A conservator often repaired damaged pieces by replicating the same paints used in the original but exceptions were sometimes necessary. Necessity drove me to great depths that night.
Peaches watched aghast as I returned to my perch and blotted the areas I’d been working on before brushing paint over the cleared patches, covering the delicate plaintive carnation with a brown blemish, smudging the trees around the watchtower with a thick swirl of paint, and burying everything under an appallingly shoddy patch job. Anyone taking a closer look would see the outrage in an instant but I was betting that no one would be looking that closely short-term, especially since the painting hung far from eye level.
That done, I returned to the conservator’s closet, packed away the painting supplies, and wiped the brushes on a cloth, but carried the turpentine bottle over to one of the desks, cover off. Placing it on a wad of paper, I arranged papers to look as though some careless twerp had been rubbing solvent on wads of tissue.
“What?” Peaches whispered.
“Decoy,” I replied, “to explain the fumes.” It might work for a moment, which could be all we needed. Besides, it was the best idea I had.
That done, we cleared up what evidence we could, and just before exiting, I led Peaches to the closet and pointed out the secret passageway. “It leads directly to Senhor Carvalho,” I said.
“Fat lot of good that will do me. I’d never get my booty through there.”
“It’s not as tight as it looks. Besides flesh has give,” I said.
“Yours might. Mine’s all muscle.”
Like I had time to argue that.
After checking the corridor, we exited the library, practically bolting down that hall, up the stairs, and back to our rooms, arriving in breathless triumph until we saw Markus’s door wide open.
“Shit!” Peaches exclaimed.
We stepped inside and gaped. The archaeologist had vanished, taking his bags with him.
17
At 4:45 Evan was downstairs spreading the alarm about Rupert’s supposed worsening condition to any person he could find. Three staff members trudged to our floor in their nightclothes, all masked and talking excitedly. None would go near Rupert’s room. Minutes later, Adriana arrived with a man and woman we didn’t recognize and, once we explained the situation, demanded that the wing be sectioned off.
“But you must still leave,” she ordered.
“Sir Fox is not going anywhere,” Evan said, standing in the center of the corridor, arms crossed, doing his most manly command pose. “He is not well and must stay put until he recovers.”
“What is wrong with him?” Her eyes widened with fear.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps you can have a doctor visit to determine that point. I can only tell you that he has a fever and a dry cough.”
“A fever! This can’t be happening! We haven’t had a doctor here since—well, for a while. There is one in the village that attends Papa Carvalho occasionally. Maybe he will come.”
“I suggest you arrange for testing,” he said.
“Testing for…?” Her look of shock made me feel as guilty as hell. This seemed so cruel. “Sir Rupert must go into quarantine,” she said after a moment. “The rest of you leave as planned.” She looked as though she might burst into tears.
“You can’t expect us to just leave him. Somebody must stay and nurse him,” I said.
“Unless one of your staff will take on the task,” Evan added, “none of us will be leaving this morning.” He stood tall, imposing and resolute.
Adriana’s eyes looked around her above the white mask, almost as if she was seeking a place to hide. “Fine.” She turned to speak urgently to the man beside her and moments later faced us again. “Choose one person to stay with him, then, but it cannot be you, Senhor Barrows, or you Senhorita McCabe. You can stay.” She indicated Peaches leaning against a wall behind me.
“‘You’ has a name,” Peaches said, straightening. “I’m Peaches Williams but you can call me Senhorita Williams, if you must. I’ll stay with Rupert, under certain conditions.”
I glanced at her in surprise. She was setting terms?
Adriana dropped her gaze. “Forgive me if I am rude.” Her hands flew into the air. “But I am so alarmed! To have this happen to our household along with everything else.”
“No problem. I’ll make a list of things needed to keep Sir Rupert and me comfortable. In the meantime, if you don’t mind, take your staff away and leave us to it. And we want coffee and breakfast. Eggs would be nice—boiled, not too hard.”
“Yes, we will go. The rest of you come downstairs in ten minutes. Adriana turned to Evan. “Where is Senhor Collins?”
“Unfortunately, we can’t answer that,” Evan replied. “I had hoped you knew.”
“Why would I know?” she said, glaring at him. “I want you out of here.” She swung around and dashed downstairs with her staff.
“I feel sorry for them,” I whispered as their footsteps died away. “To know what she’s fearing…”
“Let the virus work to our benefit for once,” Evan remarked, returning to his room.
By 5:00 a.m., my backpack and his were at the bottom of the stairs with the two of us standing tense and silent in the hall, waiting.
We had made no effort to find Markus, not just because we were sure that he had left on his own accord but because we didn’t have time to search. Our biggest worry, mostly left unsaid but for a hastily scribbled note, was that he had been working for the Divinios all along. On the other hand, I suspected he believed he knew the location of that crown on the property and may have gone off to search on his own—unlikely considering his temperament but not impossible. God knows what archaeologists burning with a quest will try to do, at least in their minds.
But if he did work for the Divinios, it meant that every bit of our plan had been exposed—what little we knew of it, that is. Senhor Carvalho may have been short on details for a reason. The uncertainty, heaped on all the rest, made Evan and me unusually tense.
Evan passed me a piece of paper that I hastily read and shoved into my pocket. Where in Spain are we going?
I’m not sure, I mouthed. He lifted his brows at me, maybe not as amused as I had hoped.
Minutes later, we heard footsteps marching down the long hall as two men wearing masks appeared, only one of whom I knew—Senhor Abreu. I stifled my relief at seeing someone assumed to be an ally but nothing in the man’s eyes gave any indication that he felt the same.
Abreu introduced the driver, a Senhor Magro, who was to take us to the airport. We hastily applied our face masks, picked up our bags, and followed the men outside. I turned long enough to catch Peaches waving at me from the stairs. I hated to leave her behind and yet was so grateful that she and Rupert would pull together to do whatever was needed back at the quinta.
The dawn hung damp and cool with a band of luminous ultramarine bleeding into the sky beyond the treetops and mist snaking through the grass. We piled into a long gray unmarked six-seater van, our bags at our feet, nobody saying a word. Evan and I sat stiff and watchful.
When the car pulled away down the long drive, I turned back to gaze at the castle, noting lights on at the very topmost tower but the castle otherwise dark. Turning away, I stared ahead, my arm pressing against the gun in my jacket, ready for anything. Gun, phone, and Evan—what more did I need to plunge into the unknown? Actually, I could think of plenty. Would I ever see my friends again?
The van wound down the drive, through the gates, which opened as we approached, and onto a deeply wooded road, but instead of going down toward the village we headed up.
I shot a look at Evan but he kept his gaze fixed ahead, which prompted me to do the same. I watched as the silhouette of the Moorish castle bit into the sky over our heads. We were heading up to the ancient castle? I had seen the illuminated walls from my window and knew that the Castelo dos Mouros had been built in Portugal’s medieval Moorish era and destroyed by the
Christian crusaders, but what did it have to do with our escape or was it part of the Divinios’ murderous plan?
Floodlights beamed up at the gray stone walls when the van lurched to a stop at the foot of the rocky outcrop leading up to the ruins.
“You two go!” Abreu called. “Now. Up the stairs! He waits!”
Who waits? Why up the stairs? Heart galloping, I sprung into action, grabbing my bag and jumping out the door at the same time that Evan exited from the other side.
My heart shattered at the thought of all the things that could go wrong but I couldn’t dwell on that now. The van was already zooming back down the way it had come and was soon swallowed by the mist.
“Phoebe, hurry!” Evan beckoned me up a path leading toward a set of rough-hewn stairs. Spotlights illuminating the ruin’s exterior walls did nothing to light the stairs between the low parapets. Here the shadows clotted like glue and Evan turned on his phone light to guide our way raggedly upward.
We were climbing up the old castle’s battlements with nothing between us and the drop but the remains of the ancient walls, the exterior versions waist-high, the interior ones knee-level. On the right, the mountain opened around us in dizzying glimpses of mist and rocky outcrops, the lights of the village dropping far away to our left, the forest to our right.
Up here the wind cut into my face and the steepness of the climb nearly took my breath away. Soon I was stuffing my mask into my pocket and transferring my bag into backpack mode as I forced my legs to keep pushing.
We climbed and climbed as the dawn bloomed pink all around. Evan was too far ahead for conversation and I didn’t have the breath left to try. I knew he had to be feeling as ripped in two as I but his training kept him focused and powering on. But why anyone would wait for us here? It was all rock and bramble with a watchtower ahead and walls curving into the distance. Unless the idea was to ambush us and throw us off the wall, in which case I had to admit the location was perfect.
I paused long enough to gaze through the wind-roughened parapets to catch my breath. Then I heard a faint beating far to the right at the same time as I caught sight of lights weaving through the trees below, approaching from two directions.
Picking up my pace, I launched up the next length of dizzying stairs until I stood beside Evan on the windy battlement watching a silver speck come into view.
“We have more company!” I cried, pointing behind us.
He swore and gazed ahead. In front lay the watchtower, to the left the rocky remains of the keep edged in dawn and rimmed by thick shadow, and beyond that the battlements continued curving like a snake up the crest of the mountain.
It was at that moment that we heard the explosion. Something far down to the left burst into flames and burned in a dark smoky plume. We watched in horror as the object tumbled over and over in flames and smoke, finally dropping straight out of view.
“It’s the van!” I called.
“That was supposed to be us,” Evan said, voice tight. He grabbed my hand. “Keep moving.”
“But—” There was no time for fear or to cry, let alone talk. We began climbing downward now just as we saw the helicopter growing closer by the moment.
We watched as the small silver helicopter came into view overhead, hovering over the ruined keep. Now we saw how the rocks on the inner side of the ruins fell away to a flat gravel space directly below. It didn’t look wide enough to land a chopper but that’s exactly what the pilot seemed to be doing. He began lowering the machine straight down toward the only flat area on the rock.
Evan and I pressed ourselves against the outer parapet as the blades beat overhead. I turned to avoid the spin of dust and glimpsed the lights bobbing below the lower walls. “They’re on the walls!” I called.
The helicopter dropped into the narrow space with amazing finesse and in seconds we were dashing down the remaining stairs and ducking under the vortex toward the open door just as two men appeared on the battlements and started shooting.
“Get up fast!” Evan called to the pilot, repeating himself in Spanish and urging us into the seats. He swung open the door and shouted something. We climbed into the seats behind him as he slammed the door shut, giving us only seconds to strap ourselves in before the machine lurched upward.
My first time in a helicopter and here I was rising in the air from atop a mountain promontory being chased by religious fanatics while heading to parts unknown. Sometimes I'd rather be knitting.
A bullet pinged against the blades.
As I soon discovered as the machine zipped away, helicopters offer the best flight view of any aircraft thanks to that wraparound windshield. This gave me an uninterrupted view of the men scrambling over the rocks below, the sparks of their guns firing, and, as an added bonus, the flashing emergency lights far down in the valley.
Evan passed me a pair of ear protectors from the console between us. I was grateful for the instant quiet but kept my gaze fixed on the shrinking ground, my heart in my throat. He squeezed my hand as we zipped off into the dawn, me squeezing back in silent fear for those we left behind.
We were now flying over land, forests, villages, and towns visible far below. Though my knowledge of helicopters was scant, I knew enough to know that they can’t travel as far or as quickly as planes. How far this one would take us was left to be seen and I could only hope that our pilot had a plan.
But despite the adrenaline, my heart began to settle and I must have dozed. It seemed like several hours had passed when a sharp sound lurched me awake. I looked out and saw us going down—quickly—and to someplace in the middle of nowhere. Nothing but sandy hills and a rocky grassland baking in the bright sun, a scruff of forest off to the left, a vineyard to the right.
I turned to Evan with a question but the sound of gunfire answered me before he could. The pilot was shouting.
“The gas tank’s been hit,” Evan called. “He’s got to land before we lose power!”
“Where are we?” I called.
“Somewhere in Spain!”
So we landed somewhere in Spain with a bouncing crash followed by the the crunch of landing gear and the screech of something major breaking off—the tail, we discovered, as we leaped out of the helicopter.
Now we were on the run, heading toward the copse of trees, the pilot in the opposite direction. He called something back to us, Evan translating: “We’re to hide. Keep away from him.”
No time to ask why. Two white helicopters flew low across the field peppering the ground with machine gunfire. We were almost to the trees when I turned and saw the pilot hit. He spun in a full circle before falling to his knees. I took off after him until Evan grabbed my arm and wrenched me back. One of the helicopters was landing. We had to keep on running.
We bolted into the trees. In a few minutes, they’d be on foot coming after us. An orchard, I guessed. Here the sun filtered down in long motes, beautiful had we time to enjoy. But the cover was scant and we could hear the roar of the second helicopter overhead along with men shouting.
“They’re gaining!”
And suddenly we burst out of the trees to teeter on the brink of a steep scrubby mountainside with no option but to scramble down over loose stones. Below we saw a cluster of white buildings, a little village beyond that. Yet we hesitated. Hardly any cover. Parts of the drop too steep.
Across the sky from the opposite direction, another helicopter was speeding toward us—longer, painted in camouflage, two roof propellers. When a bullet pinged against the rocks at our feet, we lunged down the hill, caught in a wild sliding scramble heading roughly for a boulder outcrop. Two men were firing at our backs now.
We leaped behind a pile of boulders as Evan pulled out his gun and fired back. I had my gun in hand as the new helicopter flew overhead.
Evan paused to study the underbelly. “They saw us. Camouflaged AS532 Cougar. Looks like it belongs to the Spanish army. Who did you say Senhor Carvalho’s friend is?”
“Another Señor Anonymous.
Are they on our side?”
“We can’t wait around to find out.”
We watched the army helicopter drop low over the gunmen, a soldier leaning out the door firing at our pursuers while the second enemy helicopter was speeding off into the distance. It certainly seemed that they were on our side and they gave us the break we needed.
Instantly we were scudding downward, grabbing on to bushes to brace ourselves as we slid. Our backpacks knocked off our balance so we sent them sliding down ahead. It was all I could do to keep my feet under me and at one point I stumbled, nearly tumbling downward face-first, but I managed to steady myself against a rock. Evan remained ahead, turning occasionally to point out obstacles or to offer me a hand.
“Just go!” I cried. Men.
By the time we reached the bottom and retrieved our bags, the sun hung low in the sky, the gunfire had stopped, and the helicopters had disappeared. We were trudging around a white-walled farm compound. A corral of white ponies whinnied away to the right. Somewhere a dog barked and barked.
“We’ll hide in a barn somewhere until dark,” Evan said.
We had seen a village farther down the road but who knew what the response would be if two strangers suddenly appeared in the streets? We obviously weren’t tourists. We couldn’t even claim that our car had broken down on some nearby highway—was there even a nearby highway? Hiding until nightfall seemed the best option.
A man raking a small field in the distance didn’t catch sight of us as we scuttled into the walled enclosure. Inside, a small house lay at one end with a cluster of stucco outbuildings forming a rambling rectangle. A fountain looking as though it hadn't spewed water for years sat in the center of a cracked cement drive with a clump of yellow weeds blooming around the base.
We slipped inside a large storage building that smelled of motor oil overriding something musty and hid in a corner behind an old tractor. Sacks of veggies and an upended wheelbarrow kept us company along with a mewing cat that skittered away. Tools hung on the walls, most of them rusted and bearing signs that they’d been repaired multiple times. The last rays of sun were cutting through a high cracked window in long motes as we settled down in the shadows on mounds of sacking.
The Crown that Lost its Head: A Historical Mystery Thriller (An Agency of the Ancient Lost & Found Mystery Thriller Book 2) Page 20
