The cognomina codex, p.40
The Cognomina Codex, page 40
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Ramsay walked with Evan past the crowd of tourists toward the administrative entrance of Les Invalides, the sprawling opulent 350-year-old military hospital in central Paris that now housed the French Army Museum. She showed her newly laminated ID badge to the soldier at the gate and instructed Evan to do the same with his.
“Is this an army base or a museum?” Evan asked as they passed through the military gate into the manicured gardens of the wide courtyard.
“It started as a hospital and retirement home for injured French soldiers, but about a hundred years ago, they converted this part into the French Army Museum,” she said pointing to a long three-story stone building. “This section at the back is still a working hospital today under military administration. I was able to call in some favors to get us a private space for a while. It’s this way.”
Evan followed her as she showed her photo ID badge to another stern-looking French soldier who stood sentry at the entrance to the old hospital wing. Ramsay passed the first checkpoint and then a second. She showed her badge again as they walked into the labyrinth of white hallways before stopping in front of an innocuous unmarked office door.
“So what do we do now?” Evan asked.
“Well, we will need help,” Ramsay answered flatly. “And you actually gave me an idea on how we can get it. Come on, I’ll tell you more inside.” She swiped her badge on the scanner and pushed the door open with the sound of a vintage buzzer.
The plain door opened into a long rectangle of a room that housed two administrative desks, a waiting room with a small kitchen off to one side, and a row of six modern medical beds set up in a row along the side wall. Evan saw that five of the beds were occupied and that Auda was sitting up in the one closest to the familiar faces of the Cognomina members who sat in the comfortable chairs of the old waiting room. Galen looked up from his work at Samas’s bed and smiled as they entered. Auda looked at Evan and nodded without speaking.
“We all have private rooms in the back,” Ramsay said to Evan as he followed her inside. “I’ll show you in a minute.” Ramsay turned to face everyone in the long room. “I’ve triple-checked,” Ramsay said loudly enough for all to hear. “It looks like we’ve lost them.”
Rafic stood up from his laptop on one of the two desks. “From what I have been able to monitor so far, they don’t know where we are, but they are searching.”
“We should be safe here. While it hosts tourists all day, Les Invalides is technically still a military facility,” Ramsay said, pacing the length of floor between the table and a recuperating Auda in the nearest hospital bed. “I have called in a few favors and made arrangements for us to stay here in Paris as long as we want.”
“It’s a bit ironic,” Poppy started, “that we are hiding in the city that is the headquarters for La Mutuelle.”
“We’re hiding in plain sight, just like she is,” Mr. Diltz countered from his seat next to the scribe, who worked at the larger desk. “I have been able to reverse all of Mr. Pianosa’s transactions. You should see your balances as they were before.”
“What did you do with Pianosa?” Evan asked.
“Don’t ask,” Ramsay and Diltz said in grim unison.
Rafic walked around the edge of his desk toward them with his chrome phone in hand. “You found the dark matter I couldn’t see,” he said as he threw his arms around Evan. “It’s everywhere. They are into everything.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Do you remember back at the hotel when I was able to pull information from your phone just by placing it next to it?” Rafic asked with a smile as he held up his sleek prototype phone.
“Yes,” Evan replied.
“And do you remember me telling you that it has a mode to do that even when powered down?”
“Yes,” Evan said, confused.
“Well, thanks to you and the information you passed to Gonzalo before their Conclave, I was able to get this,” he said, waving his spy phone over his head, “right in the middle of that rack of checked-in phones at her palazzo where it sat and worked silently for three hours.”
“And?”
“And it’s a gold mine.” Rafic beamed. “Only the Italian generals and one American businessman had encryption I can’t break. Everyone else I was able to get. We’re not blind anymore, Evan, thanks to you.”
“How the hell did you guys get in?”
“After you told Gonzalo where you were headed, I ran a data analysis and searched for important people coming to Venice for Carnival, but I eventually focused on business moguls and government bureaucrats who spend way more than they make. From there, I found ten targets I thought could be assets and sent them each a text message to come to the Hotel Metropole in costume with their invitations for an urgent premeeting. And five of them showed up. Our doctor prepared a cocktail that ensured they slept until morning while Jens, Poppy, and I took their clothes, masks, and invitations, and we just went in their place. I even included a search parameter for sex and size,” Rafic said with nerdy pride, “so that I could get everyone fitted—everyone except Chance, of course.”
“I took care of the guards on the dock,” Chance boomed from a comfortable chair near the window as he looked out.
“Keep that curtain closed,” snapped Ramsay. “We can’t be too careful now.”
“It was my idea to get us in and get this data download,” Rafic continued, “but it was Galen’s idea to prepare the injections in case we needed them.”
“I cracked the antidote and snapped Auda out of it earlier that day,” Galen said from across the room. “Once I could reverse the effect of the injection, I knew we could use it against them if we had to. Injecting them was going to be the backup plan if Ramsay failed in Rome, but it turned out to be your escape plan in the end.”
“Speaking of plan,” Evan said, turning and walking over to Poppy, who sat in the leather chair next to Chance, “how did you—”
“Oh, this?” she said, holding up her hands that were bandaged into clumsy white mittens. “Well, this was certainly not to plan. But I couldn’t let you become a murderer, could I?” she asked as she sat up in the chair. “Be a dear and give me a cigarette, will you?”
“You can’t smoke in here,” Galen ordered without looking up from Auda’s pulse.
“Oh really?” Poppy smirked as she confidently waved Evan toward her with a gauze-covered hand. “You should check your schedule for when my next shot is due, Doctor,” she growled as Evan placed a cigarette into the corner of her mouth. “Skip me again, and I’ll crawl into that last empty bed to get your attention.”
“Will they all recover?” Evan asked over his shoulder at Galen.
“Yes, but it might take a while. Auda here says a few words sometimes.” The physician looked over at the last bed. “I suspect Clovis will take the longest. They’re all improving at different paces.”
“Wait, where is Jens?” Evan asked. “And do not say don’t ask.”
“He’s looking into something that could help our plan,” Ramsay said with a sly smile.
“So what is our plan?” Chance asked in a voice loud enough for all to hear but clearly directed at Ramsay.
“First, we need to heal our injured and get all the members of our core team back to one hundred percent.”
“That might take some time,” Galen cautioned.
“After that, we need to get our house in order,” Ramsay offered, “figuratively so that we have a place to call our own, besides here, and literally if we can.”
Mr. Diltz coughed to get her attention. “After I restored all your accounts, I took the liberty of making a few calls and using some of the communal funds,” he started. “I was able to get the site of the St. Germain surrounded with a metal security fence yesterday. I was just on with the building commission, and we have permission to rebuild it.”
“Excellent work, Mr. Diltz. I hope we can delay your retirement party for a while longer,” Ramsay said with a smile. “In your follow-ups with them, you might ask if we can expand with the rebuild.”
“Expand?” Poppy said, struggling to manipulate her cigarette between wrapped hands.
“Don’t you mean contract?” Chance said, looking at the remaining faces in the room.
“Hold that question for a minute. Next,” she said, pointing to Rafic and Evan, “we need to find out all we can about Brevicepts, her captains, and the plans you heard during the Conclave.”
“I have some faces ready for you to identify,” Rafic said with a grin.
“This should let us know how big La Mutuelle really is and might give us some additional insight into what they are planning next,” Ramsay continued. “After that, we need—”
“After that,” Poppy interrupted, “we need to take this bitch down.”
“Take her down,” Auda mumbled quietly, taking all of them off guard for a second.
“Yes, after that, we take her down,” Ramsay replied.
“But how?” Chance broke in.
“We need to strike at her most critical advantage, her invisibility,” Rafic added. “If we can do that, we can make it her biggest liability. We need to shine a light on La Mutuelle.”
“And just how would we do that?” Chance demanded. “And with so few of us now?”
“You’re right, my friend,” Ramsay agreed as she walked over and ran a finger along the silver edge of the scribe’s open tome. “There aren’t enough of us to counter La Mutuelle, even if we could find a way to expose her. But what if both of those problems could be unlocked with a single solution?” she said, turning to look at Evan.
“What? What solution? I don’t have any solution.”
“You’ve already given it to us,” Ramsay teased.
“I don’t understand,” Evan responded.
“I don’t follow either,” Chance declared.
“Evan, your narrative in the notebooks has already freed us from our secrecy. Who and what we are is no longer in the dark. You have already disclosed us, and now we are in a perfect position to expose her and La Mutuelle for who they are and their long-term plans.”
“I like where this is going,” Galen said, joining the conversation.
“And,” Ramsay continued, “we all believe there are more Reincarnationists out there. Maybe they could be the help we need, but instead of setting up a system to search for them the way Brevicepts does, we could—”
“We could what? Advertise?” Chance quipped.
“I might have a more elegant solution,” Ramsay mused as she looked at their faces. “We would obviously need to vote on it before moving forward, but I have asked our scribe to start work on something that could capture the whole story in a way that exposes her and recruits for us.”
“We’re listening,” Poppy said for the group.
Ramsay took a deep breath. “It would involve each of you spending some time with our chroniclers where our accounts would ultimately become a new volume in our—” Ramsay stopped midsentence when the buzzer on the electric door lock announced the entrance of Jens.
He paused for a moment to catch his breath from the run through the maze of hallways. “I checked, and you were right. The writer is here in Paris. We could just leave it for him.”
All eyes turned back to Ramsay, who directed Jens to take a seat. “Well, now that we’re all here, I suppose it’s time to vote on what to do next.”
Author Bio
D. Eric Maikranz has had a multitude of lives in this lifetime. As a world traveler, he was a foreign correspondent while living in Rome, translated for relief doctors in Nicaragua during a cholera epidemic, and was once forcibly expelled from the nation of Laos. He has worked as a tour guide, a radio host, a bouncer, and as a Silicon Valley software executive. His first novel, The Reincarnationist Papers, was adapted into the Paramount Pictures film, Infinite, starring Mark Wahlberg.
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D. Eric Maikranz, The Cognomina Codex
