The Blood of Alexander

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The Blood of Alexander Page 22

by Tom Wilde


  I didn’t even have time to catch a breath before I was buffeted by the wind whipping from the helicopter blades. I was painfully speared by an overhead searchlight as I heard and felt the stones around me crack from an onslaught of high-velocity rifle slugs. I dove for the cover of the tunnel and kept moving blindly for the other end. If I was caught in here while they shot into the tunnel, I could get chewed up by ricochets. I had to make my way with one hand on the wall, and once I cleared the tunnel I dashed as fast as I could across the courtyard, throwing myself through the open wooden portal. I hit and rolled, then scrambled back and shoved the heavy door shut.

  I reached up and threw the big iron bolt, locking myself in, then collapsed to the cold stone floor, every breath I gulped giving me a lancet of pain in my chest. Flashes of bright light that shot through the high windows and arced around the room lit the inner chamber. Then it all went dark and I heard the blessed sound of the helicopter beating a retreat across the sky. But as I lay there panting in the darkness, I was aware of a new sensation. Somewhere in the castle, something was burning.

  Rhea must have found the library.

  As I lay there on the ground, I briefly reflected on the fact that since I’d woken up that morning, I’d been betrayed, chained to a wall, and damn near killed half a dozen times, and now this. It was just no goddammed fair, I thought as I pried myself off the floor and fumbled in the dark for the light switch. I blinded myself with my success, and as I blinked my eyes clear I could see a thin haze of smoke wafting out of the corridor from which Rhea and her now-deceased companion had emerged. I also spotted a black pistol with an attached silencer and a small flashlight that Vandervecken must have dropped when my antique bullets crashed into him.

  I quickly replaced my belt and picked up the pistol and flashlight, using the latter to light my way as I followed the thin trail of smoke along the arched corridors of the castle. I was led to a larger, rounded tower room with stairs that led down to the darkened depths. My light showed me that the smoke was emanating from below, and the rounded tower was now like a giant chimney drawing up plumes. I could see flickers of fire through the obscuring clouds below.

  I squinted my eyes as I went down the stairway, choking from the fumes, until I came to an enormous black iron door. The door was open, and for an instant I thought I was in front of a giant furnace. I crouched low and used my hand to shield my face from the heat as I looked inside the flaming chamber.

  I was kneeling before a large room, lined with old wooden cabinets on either side. Most of the cabinets had been opened, their drawers pulled out and drooping from the weight of their contents. In the heart of the room was a crucible of flames, fed by a pile of papers and documents heaped in a lump. Through the stinging smoke I could make out shapes within the fire: a bundle of scrolls burning like fireplace logs, a wooden box filled with old wax recording cylinders lit up like candles, the torn-out plates of an illuminated manuscript curling and blackening from the heat.

  My chest was heaving with the strain of holding my breath. I had to get out quick or die here. But my anger at the sight of the destruction of all the irreplaceable historical artifacts burned hotter than the fire forcing me back. I’d be damned if I was going to let Rhea get away with destroying all of it. And with the memory of Rhea came another, a memory of what Madame Ombra had said: “Byron knew.”

  I lurched up and reached into the burning room, grabbing the nearest drawer to me and wrenching it free. It broke loose all at once and I fell back, kicking myself away from the fuming furnace. By the flickering light of the fire I squinted and pawed my way through the files and papers in the drawer, blessing the fact that everything was labeled alphabetically. I frantically went through to the documents starting with Bs, seeing almost all of the files were labeled “Balsamo.” I was afraid I’d have to try another dive in for the next cabinet when I grabbed a small packet that felt like old oilskin. Through the pall of smoke I read the hand-printed title: “Byron, George Gordon.”

  I quickly stood up and rammed my shoulder into the heavy iron door, putting all my weight into it and forcing it closed behind me, then I threw myself toward the curving staircase, going up as fast as I could on shaky legs until I sprawled out through the tower’s entrance, savoring the cool air near the floor that didn’t try to kill me with every breath. But I didn’t allow myself a respite. With every moment that passed, Rhea was getting farther away, and I knew that Madame Ombra’s men were on their way to the castle. I had to keep moving. And I was going to make Rhea pay for her mistake in leaving me alive.

  PART III

  History is a pack of lies that others have agreed to.

  —NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The first thing I needed to do was get the hell out and find a place to hide. I hurried out of the confines of the castle, deciding not to steal one of the vehicles in the courtyard—if Madame Ombra’s people were on the way, they’d spot one of their own in an instant, and I needed to leave no trace of my escape. From the vantage point outside of the chateau, I spotted a cluster of lights from a town that appeared to be only a few miles away. I checked my bearings with my little compass and verified that my destination lay northward. I made it down off the mountain in the dark, pausing only once to look back at the Castle Joux as it loomed above me, bathed in the light of a fat half-moon and wreathed in stars. I was glad to see there wasn’t any smoke issuing from the towers. The steep, winding path brought me down to the two-lane road, and I quickly walked through La Cluse et Mijoux, keeping a nervous eye on the few cars that were out driving this time of night. Marching on the grassy shoulder of the highway, I managed to arrive at the town of Pontarlier before I froze to death in the cold Alpine night. If you took away the electric lights and parked cars from the old European city, you’d think you had traveled back a couple of centuries in time.

  I walked the main street of the rue de la République until I could see a tall, arched clock tower toward the center of town. I was tempted to duck into the first hotel I saw, but I wanted to get off the main drag. A helpful sign along the way informed me that the local police station was located off to my left, so I instinctively turned right and found an avenue named rue Jeanne d’Arc. I put my faith in the warrior saint and she rewarded me almost instantly, as I came to a large, whitewashed, barnlike structure that proclaimed itself the Hôtel de Morteau. My Seamaster watch had picked up more occluding scars in its crystal, but as I entered the blessedly warm French provincial lobby of the hotel I could see that it was just after eleven o’clock, Sunday night.

  I put on my best smile and rubbed my chilled hands together as I approached a long-faced concierge who greeted me with a lugubrious expression. His countenance brightened as I produced a wad of euros and a rambling story about losing my traveling companions and luggage, and we came to the agreement that there was a room for me at the inn. Could I make a telephone call to the United States from my room? Oui, I was told, if I would be so kind as to give him a carte bancaire? I produced my Argo Foundation credit card and passport with a bit of awkward juggling, as I was holding the oilskin packet I took from the castle under my arm to keep the bullet hole in my jacket covered up. He laboriously took my information from my passport as I struggled to keep my frozen smile from melting off my face until he finally gave me my room key. I left a financial merci with the innkeeper and went to find my lodging.

  My room was a small single on the second floor, painted in an unattractive salmon color, with vintage wood furnishings. I went for the bathroom, and when I caught a look at my face in the mirror, I was retroactively surprised that the concierge didn’t automatically call for the gendarmes. I washed up, letting the warm water thaw out my hands, then I drank my fill to ease my ragged, smoke-burned throat. I dried off and took my salvaged package to the single table in the room.

  I took off my armored leather jacket, then removed the pistol I’d recovered from the castle from the small of my back, where it had b
een grinding a hole in my flesh throughout my evening walk. The gun was another one of those Glock 9mms that kept turning up, and I was starting to wonder if I shouldn’t buy stock in the company based on their evident popularity. I took the silencer from my pocket and rethreaded it to the barrel, then popped out the magazine and checked the load—the pistol had seven rounds left, plus one in the chamber. Quite enough to raise a lot of hell if you knew what you were doing.

  I wrapped the gun in my jacket and left it at the foot of the bed on the flowered quilt, and then I turned my attention to my prize. I carefully untied the leather thong of the oilskin envelope, and gently shook the contents out onto the table. For all of the death and destruction I’d endured that night, my reward was a single sheet of paper. It was old, folded into four squares, and wrinkled as if left out in the rain once long ago. On one side of the paper was an offset paragraph in old-fashioned typeset print, so faint that it took me a moment to perceive that it was printed backwards. The thick, marbled paper was browned with age, and oddly darkened toward the center with uneven blemishes. I carefully unfolded the foolscap stationery and saw a handwritten missive in black ink that left tangible impressions from a quill pen. The ink had bled on every line, giving the cursive writing a shadow, like an aura. I held the letter to the light from the table lamp and saw that six of the words were underscored with yellowish-brown lines. I read:

  To Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Villa Dupuy, Leghorn

  June 8th, 1822

  There is nothing to prevent your coming to-morrow, and I regret to say my anticipations were well founded. It is lucky that I am of a temper not to be easily turned aside though by no means difficult to irritate when my blood is up. But I am writing a letter, instead of making a dissertation. I write to you from the Villa Dupuy, near Leghorn, with the islands of Elba and Corsica visible from my balcony and my old friend the Mediterranean rolling blue at my feet.

  I have lately had some anxiety, rather than trouble, about an awkward affair here, which on its face would be beneath the dignity of Gentlemen. Some other English and Scots, and myself, had a brawl with a Dragoon, who had insulted one of the party. He called out the guard of the watch to arrest us (we being unarmed), but I and another (an Italian) rode through said guard. I rode to my house and dispatched my secretary to give an account of the attempted and illegal arrest to the Tuscan authorities. But through the intervention of some unknown agent, this Dragoon, who at first was taken for an officer, having acted in the manner of an assassin was himself wounded severely not forty paces from where I stood and well within sight of the tower. Who wounded him, though it was done before thousands of people, they have never been able to ascertain, or prove, nor even the weapon; some said a pistol, an air gun, a stiletto, and what not. The authorities have arrested people and servants of all descriptions, but can make out nothing.

  Therefore, and in light of the not inconsiderable troubles of your own, I would press upon you the necessity of a postponement of our planned excursion, until such time as the local weather is more salubrious.

  Yours ever,

  N.B.

  But it was the six underlined words of the letter that seemed to leap from the page as they spelled out “Blood-Islands-Corsica-Beneath-Watch-Tower.”

  I felt the hammering of my heart within my battered chest and my hands started to shake as I realized this fragile scrap of paper might hold the key to everything. I gently folded the letter back, squinting at the backwards-typeset words on the other side as I slowly read:

  To goodley vessels; many a sail of pride,

  And golden keeled, is left unlaunch’d and dry

  But wherefore this? What care, though owls did fly

  About the great Athenian admiral’s mast?

  What care, though striding Alexander past

  The Indus with his Macedonian numbers?

  Though old Ulysses tortured from his slumbers

  I let the letter drop gently to the table, as if the paper were in danger of crumbling to dust at my touch. The shock and excitement I felt as I discovered the words naming Alexander so prominently made me want to shout, but I restrained myself to the betterment of my smoke-singed throat, not to mention my fellow travelers at the hotel. I gave myself a minute to swallow my emotions, and then returned to the letter with a critical eye.

  The ink that underscored the six telling words was a faint brown color, as opposed to the faded and water-bled black of the writing. It was possible that the different-colored underlines could have been a form of invisible ink, which had been in use as far back as the American Revolutionary War. The uneven browning of the paper could have come from the letter’s recipient using heat to expose the secret writing. The backwards poetry on the reverse side might have been impressed by having the paper wet, which would explain the wrinkling, and held down over another printed page. But why? And who was “N. B.” who wrote to Percy Shelley? More importantly, where were the Blood Islands of Corsica?

  It was high time to call for some help. The room phone was inconveniently attached to the wall on the other side of the bed. I took my letter around and settled in with my back against the headboard, feeling like I’d aged a century or two, and placed my call to the States. It was just prior to midnight here, which put the time at close to 7:00 P.M. in New York. At least I didn’t have to worry about disturbing anyone at church services.

  Mr. Singh answered his private line right away.

  “Blake here,” I greeted him.

  Mr. Singh responded as coolly as ever with, “I’m all ears.”

  I grimaced, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. Mr. Singh was informing me that our phone line was tapped, and it was a sure bet that our new friends from Washington were keeping tabs on us. Singh continued, “Mr. Riley wants to speak with you.” There were some clicks on the line, and then I heard the well-remembered gravelly voice. “Blake? That you, boy?”

  “Aye, aye, sir. Listen, I need—”

  He cut me off. “No, you need to listen. I’ve heard some very disturbing things about you lately from our friends in the government. They tell me you’re in a great deal of trouble, and from what I’ve heard, you should go and turn yourself in to the authorities right away. And because of this, and I’m sorry as hell to say it, but I need to let you go. For the good of the foundation.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry, boy. But frankly, if even half the things I’ve heard are true, then well, what can I say? Except to tell you that I thought I knew you better, and that I have to put the needs of Argo ahead of any individual. So you’re fired.”

  Nick Riley’s words hit me like a hammer. He’d warned me at the outset that I needed to keep Mr. Jonas and his government agents ignorant of my abilities, abilities that made me into Nick Riley’s personal thief and smuggler, but I’d screwed up and let my criminal talents be revealed. Nicholas had to cut me loose so I wouldn’t drag down the rest of the Argo Foundation with me.

  I had a sudden lump in my throat that made it hard to speak. “I … understand. And I’m sorry too. I never meant to let you down.”

  “I know,” Nick said. “Is there any last thing I can do for you personally?”

  “I’d just like to say good-bye to someone.”

  “Surely. Who?”

  “The librarian.”

  “I see,” Nick rumbled softly. He’d obviously know I was up to something, and I could feel him weighing his options. “Certainly,” he said at last. “Mr. Singh? Please give Blake the number. Good-bye, Jonathan.”

  I didn’t reply; I couldn’t trust my voice to hold up. I absently fumbled my pen from my pocket until I remembered I’d used the cartridge as an improvised escape tool, and then just cleared my mind to receive the string of numbers that Mr. Singh recited with all the emotion of a vending machine. When he finished, Mr. Singh said, “Blake?”

  “Yeah?”

  There was a pause. “May God’s Sword protect you.” Then the line went dead.

  I u
nclenched my fist from the handset, unaware I’d been throttling the thing. Ever since Nicholas Riley plucked me out of the ashes of my former life, no matter what dark, dangerous place in the world he sent me, I always knew even though I was alone, I had Nick and the Argo Foundation behind me. Now that connection was cut, and I was like an old-fashioned deep-sea diver whose lifeline had been severed, leaving me in dark water and sinking fast.

  I closed my eyes as I slowly shook my head. I’d come through blood and fire, and was now left utterly alone. Then, from some dark, sharp-edged corner of my soul, I felt a laugh well up. Rhea, Vanya, the Ombras, and all the rest who played a part in this tragedy had managed to make one critical error: They all had left me alive.

  All at once, I knew what to do. I was going to use every skill, every ability, every down-and-dirty trick I had ever learned to make each and every single one of them pay for their mistake. And I was going to get Caitlin out of all this, even if I had to drag the rest of them down to hell with me to do it.

  I made another call to the States using the number Mr. Singh had provided. I had to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, and to do that I needed information. And there was one woman in this world who could get it for me. The only problem was, she hated my guts.

  The woman in question was Abigail Pennyworth, a British expatriate and a fellow member of the Argo Foundation. Abby was a creature like me, another of Nicholas Riley’s collection of criminals. Abby was an artist, only her artistic talents lay in the area of document forgery, especially if you needed a paper artificially aged for apparent authenticity. Old Nick was the one who caught her in the act once, and he used that evidence to blackmail her into working for him. Her official title with Argo was librarian, which was about as accurate as my former title of field researcher. I also happened to know she had a fondness for classical poetry and a near photographic memory.

  As the call was going through, I pictured Abby as I last saw her—a tall, slender woman with waves of wild red hair that never stayed constrained and luminescent green eyes that were magnified behind her round, black-rimmed goggle-like glasses. Her sense of fashion ran to thrift store chic for the colorblind. She and I were once assigned to perform a delicate bit of theft and forgery, which in this case meant stealing an unknown copy of a T. E. Lawrence manuscript from the unrightful owner and replacing it with a near-exact copy. The “near exact” being in the form of the almost microscopic Happy Face symbol Abby used in the dot of one i. For once, the job went off without a hitch, and Abby and I later celebrated with a night of good Scotch whiskey followed by bad judgment. Turned out that when we weren’t committing crimes together, we got along like rabid cats and distempered dogs. When we broke up, I told her it was all my fault. It was the only time she ever agreed with me.

 

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