The Paris Vendetta

He climbed the stairs, gripping a thick wooden banister.

On the second floor the elevator doors were blocked by two planks nailed together in an X. Work pallets held more disassembled scaffolding. White metal doors, clearly temporary, were shut and a sign taped to them read INTERDIT AU PUBLIC. ACCESS DENIED. Another sign affixed to the wall identified that past the closed doors lay SALLES NAPOLÉON 1ER. ROOMS OF NAPOLEON 1ST.

He approached and yanked the handle for the metal doors.

They opened.

No need to lock them, he’d been told, since the building itself was sealed each night and there was little of value in the galleries beyond.

He stepped into the dim space, drained of noise, allowed the door to close behind him, and hoped he wasn’t going to regret the next few minutes.

THIRTY-SEVEN

NAPOLEON LAY PRONE IN THE BED AND STARED INTO THE FIREPLACE. The tapers burned bright, shedding a red luster on his face, and he allowed the heat and silence to lull him into sleep.

“Old seer. Do you at last come for me?” he asked out loud, in a tender voice.

A joyous expression spread over Napoleon’s countenance, which immediately twisted into a show of anger. “No,” he yelled, “you are mistaken. My luck does not resemble the changing seasons. I am not yet in autumn. Winter does not approach. What? You say my family will leave and betray me? That can’t be. I have lavished kindness on them-” He paused, and his face assumed the expression of an attentive listener. “Ah, but that is too much. Not possible. All Europe is unable to overthrow me. My name is more powerful than fate.”

Awakened by the loud sound of his own voice, Napoleon opened his eyes and gazed around the room. His trembling hand found his moist forehead.

“What a terrible dream,” he said to himself.

Saint-Denis drew close. Good and faithful, always at his side, sleeping on the floor beside the cot. Ready to listen.

“I am here, sire.”

Napoleon found Saint-Denis’ hand.

“Long ago, while in Egypt, a sorcerer spoke to me in the pyramid,” Napoleon said. “He prophesied my ruin, cautioned me against my relatives and the ingratitude of my generals.”

Absorbed by his reflections, in a voice made rough by fading sleep, he seemed to need to speak.

“He told me I would have two wives. The first would be empress and not death, but a woman would hurl her from the throne. The second wife would bear me a son, but all my misfortune would nevertheless begin with her. I would cease to be prosperous and powerful. All my hopes would be disappointed. I would be forcibly expelled and cast upon a foreign soil, hemmed in by mountains and the sea.”

Napoleon gazed up from the bed with a look of undisguised fear.

“I had that sorcerer shot,” he said. “I thought him a fool, and I never listen to fools.”

Thorvaldsen listened as Eliza Larocque explained what her family had long known about Napoleon.

“Pozzo di Borgo thoroughly researched all that happened on St. Helena,” she said. “What I just described occurred about two months before Napoleon died.”

He listened with a false attentiveness.

“Napoleon was a superstitious man,” she said. “A great believer in fate, but never one to bow to its inevitability. He liked to hear what he wanted to hear.”

They sat in a private room at Le Grand Véfour, overlooking the Palais Royal gardens. The menu proudly proclaimed that the restaurant dated back to 1784, and guests then and now dined amid 18th-century gilded décor and delicate hand-painted panels. Not a place Thorvaldsen usually frequented, but Larocque had called earlier, suggested lunch, and selected the location.

“Reality is clear, though,” she said. “Everything that Egyptian sorcerer predicted came to pass. Josephine did become empress and Napoleon divorced her because she could not produce an heir.”

“I thought it was because she was unfaithful.”

“That she was, but so was he. Marie Louise, the eighteen-year-old archduchess of Austria, eventually captured his imagination, so he married her. She gave him the son he wanted.”

“The way of royalty, at the time,” he mused.

“I think Napoleon would have taken offense at being compared to royalty.”

Now he chuckled. “Then he was quite the fool. He was nothing but royalty.”

“Just as predicted, it was after his second marriage, in 1809, that Napoleon’s luck changed. The failed Russian campaign in 1812, where his retreating army was decimated. The 1813 coalition brought England, Prussia, Russia, and Austria against him. His defeats in Spain and at Leipzig, then the German collapse and the loss of Holland. Paris fell in 1814, and he abdicated. They sent him to Elba, but he escaped and tried to retake Paris from Louis XVIII. But his Waterloo finally came on June 18, 1815, and it was over. Off to St. Helena to die.”

“You truly hate the man, don’t you?”

“What galls me is we’ll never know the man. He spent the five years of his exile on St. Helena burnishing his image, writing an autobiography that ended up being more fiction than fact, tailoring history to his advantage. In truth, he was a husband who dearly loved his wife, but quickly divorced her when she failed to produce an heir. A general who professed great love for his soldiers, yet sacrificed them by the hundreds of thousands. Supposedly fearless, he repeatedly abandoned his men when expedient. A leader who wanted nothing more than to strengthen France, yet kept the nation constantly embroiled in war. I think it’s obvious why I detest him.”

He thought a little aggravation might be good. “Did you know that Napoleon and Josephine dined here? I’m told this room remains much the same as it was in the early 19th century.”

She smiled. “I was aware of that. Interesting, though, that you know such information.”

“Did Napoleon really have that sorcerer killed in Egypt?”

“He ordered one of his savants, Monge, to do it.”

“Do you adhere to the theory that Napoleon was poisoned?” He knew that, supposedly, arsenic had been slowly administered in his food and drink, enough to eventually kill him. Modern tests run of strands of hair that survived confirmed high levels of arsenic.

She laughed. “The British had no reason to kill him. In fact, it was quite the opposite. They wanted him alive.”

Their entrées arrived. His was a pan-fried red mullet in oil and tomatoes, hers a young chicken in wine sauce, sprinkled with cheese. They both enjoyed a glass of merlot.

“Do you know the story of when they exhumed Napoleon in 1840, to return him to France?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“It’s illustrative of why the British would never have poisoned him.”

MALONE THREADED HIS WAY THROUGH THE DESERTED GALLERY. No lights burned, and the illumination provided by sunlight was diffused by plastic sheets that protected the windows. The air was warm and laced with the pall of fresh paint. Many of the display cases and exhibits were draped in crusty drop cloths. Ladders dotted the walls. More scaffolding rose at the far end. A section of the hardwood flooring had been removed, and messy repairs were being made to the stone subsurface.

He noticed no cameras, no sensors. He passed uniforms, armor, swords, daggers, harnesses, pistols, and rifles, all displayed in silk-lined cases. A steady and intentional procession of technology, each generation learning how to kill the next faster. Nothing at all suggested the horror of war. Instead, only its glory seemed emphasized.

He stepped around another gash in the floor and kept walking down the long gallery, his rubber soles not making a sound.

Behind him he heard the metal doors being tested.