“Did you know more books have been written about him than any other historical figure, save perhaps Jesus Christ.”
“I never realized you were such the historian.”
“I never realized you were so obstinate.”
She’d known Mastroianni a number of years, not as a friend, more as a casual business associate. He owned, outright, the world’s largest aluminum plant. He was also heavy into auto manufacturing, aircraft repair, and, as he’d noted, health care.
“I’m tired of being stalked,” he said. “Especially by a woman who wants something, yet can’t tell me what or why.”
She decided to do some ignoring of her own. “I like what Flaubert once wrote. History is prophecy, looking backwards.”
He chuckled. “Which perfectly illustrates your peculiar French view. I’ve always found it irritating how the French resolve all their conflicts on the battlefields of yesterday. It’s as if some glorious past will provide the precise solution.”
“That irritates the Corsican half of me sometimes as well. But occasionally, one of those former battlefields can be instructive.”
“Then, Eliza, do tell me of Napoleon.”
Only for the fact that this brash Italian was the perfect addition to her club did she continue. She could not, and would not, allow pride to interfere with careful planning.
“He created an empire not seen since the days of Rome. Seventy million people were under his personal rule. He was a man at ease with both the reek of gunpowder and the smell of parchment. He actually proclaimed himself emperor. Can you imagine? A mere thirty-five years old, he snubs the pope and places the imperial crown upon his own head.” She allowed her words to take root, then said, “Yet for all that ego, Napoleon built, specifically for himself, only two memorials, both small theaters that no longer exist.”
“What of all the buildings and monuments he erected?”
“Not one was created in his honor, or bears his name. Most were not even completed till long after his death. He even specifically vetoed the renaming of the Place de la Concorde to Place Napoleon.”
She saw that Mastroianni was learning something. Good. It was about time.
“In Rome he ordered the Forum and Palatine cleared of rubble and the Pantheon restored, never adding any plaque to say that he’d done such. In countless other cities across Europe he ordered improvement after improvement, yet nothing was ever memorialized to him. Isn’t that strange?”
She watched as Mastroianni cleared his palate of chocolate with a swish of bottled water.
“Here’s something else,” she said. “Napoleon refused to go into debt. He despised financiers, and blamed them for many of the French Republic’s shortfalls. Now he didn’t mind confiscating money, or extorting it, or even depositing money in banks, but he refused to borrow. In that, he was totally different from all who came before him, or after.”
“Not a bad policy,” he muttered. “Leeches, every one of the bankers.”
“Would you like to be rid of them?”
She saw that prospect seemed pleasing, but her guest kept silent.
“Napoleon agreed with you,” she said. “He flatly rejected the American offer to buy New Orleans and sold them, instead, the entire Louisiana Territory, using the millions from that sale to build his army. Any other monarch would have kept the land and borrowed money, from the leeches, for war.”
“Napoleon has been dead a long time,” Mastroianni said. “And the world has changed. Credit is today’s economy.”
“That’s not true. You see, Robert, what Napoleon learned from those papyri I told you about is still relevant today.”
She saw that she’d clearly tickled his interest as she drew close to her point.
“But of course,” he said, “I cannot learn of that until I agree to your proposal?”
She sensed control of the situation shifting her way. “I can share one other item. It may even help you decide.”
“For a woman I do not like, who offered me such a comfortable flight home, fed me the finest beef, served the best champagne, and, of course, the chocolate tart, how can I refuse?”
“Again, Robert, if you don’t like me, why are you here?”
His eyes focused tight on hers. “Because I’m intrigued. You know that I am. Yes, I’d like to be rid of bankers and governments.”
She stood from her seat, stepped aft to a leather sofa, and opened her Louis Vuitton day satchel. Inside rested a small leather-bound volume, first published in 1822. The Book of Fate, Formerly in the Possession of and Used by Napoleon.
“This was given to me by my Corsican grandmother, who received it from her grandmother.” She laid the thin tome on the table. “Do you believe in oracles?”
“Hardly.”
“This one is quite unique. It was supposedly found in a royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor, by one of Napoleon’s savants. Written in hieroglyphs, it was given to Napoleon. He consulted a Coptic priest, who translated it orally to Napoleon’s secretary, who then converted it into German for secrecy, who then gave it to Napoleon.” She paused. “All lies, of course.”
Mastroianni chuckled. “Why is that not surprising?”
“The original manuscript was indeed found in Egypt. But unlike the papyri I mentioned earlier-”
“Which you failed to tell me about,” he said.
“That comes with a commitment.”
He smiled. “A lot of mystery to your Paris Club.”
“I have to be careful.” She pointed to the oracle on the table. “The original text was written in Greek, probably part of the lost library at Alexandria. Hundreds of thousands of similar scrolls were stored in that library, all gone by the 5th century after Christ. Napoleon did indeed have this transcribed, but not into German. He couldn’t read that language. He was actually quite poor with foreign languages. Instead, he had it converted to Corsican. He did keep this oraculum with him, at all times, in a wooden cabinet. That cabinet had to be discarded after the disastrous Battle of Leipzig in 1815, when his empire first began to crumble. It is said that he risked his life trying to retrieve it. A Prussian officer eventually found and sold it to a captured French general, who recognized it as a possession of the emperor. The general planned to return it, but died before he could. The cabinet eventually made it to Napoleon’s second wife, Empress Marie Louise, who did not join her husband in his forced exile on St. Helena. After Napoleon’s death, in 1821, a man named Kirchenhoffer claimed that the empress gave the manuscript to him for publication.”
She parted the book and carefully thumbed though the opening pages.
“Notice the dedication. HER IMPERIAL HIGHNESS, THE EX-EMPRESS OF FRANCE.”
Mastroianni seemed not to care.
“Would you like to try it?” she asked.
“What will it do?”
“Predict your future.”
NINE
MALONE’S INITIAL ESTIMATE REGARDING SAM COLLINS HAD been correct. Early thirties, with an anxious face that projected a mix of innocence and determination. Thin, reddish blond hair was cut short and matted to his head like feathers. He spoke with the same trace of an accent Malone had first detected-Australian, or maybe New Zealand-but his diction and syntax were all American. He was antsy and cocky, like a lot of thirty-somethings, Malone himself once included, who wanted to be treated like they were fifty.
One problem.
All of them, himself once again included, failed to possess those extra twenty years of mistakes.
Sam Collins had apparently tossed away his Secret Service career, and Malone knew that if you failed with one security branch, rarely did another extend a hand.
He wheeled the Mazda around another tight curve as the coastal highway veered inland into a darkened, forested expanse. All of the land for the next few miles, between the road and sea, was owned by Henrik Thorvaldsen. Four of those acres belonged to Malone, presented unexpectantly by his Danish friend a few months ago.