“It is not often one of the museum’s directors wakes you in the middle of the night, rips a man out of his bed and orders him to allow a person he doesn’t know a private, uninterrupted viewing.”
“It isn’t? I would have thought it happened more often than most people would imagine.”
Amaury almost smiled. “I can’t speak for that.”
“Of course. Carry on.”
The curator produced a small key, inserted it into an inconspicuous silver lock, and slid a portion of the glass aside. The gap was enough to allow only Crouch access. Caitlyn hovered at his shoulder.
“Please,” Amaury insisted, holding an object out. “Use these and have care. No fingers. Flex the pages as little as possible. Do not touch them with items of your clothing.”
Crouch knew the guidelines well. His love of archaeological history had sent him down every avenue in the past, and that included how to handle ancient manuscripts or parchment. The trouble was, the ink was no longer firmly attached to the pages. Forcing anything was out of the question. Amaury was holding out a pair of book snakes, lead weights inside fabric tubes used for holding a book open, essential for handling the document.
“Don’t worry. I will be careful.”
“Hmm. I reserve the right to worry.”
Crouch handled the document, conscious of Amaury’s every tiny intake when he suspected Crouch may have the snakes one or two millimeters off. The curator listened to Caitlyn’s contrived spiel regarding the so-called Horses of St. Mark and thankfully knew immediately what they were looking for.
“I understand. It is a passage that clearly indicated the return of the Horses to Venice and yet also alludes to the unknown. I’m surprised you have heard of it. The passage is totally anonymous.”
Crouch stopped himself from laughing aloud. “You mean you don’t get many visitors asking about the Congress of Vienna these days?”
Amaury shrugged. “Most are not so rude. With this treaty they redrew Europe’s political map, enforced Napoleon’s abdication and restored lands to many that France had plundered. Though not always their treasures,” he admitted at the end.
Crouch waited for the curator to step forward, take over the snakes and find the passage. He had no idea what he was looking for, but Amaury’s words gave him a shard of hope. Minutes passed. Crouch eyed their surroundings, in particular their only way out, and motioned that Caitlyn do the same. Their newest recruit wasn’t a soldier and didn’t possess a soldier’s instinct, but she was always willing to learn as best she could. Another minute ticked by. The sound filtering from the Richelieu Wing grew steadily louder as the day wore on. As Amaury flicked past the pages Crouch saw much white parchment covered in spider-web writing, some adorned by thick red, waxen seals.
Amaury grunted. “It is here. This is your passage.”
Crouch thanked him and waited for him to move aside before bending toward the page. Written on surprisingly white paper in tiny lettering were several passages. Crouch took his time to read them all.
“All right.” He smiled. “I have the official part where the Congress ceded the Horses back to Vienna. All good and proper. It makes no mention…” he tailed off.
“Makes no mention?” Amaury enquired.
“Wait.” Crouch was surprised to find that, amongst all the bureaucratic, legal language there sat a small, inconspicuous passage that almost went unnoticed. The only reason he didn’t skim it over was that it was written in a different style to everything that came before.
“Is this the passage you referred to?” he asked Amaury, pointing but careful to stay away from the page.
“Yes, that is the one.”
Crouch turned to Caitlyn, unable to hide the smile. “I think we’ve found a bloody fine clue.”
TWENTY FOUR
Crouch read the passage aloud:
Caitlyn peeked over his shoulder as he recited the passage. Amaury shifted from foot to foot, still clearly nervous. Both of them looked at Crouch at the same time.
“Well?” Caitlyn asked. “Do you know what it means?”
“I haven’t a bloody clue,” Crouch said. “But let me copy it down. I take it you have no objection to me taking a picture?” He glanced toward the curator.
“It is the Louvre,” the Frenchman said in assent. “It is what is expected.”
Crouch snapped several photos and then thanked the curator. After the man locked up and walked away Crouch allowed himself to break into a wide grin.
“This is why we do this,” he said. “For breakthroughs like this. For the discovery of lifetimes. For the thrill of the chase. This is what it means to be a treasure hunter.”
Caitlyn threw her arms around his neck before she could stop herself, exuberant as ever. Crouch immediately coughed and grunted and regained most of his English reserve.
“Um, okay. Well, let’s go then. Figure this out tonight and then round up the gang.”
“You make them sound like the Scoobies.”
“Are you kidding? I’d kill for the Scoobies at a time like this.”
Caitlyn nodded. “Wouldn’t we all.”
“Now how the hell do we get out of this place?”
“We go against the flow, Michael. Isn’t that what we always do?”
TWENTY FIVE
As the day passed, Alicia found solitude increasingly demanding. Another walk along the Seine, another coffee in a café, one more hour behind a desk trying to chart the future course of her life. One more sheet of blank paper. A distant study of “normal” people, and of how they went about their daily lives. It all seemed so alien to her. It had been said time and time again that career soldiers could never adapt to a regular life. Looking at typical habits and routines, Alicia could easily understand why.
The first man who beat her to the last bottle of milk on the shelf would end up crushed at her feet. The pushy woman who barged past her in the street would find her head in a handbag, still attached of course. The idiot wandering along in the flow of human traffic, obliviously texting or flicking at his cell screen as he walked, would run right into the point of her elbow.
As her thoughts turned darker, Alicia knew it was time to seek some company. First she rang Russo and thought, What the hell, why not make it a threesome?
Russo and Healey turned up together. Alicia suspected they’d met some time earlier, but said nothing. Russo sat down on the bench beside her and stared at the huge Egyptian obelisk at the center of the Place de la Concorde.
“They all seem so… unaware,” he said, referring to the people. “Carefree.”
“They’re not,” Alicia said. “But for today, and because of people like us, they can be.
“Do you think we’ll ever get to do that?” Russo said.
Alicia stared at him, surprised how close he was to her way of thinking. Silently, she shook her head. Healey voiced an objective of one day becoming a model civilian but Russo pointed out the fact that he was barely out of pre-school.