Gray moved through an archway into the covered walkway. He wanted to examine the far sides of the columns. The standing stones back in England had spirals on their reverse sides.
He searched quickly along the cloister. The others joined him. He found no markings on the inner surfaces of the columns. By the time he had circled all the way back to where he started, his excitement had waned. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was reading too much into the symbolism.
The woman noted his determined search. 'So you've heard the local legend,' she said with a slight scoffing tone. 'I think half the reason the cloister still stands is because of that mystery.'
Wallace wiped his brow with a handkerchief. 'What mystery are you talking about, my dear lady?'
The woman smiled for the first time, slightly smitten by the older professor. Also, Wallace had been sticking close to her, asking lots of questions, which probably contributed to the attraction.
'It's a legend only told locally. A story passed from one generation to the next. But I'll admit, it is an oddity.'
Wallace returned her smile, encouraging her to continue.
She pointed to the courtyard. 'As I said before, it's typical to sanctify a church with twelve consecration crosses. But here there are only eleven.'
Surprised, Gray stepped back out into the garden. He mentally kicked himself for not being thorough enough. He had never thought to count the number of symbols. He had assumed there were twelve, like the standing stones.
'The story goes that the missing twelfth and final consecration cross of Clairvaux Abbey guards a great treasure. People have been looking for it for ages, scouring the grounds here, even searching the outlying barns. But it's all just silly legendes. Absurdite. Most likely the twelfth cross had been carved inside the abbey itself, joining the blessing out here to the church.'
And maybe that link still existed, Gray thought .
The guide checked her watch. 'I'm sorry, but we must end our tour here. Perhaps if you come tomorrow, I could show you more.'
This last offer was mostly directed at Wallace Boyle.
'Oh, I'm sure we'll be back,' he promised her.
Gray glanced at Seichan to see if she thought that might still be possible. She had sidled next to him. With the tour ending, she had grown visibly tense.
Before he could question her, a loud siren blared, jarring and strident. They all searched around. What was going on?
The armed guard moved closer. Rachel turned to their guide, checking her face to see if this was a normal occurrence.
'We must find cover,' Seichan said at Gray's ear. Her voice was urgent, but she looked almost relieved, as though she had been waiting for something to happen.
'What's going on?'
Before she could answer, a new noise intruded. Past the siren, a heavy thud-thud reverberated, felt in the gut. He looked to the sky as two helicopters shot into view over the wooded ridgeline. The pair rose high, then tipped their noses and dove straight toward the prison.
From the sirens, Gray knew those two did not belong in this airspace.
The prison was under attack.
3:22 P.M.
Krista sat next to the pilot as he angled the helicopter toward the prison below. Even through the muffling headphones and the roar of the rotors, she made out the scream of the sirens below. The facility had picked up their approach, tried to hail them, but without proper call signs radioed back, the prison had sounded the alarm.
Ahead of her, the first Eurocopter swept over the prison grounds. From its belly, barrels dropped. They tumbled below and crashed with fiery explosions. The concussions cut through the chaos, booming like thunder.
Krista wanted as much mayhem as possible. She had been informed of the security protocol at Clairvaux Prison. In case of emergency, the facility would isolate the abbey ruins, both to protect a national treasure and to secure any tourists trapped there.
Like now.
The pilot from the lead helicopter radioed to her. 'Targets have been spotted below. Sending coordinates.'
She glanced at her bird's pilot. He nodded. He'd gotten the coordinates and banked the helicopter hard to the right. They were carrying ten men aboard their bird. Drop lines were being readied at both hatches. Once over the ruins, the men would bail out, slide down the lines, and secure the targets below.
Krista would accompany that first assault team.
She intended to handle this personally.
After the prison was bombed and burning, the other helicopter would unload its men in a second wave. The two birds would continue their patrol, ready and waiting to evacuate on her orders.
Leaning forward, Krista stared below. The coordinates marked a massive square of stone ruins around a large garden. The space was wide enough to land a helicopter inside if necessary.
The pilot came on the line. 'Waiting your mark,' he said.
She lifted a fist and pointed her thumb down.
Time to end this.
3:24 P.M.
Gray sheltered with the others under the cloister's covered walkway. His ears rang from the blaring sirens. His head pounded from the concussions. Fountains of fire and smoke erupted all around them.
Gray understood the tactic of firebombing the prison.
Someone wants us trapped.
And he could guess who.
Seichan's bosses wanted them on a shorter leash. Had she informed them about how close Gray's team was to finding the key? Was this how they wanted to play their endgame?
Still, Seichan looked just as angry. Apparently she hadn't been informed of this change in plans.
'What are we going to do?' Rachel asked.
He couldn't answer. He knew there were many questions buried in that one. How were they going to get out of here? What about the promised antidote to her poisoning? Without the Doomsday key in hand, they had no bargaining chip.
They needed that key.
Just before the assault, something had begun to gel in Gray's mind. A vague idea, the whisper of a thought. But the sirens and bombs had blown it all away.
Something about the missing twelfth consecration cross.
Out of the smoke, a helicopter swooped into view. Its shadow fell over the yard as it skimmed to a hovering position. Rotorwash buffeted the enclosed space, flattening the flowers and shaking the bushes.
Gray and the others had nowhere to run.
As he faced the garden, he suddenly knew the answer. There was no calculation, no piecing it together. It formed fully in his head.
Time slowed to a crawl.
He remembered his fixation with the old abbey map at the Troyes library. He knew what had nagged at him. There had been a pagan cross inscribed on that very page. Back at the library, he had missed it, failed to recognize it in that context. In his mind's eye, he saw it clearly now.
The pagan cross represented the earth quartered into its primary corners: east, west, north, south.
Just like the map's compass.
Gray stared into the garden-at the decoration that graced the middle of the yard. The compass was an ornate brass construction that rested on a waist-high stone plinth. The compass was sculpted with elaborate frills, each of the four cardinal directions clearly marked, along with many gradations in between.
The twelfth consecration cross-though disguised in this new incarnation-had been in plain sight all
