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Annja placed the flashlight lens against the laminated paper and slowly guided the manuscript page along so that every square inch was covered. After covering nearly the whole page, her hopes steadily sinking while Krauzer continued to stew, Annja blinked to clear her vision when she spotted writing in the lower right corner.
She lowered the flashlight and raised the page to examine the surface with her naked eye. Even holding the manuscript up to the overhead lights didn’t show anything. The striations within the crystal somehow translated the image, probably through various degrees of refraction.
“Did you find something?” Orta stood at her side, his chest resting slightly against her shoulder.
“Yes,” Annja answered. Her voice sounded quiet in her own ears, but her excitement thrummed like a live thing inside her.
“You’re imagining things,” Krauzer insisted. “You’re tired and you want something to be there.” Still, he came to stand on her other side and peered at the crystal. “See? Nothing’s there.”
“Look inside it.” Annja replaced the page over the flat spot and shone the flashlight against the page so the beam shone into the crystal.
Inside the crystal, the neat handwriting stood revealed, almost too small to read. The penmanship was delicate, ornate and so small. Each space between words was carefully designed.
“I don’t see anything,” Krauzer challenged.
Annja nodded to Orta. “Hold these.”
Silently, enraptured by what he was seeing, Orta held the flashlight and the page. He experimented by pulling the flashlight lens back from the paper. “I can get the writing a little larger, but pulling the light source reflects back too much and throws off the focus, causing it to disappear.”
Annja opened her backpack and took out her tablet PC and a small digital camera. She slipped on an equally small macro lens. “If someone had read the manuscript pages in that crystal all those years ago, they couldn’t have put a candle flame up against the paper.”
“Someone built this crystal to hide the message inside the manuscript pages.” Orta shook his head. “But the crystal looks so real.”
“The crystal is real. This is old, probably grown over time. I’d like to find out who created it, as well.” Annja left the tablet PC on one of the tables and brought the camera to the crystal. She experimented with angles and found the one that best revealed the message within the depths of the crystalline latticework. She snapped images.
“I see it.” Krauzer bent so low and so close that his breath temporarily fogged the crystal. Looking embarrassed, he leaned back. “You know, that’s pretty cool. I could use something like this in A Diversion of Dragons.”
Orta blew out an impatient breath. “Seriously? You see this—a secret message in a crystal that has to be at least hundreds of years old, the crystal itself even older than that—and the first thing you think of is using it in a movie? You don’t even wonder what the message is?”
“Don’t go all professor on me, Doc.” Krauzer held up his hands defensively. “I’m a movie guy. I’m one of the movie guys in this town. People talk about me the same way they talk about Spielberg and Coppola.”
“You’re an imbecile!”
Krauzer held out a warning finger. “It wouldn’t be smart to make this personal.”
“Smart? You’re not intelligent enough to know when you’re not invited to something.”
“Are you talking about the food?” Krauzer hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the takeout cartons sitting on the table. “I can pay for that. In fact, I’ll pay for it all.” He pulled out a black American Express card. “You take plastic?”
Frozen by the sudden outbreak of tempers, Annja couldn’t believe what was taking place. Male testosterone was so easily misplaced. “Guys? Maybe we could focus.”
Orta blushed a deep red. “I cannot believe the crystal ended up in your hands.”
Krauzer glared at his rival. “Yeah, well, it’s mine. Whatever secret message is in there is mine, too, so if there’s treasure, it’s mine.”
“The message isn’t in the crystal, you idiot. It’s on these pages. Which I have.”
“Yeah, well, I own the decoder ring. Try to figure out your secret message without that.” Krauzer shrugged. “I don’t need the secret message. It’s probably ‘Juan Cabrillo was here.’ Or maybe ‘Today the chef’s mystery meat was particularly horrible.’ You think Twitter and Facebook invented boring self-indulgence? Try reading some of those classics college professors cram down your throat.”
“Have you even wondered why anyone would go to the trouble of putting a secret message in these pages and that crystal?”
“I don’t care. I’ll just take my crystal and be going. I’m making a movie. I don’t have time for this crap.” Krauzer started to reach for the scrying crystal, then stopped when Annja narrowed her eyes.
“Not yet,” she told him.
“It’s mine.”
“Not until I’m done with it,” Annja said. “We agreed.”
Glaring at her, Krauzer backed away. “Hurry.”
Annja nodded to Orta. “Ready?”
Breathing out slowly, Orta picked up the flashlight and manuscript page to return to their joint task. It took him only a moment to find the hidden writing.
Peering intently at the handwriting, Annja said, “Looks like calligraphy that was made with some kind of tool.”
“Probably jeweler’s instruments,” Orta replied. “The Portuguese were constantly looking for treasures. Gold, silver and gems. For the message to be rendered so small, I’d say the writer used a jeweler’s loupe, too, though I’m not certain those had been invented at the time this was made. Some type of magnifying glass at the very least.”
Adjusting the magnification of the image on her camera viewscreen, Annja tilted it toward Orta. “This looks like Latin.”
He peered more closely. “Yes, it is. But see the name?”
“Julio Gris.”
“Yes.”
“And unless I’m mistaken, this says it is the last will and testament of Gris.”
“Let’s see what’s on the next page.”
* * *
IN LESS THAN an hour, Annja and Orta had the hidden messages from the manuscript pages shot and mostly decoded. She loaded the images onto her tablet PC and enlarged them. She’d shot them so they could be enhanced. Compiling the images into a single file she could flip through with the touch of a button took only a few minutes.
The person who had written the message had a fine hand at calligraphy. The whorls and loops looked as though a machine had punched them out.
“Well?” Krauzer sat on a stool on the other side of the large table. His arms were folded across his chest and his lips were pursed into a petulant frown.
“What?” Annja asked.
“Isn’t somebody going to read the message?”
“I thought you weren’t interested.”
Krauzer shook his head in irritation. “You know, you might want to borrow my crystal again at some point.”
That was true. Annja focused on the message. “‘This is the last will and testament of Julio Gris, second mate of the good ship San Salvador. 1542.
“‘In my life, I have been many things before I took my post on Captain Juan Cabrillo’s ship, may God rest his unfortunate soul. If I had been caught for many of the things I did, I would have been shot by jealous husbands or hanged for thievery or murder.
“‘Captain Cabrillo only knew me as a mate aboard his ship, and I worked hard for him because I have always loved the sea. Even more than I loved the sea, though, I have loved the idea of treasure.
“‘God knows of the larceny in my darkest thoughts, and He has taken pains to see that I am properly punished, for it seems I may never claim this prize. I heard the story about the lost treasure of the Merovingian kings from a man who knew György Dózsa, a warrior from the Kingdom of Hungary. According to the man who gave me the story, Dózsa read the pages from the Bibliotheca Corviniana himself.’”
“Wait.” Krauzer held his hands up. “Just hold on. You’re throwing too much information out too fast. Who are the Merovingian kings?”
Before Annja could answer, the room’s main door opened and two armed men strode inside. They wore black clothing with abbreviated Kevlar armor and carried H&K MP5 machine pistols with thick sound suppressors. Dark eyed, the men looked related, but one of them was easily ten years older than the other. He was clean shaven with a well-kept mustache, while the other man had deliberate scruff. Both moved economically, spacing themselves out so they commanded the room.
“Put your hands in the air,” the older man commanded. His accent echoed faintly of French.
Not having any options, Annja did as she was told.
6 (#ulink_d0144b16-2db0-5558-8f74-2dd6069ed3b5)
“Fox Leader, this is Fox Six.”
Moving quickly through the dim college hallways, Ligier de Cerceau carried his machine pistol in both hands. Adrenaline surged through him as he waited for his companion to unlock the classroom door they stood in front of.
“You have Fox Leader.”
“I have the packages in sight.”
De Cerceau stepped into the empty classroom, flicked on the bright light attached to the machine pistol and surveyed the space. Only tables and chairs occupied the space other than a lectern at the front of the room.
“Are the packages in good shape?” De Cerceau pulled back out into the hallway and took his smartphone from inside his jacket. The Kevlar body armor made the task more difficult, but he managed. He pressed the friend app and watched as the red pins popped up onto the screen to mark the locations of his men.
Twelve of his men roamed through the college of history, and all of them were dangerous, hard men. He’d handpicked each man for his core unit.
“The packages are in excellent shape,” Georges Dipre answered.
“Keep them that way.” De Cerceau gestured to the man beside him to proceed. “I’m on my way to your location now.”
He followed the other man, both of them as quiet as shadows as they drifted through the silent halls.
* * *
STANDING BESIDE ORTA, Annja watched the two men who were holding them prisoner. Their movements were precise and methodical. Professional soldiers, she realized.
“What do they want?” Krauzer whispered.
“The crystal,” Orta answered. Either he spoke French, too, or his native language was close enough that he had no problem following the rapid-fire conversations between the men and the person they were talking to at the other end of their communication units.
Annja had already discerned their interest and hated her helplessness.
“You can’t have the crystal!” Krauzer took a step toward the men. “I need that in my movie.”
“Stay back,” the older man commanded. He squeezed a quick burst from his machine pistol and, while the thick suppressor on the end of the weapon kept the noise quieted, the bullets ripped into the wall at the other end of the room, tearing divots and smashing through framed pictures.
“Okay, okay!” Krauzer dropped to his knees on the floor and held his hands up in surrender.
“Deal with that idiot,” the older man said in French.
The younger man put a knee in Krauzer’s back, pushing the movie director forward as he pulled a zip tie from a thigh pocket.
For a moment, the older man’s attention was diverted as he watched his companion and talked to other members of his group. Partially blocked from the man’s sight and standing to the right of the man handling Krauzer, Annja reached for the thick ceramic plates Orta had brought for their dinner. She wrapped her fingers around the edge of the top plate and hurled it in a discus throw, spinning and getting her weight into the effort.
The older gunman brought his weapon to bear and fired a short burst that sliced through the air above Annja’s head as she ducked. Spinning, the heavy plate struck the gunman in the throat and knocked him backward.
Shifting his attention from Krauzer to Annja, the second gunman tried to spin to cover her. Balanced on both hands and one foot, Annja shot her other foot out and caught the gunman in the chest and arm, driving him back toward the table. His head struck the table’s edge with a hollow thump and his eyes slid up so that only the whites showed as he toppled to the floor.
Still in motion, aware that the older gunman had been only momentarily put off, Annja stood and reached for the second plate. She held the plate at the end of her arm like a tennis racket and swung it into the surviving gunman’s face in a backhand swing as she spun.
The plate shattered across the man’s grizzled features and shards exploded in all directions. Blood streamed from the man’s broken nose and a deep cut on one of his cheeks. Unconscious, certainly concussed, the man sank to the floor.
Annja knelt over the man and quickly went through his pockets but found nothing that identified him. A demanding voice spoke over the walkie-talkie the man wore over his shoulder.
She looked at Krauzer and Orta, both of whom stared at her in shock. “There are more coming,” she told them.
“For my crystal?” Krauzer sounded amazed.
“Get it and get moving,” Annja ordered as she took the man’s machine pistol and recognized it as one she was familiar with. She dumped the partially expended magazine and shoved in a fresh one taken from the man’s tactical gear.
Krauzer stood slowly, moving as if he was in a daze. He started at the blood pooling around the gunman’s head. “Is he dead?”
“No.” Annja stood and slung the machine pistol over her shoulder. She listened for footsteps out in the corridor. She didn’t hear anything, but she’d noticed the thick soles on the gunmen’s boots. The team would be moving quietly.
“This is stupid crazy,” Krauzer announced. He wiped his face.
Annja shoved him into motion. “Grab the crystal. Let’s go.” She was happy to see that Orta was already putting the manuscript sheets back in their protective case. Grabbing her backpack, Annja quickly packed her gear into it and pulled it on. She tried to think of how much time had passed and knew that she had no clue.
Orta looked at her. “There are more of these men?”
“Yes.” Annja pulled the ear-throat mic into place and clipped the walkie-talkie to the ammo belt. A deep, controlled voice spoke at the other end, demanding that Fox Six reply. She ignored the command and nodded to Orta. “You know the campus layout. Which way is the quickest way out?”
“Follow me.” Orta headed to the back door.
Krauzer had the crystal wrapped in one arm like an oversize football and was reaching for the other machine pistol lying on the floor.
Taking a quick step, Annja kicked the weapon under the table and out of Krauzer’s reach.
He whirled on her, his features taut with rage and fear. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to keep us alive,” Annja said. “You’re a director, not a commando.”
“And you think you’re some kind of action hero?”
Annja glanced at the two unconscious attackers. “I’ve got experience with this sort of thing.”
