There was little time to celebrate. Five fingers that felt like steel bolts sank into the ganglia at the back of his neck. He relaxed, then sucked down a lungful of air at a new sensation: the cold press of steel at his temple. The pressure increased and he dropped his own gun.
“I Tsing Ping,” an oddly musical voice whispered in his ear, “you dead.”
“This is all a bit more complicated than I was led to believe,” Hawke said, twisting his body carefully and smiling up at the man. His eyes were like a pair of small coals. Tsing Ping racked the slide on his gun.
“Easy, old fellow,” Hawke said calmly, getting one foot under him. “Easy does it, right? I’m going to get to my feet now and—” He never finished the sentence.
There was a sudden screech of metal and then a terrific jolt as the ship’s entire superstructure shuddered under the violent impact of something slamming against it, just below the pilothouse. Hawke, trying to scramble to his feet, was slammed hard against the bulkhead. The impact was sufficient to send Tsing Ping and everyone on the bridge flying across the wheelhouse and tumbling to the floor. He heard shouts from the pier below and then shots rang out, bursts of automatic fire.
Hawke crabbed his way across the chaos of the wheelhouse, managing to recover his Walther from under a sheath of loose documents and navigation charts and broken glass. Then he was up and out onto the bridge wing. Standing at the rail he saw that one of the two dockside cranes, the one directly abeam, was now coming under intense fire from crewmen standing on the starboard rail. Then he saw why. Some madman was at the controls of the crane. The cab had revolved away and now was spinning toward the Star’s hull again, the cable taut, and the crazed operator was about to smash the heavily laden pallet against the ship for the second time.
Hawke could see by its trajectory that, this time, the violent impact was targeted at the pilothouse itself. With maybe three seconds to spare, Hawke turned and simply dropped through the stairway opening, hitting the deck hard, and raced aft.
He didn’t look back at the violent sound of metal on metal and shattering glass as the crane whipped around and smashed its pay-load directly into the four angled windows of the Star’s bridge. Agonized screams were heard as bodies were smashed in the twisted metal.
He reached the stern rail. On shore, he could hear the keening high-low sirens and see flashing blue lights approaching the harbor from every direction. Les flics to the rescue. Everyone aboard the old tub appeared to have run forward to see what was going on. He looked at his watch. The Zodiac rendezvous was in six minutes. In the pitted bulkhead behind him, a rusted door hung open, steps leading down. Brock had to be down there somewhere. Guarded? Absolutely. It seemed he was expected after all.
How the hell had he imagined this was going to be simple?
He had one thought as he raced down the steep metal steps.
He’d gone soft. Lazy. Cocky.
Chapter Seven
Paris, 1970
ALL WAS BLACK INSIDE DES INVALIDES. THE GREAT COMPLEX of buildings housed a veterans’ hospital and the army museum. And, in the center, a great church, the Church of the Dome, where the emperor was buried. The skeleton named Joe Bones had forced Luca’s father to use one of his keys to open a security door at the rear of the Musée de L’Armée.
They entered the museum at the end of a long dark allée where no lights shone. But now the snow had stopped and a bright white moon had emerged from the clouds. Pale light flowed through the tall windows and Luca could hear the powdery silence outside.
“Move yer ass, Joey,” Benny said to his gunman. “History awaits us.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Joe Bones said, and shoved the gun in Luca’s father’s back, nudging him forward. The two mute goons brought up the rear.
Everywhere Luca looked, in shadowy display cases, were relics of the vanished Grande Armée. Uniforms, muskets, cannon, and swords. Cavalry mounted on horses. The stuff of Luca’s dreams. The stuff of La Gloire. In other words, his bright and shining future, if he survived this night. His heart quickened.
Their footsteps were a hollow echo on the vast marble floors as they made their way past the endless rooms of the museum, moving relentlessly toward the great Dome. Luca willed himself to show no emotion whatsoever. It would do no good in any case to let these monkeys see anything.
His father was walking ahead of them all, his head down, like a condemned man approaching the gallows. The dog Pozzo trotted happily alongside his owner. Joe Bones held his gun extended at the end of his arm, trained on the back of his father’s head. Luca had never seen the old man look so forlorn and defeated. Except now, amazingly enough, his father had begun to sing. Softly at first, then with a full throat. The French National Hymn, “La Marseillaise.”
Arise children of the motherland
The day of glory has arrived…
To arms, citizens! Form your battalions!
We march, we march!
Let their impure blood water our fields.
It was almost unbearable, the pity Luca felt for his father at that moment. Almost. Finally, they came to a wide corridor at the end of a long hallway. Inside the church proper, now, Luca thought. The huge round room of the Dome was full of moonlight as they entered. There was a waist-high white marble balcony circling the room beneath the towering dome. Pale blue moonlight streamed down from above, falling on a single sculpted monument rising up from the floor below.
“Holy Jesus,” Joe Bones whispered, awe in his voice. “Lookit that!”
He took Luca by one shoulder and pulled him toward the balcony. Luca closed his eyes and placed his hands on the cool marble railing. Breathing deeply, he emptied his mind. When he was ready, he opened his hungry eyes and feasted on the vision of his noble ancestor’s final resting place.
The tomb of his beloved emperor.
Luca took a deep breath. Napoleon Bonaparte’s real bones were inside this beautiful monument. His heart was pounding against his ribs as he took it all in, almost forgetting about his father for the moment.
Arising from the lower depths of the church, the emperor’s great stone sarcophagus, the captured wave, rested atop a high marble plinth. Above the tomb, the circular cupola rose some two hundred feet. Although the space was chill and airless, Luca could sense a thrilling presence here. Almost a living presence. Menacing. It was as if Napoleon was not resting here, but lurking.
Luca saw that a thick rope descended out of the gloom of the top of the dome. It hung directly above the crypt and now one of the goons had a long shepherd’s crook and was reaching out over the balcony, slowly pulling the rope toward his father. He sucked down a lungful of cool damp air. They were going to hang him? His heart rate zoomed even higher and his mouth went dry, but still he showed nothing.
“Luca!” he heard his father cry now. “Run! Run!”
“Don’t worry, Father, I’m coming,” Luca said. As he slowly circled the curved balustrade, a passing cloud covered the moon, filling the dome with purple darkness.
Luca, his eyes shining, strode round the balcony to where Benny and his men stood in a small circle around his father. The son walked up to the father, stared deeply into his haunted eyes, and turned to the man in the black raincoat.
“Monsieur Benny,” Luca said in a voice so low it was barely audible, “if you would be so kind as to ask Monsieur Bones to give me his gun.”