Джеймс Роллинс - Сборник Отмычка

"You’re both awake now," the caller said in English.

"Good. Time is already running short." She recognized the voice. It was Dr. Claude Beaupre, the historian from the Pantheon-Sorbonne University in Paris. She pictured the prim, silverhaired Frenchman seated in the Hemingway Bar. He had worn a threadbare tweed jacket, but the true measure of the man was found not in the cut of his cloth, but within the haughty cloak of his aristocratic air and manners. She guessed that somewhere in the past his family had noble titles attached to their names: baron, marquis, vicomte. But no longer.

Maybe that’s why he’d become a historian, an attempt to cling to that once-illustrious past.

When she had met him this morning, she’d hoped to buy documents pertaining to the Guild’s true leaders, but circumstances had clearly changed.

Had the man figured out who I am? If so, then why am I still alive?

"I have need of your unique skills," the historian explained, as if reading her thoughts. "I expended much effort to lure you here to Paris, to entice you with the promise of answers. You almost came too late." "So this is all a ruse." "Non. Not at all, mademoiselle. I have the documents you seek. Like you, I took full advantage of the tumult among our employers-your former, my current-to free the papers you came hunting. You have my solemn word on that. You came to buy them. I am now merely negotiating the price." "And what is that price?" "I wish you to find my son, to free him before he is killed." Seichan struggled to keep pace with these negotiations. "Your son?" "Gabriel Beaupre. He has fallen under the spell of another compatriot of our organization, one I find most distasteful. The man is the leader of an apocalyptic cult, l’Ordre du Temple Solaire." "The Order of the Solar Temple," she translated aloud.

Renny MacLeod’s face hardened at the mention of the name.

"Oui," Claude said from the phone. "A decade ago, the cult had been behind a series of mass suicides in two villages in Switzerland and another in Quebec.

Members were found poisoned by their own hand or drugged into submitting. One site was firebombed in a final act of purification. Most believed the OTS had dissolved after that-but in fact, they’d only gone underground, serving a new master." The Guild.

Her former employers often harnessed such madness and honed its violence to serve their own ends.

"But the new leader of OTS-Luc Vennard-has greater ambitions. Like us, he plans to use the momentary loosening of the Guild’s reins to exert his own independence, to wreak great havoc on my fair city. For that reason alone, I’d want him stopped, but he has wooed my son with myths of the continuing existence of the Knights Templar, of the cult’s holy duty to usher in the reign of a new god-king-likely Vennard himself-a bloody transformation that would require fire and sacrifice. Specifically human sacrifice. To use my son’s words before he vanished, a great purging would herald the new sun-king’s birth." "When is this all supposed to take place?" Seichan asked.

"Noon today, when the sun is at its strongest." She glanced to the mantel clock. That was in less than two hours.

"That is why I took these extreme measures. To ensure your cooperation. The collars not only punish, but they also kill. Leave the city limits of Paris and you will meet a most agonizing end. Fail to free my son and you will meet the same fate." "And if I agree… if I succeed…" "You will be set free. You have my oath. And as payment for services rendered, the documents I possess will also be yours." Seichan considered her options. It did not take long. She had only one.

To cooperate.

She also understood why Claude Beaupre had collared her and turned her into his hunting dog. He dared not report what he’d learned from his son to the Guild. The organization could simply let Vennard commit this violent act and turn it to their advantage.

Chaos often equaled opportunity to her former masters. Or they would stamp out Vennard and his cult for their hubris and mutiny. In either scenario, Gabriel Beaupre would likely end up dead.

So Claude had sought help outside of regular channels.

"What about the boy?" Seichan asked, staring over at Renny MacLeod, unable to fit this one jigsaw piece into the puzzle.

"He is your map and guide."

"What does that mean?" Renny must have noted her sudden attention on him and grew visibly paler.

"Search his back," Claude commanded. "Ask him about Jolienne." "Who is Jolienne?" This time the kid flinched, as if punched in the gut.

But rather than going even whiter, his face flushed. He lunged forward, grabbing for the phone.

"What does that bastard know about my Jolie?" Renny cried out.

Seichan easily sidestepped his assault, keeping the phone to her ear and spinning him with one hand.

She tossed him facedown on the bed and held him in place with a knee planted at the base of his spine.

He struggled, swearing angrily.

"Stay still," she said, digging in her knee. "Who is Jolie?" He twisted his head around to glare at her with one eye. "My girlfriend. She disappeared two days ago.

Looking for some group called the Solar Temple. I was in that pub last night trying to drum up a search party among the other cataphiles." She didn’t know what that last word meant. But before inquiring, her attention focused on the kid’s naked back and the sprawl of his tattoo. This was the first chance she’d had to get a good look at it.

In black, yellow, and crimson inks, a strange map had been indelibly etched into his skin-but it was not a chart of streets and avenues. In meticulous detail, the artwork depicted an intricate network of crisscrossing tunnels, widening chambers, and watery pools. It looked like the map for some lost cavern system. It was also clearly an unfinished work: passages faded into obscurity or ended abruptly at the edges of the tattoo.

"What is this?" she asked.

Renny knew what had drawn her attention. "It’s where Jolie disappeared." Claude, still on the phone at her ear, answered her more directly. "It is a map of the Paris catacombs, our city of the dead." Fifteen minutes later, Seichan was gunning the engine of her motorcycle and speeding over the twelve stone arches of the Pont Neuf, the medieval bridge that spanned the River Seine. She wove wildly around slower traffic, crossing toward the Left Bank of Paris and aiming for the city’s Latin Quarter.

Seated behind her, Renny clung to her with both arms. He squeezed tightly as she exited the bridge and made a sharp turn into the maze of streets on the far side. She did not slow down. They were quickly running out of time.

"Take the next right!" Renny yelled in her ear. "Go four blocks. Then we’ll have to continue on foot." Seichan obeyed. She had no other guide.

Moments later, they were both running down the Rue Mouffetard, an ancient pedestrian avenue that cut a narrow, winding swath through the Latin Quarter.

Buildings to either side dated back centuries. The lower levels had been converted into cafes, bakeries, cheese shops, creperies, and a fresh market that spilled out into the street. All around, merchants hawked their goods while patrons noisily bartered.

Seichan shoved through the bustle, noting the chalkboard menus being filled out, the huge loaves of bread being stacked behind windows. Breathless, winded, she drew in the musky headiness wafting from a tiny fromagerie and the fragrant displays of an open-air flower stand.

Still, she remained all too conscious of what lay beneath this lively tumult: a moldering necropolis holding the bones of six million Parisians, three times the population above.

Renny led the way with his long legs. His thin form skirted through the crowds with ease. He kept glancing back, making sure he hadn’t lost her.