Chapter 6: The Cabal and the Louvre
Four grey gargoyles were perched at the wall's four cardinal points just below the dark blue dome ceiling. The ancient creatures' mouths were contorted open in silent roars. Their demonic eyes glared down at the large, round table located precisely on the centre of the hall's floor. Symmetric patterns were carved in the table's dusty wood, their intricate shapes mixing with the shadows cast by the single ornate lamp on the middle of the table. Huge, round stone pillars supported the dome ceiling. Bookshelves crammed with occult tomes and manuscripts lined the walls.
Three persons, one woman and two men, were seated in antique wooden chairs at the table. The woman was in her late fifties and had short, greying black hair. She wore shiny black gloves and a sleeveless green laboratory jacket. Her facial skin looked like it was pulled back tightly enough to rip open and expose the skull and brain any moment now.
A pale, flabby guy sat next to the woman. He wore a white hat, red scarf and bright green shirt. Round, pitchblack sunglasses rested over his twitching eyes. Stubble dotted his huge double chins, above which the man's teeth were nervously biting his thin lips.
The man to the woman's right was in his late thirties and undoubtedly the youngest of the three persons. His short hair had an almost golden tinge in the light of the antique table lamp. He wore a black suit over a grey turtleneck. "Shouldn't Eckhardt be here by now?" he asked, a strong British accent pervading his low voice.
"Actually, Master Eckhardt should have been here two minutes ago," answered a bald, muscular man standing leaned against one of the bookshelves. His accent was clearly Swedish. He wore an intimidating military uniform and had a milky-white beard growing on his weather-beaten chin.
"Thank you, Gunderson." The man leaned back and raked a hand through his bright blonde hair. "Where on earth has he got to? He's usually the first to show up at the Cabal meetings."
"Master Eckhardt has been very preoccupied lately, Karel," the black-haired woman replied. Her accent was very hard to place, but if one had to guess, it would probably be a mix of German and Argentine. "Have you not read about it in the newspapers?" she asked.
Karel uttered an eerily mirthless laughter. "Ah yes, Boaz, of course I know about his amusing little hobby as the so-called 'Monstrum'. However, I fear it is getting in the way of his true work. The resurrection of the Nephilim …"
"On the contrary, Karel, we need those … p-parts he has been c-collecting," the fat guy stuttered. "The Turkey specimen will require more than some simple Lux artifact to a-awaken. We'll n-n-need to …"
"What we don't need is all your ridicolous nonsense, Muller. That 'simple' artifact is the most important device in our entire plan. Yes, the organs will be useful as well, but we must focus on the paintings and the Sanglyph," Karel said, getting a little exasperated. "Sometimes I really wonder why Eckhardt lets an idiot like you stay in our great alliance."
Muller kept quiet and resumed biting his lower lip. He flinced when the double doors behind him burst open and Pieter Van Eckhardt marched into the meeting hall. The fresh blood of a certain criminal pawnbroker stained the metal glove on the newly arrived Cabal master's right hand. "Apologies for my late arrival; I was harvesting," came the terse explanation. He walked up to a bowl of distilled water on one of the bookshelves and swiftly washed the blood off. The man then started pacing slowly around the table. "Esteemed Cabal members, the hour of your reward grows ever closer," he began.
Figuring Eckhardt was going to start off with a mere summary, Karel let his thoughts wander and gazed up at the ancient stone gargoyles under the ceiling.
"As you know, we already posses three of the Obscura paintings," Eckhardt said. "Our contact, Professor Werner Von Croy, located the fourth one for us here in Paris. When we have this, we will reassemble in Prague."
Karel's gaze flew back down to Eckhardt, interest piqued.
Eckhardt glared over his crescent-shaped glasses at the three powerful individuals seated in front of him. "It is time to awaken the Sleeper."
A quiet gasp escaped Boaz' mouth. Muller's teeth sunk even deeper into his chapped lip. Only Karel remained perfectly calm.
"Hopefully, we will be more succesful this time," Eckhardt grumbled. "We are also closer to the fifth and last Obscura painting in Prague. We will gather at the Strahov. Gunderson."
The tall, military-looking man stepped forward from the bookshelf he had been leaning against. "Master Eckhardt."
Eckhardt laid his gloved hand on Gunderson's broad shoulder. "Dispatch your team for the fourth painting," he commanded.
"Immediately!"
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The fuel tank room was an rectangular hall with a deep pool of dark water surrounded by a metal walkway. A strong smell of oil and sewage wafted around. Lara gingerly followed the walkway up to a huge tank next to two rusty barrels and a valve. She had spent the last half hour exploring these disgusting storm drains beneath the Louvre and was glad to have finally reached the exit. She produced the plastic explosive from her backpack, attached it to the tank and set the timer off – five seconds and counting.
"Dive, girl, dive …"
Lara took a deep breath before back-flipping from the platform and plunging into the warm, thick waters. Above her, the timer reached 0 and the tank exploded like a huge orange flower unfolding its fiery petals of destruction.
The pool surface was covered in burning fuel, making it impossible for the woman below to surface without immediately perishing in the flames. Lara inwardly cursed and swam to her left, through a little maze of round tunnels. After holding her breath for half a minute, Lara surfaced in a sloping sewer tunnel which she followed upwards and back to the tank hall. The pool surface had been transformed into one huge yellow rectangle of flames.
Lara climbed a few ladders and followed the walkway back to the heavily sooted hole where the fuel tank used to be. Entering through the smoky entrance, she found herself in a large basement hall with double doors at the far left corner. 'Musée du Louvre' was engraved on the plate. Lara smiled and stepped through to a rising marble-staircase. "Well, at least it's clean in here."
The awe-inspiring museum did indeed make a sharp contrast to the filthy sewers Lara had just exited. The ochreus walls looked spotlessly clean, almost even sterile.
On her way up the stairs, Lara saw a single guard standing with his back to her on the wide landing. She produced her non-lethal Dart SS and fired the noiseless gun. The tranquilizer dart effortlessly pierced the white fabric of the uniform shirt-sleeve and plunged into the man's upper arm. As the poison spread through his veins, the guard grunted and reeled for two seconds before collapsing. He'd probably stay unconscious for at least half an hour.
His attacker glanced down at her Dart SS pistol with an amused smirk. "Thank you, Daniel Rennes."
Lara continued up the staircase, slipping past a search beam sweeping back and forth from a motion camera under the ceiling. She soon reached the gallery for ancient stone figurines, where several security cameras were placed at the top of the marble walls. Lara knew they weren't genuine, though – they were merely there to scare visitors away from touching the art. No, the real dangers here were the ubiquitous laser tripwires. Just one rash movement, one broken red ray, and the alarm would go off, huge iron grating falling down in front of the exits to trap the trespasser inside. Fortunately, Lara was far more agile than your average clumsy burglar. She hopped across the tops of the display cases, easily dodging the numerous laser traps.
The next room was an immense gallery for the Italian masterpieces. Oil paintings covered the 9-meter-high walls. The polished parquet floor reflected the star-filled night sky visible through the large windows in the majestically vaulted ceiling above. "Ah, la Grande Galerie. I love this place."
Lara got on her hands and knees and crawled under two lasers crossing the entrance in a bright red X. Once inside the gallery itself, she scrambled to her feet and slipped into the shadows behind a pillar, where she couldn't be spotted by the guard farther down the hall. She quietly produced the Dart SS and aimed through the vertical lasers lined up between the pillar and wall to her left. The dart penetrated the man's neck and injected its anaestethic. The man pivoted and staggered angrily towards Lara, but only managed to take a few shaky steps before falling to the floor in a groaning heap.
Lara side-stepped between the vertical lasers and crept up to the slumbering guard like a vulture to a carcass. Searching his pockets, she snatched some batteries for her K2 Impactor and a low security pass for the Mona Lisa alarm system. Lara tucked the stolen goods into the pockets of her dark green camouflage trousers and walked on down the gallery to a small vestibule. The double doors in the far left corner caught her interest. According to the sign next to them, this was the entrance to her destination - the archaeological digs.
Of course, it was locked. "Great," Lara sighed and opened Werner's notebook in hope of finding a good clue.
Carvier says she has a security pass for the digs in her office.
Lara replaced the notebook in her backpack and pulled out Rennes' map of the Louvre. To find the office wing, she'd have to go through the ventilation ducts. "This is just like VCI headquarters … except Zip isn't here to guide me this time."
Lara returned to the Grande Galerie and stepped through a door in the left wall to a smaller, but even more important gallery: the Mona Lisa room. It was a square hall with various 15th century oil paintings and two display cases, a large case in the middle and a smaller one in the far left corner. Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece hung in a golden frame on the middle of the left wall. A semicircle of vertical lasers surrounded the enigmatically smiling lady. If one were to touch a single ray for one splitsecond, poison gas would rise from the vent in the floor below.
A single guard paced the room, armed with the usual small taser. Lara snuck up on him from behind and threw him to the floor, punching the back of his head. She then gave the vent opening a few metres above Mona Lisa her undivided attention. "How can I get up there without penetrating the lasers? Think, Lara …"
That's when she spotted the control panel hidden in the corner behind the small display case. She pulled the case a few feet out of the corner and approached the panel. It consisted of some switches for the overhead lights and a vertical crack for swiping security cards – like the one Lara had picked up from the unconscious guard in Grande Galerie. "I'll bet this thing turns off the lasers – at least temporarily. But even if I can get them disarmed, I'll have to find a way to get all the way up to the vent opening."
Lara walked back to the middle of the room and pushed the larger display case towards Mona Lisa until some low benches prevented it from getting any closer to the famous painting. She then returned to the panel in the corner, produced her security pass and swiped it through. Behind her, the lasers vanished into thin air.
Lara immediately whirled around, dropped the security card and ran across the parquet floor, jumping up to grab the edge of the display case. The five panes of thin glass creaked under the woman's weight as she pulled up and took a running jump from the case top. For half a second, she sailed through the dry museum air before grabbing the edge of the vent duct and pulling up into the claustrophobia-inducing shaft.
"Phew! I need a vacation," Lara muttered as she crawled down the cold metal passage. In the gallery behind her, the lasers reappeared, oblivious of the trespasser who had just cheated them.
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A/N: Happy New Year, and let's hope 2005 brings us news on TR7 …
