Tom Hyman (25 page)

Stewart followed the beam of his flashlight, staring openmouthed at the morbid panorama that surrounded them. It was l so utterly ghoulish, he thought—like a scene from Dante’s Inferno, or the literal Hell of a medieval morality play. Stewart shivered involuntarily.

They arrived at a small, steep-vaulted chamber off the main galleries, where the bones were arranged in a low semicircular wall to form a kind of altar. Slater shined the flashlight through the eye sockets of a skull sitting at the top of a neatly stacked pile. He patted the skull. “Probably a beautiful woman, once upon a time. Or maybe a whore with the pox. Or a thief who beat his wife. Hell, maybe it was Marie Antoinette. We’ll never know.”

The stale, humid air seemed to swallow up Slater’s words even as he spoke them. Stewart shuddered again. “Hurry the hell up.

This place is getting to me.”

Slater lifted the skull from the top of the pile, set it aside, and reached in among the bones to retrieve a metal strongbox. He twirled the tiny combination lock and the lid popped open. Inside, swathed in several layers of bubble wrap, was a single black plastic RCD computer cartridge. Slater closed the box and handed it to Stewart. “You take it. I don’t even want to touch it. As I said before, the fucking thing’s cursed.”

Stewart tucked the box under his arm. He felt immense relief.

“This is the only copy?”

Slater laughed. “You want to look around for others?”

Stewart shook his head. “Let’s get out of here.”

They started back. A little way along the tunnel, something fell to the ground behind them. It made a soft plop as it hit the damp dirt underfoot. Stewart whirled around, pointing the flashlight down the pitch-black passageway. Nothing. His pulse was racing.

“Just a bone,” Slater said. “Knocked over by a rat.”

They increased their pace. The humid underground atmosphere caused Stewart to break out into a sweat.

They came to a place where the tunnel divided into two separate passageways. Slater stopped. “Did you hear something?”

“No.”

“Listen…. A soft drumming sound.”

Slater directed his flashlight down one branch of the tunnel, then the other. In the second passage the beam of light picked out a crowd of rats, galloping toward them.

Slater froze. Stewart immediately turned and fled.

Fifty yards down the tunnel he was soaked with sweat and his heart was pounding. The floor of the passage was uneven, and Stewart, in his panic, stumbled and fell. The rats shot right on past him, hugging the edges of the tunnel on each side of him.

Stewart scrambled back to his feet. The strongbox with the cassette in it had slipped from his grasp. He found it in the dirt and picked it up.

He brushed off his pants and jacket and stood, catching his breath. He was shaking. Stupid, he thought, letting a few rats throw such a scare into him.

He shined the light down the passageway. No sign of Slater.

Which way had he come? He looked down the other way. The long dark tunnel looked the same in both directions. He called out to Slater.

No answer.

Stewart knelt and tried to find his footprints on the floor, so he could determine the direction in which he had come. The dirt was packed so hard it was impossible to make out anything.

He stood up and called Slater’s name again. Still no answer.

He called out a third time. The walls seemed to muffle his voice, soaking up the sound before it had traveled any distance at all.

Finally he thought he heard something faint far down the tunnel. A yell? A scream? Slater. It was certainly Slater. He took off at a trot back down the tunnel toward the sound. He came back to the place where the tunnel divided.

He heard Slater’s voice again. It was coming from the tunnel on the left. He started to call, then checked himself. Slater was talking to someone. He sounded agitated.

Stewart advanced cautiously along the tunnel, listening. Slater’s voice was getting closer, but numerous alcoves branched off both sides of the tunnel, and Stewart couldn’t locate the exact direction of the sound.

Then the main passage curved sharply to the right. Stewart stopped and turned off his flashlight. He could see faint light reflected off the tunnel wall ahead of him. He approached on tiptoe and looked around.

He saw Slater. He was on his knees, squinting into the bright glare of a flashlight, and struggling to stand. Two men were standing over him.

The quick blur of a boot flashed through the beam of light and hit Slater’s stomach. Then an arm with a club descended against Slater’s skull. Slater grunted and slumped faceforward into the dirt.

The men watched him for a few seconds, then began swinging their clubs methodically against his skull, taking their time in the wavering light of their flashlights to land their blows on target.

Stewart dared not move or breathe.

Finally, mercifully, they stopped. One felt Slater’s neck for a pulse, then said something in German. They ransacked his pockets, then ripped his clothes off and looked through them frantically. Unable to find what they were looking for, they got to their feet. One of the men kicked Slater in the side of the head. They exchanged a few words and then started off in Stewart’s direction.

Stewart ducked into one of the alcoves. They passed by him without seeing him and vanished up the passageway.

When he was sure they were some distance away, Stewart edged back to the corner and turned on his flashlight.

Slater lay motionless on his back.

Three rats had already found him. They were creeping around him, tentatively sniffing, touching. One climbed onto his stomach and walked across it, scratching and sniffing.

Stewart shook his head. He felt on the verge of throwing up.

He turned and retreated back the way he had come.

They had to know he was down here, he realized. They would likely wait for him at the top of the long ladder in the tool shed in the garden of Sainte-Anne.

He would have to find another way out.

For over an hour Stewart roamed the dark labyrinth of underground passages. He began hyperventilating. He shook and trembled and his clothes were drenched in cold sweat. He talked out loud to himself to fend off the building waves of terror. The additional fear of a possible heart attack forced him to stop and catch his breath.

When his pulse had slowed, he set off again, moving at as fast a pace as he dared. His heart thumped, loud and fast and heavy, like the footfalls of someone running for his life.

He kept imagining he could hear real footfalls, pounding in the dirt behind him. A hundred times he shined the flashlight behind him to make sure no one was there.

The flashlight eventually began to dim. The thought of losing the light altogether sent a fresh shock of panic through him. He started turning it off and on at intervals to preserve the batteries.

Just as the flashlight failed completely, Stewart stumbled onto a large, sturdy circular stairway. He felt his way up the dozens of steps in the pitch-dark.

At the top he found himself in a small building on the place Denfert-Rochereau. Sun was shining in the windows. There were signs and a ticket booth. It was the tourist entrance to the catacombs. No sign of anyone watching.

Thank God, thank God.

The outside door was locked. He opened a window and climbed out.

After a change of clothes at his hotel, Stewart checked out of his suite and took a taxi to Orly Airport. In an hour he was on a plane to Munich.

On the ride in from the Munich airport Dalton Stewart popped a couple of ibuprofen caplets into his mouth. Earlier, after the terrifying episode in the catacombs, he had swallowed a Halcion tablet to calm his nerves, but it hadn’t worked. He could feel the pill’s chemicals thrumming through him; but instead of boosting him into a kind of aggressive alertness, they had kicked his sleepstarved system over the edge. He felt raw, punctured—as if his strength and courage were leaking out of him. A look of ragged desperation was not the look to bring to a meeting with Gerta von Hauser. Especially this meeting.

The baroness greeted him in her office with a kiss and then stepped back and looked him over. She seemed pleased to see him again.

They had parted on ambiguous terms. Their affair, if it could be called that, had ended the same night that it had begun—in the frenzy of the New Year’s celebration at President Despres’s palace in Coronado. Stewart had had no communication with her since, but he had thought about her frequently over the past year and a half.

“You look rather haggard, Herr Stewart,” the baroness said, in her overrounded English accent. She offered him a seat beside her on a long leather sofa.

Stewart sank into the cushions. His eyelids felt heavy. “Too many plane flights,” he complained. “It’s the damned recycled air.

I think the pilots must get a kickback from the airline on every canister of unused oxygen they save.”

The baroness murmured something in agreement.

She looked better than he had remembered her. She was wearing a hand-tailored charcoal-gray business suit. It was subdued but flawlessly cut, draping her lithe figure perfectly and presenting a striking foil for her magnificent blond hair, which she now wore long.

He mustered the energy to throw out a few compliments. The baroness gave him a quick, impatient smile. She asked about Anne and their child but didn’t appear much interested in Stewart’s answer. She wasn’t one to waste time on small talk, anyway. She moved directly to the point: “Naturally I am curious to know why you have come to see me.”

Stewart reached down for his attache case, clicked open its brass snaps, and pulled out a black plastic RCD. He held it up in front of her. “You know what this is?”

Her eyes focused on the object, then back on him. “I expect you’re going to tell me.” She smiled.

Stewart placed the RCD on the low marble table in front of the sofa.

“It’s Goth’s Jupiter program.”

The baroness seemed slightly startled. “Where did you get it?”

“I had the foresight to acquire a copy before Goth’s death.”

He was oversimplifying considerably, but he had no intention of telling her about Slater and the catacombs.

The baroness picked up the cartridge and turned it over in her hand several times, as if she were examining a small sculpture for flaws.

“Why have you not done anything with it?”

“I didn’t think it worked. Now I know that it does.”

The baroness looked mystified. “And you want me to help you develop it?”

“Exactly.”

“Why do you come to me? Why don’t you test it yourself?”

A wave of faintness forced Stewart to close his eyes for a few seconds.

He bent his head down and pretended to study something on the floor until the sensation had passed. “I need backing,” he said.

“It can’t be very expensive to set up a trial….”

Stewart’s mouth was dry. He licked his lips and tried to suppress the humiliation he felt. “No. You don’t understand. I’m in financial trouble. Biotech is facing bankruptcy.” His voice stumbled on the word “bankruptcy.

The baroness settled back against the sofa and crossed her arms. A visible thrill of satisfaction lit her face. “And you hope to save yourself with this?” She nodded in the direction of the black plastic cartridge on the table in front of them.

“I’m willing to offer you a large percentage. In return for enough cash to get the banks off my back.”

“How much cash is that?”

“Twenty-four million.”

“You can’t raise even that much?”

“If I could I wouldn’t be here.”

“I see.” The baroness seemed suddenly offended. She moved from the sofa to her desk, as if to distance herself from Stewart’s request.

“You expect me to give you twenty-four million for only a share of the program’s profits?”

“Baroness, the twenty-four million is a loan. You’ll be paid back in full. I’ll even leave the terms to you.”

“What equity are you offering me?”

“Fifty percent of Jupiter.”

The baroness shook her head. “That’s not equity. That’s-what’s the American expression?—a pig in a poke.”

“I’ll put up the necessary shares of Biotech as collateral as well.

God knows I’m not trying to cheat you. The banks have gotten cold feet. I’ll have to file a Chapter 11 and try to reorganize.”

“How soon do you need this money?”

“Immediately. Today.”

The baroness swung her chair away from the desk and gazed thoughtfully out the window. Stewart had laid out his position naked and unadorned.

He knew his desperation was showing, but he was too exhausted to try to paint a less stark picture of his situation. She would likely see through any obfuscations anyway.

The baroness swiveled her chair back to face the desk. She brushed some imaginary dust from the desk’s polished surface. “I cannot do it, Herr Stewart. And certainly not on such short notice.”

Stewart listened for even a trace of indecision in her tone, but he heard none.

“Even if you have the real Jupiter, I have no faith in it,” she continued. “Not anymore. It hasn’t been tested. It may be worthless.

As for your Biotech stock, that can’t be worth much, either, if your financial situation is so bad.”

Stewart held up a hand in protest. “The company’s basically sound.

That’s the irony of the situation. We overextended and we had some bad luck. Goth’s death to begin with, of course. And then some damaging lawsuits, coupled with a major business recession. But these are all surmountable problems. All we need is a little time. But the damned banks are running scared. They’re in bigger trouble than Biotech, and they’re looking for assets to shore up their own shaky finances.”

“You’ve made some bad business decisions,” she countered.

“Don’t blame the banks.”

Stewart drew a breath to rebut her, then let it out in a long, tired exhalation.