The Guardian

by Christopher Kenworthy

  The restrictions of the tunnel hampered both him and the animal. He had been told that the way to incapacitate a dog was to pull its forelegs apart with all his strength.

  The man who had proffered the advice – a former police dog handler – had not explained how to keep the dog’s teeth from his throat at the same time, however. Even if he could have spared a hand, there was not room within the tunnel to achieve the necessary spread.

  He was fumbling desperately at the dog’s jaws, trying to keep the mouth open, when he heard a tinkle on the rock floor, and knew instantly what it was.

  “The scalpel,” he panted at Amy. “Get the goddam scalpel and cut his throat! Quick, I’m losing him!”

  He felt her scrabbling on the floor and then her hand came over his head and into the light of the torch came over his head and into the light floor and then her hand of the torch. The first stab laid his wrist open and he shrieked: “The goddamn dog, for Chrissake! Cut the goddamn dog!”

  She slashed again, her breath sobbing in his ear and blending with the animal’s snarling and his own panting. Blood spurted from under the Doberman’s ear.

  Another slash and the dog howled and tried to back away, shaking its head. Carver hung onto its jaws desperately and it gnawed awkwardly at his fingers, screwing its head round to try and get them between its back teeth.

  If it managed that, Carver knew he would lose his fingers, and he wrapped his feet round the animal’s body, slowing it down and crushing his thighs around its barrel chest. He felt as though he was applying scissors to a telegraph pole, then Amy’s body fell across his own and he felt her hands under the Doberman’s neck and he was covered in hot, pumping blood.

  The dog gave a whimper, and then bucked convulsively twice, its claws scraping on the floor. And then, undramatically, it was dead. The strength went out of the massive jaws, and the body fell forward onto Carver’s chest.

  “Jesus Christ! Jesus H. Christ!” Carver forced Amy backwards off his head and dragged himself from under the dog, panting desperately. His hands were on fire with the marks made by the animal’s teeth, though when he examined them in the torchlight, there were surprisingly few punctures.

  Amy was crouching, crying, against the wall with her face in her hands. He pulled them away and she screamed, staring at him. Carver felt at his own chest and realised he was soaking with blood. In the reflected lights from the torch on his head – still, miraculously, intact and firmly fixed – and the dropped one in the tunnel, he must have looked disgusting.

  “It’s all right. It’s the dog’s blood, not mine,” he said.

  She calmed a little then, but it was some minutes before he could persuade her to climb over the corpse and follow him on down the tunnel. The feel of the sopping shirt and the sweet smell of blood nauseated him and after a moment, he stripped off what remained of the shirt and threw it to one side.

  “Why didn’t you shoot it?” she asked as they continued down the tunnel.

  “Could have brought the roof down. Anyhow, I never got a chance to reach the gun,” he said. The thought made him check the weapon, which had survived both fall and fight without damage. His back, though, where he had rolled on the pistol, was bleeding and lacerated. In the heat of the fight he had not noticed it.

  There was a patch of lighter darkness ahead, and in a second he could see an irregular patch of sky. The heat of the day outside reached into the tunnel, and like sunflowers, they turned their faces towards it and quickened their steps.

  At the entrance, in a steel locker, was a knotted rope anchored to the wall, clearly intended for descent.

  Carver tried out the rope and leaned out far over the drop. From here he could see a ledge leading down to the left, quite easily, and he calculated the rope was the right length to reach it.

  But as he drew back, a rustle from the cliff attracted his attention. He looked up. A few feet above him swung a large basket, scraping at the cliff face.

  It was swinging gently in the light breeze. And the rope from which it was suspended led straight to the roof of the keep, passing within inches of one of the small, unglazed windows.

  “How are you at climbing?” he asked Amy.

  “Good,” she said. “Could make it down, but...” She eyed the rope and basket. “But not up.”

  “Go down, then. When you get to the bottom, wait for me at the foot of the road,” he said.

  He raised himself on the locker and reached up to catch the basket with his right hand. His hands burned on the rope as he caught it, but there was a feral gleam in his eye as he started to raise himself, foot by foot, towards the roof.

  *

  Gehn had checked all the customers into the courtyard, and led the slaves, now dressed for the occasion, across to the main hall.

  An outside observer would have found it bizarre. The merchandise was dressed for a cocktail party, the girls in bright, formal summer dresses and the boys in darker more restrained colours. As they trooped across the courtyard, their conversation excited and noisy, they looked like university students on their way to an end of term ball.

  Sigmund Dark welcomed them into the big room, and for a moment they all paused, abashed by the subdued lighting and the rank of faces that turned to look at them as they entered.

  “Come, now, boys and girls, and meet your future employers.” Dark was all expansive host as he drew the group out into the great hall.

  “Jenny, my dear – this is Mr Fahad. He has heard a lot about you and has been looking forward to meeting you. Maire, sit here with Mr O’Connor. His ancestors came from Ireland, too. Perhaps you may even have some relatives in common, far, far back. But he lives in Seattle now. Or at any rate, near there.

  “Brian, come and see Mr Aldiniti. He has been looking for a personal, private secretary to travel with him and look after his business in Turkey.

  “Herr Brinkmann, I told you that you would like our little Christa, here. Among other things, she is a trained nurse and will be able to care for you as well as your business interests.”

  He talked his way around the hall, leaving his merchandise to join in the little groups standing or sitting around the room. His face beamed, his voice rumbled, his eyes were never still, probing conversations, reading expressions, hearing and seeing the reactions to the pairings he had arranged.

  This was Sigmund Dark’s real talent, the interpretation of the moment of interface between the buyer and the bought, and he used it this particular day with an intensity sharpened by his tension.

  *

  In the doorway, Gehn stood at ease, his feet the regulation half a metre apart, his kepi straight on his head, the epaulettes of the Legion on his shoulders, and his sub machine gun slung across his chest. Unseen by the customers in the murmuring room, blood soaked down his thighs in thin red fingers, showing through the bleached fawn cloth of his trousers. Across the courtyard behind him, one of the chauffeurs paused in the construction of a cigarette and stared hard at him, first curious, then disturbed.

  After a couple of minutes as the immobile figure in the doorway swayed slightly, he crossed to the next car and spoke urgently with its driver.

  Gehn was unaware of the interest he was causing. Indeed, he was fighting to remain aware even of his surroundings. He suspected that the injection Dark had given him was responsible for his feeling of detachment and for the buzzing at the back of his head. He concentrated hard on breathing short, gasping breaths, which seemed to be all he could manage now.

  His belt felt very tight, and he wanted to loosen it but dared not do so while he was on duty.

  Automatically his eyes quartered the room, noting the shoulder holster on the body guard in the corner, and the over-quizzical gaze of a sheikh in full robes who was engaged in buying a young boy from Sigmund Dark.

  His vision seemed to blur from time to time, and he raised his head and stared at the upper edges of drapes, which rippled slightly in the draught from the door
and windows.

  As he did so, one of the spots of light which represented the outside windows of the keep was eclipsed briefly and as quickly re-appeared.

  Gehn stared at it owlishly. What in the name of all that was Holy could have reached so far up the keep as to block the window, even for a moment? The wall fell sheer outside for a thousand feet.

  A bird? One of the great honey buzzards which patrolled the upper air, flickering past the aperture?

  He seemed to be thinking through thick treacle, each thought surfacing slowly with an almost audible plop. Gehn frowned, trying to catch an elusive mental picture that should mean something.

  As he groped for the idea, his eye fell on a particularly pretty girl who had arrived with one of the businessmen from further along the coast. Gehn recognised him as the man from Beziers, LeCorbiere, and after a moment, recognised her as a former inmate of the castle.

  While he watched, she suddenly stiffened, stared at the draperies behind her, and then turned and looked at him.

  At the same moment, Gehn found the mental picture he had been seeking. It was the line on the winch, still hanging down the side of the keep after they had dropped the dog to the ledge. A line which fell past the window to the keep. A window which had just been filled by something which for a moment blocked the light.

  He opened his mouth to bellow a warning and began to bring up the Uzi to shoot at the draperies behind which, he was now certain, Carver had managed to secrete himself.

  But what came out of his mouth was only the beginning of a cry which was instantly choked by a hot, rushing flood. Inside his chest, he felt something break and the blood which had been leaking into his stomach cavity since the two pellets of buckshot had penetrated his back flooded down the front of his shirt.

  Across the room, Sigmund Dark noticed the expression on the face of the bodyguard with the badly concealed shoulder holster, and saw the man reach for his gun.

  He spun round in time to see Gehn open his mouth, grab the Uzi and bring it up into line, and then spew blood like a fire hose.

  As Gehn fell forward, his finger tightened on the trigger, and the Uzi emptied its magazine into a group of buyers and slaves standing near the door.

  Outside, the chauffeurs heard the burst of shooting and jumped for their cars. Their orders, almost to a man, were to have the engine turning over and the door open in case of trouble, for these cars were like armour plated citadels.

  Inside the hall, there was a moment of appalled silence when the Uzi had finished firing, and then the first bodyguard opened fire.

  The shots went – pointlessly – into Gehn, who was coughing out his life on the floor and in any case incapable of doing any more harm.

  Two Arabs were sprawling in armchairs, bright blood flowering on their white robes. Across the heaving chest of one lay a fragile, pretty girl and a young boy. The boy had no face. The girl, no eyes.

  The other bodyguards in the room were crouching over their employers, weapons pointed towards the doorway or towards Sigmund Dark.

  Dark himself had his hands in the air and was calling desperately for calm. His words went unheeded as the first man ran for the door.

  It was LeCorbiere, the businessman from Beziers, and Dark’s own business partner. Being closest to their host, he was also the one who distrusted him most deeply.

  LeCorbiere was followed by a shouting crowd of men. But he was in good condition and fleet of foot as well as thought. He cleared the balustrade neatly, landed on the balls of his feet and crossed the yard in a dozen leaping steps. The chauffeur gunned the engine to meet him, and his personal bodyguard , running close behind to intercept any shots aimed at his employer, cannoned LeCorbiere into the car and fell on top of him as the door slammed shut and the car made for the gateway.

  It narrowly missed the second car, owned by a gulf oil millionaire, who was only slightly less speedy than LeCorbiere.

  Within minutes, the whole group of cars had been transformed into a racing cavalcade, pouring down the hill in swirling dust as the men who would buy children desperately fled for their lives.

  But the pretty girl Gehn had recognised did not go with them. She was lying, rolled into a tight ball behind one of the overstuffed armchairs in the keep. Kneeling by her side, Carver made a nightmare figure, streaked with blood and sweat and holding in one hand a so far unfired Desert Eagle.

  One of the men cut down by Gehn’s burst of fire was flopping on the floor, crying hoarsely. Another was on his knees, trying to knot his handkerchief round a forearm which was pumping blood across his trousers.

  Blood had splashed head high along the bright drapes, and puddled on the floor. Blood was soaking into the bright dress of the dead slave girl and the white robes of her would-be owner.

  Blood had fountained to splash into one of the pyramids of crystal glasses, ironically untouched by the sleet of lead which had smashed into the people alongside it.

  “Carver!” Sigmund Dark, unhurt among the carnage, his white safari suit dappled with red, was beside himself with rage.

  “Carver, you bastard! Come out here!”

  He was in the entrance which led to his own quarters at the opposite corner of the room, and Carver remembered that the massive stones overlapped the door. It was pointless shooting at him from here.

  He dropped onto his stomach, and put a hand on the face of the girl lying next to him on the floor. She opened eyes enormous with shook and stared at him with visible delight.

  “Is it really you, Carver?”

  “You better bet your life it is, kid,” he said with a tight grin. “Who does it look like?”

  “Geronimo,” she said with the ghost of a grin, and he returned it, fiercely.

  “Let’s say we have a lot in common,” he said. “You hurt?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I don’t feel anything. Carver?”

  He examined her as best he could. There was no blood.

  In fact, she was about the only thing in the room not dappled with it.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “I knew you’d come,” she said, and made it all worth while.

  At the opposite side of the room, Dark was shouting again. There was a short burst of automatic fire and the place was filled with the squeal of a ricochet. One of the wounded men gave a grunt and then fell silent.

  “He’s going to go round through the courtyard,” said Carver. “Wait here.”

  He rolled clear of the chair, and wriggled his way across the flags, keeping an overturned table between himself and the doorway which concealed Dark.

  To confirm his guess, there was no more fire from the doorway, though one of the injured bodyguards reached for a gun lying a few feet away.

  “Touch and you’re dead,” Carver told him flatly and the man flinched back instantly, believing him without question.

  As he wriggled past, Carver took the gun and stuck it in the back of his waistband. Temptation removed was temptation overcome.

  Outside in the yard, two cars still sat with their engines turning over. They were those owned by the two dead Arabs, Carver guessed. He bounced a shot off the windscreen of the nearest one and watched the glass star but fail to break. Considering the Desert Eagle would fire through a brick wall, it said much for the strength of the design.

  Even so, the shot unnerved the driver, who drove off, tyres squealing. His panic communicated itself to the driver of the other car, who did not wait for a demonstration, but followed instantly.

  A silence fell in the courtyard.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  Carver lay in the angle of the gatehouse and watched the ground floor entrance to the keep carefully. It was very hot, here in the enclosed space, and the dust hung in the air like a brown stain.

  Now that he had stopped moving, he was beginning to feel his various cuts and bruises and each one was a separate little mouth feeding on his energy. He had to wind this business up
quickly, or he would stiffen, he knew, and with a man like Dark to deal with he could not afford to slow down.

  Besides, he had several lives to think of beside his own.

  Finding Irene and being able to keep her with him when LeCorbiere had run for the door had been a blessing he had not looked for, but he was delighted to accept that God had dropped one blessing in his lap at any rate.

  Then there was Amy, who had started her climb down towards the escape route even as he had started his ascent to the keep. She had sworn she was an experienced mountain climber, and certainly she had shaped up to the climb like one. But she might just as easily have got stuck in some awkward place.

  Below, in the exercise room, there was Kiti. Whether she had now managed to control herself and devise some way out of the trap, he had no way of knowing. But he had to release her from the room before he left the castle. Particularly considering his plans for the place, once he had left.

  There was a flicker of movement across the yard and he focused on the lower corner of the door, gazing over the sights. But the face which was framed in aperture was Irene’s.

  “Carver! Carver, I’ve got your brat here! Do you want to watch me blow her brains across the yard, or are you going to come and get it yourself?”

  Carver let out a long, exasperated breath, and stood up slowly, the Desert Eagle dangling from his right hand by the trigger guard.

  “Send her out and I’ll step out,” he called.

  There was cackle from the dark: “Oh, no! You step out and then we’ll see!”

  “I’m not crazy,” Carver told him. “You could get us with one burst. The girl goes safe, or nothing.”

  There was a pause. Dark was considering the matter. Carver could almost read his thoughts. Get them both out in the open, he was thinking, and he would be able to cut them down at will.

  “Very well, Carver! You both walk to the centre of the courtyard together. And put that gun down where I can see it.”

  Irene emerged from the doorway, squinting in the bright sunlight, and walked slowly towards the centre of the court.