Cradle Of Solitude

He interrupted her again. “Wait, I thought the catacombs were full of skeletons. What difference does it make that they found one in a French uniform?”

“The American Civil War, Doug, not the French. The French didn’t have a civil war.”

How he managed to run a show about historical subjects with such a limited view of world history constantly astounded her, but he took her correction in stride, seemingly without a second thought.

“American, okay, got it. Union or Confederate uniform?”

“Confederate. But that’s really beside the point.”

He didn’t seem to hear her. “This is good, Annja, real good. We can turn this into a world-class episode, just leave it to me.”

Knowing Doug, he’d find a way to suggest that the Paris catacombs were full of Civil War zombies, getting ready for the second rise of the South. Leaving it to him was the last thing she intended to do.

“Doug, we’re not doing an episode on this. I just need the letter authenticated.”

“Who’s it from?”

“The letter?”

“Yes, of course the letter. Try to keep up, Annja.”

I swear, one of these days I’m going to run him through with my sword, she thought. “Jefferson Davis.”

“Confederate President Jefferson Davis?”

Maybe he did know something about history, after all. Either that or he was quick with Wikipedia.

“The one and the same.”

There was silence for a moment. “Annja?”

“Yes, Doug?”

“Let me be sure I’ve got this straight. You discovered a skeleton, dressed in the uniform of a Confederate soldier, carrying a letter from President Davis, in the midst of the Paris catacombs and you don’t think there’s anything of interest there for the show?”

Annja had to admit he had a good point.

In the end, Doug agreed he would use whatever cachet the show had to get someone at the Smithsonian to examine the letter as quickly as possible. In return, she agreed to send over a copy of the video footage they’d taken to date so that it could be cleaned up and potentially used in an episode about discovering the skeleton at a later date.

Once that was settled, they agreed to check in with each other if anything significant developed and ended the call.

Not thirty seconds after getting off the phone, Annja realized that she probably could have just called up the embassy and asked Billy Garrison to get it done for her, given that she was officially working on a government matter, anyway.

But that would, of course, require talking to him and he’d have wanted to get together to discuss the situation in more detail, say, over dinner and drinks, and she’d have felt obligated to do so in order to get the letter properly authenticated and…no. Doug was the better option.

Owing Doug a favor couldn’t be all that bad, could it?

After a moment, she decided that, yes, it could be all that bad. Doug was the guy who had once asked her to pretend to be dead for a few weeks to milk the sales of the commemorative DVD set he’d put out when she’d been incorrectly reported dead.

Dutifully ignoring Bernard’s chuckles, Annja got back to work.

7

After examining the sack coat, Annja turned her attention to the pistol and sword Parker had been holding when he’d died.

The gun was a single action revolver, which she recognized as a Colt 1851 Navy Revolver from the engraving of a naval battle on the cylinder. The gun had been popular at the time of the Civil War. Her research told her that famous Navy Revolver users included Wild Bill Hickok, “Doc” Holliday and General Robert E. Lee.

Drawing back the hammer, she discovered that three of the six chambers still held percussion caps, indicating that they were loaded and ready to fire.

Apparently Parker’s enemy hadn’t been the only one who’d gotten a shot off at the fateful meeting, she thought.

She emptied the revolver, carefully storing the percussion caps, bullets and powder in separate vials, eliminating the chance of an accident while she examined the weapon.

When she was finished with the revolver she turned her attention to the sword. Since she’d miraculously inherited Joan of Arc’s famous sword, bladed weapons had become a passion for Annja and she immediately recognized this one as a Shelby cavalry sabre, named after General Joseph O. Shelby, leader of the Iron Brigade. When the Confederacy fell, Shelby, one of the few Confederate generals who had never been defeated in combat by Union troops, took his entire command to Mexico rather than surrender. The cavalry sword he’d carried throughout the war, a common enough model produced by the Ames sword company, was renamed in his honor after the war.

The blade was about forty inches in length and bore the CSA, or Confederate States of America, inscription, as did the brass guard. The grip was leather, wrapped with twisted brass wire. The entire weapon seemed to be in excellent shape and Annja gave it a few experimental swings through the air to get the sense of it. It was well-balanced, though shorter and lighter than the weapon she was used to using.

Putting the weapon back down on the examination table, she moved over to the rest of Parker’s clothing.

He’d been wearing leather cavalry boots rather than the usual leather brogans, but Annja wasn’t surprised by this, as Confederate footwear had been notoriously bad. The boots were in fairly good shape, but didn’t tell her anything new about their owner. The same was true for the regulation trousers that she examined next.

The shirt was a bit more interesting, if only because it held the evidence of the gunshot that had ended Parker’s life. There was a bullet hole in the front of the shirt, just to the left of the sternum, but no corresponding hole on the back. This meant the bullet hadn’t passed completely through his body, as she might have expected at such close range, but had remained lodged somewhere inside his chest. It was a good reminder that modern weapons were far more powerful than those of a hundred years ago and she told herself to keep that in mind as she examined the evidence of Parker’s demise.

Annja wished they had the bullet to examine, as it might have been able to tell them something about the gun that had been used. That could have narrowed their avenues of inquiry a bit, but she’d been unable to find it among Parker’s remains.

It’s probably on the floor of the antechamber. Maybe I’ll go back and try to find it later, she thought.

Annja was about to put the shirt aside when she noticed an odd double stitch along one of the seams. She ran her fingers over the cloth at that point and felt something there, just beneath the surface.

It was small, no more than an inch long and less than a quarter-inch thick, and it hadn’t gotten there by accident. Whatever it was, someone had taken a bit of trouble to hide it inside the seam of the shirt.

“I think I’ve got something,” Annja said, and when Bernard came back over to her station as he had done before, she showed him what she had found. They both agreed that it merited further investigation. They photographed the shirt from a variety of angles, wanting to preserve a record of its condition before they altered it in any way, and then they x-rayed it, as well. The latter was inconclusive, however; it showed the object and confirmed its rectangular shape, but it didn’t provide any information as to what it might be.

They were going to have to take a look for themselves.

Scalpel in hand, Annja carefully cut each of the threads that held the seam closed and then, using the flat of the blade, she lifted the edge of the cloth, revealing what was hidden inside—a folded piece of paper. Annja held the pocket of cloth open with the scalpel while Bernard used a pair of tweezers to tease the paper free of its hiding place and move it onto its own examination plate.

With the aid of a low-power magnifying glass Annja could see that two edges of the paper were evenly cut, while the others were ragged, indicating it had been torn from a larger source.

A few words had been written on the small slip of paper in a hurried scrawl. Using the magnifying glass, Annja read them aloud.

“Berceau de solitude.”

Annja didn’t need Bernard to translate. She knew the words were Cradle of Solitude, but she hoped he might have some insight on what it meant, because she didn’t have a clue.

“Only place I know by that name is a monastery in the Pyrenees,” he told her.

“A monastery? Can you think of any reason it might be connected to our mysterious friend here?” she asked.

“Not particularly. If memory serves, it started out as a convent in the early 1500s, was abandoned about a hundred years later and then was bought by a sect of Benedictine monks just before the French Revolution. They’ve been running the place ever since.”

Benedictine monks. She couldn’t think of any obvious connection between the religious order and the Confederacy, but it wasn’t her area of expertise. Still, there had to be a connection, for no one went through the kind of trouble Parker had to hide a piece of paper if it wasn’t important.

The monastery was the key to this mystery.

She was sure of it.

“Is it far from here?”

Bernard shrugged. “Four, maybe four and a half hours by car. There’s a train that runs in that direction, as well, but you’d have to find transportation up the mountain. Not much sense in going, though.”

“And why’s that?”

“It’s closed to the public. Outside visitors have to be approved in advance by the abbot and the process takes several months. I spent some time there a few years ago examining one of the books they have in their library and I remember the process being an absolute nightmare to get through.”

“So you’ve met the abbot?”

“The abbot, hmmm. Abbot Deschanel. Yes, I have. A charming man, actually.”

“Would he remember you?”

“I should think so,” Bernard told her. “We spent several evenings discussing a variety of topics over a glass of wine or two and I…” He paused, finally putting two and two together. “Oh, no.”

Annja smiled at him sweetly. “What?”

“You want me to call over there and try to get you in to see the abbott without going through the standard process.”

“You’d do that for me?” she replied, letting her eyes go wide and feigning innocent surprise.

Bernard laughed. “I’m supposed to believe that the idea never even occurred to you, right?”

“You can believe what you want. But now that you’ve brought it up I think it’s an excellent idea.”

“It’s been more than a hundred years, Annja. What do you expect to find?”

She shrugged. “I don’t have any idea. But I’m sure something will occur to me once I’m there. There has to be a reason that Parker went through all the trouble of hiding the name of the monastery inside the seam of his shirt. That doesn’t just happen by accident.”

Bernard considered that statement. “You think he knew he was going to run into trouble,” he said slowly, thinking it through, “and he took precautions in case he did?”

“I do. And I think somewhere in that monastery is the answer to just what kind of trouble he was expecting. If we know that, we might be able to figure out just what he was doing here in France in the first place. Isn’t that the point of all this?”

She knew she was stretching things a bit. The authorities hadn’t been all that clear on exactly what they wanted her and Bernard to do. Identify the body if at all possible, sure, but given the state of the skeleton they probably didn’t expect them to have all that much success. Turning the skeleton over to the museum had pretty much achieved what the police had most likely wanted to achieve, which was passing the buck on to someone else. Now that the skeleton wasn’t in the catacombs and potentially slowing down the construction of the Metro tunnel, the details really weren’t all that significant to the police.

But they were to Annja. Now that she was involved, she was determined to find out all she could about Captain Parker’s fate, if indeed the skeleton really was his.

She thought it was. Regardless of how outlandish the idea sounded when said aloud, at this point she was all but convinced that she was right. She wasn’t sure why she felt that way, as the evidence was scant at best, but something deep inside rang true at the thought. That meant tracking down what had actually happened to him might possibly lead them to the missing Confederate treasure, as well. And that was definitely a prize worth pursuing.

In order to do that, she had to get inside the monastery.

“So you’ll do it?” she asked.

Bernard, however, wasn’t convinced. “I’ll give it some thought,” he said.

Deciding she wasn’t going to get any more out of him at this juncture, Annja let the matter rest for the time being. She’d hit him up again before leaving that afternoon once he’d had a chance to think it over.

In the meantime, she had a lot of work to do.

8

About the time that Annja was examining the sword, Blaine Michaels, a direct descendant of the man who had fired the shot that had taken Captain Parker’s life, received a phone call at home from the same computer technician he’d spoken to earlier that afternoon.

The information he received was more complete this time around, outlining what had happened in the tunnels earlier that morning.

“You’re certain that they said the skeleton came from inside the catacombs and not the Metro tunnel itself?”

“Yes, sir.”

Michaels grunted, most decidedly not thrilled with those circumstances.

“And the Creed woman?”

“Because the skeleton was dressed in the uniform of a U.S. soldier, the police contacted the embassy and asked to have a representative present. Apparently the Creed woman was suggested by someone on the ambassador’s staff and was brought in to represent their interests.”

He didn’t bother to correct the misinformation in his subordinate’s report; he had better things to do with his time than explain the difference between the Confederate States and the United States. It was the fact that they had discovered the body at all that had him on edge.

He didn’t exactly know why. After all, the body had been down there in the dark for more than a hundred years. There was nothing that could tie his family or the organization as a whole to the crime, if it could even be called a crime at this point, and there was little enough to be done even if they could.

Relax, he told himself.

But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t. After struggling against it for some time, he got up and made his way to his study. Locking the door behind him, he moved over to the safe, knelt in front of it and dialed the combination lock. Opening the door, he reached deep into the back, past the stacks of cash and bearer bonds, and took out his great-grandfather’s journal.

The old man had recorded the events of the night in question in considerable detail, just as he’d been taught to do. As the current head of the society, Blaine had done the same thing himself many times, making note of the steps he’d taken and the motivations behind them so that the one who followed in his footsteps—his son, most likely—would understand how those actions fit into the society’s long-term plans.

He wasn’t troubled by what had happened that day, at least with regard to the actions the society had taken. Anyone who crossed them would meet a similar fate. No, what was troubling were the goals they’d failed to meet—namely, determining where the traitor had hidden the treasure promised to them. His great-grandfather had been unable to force the information from the traitor before killing him and all of their searches to date had ended with nothing to show for them.

Blaine Michaels had been haunted all his life by his great-grandfather’s failure. Those in the society had long memories and there had been considerable opposition to his rise to power as the group’s current leader, but he’d been determined to win back the position of power his great-grandfather had forfeited in the face of his failure.

More importantly, he was determined not to let history repeat itself.

And that, he realized, was the source of his unease.

He couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that there was something they had missed that night, something that might have provided the clue they needed to figure out just where the treasure had been hidden.

Blaine knew that the original meeting had quickly devolved into an argument, which in turn led to violence. A running gun battle through the catacombs had ended with both men wounded, the traitor mortally so. Time had been of the essence in getting his great-grandfather to safety. Afterward, there was confusion about where, exactly, the traitor’s body had been left behind and the searches that followed had been unable to locate it in the hundreds of miles of twisting tunnels beneath the Paris streets. Eventually, his great-grandfather had been forced to step down from the position of leadership and the incident had been swept under the rug as a total failure.

But now, it seemed, there was a chance to correct the errors of the past. If the body held information that might lead them to the missing treasure, then he couldn’t afford to pass up the chance to find it.

Decisive action. Yes, that’s exactly what the situation needed.

Satisfied he’d come to the right conclusion, he reached for the phone.

DECIDING TO CALL IT a night, Annja and Bernard gathered all the notes and photographs they’d produced during the day, transferred them to Bernard’s office down the hall and then locked the lab behind them. “Tomorrow morning, then?” Bernard asked.

“Sounds good,” Annja replied. “And give some more thought to getting me in to see the abbot, will you?”

Bernard smiled. “Your persistence is what makes you such a good archaeologist,” he said, and then, before she could object to his playful teasing, he added, “but yes, I will. You have my word.”

Satisfied, she rode the elevator up to the ground floor. The museum had closed for the day and the halls were empty and silent around her. She paused for a moment at the entrance to a hall devoted to Egyptian artifacts, breathing in all the history that surrounded her, and was struck with the odd sense of being at home.

Yeah, and if you don’t get out and have a life one of these days, you’ll end up a stuffed mummy just like those in there, she thought wryly.

She’d been working straight through since leaving the dojo earlier that morning and only had a few more nights left to enjoy Paris, so it was time to get out and see the sights.

No sooner had she decided to take a break, however, than she found her thoughts returning to the whereabouts of the missing bullet. The gunshot wound had almost certainly killed Captain Parker and it should have been there with his remains. Not having the bullet irked her; it was like finishing a puzzle only to find out that you’re missing one last little piece. It was a tiny detail, she knew, but an important one, and she was just detail-oriented enough to want to put it to rest.

You’ve spent all day on this, she thought, what’s another hour or so?

The spent bullet was probably lying on the floor of the chamber near the wall against which Parker’s skeleton had been resting. It shouldn’t be all that hard to find.

Go on, take a quick look. If you find it, great, and if not, at least you’ll know you gave it a shot, she thought.

Decision made, she caught a cab over to the Metro station they’d used to gain access to the catacombs earlier that day. The trains were still being rerouted around the station due to the construction and so her footsteps echoed off the walls as she descended the steps.

A uniformed police officer was waiting for her at the turnstiles, alerted to her presence by the noise of her footsteps. Obviously bored with the duty he’d been assigned, he told her the station was closed and only looked up at her when she thrust the pass under his nose that she’d been given by Laroche.

“You’ll be wanting to go into the tunnels, then?” he asked.

“Yes, I shouldn’t be long.”

“But it’s after dark.”

Annja didn’t see how that was relevant. She was going underground, where it was always dark. What difference did it make that the sun had gone down?

Rather than get into it with him, though, she simply said, “Yes, it is,” and smiled sweetly at him, hoping her charm would get him to open the gate.

What she really wanted to do was to laugh at his superstitious attitude, for the things she’d faced since acquiring her sword made the idea of roaming around in the tunnels beneath the Paris city streets seem like child’s play, but she knew that doing so would kill any chance she had of getting through the gate.

Thankfully, her official pass seemed to be enough. He gave her a look that clearly said he thought she had a few screws loose upstairs but he didn’t say anything as he unlatched the gate and let her in.

She jogged through the station and down to the same platform where Laroche had taken her. Arming herself with a lantern just as they had earlier in the day, she climbed down onto the tracks and set off toward the break in the tunnel that marked the entrance to the catacombs.

More sawhorses had been set out at the site since she’d been there earlier, their blinking orange lights bouncing down the tunnel and letting her know she was getting close. She followed the glow like a trail of bread crumbs until she reached the spot where the workers had broken through into the older passageway inside the catacombs.

She was relieved to see the ladder she’d used earlier was still in place and she quickly descended into the lower tunnel. At the bottom of the ladder she paused, glancing back up the way she had come. For a moment she thought she’d heard something, but the sound didn’t repeat itself.

Probably just a rat, she thought, and shuddered.

She brushed it off and continued on her way.

The cemented tunnel had given way at the bottom of the ladder to the smooth limestone of the catacombs themselves. The antechamber where they had found Parker’s remains was just ahead and she found herself hurrying the last few dozen feet to its entrance, eagerness spreading through her veins like a drug. As she entered the room the thousands of skulls stared back at her, eerie in their eternal silence, but her attention was solely focused on what she’d come here to find and she barely noticed.

She moved over to the spot where the skeleton had been found and got down on her hands and knees. Resting the flashlight on the floor so that its beam filtered across the area she intended to search, she began hunting for the missing bullet. When she’d gone over the entire area in one direction, she went back again in the other, crisscrossing her initial efforts so she could be assured that she hadn’t missed a spot.

When that failed to turn up what she was looking for, she moved her attention over to the wall against which Captain Parker’s remains had rested. Perhaps the shot that had killed him had actually passed through his body completely, even though they hadn’t found evidence of an exit wound. It was something that wasn’t completely outrageous if it had happened at close range. Perhaps the bullet had embedded itself in the wall instead of falling to the floor when the body decayed.

Searching the wall, however, proved to be much harder than the floor. Comprised as it was of hundreds of human skulls, there were too many nooks and crannies and shadowed surfaces that could be hiding the impact point of the bullet. With just the beam of her flashlight to illuminate the wall’s surface, there was no way she was going to find something that small amid all the stacked human bones.

Better to come back in the daytime with a team of grad students and a full bank of lights, she told herself, and decided to really call it quits for the night. The beam of her flashlight swept across the floor as she turned away and out of the corner of her eye she caught the glint of something reflecting back at her.