“It’s possible. DuPaar wouldn’t be the first person to believe whatever country possessed Alexander’s mummy could never be defeated. It’s the kind of legend a deranged dictator would love. And I’m fairly certain the Chinese didn’t rob the church in Venice for Saint Mark’s remains. They thought they were getting Alexander’s.”
Patrick pursed his lips, doubtful. “Alexander the Great in Saint Mark’s tomb? That is… what do you say… a pull?”
“A stretch. But not as much as you might think.”
Lang explained the theory set forth in Chugg’s book.
By the time he had finished, Patrick was shaking another Gitane out of the box. “And you believe if you can find these…?”
“If I can find the mummy, or whatever remains of it, or prove it no longer exists, duPaar will no longer tolerate foreign forces in his country.”
Patrick took a thoughtful puff, smoke streaming from his nose. “And that would hardly endear you to the Chinese, my friend.”
“Perhaps not, but if they no longer can keep a foothold in Haiti by reason of Alexander’s mummy, remains, whatever, they have very little incentive to continue efforts to get rid of me and Gurt. Like them or not, they are practical. Likewise, if the Chinese pick up their toys and go home, the U.S. government no longer has to worry about what I might say. In fact, they can take credit for avoiding a threat.”
Patrick opened his center desk drawer, poking through it with a pen as though he anticipated he might encounter something venomous. “Nanette has a friend whose husband teaches history at the Sorbonne, a pudgy, officious little academic. Nanette tells me he has just finished editing for publication a diary of someone, Bonaparte’s personal secretary, I think. Supposedly, this lecturer in history discovered a number of previously unknown facts about the emperor. Ah! Here is his card!”
Patrick held it between thumb and forefinger, the way one might hold a dead rat by the tail.
Lang took it, scanning the spidery print. “I’m not sure what he can-”
Patrick shut the drawer with a slam. “The man may be an ass but he has won several prizes for historic research. If Bonaparte’s savants found anything relating to Alexander, he would know about it.
“I will call to let him know you will visit him.” Patrick consulted a large gold Rolex. “But first, the oysters at the Restaurant de la Place de l’Opera are superb this time of year. They arrive daily from Honfleur. Come.”
It was obvious Patrick was not going to focus on anything beyond lunch, not until he was sated with Norman mollusks.
A rural highway in Georgia
The previous evening
The men blocking the road had given the matter some thought. They had chosen a place the highway narrowed slightly just before a bridge over some nameless creek. There was no chance Gurt could pull around them without hitting the bridge abutment or going into the water itself.
She gave the latter possibility an instant’s thought. The big Hummer’s high ground clearance and four-wheel drive just might be enough to get it across the water. She dismissed the idea. She had no means of knowing how deep the water was but it was a certainty winter rains and any ice melt had not diminished its flow.
Instead, she kept her foot on the gas despite frantically waving flashlights and the echo-tinged shouting of a bullhorn.
Two questions occupied her mind as she bore down on the blockade: where was the weakest spot and did the government want her badly enough to use deadly force?
The second was answered by a burst of automatic rifle fire well over the Hummer’s roof, warning shots only. The staccato blast brought Manfred wide-awake with a yelp of fear. She had only a fraction of a second to take a hand from the wheel, reach behind the front seat and make sure he was secure in his child’s seat.
“Mommy!” he shouted in terror.
There was no time for him to say anything else.
Gurt was aware of figures scattering like a covey of frightened birds as she aimed the Hummer at the narrow space between sheriff’s cruiser and the unmarked car. Now she would find out if the massive Hummer’s superior weight would push through the lighter vehicles. With a sound of shrieking sheet metal, the Hummer split the two apart like an ax cleaving a log. The impact tried to snatch the wheel from her hand.
Then her world went white as the air bag exploded into her chest, driving her back against her seat and blinding her forward vision. Using the edge of the road she could see through the side window, she kept on the pavement as she used one hand to tug the balloonlike air bag aside. Ahead, she could see into multiprismed fractions as the windshield had become a spiderweb of refracted light.
She could feel something dragging against the right front wheel. A fender, she guessed. Manfred was howling with fear but otherwise seemed fine. A thin trail of steam was jetting from a radiator even the big grill had not been able to completely protect. A quick glance at the gauges showed engine heat creeping toward the red as oil pressure fell off. She must have ruptured a line or holed the oil pan.
She next checked the mirrors. It was too dark to see exactly what damage she had caused but it was apparently enough to prevent pursuit for the moment. She needed to put as much distance between her and the people at the bridge as possible before the engine seized.
She took the first dirt road she could see by her one remaining headlight. Cresting a small rise, she saw another, smaller unpaved path, actually no more than parallel tracks leading toward a shedlike structure.
She turned in, the scraping sound against the right front wheel louder. She stopped in front of a ramshackle wooden building, shifted into park, put on the brake and got out. She left the engine running for fear it would not restart. In the beam of the single light, she saw a tractor and an aged pickup truck. She had arrived at some farmer’s machine shed.
Shifting her attention to the Hummer, Gurt could now see the grill had been pushed back into the radiator where the spume of steam was hissing. A fender had indeed been crushed against the right front tire.
None of this interested her as much as what she could not see.
Crossing in front of the car, she opened the passenger door.
Forcing herself to ignore Manfred’s pleas to be freed from his car seat, she removed a flashlight from the glove box, knelt and began to examine the underside of the SUV.
It took her less than a minute to find a soap-bar-sized box just under the driver’s door. She recognized it as one of a number of commercially available wireless devices with GPS capabilities, the kind used by long-haul trucking companies for both security and driver location. It could be tracked by anyone with Internet access and a password. The following car Jake had spotted was only closing the rear door of a preset trap once she had entered a section of the highway with no turnoffs. Like chasing fish into the net.
But hadn’t Jake swept for just such a homing device a few hours ago? A closer look showed a wire from the contraption running forward. Although she could not see from where she was, she would bet it was connected to the Hummer’s starter, activated only by turning on the ignition. With the switch off, there was nothing to be found by the kind of sweep as Jake had performed.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the thumping of rotor blades. Her pursuers might have been disabled on the ground but they had managed to get a helicopter airborne and this locator beacon was going to lead them straight to her.
From the rate at which the sound was growing, they would be here in minutes.
Place de l’Opera, Paris
The Honfleur oysters had been as good as promised but gastronomy had hardly been on Lang’s mind. He had hardly savored the fruits de mer, a whole lobster, crab, shrimp, mussels, clam and whelk with tart shallot-vinegar sauce, warm loaf of rye bread and dairy-fresh butter.
“Only a single glass of Muscadet?” Patrick asked. “It is a marvelous vintage.”
Lang looked around the ornate, rococo dining room complete with mural on the ceiling. Most of the patrons were men in business suits. Several had much younger women with them. Lang would have bet this was not the French version of National Administrative Professionals Week.
He would have liked nothing more than to get a little tipsy on the sweet wine and retire for a nap. “Regrettably, I have a busy afternoon, what with seeing professor”-he reached into a pocket to remove the card-“Henri D’Tasse.”
Patrick had shamelessly helped himself to the last of the Muscadet, shaking the bottle slightly to make
