LITMIR.BIZ

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was nonplussed when she immediately responded in the same language, selecting a glass of pinot grigio. It had been some time since she’d been out for a nice dinner. She was going to take advantage of the situation and enjoy herself.

      Davies’s blue eyes were sparkling. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me on such short notice. I’m only in the city for the evening and didn’t want to miss the opportunity.”

      Despite her earlier thoughts, Annja felt herself swayed by his charm. “It’s my pleasure, Sir Charles.”

      The elderly man waved his hand as if shooing away a bad odor. “Please. Charles is fine. I reserve that Sir Charles stuff for those I don’t particularly care for all that much.”

      Annja laughed. “I think I like you already. Okay, Charles it is.”

      The waiter brought their drinks—the wine for Annja and a refill of what looked like Scotch for Charles. He waited until the server was out of earshot before continuing.

      “A mutual friend of ours in Paris said you might be able to help with a particular problem I’d like to solve.”

      Annja only had one friend in Paris who could possibly run in the same social circles as Davies and that was Roux. Incredibly wealthy in his own right, perhaps even more wealthy than Charles Davies, Roux was unlike any other man she’d ever met. Save one.

      He’d lived for more than five hundred years, which probably had something to do with that, she thought.

      Roux had been an instrumental force in her life for years now. She had been with him when she’d discovered the final missing piece to the shattered sword that had once been wielded by Joan of Arc. Annja had been in Roux’s study with him when the blade had mystically reforged itself right before their very eyes and, by Annja’s way of thinking, had chosen her to be its next bearer. Since then Roux had become a kind of mentor to her, sharing what he knew of the blade and its purpose.

      Which made sense given that the blade had had a significant impact on his life, as well.

      He’d been Joan’s protector, charged with delivering her safely back behind French lines, a job he’d ultimately failed to do. Joan had been captured and, vastly outnumbered, he and his young apprentice, Garin Braden, had been unable to do anything but stand and watch as the English soldiers burned her at the stake for witchcraft and heresy. Joan’s sword had been shattered by the commander in charge of the execution detail, the pieces quickly gathered up by onlookers as souvenirs. It was only later that Roux discovered how his failure to live up to his vow to protect the young maiden had changed him and, by extension, his apprentice, as well. The two men stopped aging, appearing today just as they did five centuries before. Determined to be the master of his own fate, Roux had set out on a quest to reunite the shattered pieces of Joan’s sword, thinking that restoring the weapon might somehow end the curse.

      Unfortunately, this brought him into rivalry with his former apprentice, Garin, who decided that he was quite happy living forever and didn’t see it as a curse at all. Because he saw the restoration of the blade as an attempt to undo the very act that had granted them an ageless life in the first place, Garin spent the next couple hundred years trying to kill Roux whenever he got the chance. It was only recently, when the blade had been reformed without any harm coming to them, that the two men had put aside their conflict and begun to cooperate.

      Roux had sent customers her way on several occasions and so Annja wasn’t exactly surprised to hear of his recommendation.

      “And how is the stubborn old goat?” she asked.

      “As willful as ever,” Davis replied, “and determined to make everyone around him well aware of it.”

      Their meal came, sea bass for Charles and a sirloin for Annja, and they spent the next thirty minutes enjoying the food and talking about inconsequential things. Once the table had been cleared and coffee ordered, Charles finally got down to business.

      “What can you tell me about the Library of Gold?” he asked.

      Annja didn’t even need to think about it. The library was one of the great unsolved mysteries of the archaeological world and she was well-versed in its history.

      “It’s a collection of ancient books gathered over several hundred years by the Byzantine Empire and collected in the library at Constantinople. It supposedly included roughly eight hundred books written in Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Arabic, including some exceedingly rare volumes as a complete set of the “History of Rome” by Titus Livius, poems by Kalvos, “The Twelve Caesars” by Suetonius and individual works by Virgil, Aristophanes, Polybius, Pindar, Tacitus and Cicero.”

      Annja took a sip of her wine, warming to the subject. “Many of the books would have been written by hand, which, if they surfaced on today’s market, would make them incredibly valuable. Never mind the several hundred editions that were supposedly created specifically for the various emperors, which were rumored to have had their covers inlaid with gold and encrusted with jewels of all shapes and sizes.

      “When the emperor’s niece, Sophia Palaeologus, married the Grand Prince of Moscow, Ivan III, she took the library with her back to Russia. Reasons for this vary. Some say it was a part of her marriage dowry, while others insist that it was to keep the library from falling into the hands of Sultan Mahomet II, who was threatening Constantinople at the time. Either way it turned out to be fortuitous, because the sultan’s forces eventually sacked Constantinople. I guess in the end it really doesn’t matter. The library went to Russia and that pretty much sealed its doom.”

      Charles was watching her closely, sizing her up it seemed. “Why’s that?” he asked.

      “The difference in the cities themselves, for one. At the time, most of the buildings in Moscow were made of wood. Fires were frequent, the dry air leeching the moisture out of the wood in the summertime and causing them to burn fast. A small one-building fire could engulf an entire section of the city if it wasn’t quickly contained. Compare that with Constantinople, which was far older than Moscow and where most of the buildings were of cut stone. For this reason alone, the library was safer in Constantinople.

      “Sophia apparently came to the same conclusion. Soon after arriving in Moscow, she convinced her new husband to rebuild the entire Kremlin, replacing the wooden structures with buildings of brick and stone. The library was moved to the Temple of the Nativity of the Theotokos and that’s where it remained until Sophia’s stepson, Ivan IV, came to power in 1533.”

      “That hardly sounds like doom and gloom,” Charles said skeptically.

      Annja smiled. “The library passed into the hands of Ivan IV, also known as Ivan the Terrible and the Butcher of Novgorod. This is the same man who killed his own son and heir in a fit of rage by striking him repeatedly over the head with an iron rod. He created a secret police force that was actively encouraged to rape, loot, torture and kill in his name to keep the populace under control. Does that sound like the kind of man priceless texts should be entrusted to?”

      Charles grimaced and shook his head.

      Annja went on. “Recognizing the potential danger the library was in, the Vatican tried to purchase it outright from the self-declared czar. Ivan refused. Afraid his enemies would try to take it from him by force, Ivan hired an Italian architect named Ridolfo di Fioravanti to design and build a secret vault to house the library. Months into the project Fioravanti and the library both vanished.”

      “So what do you think happened to it?” Charles asked casually.

      Annja thought about that one for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t have a clue,” she said. “And given what’s gone on over there for the past century or so, we’ll probably never know.”

      Charles leaned toward her, his eyes shining with excitement. “What would you say if I told you I knew where it was? Or, at least, had direct information that could lead you to it?”

      Annja laughed. “If I had a nickel for every time someone told me they knew where to find a long-lost treasure, I’d be as rich as you are, Charles.”

      He

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