by Tom Wilde
Rhea laughed. “You don’t need to. I already know the location of your hidden library.”
Madame Ombra’s eyes betrayed her surprise as Rhea continued, “Don’t blame your husband. He stood up very well to the physical torture. It was the drugs that got to him. By the time I was done, he truly believed everything I was telling him. And he wanted one more thing: He wanted you to know how much he loved you.”
Madame Ombra didn’t have time to reply as Rhea, fast as a snake, dropped her hand down the woman’s back and with a hiss, made a vicious strike. I saw Madame Ombra’s body arch in pain, and then she slowly slid down to the floor. Rhea had used her blade on the woman’s kidneys, a professional, lethal stab. Madame Ombra could have been dead before she hit the ground.
Rhea made a contended sigh, then said, “Well, Jonathan, it’s just you and me now.”
Rhea didn’t make a sound as she crossed the floor to me, the red light now behind her, hiding her face. She was like a Shadow of Death, taking its time in coming for me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
As Rhea approached, the scent of her jasmine perfume mingled with the smell of burnt gunpowder and fresh blood. I suddenly felt the pain in my wrists, caused by my unconscious act of impotently lunging against my iron restraints as Rhea murdered Madame Ombra and her man. As she reached up for my face, my jaws clenched in fear and revulsion. Her leather-clad hand stroked my cheek as she said in a soft and soothing voice, “I’m sorry things didn’t work out differently between us.”
“Did you have to kill them?”
“I told you I was willing to do whatever is necessary.”
“So everything you said about Vanya, all that talk about his unleashing a plague—”
“Is all true,” she said calmly. “And I am going to change the world with him.”
With the red light behind her, I couldn’t see her face. “Now what?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.
“The plan remains the same. Only you are no longer a part of it. I convinced Vanya that you were just too dangerous to keep around.” Rhea ran her hands down my chest, her fingers lingering over the flat box she had given me, which still rested in my jacket pocket. “Do you have any final messages for that wife of yours?” she asked.
I felt my teeth clench. “If you’re smart, you’ll keep Caitlin alive.”
“Oh? Why?”
“Because the way you’re going, sooner or later, you’ll need a hostage.”
“What makes her so special?”
I couldn’t think of anything more creative than the truth. “Because she’s a government agent.”
Rhea laughed, softly. “Oh, really? Well, if she is, then I would say that America is in very sad shape indeed.”
Rhea turned and went back to the table. She picked up the flintlock pistol and examined it curiously, then carefully set it back down. Then she picked up the electric lantern and switched the light from the gentle red glow to the bright white spotlight that fired directly in my face. I screwed my eyes shut against the painful glare, waiting for God knows what to happen. Then I finally heard Rhea say, “I think I want to remember you, just as you are now.”
The light slid off my face and I blinked my eyes, trying to coax them back to work as I heard the groan of the iron door, along with Rhea’s pleasant-sounding laughter. I heard a muted clanging sound, and as the afterburn of the light cleared from my eyes, I realized I’d been left alone in the dark with the dead. Moments later I heard a sizzling, crackling sound coming from inside my jacket and the faint smell of burnt insulation mingled with the dank, blood-soaked odor of the dungeon. Rhea had triggered the explosive killing device near my heart. If I hadn’t removed the C-4 charge first, I’d now be the third corpse in this tomb.
So there I was, chained to a wall in an ancient dungeon and left for dead in utter darkness. It was time to get the hell out of here.
The key to the manacles around my wrists was over on the table. It may as well have been on the dark side of the moon. But I’d learned a long time ago all about locks and how to defeat them, even locks as old as the ones restraining me now. All I needed was a thin length of metal, narrow enough to fit into the keyway, soft enough to be bent at an angle, yet strong enough not to break as I manipulated the internal levers. I was carrying something that just might do the trick—the ink cartridge inside my pen.
The first problem was that I had my pen clipped to the inside of my front pants pocket, and my hands were chained so that I couldn’t drop my arms below shoulder height. The second problem was that my hands were going numb. My scarred right hand was tingling, and I tried to tell myself that feeling was just all in my head, but my left was practically dead from the wrist up due to the fact that the manacle was clamped around my watch, and the tight fit had been squeezing the life out of my hand ever since. I took a deep breath, reached up for a grip on the chains, and with a jump pulled myself straight up. When I was as high as I could manage, I slowly released my right hand, holding myself up with my quivering left arm alone, and felt around my pocket for my pen. I grabbed it just as my overstrained left arm failed and dropped me. My feet hit the floor and my knees buckled as my arms snapped up just as the back of my head banged against the wall, sending electric shooting stars through the darkness. But I kept a grip on that pen like it held my very life.
Pulling myself up, I sent my near-lifeless fingers to work stripping the cartridge out of the pen, letting the metal shell fall and bounce on the stone floor. I felt my way to the keyhole on the manacle on my left wrist, and then inserted the slender tip of the ink cartridge, forcing it down until I had bent it into a curved piece of metal to work with. I used my improvised lock pick to probe the innards of the manacle, feeling for a piece that moved to the touch. The internal mechanics seemed to be rusted solid. Fearing I’d break my makeshift tool, I managed to put enough pressure to bear until I felt the mechanism finally give way.
I yanked my left hand free, shaking the life back into it, then went to work on the other lock. I was getting impatient, and felt something go snap all at once, but fortunately it was the locking lever and not my pen cartridge that gave way. I pulled my hand free, hearing the chains rattle and clink together impotently as I rubbed the gritty rust particles off my wrists.
I’d had enough of working in the dark and I was glad my little button-sized flashlight still functioned, illuminating the chamber in its now-familiar red hue. I saw the young bearded man sprawled on the floor, his sightless eyes turned up toward the glistening, ragged hole in his forehead. I picked up the pistol that he’d dropped, then let it fall clattering to the floor. I had no doubt that this was the same gun that Rhea had offered to give me earlier, and she had obviously rigged it to be useless.
My light caught a couple of other items discarded on the floor. The first was a metal pen that I recognized as the one that belonged to Caitlin, only the tip of the pen was missing and I could smell a faint scent of gunpowder. It was some kind of concealed one-shot pistol, and Rhea had used it to kill Madame Ombra’s guard. The other thing I saw was Caitlin’s dark-framed sunglasses, only one of the earpieces was now missing. I curiously pulled on the remaining earpiece, and it popped free of the frame. I was now holding a slim hilt with a thin, razor-sharp blade attached. Rhea must have used the mate of this knife to murder Madame Ombra. Rhea had come prepared with Caitlin’s own deadly government issue toys, and it made me wonder what else was in the collection of innocuous-looking items I had briefly been carrying.
Ahead of me I saw the table that held the manacle key and the large antique double-barreled pistol. I went over behind the table and knelt down beside the still form of Madame Ombra. She was lying on her side, and my flashlight revealed a wet, shiny patch on the lower back of her long black coat. What was almost invisible was the thin black stem of the needle-like blade protruding from her like a stinger from some monstrous insect. There was no doubt she was dead. Which is why when her eyes suddenly opened and she groaned, I damn near fell
over from the shock.
“Mon Dieu,” she hissed.
“Stay still,” I stammered. “You shouldn’t move.” Hell, I thought, you shouldn’t be able the move at all.
She started to reach behind her with a trembling hand, then stopped. “Ques … What is wrong?”
“You’ve been stabbed. In the kidney. Now try to lie completely still.”
For a moment, I thought she was having a seizure, and then I realized she was quietly laughing. Just as I was thinking she was falling into shock and hysteria, she whispered, “I haven’t got a kidney there. I gave it to my daughter years ago. Help me up.”
I did my best to gently lift her to the chair, setting her in the seat sideways and making sure the slender hilt of the knife didn’t bump into anything. The knife was plugging the wound and I didn’t want to disturb it. Madame Ombra leaned on the wooden table, breathing in short, shallow gasps. “Where … is that woman?”
“Gone. Left us both for dead. She said she knew where your library was hidden. She’s no doubt going to get the Fouché document.”
That squeezed another rusty laugh out of Madame Ombra. “Then she is to be … disappointed. Old Fouché didn’t leave enough clues to matter.” She focused her pale eyes on me. “I was, how you say? Stalling for time. You were not supposed to arrive here until midnight, and the rest of my men are still on their way.”
“So we’re all alone here?”
“Oui,” she wheezed. “And now you are the only one who can stop her.”
“You said Fouché’s document wouldn’t help her.”
She reached out and grabbed my sleeve with a trembling hand. “But she knows about the library! And if she finds that, she may find out what Byron knew … and Shelley. It’s why he had to die, you see.”
Her eyes filmed over and her hand dropped to the table. I was losing her. “Byron? Shelley? Wait, you mean Lord Byron? And Percy Shelley, the poets?”
Her head slowly fell forward, as if she was going to sleep. “Keep her away from … the Tower Mirabeau,” she whispered.
I came around the table just in time to keep her from falling to the floor, and I eased her down as gently as I could, laying her on her left side. Her pulse was weak, almost fleeting, and I didn’t think she’d be alive much longer. There was nothing more I could do for her here. I grabbed the heavy flintlock pistol and went for the iron door. Rhea had taken no chances; the damn thing was locked, and there was no keyhole on this side of the dungeon. But my clever little assassin had provided me with a key of a different type when she arranged to murder me.
I went back to the table and set the pistol and flashlight down, then retrieved the small square of C-4 explosive that I’d kept after I disarmed the pocket-sized bomb Rhea gave to me. I’ve worked with this grade of explosive before, and I knew how stable it was, but it was still a relief to quit carrying it concealed so close to my reproductive organs. I rolled the malleable explosive into a thin snake and then got out my survival matches and made up a miniature warhead to use as a detonator.
I packed the plastic explosive into the doorjamb. Now the only questions were whether the cluster of match heads would be enough to kick off a detonation, and if so, could I get my hand the hell out of the way before I got it blown off? Only one to way to find out, I thought grimly. I went back to the table and set it on its side as a shield for the supine Madame Ombra, put the flintlock pistol on the far side of the room, then went back to the door and readied my lighter. I briefly wondered who the Patron Saint of Explosions was, and then I lit the C-4 and jumped for the corner, covering my ears and averting my eyes.
I was there long enough to feel like a dismal failure, when suddenly the concussive thunderclap knocked me stupid. I had to take a moment to reorient my blinded eyes and ringing ears. My flashlight showed the heavy iron door had buckled near the keyway, and it still resisted my efforts to open it. I had to slam my body against the door three times, feeling like I was being speared in my previously wounded ribs with every attempt, until I forced a narrow passage open. I retrieved the antique pistol, and took one last look at the woman in black, holding a fleeting hope that she was still alive. I took the black box remote-control killing device out of my jacket and tossed it across the room—it may have held more nasty surprises that I didn’t need. I squeezed myself out through the door and into the passage of the tunnel.
I took to the winding stairway like a lost soul stealing out of hell, and I was ready, willing, and able to deal out some lethal payback to anyone who’d try to stop me. It felt like it took forever to ascend to the top of the tunnel, and when I reached the top I saw that Rhea had moved the wooden bookcase back into place, inadvertently giving me some cover. I gave myself a few moments to get my breath back, using the time to examine the old-fashioned hand cannon. During my long course of combat and survival training I’d been taught to shoot everything from a tiny, five-shot derringer small enough to be hidden inside a pack of cigarettes to a .50 caliber tank-killing rifle, but I’d never actually fired anything this antiquated. It was because of my fascination with weapons of historical value that I knew theoretically just how to operate this big, two-shot horse pistol.
I carefully opened the priming pans on both sides and made sure they held a charge of gunpowder, then closed them up. The twin hammers were already pulled back into firing position. I was as ready as I was going to be. Pushing the bookcase open as quietly as I could, I slipped out into darkness, straining my abused ears and questing for a sound. I heard nothing through the concussion-wrought ringing in my head.
I had no idea where the Tower Mirabeau was located in this enormous maze of fortifications, so I crept back along the way I was brought in. I stayed close to the walls, feeling like the confines of the rounded stone passages made me an easy target. But before too long, my nose gave me my heading—I could smell a current of fresh air from ahead of me. I reached the foyer where I’d first met Madame Ombra and saw that the overhead electric lights had been doused and the heavy wooden door was left ajar. The slight breeze carried something else along with it: the unmistakable staccato beating sound of an approaching helicopter.
I stepped into the foyer just as a pair of shadowed figures emerged from a darkened side hallway. I raised the heavy pistol and shouted: “Hold it!” just as a jet of fire spit and my chest took a sledgehammer blow. The gun in my hand snapped and flashed, then a split second later a double shock of thunder erupted as a gout of flame lit up the room, nearly breaking my wrist and giving me a snapshot of a darkly dressed man being slammed into the stone wall.
My knees buckled from the hit I took, and I dropped to the floor. Gritting my teeth against the pain, I forced myself to stand, blinded now by darkness wreathed in the gunfire afterburn as I made my way to the door. Reaching the portal, I caught a glimpse of a running figure crossing the courtyard and headed for the open maw of the tunnel that led to the front gate. There was no doubt it was Rhea, making a hasty retreat. As I started to give chase, there was a heavy-sounding thunk over my shoulder. I spun around and saw the man I’d shot, now in the act of prying a large knife out of the door where my head had been a moment before.
I backed out to the open courtyard as the man freed the weapon and came stalking toward me. Moonlight caught on the blade in his hand as he crouched in a professional knife fighter’s stance. My heart was hammering in my chest and my legs were shaky, aftereffects of the bullet that slammed into my chest; I’d have been dead if not for the Kevlar-lined jacket Rhea had given me. Unfortunately, the man I shot was obviously wearing the same kind of jacket.
“Blake? Rhea said that she killed you.”
Though his face was shrouded in darkness, the lilting accent identified my opponent: Vandervecken, Vanya’s personal mercenary. “Yeah,” I panted in reply. “Want to sit down and talk about it?”
“I would,” he said with a barked laugh, “but I have to fly.”
Vandervecken closed in for the kill, holding the knife low. Both barrels of
my gun had discharged, but the pistol itself made a good, heavy club and we circled each other like ancient warriors under the looming castle walls. I tried to keep my mind off the deepening roar of the approaching helicopter as I studied my opponent in the moonlight, searching for an opening.
He didn’t give me time to find one; he came at me with a slashing, scything attack that had me backing up across the courtyard. I grabbed the barrels of my gun with my free hand and made a sweeping, upward block, then had to throw myself back to keep from having my gut slashed open when he countered with a wicked horizontal backhand swipe. I knew all at once he was too good with a knife for me to beat him in a stand-up fight. I either had to get creative or get cut to pieces.
I went for the unconventional move and threw my pistol at his head, bouncing the gun off his skull with a glancing blow as he ducked. It didn’t drop him, and that was my cue to turn and run like hell. I launched myself into the tunnel, which echoed with the sound of the helicopter blades. Even so, I could still hear Vandervecken’s footsteps racing up behind and gaining on me. I was slowed by the fact that my hands were busy readying my next weapon for attack. I cleared the tunnel and made for the bridge. The instant I was out of the mouth of the arch I spun and threw myself sideways, whipping my belt free and sending the heavy buckle crashing into Vandervecken’s midsection.
It was his turn to back up as I swung my weighted weapon and slashed at him, missing a head strike. I kept up a flailing attack, the heavy buckle thudding into his arms as he covered up from the blows, until I had him backed up against the metal guardrail of the bridge. I dropped down and whipped the belt around his legs, grabbing the free end and pulling up with all my strength, flipping him over the railing and dropping him out into space. I lurched over to the rail and watched as Vandervecken vainly fought against the lethal pull of gravity. He didn’t make a sound until he crashed into the jagged rocky bottom of the moat.