The Delphi Agenda (38 page)

“I thought the Order was secret,” Steve said, his hand resting protectively on Lisa’s elbow. “It doesn’t show up in any search of Church literature.”

“Quite so.” Lacatuchi’s merriment seemed genuine. “But we need not keep it secret from
you
, not any longer.” Since neither Lisa nor Steve had taken the offer of his hand he used its back to wipe moisture from the corner of his eye. “After all, whom would you tell?”

Steve started to protest, but Lisa interrupted. “We don’t need to tell anyone. You’ve made yourselves known.”

Lacatuchi maintained his good humor. “Brother Defago told you, Mademoiselle Emmer, that secrecy does not matter, not any longer.”

“Now why would that be?” Steve managed to say.

Lacatuchi paused, savoring the moment, aware of the drama. “Because the Struggle will soon be over.” He sounded as if he was being recorded for the sake of history.

Lisa clicked her tongue. “Don’t presume to know the future.”

“Ah, that would be your province, would it not?”

Lisa’s eyes glittered but at that moment a door opened behind the Prior General and Brother Defago took a step into the vast hall. When he saw the tableau he stopped and waited patiently.

Lacatuchi did not notice him. He thrust his face close to Lisa’s. “Then let’s get down to business, shall we?”

“Certainly.” She was standing at an angle to the monk and made no sign she had seen him.

Lacatuchi held out his hand. “You will give me the so-called Founding Document.”

Lisa’s smile moved across her lips like a fast-moving cloud over a meadow. “Surely the Prior General of the Order of Theodosius cannot seriously believe we would be so naïve as to bring it with us? When Alain is safely on his way back to the hospital, assuming he’s still alive, we can discuss the next steps.”

The remains of Lacatuchi’s geniality vanished. “How dare you!”

“Please, no theatrics,” Steve interjected. “We are negotiating a very simple business arrangement, a quid pro quo. Shouting will only interfere with trust.”

“Trust!” Lacatuchi snapped. “I don’t bargain. You were to bring me the Document.” His eyes narrowed and turned sly. “Of course, it doesn’t matter whether you brought it with you or not. If you don’t have it then it’s back in Foix’s apartment, and as you know we’ve already entered that place with impunity.”

“Your nun entered, you mean.”

Lacatuchi laughed aloud this time. “Sister Teresa is our finest instrument, utterly dedicated and an unerring shot. We are very proud of her.”

“A deadly sin, pride,” Lisa suggested dryly.

“Indeed. Nonetheless.”

“And her aim is not so unerring as all that. She missed once.”

Lacatuchi spread his plump, pale hands.

“Then there is her adventure at St. Denis.”

His eyes narrowed. “What of it?”

“She’s now quite famous.”

He waved negligently. “Oh, that. As I say, there is no further need for secrecy. Or for Sister Teresa and her keeper, for that matter.” He drew a sorrowful expression. “It will be the end of the Order, which will never have existed.”

Defago reached back for the door handle and was gone, as silently as he had appeared.

Lisa smiled. “And what will you do then, Prior General? Go into retirement? What about the others? They will become… inconvenient. How will you dispose of them?”

The Prior General’s complexion had been darkening. “You will now see your friend Alain,” Lacatuchi said. He nodded at his secretary, who gestured at the shadows. Instantly three figures materialized and seized the pair, snapping handcuffs on them. It happened so fast neither could get a good look, but what little they saw was not encouraging. They were large and efficient and silent men. They might well be deaf-mutes.

They were pushed toward an opening. Beyond was a circular stone stair, lit by a dim electric bulb around the first turn.

Lisa resisted but her keeper shoved her roughly and stayed close to her. She followed Steve down. With her hands confined behind her she felt vulnerable and unsteady and tried to keep her shoulder against the outer curve so as not to stumble.

Somewhere down below she could hear the monotonous drip of water.

It was nearly dark when Philippe Dupond finally arrived at the abbey. A Renault was parked at the end of the walk, its engine nearly cooled to ambient temperature, which was high. There was no sign of the SUV or its occupants.

He drew his revolver and started up the walk before catching himself. He was dirty, sweaty, frustrated and angry. That could lead to mistakes. He holstered the gun and leaned against the car, studying the abbey.

He was an observant man and had been out here several times, so he knew there were broken windows facing the river. Though boarded up, they offered a possible point of entry.

A dirt track off the main road went past the warehouse with a service entrance to the east. The gray AGON van was usually parked nearby. This door was normally locked and he’d never seen anyone use it.

Finally, there was the front door. Perhaps he could just pretend it was business as usual, he was here to report? Would Xavier, Lacatuchi’s pet thug, believe him, usher him into the office and say, Look who’s here?

This didn’t seem likely under the circumstances. Emmer and Viginaire were already here. The police must be somewhere around as well ready to kick everything into the
merde
.

He sprinted along the low wall past the trash and debris that filled the yard. At the far end he turned toward the annex. Fortunately it was windowless and as far as he knew there were no cameras or other forms of electronic surveillance. The Church sometimes remained stubbornly conservative when it came to technology.

Sometimes, but not always, he reminded himself.

Nothing happened, though, and soon he was edging along the south wall of the annex toward the east end. Here he found three steps down to the door. The empty van was parked nearby, a gray bulk. It was unlocked and he checked inside but found nothing useful. The glove compartment contained only registration papers and an old map of France.

He went down to the service entrance. As he expected, the door was locked from the inside. He got out his picks and began working on the mechanism.

Lingering sunlight was draining from the west end of the abbey. Two members of a National Police SWAT team dressed in dark gray and bristling with hooks, clamps, weapons and Velcro pouches were perched on the edge of the peaked roof looking out over flax fields toward the fading sunset. Though they appeared identical, both stocky with hard eyes and identical facial hair, one, nominally the leader, stroked his mustache with evident satisfaction. He liked sunsets.

They had scaled the rough outer wall and remained with their feet dangling over the edge for a little more than an hour.

The other stirred and whispered, “It’s dark enough. Shouldn’t we get going?”

The first nodded and, moving in a crouch, led the way along the ridgeline toward the center of the great hall. Before them the river twinkled in the last light. The water looked as if it had suddenly been kicked into motion. Stars were appearing. He gestured at the top of one of the buttresses along the north side. The second man slid down and affixed two ropes. His thumb up gesture was barely visible. The first gave a soft grunt of satisfaction and slid down the roof.

This time he pointed down. One by one they slipped over the edge and lowered themselves halfway. They were now level with the pointed arch of a window. It was missing most of its stained glass, and badly patched with cheap plywood, heavily warped by years and rain.

The leader touched the wood, curled his fingers around an edge and pulled. He froze at the faint screech. After listening for a time he tugged again. A section came away.

It was now completely dark. Still dangling from the ropes the two men put on night vision goggles. The leader peered through the opening.

After a moment he wormed his way through, taking the remainder of the rope with him. The other followed and soon they were on the floor near a series of straight-backed chairs.

The hall contained only old furniture and debris. There were three potential doors, one just an opening outlined in dim reflected light.

They made their way to the front door. It was massive, ancient, and secured by a large bolt. The east door was locked. The nearby opening led to a descending spiral stair illuminated somewhere below by a low-wattage bulb.

The leader removed his night vision goggles and peered around the bend. He saw only a bare bulb stuck into a socket near the ceiling. Wires led from it along the ceiling to the second door where they disappeared. So the lights were fed from the new building. Interesting.

They tried to force the locked door, but it was solid, probably steel core, and wouldn’t budge. They consulted together in whispers and decided not to try explosives yet. They didn’t know where the targets were or what was happening to them.

That left the stone stair.

The leader unscrewed the light bulb and left it on the floor of the great hall. Then they tiptoed downstairs, astounded at the number of turns, twisting ever closer to the voices they could hear, to the hollow sound of water, echoes and footsteps. They stopped just out of sight and put on their night vision gear.

* * *

The nun waited under the pool of light. As Emmer and Viginaire approached, goaded by their captors, she smiled the welcome smile of a wolf.

“Where’s Alain?” Steve demanded.

Defago methodically chained Lisa’s handcuffs to a post and moved deeper into the shadows.

Meanwhile Xavier wordlessly pushed Steve into the question chair and tightened the leather straps over his forearms and calves. He hooked a metal band around the banker’s forehead and pulled it tight against the high wooden back.

Blood seeped through Steve’s shirt.

The nun regarded this stain with interest. It spread slowly like an animated film of invading troops occupying a neighboring country. She pushed the wound with a gloved fingertip. “So you were the one I hit the other night.” She looked into his face. “God does work in mysterious ways.”

“Sure does,” Steve agreed in a jaunty Americanism. His affability, though strained, was genuine.

“Does it hurt?” she asked. Her eyes were soft with what looked like sympathy, though Steve was pretty sure it wasn’t. It was hard to tell through the yellow lenses, and in such dim light.

He said, “You’re from Texas. Long way from home.”

Her face hardened. “Answer!”

“Does it hurt? What do you think,
Sister
?”

She cocked her head. “I think I should tighten your head restraint. You don’t seem to appreciate your situation.” She reached up for the screw at the back.

Lisa stirred. “Perhaps it is you who don’t appreciate the situation. As Bruno said to his Inquisitors, ‘It is perhaps with far greater fear that you pronounce, than I receive, this sentence.’ You act from fear, Sister.”

The Prior General had been examining his fingernails near the elevator. “Neither one of you is the Great Heretic,” he said mildly, completely in control.

“Not great, perhaps,” Lisa retorted with a smile. “But heretic, surely you must grant us that.”

The nun swiveled her chair toward the girl. “Are you not afraid?”

“What should I fear?” she asked. “You want something of me but you won’t get it if anything happens to us, any of us. So, where is Alain?”

The nun swept this question away. “Do you really think we won’t get what we are after?” she purred. Her chair advanced a little. “Tell me, do you know how Bruno died?”

“Fire.”

The nun uttered her peculiar barking laugh. “Oh, yes, at the end. But before that, well, let me describe it.” She folded her hands around her rosary. The beads began to move unconsciously through her fingers. “Though you quote his last known words, he drew many painful breaths afterward. There was time between January 20, when he said those words of defiance, and February 17 when he met his end, consumed by the flames. Plenty of time to suffer.”

“Really,” Lisa laughed easily. “You do have a flair for the melodramatic. ‘Consumed by the flames?’ Who talks that way? Look around you. Even this setting is absurd, like a bad gothic novel. Stone walls sweating blood in the heat of the night? Lurid light, pools of somber shadow? Are we supposed to be afraid? Come, now, who’s your set designer?”

The nun looked first at Defago, who said nothing, and then at the Prior General, who put his hands behind his back and thrust out his chest. She turned away in disgust.

The Prior General approached Lisa and pushed his face toward hers. “This abbey was built in the thirteenth century,” he hissed. His jowls quivered. “This room was built for a purpose. It has seen others before you. Perhaps many others.” He licked the corner of his mouth and collected himself with an effort. “You will be the last. When our work is done, this abbey will become part of the patrimony of France. I’m quite positive there will be funds available for its reconstruction. What has happened here will be as if it had never been. You will have disappeared.”

“You want the Founding Document. I have it.” She spoke calmly. Her smile was infuriating. Her teeth were perfect and white, thanks no doubt to American orthodontics, and her eyes were clear.

The Prior General stepped back. She looked so steadily and so straight at him he felt she was seeing into his darkest heart, a place he could not see himself.

He gestured to Defago. He was the Prior General. This was the end game. She was clever, yes, a resourceful Pythia. It would not do to underestimate the witch.

At the same time she was his prisoner, her arms confined behind her back, chained to a pillar. Her helper Alain was out of the picture, broken and confined, and there was her presumed lover strapped into the inquisitorial chair, undergoing the very first stages of the Questioning.

Yet she showed no fear, no weakness. She must be callous indeed to ignore his ordeal.

Well, Defago was his instrument, too. He gestured. The monk stepped into the light and, speaking conversationally, said to Steve, “Normally, you know, the questioning chair is upholstered with metal spikes.” His face took on a wistful expression. “Some people under the Question slowly bled to death in great pain. Or, sometimes the seat was heated by fire. This one, of course is wood, with leather and metal straps, so there will be no fire, and it lacks the spikes, for we are humane people and dislike pain.”