The Paris Vendetta

communicates with me at his choosing.”

They were keeping their voices down, walking behind the main group. Even though he’d worn his thickest wool coat and fur-lined gloves, he was cold. Each exhale vaporized before his eyes.

“Surely you can arrange something,” she said. “Considering we won’t be prosecuting you.”

He caught the unspoken threat. “Is that why I’m honored tonight with your presence? You came to deliver an ultimatum? Your representative wasn’t authoritative enough?”

“Game’s over, Ashby. Your usefulness is rapidly diminishing. I’d suggest you do something to increase your value.”

He’d actually already done just that, but he wasn’t about to tell this woman anything. So he asked, “Why did your people take the book in the Invalides?”

She chuckled. “To show you that there’s been a change in management on this end. New rules apply.”

“Lucky for me that you’re so dedicated to your profession.”

“You really think that there’s some lost treasure of Napoleon out there to find?”

“Eliza Larocque certainly does.”

She reached beneath her coat, removed something, and handed it to him. “That’s my show of good faith.”

He gripped the volume through his gloves. In the ambient glow of a nearby street lamp he caught the title. The Merovingian Kingdoms 450-751 A.D.

The book from the Invalides.

“Now,” she said, “give me what I want.”

The tour approached Ten Bells pub and he heard the guide explain how the establishment had played host to many of Jack the Ripper’s victims, perhaps even the Ripper himself. A fifteen-minute break was announced and drinks were available inside.

He should head back to Salen Hall and Caroline. “Are we finished?”

“Until tomorrow.”

“I’ll do everything possible to make sure you get what you want.”

“I hope so,” she said. “For your sake.”

And with that the woman named Stephanie Nelle walked off into the night.

He stared down at the book. Things really were finally falling into place.

“Good evening, Lord Ashby.”

The unexpected voice came near his right ear, low and throaty, below the rhythmic sound of soles slapping pavement around him. He turned and, in the glow of another street lamp, caught a reddish hue in thick hair and thin eyebrows. He noticed an aquiline nose, scarred face, and eyeglasses. The man was dressed, like the others around him, in thick winter wear, including scarf and gloves. One hand clutched the roped handles of a Selfridges shopping bag.

Then he saw the eyes.

A burnt amber.

“Do you ever look the same?” he asked Peter Lyon.

“Hardly.”

“It must be difficult having no identity.”

“I have no problem with my identity. I know exactly who and what I am.” The voice this time seemed almost American.

He was concerned. Peter Lyon should not be here.

“You and I need to speak, Lord Ashby.”

FORTY-FOUR

PARIS, 8:50 PM

SAM FOLLOWED MEAGAN DOWN A SPIRAL STAIRCASE THAT CORKSCREWED into the earth. They’d dined at a cafe in the Latin Quarter after being granted a temporary release from Stephanie Nelle’s protective custody.

“Where are we going?” he asked her as they kept descending into pitch blackness.

“To Paris’ basement,” Meagan said.

She was ahead of him, her flashlight dissolving the darkness below. When he reached the bottom, she handed him another light. “They don’t keep flashlights down here for trespassers like us.”

“Trespassers?”

She motioned with her beam. “It’s illegal to be here.”

“What is here?”

“The quarries. A hundred and seventy miles of tunnels and galleries. Formed when limestone was torn from the ground, used for buildings, to make gypsum for plaster, clay for bricks, and roof tiles. Everything needed to build Paris, and this is what’s left. The Paris underground.”

“And the reason we’re here?”

She shrugged. “I like this place. I thought you might, too.”

She walked ahead, following a damp passage clearly hewn from solid rock and supported by a chalky framework. The air was cool but not cold, the floor uneven and unpredictable.

“Careful of the rats,” she said. “They can pass leptospirosis.”

He stopped. “Excuse me?”

“Bacterial infection. Fatal.”

“Are you nuts?”

She stopped. “Unless you plan on letting one bite you or swishing your fingers in their urine, I’d say you’re okay.”

“What are we doing here?”

“Are you always so antsy? Just follow me. I want to show you something.”

They started back down the corridor, the roof just above his head. Her light beam revealed about fifty feet of tunnel ahead of them.

“Norstrum,” he called out to the blackness.

He wondered why he’d disobeyed and come, but the promise of an adventure had been too enticing to ignore. The caves were not far from the school, and everyone knew about them. Funny how no one ever used the word orphanage. Always the school. Or the institute. Who were his parents? He had no idea. He’d been abandoned at birth, and how he arrived in Christchurch the police never determined. The school insisted students know all they could about themselves. No secrets-he actually appreciated that rule-but there was simply nothing for him to learn.

“Sam.”

Norstrum’s voice.

He’d been told that Norstrum, when he’d first arrived at the school, had named him Sam Collins, after a beloved uncle.

“Where are you?” he called out to the blackness.

“Not far.”

He aimed his light and kept walking.

“It’s just up here,” Meagan said, as the tunnel ended in what appeared to be a spacious gallery, with multiple exits and a high ceiling. Stone pillars supported a curved roof. Meagan shone her light on the rough walls and he spied myriad graffiti, paintings, inscriptions, cartoons, mosaics, poetry, even musical lyrics.

“It’s a collage of social history,” she said. “These drawings date back to the time of the French Revolution, the Prussian siege in the late 19th century, and the German occupation in the 1940s. The Paris underground has always been a refuge from war, death, and destruction.”

One drawing caught his eye. A sketch of a guillotine.

“From the Grande Terreur,” she said, over his shoulder. “Two hundred years old. A