The Louvre Museum was a tomb of stolen history.
Statues of Roman gods stared blindly at Egyptian sarcophagi. The air was cool and smelled of stone dust.
It was midnight. The museum was closed, the doors locked and guarded by the Imperial Guard.
But inside, the lights were burning.
I sat in my wheelchair in the center of the Great Hall. My breath rattled in my chest. The edema was worse; my legs felt like water-filled balloons.
"Are you sure about this?" Charles asked.
He stood next to a large, black slab of granodiorite. It was propped up on a wooden easel.
The Rosetta Stone.
Captured by Napoleon's troops in Egypt in 1799. It was the key to deciphering Hieroglyphs. A linguistic miracle.
"I'm not here for a language lesson," I said. "Scan it."
Charles held up the brass lantern—the electroscope.
He moved it slowly over the face of the stone. Over the Greek text. Over the Demotic script.
Nothing.
Then he moved it over the Hieroglyphs at the top.
Click.
It was faint. A single, distinct click.
Click. Click.
"Trace radiation," Charles said. "Background levels are normal, except for... here."
He pointed to a specific cluster of symbols. A cartouche representing the sun.
"The stone itself isn't radioactive," Charles said. "But the ink... or whatever they used to carve this section... it contains the dust."
I leaned forward.
"The Green Fire," I whispered. "The priests who carved this... they were using tools contaminated with it. Or they were marking something."
"Administrator?"
A young man stepped out from behind the statue of Anubis. He wore thick spectacles and looked like he hadn't slept in a week.
Jean-François Champollion. The prodigy linguist.
"I have completed the translation," Champollion said nervously. "Or... the decryption."
"Show me," I ordered.
Champollion unrolled a large sheet of parchment on the floor. It was covered in drawings of the glyphs, annotated with complex mathematical formulas.
"The Greek text is a decree," Champollion said. "A tax exemption for the priesthood. Boring administrative work."
He pointed to the top section.
"But the Hieroglyphs... they don't match the Greek. Not exactly."
He adjusted his glasses.
"There is a sub-layer. A frequency pattern in the repetition of the 'Sun' glyph. It's not language, Administrator. It's binary code."
"Binary?" Charles asked. "In 196 BC?"
"Math is universal," I said. "Go on."
"I treated the symbols as variables," Champollion said. "If 'Sun' equals 1 and 'Serpent' equals 0... it creates a grid."
He laid a transparent overlay onto a map of Egypt.
"It's not a story about gods," Champollion whispered. "It's a schematic. Coordinates."
He pointed to a spot in the desert. West of the Nile. Nowhere near the Valley of the Kings.
"What is there?" I asked.
"According to the text," Champollion read from his notes, "it is the 'House of the Calculator.' Or... 'The Engine of Ra.'"
He looked up at me. His eyes were wide with fear.
"The text warns that the Engine 'eats the years.' That it 'drinks the life of the soil to feed the stars.'"
"A reactor," I said. "Or a processing unit."
Rothschild was right. Cagliostro found something. The Pharaohs didn't build the Pyramids to bury their dead. They built them to contain something else. Something that emitted so much energy it turned the groundwater into poison.
I coughed. Blood flecked my lips.
"We have to get there first," I said.
"To Egypt?" Champollion asked. "But the British control the sea!"
"We won't go by sea," I said. "We'll go by... stealth."
I looked at Charles.
"I can't go," I said.
Charles didn't argue. He looked at my swollen legs. My grey skin.
"The journey would kill you," Charles said flatly. "Probability of survival: 0%."
"Exactly," I said. "So you have to go."
Charles froze.
"Me?"
"You are the heir," I said. "But you can't inherit a graveyard. If Rothschild gets that Engine... if he learns how to weaponize the radiation on a massive scale... he won't just poison a city. He'll hold the world hostage."
"I am needed here," Charles argued. "The economy is fragile. The Blue Drop crisis..."
"Fouché can handle the drugs," I snapped. "And Chouan can handle the supply."
I wheeled myself closer to him.
"This is the source code, Charles. Paris is just a spreadsheet. Egypt is where the algorithm was written. You have to go to the root directory."
Charles looked at the stone. Then at me.
"I am twelve," he said.
"You are the Wolf Cub," I said. "And it's time to hunt."
The next morning. The armory of the Tuileries.
The air smelled of gun oil and cold steel.
I opened a velvet case on the table.
Inside lay a revolver.
Not a flintlock. A percussion cap revolver. Six shots. A prototype I had commissioned from the royal gunsmiths based on my memory of a Colt Paterson.
It was crude. Heavy. But it worked.
"Take it," I said.
Charles picked it up. He checked the cylinder. He spun it.
Click-whirrrrr.
"It's inefficient," Charles critiqued. "Reloading takes too long."
"But you have six shots before you have to reload," I said. "In a knife fight, that's an eternity."
I handed him a leather book. The Black Ledger.
"What is this?"
"Insurance," I said. "Names. Dates. Sins. Every corrupt official in the Mediterranean. Every bribe taken by a British admiral. Use it to buy passage. Use it to buy silence."
I looked at the door.
Marshal Ney was waiting. He looked uncomfortable in civilian clothes—a heavy merchant's coat. But his red hair was unmistakable.
"The Marshal will command your security," I said. "Chouan will handle the logistics. Champollion will handle the science."
"And me?" Charles asked.
"You make the decisions," I said.
I put my hand on his shoulder. It felt frail.
"You are the Administrator now, Charles. Of the Expedition."
Charles holstered the gun. He put the book in his satchel.
"When do we leave?"
"Now," I said. "A blockade runner is waiting in Toulon. It's fast."
We walked out into the courtyard.
A carriage was waiting. The horses stamped on the cobblestones.
It was a grey morning. The sun was trying to break through the smog of the city.
Charles stopped at the carriage door.
He turned to look at me.
I sat in my wheelchair, wrapped in blankets. I looked small. Dying.
"Father," Charles said.
It was the first time in months he had used the word without irony.
"Yes?"
"Probability of your survival until I return?"
I smiled.
"Three months," I lied. "Larrey gives me three months."
Charles did the math in his head.
"The voyage to Alexandria takes three weeks. The excavation... two weeks. The return... three weeks."
He nodded.
"Eight weeks. You have a 4% margin of error."
"I'm an accountant," I said. "I live in the margins."
Charles didn't hug me. We didn't do hugs.
He extended his hand.
I shook it. His grip was firm. Cold.
"Don't let the fire go out," Charles said.
"Bring me the Engine," I replied.
He climbed into the carriage. Ney followed. Champollion scrambled in last, clutching his scrolls.
The driver cracked the whip.
The carriage rolled out of the gates.
I watched it go.
I watched until it turned the corner and vanished.
I was alone.
The courtyard was silent.
I looked at my hand. It was shaking so badly I couldn't stop it.
I coughed. A spasm that racked my whole body. I pulled the handkerchief away. It was soaked in bright, arterial blood.
"Three months," I whispered to the empty air.
I knew I didn't have three months. I had weeks. Maybe days.
I wheeled myself back toward the palace.
The wheels squeaked.
"Time to cook the books," I whispered. "One last time."
I had to keep the Empire alive. I had to keep the British distracted. I had to keep Rothschild looking at Paris, not Egypt.
I had to be the ghost in the machine.
"Fouché!" I shouted.
The Police Minister appeared from the shadows.
"Yes, Administrator?"
"Leak a rumor," I said. "Tell the British spies that I am planning an invasion of England."
Fouché raised an eyebrow. "With what fleet?"
"With phantom ships," I said. "Build mock-ups in Boulogne. wooden frames. Canvas. Make them think I'm gathering an armada."
"A bluff?"
"A distraction," I said. "I'm going to put on the greatest show on earth, Joseph. And while they are watching the stage..."
I looked south.
"...the Wolf is going to eat their sun."