Deadly Jewels (7 page)

And so, quietly and without drama, the
Emerald
entered the harbor at Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was time to unload.

 

CHAPTER SIX

Patricia handed me the headlamp. “You attach it to your helmet,” she said.

I looked at her dubiously. I already was wearing more foreign objects than I'd ever even
seen
on a single person: chest waders (now
there's
a fashion statement), climbing equipment, ropes slung casually over my shoulder, a tool belt with portable spotlights, and now a headlamp.

And none of it particularly light to wear or carry.

Patricia, on the other hand, seemed completely comfortable with the equipment. And the process. “What we do is, we mark it on Google Maps,” she'd explained to me that morning when we met for coffee in the glass and chrome of Café Pavé, probably the last time in a while that we'd be bathed in light. “This way, just in case anything goes wrong…”

I looked at her sharply. “What's going to go wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said and laughed as she pushed her glasses back up her nose. “It's just a precaution, don't worry.”

Easier said than done. But it was my own fault; when she had started to describe the urban exploration that had brought her to the center of her dissertation, I'd held up my hand. “You mean there's something
still there
? Something from the forties?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Why of course? And why hasn't anyone seen it? And
what
is it?”

“It wasn't always open,” she said reasonably. “Urban explorers have been down in these tunnels before; you're right, they would have found anything there was to find. But the museum's expansion work diverted some of the waterways, and one of them broke through into these rooms I'm telling you about. The rooms are under Sun-Life and they've been sealed off, bricked up. I think the vault was probably in there.”

“The vault's gone?”

“High-tech for its time,” she said. “They probably sold it.”

“So how do you know—?”

“Because it's a mess in there, and I didn't take time to look at everything because frankly I was a little spooked, but there were some empty crates. And there was a hatbox.”

“A hatbox?” I wasn't getting the significance.

She leaned forward. “The story is that King George and his two daughters—one of them is Queen Elizabeth to us, by the way—took the jewels out of their settings and packed them into hatboxes. Diamonds and rubies and emeralds and God only knows what else—well, you see why I got excited.”

“I see why you got excited.”

“So when do you want to go?” She caught my look. “Well,
don't
you? Isn't that the point? You don't want your boss or those cops finding it first, and neither do I. Listen to me, this is perfect. I want the discovery to be mine, you want to keep this under wraps, so we both win. I need a witness to the discovery, and once you see what's at stake, you'll know how to handle the politics—which, frankly, is way beyond either my interest or ability.”

“Uh-huh.” I thought about it for a moment, rubbing my finger around the rim of my wineglass. The longer we waited, I thought, the more likely it was that it wouldn't be our secret. Someone else would find the underground rooms. The feds, or customs, or my boss would get involved; and Patricia was right—once that happened, the genie was out of the bottle. I'd rather be able to decide on the timing of its release myself. “Tomorrow.”

“Sorry?”

“We'll do it tomorrow. Unless you have anything more—”

“No,” she interrupted. “This is all I have.”

I looked at her and thought, she's telling the truth. It was there if you looked for it, the gleam of obsession, the single-mindedness that's probably shared by crazy people and geniuses alike.

“All right,” I said. “Tomorrow.”

Which was how I was now finding myself wearing gear that I hadn't known existed, and listening to someone talking lightly about leaving a bread crumb trail in case things turned nasty.

What could be nasty, after all, about wading through sewers?

“We're not actually going to cross any active ones,” she said, uncannily reading my mind. Or perhaps it was my expression. “It's just a precaution.” Like leaving Google Maps open on her computer, I thought. This woman didn't leave much to chance.

We went down into the complex two blocks away from my apartment, which was also a little unsettling, down through a manhole that Patricia slid carefully back into place once we were through. “Put on your flashlight.”

“It's on,” I responded. “How did you figure this out?”

“What, getting around underground?”

“For want of a better description.”

“This way.” She touched my elbow and slipped past me. “Follow me.” There was a pause. “How did I figure it out? I've always been into this.”

“Wading through sewers?” I was skeptical. “What, did you have a particularly bad childhood?”

She laughed, and the sound echoed down the tunnel in front of us. “I guess you could call it recreational trespassing,” she said. “I was studying history and I was particularly interested in urban history—how cities came to be, you know?”

I didn't, not really. “I don't know that I've ever given it a moment's thought.”

“Most people don't. Watch your step, here: stay on the brick if you can, it's older.”

“It's older? That's supposed to be reassuring?”

“The brick's better. It's more solid. They started working with concrete in the 1920s, but it cracks over time. Anyway, so I was interested, and I felt that a lot of historical significance of cities ended up buried, one way or another. So I started hanging out with this group of people, some students, some not, and we did all sorts of exploring. The Paris catacombs. The Neglinnaya River, which flows under Moscow. New York.”

“Recreational trespassing,” I said, nodding, thinking that it takes all sorts to make a world.

We were advancing slowly, and while it was certainly damp, it wasn't wet. Yet, I reminded myself darkly. There was the occasional sound of something skittering away, lightly, invisibly; rats, no doubt. The tunnel was large and wide, with an arched ceiling and so far mostly brick.

We were probably under my building right now.

“It shows you how much work went into all the stuff we take for granted,” said Patricia earnestly, leading us forward. Her voice echoed around us. “Any city's infrastructure, you know, it's how they function, but it's mostly in places that people never see. And it's in layers, like an archeological dig. First, you see the utility networks, that's right under street level. Then, under that, there's centralized steam heating. At the lowest level is the water supply system.”

I contemplated for a moment explaining to her why, after last summer, I wasn't quite ready to embrace the idea of exploring a steam tunnel, and decided against it. “Where are we now?” I asked instead.

She stopped and looked around her, the floodlight she carried swinging around crazily. “Place Royale, more or less,” she said. “Anyway, it's all connected, isn't it? These tunnels were built in the nineteenth century, and yet any new building that goes up in a city will be relying on them. The past is never really past.”

“Nice phrase.” Not bad for marketing copy, either.

“True phrase. Come on, this way.” Her goggles were keeping her glasses in place, I noticed. We were branching off the main tunnel and still moving north. A thought struck me and I stopped. “Aren't we supposed to be up closer to Dorchester Square?” I asked. That was, after all, where the Sun-Life Building still stood, on Metcalfe Street, even though Sun-Life itself was long gone; a whole list of corporate and noncorporate entities leased space in the building now. And it was a good distance from where we'd entered the tunnel, in the Old Port section of the city.

Not that it was all that meaningful: unlike other big cities, you can walk across Montréal in less than a day.

Patricia had stopped also and was waiting for me. “I can feel you thinking,” she said. “Pity you can't walk at the same time.”

“You're so funny. So answer the question.”

“The
vault
was under Dorchester Square,” she said patiently. “But the jewels were moved.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I'm a researcher. That's what I do: I find out stuff like that. And I'm about to show you where they ended up,” she said, a current of impatience moving through her voice. “There were documents in London, that's what started me on all this in the first place. Documents about them being afraid that Sun-Life was compromised. So, assuming that was right, ask yourself, Martine: who else had a decent vault at the time?”

“I don't know.” I was feeling a little irritable at her pedantic approach. Maybe academia does that to people. “Banks?”

“Banks, sure. Good option. But also the Montréal Stock Exchange.” She put up a hand. “Don't say it. They're downtown now, yeah, but they used to be—”

“—at the Centaur Theatre!” I couldn't help the interruption;
this
part of history, at least, I knew about. The Exchange was in a Beaux Arts–style building in the Old Port when, in 1969, the Front de Libération du Québec set off a bomb there (the Exchange apparently representing a bastion of Anglo-Canadian power), blowing out the northeast wall.

Now the Exchange lived in one of Montréal's highest modern buildings, and the English-language Centaur Theatre played where stocks were once exchanged. About five blocks from the Pointe-à-Callière museum, where the excavations were going on.

“Got it in one,” said Patricia cheerfully. “Come on.”

We proceeded in silence, which was fine with me: I really didn't want to hear any more about recreational trespassing, since we were pretty much doing the same thing now and the thought of possible professional consequences should we be caught had started wending its way through my brain. I could already hear Jean-Luc denying any knowledge of anything I happened to have done at any time.… I walked straight into Patricia's back. “Sorry.”

“It's okay,” she said. “Look, we have to climb here onto that shelf … see it?” She moved the spotlight to an opening that was about shoulder height and seemed very, very dark. Probably filled with rats, too. “I can boost you up,” she said encouragingly.

Okay, so I might not be twenty-three myself, but I wasn't all that decrepit. “I'll manage,” I said.

“Not in those waders,” she said. “Come on. I'll boost you, then you can give me a hand up.”

“All right.” Even with her help, I struggled, and ended up on my stomach on what felt to be a very narrow ledge. “You're doing great,” she said. “Now, just give me a hand.”

She was up surprisingly quickly. Okay, so maybe there
is
something about being twenty-three.

We had to crouch to enter this tunnel, and as the light moved ahead of us I could see scurrying forms, shadows moving fast. I'd been right. We were right up against the river, after all, and the Old City has always had a rodent problem. I wasn't as concerned about them as I was about ending up on my knees if this thing got any smaller. I've never been particularly aware of being claustrophobic, but there's no time like the present to find out something new about oneself.

“Over here.” It was clearly an accidental opening, without the fine brickwork that had been in evidence in all the other openings I'd seen so far, and I could see where high water had left debris drying around it; it hadn't happened all that long ago. Patricia pushed me. “Go on.”

She'd been right; it opened up onto a room. I swept my flashlight around: the cluttered floor, now smelling rank; the walls that were perfectly dry above where the water had coursed through. A doorway into another room.

Crates, several of them, one or two completely falling apart, held together only by the sturdy iron reinforcements at all the corners. Stencil-stamped. I played my light over the labels: H
OUSEHOLD
G
OODS
.

“Here it is,” she said, and I followed the beam of her spotlight to the faded circular hatbox beyond. Treasure, I thought. Even if nothing else ever comes of this, here is treasure. I imagined for a moment the two princesses, one now dead, the other elderly, giggling at the game their father had invented, wrapping up diamonds and sapphires and rubies. In the stillness of the underground, I could almost hear the echo of their laughter.

And then I played my own light beyond the crates and looked into the empty orbs of a skeleton's eyes.

*   *   *

Hans had told them he was from Holland.

Not many people really could grasp the difference in accents, not if they didn't speak either German or Dutch. And, in fact, he'd actually spent a summer in Amsterdam, back in 1933, so he could even throw in a word or two for color if necessary.

It never became necessary. They desperately needed people for the work crews, what with all able-bodied men signing up ever since it had become clear that Canada was following Britain into war.

Someone like Hans, with an official-looking exemption from military service, was a gift from the gods. No one ever commented on his name. No one ever commented on his accent. And this in spite of what they were all talking about, the only topic of conversation, it seemed: the war with Germany.

Hans talked about it, too. Rationing; everybody talked about rationing, and so he talked about rationing. They talked about the insanity of following a crazy clerk bent on world domination, and so he talked about the Leader in disparaging ways, too. But mostly he talked to the foreman about the rush job they were on, building this ultrasecret, ultrastrong vault under the Sun-Life Building in Dorchester Square.