It had been poured over the rotting bodies to extinguish the putrid smell, and though at the time they hadn't known it would kill germs, it had.

So they were in the seventh. One of the ritzier neighborhoods in Paris, it boasted the Eiffel Tower. Interestingly, its high-cla.s.s status was not apparent from beneath. But they had to be close; this was where she and Ascher had determined the treasure might be found.

The tunnel they traversed ended abruptly at a wall of skulls. A design had been worked with the bones of former Parisian residents. A large circle, two skulls thick in outline, expanded about five feet in diameter before them, and filling in the non-circle parts were thousands of femurs. In the center of the heart was a small plaque.

"Did we take a wrong turn?" Lambert wondered. He commandeered the map and swept the flashlight over it. The beam flickered.

"You're running out of juice," Ascher said slyly.

"We've got reserves." Lambert was quick to cut him off. "It appears as if the end, the glorious X X marks the spot, is ahead. Through that wall." marks the spot, is ahead. Through that wall."

"This could be a new addition created by stray bones. The cataphiles are always putting up new walls and tearing down old ones," Ascher noted. "They haul cement blocks and jack-hammers down here." He tapped the wall of bone before him.

Annja leaned against the wall and listened, as Ascher did, while he tapped. "No, it's original. These skulls are tight and the debris solid, like mortar," she said.

"Very possible. For as old as these tunnels are, they could contain any number of blocked-up pa.s.sages. Either by necessity or because they were dangerous."

Annja brushed her fingers over the plaque, which was thick with dust. There was something engraved on it.

Their heads turned away from the intrusive flashlights over their shoulders, Ascher whispered, "As soon as we get the treasure, we will overtake them, oui? oui?"

"Seven against two. I like those odds."

"I like a woman who can get behind those odds."

"What's the holdup?" Lambert called. "Push it down!"

"There's a plaque," Annja said.

She bent before the small piece of stone and beamed her flashlight over the small French words. Selon Mes Merites. Selon Mes Merites. Hmm..."As I deserve?" she whispered. Hmm..."As I deserve?" she whispered.

An appropriate saying for anyone who may have found a treasure, but not for a treasure left behind. Her heart sank. They were too late. Or this was the wrong X X marks the spot. marks the spot.

"Perhaps we should retrace our footsteps," Annja offered. She beamed her headlamp down the direction they had come. The sandy floor glinted with fine mica particles as if crushed diamonds. "We may have taken a wrong turn."

"You're not looking at all the options," Lambert said.

"Which are?"

"Break down the wall."

"I will not damage a historical structure," Annja said. "Such destruction is worse than theft and piracy."

Lambert looked to one of his men.

The man with shoulders as solid as a Mack truck, took a bouncing step back, prepared, and as he lunged forward, Annja dashed in to push him away. "Are you insane? You will destroy history!"

"Annja, be careful," Ascher warned.

Lambert beamed his flashlight down the pa.s.sageway. "You don't think the ravers we pa.s.sed haven't destroyed enough already?"

"b.l.o.o.d.y pirate," she spit out.

"Mad b.l.o.o.d.y Jack thanks you kindly, mademoiselle. mademoiselle."

Why she was allowing herself to get so worked up must have something to do with being entombed for hours under duress, she thought. Annja kicked the rubble-littered floor with her heel.

"Do whatever," she snapped.

Lambert lifted a hand and gestured. "Theo!"

Another of the thugs charged the wall, and this time Annja allowed it. It was either that or more arguing, which would only result in her defeat.

The thug bent up a knee and connected with the wall of skulls, foot flat and thick heel of a combat boot torquing to dig into any give that may result.

While the entire wall didn't come crumbling down, the force of the impact did push in two skulls and dislodge the plaque. The flat stone piece teetered forward and fell.

Compelled to rush for the piece, Annja missed catching it. It didn't break upon landing the dirt floor. Small thanks for that.

Musty quicklime dust scented the air. It was a familiar smell to Annja, that of ancient times best regarded with reverence and not the blatant disregard Lambert inflicted with his greed.

Icy cold air gushed from the enclosed section of tunnel, streaming over Annja's nose and cheeks. Angry ghosts of history.

If only.

As Theo dragged himself upright and brushed off his hands, another thug began to pull out the skulls.

"Careful," Lambert instructed from over their shoulders. "One wrong skull and the whole thing could come down."

"Isn't that what you want?" Annja asked.

"Not if it's connected to a wall we need to get back out of here."

"Let me do it." Annja shoved aside the thug. She might be able to limit the destruction some. Fitting her fingers through two eyeholes, she carefully rocked at an ancient skull. "I'm going to h.e.l.l for this."

"They are long dead," Lambert said over her shoulder. "Their souls don't care what you do with their bones now."

He'd said something similar about stealing DNA from dead historical figures. The man was utterly mad. He thought he was serving mankind, but instead he destroyed it.

"You should respect the dead, no matter their state," Annja muttered, and proceeded to carefully extract the skulls.

The actual wall was only three skulls thick, equal to the length of the femurs, which were tightly stacked about the skull circle. Once Annja removed the skulls that curved along the top of the circle, the femurs loosened, and the structure slowly collapsed.

She jumped back to avoid the dust of centuries' dead.

A warm hand gripped her arm from behind. She didn't startle, because the touch wasn't rough. Ascher silently conveyed his presence. And she took some relief in his being there. Not completed surrounded by the enemy, then. But a little lost as to what would happen next.

And what if there was a treasure? That would mean she and Ascher no longer held value to Lambert. And a tunnel full of bones was the last place Annja wanted to die.

Lambert leaned inside the hole and poked in a flashlight. He popped back out and handed Annja the flashlight. "Ladies first. It's a small room, about four feet long by three feet high."

"I'd rather watch." Annja crossed her arms firmly. She'd gone to the limits with helping these crooks.

Lambert nodded to one of his men. He moved swiftly, wrapping an arm about Ascher's neck in a chokehold. Shoving the barrel of his weapon into his left side elicited a pained moan from Ascher. The side where he'd lost a kidney a few weeks earlier.

Regarding her calmly, Lambert said softly. "I was unable to uncover relatives or close allies who would mean something to you, Annja. But I suspect Vallois should serve to p.r.i.c.k a personal nerve or two."

"Give me the d.a.m.n flashlight." Annja grabbed it from Lambert and stepped through the hole. Coffin-like and musty, the surroundings were familiar, and yet this was the first time she'd been inside a room completely constructed of bones.

Lambert's head popped inside her hiding spot. "Your lover awaits your victory, my warrior Creed."

"He's not my lover."

"You often kiss friends so pa.s.sionately?"

When had she-? The only time she and Ascher had- Had there been spies in the hotel? How could they have witnessed that kiss without-they must have been observing through the window with a sniper scope.

d.a.m.n. That Lambert had knowledge of her every move disturbed her on a level she couldn't even comprehend.

Ignoring her silent horror, Lambert slid inside the nook and nestled his body close, his thigh fitting against hers. "So, what do we have here?"

She hated that this awful man knew so much about her every move.

"Seems a secret room," she commented. "Possibly it was bricked up with the skulls shortly after the treasure was hidden here. Of course, the plaque dates to the wrong century."

"We've come to the X X on the map-or rather, the fleur-delis. It's the right place," Lambert said. on the map-or rather, the fleur-delis. It's the right place," Lambert said.

"I can't imagine why Mansart would make it so difficult."

"Ah, you hit on the Mansart connection."

"Thanks to your map."

"Glad to be of a.s.sistance. You are keen and perceptive. You know, Annja, we would work well together."

"I don't work for madmen."

"Ouch."

She tried to move her leg away from his, but there was nowhere else to put it.

Annja scanned the room, lined with skeletons. Like a tiny cove that might have once been designed as a rest stop within the greater labyrinth? The tenor of her heartbeat grew more apparent. The air, a mixture of dirt particles and desiccated bone dust, formed a cloud at the back of her throat. m.u.f.fling. Not a place she wanted to stay in too long.

Most especially not with Jacques Lambert crouching too close for comfort.

"Wouldn't it have been easier to place the treasure below the Louvre," she wondered aloud, "in the aqueducts?"

"Very busy waterways, those aqueducts. Especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I've no idea, myself, why the great secrecy and ridiculous treasure hunt, but obviously someone wanted to make it difficult. Perhaps so the reward might be appreciated all the more?"

Annja sighed and pressed the back of her head against the wall of skulls. Her eyes circling the s.p.a.ce, she tried to envision a drunken crew of musketeers tramping about beneath the city, oil lamps held high and boisterous laughter echoing off the stone walls. It would have been an adventure that should have appealed to d'Artagnan. And perhaps that was what the queen intended.

Lambert slapped her thigh. "This is cozy, oui? oui?"

"Take your hand off me."

He gave her leg a squeeze before clasping his hands together about his knees.

"Let me see that map again," she said.

If there were any place that might have an X X on it, this little nook had to be it. on it, this little nook had to be it.

"I'm surprised at you," Lambert said with a snap of his finger against the map. "Lamination? That's not very proper for an archaeologist, is it?"

"Implanting cloned embryos in una.s.suming mothers' wombs. That's not very proper for a geneticist, is it?"

"Touche. But I wager you think you know something that isn't at all what it really is."

"I guess differently. Explain the pregnant women in your waiting room?"

"I cannot. Not to you. To explain genetic engineering would make your head spin."

"I got me some learning in college. I can even balance my checkbook. Try me."

"Annja." A tilt of his head flashed a bright beam of light into her face, so he pushed back his helmet to sit at the back of his head. The headlamp splashed light across the ceiling of their intimate cove. "As I've already attempted to explain, BHDC offers a very particular service. We trace genetics and family bloodlines through DNA. Most useful in providing proof for claims to family fortunes and treasure."

"That you then swoop in to steal," Annja said.

"As any good pirate would, my dear."

"I don't get you, Lambert. All this for what?"

He sighed and adjusted his position so he sat in a half turn toward Annja. "All I have ever done in my life has been only for my brother."

"Your brother?"

"My twin. He died when I was seven."

"And you think you can bring him back by cloning him?"

"Not at all. It would not be my brother, but a physical copy of him. Mentally, the cloned version would be his own person."

"Then I don't understand."

"Had technology been more advanced thirty years ago, the medical community might have been able to grow a new liver for my brother instead of allowing him to suffer and die because my family hadn't the money to pay for a replacement."

"People can't actually buy replacement livers, can they? Most certainly not thirty years ago," Annja said.

"Technology can do remarkable things, Annja. But no, when we were children, sadly the technological advances were few. Yet, even when I got the money for an operation my father said Toby had to wait on the list. The list! Do you know how long donation lists are? To land at the top of a donor list can take years. Sometimes those waiting for a donated organ never get them. The recipient might die before it happens."