Magic Lantern (Rogue Angel) (38 page)

If she’d known that, she could have simply held her breath.

Except that there had been no way to know.

She took the flippers off and left them at the water’s edge. Then she widened the flashlight beam and moved forward. She had to guess at the distance she’d covered swimming. Olympic swimmers averaged a hundred meters in a minute. She wasn’t an Olympic swimmer even with the fins. Her best estimate was that she’d covered forty or fifty yards underwater.

The tunnel rose only a few feet, just enough to keep it from the water. According to the map on the sat-phone, there was only one more intersection.

Annja found the four-way juncture another twenty-six yards ahead. She had to use the laser distance meter to accurately measure the distance, but the intersection was clearly marked on the map. She took the left turn and ended up in a short corridor that dead-ended.

That had been on the map, too.

Excitement tingled through Annja. The map had shown a door, a secret place that existed just beyond the door. She widened the beam again and played the light over the moldy surface of the wall.

Like the rest of the walls, the surface was uneven and irregular. The stones hadn’t been shaped into any kind of standard dimensions. But there was a difference in the mortar. The grouting between the stones was smoother, and it wasn’t pitted. The color was almost the same, and if she hadn’t been looking for the differences, she knew she would never have found them.

Anton Dutilleaux was an illusionist. Why wouldn’t he hide his treasure behind an illusion?

Edmund would love it. For a moment, she felt guilty that she was seeing everything before he did. This had been his mystery. He deserved to be here for the discovery.

She ran her hands over the wall, but felt only the rough surfaces of the stones, no irregularity. Turning the flashlight beam toward the stone floor, she studied the surface in front of the wall.

There were no scars, no scratches, to show that the door swung outward.

If the door didn’t open outward, it had to open inward.

Annja fisted the flashlight and put both hands on the door. Gently, but with increasing pressure, she pushed. Just as she was about to give up, the door moved.

Grinding over loose debris, it slid backward about two feet and stopped. No matter how hard Annja pushed, the door wouldn’t move any farther.

Using the flashlight, she spotted openings on either side of the door. She chose the one on the right and went through.

The air inside the room was thicker and stank more of rot. Evidently the door had been shut for a long time.

A square room forty feet across—measured by the distance meter—sat empty except for an obelisk in the center. Twelve feet tall, flush against the ceiling, the obelisk was carved of what looked like stone. It was only three feet wide.

Upon closer inspection, Annja realized the obelisk wasn’t carved from a single stone the way a true monolith was. Instead, it was pieced together with large stones. The mortar looked like the same that had sealed the false door. Several of the stones had carvings on them. Faces and strange figures.

Slowly, Annja walked around it. There were no openings that she could find, and no marked areas that indicated hidden places. She had no doubt that Dutilleaux was responsible for the creation of the thing, though. Some of the engravings revealed rough figures from Chinese mythology—dragons and koi and ghostly apparitions.

Maybe it was there as a final warning to anyone who happened into the room, or maybe it was a puzzle Anton Dutilleaux intended for his friend Tsai Chien-Fu. Annja didn’t want to touch it until Edmund had had a chance to study it and give her his thoughts on the matter.

Shining her flashlight around the room, she discovered that two of the walls were piled high with bones. At one point in the tunnel’s history, it had been a storage area for the relocated Parisian dead. The skulls sat neatly among the long bones.

She walked back into the hallway and tested the door. It moved easily forward. Evidently Dutilleaux had used some kind of counterweight to keep the door shut. She directed her flashlight beam toward the ceiling, which she hadn’t checked, and spotted the metal rod that extended through the ceiling.

Further examination of the ceiling over the entrance to the room revealed that the ceiling had been lowered there and a false floor put in. Only the length of the shadows gave it away.

Annja was impressed. Dutilleaux had gone to a lot of trouble to disguise his treasure trove. But that only stood to reason. The Qianlong Emperor’s warriors were searching to kill him and recover their ruler’s lost belongings.

She’d just put her flippers back on when she heard the gunshot.

39

With the sharp report of the gunshot ringing in his ears, Laframboise spun around toward his men, ready to threaten whichever of them had fired. Instead, he stared in confusion as one of his men fell forward, his face a bloody mess.

Then Campra was at his side, bumping him roughly and shoving him toward the wall. Back the way they’d come, the corridor suddenly lit up with muzzle flashes.

Campra lifted his machine pistol and opened fire. Brass tumbled out of the gun. Instinctively, Laframboise brought up his pistol and added to the thunder and lightning, but he was only firing into the mass of muzzle flashes and didn’t see any actual targets. The pistol bucked in his fist.

His men fell, torn to rags by withering fire. The ambush had caught them all off guard. The muzzle flashes lit up the tunnels and threw impossible shadows against the walls one moment, then ripped them away in explosions of light the next.

Laframboise fired his pistol dry, then tried to reload. He stood behind Campra, partly shielded by the man’s bulk. Then Campra fell back on him, taking him down with his dead weight. Laframboise hit the ground hard. His elbow struck stone and he felt the pistol squirt from his fingers. He lay on his side and stretched for it, trying desperately to get his fingers around the butt.

When he realized he wasn’t going to reach it, Laframboise twisted and sat up, pushing himself forward with one hand while he reached for Campra’s machine pistol with the other. Campra’s head turned with a sickening looseness. In the light from a nearby dropped flashlight, Laframboise saw the bullet wounds in Campra’s eye and throat. Blood streaked the man’s face.

He curled his fingers around the machine pistol and started to haul the weapon up. A black-garbed figure dashed forward and kicked Laframboise in the face.

Knocked backward, senses spinning, he struggled to hang on to consciousness. His head felt too big, wobbly, and his neck felt as if it was trying to support a pumpkin. A bright light in his eyes blinded him.

“Jean-Baptiste Laframboise.” The voice was harsh and foreign. French was not the speaker’s native tongue. “Can you hear me?”

He blinked until he could see Puyi-Jin. The Asian warlord was in his fifties, a grim-faced man with hazel eyes. His black hair was graying at the temples.

“I hear you.” Laframboise licked his lips and tasted blood.

“Where is Annja Creed?”

“She dove into the water. The tunnel’s submerged.” Laframboise didn’t want to answer, but he didn’t want to die, either.

You will never see the treasure.

He tried to screw up the courage to grab for the machine pistol again, or maybe to spit in Puyi-Jin’s face. But his mouth was so dry he couldn’t manage it.

“You should not have betrayed me.” Puyi-Jin pointed his pistol.

“The lantern’s cursed. That’s what made me to do it. The curse.” Laframboise wanted to face death bravely, but he couldn’t. His teeth chattered. “If you go after it, the curse will get you, too.”

Puyi-Jin shook his head. “I do not believe in curses.” He squeezed the trigger.

Bullets hit Laframboise in the face, then darkness closed in around him.

* * *

ANNJA SWAM THROUGH THE water, her flashlight barely lighting her way. Then she saw two figures in the water ahead of her, backlit by a flood of lights in the tunnel on the other side. She could barely make out Fiona. As she came up for a breath, the other woman grabbed her arm and pushed her back under. Muted gunshots echoed through the water.

Edmund was beside Fiona, also barely recognizable in the dark water. He wasn’t a strong swimmer. Annja pulled him past her, then grabbed his belt and swam on top of him, dragging him along at a faster clip since she had the fins. A moment later, he started flailing in panic.

Realizing that Edmund thought he was about to drown, Annja took the Spare Air mouthpiece from between her teeth and passed it over to him. The short hose just reached to him. He shoved the mouthpiece between his teeth. Annja kicked strongly with her flippers and got him going again.

Twenty or thirty seconds later, she angled up and the three of them were safely on the other side.

Annja shone her flashlight over them. Fiona’s face was bruised and swollen, but she was concentrating on the machine pistol she’d brought with her. Water drained from the barrel and the empty magazine space. She held the magazine in her other hand.

The gunfire continued sporadically.

“What’s going on?” Annja kicked her flippers off and wished she had her boots.

“Laframboise’s men were following us.” Fiona held up the machine pistol’s magazine and checked the load. The magazine was taped to another. She reversed the magazine and shoved the other one back into the weapon.

“How did they follow us?”

“Let’s figure that out later.” Fiona glanced around. “Does this tunnel continue?”

“No. It’s a dead end.”

Fiona cursed. “Not good.”

The gunfire ceased.

“Laframboise and his people aren’t shooting one another.” Annja led them toward the room where she’d found the obelisk.

“I think Puyi-Jin and his people arrived.” Edmund looked pallid in the dark. “I didn’t see much because Fiona grabbed me by the shirt and hurled me into the water, but the men I saw looked Asian.”

“One thing was for certain.” Fiona flicked on a flashlight attached to the machine pistol. “We couldn’t stay there.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “I should think Puyi-Jin’s men will be along shortly.”

A single gunshot rang out.

Annja glanced back and spotted light dawning in the darkness of the flooded tunnel. Swimmers were on their way. “Come on. Dutilleaux managed to hide a room. If we can get there, we might be able to hide, too.”

Annja guided them into the room, then turned and forced the door closed. She shut off her flashlight because she didn’t want the glow leaking around the door. For a moment all she could hear was Fiona and Edmund’s ragged breathing in the darkness.

Then they heard footsteps out in the hall. Voices filtered through a moment later.

Annja couldn’t tell how many voices there were. The sounds were too confusing and her hearing was blunted from the gunshots. Certainly there were more than three opponents. She stood behind Fiona, who held her captured machine pistol at the ready. Quietly, Annja reached for the sword and pulled it into the chamber.

Someone spoke in Chinese, angry and commanding.

Fiona whispered just loud enough to be heard. “That must be Puyi-Jin, or perhaps one of his lieutenants. He doesn’t believe we’ve disappeared.”

Light glared along the bottom of the hidden door. Annja focused on keeping calm. They could see the light on this side of the door, but the men on the other side couldn’t see the crack.

Water dripped from Annja’s wet clothes, curling around her ankles and running between her toes. Suddenly she knew that their hiding place wasn’t going to remain secret for long. With all their wet clothing, they’d left a trail.

“Let’s hope they muddied our tracks with theirs before anyone noticed,” she whispered in Fiona’s ear. “The door will only come into the room a couple feet. For just a moment, they’re going to be trapped there.”

“Good. It will give us a temporary kill box. I’ll make the most of it.” Fiona adjusted her grip on the machine pistol.

Annja waited tensely. The men out in the hallway stopped talking and things got quiet.

Then a deafening blast ripped through the chamber and the secret door flew into chunks of debris that ricocheted off the walls. Light flashed and ripped away the darkness for a moment. The concussive wave knocked Annja backward off her feet. She lost the sword and it vanished. She barely clung to her senses as vertigo slammed through her and sickness twisted her stomach. She swallowed to ease the pressure in her ears.

Dizzy, she tried to get to her feet to pull the sword back. Before she could, an Asian man dressed in black pressed a pistol against the back of her head.

“Move and you die.”