When Tang Ren knocked on Hemingway's cenotaph with a long bread stick, the morning mist in District 4 was being torn apart by the sound of police sirens. Su Chen squatted in front of the wet tombstone, his fingertips touching the fresh bloodstains - the dark red and gray marble winding into a strange Mobius ring.
"The deceased was a Louvre restorer." Qin Feng flipped through the files handed over by the sheriff, his stuttering echoing in the cemetery, "He was found by a cleaner at three in the morning, with an unfinished sketch of Mona Lisa under him, but..."
"But Leonardo da Vinci never drew this angle!" Su Chen suddenly raised his head. He took out a portable purple light and illuminated the sketch. The invisible ink revealed dense longitude and latitude coordinates, and the intersection point directly pointed to the rose window of the Sacred Chapel.
The sheriff opened the shroud, and Tang Ren's scream scared the pigeons away. The corpse's right index finger was completely severed, and a goose-hair brush in the style of the Renaissance was inserted into the wound, with the pen shaft engraved with "Greetings from the Q Organization".
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In the blood-red light cast by the stained glass, Qin Feng used a magnifying glass to count the lead bars of the rose window. "124... corresponding to the number of chapters in the Hell chapter of The Divine Comedy." His finger suddenly stopped at the foot of a saint statue, "There is a crack here, which was just repaired by Zhou."
Tang Ren tiptoed to feel for the crack, but knocked over a janitor's ladder, which hit the organ, shaking off dust and revealing wax marks on the floor - someone had lit candles of different colors for seven consecutive nights, and the tar residue spelled out the Hebrew letter "Tsade".
"This is the Masonic code." Su Chen used a cotton swab to collect wax. "The last call record of the deceased showed that he had recently investigated the cellar map of the Knights Templar."
Suddenly, the lights and shadows of all the rose windows began to move. The midday sun shone through the stained glass, projecting an inverted map of Paris on the ground, with the Eiffel Tower covered by a blood-red spot of light.
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At the riverside artists' gathering area, Tang Ren held up the sketch of the deceased and asked around. An old woman painting watercolors had her pupils shrink and suddenly pressed her palette against his face. As the cobalt blue paint flowed, Su Chen noticed the plaster statue behind her easel - the base was engraved with a "Q" mark that matched the goose brush.
"Chase!" Qin Feng knocked over the easel, and the old woman had already entered the underground passage. When the three chased to the abandoned plaster workshop, they stepped on the carefully arranged mechanism. Hundreds of thin wires hung from the ceiling, each tied with an unfinished facial model of "Mona Lisa" - all the models had their right eyes hollowed out.
"This is not a trap... It's a message." Qin Feng held up the plaster fragments, "Q organization is looking for Leonardo da Vinci's lost right eye technique."
Su Chen found a half-filled can of Venetian turpentine in the corner of the wall, with a microfilm roll hidden under the label. After developing it, it turned out to be a guard roster for the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911, with modern handwriting on the edge: "Full moon in August, the authentic work is returned."
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When the museum was closed late at night, Su Chen bribed the security captain to borrow the patrol records. Surveillance showed that the deceased sneaked into the Italian Painting Museum for seven consecutive nights, and stayed in front of "Madonna of the Rocks" for 23 minutes each time.
"Back of the frame!" Tang Ren suddenly used gum to stick a golden hair. Qin Feng compared the library database and found that it was the hair color of Emily, the chief restoration assistant. When they rushed into the restoration room, they saw an overturned flax oil can - the oil-stained floor formed a perfect Fibonacci spiral.
At Emily's workstation, a yellowed invoice was pressed against a paper weight: On August 21, 1911, the Louvre ordered a life-size statue from a plaster factory, and the signatory's section was stamped with the Masonic triangle eye badge.
"Tomorrow... is the full moon of August." Su Chen looked at the gradually full moon outside the window, cold sweat seeping out of his palms.
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Tang Ren pinched his nose and jumped into the stinking sewer. The flashlight illuminated the sword scratches on the wall. Qin Feng counted the steps: "146 steps... Yes, corresponding to the years when the Knights Templar fell, 1307 to 1453."
At the first fork, Su Chen found fresh gunpowder residue. Following the trail to the end, he found the keyhole on the cast iron door was actually a cipher designed by Leonardo da Vinci. Tang Ren took out the goose feather brush from the dead man's body and inserted it into the keyhole, and the muffled sound of gears turning came from inside the door.
The cellar is filled with wooden boxes with Q marks, and when they are pried open, there are hundreds of "Mona Lisa" imitations. The paint layers of each painting are sandwiched with fragments of the original painting - the Q organization has spent decades recycling original pigments from counterfeits around the world, preparing to piece together the only authentic painting.
"They switched things up on a full-moon night!" Qin Feng's flashlight swept across the engineering drawings on the wall. The ventilation ducts of the Louvre were marked in red. "The real thing is now..."
Suddenly, police sirens sounded overhead, and the footsteps of the Q organization echoed in the drainpipe. Tang Ren grabbed the imitation and used it as a shield: "This time I will defend the statue!"
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As the skylight on the top floor of the Louvre cast a cold light, Su Chen used a purple light to illuminate the protective cover of "Mona Lisa". The slight reflection of the glue showed that the frame had been opened within 24 hours. Qin Feng noticed the blind spot of the security system - at 23:17 every night, the cleaning robot would block the east camera for 11 seconds.
"There are scratches on the elevator cable!" Tang Ren pointed at the pulley on the ceiling. The three climbed up the maintenance ladder to the dome and found that the real "Mona Lisa" was hanging in the ventilation shaft. The Q organization used the smell molecules of the counterfeit to deceive the sniffers.
Suddenly, gunshots were heard from the exhibition hall below. Emily appeared with cutting tools and the Templar emblem tattooed on her neck: "Leonardo da Vinci designed a thief-proof frame for the original painting. Only when seven keys are inserted..."
Before he finished speaking, a laser aimed and locked onto the three people. Mr. White Gloves from the Q organization stepped out from the shadows, holding the last bronze key in his hand: "Thank you all for helping to collect the scattered keys from 1911."
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The chase started on the Champs-Elysées before dawn. Tang Ren grabbed the tourist carriage and rushed forward, while Qin Feng used a painting tube as a sword to block the pursuer. Su Chen found that the key pattern was exactly the same as the sword of a soldier on the relief of the Arc de Triomphe.
"Go to the vault!" He kicked open the maintenance passage. During the chase on the 284 steps, Emily was shot and fell, and before she died, she threw the key to Qin Feng. The morning sun just penetrated the Arc de Triomphe, and the key projected on the Monument to the Unknown Soldier, revealing the longitude and latitude coordinates of the vault.
When the seven keys were inserted into the frame of the authentic painting, what popped out of the secret compartment was not a treasure, but a letter written by Leonardo da Vinci: "The real Mona Lisa is in the eyes of the beholder." The leader of the Q organization took off his mask and turned out to be the retired security director of the Louvre.
When police cars surrounded the museum, Tang Ren secretly stuffed the fake fragments into his pocket: "Keep it as a souvenir!" He didn't know that on the back of one of the fragments, new coordinates were written in invisible ink - Leonardo da Vinci's Mechanical Lion at the Venice Biennale.
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