Clive Cussler - Lost City

Skye's eyes scanned the room, and then she went to her desk. She was compulsively neat when it came to her paperwork. Before leaving her office, she had stacked her reference books, papers and files with micrometer precision. Now the edges were ragged, as if they had been hurriedly re-stacked. Someone had been at her deskl "Mademoiselle?"

The police officer was giving her an odd look and she realized that she had been staring blankly into space. She nodded, opened a desk drawer and extracted a file. She tucked the file under her arm without bothering to see what it contained.

"I'm through here," she said with a forced smile. Skye resisted the impulse to bolt from the office and tried to walk at her usual pace, but her legs seemed made of wood. Her calm facade gave no hint of her racing pulse and her heartbeat seemed to thunder in her ears. She was thinking that the same hand that had disturbed her papers could have held the gun that killed Renaud. /

The policeman escorted her from the building and past the barricade. She thanked him and walked home in a daze, crossing streets without looking either way, a near-suicidal move in Paris. She paid no attention to the screech of brakes, the cacophony of blaring horns and the shouted curses.

Her full-blown panic attack had subsided by the time she turned the corner of the narrow street to where her apartment was located. She wondered if she had done the right thing not telling Inspector Dubois that her office had been searched. In her mind she could see the inspector thinking that this crazy paranoid woman must go on the list of suspects.

Skye lived in a nineteenth-century, mansard-roofed house in Mouffetard, on the fringes of the Quartier Latin. She enjoyed the busy neighborhood, with its shops and restaurants and street jazz musicians. The old town house had been turned into three apartments. Skye's was on the third floor and her wrought-iron balcony gave her a view of the street life and the ubiquitous Parisian chimney pots. She sprinted up the stairs. Relief washed over her as she opened the door. She felt safe back in her apartment, but the feeling of security lasted only until she walked into the living room. She couldn't believe the sight that greeted her.

The room looked as if a bomb had gone off. Chair and sofa cushions were strewn about the floor. Her coffee table was swept clear of magazines. Books had been pulled from their shelves and thrown about haphazardly. The kitchen was even worse. Cabinets were wide open and the floor was covered with broken glass and dishes. Moving like a sleepwalker, she went into the bedroom. Drawers had been yanked from their dressers and their contents dumped everywhere. The bed covers and sheets had been yanked off the bed and the mattress sliced open, spilling out the stuffing.

She went back into the living room and gazed at the mess. She was shivering with anger at the violation of her privacy. She felt as if she had been raped. The anger gave way to fear as she realized that the person who wrecked her apartment might still be in there. She hadn't checked the bathroom. She grabbed a poker from the fireplace, and with her eyes glued to the bathroom door, she began to back out of the apartment.

The floor creaked behind her.

She whirled and raised the poker over her head.

"Hul-lo," Kurt Austin said, his coral-colored eyes wide in surprise.

Skye almost fainted. She dropped the poker by her side. "I'm sorry," she said.

"I should apologize for creeping up on you. The door was open, so I stepped inside." He noticed Skye's ashen face. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine now that you're here."

Austin surveyed the living room. "I didn't know you had tornadoes in Paris."

"I think the person who killed Renaud did this."

"Renaud? Not the man who was trapped under the glacier with you?"

"Yes. He was shot to death in his office."

Austin's jaw hardened. "Have you checked the other rooms?"

"Every one except the bathroom. I haven't dared look in the closets."

Austin took the poker from her hand. "Insurance," he said.

He went into the bathroom and came out a minute later.

"Do you smoke?" Austin said.

"Not for many years. Why?"

"You were right to worry." He produced a cigarette butt. "I found a pile of these in the bathtub. Someone was waiting for you to come home."

Skye shuddered. "Why did he leave?"

"Whatever the reason, it was lucky for you that he did. Tell me about Renaud."

They cleared off the sofa and Skye recounted the details of her visit to the university office building. "Am I crazy connecting this disaster and the search of my office to Renaud's murder?"

"You'd be crazy not to make the connection. Is there anything missing from your apartment?"

She looked around the living room and shook her head. "It's impossible to tell." Her eye fell on the telephone answering machine.

"Strange," she said. "When I left the apartment, there were only two messages on the machine. Now there are four." "One is from me. I called as soon as I got into Paris." "Someone must have listened to the last two messages, because the light isn't blinking."

Austin hit the play button and heard his recorded voice saying that he couldn't reach her at her office, and was going to drop by her apartment on the chance she might be between home and work. He hit the play button again. Darnay's voice came on.

"Skye. It's Charles. I was wondering if I could take the helmet with me to my villa. It's proving more challenging than I anticipated."

"Dear God," she said, her face waxen. "Whoever was waiting for me must have heard the message." "Who is Charles?" Austin said.

"A friend. He is a dealer in rare arms and armor. I left the helmet with him to examine. Wait " She salvaged her address book from a pile of papers and looked under the Ds. A page was torn out. She showed the book to Austin. "Whoever was here has tracked down Darnay."

"Try to warn him."

She picked up the telephone, dialed a number and listened for several moments. "No one is answering. What should we do?" "The smart thing would be to call the police." She frowned. "Charles wouldn't like that. He operates his business on the fringes of the law and sometimes beyond that. He'd never forgive me if the police descended on his place and started poking around."

"What if his life depended on it?"

"He didn't answer the phone. Maybe he's not even there. Maybe we're worrying for nothing."

Austin was less optimistic, but he didn't want to waste precious time in a fruitless argument. "How far is the shop from here?"

"On the Right Bank. Ten minutes by taxi."

"I've got a car outside. We'll do it in five."

They ran for the stairs.

THE A N TIQU E SHOP window was dark and the door was locked. Skye produced one of the few keys Darnay had entrusted to outsiders, and opened the door. A line of light seeped out from under the office curtains.

Austin cautiously pushed the curtain aside. The bizarre scene that greeted him looked like an exhibition in a wax museum. A kneeling gray-haired man had his chin resting on a wooden shipping container, like a condemned man with his head on the chopping block. His hair was disheveled; he was bound hand and foot, his mouth gagged with duct tape.

A big man stood over him like an executioner, leaning on a long two-handed broadsword, a black mask covering the upper part of his face. The executioner looked up and smiled at Austin. He pulled the mask off, threw it aside and raised the sword over Darnay's neck. The light gleamed wickedly on the double-edged blade.

"Please stay," he said in a voice that was surprisingly high-pitched for his size. "Your friend here would simply lose his head if you left."

Skye dug her fingers into Austin's arm, but he hardly noticed. Austin remembered the descriptions he had heard and knew that he was looking at the fake reporter who had flooded the glacial tunnel.