Glass shards clattered to the floor.
He tossed the chair aside, reached in, and removed one of the short swords. Its edges had been sharpened, most likely to enhance its display. A card inside the case informed visitors that it was a 16th century weapon. He also removed a hand shield identified as from the 1500s.
Both sword and shield were in excellent condition.
He gripped them, looking like a gladiator ready for the arena.
Better than nothing, he reasoned.
SAM RACED UP THE STAIRS, ONE HAND SLIDING ACROSS A SLICK brass banister. He listened at the landing, then climbed the final flight to the museum’s top floor.
No sound. Not even from below.
He kept his steps light and his right hand firm on the railing. He wondered what he was going to do. He was unarmed and scared to death, but Malone might need help, just like in the bookstore last night.
And field agents helped one another.
He came to the top.
A wide archway opened to his left into a tall room with bloodred walls. Directly ahead of him was an entrance to an exhibit labeled LA DAME à LA LICORNE.
The Lady and the Unicorn.
He stopped and carefully peered around the archway into the red room.
Three shots cracked.
Bullets pinged off stone, inches from his face, stirring up dust, and he reeled back.
Bad idea.
Another shot came his way. Windows to his right, adjacent to the stairway landing, shattered from an impact.
“Hey,” a voice said, nearly in a whisper.
His eyes shot right and he spotted the same woman from before, the one who’d started the mayhem with her scream, standing inside the recessed entrance for the Lady and the Unicorn exhibit. Her short hair was now pushed back from her face, her eyes bright and alert. Her two open palms displayed a gun.
She tossed him the weapon, which he caught.
His left hand clamped the grip, finger on the trigger. He hadn’t fired a weapon since his last visit to the Secret Service shooting range. What, four months ago? But he was glad to have the thing.
He met her intense gaze and she motioned that he should fire.
He sucked a deep breath, swung the gun around the archway’s edge, and pulled the trigger.
Glass broke somewhere in the red room.
He fired again.
“You could at least try and hit one of them,” she said from her hiding place.
“If you’re so damn good, you do it.”
“Toss it back and I will.”
Malone 5 - The Paris Vendetta
TWENTY-NINE
LOIRE VALLEY
ELIZA SAT IN THE DRAWING ROOM, CONCERNED BY THE UNEXPECTED complications that had arisen during the past few hours. Thorvaldsen had left for Paris. Tomorrow they’d talk more.
Right now she needed guidance.
She’d ordered a fire and the hearth now burned with a lively blaze, illuminating the motto carved into its mantel by one of her ancestors.
S’IL VIENT à POINT, ME SOUVIENDRA.
If this castle is finished, I will be remembered.
She sat in one of the upholstered armchairs. The display case, which held the four papyri, stood to her right. Only the crackling embers disturbed the silence. She’d been told that it might snow this evening. She loved winter, especially here, in the country, near all that she held dear.
Two days.
Ashby was in England, preparing. Months ago, she’d delegated an array of tasks to him, relying on his supposed expertise. Now she wondered if that trust had been misplaced. A lot depended on what he was doing.
Everything, in fact.
She’d dodged Thorvaldsen’s questions and not allowed him to read the papyri. He hadn’t earned that right. None of the club members had, to this point. That knowledge was sacred to her family, obtained by Pozzo di Borgo himself when his agents stole the documents from shipments scheduled for St. Helena, part of Napoleon’s personal effects sent into exile with him. Napoleon had noticed their omission and officially protested, but any improprieties had been imputed to his British captors.
Besides, no one cared.
By then, Napoleon was impotent. All European leaders wanted was for the once mighty emperor to die a quick, natural death. No foul play, no execution. He could not be allowed to become a martyr, so imprisoning him on a remote south Atlantic island seemed the best way to achieve the desired result.
And it worked.
Napoleon had, indeed, faded away.
Dead within five years.
She stood, approached the glass case, and studied the four ancient writings, safe in their cocoon. They’d long ago been translated and she’d committed every word to memory. Pozzo di Borgo had been quick to realize their potential, but he lived in a post-Napoleonic world, during a time when France stayed in constant upheaval, distrustful of monarchy, incapable of democracy.
So they’d been of little use.
She was truthful when she told Thorvaldsen that it was impossible to know who’d written them. All she knew was that the words made sense.