Rogue Angel 54: Day of Atonement Read Online Free PDF Page A

collections, and unfortunately getting access to them is next to impossible.”
    “So by retrieval you mean theft?” Garin decided to come straight out with it. Breaking the law wasn’t a dealbreaker for a man like Garin Braden. More often than not a brief flirtation with the dark side only added to the thrill.
    “Ah, no, no. Actually, I want you to find me one of the missing copies.”
    “How can you be so sure that they still exist? Do you have a lead on one of them? Evidence, perhaps, that there is another copy that hasn’t been destroyed?”
    “Sadly, no. I am laboring purely under the apprehension that what is lost can be found, and that you are the right man to track them down.”
    “Remind me again who recommended me?”
    “Remind? I didn’t actually say a first time. Suffice it to say it was a most impeccable source or I wouldn’t be talking to you now.”
    “That’s really not saying very much, is it?”
    “And yet it speaks volumes, if you care to think about it for a moment.”
    Garin wasn’t so sure.
    “Okay, let’s assume this mysterious benefactor knows his stuff and that I am indeed the man for the job. Why do you want these papers? What’s so fascinating? What makes them special, apart from the fact they’re nearly six hundred years old obviously?” More often than not, the answer to that question was more money than sense, with the buyer willing to throw cash at some mythical El Dorado.
    “Please, don’t take me for a fool, Mr. Braden. I am sure that you know full well why a scholar such as myself would be interested in documents created in Rouen in that particular year.”
    “Do I?”
    “Put it this way—if you don’t, then I will have to reconsider the recommendation, and believe that I have made a gross error in judgment.”
    “So these documents relate to the trial of Joan of Arc?”
    He could almost hear the man’s smirk as he said, “That’s more like it. No need to be coy. As I said, these papers are just the first of several artifacts I am seeking. In the interests of full disclosure, I will email a complete list once we have agreed upon a fee for your services.”
    Garin’s mind raced to an extortionate figure; after all, if the man was as determined to get hold of these artifacts as he sounded, he was ripe for a little extortion. “Three million, plus expenses,” he said, plucking the number out of thin air. He expected the man to counter with a lower offer and a back-and-forth of offers and counters to follow. It didn’t.
    “Dollars or euros?”
    “Euros,” he said without missing a heartbeat. “And this is purely for the papers. Anything else I turn up is extra.” It was a fishing expedition, of course. The hook baited, he wanted to see just how desperate the man was to get his hands on these lost words. “If I can’t find them, you don’t pay me. Fair?”
    “Of course.”
    The man hung up without another word.
    Garin was glad that the caller could not see the smile that had spread across his face.
    He wasn’t smiling because he was looking forward to the challenge of the hunt, though that would normally be the case. Garin wasn’t the kind of man who chased legends. He left that sort of thing to Annja Creed. He wasn’t interested in history’s monsters. He had gone toe-to-toe with more than his fair share of them. No, he was smiling because he knew the exact location of one of the two missing transcriptions of Guillaume Manchon’s papers.
    They were currently locked up safe and sound in a vault in Roux’s house.
    Sometimes it was just too easy.

5
    By the time Annja had left the hotel with her cameraman, the sun had started to sink in the sky. The late-afternoon chill had turned into full-on cold.
    She couldn’t dislodge the thought that the two men in the Mercedes had been following her. Had it been Brooklyn instead of the South of France she would have been worried about carjacking, or that insurance scam where people deliberately rammed into you