Burnt Sienna

by David Morrell

  As Malone headed in that direction, he heard the door open behind him. Turning, he saw the guard. With a nod, Malone resumed his search. The encyclopedia was easily located. Britannica. He didn’t know anything about rare books, but he did know about Bellasar’s tastes, and he would have bet anything that this particular edition — 1911, the copyright page on the volume he selected showed — was the classic version preferred by collectors.

  The guard kept watching. Malone nodded to him again, but this time with a slight impatience, as if saying, Fine, you’ve made your point. You’ve been a good watchdog. Now get on with your rounds and let me read in peace. The guard’s puzzled gaze wavered. After he stepped back into the corridor, his steps receding along the marble floor, Malone went over and shut the door, being sure that the latch made a noise to let the guard know he didn’t want to be disturbed again.

  He carried the volume he had chosen — for subjects that began with R — to an easy chair, and as he turned the heavy book’s brittle pages, smelling its must, he tried to stifle his apprehension. Everything’s going to be okay, he assured himself. Just keep following the plan.

  He found the article he wanted.

  “Rossetti, Dante Gabriel: English painter and poet, a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, born in 1828, died in 1882.” Stop thinking about death! he told himself.

  Rossetti’s original first names had been Gabriel Charles Dante, but his obsession with the Italian poet from the Middle Ages had prompted him to insist on being called Dante. The obsession had taken another form when he identified his beautiful wife, Elizabeth, with Dante’s Beatrice and dedicated himself to a passionate translation of Dante’s devotion to that woman, in effect describing the love he himself felt for Elizabeth. After Elizabeth’s death early in their marriage, Rossetti had buried the manuscripts of all his poems with her and had painted a symbolic portrait of his idealized love for her, calling it Beata Beatrix — Blessed Beatrice.

  Again, the subject was death. Struggling to distract himself, Malone found significance in the parallel he shared with Rossetti — they were both painters, and their lives had been changed because of a woman each had fallen in love with while doing a portrait of her.

  Love. For the first time, Malone realized that he had consciously used the word in connection with what he was feeling.

  3

  A half hour later, when the guard again looked in, Malone pretended to be asleep in the chair, his eyes closed, his head drooping, the encyclopedia open on his lap. This time, the guard shut the door when he went away. Immediately, Malone stood, turned off the lights, and went over to a casement window. Seeing no one outside, he opened the window, eased down to the murky ground, shut the window behind him, and sank behind a shrub. If the guard returned to the library, he would decide that Malone had wakened and gone back to his room.

  Staying low, Malone assessed the spotlights in the darkness. After assuring himself that no one was in this area, he crossed a path, reached shrubs, and crept behind them in the direction of the Cloister, its bell tower silhouetted against the starry sky. Moving cautiously, working to blend with shadows, he took a half hour to cover a distance that would normally have been a five-minute stroll.

  His palms sweated. Having been away from the military for a decade, he had to work to shut down his emotions. His heart pounded. His lungs couldn’t seem to get enough air. Leaving the cover of a fountain and reaching a clump of sculpted evergreen shrubs, he sank to the ground and stared at the arched windows of the Cloister. Although most were in darkness, it puzzled him that all of the basement windows were brightly lit. As he debated whether to risk crawling closer, he was startled by an outside door that opened, revealing a man’s shadow against an interior light. A guard with a rifle stepped out, closed the door, stared up at the starry sky, and lit a cigarette. Malone silently gave thanks that he had hesitated to crawl toward the basement windows.

  No problem. I’ll just wait until he goes back inside or moves on. But with Bellasar and Potter away, the guard wasn’t in a hurry. Indeed, after finally finishing the cigarette, then stubbing it out with his boot, the guard continued to remain where he was. Only when the door opened and another man came out, this one wearing a knee-length white coat, did the guard assume a professional stance, as if he’d been standing at attention, watching the door.

  The second man, tall, with dark hair, blocky features, and a husky build, wasn’t anyone Malone had seen before. With help from the hallway light spilling from the open door, Malone studied him, trying to memorize his broad lips, thick eyebrows, and square face. There was little time. The white-coated man pointed toward the crushed cigarette at the guard’s feet and said something curt, with the immediate result that the guard came to greater attention. A further disapproving remark caused the guard to follow the man back into the building. The door banged shut, blocking the interior light. But there was still ample illumination from the security lights in the area, and Malone took a long, careful time to watch for other guards before he reconsidered approaching the basement windows.

  Why had the man been wearing a knee-length white coat? he wondered. It looked like the kind of coat a doctor would wear in a hospital. Or a technician in a laboratory. What was behind those basement windows? Ignoring a metal band that seemed to tighten around his chest, he stayed low and darted toward shrubs at the side of the Cloister. No sooner had he disappeared behind one than boot steps rounded a corner, passing close enough to Malone for him to hear a scrape of metal against metal, perhaps from a rifle against an equipment belt.

  Other sounds attracted Malone’s attention — muffled voices, the rasp of what sounded like wood against stone. Wary, he peered through a window, staying to the side so he wouldn’t be seen. Not that it did him any good — the illumination through the glass was filtered by a blind. The voices seemed to come from farther along, however, and when he crawled to the next window, reaching the cover of another shrub, he discovered that instead of a blind, this window had an inside shutter, the slats of which had not been completely closed.

  He was able to see part of a room — segments of a stone floor, tables, cabinets, laboratory instruments, computers, and various electronic devices. Two large appliances against the far wall looked like an industrial-grade freezer and refrigerator. The voices became more distinct as the guard and the white-coated man stepped into view. The man spoke what sounded like Russian, which the guard didn’t seem to understand and Malone certainly didn’t, but the gist was clear — the man wanted the guard to open a wooden crate.

  Nails screeched as a crowbar pried them free. When the guard rammed so hard that a board shattered, Malone heard another voice cry out in protest. A third man stepped into view. He, too, wore a knee-length white coat. He gestured in alarm, speaking in agitated Russian, the frantic point of which was obvious: Be careful. Malone had seen those gestures before. In fact, he had seen this man before, the same balding, stoop-shouldered man he had watched get out of the helicopter the first morning he had been on the estate. The man had been dismayed by the rough way Bellasar’s men had handled the crates he had brought, just as he was dismayed now.

  Finally getting a closer look at him, Malone focused all his concentration, straining to fix the man’s features in his memory: the deep eyes, the high forehead, the oval face, the —

  A distant rumble made Malone flinch. As it rapidly swelled to a whumping roar, an icy hand seemed to squeeze his heart. A helicopter. Jesus. Is Bellasar returning? Is Sienna with him?

  The roar became loud enough that the men in the basement heard it and turned toward the window. Malone jerked to the side. Nothing in the way they spoke made him suspect that they had noticed him, but in the heightened security that would result from Bellasar’s return, a guard was bound to see him. There’d be so much activity at the château, Malone wouldn’t be able to sneak back inside.

  His only chance was to take advantage of the brief distraction the chopper’s arrival would create. Blinding lights
came on between the château and the Cloister, illuminating the helicopter pad. Almost at once, another glaring light illuminated the area, but this one blazed from the sky, from the nose of the swiftly approaching helicopter.

  The guards will be looking from one light to the other, Malone thought urgently. But the moment the chopper sets down, everything’ll be back to business as usual. This is my only chance. Move.

  But even as he braced himself to run from the shrubs at the side of the Cloister toward the greater number of shrubs across from him, a guard charged past. Malone barely checked his impulse in time. He looked to make sure that another guard wasn’t hurrying after the first one. Yes, they’re temporarily distracted, he fought to assure himself. I can do this.

  The moment the chopper roared overhead, its spotlight flashing past, Malone sprinted from the side of the building. He reached the opposite shrubs at the same time he heard Russian voices as the door to the Cloister banged open behind him. It sounded as if they were headed toward the landing pad, but he didn’t look behind him. He didn’t stop. It had taken him thirty minutes to get here, creeping from statue to fountain to hedge to whatever other murky cover he’d been able to find. But now he had to cover the same distance quicker than it would take to walk it.

  Staying low, moving with furtive speed, trying to blend with shadows, he heard the chopper set down to his right, its rotors slowing. Any moment now, Bellasar or whoever was in the chopper — Please, God, let Sienna be all right — would get out and proceed toward the château. Bellasar would ask the guards about Malone’s activities while he had been gone. The guard who’d seen Malone go into the library would report that the last time he’d checked, Malone was still in the library, asleep in a chair. Bellasar would want to see for himself. And if I’m not in that chair when Bellasar looks in, Malone thought, he might get suspicious enough to check if I’m in my room.

  As a guard loomed into view, Malone dropped to a crouch beside another statue and froze, praying that the guard wouldn’t look in his direction. On the right, through a gap in some bushes, Malone saw the starkly illuminated landing pad. Angrily, Bellasar got out of the helicopter. Before the white-coated men could reach him, he turned away. Followed by his bodyguards, he took long strides toward the château. But there wasn’t any sign of Potter. Far more important, where was Sienna? My God, has something happened to her? The next instant, someone shifted within the helicopter. A figure came slowly into view. But Malone’s relief when the figure turned out to be Sienna was immediately replaced by worry when he saw how hesitantly she got down from the helicopter. Even at a distance, she looked dazed.

  Move! Malone warned himself. There’s nothing you can do for her now, and if you don’t get back to the library before Bellasar looks in on you, you won’t be able to help her anytime. Hell, you won’t even be able to help yourself.

  As the guard that blocked his way moved on, Malone looked once more at Sienna, noted how unsteadily she walked across the landing pad, and urged himself past the statue, then toward the château. Lights came on in several upper windows — presumably Bellasar’s suite. Maybe Bellasar intends to go directly to bed, Malone thought hopefully. Maybe he won’t check on me until the morning.

  Malone’s chest heaved as he reached the final protective section of shrubs. He peered urgently around to make certain there weren’t any guards in the immediate area, that no one would see him dart across the white-pebbled walkway, open the library window, and crawl back inside. As assured as he could be under the circumstances, knowing that he had to commit to taking the risk, he braced himself for a final effort and felt a cold paralysis seize his muscles as the library windows suddenly blazed with light.

  4

  “You told me he was in here!” Bellasar shouted, squinting from the bright overhead light.

  “He was,” the guard insisted. “I saw him asleep in that chair an hour ago.”

  “Then where the hell is he now?”

  “He must have wakened and gone to his room.”

  “Suddenly he has an interest in old books? Suddenly he’s hanging around the library at midnight? You never saw him go back to his room?”

  The guard spread his hands guiltily. “No.”

  Bellasar stormed toward the casement windows, scowled at each of them, and noted that one was open a crack — enough space for fingers to pry in and open it farther if someone had gone out that way, closed it, and wanted to reopen it easily. “Damn it, find him. Go to his room! I want to know where he is!”

  As the guard hurried into the hallway, Bellasar went after him. In the vestibule, he yelled for the three bodyguards who’d been with him to follow. Taking the curving staircase three steps at a time, he rushed up, passing the guard he had sent ahead of him. At the top, he slowed just enough for the group to catch up to him, then charged along the corridor, reached the door to Malone’s room, thrust it open, turned on the light, and blinked at the empty bed, the covers of which weren’t turned back.

  “Search the grounds! Search everywhere!”

  The guards scrambled to obey.

  Following, Bellasar encountered Sienna as she wearily reached the top of the staircase.

  “He’s missing,” Bellasar said. “If I find him where he shouldn’t be, you won’t need to worry about posing for the second portrait. He’ll be dead.”

  Brushing past her, Bellasar charged down the stairs. “Check every room!” he ordered a group of guards who had heard the commotion and run into the vestibule. Seeing the Russians and another group of guards at the open doorway, he told them, “Search the Cloister! Give me your pistol!” he ordered a guard who raced past. He worked the 9-mm Sig-Sauer’s injection slide to make sure a round was in the firing chamber, paused long enough to be satisfied that his commands were being obeyed, then rushed outside to join the search.

  Flashlights zigzagged as guards searched under bushes and among trees.

  To Bellasar’s left, glass crashed. Voices shouted. One, louder than the rest, was terribly clear.

  “We’ve found him! Here! Over here!”

  5

  Pretending to have been shocked awake, Malone jerked up from the settee on which he lay in the darkness. Men barged into the sunroom with such force that the glass door slammed against the huge window next to it, shattering both panes. Shards of glass hit the stone floor, exploding into smaller pieces, crushed by the boots of the men who charged in, aimed pistols and flashlights, and yanked him to his feet.

  “What the —” Malone tried to sound disoriented.

  A man rushed outside. “We’ve found him! Here! Over here!”

  “What the hell’s going on?” Malone murmured. “Why are you …” The lights still hadn’t been turned on. The flashlights were aimed at his eyes, one of the beams so blindingly close that he raised his left arm to brush it away, only to have his arm thrust down and the flashlight whacked across the side of his face.

  The impact sent a burst of colors through his mind. For a moment, those colors swirled. His legs bent. He started to fall, but the men jerked him to his feet, and the flashlight was cocked back to strike him once again when several more people rushed into the room.

  Bellasar demanded, “Where is he? Show me the son of a bitch!”

  The overhead lights came on. The blow to Malone’s face had blurred his vision, but now he managed to focus it, seeing Bellasar stalk through the guards.

  Bellasar’s normally handsome features were twisted with rage. “The first time we met, you were tied to a chair. You’d pissed your pants.” Bellasar’s chest heaved, driven by the force of his emotions as he put on leather gloves.

  “I don’t understand,” Malone said. “Why —”

  “Shut your mouth!” Bellasar punched it.

  Malone’s head jerked back. For a moment, he saw more colors flash. His ears rang. As his disorientation cleared, he became aware of blood trickling down his chin from his split lips, joined by blood from a throbbing gash on his left cheekbone where the flashl
ight had struck him.

  “That first time I saw you, as I looked at the piss beneath your chair, I said you were a fool for refusing to cooperate with me.” Bellasar’s voice trembled. “But I also said that I was reasonable, that I was willing to give you a second chance. I warned you, though.” He punched Malone again, mangling his lips further. “I never give third chances.”

  The men holding Malone were jolted back by the strength of the blow.

  Malone needed a few seconds longer before his mind stopped spinning. “I don’t give third chances, either. You’ve hit me twice. Try doing it again.”

  “What?”

  “Without your guards hanging on to me.”

  “This close to dying, you have the nerve to talk to me like that?”

  “Why in Christ’s name are you threatening me?”

  “You actually think you can bluff your way out of this?”

  “Out of what?”

  “You deny sneaking out of the library window?”

  “Sneaking out of the library window? Do you have any idea how crazy that sounds?”

  “You deny you were in there?”

  “Of course I was in there! You made such a big deal about Dante and Beatrice, I read the book you suggested! You want a question and answer session? You want me to tell you what Beatrice was wearing when Dante first saw her? A red dress! Do you want to know the color of her dress the next time he saw her? White! The time after that, he saw her in church! The time after that, she was at a —”

  “Why was the library window open a crack?”

  “Beats the shit out of me! I didn’t know it was!”

  “The guard didn’t see you leave the library.”

  “That makes us even, because when I left, I didn’t see him, either.” Malone wiped blood from his face. “Reading about Beatrice got me thinking about sketching Sienna without her being in front of me. So I came over here and tried something new, but I was sleepier than I thought, and I took a nap on that settee. The next thing I knew, your storm troopers were barging in.”