amazingly enough, his father had begun to sing. Softly at first, then with a full throat. The French National Hymn, “La Marseillaise.”
Arise children of the motherland
The day of glory has arrived…
To arms, citizens! Form your battalions!
We march, we march!
Let their impure blood water our fields.
It was almost unbearable, the pity Luca felt for his father at that moment. Almost. Finally, they came to a wide corridor at the end of a long hallway. Inside the church proper, now, Luca thought. The huge round room of the Dome was full of moonlight as they entered. There was a waist-high white marble balcony circling the room beneath the towering dome. Pale blue moonlight streamed down from above, falling on a single sculpted monument rising up from the floor below.
“Holy Jesus,” Joe Bones whispered, awe in his voice. “Lookit that!”
He took Luca by one shoulder and pulled him toward the balcony. Luca closed his eyes and placed his hands on the cool marble railing. Breathing deeply, he emptied his mind. When he was ready, he opened his hungry eyes and feasted on the vision of his noble ancestor’s final resting place.
The tomb of his beloved emperor.
Luca took a deep breath. Napoleon Bonaparte’s real bones were inside this beautiful monument. His heart was pounding against his ribs as he took it all in, almost forgetting about his father for the moment.
Arising from the lower depths of the church, the emperor’s great stone sarcophagus, the captured wave, rested atop a high marble plinth. Above the tomb, the circular cupola rose some two hundred feet. Although the space was chill and airless, Luca could sense a thrilling presence here. Almost a living presence. Menacing. It was as if Napoleon was not resting here, but lurking.
Luca saw that a thick rope descended out of the gloom of the top of the dome. It hung directly above the crypt and now one of the goons had a long shepherd’s crook and was reaching out over the balcony, slowly pulling the rope toward his father. He sucked down a lungful of cool damp air. They were going to hang him? His heart rate zoomed even higher and his mouth went dry, but still he showed nothing.
“Luca!” he heard his father cry now. “Run! Run!”
“Don’t worry, Father, I’m coming,” Luca said. As he slowly circled the curved balustrade, a passing cloud covered the moon, filling the dome with purple darkness.
Luca, his eyes shining, strode round the balcony to where Benny and his men stood in a small circle around his father. The son walked up to the father, stared deeply into his haunted eyes, and turned to the man in the black raincoat.
“Monsieur Benny,” Luca said in a voice so low it was barely audible, “if you would be so kind as to ask Monsieur Bones to give me his gun.”
His father stared at him, his face a mask of confusion.
Luca leaned forward and kissed his father on the left cheek.
“What? What is—” His father’s eyes went wide and he strained violently against the two men who held him in their grip. He struggled for breath. His lips formed words that would not come.
“Luca?” Emile cried out as the skeleton handed Luca the pistol. “Luca! What are you—what is happening—I am a loyal soldier of the Corse! I—”
“You are loyal to the Corse, Papa,” he said, his voice barely over a whisper, “but you killed a brother of the Brigade Rouge.”
He raised the automatic until it was aimed between his father’s eyes.
“Luca, no. Listen to me. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
Luca increased the pressure on the trigger.
“Put the gun down, son. Listen to your father. Whatever your crazy Brigade Rouge people are saying, it isn’t true. I made some mistakes, yes. But, not—this. Don’t do this, Luca. I love you.”
The boy couldn’t do it. He lowered the muzzle slowly, never taking his eyes off his father’s own pleading eyes.
“My son! What—”
“The Brigade Rouge has no forgiveness for traitors,” Luca said, his voice flat.
“The party! Wait! You don’t—let me—”
The gun came up.
“Luca! For God’s sake! You can’t—”
Luca pulled the trigger.
The muzzle flash was brilliant and the crack of the explosion reverberated throughout the great domed chapel. His father was blown back against the balustrade, a bubble of blood forming on his lips as he sank to his knees. Luca looked down, letting the gun slip from his hand and clatter to the marble floor. His father lay gasping on the cold stone. In the dim light, the spreading stain on his chest was thick and black. He was vomiting blood. Luca stepped back and the two goons bent to their work. They looped the thick rope over Emile’s head, forming a heavy noose around his neck.
“You got balls, kid,” Joe Bones said, looking down at the dying man. “I gotta give you that.”
Emile Bonaparte’s right leg was still jerking spasmodically and he was taking shallow ragged breaths. Luca knelt beside him, taking his father’s still-warm hand and holding it to his cheek. Luca made every effort to force his eyes to fill with tears. It was the one test he would fail on this historic night. He could not cry on demand.
“Arrivederci, Comrade Papa.”
A fresh gout of blood erupted from his father’s mouth, and Luca’s hands were covered in the thick warm fluid. It had to be this way, he said to himself. In just this place, in just this way. He pinned a red floret to his father’s lapel and got to his feet.
“Do it,” Luca finally barked at the skeleton. “Finish the damn thing. Hang him.”
Then the two large men—Luca recognized them now as the two men who looked like brothers from the station platform—bent and picked up his father’s body. One had the feet, the other held his wrists. They began to swing the body to and fro, in ever greater arcs, the blood looping out of his father’s mortal wound.
Luca watched in stony silence as his father’s body sailed high out over the curvature of the balcony. He moved to the railing and looked down as the rope snapped taut, taking the full weight of the old man’s body.
Emile Bonaparte jerked to a stop at the end of the rope, his body swaying gently just a few meters above Napoleon’s sarcophagus. A cloud shifted high above, and blue moonlight once again lit the scene. Two dead Bonapartes, one grave. A red floret pinned on the traitor’s lapel. It was all intended to send a message to those in government who had something to fear from the Brigade Rouge. It was also a call to arms to Luca’s fellow conspirators, to unite in their struggle to overthrow the old leadership of the Corse.
“Wait till the cops get a load of this little picture,” Joe Bones said, staring at the scene. “I mean, this shit is friggin’ dramatic!”
Luca felt Benny Sangster’s big rough hand on his shoulder.
“You got the money, kid? I know you popped him. But we got expenses to cover.”
Luca handed him the envelope containing the ten thousand dollars, U.S. The price the Brigade Rouge had put on his father’s head.
“I never would have believed it, kid,” he said, pocketing the cash. “I told them Red Brigade Corsicans you was too wet behind the ears. You know. That you didn’t have the moxie. I mean, c’mon. What kind of kid could —”
“I am capable of absolutely anything,” Luca said, in a voice as cold as stone. “I am a son of Napoleon.”
And, in that pit where his soul would have been if he’d had one, he truly believed it.
“Well, you certainly made your bones the hard way, kid,” Benny said. “Never seen anything like it.”
A death rattle came from the twisted throat of the man hanging by his neck in the moonlight.
“Whoa,” Joe Bones said, digging his knuckles into his sunken eye sockets, “this shit is intense.”
“This is just the beginning,” Luca Bonaparte said as he walked away into the shadows.
