“Okay, quick.” Gabriel held his hands together to give Sammi a boost. She placed a foot in his palm, caught hold of the top of the fence with both hands and nimbly hoisted herself up. In an instant she was down on the other side and had disappeared into the thick foliage. Gabriel was reminded of the way she’d vanished from Lucy’s apartment in Nice.
“Coming?” came an impatient whisper.
Gabriel took a look around to make sure no one had come into view, then pulled himself up to the top of the fence. Before he could put his leg over, he heard a telephone ringing somewhere beneath him—Sammi’s cell phone.
He vaulted over the top of the fence and dropped into the undergrowth, where Sammi was fumbling in her pocket. The phone rang again. Gabriel hissed, “Turn that thing—”
She flipped it open and answered in a whisper. “Oui?” She listened for a moment. “Yes, he is right here.” She handed the phone to Gabriel. “It is your brother. He says it is urgent.”
Gabriel took the phone. “Michael, once again, not a good time.”
“I was right, Gabriel,” Michael said, miserably. “She’s been kidnapped again.”
“What?”
“I said Lucy’s been—”
“How did it happen? In Paris?”
“No. She never made it on the plane.”
Gabriel’s hand tightened around the phone. “Damn it.”
“I just got another e-mail from the Alliance. It says you have to ‘deliver the Stone to us or your sister will die.’ ”
“They must know we’re here,” Gabriel said.
“You want me to call the police?” Michael said. “Interpol?”
“No. They’d be useless—or worse. These people are not amateurs. They’ll kill her if we give them a reason.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Get their goddamn stone for them.” He hung up. The look on Sammi’s face told him he didn’t need to relay the news. “Don’t worry,” Gabriel said, “we’ll get her back.”
“What if we can’t?”
Gabriel didn’t answer. He just took another look at his map, jammed it in his pocket, and headed toward a thick crop of trees.
The track led them deeper into the dark forest. Sunlight barely filtered through the tops of the tall pine trees. Twenty minutes of climbing over knotted roots and fallen and rotting tree trunks brought them to a small clearing that began where they were standing and ended a dozen feet away, at a wall of boulders. It was as tall as a three-story building, as wide as four buses driving bumper-to-bumper.
“Is this a natural formation?” Sammi asked, looking at the giant, irregular stones. “Or was there a rock slide . . . ?”
“Neither,” Gabriel said. “I think they were put here. Like the menhirs.”
“But these are enormous,” she said. “How could they even have moved them, never mind lifted them . . . ?”
“Nobody knows,” Gabriel said. “But here they are. And the map says we need to be on the other side.”
“I don’t see a way around,” Sammi said.
“There isn’t one,” Gabriel said. He was already undoing the closure of his rucksack and gestured to Sammi to do the same. “We’re going to have to go over.”
He took out a length of rope and tied one end to her waist, then fastened the other to his own. “I’ll go first. Just follow my lead. Place your feet exactly where I put mine. All right?”
She leaned in and kissed him, just briefly. “For luck,” she said.
“Let’s hope we don’t need it,” he said.
Gabriel shimmied up the first boulder, found a foothold, and then struck the pickax into the rock above him. That gave him something to grab. He hammered a spring-loaded camming device into the crack between two big rocks and quickly attached a carabiner to it, then secured the rope. Using this anchor, he was able to climb to a higher rock, repeat the procedure, and move on. When he was four boulders up, he called for Sammi to follow. She bounded up the first rock like a pro, carefully mimicked Gabriel’s footwork, and scurried onto the second. They were on their way.
It took them a little over forty minutes to reach the top of the boulders. “That wasn’t so bad,” Sammi said.
“We’re not done,” Gabriel said. “Now we go down.”
They reversed the process. Down generally took less time than up, but was more dangerous. When ascending during a rock climb, you can see what’s ahead. When you’re going down, you can’t.
“Take it slow,” Gabriel said. “Pay attention to every step. It just takes one—” Gabriel felt some loose pebbles slip beneath his sole and leaned in toward the rock face to regain his balance.
“Are you okay?”
“As I was saying,” Gabriel said.
They went the rest of the way slowly, cautiously, Gabriel wondering with every step whether Amun or Kemnebi or another of Khufu’s minions was watching them at this very moment, from the branches of a nearby tree or through the high-powered scope of a sniper rifle.
Sammi dropped to the ground beside him, a little out of breath. “How did I do?”
“You’re a natural.” Gabriel quickly packed the climbing tools and took out his handmade map. “Here is where it gets complicated. I’m not sure where we’re supposed to go next. Neither was the Alliance. The place we’re looking for—” he pointed to the area labeled in Arabic “—is somewhere around here, but exactly where . . . I don’t know.” He looked at the thick wall of trees directly ahead of them. “You’d think there would be a marker of some kind.”
“After two hundred years?”
“There’s apparently a group still in existence that’s devoted to keeping the secret.”
“Then wouldn’t they want to get rid of any markers?”
“Not if the markers are part of the secret they’re protecting,” Gabriel said.
Sammi studied the terrain in front of her. “Is this what you Americans mean when you say ‘can’t see the forest for the trees’?”
“Might as well be.” Gabriel began to walk along the tree line, studying the ground and the trunks. He found no signs of recent visitation, nor any indication of any man-made objects. He looked at the map again. “I don’t get it. It’s as if the trail stops cold.”
“Are you sure it really exists?”
He thought of the nonexistent urn he’d come to Corsica to find the last time. “I’m beginning to wonder.”
He put the map away and moved forward, through the trees. There was no trail, so the brush was difficult to step across. Sammi tailed behind him.
“Watch your step,” he warned.
As they continued deeper into the maquis, Gabriel systematically scanned their surroundings left and right. If they didn’t find something concrete soon, they’d have to turn back. What consequences that might have for Lucy, he didn’t know and didn’t want to contemplate. He could tell the Alliance that in his expert opinion the Stone didn’t exist, or at least the hiding place on Corsica didn’t. They might even believe him—but that wouldn’t stop them from killing him. Or Lucy.
Maybe if he could break her free again, get her back to New York—
He never had the chance to finish the thought, because at that moment he saw the menhir.
It was twenty yards in front of them and off to one side, hidden by an especially dense group of trees, a menhir similar to the ones behind them at Filitosa. Gabriel ran toward it, Sammi at his heels. He pushed aside a branch and stepped closer. This one wasn’t ancient. It was old—but not prehistoric. The stone wasn’t nearly as weathered, the features on the carved face at the top more distinct.
It was the face of a young man—a boy, really—and on the sides of the towering stone were the suggestions of a military uniform. The figure’s face was turned to the left, in profile.