At the top of the hill, Lang faced the Pantheon, designed originally to be a church dedicated to Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, by Louis XV in gratitude for his recovery from an illness. Unfinished by the time of the revolution and the rebellion against anything of a religious nature, the building’s facade was converted to a copy of a Roman temple and dedicated to France’s heroes.
Lang took out the professor’s card, reminding himself of the address, and began a slight descent along the left side of the building. This area had been the seat of the University of Paris since its founding as a place for sixteen poor students to study theology in the 11th century. In 1969 the university had been divided into thirteen different departments and disbursed throughout the city. Some lectures were still held in the building at 47 rue des Ecoles. From the card he held in his hand, Lang supposed history was one of them.
The street still had the slightly shabby, down-at-the-heels atmosphere common to neighborhoods where students congregate, with discount stores and bistros advertising low prices. Number 47 was a two-story brick building with little to distinguish it other than a pair of huge wooden doors. Lang entered a stone-floored foyer whose only feature was a spiral staircase. The stone steps were worn from centuries of student feet. Upstairs was a single corridor lined with doors with opaque glass above unvarnished wood.
Lang read the names in chipped black letters until he found the one marked D’TASSE. He knocked gently.
“Entrez!” came from within.
Had Lang asked a film company to create an office for an absentminded professor, they might have produced something very much like what he saw. A wooden desk was stacked high with a jumble of papers, single sheets, periodicals and notebooks. Behind it, a floor-to-ceiling bookcase sagged with the weight of dusty volumes, magazines and more papers. In the corner, an electric heater hummed in a futile effort to dispel the room’s clammy cold. At the desk was a man in a black turtleneck sweater. A sharply pointed Vandyke beard did little to minimize the chubbiness of the face. He peered at Lang though narrow slits of glasses.
“Professor D’Tasse?”
The man stood to a height that could not have greatly exceeded five feet. He extended a hand the size of a child’s. “You are Mr. Reilly, the American my good friend Patrick Louvere called me about?” he asked in accented English.
Not exactly how Patrick described the relationship.
Lang shook the hand. “Yes. He said you could help me.”
The professor sat back down. “Any friend of Patrick’s is, as you Americans say, a friend of mine.”
Lang looked over to where a straight wooden chair served as the depository for a stack of books. D’Tasse nodded and Lang moved them to the floor to take a seat after slipping out of his new coat.
“You have recently edited a diary of, I believe, Napoleon’s personal secretary?”
Behind the glasses, D’Tasse’s eyes narrowed. “What is your interest? I already have a publisher, and a number of American universities are interested. In fact, it has been previewed… is that the correct word, previewed? Yes, previewed in American University amp; College Review.” He held up a pack of printed pages. “I have had made an English-language translation to send them.”
Lang cleared his throat, giving him an added second to come up with a plausible story. He couldn’t. “Let us say I have a very practical interest in Napoleon, one I am not at liberty to divulge.”
“Ah, a secretive friend of the ever-so-secretive Patrick!” He put the papers down and leaned across the desk, resting on his elbows. “See here, Mr. Reilly, I must guard my work. It should be available to all at no cost. Protecting scholarly research from capitalistic exploitation is a duty of the academic community.”
More like academic penis envy.
D’Tasse continued. “I can tell you story after story of colleagues of mine who shared their work, only to see it for sale in some commercial publication.”
How many copies of People Magazine would the diary of Napoleon’s secretary sell?
Lang tried not to show his annoyance. Patrick knew a pompous ass when he saw one. “I can assure you, professor-”
The sentence was never finished.
The door slammed open. Lang swivelled his neck to see two men standing on the threshold, overcoat collars tuned up, caps pulled low. Lang’s first guess was that they were students, students very pissed off. Perhaps about a grade.
Then he saw the guns in their hands.
Somewhere in middle Georgia
The previous evening
The helicopter was approaching. Already Gurt could see a cone of light sweeping an adjacent field as it flew circular patterns, the standard search procedure. She guessed she had less than two minutes to do something.
She stood to reach inside the Hummer, turning off the remaining headlight. She then hurried to the rear passenger door and fumbled with the buckles on Manfred’s child seat. Whoever had designed the thing did not have a speedy exit in mind.
“Mommy, the copter’s coming,” he chortled gleefully, his fear now forgotten. “I want to see it!”
His hand in hers, she unlatched the rear compartment, letting Grumps out. He sniffed at the frozen grass, undecided where to leave his next pee mail.
Gurt pointed. “Manfred, take Grumps to that shed over there and stay inside.”
“But I want to see…”
“MACH SCHNELL!”
His mother rarely raised her voice to him but when she did, particularly in her native tongue, Manfred knew there would be no subsequent conversation.
Taking a second to make sure she was being obeyed, Gurt watched the little boy, followed by the dog, trot inside the rickety structure. Boards were missing and, she was certain, so was part of the roof but it should shelter both from the probing skyborne eye.
She started to bend down and disconnect the tracking device. No, no good. The chopper was close enough to find her without it. Better to use their own weapon against them.
Climbing back into the Hummer, she snatched off the brake and shifted into drive while watching the helicopter’s pool of light skim ever closer. Thankful the cold weather had delayed the engine’s seizing, she stepped on the gas, easing the bulky vehicle back onto the dirt road. Once there, she shifted again into park. Using her seat belt, she lashed the steering wheel to hold the car straight in the road before slipping the gearshift again to drive. She grabbed her purse by the shoulder strap and jumped free as the Hummer lumbered forward.
With a little luck, the Hummer and its tracking device would be a mile or so down the road before loss of oil and coolant brought it to a stop.
By that time, she intended to be gone.
Where and how, she was not sure.
She made it back to the shed just before the light from the helicopter swept overhead, the aircraft’s twin-turbine engines roaring malevolently. She watched as the pool of light moved away before going outside to the pickup truck. Rusty hinges complained bitterly as she opened the door and felt for the ignition switch. She was grateful the truck was an older model without the complicated antitheft mechanisms. She was fairly certain she remembered Agency training for how to direct-wire the ignition, bypassing the switch itself. What was it Lang called the procedure? Hot-wiring, that was it. Now if only the battery in this dilapidated scrap heap was working.
There was something else in the training for doing this…