The Broken Sword

by Molly Cochran

  "Are you sure they're coming?" Emily asked for the fourth time, peering through one of the tall windows in the Victoria's dining room.

  "Don't worry about a thing," Aubrey answered automatically, although his sensitive hands had begun to perspire.

  It was possible that they hadn't seen the ad in the newspaper. Still, they were definitely coming to Tangier. It was the only place where the road that passed through Ait Haddus led. Saladin's relatives were stationed all over the city. If the four travelers didn't come to the hotel tonight, the Arabs would find them by morning. Either way, none of them would leave Tangier alive.

  "You're lovely," Aubrey said, thinking that Emily's dress must have been designed by a tentmaker. "Americans have such a unique style."

  She smiled nervously, adjusting her neckline. It was the only garment she owned that might be termed dressy, although now she thought it would be more suitable for a funeral than a dinner date.

  She was frumpy, she decided, no matter what Aubrey said. Actually, she had always been frumpy, except for the weeks she'd been with Hal.

  Hal had made her feel beautiful. She would not have worn this dress with Hal. She would have dressed in pink silk with flowers. She would have painted her toenails and showed them. She would have run naked through a rainstorm.

  Hal. She saw her arms trembling. Tonight she would see Hal again.

  It's all right, she told herself. You're a grown woman. He left you, but that isn't the issue here. You're going to get Arthur back. Hal doesn't figure into it one way or the other. You'll be polite, and then take your nephew and be on your way. Thank you very much, Hal, and good-bye.

  Yes.

  She was trembling harder than ever.

  "Are you cold?" Aubrey asked.

  Emily shook her head. She glanced at her watch again. Seven-oh-four. Hal was late. "How do you know they'll be here?" she asked.

  "Because they'll want to see you," he said, forcing a smile.

  "I need to go to the ladies' room."

  "Emily—"

  "I'm sorry," she said, pushing her chair back with a squeak. It was just too much for her. In the washroom she applied her lipstick twice, straightened her slip, fixed her pantyhose, washed her hands.

  Don't worry about a thing, Aubrey had said. He had made all the contacts, through a friend who knew a friend, who knew someone else. She had read once that anyone in the world was only six links removed from anyone else. The problem was finding the six correct links.

  But Aubrey had found them, and at the end of that chain of contacts were Arthur and Hal and another chance for Emily's life.

  Please come, she begged as she walked back, feeling her knees knocking together. Please, please come.

  She was passing by a beefy waiter carrying an enormous tray on his shoulder when she spotted Hal. He was walking beside a railing, looking up at the tables on the mezzanine. He was alone.

  "Hal!" she called, but she found her voice had left her. She signaled frantically, her elbow bumping into the waiter. The waiter stumbled over her, nearly dropping the tray.

  "Oh, I'm so sorry," she said. The waiter gave her a withering look.

  Hal had not noticed the scene, but Aubrey had. From the table he nodded almost imperceptibly to a busboy polishing silver in a corner of the restaurant. The busboy, whose eyes, Aubrey noticed, looked just like Saladin's, set down the handful of utensils he was holding and pulled a gun from beneath his apron.

  A woman sitting near the bus table screamed. Instinctively Hal dived to the floor, catching sight of the busboy as he fired two shots at the spot where Hal had been standing. The bullets hit the waiter instead, in the back of the neck. As the gunman fled through the kitchen, he threw two small containers resembling balloons at the long draperies. They caught fire immediately, and the room burst into pandemonium.

  The waiter fell, the heavy tray clattering to the floor as a fountain of blood gushed out of him, spurting onto the diners as they ran screaming toward the exit. They smashed into Emily, who craned backward, trying to see past the crush of people around her.

  "Arthur!" she screamed. "Are you here? Hal?"

  Someone knocked against her, hard. She lost her footing and slipped. The next moment she was on the floor, screaming helplessly as strangers ran over her, heedless, no longer concerned that she was a human being, sensing her body only as an impediment to their escape from the suffocating heat and smoke.

  She felt a bone snap in her leg with agonizing clarity, and another in her hand as she tried to pull herself upright. She screamed until her throat was raw, but even she could not hear the sound she made amid the din of exploding windows and crackling flames.

  The fire spread quickly. As it sped toward Emily, one of the frantic restaurant patrons inadvertently kicked her in the head, and she lost consciousness.

  By the time she came to, she was engulfed in flames. She managed to roll, despite the shrieking pain from her broken bones, putting out the fire in her clothes, but her face was a different thing altogether. It was a molten mass, her blood inside it a river of torment. She screamed as she fought her way outside, where she heard the wail of an approaching ambulance.

  Emily pulled herself up to a standing position against a vertical pillar and scanned the crowd, looking for Hal. Some of the guests were dressed in nightclothes; others carried hastily stuffed suitcases or towels filled with valuables. One elderly woman was wandering around in circles, her hands clutching strands of pearls and gold jewelry.

  The police and fire engine sirens were coming closer. A cluster of English people standing near the marble column where Emily had propped herself chattered excitedly about a witness having seen the gunman take off in a German-made car toward the interior.

  "Why do you suppose he shot the waiter?" a woman asked in hushed tones.

  Hal, please be all right, Emily thought, thumping her head against the pillar.

  Within minutes an ambulance arrived, and she was carried gingerly inside.

  She never saw Aubrey Katsuleris again. And though she tried for several years afterward to establish the six links that would bring her back to Hal Woczniak and Arthur Blessing, she was not able to accomplish that, either.

  As soon as the draperies caught fire, Hal knew what was going to happen. There were only two exits from the dining room, and the killer had gone out through one of them. Nearly everyone in the room would rush for the grand, although not particularly wide, double doors leading to the lobby.

  Besides, he had no illusions about whom the shots were meant for. He hadn't recognized the gunman, but he doubted that the man was anything more than a hired shooter. When he'd missed his target, he had opted to run rather than try again—the mark of a professional who had blundered. If the so-called busboy had known about the cup, he would have taken Hal in the melee that followed.

  And that, he was sure, was what whoever planned this setup was about to do.

  While the diners were still rising from their seats, Hal swept a pink tablecloth out from under its burden of dishes and threw it over his head. Then he leaped toward one of the huge windows feet first and fell in a spray of broken glass into the garden below.

  He shook the glass out of his hair. The fall had been a good one. Out of a dozen cuts and scrapes, not one was serious. He looked up at the broken window. No one was in it looking for him. Probably covering one of the exits, he thought, or both. Taking a final look around, he sprinted toward the docks.

  Taliesin and the children were waiting on the dark side of a moonlit cargo ship.

  "Where's Emily?" Arthur asked.

  "It was a fake," Hal said. "Look, I think—"

  "Someone's coming," Beatrice whispered.

  Hal whirled around, but he was too late. Something kicked him in the small of the back, sending him tumbling down the pier. In another second, Aubrey stood behind Arthur, a gun with a web silencer to the boy's head.

  "You know what I want," he said casually. "Let's not try any heroics."

/>   "He's just a little boy," Taliesin whispered. Aubrey turned slightly and fired at the old man's shoulder. The fabric from his tweed jacket burst into a tuft of charred threads. With a groan, Taliesin slapped his hand over the wound. Blood flowed out from between his fingers.

  Arthur tried to wrench himself away, but Aubrey grabbed the boy's hair and jerked his head back, the smoking silencer jammed into his cheek. "Will there be any more discussion?" he asked crisply.

  "Give me the cup," Hal ordered.

  Beatrice held it out. "He's going to kill us anyway," she said, breaking into sobs. "All of us. It won't matter."

  Hal snatched it out of her hands, then extended his arm over the edge of the pier. "Okay, here it is," he said. "If you shoot any of them, I'll drop it. If you shoot me, I'll drop it. Either way, you aren't going to get this cup without a team of scuba divers and the permission of the Moroccan government."

  "You'd better give it to me, Hal," Aubrey said patiently.

  Hal spoke without taking his eyes off the other man. "Get out of here, Taliesin. Take the girl with you." When no one moved, he snapped, "Now! Get out of here!"

  The old man put his good arm around Beatrice, who had covered her face with her hands.

  "Now the kid," Hal said. "Let him go. When he's out of the way, you can have the cup. And you can have me.”

  "No!" Arthur cried.

  "Shut up. Is it a deal?"

  Aubrey half smiled. "A deal," he said. He released Arthur.

  He would kill the boy, of course, just as soon as he had the cup. Hal knew that from the man's easy manner. An amateur would not have released Arthur so easily. He would have argued, threatened, maybe even have taken a couple of wild shots.

  But this was no amateur. He had shot the old man without blinking an eye. And he had aimed for Taliesin's shoulder. Enough to cause alarm without real panic. And now he was calmly watching Arthur trot down the long pier, where he would eventually find him and kill him, along with the others.

  Yes, Hal thought, he was very good.

  And so while Arthur was still an easy target with nowhere to hide, just a moment or two before Hal would have been expected to turn over the cup, he dropped it to the pier with a clatter, then threw up one leg in a high three-sixty roundhouse kick that knocked the gun out of the man's hands.

  The move took Aubrey completely by surprise. He had been expecting a retired FBI agent with the reflexes of a walrus, but the American's timing had been a work of art. Before he could recover from the first blow, Hal grabbed him by the throat and pummeled Aubrey's head into the splintered boards.

  And the cup rolled on, down the pier, slowing as it crested each warped plank, veering first right, then left, glinting dully in the moonlight, until it came to rest at Beatrice's feet.

  She picked it up, unbelieving, then held it up to show Arthur.

  "Hal!" the boy called. "We've got it! Come with us!"

  Hal looked up. It was only for an instant, but an instant was all it took for Aubrey to grab the gun lying on the pier. He smashed its stock across Hal's cheek.

  As Hal reeled backward, Aubrey caught sight of the boy and took careful aim. Hal lunged at him on all fours, like a wild bull, dragging him down. A shot fired into the air as the two men rolled over one another toward the edge. Then, as Arthur watched, rooted to the place where he stood, Aubrey kicked upward with both feet, sending Hal hurtling over the edge.

  Staggering to his feet, Aubrey aimed at the water and fired. Once, twice. Then he turned and crouched, directing the fat web of the barrel directly at Arthur.

  "Hurry," Taliesin whispered as he threw Arthur bodily into the open hold of a ship. The interior was stacked with crates. He shooed Arthur and Beatrice up the ramp and over the crates into the darkness of the hold, where they sat in numb silence as the gunman from the pier fired at the place where they had been a moment before.

  In the distance, some sailors were walking and shouting good-naturedly to one another in what sounded like English. Arthur stared into the blackness of his hiding place, hearing them but unable to concentrate on their words. Unable to think of anything but the sight of Hal windmilling into the water, and the shots that had followed.

  They were both gone now, Emily, who had raised him from infancy, and Hal, who had been the only father he'd ever known.

  Hal...

  Hal was dead.

  In time, the sailors walking down the dock approached the ship and finished loading the crates. Their ribald jokes and loud voices turned the atmosphere around the pier from silent terror to a workaday warmth, but Arthur felt none of it.

  For him the world had ended, and when Beatrice reached out in the darkness to clasp her hand over his, he felt only the hot tears of his loss running down his face.

  On the dock Aubrey waited, his jaw clenching both from the pain in his face and from his impatience. He had expected the drunken sailors to pass the ship where the old man and the children with the cup had entered. He stood in the shadows, feeling the blood harden in the fine lines around his eyes, as the men took their time loading the hold.

  He did not mind the pain; Aubrey knew he deserved every bit of the beating the American had given him. He should never have depended on Saladin's relatives to kill for him. The gunman who had come so highly recommended by the Lagouat clan had failed miserably, and would never be seen again.

  It had been essential that the American be killed first. With his protector dead, the boy would have led Aubrey straight to the cup. Then three shots in the darkness, and the cup would have been his, with no witnesses, no problems.

  He would never use the relatives again.

  "Hey, you!" one of the sailors called, pointing unmistakably at Aubrey. "What do you want, huh? You got a problem or what?"

  Cautiously, Aubrey took two steps forward—not enough to show his face, but enough to allay any fears the sailor might have. "Where is this ship headed?" he asked pleasantly.

  "Port of New York."

  "Ah." From where he stood, he could see the ship's name, the S.S. Comanche, on its prow. "The container port in Newark?"

  "Yeah," the sailor answered. "And we're shipping out now, so get your ass out of here."

  "Certainly," he said genially. He walked back along the dock to the place where the American had fallen. It had been difficult to see, particularly with blood running in Aubrey's eyes, but he had sensed that one of the bullets had struck.

  The tide was going out. With the active surface current in the Strait of Gibraltar, the corpse had probably already begun its journey down the twelve-mile-wide channel separating Tangier from Spain. By daylight, it would be swallowed by the vastness of the North Atlantic.

  So all there was to do was to reach the United States and wait for Arthur Blessing and his magic cup when the S.S. Comanche docked. Despite Aubrey's colossal frustration, the thought of taking the cup in America was rather thrilling. In a country where violent crime was so commonplace, it would be easy to kill two children and an old man.

  He would find someone—no Arabs, please, not after tonight—to get rid of the girl and the old man. But the boy's death had meant a great deal to Saladin. Aubrey would kill Arthur Blessing himself. He would take his time, find some inventive method of doing away with the little bugger.

  For old times' sake.

  As the ship pulled out, its foghorn booming, Aubrey saluted it with a little wave of farewell.

  PART TWO

  THE SWORD

  Chapter Ten

  Dawn was breaking, and Hal was cold. It had been nearly seven hours since he had emerged, frantic and gasping, from the grip of the undertow that had carried him away from shore.

  The first few moments had been a welter of confusion and despair. Images of the past hour—the waiter's blood spurting out in the dining room, the panicked stampede to the exit after the fire started, the dark man's smile as he held the gun to Arthur's head at the pier—came to him in a jumble, mixed with the sensation of the water and the sound of
Katsuleris' two bullets thudding into the pylon near him as the current carried him under.

  His only thought at the time was to breathe as the riptide smashed him against underwater boulders and tangled him in kelp. Afterwards, he wondered why he had bothered; and yet he had fought against the current, fought with all his body and will for one gulp of air before the tide grasped him again, pulling him out farther, farther into the cold black water of the channel.

  The second time he came up, he was nearly unconscious. The black water had melted into the starless sky seamlessly. Hal was not aware of when the current had let him go, or of when he had started to breathe again. All he knew was that he was floating alone in the channel with a piece of rotted board under his head. Both his shoes and one sock were missing. So was his watch. Dim lights were scattered like pinpricks in the black shroud that surrounded him. There was a larger light somewhere to the left of his big toe: The lighthouse in Tangier, he presumed.

  Miles away.

  He might have slept then; he didn't remember. Then, as the sky was changing color from black to cobalt and a thin, sparkling line of light appeared on the waves in the east, he heard something. It was only momentary. When he strained to hear it, the sound was gone, drowned out by the susurration of the waves. Still, Hal was certain he had heard something.

  Then he saw it, off to the west, barely visible against the still-inky sky: a boat. It was a trawler of some kind, steaming toward him. As it neared, the noise Hal had heard grew steadily louder, then stopped abruptly as the trawler's engine was cut. The men on board were shouting to one another in a language Hal didn't recognize as they lifted a net heavy with fish onto the deck.

  He tried to signal to it, but found that his arms were too stiff with cold to lift. He struggled in the water, managing only to knock away the board on which his head and chest were resting. With the effort, his legs stiffened with cramps, and he felt himself going under again, flailing, gasping for breath.

  "Hey!" he shouted. "Over here!" He heard his voice ring across the water with a curious loudness before being silenced in the swell of a wave. Water washed over his head. He sputtered and coughed, then went under again. It would be an easy death, he thought.