Cradle Of Solitude

He stepped forward as she approached.

“Excuse me. Miss Creed?”

He had a strong French accent.

“Yes?” she replied.

She searched her memory, but she was pretty sure she didn’t know him. Having strangers approach her was nothing new. People often recognized her from Chasing History’s Monsters, the cable television show she cohosted, but something told her this guy wasn’t a fan looking for a quick autograph.

“Please forgive the interruption. I am Commissaire Laroche, of the Police Nationale.”

Annja knew the Police Nationale was the main civil law enforcement agency in France. Commissaire was a commissioned officer rank, sort of analogous to a senior detective in the United States. In other words, this guy was a heavy hitter in the local police community. Annja was alarmed. She’d stayed out of trouble while on vacation and hadn’t done anything to elicit interest from the police.

This time around, at least.

Seeing he had her attention, Laroche continued. “I’m looking for some assistance with a—how do you say…peculiar? yes?—situation. Your name was given to me by Monsieur Garrison at the embassy.”

That, at least, was a name she recognized. She’d met Billy Garrison at a press junket she attended on behalf of the show the last time she’d been in Paris. He was on the ambassador’s staff and had taken her to dinner a few nights later, but there hadn’t been any spark and she’d declined his offer for a second date.

Being dateless was preferable to listening to Billy ramble on about French politics for hours again. Thanks, but no thanks.

“May I see some identification, Commissaire?”

He bowed slightly, an outdated but courtly gesture. “Of course, Miss Creed. And please, call me Henri.”

He handed over a leather case that contained his badge and ID. She glanced at it, confirmed that the man in the picture and the one standing in front of her were one and the same, then handed it back.

“Thank you. One can’t be too careful these days….”

“Of course, of course,” he replied, waving off her apology.

“So how is Billy?” she asked, more to gauge the inspector’s reaction to him than anything else.

He didn’t disappoint. “Monsieur Garrison is as long-winded as usual,” he replied, giving her a tight smile.

Yep, that was Billy.

“So what’s this peculiar situation that you need help with, Henri?” she asked.

Laroche hesitated, glancing over her shoulder as he did so. “Perhaps we might take this outside?” he asked.

When she followed his gaze and found the rest of the dojo’s students watching their discussion, Annja readily agreed.

She accompanied him out the door into the bright spring sunshine and fell into step beside him as he walked slowly up the street, explaining as he went.

“For the past several weeks construction teams have been working on the southern line of the Metro, widening the existing tunnels to make room for the new branch that will be added to the system in May.”

Annja was aware of the project, for the construction workers with their bright orange reflective vests were a familiar sight on the trains in and out of the area.

Laroche went on. “Late yesterday afternoon the floor gave way beneath a work crew in one of the newly expanded tunnels. Thankfully, only two of the men sustained injuries and in both cases they were minor ones. When the dust cleared the crew discovered that they had fallen into a previously unknown second tunnel, running parallel beneath the first. Further exploration revealed several antechambers just beyond, each one filled with stacks of human bones.”

Annja could scarcely believe what she was hearing. A previously undiscovered section of the catacombs? Her heart skipped a beat at the thought.

Prior to the creation of the catacombs in the mid-1700s, the dead of Paris were buried in small cemeteries alongside local churches. But as the city grew, the cemeteries ran out of space. Mass interments became common, often without caskets, and over time this led to the contamination of ground water as the bodies decomposed in the earth.

To deal with the problem, city officials moved to outlaw all burials within the city limits from that point forward. Existing graves were exhumed and the remains were relocated to a series of abandoned limestone quarries that were, at that time, on the outskirts of town. The process of disinterring the bones from their original resting places was carried out with reverence for the dead as well as consideration for the living. The quarry space was blessed, the long trains of carts moving the bones were accompanied by priests and the activity was always conducted at night. No attempt was made to identify or separate the individual bodies, but each set of bones was marked with a plaque indicating the cemetery from which they originated and the year they were moved. By 1860, when the relocation was completed, some five to six million skeletons had been moved to the catacombs.

Eventually, the city expanded and what had once been outside the city limits now lay hidden beneath its streets. Annja knew only a small section of the massive tunnel network was accessible to the public. That left close to two hundred miles of tunnels and caverns extending like a spider’s web beneath the city that only a handful of people had ever seen.

“Most of the men on the crew had seen the catacombs at one point or another in their careers so the rooms full of bones were not at all surprising to them,” Laroche said. “However, the discovery of a fully intact skeleton, partially buried beneath a pile of those older bones, was.”

Annja considered that for a moment. “Sounds like a job for the police rather than an archaeologist,” she said.

“Ordinarily, I’d agree with you,” Laroche replied, “but this particular discovery turned out to be a bit more complex than first thought.”

They paused, waited for the light to change, then crossed, continuing walking along the other side of the street.

“When the crime scene unit arrived, it didn’t take them long to determine that the job would be better off in the hands of a forensic anthropologist. While arrangements were being made to bring one in, word of the find was also sent to the American Embassy.”

Annja was surprised. “The embassy? So your mysterious skeleton is that of an American?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

That’s like saying you’re kind of pregnant, she thought, but when she pressed him on it Laroche wouldn’t explain any further.

“I’d rather not prejudice your opinion,” he said as they turned left onto another thoroughfare. Caught up in the puzzle he was laying out before her, Annja barely noticed where they where headed.

“What’s my opinion got to do with any of this?” she asked.

Laroche smiled. “Because of the nature of the find, it was agreed that a representative from the United States should be present when the skeleton is excavated. Mr. Garrison suggested that you would be ideally suited for the task.”

“Is that so?”

Laroche grinned devilishly. “Oui. In fact, it sounded like he said something about you preferring the company of the dead over that of the living, but perhaps I misheard him.”

He is so going to pay for that one, Annja thought, before realizing that in order to carry out her threat, she’d have to see him again.

Perhaps he wasn’t as dim-witted as she’d taken him to be.

Putting the thought aside for the time being, she focused on the opportunity being offered to her. “So are you asking me to get my hands dirty or will this be strictly observational in nature?”

“You can get as dirty as you like, Miss Creed.”

“Am I being brought on as an official consultant?” she asked.

Reading between the lines, Laroche said, “The embassy has agreed to cover your costs and to provide a reasonable fee for your time. Monsieur Garrison would not discuss the specific details with me, but stated he would be happy to take your call so he could provide you with the specifics.” So Billy wasn’t so dim-witted, after all, she thought.

“Well, when do you want to get started?” Annja asked, chuckling to herself.

Laroche slowed, and then stopped. “As a matter of fact, I was hoping you would be free right now.”

Startled, Annja glanced around, only then realizing that they were standing in front of a Metro station. A pair of sawhorses stood in front of the entrance, holding a sign noting in French that the station was currently closed for repairs.

This time Annja laughed aloud. “You certainly know how to show a girl a good time, Henri!” she said. “You’ve piqued my curiosity and given me an intriguing puzzle to boot. How could I say no?”

“Excellent!” Laroche said.

They descended the stairs and entered the station proper, where Laroche used his badge to get them past the police officer stationed there.

Once past the turnstiles, Annja followed Laroche onto the subway platform and over to the far end, where a selection of equipment was stored under a tarp. The detective removed two lanterns from beneath the cover, turned them both on and passed one to Annja. Then he led her off the platform and onto the track.

The air was cool in the tunnel and Annja was glad she’d had the foresight to grab a sweatshirt when she’d left her hotel that morning. At the moment the change in the temperature felt refreshing after the heat of the bright sun above, but it wouldn’t be long before the chill seeped into her bones if they spent any length of time down below.

She was starting to suspect they would.

As if hearing her thoughts, Laroche spoke. “The entrance to the catacombs is several hundred yards ahead. I’m sorry, but there is no alternative but to walk.”

Annja smiled at his apologetic tone. “Walking’s something an arcaheologist gets used to very quickly. It’s no problem at all.”

They kept to the center of the track, where the pathway was reasonably clear of debris and the chance of one of them turning an ankle was reduced. Not that the chances of doing so were all that great in the first place; the subways in Paris were far cleaner than those back home in Brooklyn.

Annja had spent much of her professional life clambering around inside crumbling ruins and forgotten old tunnels, so the weight of all that earth above their heads didn’t bother her in the slightest. The same couldn’t be said about her companion, however. No sooner had they started down the tunnel than the conversation dried up and his repeated glances at the roof over their heads let her know just how uncomfortable he was. Figuring he’d say something if it got to be too much, Annja kept her thoughts to herself and simply walked along in his wake.

They’d been underground for about fifteen minutes when a faint glow could be seen coming from around a bend in the tunnel ahead of them. The light grew brighter as they approached, until, rounding the curve in the tunnel, Annja could see that it was coming from a set of portable arc lights that had been erected on stands near a hole in the tunnel floor. Several people were milling about, but didn’t appear to actually be doing much of anything.

Waiting for the boss to return, Annja thought.

It turned out she was right. As soon as the group caught sight of the two of them approaching, they settled down and waited to be told what to do.

“Please wait here for a moment,” Laroche said, and then stepped over to confer with his people. After listening to an update from one of his subordinates, the detective issued a flurry of orders, sending his people scurrying off in a variety of directions on several different tasks. Doing so seemed to help him forget the weight of all that earth above and it was a steadier man who rejoined her a few moments later.

“I’m told that Professor Reinhardt from the Museum of Natural History is already waiting for us below. As the official representative from my country, he will be in charge of the project, though any actions that impact the remains directly must be approved through you. Will there be a problem with that?”

Annja shook her head. Bernard Reinhardt was an old friend. She’d worked with him on several projects and tried to find time to say hello whenever she was in Paris. His conduct in the field was impeccable; she couldn’t have asked for a better partner.

“Let’s get to it,” she said.

Stepping over to the ladder that extended out of the hole in the tunnel floor, Laroche swung himself onto its rungs and started downward.

Annja gave him a moment, and then followed.

4

Lights had been strung along the ceiling of the tunnel and in their glare Annja could easily see the differences between this tunnel and the one above. It was narrower, for one, with walls of hewn limestone rather than concrete, and with a ceiling that was a good two feet lower than the previous passageway. Where they had been able to walk two abreast with room to spare in the tunnel above, down here they were forced to move single file down the narrow corridor. It was also quiet. Gone were the faint sounds of distant trains rumbling through the walls; the limestone surrounding them seemed to swallow up even the slightest echo, devouring it before it could move more than a few inches from its source.

The most striking difference, however, was the sense of age that filled the rough-hewn walls around them. This tunnel had been around for a long time, that much was obvious, and Annja found herself wondering just what it had seen and been witness to over the years.

“This way,” Laroche said as he led her down the tunnel. They’d only walked a dozen or so yards before the opening to a chamber loomed on their left. The string of lights led inside and Laroche and Annja followed them.

Entering the room, Annja stopped short, her eyes widening at what she saw.

The entire chamber was fashioned of bones.

Human bones.

Tibias and femurs by the thousands were stacked neatly side by side, interspersed regularly with rows of skulls, their empty eye sockets staring at her as if in accusation. Here and there the skulls had been arranged in artistic patterns, a cross being the most common. There were no intact skeletons, the goal of the arrangement clearly having been to make the best use of the space available, and Annja could only assume that the rib cages, spines and other bones that would have made up the rest of each skeleton had been used to fill in the spaces behind the larger bones. Most of the stacks rose to a height of about 5 feet and from what she could see they were a few yards deep in some places. To her left was a plaque noting the year the bones had been interred as well as the cemetery from which they had come.

Clearly they had entered the original catacombs.

“Annja!” an exuberant voice cried, pulling her away from her study of the skulls before her. She turned to find her colleague, Professor Bernard Reinhardt, emerging from the chamber just beyond, his hand extended in welcome. The smile on his face was outmatched only by the size of his handlebar mustache, which stretched a good inch past his cheeks on either side.

Reinhardt was a large, portly man in his early sixties, though he had the exuberant energy of a man half his size and age. He’d been known to work right through the night and into the next day while on an important dig, putting most of the graduate students who worked with him to shame. In the narrow confines of the underground passageway he appeared twice as big as usual and Annja found herself having to stifle the urge to back away as he thundered toward her. He was dressed in a thick flannel shirt, jeans and solid pair of hiking boots, a far cry from the three-piece suit, complete with pocket watch and chain, that he liked to wear while at the museum.

Annja had met him several years before while in Paris for a symposium during which he’d delivered a presentation on the Saxon conquest of Normandy. She’d been so impressed with his quick mind and engaging delivery that she’d introduced herself after his talk. Despite the obvious difference in their ages and educational backgrounds, their shared love of European history had turned them into colleagues with genuine respect for each other’s specialties.

“Hello, Bernard,” she said, ignoring his outstretched hand and giving him a quick hug, which earned her a hearty embrace.

“It is so good to see you, Annja,” he said, releasing her. “Have they told you why you are here?”

“Just that they’ve discovered something of interest to both your government and mine,” she replied.

Bernard grinned. “Well, then, if they didn’t spoil the surprise, I’m not going to, either. This way, my dear.”

He turned and led her through several other chambers, each one similar to the last. The stacks of bones seemed to go on and on; everywhere she looked, the walls were covered with them. Not that Annja was surprised. She’d heard it estimated that there were more than six million skeletons interred down here in the dark.

That’s a lot of ghosts, she thought.

Ahead of her, Bernard came to a halt at the entrance to a side chamber.

“Is this it?” she asked.

He nodded, then extended a hand, as if to say, After you.

Her lantern held high, Annja entered the chamber.

The room was small, no larger than ten square feet, she estimated, and so it didn’t take her long to pick out what she’d been brought there to see.

The skeleton was seated with its back against the wall of the antechamber, its legs stretched out before it. A cavalry saber was gripped in one hand, in the other, a Colt revolver. At first glance both weapons appeared to be in excellent condition. So, too, was the uniform the skeleton wore—wool trousers and a light shirt, both partially covered by a long frock coat that hung to midthigh. The three bars that designated the rank of captain had been sewn onto the coat’s collar. A kepi hat was still perched atop the skull where it rested against the back wall.

The dirt and dust that had settled on the remains of the clothing made it difficult to determine the exact color of the uniform, but there was no mistaking the brass emblem of a wreath pinned to the front of the hat. The arms of the wreath rose on either side, surrounding the three letters nestled between them.

CSA.

As she stared at the emblem in surprise, Annja finally understood what Laroche had meant. They weren’t questioning that the remains belonged to an American. Not at all. They were questioning his status because the America he’d belonged to no longer existed.

The Confederate States of America.

5

Annja walked over to the skeleton and settled into a crouch before it, her gaze moving slowly and carefully, taking in the details. Behind her, she heard Bernard step into the room.

“Fascinating, isn’t it?” he said, his voice hushed, as if in reverence for the dead man before them. “To think he’s been down here for a hundred and fifty years, just waiting for someone to come along and find him.”

Annja nodded. She was amazed that anyone had done so, frankly. The chances of the construction team finding the adjacent tunnel, never mind following the right series of chambers to wind up here, several hundred yards from the entrance, were astronomical.

“Any idea who he was?” she asked, looking back at her colleague.

Bernard shook his head. “Not a clue. But that’s why we’re here, my dear, to solve the mystery.”

And a mystery it was. Annja couldn’t think of a simple reason why a Confederate soldier, a captain no less, would have been wandering around down here in the catacombs miles from any known entrance. Had he simply gotten lost? Stumbled around in the dark, unable to find his way back out, until eventually he’d succumbed to a lack of food or, more likely, water?

If that was the case, what was he doing with a cutlass and pistol in hand? Just who, or what, had he been defending himself against?

An interesting puzzle, to say the least.

And just the kind of thing that Annja lived for.

She reached into the bag at her side and pulled out her digital camera. She rarely went anywhere without it and it was times like this when she was thankful she’d adopted the habit. Eventually, she knew, they were going to have to remove the skeleton from the catacombs and take it back to Bernard’s laboratory for proper examination, but there were a lot of things they needed to do before that and documenting the site as they’d found it was the first priority. The position of items in relation to others and the context in which they were found were just as important to an archaeologist as the items themselves. The photographs would help them establish a record of where each item was in relation to all the others, allowing them to reconstruct the site down to the finest detail if necessary as their investigation progressed.

She started by taking several wide-angle shots, panning her way around the room until she had covered it all. They would be able to make a panorama-style shot from the photographs showing the entire room and even use them to create a three-dimensional computer model.

When she was finished with that task, she focused on the skeleton itself. She took several shots to establish its position against the wall, then moved in for close-ups. She’d taken about a dozen pictures and was about to call it quits when the light from the flash bounced off the uniform the skeleton wore and highlighted something she hadn’t previously noticed.

Bernard must have seen her sudden tension.

“What have you got, Annja?” he asked as she leaned in closer to get a better look.

“Not sure yet,” she murmured, her gaze on the skeleton in front of her.

As the flesh beneath it had decayed, the uniform coat had folded down upon itself, hiding small stretches of fabric between the folds. The light from the flash had thrown back an oddly shaped shadow from one of them, suggesting that there was something else there. Annja withdrew a pen from her pocket and gently lifted the edge of the folded material, revealing what lay beneath.

The blackened edges of a bullet hole stared back at her.

Gently, Annja used her pen to lift the coat’s edge away from the shirt beneath. The dark stain that covered the yellowed linen shirt beneath answered one question that had been nagging at her.

The soldier, whoever he was, hadn’t wandered down here, gotten lost and eventually died of thirst, as she’d first hypothesized.

He’d been shot in the chest.

And from the looks of it, he’d died pretty quickly thereafter.

This hadn’t been an accident; it was murder.

Bernard crouched beside her and she showed him what she found.

“See the rounded edges of the bullet hole?” she asked, pointing with the end of the pen. “And the way the fabric is still intact all around it, rather than stretched or torn?”

Bernard nodded. “The musket ball was moving so fast that it didn’t have time to do much damage to the material as it passed through. Must have been close range, then.”

“Just what I was thinking, as well.”

She sat back on her haunches and stared at the dead man in front of her. “He wasn’t here by accident. We’re too far away from any easily accessible entrance for that to be the case. He came here deliberately, perhaps to meet someone…”

“And whoever it was gunned him down where he stood,” Bernard finished for her.

“It’s no longer an interesting archaeological puzzle,” Annja said as she climbed to her feet. “Now it’s a homicide investigation.”

The police, however, wanted nothing to do with such an old murder. After a few quick calls back to headquarters, Laroche approached and informed Annja and Bernard that they were still in charge of the investigation, that their skills were going to be more valuable in terms of identifying the victim and perhaps even his murderer than anything the police could bring to bear on the problem.

Homicide or not, it was their problem to solve.