Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

“Time enough for us to get to know you,” he said, with a wink.

Fat chance. “Look, I work here,” she said.

“You don’t look like a construction worker,” he said, sniffing. “Interesting coat. You sure the raccoon’s dead?”

“Digital inventory archive,” she said, impatient. “But who are you?”

By now the robes had come off, and surrounding her were young men in pinstripe suits. The candlelight flickered over their faces. “Gadz’Arts,” one of them said as if assuming she’d understand.

Like Pascal Samour, Jean-Luc, and de Voule, but a few years younger. “What’s going on?”

“One of our traditions,” the brown-haired one said, as if chanting in robes were commonplace. “We’re recent Conservatoire graduates, but part of a long history. One of our customs. Many think them arcane and silly, but we’ve been here since 1789, so to speak.”

With their robes off in the flickering candlelight, they looked like any three-piece suits in the nearby Bourse bars.

He grinned. “We’re trained technical engineers, I’m afraid. This meeting, well, it’s what we Gadz’Arts have done for centuries, nothing so exotic as the Freemasons.” He turned to one of the others, now on his cell phone. “Or so I’ve heard.”

“If you’re engineers, you can figure a way out, non?”

The one with the phone nodded. “Bad news. The hail’s knocked out the grid for several streets.”

Great. “But with your technical savvy, I’d imagine you know how to jimmy the electrical door lock.”

“Why?” the brown-haired one said.

She had no intention of spending the night here with these … whatever they were.

“I’m late,” she said, wishing she’d come up with something more original. Part of her hesitated, held back from mentioning Jean-Luc.

The men exchanged glances.

“Or do I need to learn the secret handshake?”

“Follow us.”

“To where?”

“The tunnel to the street exit.” Two of them moved carved chairs aside, revealing a coved door that clicked open on a spring latch. Beyond it, narrow steps wound down to a subterranean tunnel. Vaulted and dry.

“But how do you know about this?” She didn’t like this plan. On the other hand, she wanted to get out of here.

“Part of our initiation rites,” the smiling brown-haired man said. “After you.”

The tunnel followed the refectory layout above. The men carried candles, illuminating the dirt ground, the blackened stone archways.

“We’re concluding our ritual,” one of them said.

Filing through one cavern, each of the men deposited something from their pockets in a human skull. She backed up against the wall.

“Your turn.”

“I don’t think so.” But before she could turn, he’d pushed her and slammed an old oak door she hadn’t noticed in the shadows. She heard clinking metal as the door locked.

Stupid again! “What the hell! Let me out!”

Laughter. “Part of our rites, Mademoiselle.”

“Rites? Some prank? You’re sick.”

“Non, we expected you.”

Expected her? In rising panic, she pounded on the door.

Then stopped and listened. Nothing. She turned her penlight to the human skull. She shuddered. Inside were wooden matchsticks, written all over with miniscule black script.

Mademoiselle Samoukashian’s words came back to her: the cruel medieval rites of hazing. An overcoat hung dripping on the dirt. A camel-hair coat. Like the one worn by the man darting in the street, the man who’d attacked her.

Her head ached. She had to get out of here. Her penlight battery would last only so long. She inserted her double-sided lock pick and jiggled. The door opened. Thank God centuries-old locks had simple mechanisms.

Meizi had been run down before her eyes, both of them targets. She’d discovered Morbier to be a traitre, her mother likely dead. The clueless DST was on her tail for a lead to her mother, or maybe for Samour’s formula. But they weren’t the only ones.

Footsteps pounded behind her in the dirt.

She ran through the tunnel’s forks and twists, trying to visualize what lay above.

She came to a bricked-up wall. Nowhere to go.

Her fingers scrabbled inside her bag for a tool, a weapon. Only the lock pick.

“Are you lost?”

She knew that voice. And in that moment, all the puzzle pieces fit. Her lip trembled. She should have put it together before. But after the attack … Revulsion took over. Now she was trapped. But let him win? No way. She fought the shaking in her legs, her hands. She had to talk her way out of here. “Thank God, Jean-Luc. The power’s out, the Gadz’Arts said—”

“And they were right,” Jean-Luc said. A strong flashlight beam blinded her. Her blood ran cold. Cornered like a rat, no way out and the killer in front of her.

“You expected me, Jean-Luc?” Her hand gripped the lock pick in her bag. She slid it up her sleeve. “So you know I just found the document Samour stole from you.”

“Bien sur,” he said, his voice soaked up by the densely packed earth. She couldn’t see him behind the flashlight beam. “We can’t have you interrupting our ritual, you know. That’s not allowed.”

“My mistake. I need to show you this, upstairs.” She tried to sound more confident than she felt with her back to the wall. “There’s more light, still some power in my laptop,” she said, trying to buy time.

“I told them I’d deal with you,” he said.

Like he dealt with Pascal? Her heels hit the wall, nowhere to go, no way to see him. Did he have a gun?

Her breath came in short spurts.

Jean-Luc had wanted to steal the formula from Pascal Samour, not the other way around. He was desperate to jump ahead in fiber optics. Why hadn’t she put it together? How could she have ignored the obvious signs? She was furious with herself.

“You don’t understand,” Jean-Luc said. “Pascal didn’t follow rules. Never had. He wouldn’t listen. I caged him up, like we’d always done. But he’d changed.”

Caged him? So for once Pascal stood up to him, refused to act the doormat. And paid.

“As his Mentu, his mentor, you tried, didn’t you?” she said.

“You found the backup he promised me, like I knew you would,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact.

“Promised you?” She had to keep talking. “But you told me he stole this.”

How much longer until he attacked her? Here, vulnerable, with the light blinding her as the car’s headlights had blinded Meizi.

“C’est vrai, but I’m the only one who ever listened to Pascal.”

“Becquerel believed in him.” Then it hit her. “But you took care of Becquerel,” Aimee said, taking a guess. “Smothered him with a pillow in the nursing home, didn’t you?”

“That shouldn’t have happened.” His bittersweet tone surprised her. “We’re trained engineers, not killers.”

“But Pascal was brilliant,” she said. “He discovered the ancient stained-glass formula and applied the concept to the principles of fiber optics.” She was perspiring in the coat.

“So simple, when you think about it. The greatest discoveries are. The rest, so unnecessary.” Jean-Luc’s voice dropped, almost sad now. “I listened to Pascal, I was the only one.”

“Wrong again. The DST listened,” she said. “He worked for them.”

“The DST? Too late to the party.” His voice hardened. “The Chinese military offered me a contract. It’s the Year of the Tiger, auspicious.”

“Chinese? Was Meizi involved?”