Psalm 63, verse 9, was next. They who seek my life will be destroyed, they will go down to the depths of the earth. They will be given over to the sword and become food for jackals.
He’d already received permission from the French government to do whatever was necessary to solve the riddle. If that meant destroying something within the church, then so be it. Most of it was 19th and 20th century repairs and reproductions anyway. He’d asked for some tools and equipment to be left inside, anticipating what may be required, and saw them near the west wall.
He walked across the nave and retrieved a sledgehammer.
When Professor Murad related to him the clues, the possibility that what they sought lay below the church became all too real. Then, when he’d read the verses, he was sure.
He walked back to the olive tree carved in the floor.
The final clue, Napoleon’s last message to his son. Psalm 17, verse 2. May my vindication come from you; may your eyes see what is right.
He swung the hammer.
The marble did not break, but his suspicions were confirmed. The hollow sound told him that solid stone did not lie beneath. Three more blows and the rock cracked. Another two and marble crashed away into a black rectangle that opened beneath the church.
A chilled draft rushed upward.
Murad had told him how Napoleon, in 1806, halted the desecration of Saint-Denis and proclaimed it, once again, an imperial burial place. He’d also restored the adjacent abbey, established a religious order to oversee the basilica’s restoration, and commissioned architects to repair the damages. It would have been an easy matter for him to adjust the site to his personal specifications. How this hole in the floor had remained secret was fascinating, but perhaps the chaos of post-Napoleonic France was the best explanation, as nothing and nobody remained stable once the emperor had been ensconced on St. Helena.
He discarded the sledgehammer and retrieved a coil of rope and a flashlight. He shone the light into the void and noted that it was more a chute, about three feet by four, that extended straight down about twenty feet. Remnants of a wooden ladder lay scattered on the rock floor. He’d studied the basilica’s geography and knew that a crypt once extended below the church—parts of it were still there, open to the public—but nothing had ever stretched this far toward the west fa?ade. Perhaps long ago it had, and Napoleon had discovered the oddity.
At least that’s what Murad thought.
He looped the rope around the base of one of the columns a few feet away and tested its strength. He tossed the remainder of the rope into the chute, followed by the sledgehammer, which might be needed. He clipped the lamp to his belt. Using his rubber soles and the rope, he eased down the chute, into the black earth.
At the bottom he aimed the light at rock the shade of driftwood. The chilly, dusty environs extended for as far as the beam would shine. He knew that Paris was littered with tunnels. Miles and miles of underground passages hewed from limestone that had been hauled, block by block, to the surface, the city literally built from the ground up.
He groped for the contours, the crevices, the protruding shards, and followed the twisting passage for maybe two hundred feet. A smell similar to warm peaches, which he recalled from his Georgia childhood, made his stomach queasy. Grit crunched beneath his feet. Only cold seemed to occupy this bareness, easy to become lost in the silence.
He assumed he was well clear of the basilica, east of the building itself, perhaps beneath the expanse of trees and grass that extended past the nearby abbey, toward the Seine.
Ahead he spotted a shallow recess in the right-hand wall. Rubble filled the passageway where somebody had pounded their way through the limestone.
He stopped and searched the scene with his light. Etched into the rough surface of one of the rocky chunks was a symbol, one he recognized from the writing Napoleon had left in the Merovingian book, part of the fourteen lines of scribble.
Someone had propped the stone atop the pile like a marker, one that had patiently waited underground for more than two hundred years. In the exposed recess he spied a metal door, swung half open. An electrical cable snaked a path out the doorway, turned ninety degrees, then disappeared into the tunnel ahead.
Glad to know he’d been right.
Napoleon’s clues led the way down. Then the etched symbol showed exactly where things awaited.
He shone the light inside, found an electrical box, and flipped the switch.
Yellow, incandescent fixtures strewn across the floor revealed a chamber maybe fifty by forty feet, with a ten-foot ceiling. He counted at least three dozen wooden chests and saw that several were hinged open.
Inside, he spied a neat assortment of gold and silver bars. Each bore a stamped N topped by an imperial crown, the official mark of the Emperor Napoleon. Another held gold coins. Two more contained silver plate. Three were filled to the brim with what appeared to be precious stones. Apparently the emperor had chosen his hoard with great care, opting for hard metal and jewels.
He surveyed the room and allowed his eyes to examine the ancient and abandoned possessions of a crushed empire.
Napoleon’s cache.
“You must be Cotton Malone,” a female voice said.
He turned. “And you must be Eliza Larocque.”
The woman who stood in the doorway was tall and stately, with an obvious leonine quality about her that she did little to conceal. She wore a knee-length wool coat, classy and elegant. Beside her stood a thin, gnarled man with a Spartan vigor. Both faces were wiped clean of expression.
“And your friend is Paolo Ambrosi,” Malone said. “Interesting character. An ordained priest who served briefly as papal secretary to Peter II, but disappeared after that papacy abruptly ended. Rumors abounded about his—” Malone paused. “—morality. Now here he is.”
Larocque seemed impressed. “You don’t seem surprised that we are here.”
“I’ve been expecting you.”
“Really? I’ve been told that you were quite an agent.”