “No, not quite. I'd been hoping for the answer but this is just another piece of the puzzle.”

“But one more than you had before, no?”

The abbot was right; it was one more piece of information than she'd had before. For that she should be thankful.

“Yes,” she said, smiling at him. “You're right. And I'd do well to remember it.”

She thanked him for his time and asked if it would be all right if she kept the letter.

“Please, take the box, as well. It is yours now—my duty as caretaker has been fulfilled.”

They put the puzzle box back inside the chest it had been stored in and wiped down the chest with a towel the abbot fetched from another room. Once she could carry it without getting her clothes covered with dust, she shook hands with the abbot, picked up the box and followed the monk he'd summoned to lead her back to the front door.

As she got in her car, Annja was full of excitement over what she'd learned. The trip had been well worth the drive. With the information she now had, she could conclude that Parker had been in Paris to carry out some kind of secret negotiation on behalf of President Davis. Not only that, but she could also make a pretty good case that the money from the Confederate treasury hadn't been stolen by brigands at all, but had actually been rerouted by Parker himself to assist with the mission assigned to him. It was the kind of discovery that could make someone a superstar in the field of archaeology practically overnight and Annja wasn't at all displeased by the idea. People recognized her on the street thanks to her hosting gig on
Chasing History's Monsters,
but she'd much rather gain the respect of her academic peers than the adoration of the viewing audience any day of the week.

Then again, if she found the treasure itself, she could have both!

She was so distracted by thoughts of the future that she nearly ran into a group of six monks walking behind her car as she backed out of the parking space. Thankfully, they were paying more attention than she was and were able to skip out of the way quickly enough.
Embarrassed, she gave a little wave of apology, drove back to the gate and headed down the mountain.

She'd been driving for about ten minutes when something started nagging at her. Something about the monks she'd nearly run over. It was right there, on the edge of her awareness. She reached for it…only to have it slip away.

The feeling left her for a moment and she'd convinced herself that it was just a result of her lingering sense of embarrassment for having almost run them over, when the sense that something was terribly wrong overcame her again. The image of her sword flashed before her eyes, as if urging her to make the connection. She concentrated, trying to make the feeling come further into focus. Something about the monks…

She had it!

The scene unfurled before her again on the movie screen of her mind—the monk skipping back away from her car as she got too close, the hem of his dark brown robe riding up over his feet, revealing the pair of dark black boots he wore beneath.

All of the monks she'd seen inside the monastery had been wearing hand-woven sandals.

She slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop. Fortunately, there was no one behind her. As soon as the car had stopped moving forward, she spun the wheel and stomped on the gas pedal, practically sending her little borrowed car into convulsions as the tires spun and she took off back in the direction she'd just come from.

A terrible feeling unfurled in her gut, a sense that some invisible line had been crossed and that she was
already too late to stop whatever it was from happening. She quickly found herself urging the car to go faster as she raced up the mountain road at dangerous speeds.

Annja rounded the final curve and the sprawling towers of the monastery came into view, the brick blooming in the sunshine. For a moment she thought she'd been mistaken, that her concerns had all been for nothing, but then she saw the smoke billowing out of one of the upper-story windows and knew that she'd been horribly, terribly right.

She drove through the still-open gates, skidded to a stop in the middle of the circular drive and was up and out of the car before the engine had even stopped idling. As she rushed up the steps she willed her sword into existence. Its familiar weight was a reassuring presence as her hand closed around its hilt.

One glance was all it took to know that the man in front of her was dead. The bullet hole in his forehead stood out starkly against his pale flesh, but did little to hide his features and it was easy for her to recognize him as Brother Samuel.

Someone was going to pay for this, she vowed.

She slipped inside the door and stood in the hallway
Samuel had led her through a short time earlier. The office doors on either side of the hall were standing open but as she made her way down its length, cautiously glancing inside each room as she passed, she found that all the rooms were empty.

The door at the far end of the corridor was closed but not latched, so she used the fingers of one hand to ease it open slightly. From where she stood Annja could see part of the cloister and a stretch of the covered walkway that ran perpendicular to her position. The body of another monk lay sprawled across the stone pavement, a dark stain spreading beneath him.

A gunshot rang out, breaking the oppressive silence that lay over the place like a funeral shroud, and Annja jumped at the sound. It was very close. Just beyond the door, in fact, in the section of the cloister she couldn't yet see.

She gave a push with her hand and sent the door gliding open on well-oiled hinges, revealing the scene in the open space of the cloister just beyond.

A monk in the now-familiar brown robe and sandals was dragging himself on his stomach across the green grass, leaving a trail of bright red blood in his wake from the bullet wound in his leg. Behind him stalked another, similarly dressed individual, but this one was wearing combat boots instead of sandals and carried a 9 mm automatic pistol in his hand. Even as Annja watched, the second man sighted along the length of his arm and shot the wounded monk in the other leg.

Blood sprayed.

The monk screamed in pain.

The intruder threw back his head and laughed.

That was enough for Annja. Without a second thought for her own welfare, she sprinted from the door
way, leaped through the nearest arcade and charged the gunman.

The monk on the ground saw her first, his eyes growing wide at the sight of her charging forward, sword held high, and the fear in his face alerted his tormentor that there was something wrong. The other man twisted around, the muzzle of his gun coming up as he tried to line up a shot even before he knew what his target would be.

Annja wasn't taking any chances. The first swing of her sword slashed his arm just below the elbow, his gun flying free as his arm hung uselessly. Annja used her momentum to spin around and her second strike caught the intruder at the collarbone and drove diagonally down through his neck.

He was dead before he even had the chance to make a sound.

Unfortunately, so, too, was his victim. As Annja knelt down to help the injured monk she found him staring up at her with unseeing eyes. The second bullet must have found the femoral artery, for there was a rapidly expanding pool of blood in the grass around his legs that hadn't been there moments before.

She reached out and closed the dead monk's eyes, vowing as she did so not to let any more of his brethren suffer the same fate.

Noise from one side caught her attention. She turned to see several men emerge from the door to the chapterhouse on the far side of the cloister, dragging the abbott between them. To her dismay, one of them looked up and saw her crouched there over the body.

“Hey!” he shouted.

Annja didn't hang around to hear what he said next. A glance at the entrance to the church a few feet away
showed the massive oak doors propped open with what looked to be stacks of hymnals and Annja slipped inside, saying a silent thank-you to whatever enterprising monk had decided a little fresh air might do the old worship center some good as she did.

She stood still for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness and trying to get her bearings. The cathedral, she knew, was shaped like a cross lying on its side. The main section of the church ran east to west and the door she'd entered through put her halfway along the length of the nave. The presbytery containing the altar, as well as the north and south transepts that formed the crossbeam of the cross, were to her right.

She had no doubt the gunmen would follow her, so she quickly ran across the center aisle of the church and hid among the pews of the north transept. From there she could keep an eye on the door and still have room to maneuver if need be. She released her sword into the otherwhere, not wanting to have to worry about it sticking up and giving her away.

Annja had just knelt behind the corner of a pew when three men entered the cathedral through the same doors she had used, guns in hand. The leader glanced around, then sent each of his men along the outer edge of the church while he advanced down the center aisle.

Since the intruders were still dressed in the brown habits they had used to infiltrate the complex, she couldn't tell anything about them. There were no identifying marks on their clothing, nor did she recognize any of the men, from what little she'd seen of their faces. With what she'd discovered so far, which was practically nothing, she was going to be little use in helping the authorities catch those in charge of masterminding the massacre.

The leader of the gunmen shouted to the others in French, directing them to move in on the far end of the church.

That, of course, would bring them right down on her position. She needed to get out of there and find a way to take one of the gunmen captive. If she could do that, she could get the information she needed about who they were and what they were after. She would then figure out what to do from there.

Annja turned and scurried down the length of the row, staying in a crouch to keep her head from showing above the backs of the pews. Her intent was to sneak around behind the advancing gunmen and use the opportunity to slip back out the door she'd entered.

Unfortunately, fate had other ideas.

She reached the end of the row and stuck her head around the corner, only to discover one of the gunmen coming from the opposite direction, intent on sneaking up on her in a similar fashion.

They saw each other at the exact same moment, but Annja was a split second faster in her response. She swept her hand out and to the side, pinning her opponent's gun hand against the back of the pew. At the same time she thrust her other hand forward, summoning her sword in the process, intent on running her opponent through.

Some instinct must have saved him at the last second for he twisted to the side and the sword thrust that was intended to skewer him in the chest merely pierced his abdominal area instead. He screamed in pain and reflexively pulled the trigger of his firearm, sending several shots flying down the length of the pew.

While keeping the pressure on the man's wrist, Annja drew back her sword-bearing arm and, with an adrena
line-fueled thrust, drove the hilt into his chin. The force caused his eyes to roll back in his head and sent him into unconsciousness.

Her opponent might be out of the fight, but the damage had been done. When she poked her head up to get a sense of where the rest of the intruders were, bullets thundered into the wood of the pews around her and she felt a sting of pain as a long sliver of hardwood was blown free and slashed across the side of her cheek. Her quick look had shown her several dark forms making their way down either side of the nave in an effort to box her in.

She couldn't stay put.

Not if she wanted to live.

She scrambled over the unconscious body of her opponent and then crab-walked down the length of the pew to the other end. From there she looked out over the presbytery, hunting for a way out.

She had a good view of the altar, as well as the rest of the presbytery space behind it. Chapels lined the rounded rear wall, small alcoves with a statue of some saint or another and a kneeler, sometimes two kneelers, in them. Nothing that looked at all promising as an escape route.

She was about to start looking elsewhere when she saw it.

Between the sixth and the seventh chapels, roughly straight back from the altar as seen from the front of the church, was a door.

It was deftly designed, the undecorated surface of the door blending in with the rest of the dark wood that made up the rear wall, and if the light hadn't reflected off the narrow metal of the sunken handle she might never have seen it.

Where it led, she had no idea.

But anywhere's preferable to here at the moment, she thought.

Of course, getting there was going to be a bit of a challenge. She would have to expose herself to gunfire from several sources as she dashed up the platform, past the altar and over to the door. If she got there and found the door locked she would be in real trouble.

Of course, if she stayed and did nothing, she'd only be making things easy for them. It wouldn't take them long to surround her and, when they did, it would be like fish in a barrel.

She had no other options.

Annja mapped out the route in her mind, doing what she could to prepare herself for what was to come, and then counted it down in her head.

One…

Two…

On three, she lunged to her feet and ran.

Her sudden movement must have taken her pursuers by surprise, for she made it up the platform and halfway to the altar before she heard a shout from the somewhere behind her and the gunfire started once more.

The cacophony was deafening, as the acoustics of the cathedral sent the echoes of each gunshot bounding around the interior, filling the space with thunderous applause of a murderous kind. As she flung herself behind the thick protection of the rectangular marble altar in the center of the platform, several bullets whistled past close enough for her to feel the heat of their passage.

No sooner had she reached the safety of the altar than she was scrambling and charging forward again, except this time she had the bulk of the altar between
her and her attackers. A hail of bullets slammed into the marble while she scrambled on hands and knees over to the door she'd seen from the other side of the room.

She grabbed the door's handle and pulled it open, revealing a set of spiral steps leading upward. Choir loft, she thought, though there was no way of knowing for sure. Wherever they led, she'd deal with it. Right now she just wanted to get out of the line of fire!

As if to punctuate her argument, bullets slammed into the door beside her.

Annja dashed up the stairs.

She'd guessed correctly and emerged into the choir loft. What she hadn't known was that the loft was accessible from the opposite end of the church through the use of two wide walkways and a staircase at the front of the church. As she came up level with the choir loft, several shots ricocheted off the staircase around her, fired by the gunmen running down the walkways in her direction.

With nowhere else to go, Annja continued up the winding staircase, hoping against hope that somewhere above her was a way out.

She emerged into the cupola of the bell tower, an octagonal-shaped room with large arches open to the elements on each side. Beneath her, the staircase rang with the sound of booted feet and the thrumming of the railing under her hands let her know that the gunmen were in hot pursuit. She had only seconds to act before they caught up with her.

With the gunman on her heels and nowhere else to go, Annja took the only course of action available to her. She rushed across the room, clambered through one of the open arches and stepped out onto the roof.
A gunshot rang out as she did so, the bullet slamming into the edge of the archway by her left hand, but she knew better than to look back.

The roof stretched out ahead of her, but she could already see several other intruders climbing onto it from the access ladders on the other wing and were she to head in that direction she'd quickly find herself trapped between two groups of gunmen.

A glance in the other direction showed her the edge of the rooftop only a few yards away, overlooking a long drop to the thundering river below.

Footsteps on the ladder told her she had only seconds to make up her mind.

She turned and ran.

The gunmen continued shooting at her, perhaps divining her intent, but she ignored them as best she could, thrusting downward with her legs, pushing for every ounce of speed she could get.

It was going to be close….

As bullets filled the air around her, Annja raced toward the edge of the rooftop and flung herself out into space.