Free The Delphi Agenda by Rob Swigart

master at breaking codes and ciphers, of opening locked doors. Since the seventeenth century a rossignol has been what you call in English a ‘lock pick’ or ‘skeleton key.’ ”
    Steve and Lisa turned toward the Boulevard St. Germain as if propelled by the sound of the great green door of Foix’s apartment building clicking shut behind them.
    After they passed the entrance to the Rue Bernard Palissy, a man in a tan raincoat dropped into formation a few paces behind them. When they turned right on the boulevard, he followed.
    At the big intersection at Odeon, Steve guided Lisa with a gentle hand on her elbow down the Rue de l’École de Medecine toward the Rue des Écoles. The follower remained twenty steps behind, looking like any member of the early lunch crowd in this popular tourist district.
    Steve stopped to admire a bookstore display. “Turn slowly,” he said. “Pretend you’re interested in books. Back there, at the corner you see the man, the one in the raincoat? He’s a cliché, one of Hugo’s hounds, I’d guess.”
    She nodded. “If I had any doubts I was a suspect, they’re gone now. Who else would wear an overcoat in June when everyone else carries an umbrella?”
    “Except us,” Steve grinned. “Shall we lose him?”
    “After lunch. I’m hungry, and if we eat he might get careless. I have a lot to think about and I can’t do it if they’re going to chase me all over the place. But do you have any money? I only have a few euros and I’m afraid my dining choices are on the side of affordability.”
    “I’m a banker,” Steve answered. “And I know just the place.” They crossed the Rue Saint-Jacques, and turned onto the Impasse Chartière where they were confronted by the prow of a triangular six-storey building.
    “It looks like the Flatiron,” Lisa said. “Sort of.”
    “That would be in New York?”
    “Yes.”
    “This building is older,” Steve said. “Seventeenth century.”
    The entrance was framed in lush green vines. He indicated the sign by the door. “They say the Coupe-Chou, or in English literally the ‘cabbage-cutter,’ was a kind of razor. It seems that during the thirteenth century a barber nearby used to slit the throats of his clients and hand their bodies over to the butcher across the street to be made into paté. May I invite you to join me for lunch?” he added with a courtly bow.
    “Charming,” she replied. “I’d be delighted.” A few drops of rain fell and their pursuer took refuge in an entrance across the street. “Well,” she added, opening the door. “He has the raincoat, so I guess he can wait outside.”

14.
    The windowless chamber was large and cold and dark. A dim electric bulb hanging from a ceiling lost in shadows was a poor substitute for the smoking torches that would have been here in another age. Somewhere water dripped and ran. Chaotic echoes, footsteps, muffled voices, a burst of raucous laughter, reverberated around the room.
    The man known as Rossignol was naked, a frail, worn man looking much older than his years. His white hair was disordered. His arms and ankles, with their prominent bones and thin, sagging flesh, were strapped to the thick wooden supports of a chair. His chin touched his bony chest and his eyes were closed.
    His head snapped back. He looked around in confusion, straining to get up.
    Inside the small circle of light the Dominican nun stood a few feet away. The glossy beads of a rosary passed rapidly between her fingers. She was staring at him,
    He stared back and nodded once. From then on he ceased to struggle.
    “For centuries now we have been forbidden to shed blood,” she began slowly, speaking English with overtones of East Texas. If the methodical deliberation of her words was designed to inspire dread, Rossignol gave no sign it was working.
    Only her face, framed severely by white wimple, form-fitting coif and stiff white headband, was visible, the lower part arranged into a bleak smile. “This