Lost City nf-5 Page 12

  "Brandy?" he offered.

  Skye laughed at the sight and shook her head. "Well, what do you think?"

  "Extraordinaire." He put the helmet back on the table and poured himself a brandy. "Where did you get this lovely objet dart?" "It was frozen into Le Dormeur glacier." "A glacier? Even more extraordinary."

  "That's not half the story. It was found near a body that was embedded in the ice. The body may have been in the glacier less than a hundred years. The man probably parachuted from a plane whose wreckage was found in the nearby lake."

  Darnay poked his forefinger through the hole in the helmet. "And this?"

  "I think it's a bullet hole."

  The antiquities dealer didn't seem surprised. "Then this Ice Man could have been wearing the helmet?" "Possibly."

  "It's not a failed proof mark

  "I don't think so. Look at the hardness of that steel. Musket balls would have bounced off the metal like peas. The hole was made by a more modern firearm."

  "So we have a man flying over a glacier wearing an old helmet, shot with modern weapons." She shrugged. "It seems so." Darnay sipped his brandy. "Fascinating, but it all makes little sense.

  "Nothing about this whole affair makes sense."

  She settled into a chair and told Darnay about Renaud's summons to the cave and her harrowing rescue. Darnay listened with furrowed brow.

  "Thank God you're safe! This Kurt Austin is an homme formidable Handsome, too, I suppose."

  "Very much so." She felt herself blushing.

  "I owe him my gratitude. I have always thought of you as a daughter, Skye. I would have been devastated if anything had happened to you."

  "Well, nothing did, thanks to Mr. Austin and his colleague Joe Zavala." She gestured at the helmet. "Well?"

  "I believe it's older than it looks. As you say, the steel is extraordinary. The metal used in its manufacture may very well have been forged in the stars. The fact that this is the only one of its kind that I have ever seen, and that you found no reference to it in your library, leads me to think it might have been a prototype"

  "If the features were so innovative, why weren't these ideas picked up sooner?"

  "You know the nature of arms and men. Good sense does not always prevail over intransigence. The Polish insisted on using horse cavalry against armored panzer divisions. Billy Mitchell had an uphill fight convincing the army hierarchy of the value of aerial bombardment. Maybe someone looked at this and said the old equipment was preferable to the untested."

  "Any thoughts on the eagle motif I saw here and on the plane?"

  "Yes, but none of them are scientific."

  "I'd be interested to hear them anyhow. And perhaps I'll take that offer of brandy."

  Darnay poured another snifter and they tapped glasses. "I'd say the eagle represents the joining together, an alliance of some sort, of three

  different groups into one. Epluribus unum. "Out of many, one." It was not an easy arrangement. The eagle seems to be pulling itself apart, yet it must hang together or die. The weapons it is clutching in its claws would lead me to believe that this alliance has something to do with war."

  "Not bad for an unscientific guess."

  He smiled. "If we only knew who your Ice Man was." He glanced at his watch. "Excuse me, Skye, but I have a conference call with a dealer in London and a buyer in the United States. Would you mind if I kept this piece here for a few hours so I could study it further?"

  "Not at all. Just call when you want me to pick it up. I'll either be at my office or my apartment."

  A cloud passed over his brow. "My dear girl, there is more here than meets the eye. Someone was willing to kill for this artifact. It must have great value. We must be very careful. Does anyone know you have it?"

  "Kurt Austin, the NUMA man I told you about. He's trustworthy. Some of those who were in the cave would know of it. And Renaud."

  "Ah, Renaud," he said, drawing out the name. "That's not good. He'll want it back."

  Her dark eyes snapped with anger. "Over my dead body." She smiled nervously, realizing the implication of her words. "I can stall him, say the helmet is at the metallurgist."

  Darnay's phone rang. "That is my call. We'll talk later."

  After leaving the shop, she went to her apartment instead of her office. She wanted to check her answering machine, hoping she would hear from Austin. Her discussion with Darnay had given her the jitters. She had the feeling that danger was lurking nearby, and hearing Austin's voice would have offered some reassurance. When she got home, she played her messages, but there was no word from Kurt.

  She felt weary from her work. She lay down on the sofa with a fashion magazine, intending to relax before going back to the office.

  But after a few minutes the magazine fell from her fingers to the floor and she drifted off into a deep sleep.

  SKYE WOULD have slept less soundly if she knew what Auguste Renaud was up to. He sat in his office in a dangerous fury, head bent over his desk, compiling a list of complaints against Skye Labelle. His hand was mending, but his pride was still gravely wounded.

  All his ill will centered on that insolent woman. He would pull every political string at his command, call in every IOU owed him to destroy her, ruin her career and that of anyone who had been even vaguely friendly to her. She had humiliated him in front of others and ignored his authority. She virtually ignored his demand that she produce the helmet. He would have her thrown out of the Sorbonne. She'd beg for mercy. He pictured himself as the Creator in one of those Renaissance paintings of God chasing Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden with his flaming sword.

  He had encountered her in the elevator that morning. She had said good morning and smiled at him, sending him off into a simmering rage. He had his anger under control by the time he got to his office and was directing it to the list of complaints he had in front of him. He was writing a detailed description of her loose morals when he heard a soft shuffle. The chair creaked in front of his desk. He assumed it was his assistant.

  Head still bent to his work, he said, "Yes?"

  When no one answered, he looked up and his bowels turned to ice water. The chair had been turned around. Sitting in it was the big puffy-faced man who had attacked him under the glacier.

  Renaud was adept at survival. He pretended that he hadn't recognized his visitor.

  He cleared his throat. "How can I help you?" he said. "You don't know me?"

  "I don't believe so. You have business with the university?"

  "No, I have business with you."

  Renaud's heart sank.

  "I'm sure you must be mistaken."

  "You were on television," the man said.

  Even before Renaud had arrived back in Paris, he had called a favored television reporter and arranged an interview in which he took complete credit for finding the Ice Man, and suggested that he was responsible for the rescue as well.

  "Yes. You saw the interview?"

  "You told the reporter that you found objects under the glacier. The box was one object. What were the others?"

  "There was only one, a helmet. Apparently, it was very old."

  "Where is the helmet now?"

  "I thought it was left in the cave. But a woman smuggled it out."

  "Who is this woman?"

  A malicious gleam came to Renaud's eye. Maybe this cretin would leave him alone if he had a more tempting target. He could get rid of him and Skye at the same time.

  "Her name is Skye Labelle. She's an archaeologist. Do you want her name and number?" He reached for the faculty directory and opened it. "She has an office on the floor below this one. The number is 216. Anything you do to her is all right with me." He tried to hide his joy. He'd give almost anything to see Skye's face when this madman arrived at her doorstep.

  The man slowly stood up. Good, he was leaving.

  "Is there anything else you want?" Renaud said with a magnanimous smile.

  The big man smiled slowly in return.

/>   From under his coat, he drew a .22 caliber pistol that had a silencer attached to the barrel.

  "Yes," he said. "I want you to die."

  The gun coughed once. A round red hole appeared in Renaud's forehead. He fell forward onto his desk, his smile frozen on his face.

  The big man picked up the directory, tucked it in his pocket and without looking back at the lifeless body slumped over the desk, left the office as silently as he had entered.

  THE ANTIQUE PLANE high above Austin's head danced in a graceful sky ballet in seeming defiance of the laws of gravity and physics. He watched in amazement from the edge of the grassy airfield south of Paris as the plane did an aerial spiral, then a half upward loop and half roll, reversing direction in a perfectly executed Immelmann.

  Austin tensed as the plane dove and swooped in low over the field. The plane was going too fast for a safe landing. It was coming in like a guided missile. Seconds later, the aircraft's bicycle-style landing gear hit the ground and the plane bounced a yard or two in the air, but then it touched down again and taxied up to the hangar with a guttural roar of its engine.

  As the two-blade wooden propeller spun to a stop, a middle-aged man climbed out of the cramped cockpit, removed his goggles and strode over to Austin, who was standing near the hangar. He was grinning from ear to ear. If he had been a puppy, he would have been wagging his tail with joy.

  "Sorry the plane has only one seat, Monsieur Austin. It would be a pleasure to take you up for a ride."

  Austin eyed the tiny airplane, taking in the bullet-shaped engine cover, the wood-and-fabric fuselage and the triangular fin and rudder with the skull and crossbones painted on it. Metal stringers that supported the stubby wings ran in parasol fashion from an A-shaped strut just forward of the cockpit.

  "With all due respect, Monsieur Grosset, your airplane hardly looks big enough for one person."

  Laugh lines crinkled the Frenchman's weathered face. "I don't blame you for being skeptical, Monsieur Austin. The Morane-Saulnier N looks as if a schoolboy put it together in his basement. Only twenty-two feet long, with a wingspan of twenty-seven feet. But this little mosquito was one of the deadliest planes of its day. It was fast over one hundred miles an hour and amazingly maneuverable. In the hands of a skilled pilot, it was an extremely efficient killing machine."

  Austin walked to the plane and ran his hand over the fuselage. "I was surprised at the streamlined fuselage and the single-wing design. When it comes to World War One, I usually picture blunt-nosed biplanes."

  "And with very good reason. Most planes used in the war had two wings. The French were ahead of the other countries in developing the monoplane. This model was, for a time, the most aerodynamically advanced aircraft of the war. Its main advantage over the biplane was its ability to climb more quickly, although this shortcoming was overcome later with the Sopwith and the Nieuport." "Your Immelmann was beautifully done."

  "Merci," Grosset said with a bow. "Sometimes it is not as easy as it appears. This little plane weighs less than a thousand pounds fully loaded, but it is powered by the 116-horsepower I Rhone engine. It

  is tricky to handle and a delicate hand is needed on the controls." He grinned. "One pilot said that the major danger in flying the N was not combat but landing. You may have noticed that my approach speed was high."

  Austin chuckled. "You have a talent for understatement, Monsieur Grosset. I thought you were going to drill a hole in the ground." "I would not be the first to do so," Grosset said, with an easy laugh. "My task was a simple one compared to the old pilots. Picture yourself coming in with your wings full of bullet holes and the fabric in tatters. Maybe you have been wounded so you're weak from loss of blood. Now, there is a challenge."

  Austin detected a hint of nostalgic envy in Grosset's tone. With his fine features and thin mustache, the Frenchman was the epitome of the dashing escadrille daredevils who buzzed German trenches in defiance of antiaircraft fire. Austin had called Grosset, the director of the air museum, after speaking to Ian MacDougal, and asked him to look at the pictures of the lake plane. Grosset said he would be glad to help out if he could. True to his word, he'd called back with a tentative ID shortly after receiving the digital photos over the Internet. "Your plane is in many pieces," he'd said, "but I agree with Monsieur Ian that it is a World War One-era aircraft called a Morane-Saulnier N."

  "I'm afraid my knowledge of early aircraft is on the sketchy side," Austin had replied. "Can you tell me more about it?"

  "I can do better," Grosset had said. "I can show you one. We have an N in our air museum."

  Earlier that day, after checking into his Paris hotel, Austin had caught a high-speed train that had taken him to the museum faster than if he had flown in Grosset's plane. The museum was situated in a hangar complex at the edge of the airfield less than fifty miles south of Paris.

  After the demonstration of his plane's capabilities, Grosset invited Austin to his office for a glass of wine. The office was tucked into a corner of the hangar, which was filled with vintage airplanes. They walked past a Spad, a Corsair and a Fokker into a small room whose walls were festooned with dozens of airplane pictures.

  Grosset poured a couple of glasses of Bordeaux and toasted the^ Wright Brothers. Austin suggested that they raise their glasses as well to Alberto Santos-Dumont, an early Brazilian air pioneer who had lived in France for many years and was considered French by many.

  Printouts of the photos Austin had sent Grosset were spread out on top of an old wooden desk. Austin picked up a picture of the wrecked plane, studied the broken framework and shook his head in wonderment.

  "I'm amazed that you were able to identify the plane from this mess."

  Grosset set his glass aside and fanned out the photos until he came to one he wanted.

  "I wasn't sure at first. I had my suspicions, but as you say, this is a mess. I recognized the machine gun here as a Hotchkiss, but they were commonly used by the early warplanes. And the distinctive conical engine housing was a strong clue. Then I noticed something quite interesting." He shoved the photo across the desk and handed Austin a magnifying glass. "Take a close look at this."

  Austin examined the rounded wood shape. "It looks like a propeller blade."

  "Correct. But not just any propeller blade. See here, there is a metal plate fastened to the propeller. Raymond Saulnier devised a true synchronizing gear early in 1914, which allowed him to fire a Hotchkiss machine gun through a spinning propeller. Ammunition would sometimes hang fire, so he fitted crude metal deflectors to the propeller blades."

  "I've heard of that. A low-tech solution to a complex problem." "After a few test pilots were killed by ricocheting bullets, the idea

  was temporarily abandoned. Then came the war and with it the impetus to come up with new ways to kill your enemy. A French ace named Roland Garros met with Saulnier, and they fitted his plane with steel deflector plates that worked as designed. He had several kills before his plane fell behind enemy lines. The Germans used his system to develop the Fokker synchronizing gear."

  Austin picked up another photo and pointed to a small light-colored rectangle in the cockpit. "What do you make of this? It looks like a metal plaque."

  "You have sharp eyes," Grosset said with a smile. "It is a manufacturer's code." He passed over another photo. "I enlarged the picture on the computer. The letters and numbers are a little fuzzy, but I enhanced the resolution and you can make them out well enough. I was able to match them with the records in the museum's archives." Austin looked up from the picture. "Were you able to trace its ownership?"

  Grosset nodded. "There were forty-nine Ns built. After seeing how successful Garros was, other French pilots obtained the plane and used it with deadly efficiency. The English bought some of these "Bullet' planes, as they called the model, and the Russians as well. They performed better than the Fokker, but many pilots were wary of their high landing speed and sensitivity. You say you found this wreckage in the Alps?"

 
"Yes, at the bottom of a glacial lake near the Dormeur glacier." Grosset sat back in his chair and tented his fingers. "Curious. Some years ago I was called into that area to look over the wreckage of some old planes, scattered at various locations. They were a type known as an Aviatik, primarily used for scouting and reconnaissance. I talked to some of the local residents who said there were stories told by their grandparents of an air battle. It would have happened around the start of World War One, although I could not pinpoint an actual date."

  "Do you think this aerial dogfight had anything to do with this latest find

  "Perhaps. It may be yet another piece of a puzzle nearly a hundred years old. The mysterious disappearance of Jules Fauchard. He was the owner of the plane you found." "The name doesn't ring a bell."

  "Fauchard was one of the wealthiest men in Europe. He disappeared in the year 1914, apparently while flying his Morane-Saulnier. He was in the habit of flying around his vast estate and vineyards. One day, he simply never came back. A search was launched within the probable range of his plane, but no trace was ever found. Within a few days, the war began and his disappearance, while regretful, became a mere historical footnote."

  Austin tapped the photo that showed the machine gun. "Fauchard must have worried a lot about his grapes. How did a citizen come to be flying a warplane?" ^

  "Fauchard was an arms manufacturer with strong political connections. It would have been nothing for him to have a plane diverted from the French arsenal. The larger question is how he got to the Alps." "Lost?"

  "I don't think so. His plane would not have made it to Lac du Dormeur on a tank of fuel. In those days airports were few. He would have had to stockpile fuel supplies along his route. This suggests to me that his flight was part of a deliberate plan."

  "Where do you think he was headed?" "The lake is near the Swiss border."

  "And Switzerland is known for secret banking. Maybe he was on his way to Zurich to cash a check."

  Grosset responded with a soft chuckle. "A man of Fauchard's position had no use for cash." His face grew serious. "You have seen the television reports about the body that was found in the ice?"