The Seduction Code (A Remi Laurent FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 6)

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Georgetown University

7:45 P.M., that same day

Remi Laurent clicked to the next slide, the audience in the darkened lecture hall silent, hanging on her every word.

“Here we have another depiction of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. While not as colorful or as well-preserved as the famous painting by Rubens, it is a splendid example of fourteenth-century English church painting. This is the church of Saint Mary the Virgin in Chalgrove in Oxfordshire, England.

“It is the last of a series of paintings in the church that run chronologically from the Tree of Jesse, showing the lineage of Jesus Christ, through the Last Supper, his betrayal by Judas, and Crucifixion. These take up the north and south walls of the church. On the east wall, flanking the window, we see the Assumption of Jesus on one side and the Assumption of Mary on the other. This equates their importance and shows just how prominent the cult of Mary had become by the High Middle Ages.

“The details of this painting are interesting and reflect a popular non-Biblical story of the time. Here you see the Virgin, her hands clasped in prayer, flanked by angels who are flying her up to heaven. Below, standing on a roof, is a male figure holding a girdle or belt. The halo shows he’s a saint. In fact, he’s Saint Thomas, the doubting Thomas of the Bible who didn’t believe that Christ had been resurrected until he touched his wounds. In this version of the story, Mary died in the presence of all the saints except Thomas, who was away. When he returned, she had already been put in her tomb. Thomas asked to see her, the tomb was opened, and her body, like that of Jesus, was found to be missing.

“Saint Thomas was then granted a vision of the Virgin ascending to heaven. The Virgin dropped down her girdle as proof of the vision, and this became a holy relic. Thus Thomas, who had doubted the miracles offered by Jesus, was finally graced with the last miracle of the Virgin Mary. Doubting Thomas becomes witness to the holiness of the Mother of God.”

Remi paused, looking at the image. While faded with time, the figures still remained clear. A perfect depiction of the religious individual who doubted but was given proof.

Seven years ago, when Aunt Lilli died. That’s when it was.

She had been trying to remember the last time she had attended Mass.

Seven years ago, and only because it was a funeral Mass for a favorite aunt.

The realization gave her a twinge of guilt, but more than guilt, she felt another emotion.

Nostalgia.

That surprised her. While she had never lapsed into unbelief, she didn’t think she’d miss the religious aspect of her life. That part of her had been important in her childhood before slowly fading in university, and all but vanished in her career-oriented adulthood.

A shifting in the seats reminded her that she needed to keep talking. This was a public lecture, after all.

“Thus, we come full circle, from the Annunciation to the Assumption of Mary, the life of one of the crucial figures in the medieval church. Now, if we can bring up the lights, I think we have time for some questions.”

As the lights came up, she looked out on the audience. So much older than what she was accustomed to. Before she joined the FBI full time, she had taught university students. Now, with these special guest lectures, it was mostly middle-aged members of the community, along with a sprinkling of graduate students and faculty.

Her ex-lover and the head of the Georgetown history department, Cyril Mullen, was not among them. He hasn’t attended these lectures since their breakup. The Dean of Arts and Sciences, Ronald Hines, attended them all. Hines always had an eye for publicity and keeping the famous researcher—now turned famous FBI agent—on as a special guest lecturer was good for the university.

Not good for her patience, as the first question was to prove.

A hand shot up near the front. It was a skinny fellow with disheveled hair, mismatched socks, and a worn-out old suit that hadn’t been fashionable when he bought it twenty years ago.

She acknowledged him. “Yes?”

Remi braced herself. She knew what was coming. She could tell just by his expression. She’d met far, far too many people like this in her career.

“Did you join the FBI in order to get the federal government to help you in the hunt for the cryptex?”

There were several stifled groans and chuckles from the crowd as well as an equal number of interested looks.

“My academic studies have taken a back seat to my law enforcement duties.”

Well, sort of.

“But what about the report of a fight in the catacombs of Rome between a g**g of priests and a man and woman matching the description of you and your partner?”

“I wasn’t aware of such a report.” Who the hell reported that? Remi managed a smile that didn’t quite look convincing. “But I can assure you, as a practicing Catholic, I’m not in the habit of brawling with members of the clergy in Rome’s catacombs, or anywhere else for that matter.”

More chuckles. This time no one tried to suppress them.

The man flushed a little but went on. Remi got the impression that he got laughed at a lot and had become used to it.

“With all due respect, Professor Laurent, it seems strange to me that an esteemed researcher such as yourself would be hired by a federal agency even though you are not an American citizen.”

“Well, the Statue of Liberty comes from France, too, but she’s made America her home.”

That got a round of applause. Nothing worked on an American audience like a public display of patriotism. Remi used that as a cue to look for another question.

The dean saved her with a question related to the topic of her lecture. She answered it, then went on to three more people who looked safe—a graduate student she knew, a professor from another university she vaguely recognized, and a little old lady who came to all her lectures and was enthusiastic about how beautiful all the art was.

Remi got through these questions without a hitch, then said, “That’s all the time we have for tonight.” The misfit’s hand shot up again. “I thank you all for coming.”

The dean got on stage in two seconds flat. He had probably seen that hand shoot up too.

“A wonderful talk as usual, Professor Laurent. Our next talk in this special series will be at seven P.M. here in this lecture hall where Professor Laurent will talk on the symbolism in Ottonian ivories of the tenth and eleventh centuries.”

Another round of applause. The little old lady exclaimed, “Ottonian ivories! My favorite!” Remi felt her heart lift. Despite being an FBI agent in training, she still loved teaching, and she still loved Medieval Studies.

But as she told that member of the audience, her research had taken a back seat to her new career in law enforcement.

To a point. That had been a stretch of the truth, and the rest she had told him had been pure fabrication. She was still on the trail of the cryptex, running through a series of clues, the most recent being that strange amulet she and Daniel had found in the catacombs.

God, how had that man heard about that incident? Apparently, it had been published somewhere. Most likely some outré Internet website or forum. She better look it up.

The dean came down off the stage with her.

“Steer me away from the groupie, would you please?” she said in an undertone.

“Certainly.”

The dean was a true gentleman. He didn’t like to see an academic harassed. Plus, fringe members of the public like that made the lecture series look bad.

She could see the man in the old suit homing in on her like some fighter plane swooping down in one of those old war movies her father used to watch. The dean got on that side and called out to an obese, white-haired professor.

“Bob, so glad you could make it! Professor Laurent, have you met Bob Parson, professor emeritus?”

“So nice to meet you,” Remi said. Or anyone that’s not that fellow.

“An admirable talk, Professor,” the old man said, taking her hand in a weak grasp. “I wonder if you have visited the Byzantine sites in Morea. There are some fascinating mosaics which show…”

Remi fell into a conversation about late Byzantine religious iconography, only half paying attention to the old professor and the crowd that encircled them. The misfit stood on the fringes, as he had probably always done, frustrated that he couldn’t be a part of it all.

But Remi wasn’t even thinking about him. Her mind raced. If that source he had mentioned had said a couple “matching their description” had been seen in the catacombs, that meant someone had been on the lookout for them.

Remi had long had a bit of a cult following among conspiracy theorists and alternative history nuts. Having published several books and articles on the cryptex and other medieval mysteries, that was inevitable. But she had never had someone write up a Remi Laurent sighting. It made her feel like a UFO.

Perhaps she should talk to that man? No. It would only lead to an awkward conversation in full view of this crowd. Better to make a hasty exit and look it up later.

“It’s a fascinating topic, Professor Parson, and I look forward to your publication.”

Remi shook his hand. From the look of confusion on his face, dear old Professor Parson hadn’t mentioned any upcoming publication.

“Good night, everyone!” she said as she wended her way through the crowd. “Thank you so much for coming.”

A few people called out questions. Remi smiled, waved, and ignored them. The misfit tried to follow but got swallowed up by the crowd.

Remi ducked out and hurried down the hallway, getting around the nearest corner and speeding up into a full run. Other than the lecture hall and front foyer, the university building was dark and empty.

Glancing over her shoulder to make sure that no one was following, she entered a classroom and closed the door behind her.

The Venetian blinds were shut, and only a little light filtered through to dimly illuminate the blackboard, lectern, and rows of empty seats. Some posters on the back wall looked like a row of shadowy figures, and a white hump in the middle of the room must have been a cloth draped over the projector.

This empty room with its hint of ghosts would have terrified her as a child. However, little frightened her these days. She had seen too much.

Plenty concerned her, though, and at the moment, the subject of greatest concern was what that man had mentioned back at the lecture.

Remi got on her phone. It didn’t take long to find. All she did was search for her own name with the time limit of mentions in the past week.

The article was on a website called “Hidden Wisdom, Sacred Mysteries,” a site she’d seen before. The forum had an entire thread for the cryptex.

What was new was the lead piece in the article section titled “Professor Laurent and FBI Agent Daniel Walker fight Vatican Secret Police in Rome’s Catacombs.” It was signed by “Investigator 313.”

She read it. In breathless prose with lots of exclamation points, Investigator 313 recounted how a group of Vatican secret police and been seen entering the Catacombs of St. Mark under the Appian Way just outside Rome. They had joined a regular tour group and were accompanied by Daniel and Remi. The two sides seemed to be getting along before they exploded into hand-to-hand fighting. Someone shut off the lights and by the time the tour guide got them back on, Remi, Daniel, and the priests had all vanished. The sounds of pursuit and fighting echoed down the narrow corridors of the catacombs.

“Despite his best efforts, Investigator 313 was unable to catch up with them. In fact, he was detained briefly by the Italian police but was released after he claimed he had panicked when the lights went off and got separated from the tour group. Investigator 313 will continue his tireless efforts to get to the bottom of the cryptex mystery and the apparent involvement of the federal government and the Vatican. Does this incident signify that the United States and the Vatican are now engaged in spiritual warfare?”

He was on the tour. He was following us.

The incident mentioned by “Investigator 313,” a conspiracy nut who obviously thought he was so important that he should refer to himself in the third person, took place a couple of months before, on a rare down period between cases.

Their previous case had taken them to Egypt and Ethiopia. After barely getting out of Ethiopia’s civil war alive, they had ended up back in Egypt, where the latest cryptex clue had led them to the medieval Coptic monastery of St. Bishoy in the desert of Wadi Natrun.

The clue had been in the early medieval frescoes in the main hall of worship.

They showed Christ, robed in the Late Roman style and with dusky Egyptian skin, reaching out his hand to bless a Bible held by a young man. Next to this was a small, stylized city with the Coptic word for Rome painted above it. Beneath the city reclined a winged lion, the symbol of St. Mark, one of the four gospel saints and founder of the Coptic church. Next to this figure stood an altar laid out with candles and the objects for Communion.

The one detail that caught Remi’s eye the most was a line between the city and St. Mark and the altar. Grass grew out of it, signifying ground. Ground was hardly ever painted in early Christian art. Figures simply floated. She realized that its inclusion held some special significance, something the artist wanted to emphasize.

Remi had to stare at it for several weeks before that significance hit her.

St. Mark under Rome. The Catacombs of St. Mark just outside of Rome.

And so, Remi had convinced Daniel to go on a working vacation with her to Italy. She rewarded him with a steady diet of pizza and gelato, and he rewarded her by helping her escape Father De Sanctis of the Society of Devout Students and his muscular assistants and find the next clue to the cryptex.

That clue had been hidden in a secret compartment in a burial niche inside a painted underground chapel. It was a circular medallion of brass, five centimeters or two inches in diameter. The back side was flat and blank. The front side was slightly convex and inscribed with strange, meandering lines that looked unlike any style of art she had ever seen. A small, raised boss in the center was unornamented, although all the lines ended at it.

As luck would have it, they came across a drawing of a similar medallion while on a case in Germany. Its owner had discovered that the medallion was a map, the lines being rivers coming off of a mountain in the Bavarian Alps.

She and Daniel assumed the medallion they had found also showed a mountain and rivers. So far, they had had no luck locating which.

Luckily, none of this was in the article about them. Yet Inspector 313, whoever he was, had done enough research to find out who her partner was, find out that they were flying to Italy, and followed them there.

So, who was this person? Certainly not a member of the Society of Devout Students. They worked in secrecy. And it wouldn’t be someone from the Order of St. Adrian of Nicomedia, an even more shadowy organization sworn to protect the cryptex and its secrets. They had run into them on Remi’s first case but hadn’t heard from them since.

At least not to their knowledge.

She needed to find out who this person was. Spying on and following a pair of FBI agents, even ones who were off duty, had to be illegal. If they could find him or her, they could bring Inspector 313 in and make him or her talk.

Her phone lit up, making her jump a little in the darkened room. Daniel was calling her.

She felt a flush of warmth, followed immediately by a tremor of fear.

They hadn’t talked for two weeks. Not since that conversation where they had said too much and not nearly enough.

Both had been on paid leave to recover from the last case. The administration at the FBI didn’t realize that it wasn’t the case they needed to recover from.

She picked up.

“Hello?”

“Hey Remi. Do you have a minute?” Daniel’s voice was curt and professional, as if calling a fellow agent in another state who he had never worked with.

“Um, sure,” Remi said, glancing at the door. She kept her voice down and moved to the far side of the room.

She banged her hip against one of the chairs and hissed in pain.

“What was that?” Daniel asked.

“I bumped into something. I’m hiding from a conspiracy theorist.”

Usually that would have elicited a laugh and some gentle ribbing. Not this time.

“Oh. Well, shake him and join me at headquarters. We have a case. Two murders.”

“I’ll meet you right away.”

“And Remi … I’m sorry, but I’ve done some background already and discovered that at least one of the victims is someone you know.”