by Robert Adams
"Look, at least hear the stupid little fucker out, huh? He may have shit for brains, but then he's just the front man and the fellas wants to talk to you is back in Paris, see. They got damn serious problems and need help real bad."
No gold or jewels were visible at first glance in the opened coffin, but nonetheless, what was there appeared a true treasure trove to Simon Delahayle's astonished eyes. A sword lay in its sheath—from its hilt, a modern sword, too, no relic from ages past. There was a long dirk, too, of a peculiar pattern, several daggers and knives and a wheel-lock pistol, but apparently no balls or powder for it. There were also some bags and leathern pouches, but the thing that really caught and held Simon's gaze was a big, egg-shaped thing of a silvery sheen.
The thing was about a foot long and nearly as wide, and it shone as if but just polished; no trace of oxidation anywhere marred its surface. Simon reached out for the silver egg, then changed his mind and took up the sheathed sword instead. After so many years deprived of one, his hands fairly itched for the feel of the hilt.
He drew the blade and examined it before the firelight. It looked to be Damascus steel, a wavy, colorful pattern irregularly reflecting back the flames down the length of steel, from quillions to point. The outer guard was of pierced sheet steel, padded inside with softened leather. Although completely lacking any gilding or silvering, it was nonetheless a splendid, beautifully made weapon, a gentleman's battle brand, no question about it. And Simon felt more noble than he had in long years, just to be holding the weapon in his hand.
He laid aside the other edged weapons and the pistol, which last was simply an unhandy club without charges for it, and went next at the bags and pouches. One pouch contained some two dozens of strange, thin, flat pieces of an unusual glass with a fine wire of tin or silver protruding from each end and one side. It was beyond him what they might be good for, so he closed the pouch and laid it atop the pile of daggers and knives down at the end of the coffin.
The first bag that he picked up jingled, and, hardly daring to hope, Simon untied the drawstring and then poured his hand full to overflowing with minted silver shillings and sixpences. All of them were well worn, and not a few had been clipped to one degree or another. Most were of Arthur II, the grandfather of the Usurper and great-grandfather to the rightful king. A smaller bag contained about a troy pound of gold coins of equal age and condition.
Simon sat back and earnestly recited a prayer in thanks to God. No need now to tramp the roads like a runaway serf, doing manual labor for yeomen, or stealing at risk of his neck, or poaching game for his keep. Now he could buy decent clothing and a horse and return to his home in a few weeks instead of months or years. He could return looking like the gentleman who had ridden away so many years ago, too, not like some louse-infested beggar.
And there might be even more treasure yet to be found. Picking up the silvery egg, he found it to be heavy. He shook it by his ear, but nothing rattled, although there was a low-pitched buzzing and ticking coming from somewhere inside it. Could the silver egg house the works of some kind of clock? And was the metal skin truly of silver? It did have the appearance, but not the feel; it felt more like some kind of glass. Nor did there appear to be any way of opening the thing; there were no traces of a seam anywhere on it.
Simon sat back and thought. If he did manage to break into the ovoid by main force, he might well smash or at least damage whatever was inside buzzing and ticking. But then, he had more than enough gold and silver coins to take him back to his Sussexshire farm in style, so why worry about damaging some treasure so singular that he might not dare to try to sell it, anyway, for fear of his life, since he was still half convinced that his find was a royal treasure repository of some kind. Of course, he could merely take those objects he could easily use and leave the rest, perhaps even close up the coffin that was not a coffin and return it to its niche in the wall. He could do that, but then he never would know just what the silvery-glassy egg-shaped casket contained.
Simon's curiosity got the best of him. Lifting the smooth egg from out the coffin, he placed it on the stone step beside him and began to tap on it with his oaken cudgel, increasing the force of his blows only gradually, since he expected the thing to soon shatter. But it did no such thing, so he stood up, took a two-handed grip on the cudgel, and swung it down with all his might, as he might have swung a maul.
Arsen Ademian figured that the booze had finally done it; he must surely be hallucinating. At one moment, he had been stretched out on the deep carpet on his back, absently stroking his oud, his sole remaining grip on reality. At the next, he was slammed down on his back on hard ground, as if he had fallen several feet. Above him, the gilt-plaster decorations of the suite's ceiling had gone, to be replaced by the waving branches of what looked from the distinctive leaves to be a maple tree!
He lay stunned for a moment, hearing screams and shouts all about him, in voices he recognized . . . and in one that he did not. Then he sat up, the precious oud tumbling unnoticed from his lap . . . and decided immediately that he was not just hallucinating-drunk, he had lost his marbles completely and was probably sitting in truth in a padded cell somewhere, maybe in Eastern State Hospital for the Insane in Williamsburg, Virginia.
John the Greek stumbled up to Arsen, limping, still holding a huge leather-and-iron-bound volume. "What in hell is going on? Where are we, Arsen? What happened? Were we drugged and brought out here, do you think?"
Ignoring the man and the questions, Arsen looked around him. He and John were in a smallish clearing surrounded by brush and tree boles. He was sitting in a pile of half-rotted leaves, their sogginess soaking the seat of his pants with a cold moisture. A small stone building sat across from him at the other side of the clearing; it looked old and weather-worn and totally lacked windows or any other visible openings on the two sides he could see.
Somewhere off in the forest to his right, the girls were all screaming their silly heads off, and somewhere closer by, voices he could recognize as those of his cousins, Al and Haigh, were praying aloud and loudly in church Armenian.
Then, from out of the hidden side of the little stone building, a man emerged. He was shaggy and unkempt and dressed in tattered rags. He grasped a heavy-looking length of dark wood in one hand, but he looked around him with an expression every bit as dazed as Arsen felt. He needed a bath, too, badly. Arsen could smell him the full width of the clearing. "Arsen . . ." began John the Greek, plaintively.
But Arsen interrupted him, knowing beforehand just what the plaint would be. "John, I don't know where we are or what happened or how we got here any better than you do, dammit! Maybe that guy does, though. Let's go ask him, huh?"
Arsen would have fallen back down when he stood up had the trunk of the maple tree not been close to hand. He felt dizzy for a minute, then a sharp pain commenced in his back, shoulders, and buttocks, as if somebody had beaten him across them with an ax handle. Nevertheless, he pushed away from the trunk and slowly hobbled toward the strange, shaggy, smelly man, John trailing after him.
Closer, he could detect wisps of pale smoke issuing up out of the little stone building to be borne away by an upper-air breeze that he could not feel.
At speaking distance, he said, "Mister, where in hell are we? Do you know why they brought us here? Do you work for whazizname, this archbishop fellow?"
By way of answer, the shaggy man shouted something Arsen could not understand and charged down upon him and John, his stick drawn back for an overhand blow. All pain forgotten, Arsen himself countercharged, running in under the crude weapon to grab the man's hard-muscled arm, take him on the hip, and throw him, very hard, to the ground. The violent stranger still managed to retain his grip on the stick, but when Arsen kicked him in the armpit, his next kick was able to send the stick spinning across the glade.
Seeing the man's left hand gliding toward his front midsection where Arsen thought he had spied a scabbarded knife of respectable size, he next kicked the man in t
he head. The stranger shuddered the entire length of his body, then became utterly limp.
"Jesus H. Christ!'' exclaimed John the Greek. "Where in the devil did you learn to do that, Arsen? Did you kill him?"
"In the service, John, in Vietnam. I thought I'd forgot. I guess I got a better memory than I ever thought I had." He squatted and placed two fingers below the angle of his former opponent's jaw. "Naw, he's not dead. God, he stinks, though!"
Roughly, touching the man and his tatters only with his foot, he rolled the inert body over and disarmed it of the big knife. Then he walked on around the small building, but warily, the knife held ready for thrust or slash. There could well be another of the smelly man's kind inside.
CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH
Only six or eight weeks were required to convince Timoteo di Bolgia that the only troops upon whom he and his employers could depend in any crisis were his own company, the Afriquan company, the fortress garrison, and, just possibly, King Tamhas's personal bodyguards, the Fitzgerald Squadron. His attempts to impose real discipline—the firm foundation of which any army needs must be built—on the rascally galloglaiches and the unhung criminals who were known as bonaghts had resulted ultimately in mutinies, murders and attempted murders, and arson. These had of course been punished by hangings, floggings, and other corporal punishments, the impositions of which had bred large-scale desertions, with concomitant disappearances of weapons, equipment, and horses.
Therefore, Timoteo requested and almost immediately received an audience with the Papal legate, Giosue di Rezzi, Archbishop of Munster. Di Bolgia had had a brief meeting with the frail, slender man shortly after his arrival in the Kingdom of Munster, but since then, Sir Ugo d'Orsini had been the condottiere's liaison with the representative of Rome and the Papacy. Sir Ugo accompanied di Bolgia to this second meeting.
The unnaturally pale little man greeted them both graciously enough, gave them and their purpose a quick blessing, saw them served with a decent wine and a tray of sweetmeats, then sat in silence, regarding them with pale gray eyes, his long, slender fingers steepled.
Thinking once again that this pitiful specimen of a man was even the more pitiful when compared to what he, Timoteo, recalled of the legate's illustrious elder brother, Captain Barone Mario di Rezzi, a now deceased Bolognese condottiere of some note in the last generation, rich in goods, honor, and victories won, di Bolgia went directly to the sore point of the matter.
"Your grace di Rezzi, the so-called army of King Tamhas is no such thing. It would better be called what it is—a war band made up of the dregs of society, banditti, murderers, parricides, rapists, robbers, sneak thieves, and cutpurses, along with an unwholesome assortment of berserkers and out-and-out madmen. I have been a soldier, have lived mostly in camps and garrisons, for the most of my life, your grace, and I never have seen a worse aggregation of men than this Royal Munster Army. I have seen them do things in broad daylight that dumb beasts would be ashamed to do in the dark of a moonless night!"
"They possessed no shred of order or discipline when I arrived here in Munster, and discipline is, as your grace assuredly knows, the keystone in the arch of victory. My attempts—mild ones, at that—to instill discipline upon them have resulted in mutiny, murder, arson, executions, and floggings, and now in a vast number of thefts and desertions."
"Naturally, the king is mightily displeased; any man would be to watch his war band dissipate like dew under a hot sun. Naturally, he blames me directly for everything. That too is to be expected, since I am both a foreigner and a stranger. But he had best not be too openly wroth at me, your grace, for I and my companies are now the only troops left that can be depended upon to defend him and whatever portion of his realm can be held."
"Which point, your grace, brings me to what I really sought audience with you to say. Your grace, should King Brian march south again this summer, Munster is his for the plucking. There simply is no way in which I can hold off an army of the size his is reputed to be with the force now available to me, not for any longer than it took King Brian's army to surround that Munster force and butcher it, and I have never been of a suicidal bent, your grace."
"Now, all things considered and weighed out, it is just possible that this capital city could be held, especially in light of the fact that Impressionant and the other ships give us the complete command of the river and we thus are guaranteed a means of resupply while under siege. But are we to contemplate even this, we must start to work, now, which means that your grace must have words with King Tamhas, immediately."
"You have not then talked with his highness, my son?" asked the archbishop mildly. "You know far more of military matters than do I, alas. Surely your words would weigh much more heavily upon his decisions than would mine own."
"The royal ass won't listen to me!" Timoteo burst out. "Your grace, in spite of all I've told King Tamhas, he still insists that he will meet King Brian on the field at his border and there defeat him in open battle. With what, pray tell, your grace? My company, the Afriquans, his fancy, combed, and curried bodyguard squadron, and the artillerists at the fortress are all the field troops he has left, by all that's holy! And the artillerists are standing rock-firm on the last jot and tittle of their damned contract and refusing to serve guns or to fight anyplace save in that fortress or on the city walls. By the four-and-twenty balls of the Twelve Apostles, now, I—"
"Duca di Bolgia!" The little man had come upright in his armchair, his pale eyes blazing with fire, his previously mild voice now cracking like a whiplash. "Soldiers are infamous blasphemers, but you will never do such again in my hearing! Do I make myself clear? You might also think of the good of your soul when you are out of my hearing."
"As regards the military situation, I can understand your predicament. King Tamhas is not only stubborn and overly prideful, but stupid, as well, and that is a bad combination in any man of rank or station, but calamitous in a ruling monarch, as you have seen. Yes, I shall speak with him and his equally stubborn and stupid advisers—bad blood in all of the Fitzgeralds; I think it comes from too much inbreeding—but I think my successes will be no more than were yours."
"Meanwhile, please order Sir Marc to ready his fastest vessel for sea. I shall send a message to his eminence d'Este urging that you and your force be withdrawn from Munster because the situation has become untenable. I and my staff and household will begin to make ready to depart with you, so please make allowances to carry us on one of your ships, my son."
"Also, knowing the king as I have come to know him, it might be wise to gather all of your force and the Afriquan horse back into the city, close to the ships and the fortress, lest King Tamhas decide to make military slaves of you all."
Rupen's very first mission for the Central Intelligence Agency was also very nearly his last trip of any kind for anyone. In the end, he had to use the PPK, the spring knife, and the special pen, not to even mention several grenades and an ancient Thompson that almost literally fell into his hands. But what he fought and killed for was his own life and that of Mineo, not—as they all clearly believed—for the group of whom he had overseen delivery of the consignment of modern weapons. Those people left a very bad taste in his mouth, and he very much regretted that there had not been a way for him to allow the government troops to mete out to them the deaths that they so richly deserved. He, along with most Americans, had always considered that country and its government to be allies and friends of long standing, and he could not imagine why an American agency would be arming fanatics to destabilize or bring down that government. Questions along that line directed at the CIA types, however, brought invariably the same answers, which all boiled down to their contention that he had no need to know and would be best advised to keep his mouth shut if that was all he could think of to ask.
He went back to arms dealing and hoped to God that he never again would hear of the CIA or any other clandestine organization of his own or of anyone else's government, for it was far too easy to ge
t killed playing the games that those types customarily played. Of course, the arms markets were not what they had been eight or nine years before, when he first had entered them. For one thing, those few World War II and earlier cartridge weapons that were still around and occasionally offered to him and other buyers were generally in sad shape or worse, having been through war after war after insurrection and uprising, mostly fought out in damp or dusty places by simple people whose idea of weapons maintenance most often came down to keeping the bayonet sharp, while trusting in God or Allah or Buddha or Krishna to keep the firearm functional, regardless of filthy actions, fouled bores, and total absence of lubrication.
It now was a red-letter day when Rupen received word that somewhere in some dark corner or sub-basement of an armory, in a forgotten warehouse or a deserted military depot, or in a long-sealed cave on a Pacific atoll, fine weapons in decent condition had been turned up and were for sale to the highest bidder.
Most of his work, these days, had to do with matching buyer with seller in complicated deals involving jet planes, tanks, artillery pieces, helicopters, military wheeled transport of all kinds, rockets, and even the occasional small warship. Rupen was tired unto death with trotting hither and yon all over the world. It was a young man's profession, and Rupen was forty-three years old.
He was vacationing in the ancient and beautiful city of Syracuse, Sicily, when he made his decision to wait a few weeks, tie up a few loose ends in Europe, then go back to Virginia for Christmas and announce his immediate resignation to Kogh and Bagrat.
The week or two here and there was just not enough, besides which, he rarely got all of those short respites from business; he was just too well known, and customers or their agents followed him and pestered him wherever he tried to hide for a few days. He was also tired unto death of spending his every waking or sleeping minute of life with a pistol either holstered on him or within easy reach, like some movie-version spy. Not that he had not at times had pressing need of his personal armaments, for not everyone liked him, not by any means. He was an American, after all, and Americans were becoming less and less popular around the world that their generosity had virtually rebuilt from the ruins of World War II. He moved and worked strictly as an apolitical businessman, which factor made him automatically suspect in the eyes of the more extreme factions of both left-wing and right-wing governments and movements. There were also the sore losers, sometime customers who had come out second best despite infusions of modern armaments and equipment and who found it much more satisfying to blame the arms and the persons who had gotten them those arms than to place the onus on bankrupt ideologies and ill-led or mutinous troops. A sub-genre of this species was the ones who felt that they had lost because they had not been in receipt of arms either through lack of cash, lack of credit, or both, and who felt strongly that there must be one more death for their cause: Rupen Ademian's.
