“No,” he admitted, “I’m self-employed.”
She twiddled her fingers atop the steering wheel, as if she were waiting for a bad date to end, and Escher decided to move the car farther into the trees. When David and his friend came back, he wanted them to have to walk out into the clearing where he would have the drop on them.
“Tell you what,” he said. “I know a better place where we can wait for your friends. Put the car in gear, and drive out… slowly. If you touch the horn, I’ll kill you where you sit.”
Olivia did as she was told, her mind racing a mile a minute. She started the car, and the seat-belt warning bell began its rhythmic chime. She buckled up, and said, “You do it, too, or that damn thing will keep on ringing.”
A plan was already forming in her head. But could she possibly pull it off?
Without taking his eyes off her, Escher reached over and slung the seat belt across his chest.
Olivia fumbled around, pretending to look for the headlights switch. The car was already facing the road, as Ascanio had earlier instructed her to have it positioned. But the delay allowed her to hit the button on her armrest that lowered her own window, and then hit another that clicked the doors locked.
“Stop fucking around,” Escher said, flicking the gun barrel up from his waist.
“Give me a break,” she said. “I’ve never driven this thing before.”
She glanced up at the rearview mirror, tilting it to get a good look at what was right behind her.
And it was the loading dock and the wooden wharf beyond it.
As she took hold of the gearshift, Escher sat back in his seat, the gun down, and said, “Steer toward those trees up ahead.” Discreetly, and with one foot still on the brake, she put the car into reverse and undid her own seat belt. The chime started ringing again.
“Why is that damn bell ringing?” he said, but then his whole body jerked forward as she took her foot off the brake and slammed it down on the gas pedal, pushing it all the way to the floor. The car rocketed backwards. She held the wheel firmly to keep it on course, but the bumpy ground bucketed them around as the gun went off with a deafening blast, blowing a hole in the dashboard. She was barely able to steer the car across the dock before, with a stomach-dropping sensation, she felt it hurtle off the end of the wharf and into the empty air.
The splash, a second later, rocked the car like a seesaw, as water gushed in through her open window.
But Olivia was already scrambling out of it. Escher was struggling to unfasten his belt with one hand and jerking madly at his locked door with the other.
She was almost clear when she felt his hand groping at her legs, trying to drag her back inside, but all he got was one of her shoes.
The Loire was cold and the current was strong, but Olivia was able to wriggle free of the car as it spun slowly downstream. Its lone headlight was still shining in the water. As she squirmed out of her sodden coat and let it sink, she saw the panicked Swiss Guardsman, still entangled, gasping behind the windshield. The interior was almost filled by now.
The river was carrying her downstream, too, and she had to strike out hard for the riverbank. By the time she made it, she was several hundred yards from the wharf. She clambered up onto the rocks with one foot bare, shivering wildly, and looked back at the water. There was no sign of a swimmer, anywhere. All she could see, in fact, was the silver roof of the Maserati skimming along the moonlit surface, leaving a trail of bubbles in its wake.
And then, like a submarine smoothly diving, even that disappeared.
Chapter 38
Entering the salle d’armes, David felt as if he were surrounded.
All along both walls, gleaming in the moonlight, there were standing suits of armor, some holding pikes or lances or swords. A battle-axe and a mace were crossed above the great stone hearth, a crossbow and arrows above the door. It was an amazing display, David thought, enough to rival any museum’s collection.
As quietly as he could, he followed Ascanio, who knew the chateau well, out into a vast entry hall with a grand escalier. The marble stairs swept upward like a pair of angel’s wings, and Ascanio, like David dressed all in black, moved stealthily up the right-hand side.
But they had gone only a few steps, shielded by the balustrade, when they suddenly heard footsteps on the floor above, and the clicking of a woman’s heels. If she chose to come down their side of the steps, there’d be nothing they could do to avoid exposure. Hunching down low, they waited, until they heard her call out, “Monsieur Rigaud? Ou etes-vous? ”
But thankfully she did not start down the steps. Instead, a voice answered her from somewhere on the same floor.
“ Je suis ici, Madame Linz.” A man was approaching her.
David wished that he could simply melt away into the marble stairs he was flattened against.
“That business in Paris then?” the woman was saying. “It’s all taken care of?”
“Yes, I took care of it myself,” he said, though David thought he detected the slightest lack of conviction in his tone.
“You’re sure?” she said.
So she’d noticed it, too.
“Quite, Madame. I have already given a full account to Monsieur Linz.”
Through the balustrade, David could just catch a glimpse of this man Rigaud, with close-cropped hair, dyed an unnatural shade of blond, and an erect, military bearing.
She scoffed. “You can tell him whatever you want. But you had better not ever lie to me.” She took a step away, and David saw that she was young and pretty. “You’ve made the rounds?”
“I have.”
“It’s been a long day, and Auguste’s stomach is bothering him again. We are going to bed.”
“I hope he feels better in the morning.”
“Leave a note for the cook, will you? He’d like cream of wheat for breakfast.”
“I’ll let her know.”
“Good night then,” she said, the sound of her heels clicking away.
“Sleep well, Madame,” he replied, before returning to wherever he’d been.
David realized that he had not taken a breath the whole time. He took one now, and after a few seconds, Ascanio gestured toward the top of the stairs. There, they saw light spilling from a doorway at the far end of the hall, and Ascanio quickly led David in the other direction and up another staircase.
This floor was as gloomy as the rest. Wall sconces, with dim bulbs, provided the only light, and there were cords and wires running along the baseboards of the hallways and salons they moved through. It was as if the place hadn’t been renovated in sixty years. But everywhere David looked, he caught glimpses of old oil paintings hanging forlornly over velvet sofas, and antique sculptures tucked into forgotten corners. It was a total hodgepodge-in one room alone, he saw what appeared to be an Italian fresco, a Ming vase, a Durer etching, and a framed Egyptian papyrus. Who was this Auguste Linz?
Again, they rose, checking every room but encountering no one else. Ascanio, crooking one finger, led David into a salon, where he closed the door quietly behind him. Only then did he take out his flashlight and shine it around the room. At first, David didn’t understand what he was seeing-images were repeated, fractured, distorted-but then he saw that the salon had five sides, and they were all mirrored. An unlighted crystal chandelier hung directly above an ornate desk covered with papers and books and a bronze bust of the composer Richard Wagner. Ascanio stopped to train the flashlight beam on the blotter, where a notebook was open. In it, Linz had been scrawling something in a crabbed hand, in German, but so forcefully that the pen had indented every letter.
“This was once the marquis’s private study,” Ascanio whispered, taking a few seconds to absorb the room, as if for the first and the last time, but David’s attention was riveted on the notebook. Though his command of German was poor, and the handwriting hard to decipher, one thing jumped out at him as if it were in letters a foot high.
It was his own name.
&n
bsp; “No,” David urged, as Ascanio started to move the flashlight beam away. “Look!”
He pointed to his name, and from what little he could read at a glance, he saw something about a search- die Suche -and an Italienisch Madchen, no doubt referring to Olivia.
“We don’t have time!” Ascanio said. “Come on!”
But David wasn’t about to leave this behind. He slipped the journal into his backpack before turning to see Ascanio probing the edges of one of the floor-length mirrors with his fingertips.
Rigaud was almost done with his exercises, and admiring his own bulging biceps-he could not understand how other men his age could let themselves get so badly out of shape-when Ali offered him the hash pipe again.
“If you want to relax,” Ali said, lying on the bed in nothing but an unbuttoned pair of jeans, “this will do a better job than that.” The pale scar on his throat looked whiter in the lamplight.
Rigaud did two more reps with the barbells before placing them back on the rubber mat in the corner of the room. Straightening up, he put his hands to the small of his back, where the T-shirt was stuck to his body, and wearily exhaled.
Ali took a hit off the pipe, then through clenched teeth said, “You still look pissed.”
“She talks to me like I’m some gaddamned butler,” Rigaud said, sitting down beside him on the bed. “She forgets I was a captain in the French army.”
He took the pipe, held a lighted match to the bowl, and inhaled deeply.
“Screw her,” Ali said, putting a consoling hand on his arm. “You don’t work for Ava. You work for her husband.”
Rigaud nodded, knowing he was right. But it was still hard to take. He had accepted this job because it felt like a cause, a mission, but over the years he had begun to have his doubts. What was he really doing? Whatever powers he once thought had been at Linz’s command, they seemed to have deserted him. He was a frustrated, impotent man-in every sense, if Rigaud could judge from Ava’s mood-and the tasks he set for Rigaud were increasingly redundant and defensive. Rigaud longed to go on the offensive for a change; but every time he even suggested as much to Linz, however obliquely, the man flew off the handle and went into one of his foaming, arm-waving, apoplectic fits. If he didn’t know better, Rigaud might have thought he was going to keel over on the spot.
Ali was rubbing his shoulders, and Rigaud took another long drag on the pipe. He kept his windows open to let out the smoke and the aroma. Linz, he knew, would not approve. But the master suite was far off, at the top of the eastern turret. And good God, why was someone of his age, and former rank, having to worry about such stuff? “Lie back,” Ali was saying. “I’ll give you a massage.”
“I still have work to do.”
“So do I,” Ali said, rising up on his knees and kneading the kinks in his back.
Putting the hash pipe on the bedside table and pulling off his sweaty T-shirt, Rigaud rolled over onto the bed. The hash was very pure, and all the trials of the recent days-most notably dispatching Julius Jantzen-began to recede. It was highly annoying that a man like Ernst Escher was still running loose, but the Turks would eventually track him down again. They weren’t good for much-and Rigaud had often argued with Linz to replace them with a more professional bunch-but Linz liked them for their single-mindedness and overall lack of curiosity. Even Rigaud appreciated their unslakable taste for revenge.
Ali’s fingers were working their magic on the knots in his back and shoulders and Rigaud allowed himself to drift away. Soft music was playing, that Eastern stuff that Ali liked, but right then it sounded good even to Rigaud. He remembered that he had to tell the cook, who arrived with the other servants at six in morning; that Linz wanted cream of wheat for breakfast. But then, just as promptly, he forgot all about it.
Chapter 39
Ascanio pressed the gilded border of one of the mirrors, and it opened out to reveal a spiral staircase that rose toward the top of the turret. Then, raising one finger to urge absolute silence, he slipped onto the staircase, with David right behind. The steps wound upwards for twenty or thirty feet before coming to an end behind what looked like a heavy flap of cloth. It was only on closer inspection in the flashlight beam that David could tell, from the complex threadwork, that what they were standing behind was an immense, hanging tapestry.
Ascanio flicked off his light, and ever so gingerly pushed an edge of the cloth to one side. Over his shoulder, David could see that they were in a kind of anteroom, with a reading chair and a marquetry table holding crystal decanters and a brass lamp. A master bedroom was just beyond it. He could hear classical music playing, a shower running, and voices.
Linz and his wife.
“Ava, bring me the pills.”
“How many of these are you going to take?”
“Just bring them.”
David saw Ava-completely nude-saunter out of the bathroom with her palm open.
All he could see of Linz were his legs, in a pair of black silk pajamas and scuff slippers on his white ankles.
“Put something on,” he scolded, “for decency’s sake.”
“I was just about to take a shower. The water’s finally hot.”
He took the pills, and she strolled back out of sight with an athlete’s casual grace. David heard the bathroom door slam shut.
Ascanio crossed himself, then put his backpack on the floor and opened it. Then he withdrew the silver garland.
David had witnessed its powers only hours before, in the privacy of Sant’Angelo’s home. And as much as anything else he had seen, or been told, that demonstration had convinced him of the marquis’s claims. If he had had even a scintilla of doubt, watching the marquis disappear before his very eyes had erased it.
Fixing his eyes on David, Ascanio settled it squarely on his own head.
And within seconds, he had vanished.
The flap of the tapestry lifted, then fell back, as Ascanio slipped out from behind it. David wiped a vagrant spiderweb from his glasses and stared intently… but what was there to see?
Linz’s slippers were twitching in time to the music. But suddenly, as if he had heard something no one else could, or sensed some menace no one else could have detected, his slippers stopped. He sat bolt upright on the bed, rolled to one side, and fumbled in the drawer of the bedside table. In an instant, he had drawn out a gun and fired it into thin air.
There was a cry-it was Ascanio!-and a billow of blood exploded like a balloon in the empty air. Linz shot again, and the second bullet ripped through the tapestry and lodged in the wall above David’s head.
A moment later David saw Linz suddenly topple backwards off the bed, as if he’d been hit by a freight train. David rushed out, only to see Linz, in a red robe, wrestling on the floor with his unseen assailant.
But that was when he also saw, swinging against Linz’s bare chest on a silver chain, La Medusa.
His hand was still clutching the gun, but it was being banged repeatedly against the bedstead, and blood from an invisible source was spurting onto the carpet. Linz was struggling to hold on to the pistol, and when he swung the arm free, David saw the butt of the gun plainly collide with something solid. A second later the garland rolled free, spinning on the floor like a plate.
“It’s around his neck!” Ascanio cried to David, as he shimmered back into view. “Get it!”
But the muzzle of the gun was pointing right at him, and David ducked just as the next shot blasted the ceiling light, raining shards of glass. He was grappling for it when he heard a hellish scream and wet feet squishing across the floor. A naked body, lithe and strong, leapt on top of his back, the legs wrapping themselves around his waist, the arms folded across his throat, choking him.
David staggered back, catching a glimpse of himself in the bureau mirror-with Ava’s snarling face, teeth bared, over his shoulder-as he tried to shake her loose. But her grip was too tight, and he was stumbling backwards, barely able to stay on his feet at all. His glasses hanging from one ear, he crash
ed up against a heavy armoire. He heard her grunt, the wind knocked out of her, and he threw his head back, catching her chin. He ran a few steps away from the wardrobe, then rushed backwards, slamming her against the cabinet again.
“Bastard!” she gasped through bloodstained teeth, but still managing to hang on like a Harpy.
With what breath he had left, David reached behind his head, trying to grab her hair and pull her off his back; but she bit at his fingers and hands. He whirled around and threw himself, as if he were on fire, backwards onto the floor. Her arms loosened their grip, he took a breath, then rammed an elbow back into her face. He felt her nose shatter, and her whole body went limp.
Shaking free, he crawled to his feet, only to be bowled over again by Linz as he ran from the room, the tails of his red robe flying.
“Go after him!” Ascanio said, collapsing against the bedpost and holding out the sword. “I’ll never catch him!” His pants were torn, and blood was coursing down from a bullet wound in his leg.
David staggered up, hooking his glasses back on, as Ascanio pressed the harpe into his hand. “Now you know who he is!” he shouted, staring deeply into David’s eyes. “Don’t you?”
But David, reeling, simply nodded in confusion. His mind could not process something so enormous… and so terrible.
There was a crash from the anteroom as the table and lamp toppled over.
“We should have told you! But it’s up to you now, to finish the bastard, once and for all!”
David felt his fingers gripping the handle of the sword as if they belonged to someone else entirely.
“Go!”
David turned and ran toward the anteroom door-it had been flung open and the carpet runner in the hallway was rumpled from Linz’s headlong flight. David could hear his feet tearing around a corner toward the staircase.
He took off after him, vaulting down the stairs three at a time, then through a suite of dark, cluttered rooms, where the curtains rippled from Linz’s flight and furniture had been overturned to block his pursuit.
The Medusa Amulet Page 37