The Paris Vendetta (24 page)

FORTY-FIVE

LONDON

M
ALONE WATCHED AS
S
TEPHANIE DISAPPEARED INTO THE
night and another man immediately approached Graham Ashby, toting a Selfridges shopping bag. Malone had immersed himself among the walking tour, embracing the talkative crowd. His task was to cover Stephanie’s back, keep a close eye on things, but now they may have finally caught a break.

He noted the features of Ashby’s companion.

Reddish hair, thin nose, medium build, about 160 to 170 pounds, dressed like everybody else in a wool coat, scarf, and gloves. But something told him that this was not just anybody else.

Many in the tour were making their way into the Ten Bells pub, the rattle from a multitude of conversations spilling out into the night. Entrepreneurs were actively hawking Jack the Ripper T-shirts and commemorative mugs. Ashby and Red loitered on the sidewalk, and Malone crept to within thirty feet, a spate of boisterous people between them. Flashbulbs strobed the darkness as many in the group stole a picture before the pub’s colorful façade.

He joined in the revelry and bought a T-shirt from one of the vendors.

A
SHBY WAS CONCERNED
.

“I thought it best we speak tonight,” Peter Lyon said to him.

“How did you know I was here?”

“The woman. Is she an acquaintance?”

He thought back to his conversation with Stephanie Nelle. They’d kept their voices low and had stood apart from the crowd. No one had been nearby. Had Lyon heard anything?

“I have many female acquaintances.”

Lyon chuckled. “I’m sure you do. Women provide the greatest of pleasures, the worst of problems.”

“How did you find me?” he asked again.

“Did you think for one moment that I wouldn’t discover what you are doing?”

His legs began to shake, and not from the cold.

Lyon motioned for them to drift across the street, away from the pub, where fewer people stood and no street lamps burned. Ashby walked with trepidation, but realized that Lyon wouldn’t do anything here, with so many witnesses.

Or would he?

“I’ve been aware of your contacts with the Americans from the beginning,” Lyon said to him, the voice low and controlled. “It’s amusing you think yourself so clever.”

No sense lying. “I had no choice.”

Lyon shrugged. “We all have choices, but it matters not to me. I want your money, and you want a service. I assume you still want it?”

“More than ever.”

Lyon pointed a finger at him. “Then it will cost triple my original fee. The first hundred percent for your treachery. The second for the trouble you’ve put me to.”

He was in no position to argue. Besides, he was using club money anyway. “That can be arranged.”

“She gave you a book. What is it?”

“Is that part of the new arrangement? You are to know all of my business?”

“You should know, Lord Ashby, that I’ve found it hard to resist the urge of placing a bullet between your eyes. I detest a man with no character and you, sir, have none.”

Interesting attitude for a mass murderer, but he kept his opinion to himself.

“If not for your money—” Lyon paused. “Please, don’t try my patience any further.”

He accepted the advice and answered the man’s question. “It’s a project I’ve been working on. A lost treasure. The Americans confiscated a vital clue to keep me compliant. She returned it to me.”

“A treasure? I learned that you were once an avid collector. Stealing objects already stolen. Keeping them for yourself. Quite the clever one, you are. But the police put a stop to that.”

“Temporarily.”

Lyon laughed. “All right, Lord Ashby, you go after your treasure. Just transfer my money. By dawn. I’ll be checking,
before
events start to happen.”

“It will be there.”

He heard the guide draw the crowd together, telling them it was time to move on.

“I think I’ll finish the tour,” Lyon said. “Quite interesting, Jack the Ripper.”

“What about tomorrow? You know the Americans are watching.”

“That I do. It will be quite the show.”

M
ALONE DISSOLVED INTO THE TOUR AS THE CROWD INCLUDING
Red, drew into the guide’s wake and they all ambled off into the darkness. He kept Red just inside his peripheral vision, deciding he was far more interesting than Ashby.

The tour continued another twenty minutes down coal-black streets, ending at an Underground station. Inside, Red used a travel card to pass through the turnstile. Malone hurried over to a token machine and quickly purchased four, making his way past the gate to the escalator just as his quarry stepped off at the bottom. He did not like the bright lights and the sparse crowd, but had no choice.

He stepped off the escalator onto the platform.

Red was standing twenty feet away, still holding his shopping bag.

An electronic billboard indicated the train was 75 seconds away. He studied a schematic of the London subway hanging on the wall and saw that this station serviced the District Line, which paralleled the Thames and ran east to west the city’s full length. This platform was for a westbound train, the route taking them to Tower Hill, beneath Westminster, through Victoria Station, and eventually beyond Kensington.

More people filtered down from above as a train arrived.

He kept his distance, positioning himself well behind, and followed his quarry into the car. He stood, hugging one of the stainless-steel poles, Red doing the same thirty feet away. Enough people were crammed into the car that no one face should draw much attention.

As the train chugged beneath the city, Malone studied his target, who seemed an older man, out for the evening, enjoying London.

But he spotted the eyes.

Amber.

He knew Peter Lyon possessed one anomaly. He loved disguise, but a genetic eye defect not only oddly colored his irises, but also made them overly susceptible to infection and prevented him from wearing contact lenses. Lyon preferred glasses to shield their distinctive amber tint, but had not worn any tonight.

He watched as Lyon engaged in a conversation with a dowager standing beside him. Malone noticed a copy of
The Times
lying on the floor. He asked if the paper belonged to anyone and, when no one claimed ownership, he grabbed and read the front page, allowing his gaze to periodically shift from the words.

He also kept track of the stations.

Fifteen came and went before Lyon exited at Earl’s Court. The stop was shared by the District and Piccadilly lines, blue and green signs directing passengers to either route. Lyon followed the blue signs for the Piccadilly Line, headed west, which he boarded with Malone a car behind. He didn’t think it prudent to share the same space again and was able to spy his quarry through windows in the car ahead.

A quick glance at a map over the doors confirmed they were headed straight for Heathrow Airport.

FORTY-SIX

PARIS

T
HORVALDSEN STUDIED THE TWO PAGES OF WRITING FROM THE
Merovingian book. He’d expected Malone to hand over the entire book to Murad when they’d met earlier at the Louvre but, for some reason, that had not occurred.

“He only made me copies of the two pages,” Murad said to him. “He took the book with him.”

They were again sitting at the Ritz, in the crowded Bar Hemingway.

“Cotton didn’t happen to mention where he was going?”

Murad shook his head. “Not a word. I spent the day at the Louvre comparing more handwriting samples. This page, with the fourteen lines of letters, was definitely written by Napoleon. I can only assume that the Roman numerals are in his hand too.”

He checked the clock on the wall behind the bar. Nearly eleven
PM.
He did not like being kept in the dark. God knows he’d done that enough to others, but it was a different matter when it was his turn.

“The letter you told me about,” Murad said. “The one Ashby found on Corsica, with the raised letters coded to Psalm 31. Any letter written by Napoleon to his family would have been an excercise in futility. His second wife, Marie Louise, had by 1821 birthed a child with another man, while still legally married to Napoleon. The emperor surely never knew that since he kept a portrait of her in his house on St. Helena. He revered her. Of course, she was in Austria, back with her father, the king, who’d aligned himself with Tsar Alexander and helped defeat Napoleon. There’s no evidence that the letter Napoleon wrote ever made it to her, or his son. In fact, after Napoleon died, an emissary traveled to Vienna with some last messages from him, and she refused to even see the messenger.”

“Lucky for us.”

Murad nodded. “Napoleon was a fool when it came to women. The one who could have really helped him, he discarded. Josephine. She was barren and he needed an heir. So he divorced her and married Marie Louise.” The professor motioned with the two photocopies. “Yet here he is, sending secret messages to his second wife, thinking her still an ally.”

“Any clue what the reference to Psalm 31 means from the letter Ashby found?” he asked.

The scholar shook his head. “Have you read that Psalm? Seems his way of feeling sorry for himself. I did come across something interesting, though, this afternoon in one of the texts for sale at the Louvre. After Napoleon abdicated in 1814, the new Paris government sent emissaries to Orleans to confiscate Marie Louise’s clothing, imperial plate, diamonds, everything of value. They questioned her at length about Napoleon’s wealth, but she told them she knew nothing, which was probably true.”

“So the search for his cache started then?”

“It would seem so.”

“And continues to this day.”

Which made him think of Ashby.

Tomorrow they’d finally find themselves face-to-face.

And what about Malone.

What
was
he doing?

M
ALONE STEPPED FROM THE TRAIN AND FOLLOWED
L
YON INTO
Terminal Two at Heathrow. He was worried that his quarry was about to leave London, but the man ventured nowhere near any ticket counters or security screening. Instead he passed through the terminal, stopping at a checkpoint, displaying what appeared to be a picture identification. No way Malone could safely follow, as the corridor was empty, a solitary door at its far end. So he stepped into an alcove, removed the cell phone from his coat pocket, and dialed Stephanie’s number.

“I’m at Heathrow Airport at a checkpoint marked 46-B. I need to get past it, and fast. There’s a single guard with a radio.”

“Sit tight. I have the right people here with me now.”

He liked Stephanie’s ability to instantaneously digest a problem, without questions or arguments, then fashion a solution.

He slipped from the alcove and approached the young guard. Lyon was gone, having exited the door at the far end of the corridor. He told the guard who he was, showed him his passport, and explained he needed to go through the door.

“No way,” the man said. “You have to be marked on the list.” A bony finger tapped a notebook open on the desk before him.

“Who was the man that just passed through?” he tried.

“Why would I tell you that? Who the bloody hell are you?”

The man’s radio squawked and he unclipped the unit and replied. An ear fob prevented Malone from hearing, but from the way he was now being eyed he assumed the conversation concerned him.

The guard finished his conversation.

“I’m the guy who made that call happen,” Malone said. “Now, who was the man who just passed through here?”

“Robert Pryce.”

“What’s his business?”

“No clue, but he’s been here before. What is it you need, Mr. Malone?”

He had to admire the English respect for authority.

“Where is Pryce headed?”

“His credentials assign him to Hangar 56-R.”

“Tell me how to get there.”

The guard quickly sketched a map on a piece of paper and pointed to the door at the far end of the hall. “That leads onto the apron.”

Malone trotted off and exited into the night.

He quickly found Hangar 56-R, three of its windows lit with orange and white light. Jet engines roared in the distance above a busy Heathrow. An array of buildings of varying sizes surrounded him. This area seemed the realm of private aviation companies and corporate jets.

He decided a quick view in one of the windows was the safest course. He rounded the building and passed the retracting door. On the other side he crept to a window and glanced in, spotting a single-engine Cessna Skyhawk. The man who called himself Robert Pryce, but who was surely Peter Lyon, was busy inspecting the wings and engine. The fuselage was white, striped blue and yellow, and Malone memorized the tail identification numbers. No one else could be seen in the hangar and Lyon seemed focused on a visual inspection. The Selfridges bag rested on the concrete floor near an exit door.

He watched as Lyon climbed inside the plane, lingered for a few minutes, then slipped out, slamming the cabin door shut. Lyon grabbed the shopping bag and switched off the hangar lights.

He needed to beat a retreat while he still could. Exposure was a real possibility.

Malone heard a metal door open, then close.

He froze, hoping his prey was heading back toward the terminal. If he came this way, there’d be no escape.

He crept to the corner and stole a quick glance.

Lyon was making his way back toward the terminal, but not before he stepped to a dumpster between the darkened hangars and tossed the Selfridges bag inside.

Malone wanted that bag, but he also did not want to lose his target.

So he waited until Lyon reentered the terminal, then rushed to the trash bin. No time to climb inside, so he hustled to the door, hesitated a moment, then cautiously turned the knob.

Only the guard was visible, still sitting at his desk.

Malone entered and asked, “Where did he go?”

The guard pointed toward the main terminal.

“There’s a Selfridges bag in a dumpster outside. Stash it somewhere safe. Don’t open or disturb the contents in any way. I’ll be back. Understand?”

“What’s not to?”

He liked this young man’s attitude.

In the heart of the terminal, Malone did not spot Peter Lyon. He raced for the Underground station and saw that a train was not scheduled to arrive for another ten minutes. He backtracked and scanned the assortment of rental car counters, shops, and currency exchange vendors. A good number of people milled about for nearly ten
PM
on Christmas Eve.

He drifted toward a men’s room and entered.

The dozen or so urinals were unused, white tiles glistening under the glare of bright fluorescent lights. Warm air smelled of bleach. He used one of the urinals, then washed his hands, lathering soap and cleaning his face.

The cold water felt good.

He rinsed the suds away and reached for a paper towel, dabbing his cheeks and forehead dry, swiping soapy water from his eyes. When he opened them, in the mirror, he saw a man standing behind him.

“And who are you?” Lyon asked in a deep throaty voice, more American than European.

“Somebody who’d like to put a bullet in your head.”

The deep amber color of the eyes drew his attention, their oily sheen casting a spell.

Lyon slowly removed his hand from his coat pocket, revealing a small-caliber pistol. “A shame you can’t. Did you enjoy the tour? Jack the Ripper is fascinating.”

“I can see how he would be to you.”

Lyon gave a light chuckle. “I so enjoy dry wit. Now—”

A small boy rushed inside the restroom, rounding the open doorway that led back out to the terminal, calling after his dad. Malone used the unexpected distraction to slam his right elbow into Lyon’s gun hand.

The weapon discharged with a loud retort, the bullet finding the ceiling.

Malone lunged forward and propelled both himself and Lyon into a marble partition. His left hand clamped onto Lyon’s wrist and forced the gun upward.

He heard the boy yell, then other voices.

He brought a knee into Lyon’s abdomen, but the man seemed to anticipate the move and pivoted away.

Lyon apparently realized the confines were tightening, so he darted for the door. Malone raced after him and wrapped his arm around Lyon’s neck, one hand on the face, yanking back, but the gun butt suddenly slammed into Malone’s forehead.

The room winked in and out.

His balance and grip failed.

Lyon broke free and disappeared out the door.

Malone staggered to his feet and tried to give pursuit, but a wave of dizziness forced him to the floor. Through a fog he saw a uniformed guard rush in. He rubbed his temples and tried to find his balance.

“A man was just here. Redhead, older looking, armed.” He noticed that his hand held something. He’d felt it give way when he tried to halt Lyon’s retreat. “He’ll be easy to find.”

He held up a shard of silicon, fashioned and colored like a thin human nose. The guard was dumbfounded.

“He’s masked. I got a piece of it.”

The guard rushed out and Malone slowly staggered out into the terminal. A crowd had formed and several other guards appeared. One of them was the young one from earlier.

Malone walked over and asked, “You get the shopping bag?”

“Follow me.”

Two minutes later he and the guard were in a small interview room near the security office. The Selfridges bag lay on a laminated table.

He tested its weight. Light. He reached inside and removed a green plastic bag that apparently contained several odd-shaped objects.

Clanging together.

He laid the bundle on the table and unraveled it.

He wasn’t necessarily concerned about explosives since Lyon had clearly discarded what was inside. He allowed the contents to roll onto the table and was shocked to see four small metal replicas of the Eiffel Tower, the kind of souvenir easily bought anywhere in Paris.

“The bloody hell?” the young guard asked.

His thoughts exactly.