He strode out into the square and stopped in front of the white marble cross. David and Olivia quickly caught up, and even though it was getting late in the day and the light was starting to fade, David was able to read the plaque that said the monument had been erected to commemorate the villagers executed, on this very spot, by the Nazis on June 20, 1940.
“The marquis himself donated this monument.”
There were perhaps a dozen names inscribed on its column.
“They were the household staff of the chateau. They were killed in retribution for the marquis’s escape.” His finger ran along the letters of one name-Mademoiselle Celeste Guyot.
“I never had the heart to tell him,” Ascanio said, “but it should have said Madame.”
“She was married?” David asked.
“The night before,” Ascanio replied, and from the expression on his face-great sorrow and implacable rage-David did not have to ask who her husband had been. Nor did Olivia contest his instructions again.
Ascanio went to the gas pump, slipped in a credit card, and refueled the car. Then he filled a couple of gallon jugs, and put them in the boot, too. David didn’t ask why. He drove the Maserati out of the square, where amber-colored lights were just coming on in some of the storefronts, then out onto the road leading to the Chateau Perdu.
The road was so narrow it essentially became a single, unlighted country lane. Posts with red reflectors atop them were positioned every fifty yards or so, but often they were obscured by the overgrown shrubbery and trees. For the first time, David began to see how aptly the chateau had been named-this was a lost region, a place that showed no other signs of human habitation. For the next few kilometers, nothing but dark woods lined both sides of the road. The moon hung low in the sky, peeking out from behind a scrim of fast-moving clouds.
“The gatehouse,” Ascanio finally said, dimming the headlights, and David, peering through the side window, detected a stone house, covered with vines, squatting like a toadstool among the overhanging trees. No lights were on inside, and it looked as if it had been untenanted for years. Ascanio drove past slowly, long enough for David and Olivia to take in the high iron gates, and a driveway on the other side that disappeared into the blackness.
“So where’s the chateau?” Olivia said, and Ascanio replied, “Right where it’s been for eight hundred years. On the cliffs.”
Only when they were well past the gates did Ascanio turn the headlights back on. A rubblestone wall, five or six feet high, ran for a long distance along one side of the road, and even when it ended, massive old oaks formed an impenetrable barrier.
“How do we get back there?” David said, and Ascanio pointed to a break in the trees, where a rusty chain had been looped around two trunks, along with a sign that read PRIVATE PROPERTY-NO TRESPASSING. To David’s surprise, he nosed the grill of the Maserati up to the chain and pressed on the gas. There was a screeching sound of metal on metal, a crack and a pop and a flash of white light as one of the headlights blew out, and the chain snapped in two.
With only one light remaining, he maneuvered the car along a bumpy, overgrown track that wound through the trees before eventually opening up to a view of the river. There was an old, cracked, concrete loading dock, and a long wharf beyond that extending into the rolling waters of the Loire. To David, it looked as if this place, too, had been unused for many years.
The moment Ascanio stopped the car and turned off the engine, they were swallowed up by the night. The boot of the car popped open, and Ascanio got out without a word and began to hand David his supplies-a backpack loaded with gear, a flashlight, and one of the plastic jugs of gasoline. He pulled a matching pack over his own shoulders and, like some pirate, he took the harpe -the short sword with its fearsome notched end-and slung it, still in its scabbard, onto his belt. Grabbing the other gasoline jug, he said to Olivia, “Turn the car around, then just wait for us. If we’re not back in a few hours, drive back to Paris.”
“I’m not leaving you here!”
“You won’t be,” he said. “We’ll be dead.”
David’s blood froze in his veins at the casual manner in which Ascanio said it, but he felt as if it were a test, too. Ascanio looked at him, waiting to see him quail, but David would not. He hadn’t come this far to give up now.
Not when Sarah’s life hung in the balance.
Ascanio said, “Come on then,” and took off into the trees. Olivia plucked at David’s sleeve, kissed him hard on the lips, and said, “I will be here.”
David turned, and lugging the plastic jug, picked his way with the flashlight through the dense forest. All he could see of Ascanio was the other flashlight beam, held close to the ground, and he had to struggle just to catch up. There was still no sign of a chateau, but Ascanio was leading them down toward the riverbank. There, they marched along, while the ground began to rise above them into sheer cliffs. David’s boots squelched in the muddy soil, and the gas sloshed in the jug. After several minutes, the clouds passed away from the moon, and high above them, David could see, like the fingers of a giant grasping hand, five black towers.
“I see it,” David said, and Ascanio simply nodded. Waving his flashlight back and forth across the base of the cliff, he revealed a series of caves and crevices worn into the limestone over many millennia.
“Look for five vertical cuts,” he said, making a slicing motion with the hand holding the flashlight.
David trained his beam, too, onto the cliffs and stepping carefully over the rocks and rubble, was the first to find the deep incisions, like hashmarks, chiseled above a cave entrance no bigger than a wagon wheel.
Ascanio shifted his backpack higher onto his shoulders, ducked his head, and vanished into the hole. David quickly followed and found himself at the bottom of a shaft, with steps only four or five inches wide, carved out of the stone. Ascanio was already wending his way up them; David could see the glow of his flashlight, and loose pebbles and dirt skittered down from above. David had to keep his head bent low, his shoulders tucked in, and his feet positioned sideways on the steps in order to get up them. It would have been a difficult climb under any circumstances, but because he was toting the jug in one hand and the flashlight in the other, it became a precarious balancing act, too. One missed step and he could find himself tumbling headlong all the way down the winding passageway.
The air was damp and foul, and every breath felt as if it were being inhaled underwater. Ascanio was coughing, too, but the light from his beam continued to ascend. They were burrowing up through the earth, and by the time Ascanio had stopped and David had managed to catch up to him at the very top, they were both short of breath and drenched with moisture. Ascanio’s flashlight and jug lay on the ground, and he gestured at a round slab of stone.
“We have to move that,” he said, so David put his things down, too. They were in a space only a few feet square, and it took a minute just to figure out how to divide the labor. As Ascanio pushed on one edge of the slab, David pulled on its upper rim. It rocked a few inches, then settled back into its age-old groove.
“Again,” Ascanio said, and that time the slab rolled to one side, just enough for Ascanio to slip through. The scabbard of his sword scraped against the stone. “Quick,” he said, extending his arm back through, “hand me my pack.” David did, then handed his own through, too, before scrunching down, as if trying to worm through a rubber tire, and into a rocky tunnel. A string of lightbulbs, all of them off, dangled along the roof. Ascanio was already removing the cap of his jug, and motioning David to move past him.
As soon as David had, Ascanio bent over and, walking backwards, began sloshing the gasoline in a long trail along behind them. They moved steadily down the tunnel, David leading the way now, until Ascanio’s jug was empty. They were standing above an iron grate, and when David directed his flashlight beam into it, he could see a steep fall, and hear, at the bottom, the ebb and flow of river water.
Ascanio tossed his own empty jug aside
, opened David’s, and they continued on, with Ascanio dribbling gas behind them all the way. Wine racks rose on either side, until they came to some steps leading into an old-fashioned scullery; beyond that, in the kitchen, they could hear the sound of a radio playing. Ascanio put a finger to his lips as he reached up with the harpe and cut the cord that connected the light-bulbs strung the length of the tunnel.
Then, creeping behind the last of the racks, they peered out between the bottles to see a woman with her gray hair in a long plait bustling about the kitchen, tidying up. She wiped the counter clean, put some stray dishes in the dishwasher, then turned it on.
Surveying her domain before closing up for the night, she said, “ Que faites-vous vers le haut la?”-What are you doing up there?-to a kitten with its paws up on the center table. She flicked off the radio, put on her overcoat, and deposited the kitten into one of her voluminous side pockets. Then, tying a scarf under her chin, she left, leaving the room illuminated only by a night-light above the stove and the red glow from a wall clock advertising Cinzano.
The clock continued to tick, the freezers-two of them-hummed, and the dishwasher gently rattled its plates, but there was no sign of further activity. Finally, Ascanio crept out from behind the rack, and after glancing out the kitchen door, came back and began to shake the remaining drops of gasoline onto the floor. When the jug was empty, he tossed it out of sight under the sinks. He stashed his flashlight in his backpack, then, gripping the hilt of the harpe, he whispered to David, “ La Medusa? ” It was as if he was asking him if he wanted a beer.
“Yes,” David said, relieved to discover that his own voice was firm and determined. He wiped the grime from his glasses and looped the wire sidepieces firmly back behind his ears. “ La Medusa.”
Chapter 37
There had been no sign of the Maserati on the lonely country road, but several times Escher had come to junctions and turnoffs, and at each one he had to stop and look for fresh tire tracks. Once or twice, he followed what turned out to be dead ends-spurs that ended in vineyards or empty barns.
But whenever he came on a small store or gas station, he pulled in and asked if anyone had seen his friends go by, in their brand-new silver Maserati. Fortunately, it was the kind of car they were likely to remember. At one station, a teenager working the register said it had gone by about an hour ago and pointed toward the town of Cinq Tours.
Escher had purposely looked puzzled, as if he’d forgotten something, and said, “What’s in Cinq Tours?”
“Fuck if I know. You want to buy anything?” he said, anxious to return to his video game.
Escher bought a pack of Gitanes and got back in the car. He fished his flask out from under the seat, had a shot of whiskey to restore his spirits, and headed on. Twenty minutes later, he had to pull over to let a flock of sheep amble by. When he asked the shepherd about the car, the man said not a word, but jerked his staff toward Cinq Tours again. It was getting late, the sun setting, and none of this was going to get any easier after dark.
Escher drove the little Peugeot over an old stone bridge, past a millrace, and thought, This is just the kind of picturesque crap tourists love. Give him a city anytime. Up ahead, he saw the lights of a town square, with a white cross in its center. There was an inn on one side, with a couple of muddy trucks parked in front, but no Maserati. He pulled in next to the gas pump and got out.
There were a bunch of locals inside, in woolen shirts and work boots, and a TV was mounted on brackets over the bar. The evening news was on, but no one was watching. Escher went straight to the bar and asked the bartender about the car, and whether or not two men and a woman had recently stopped in together. The bartender said, “I just came on, but the owner’s been here all day.” He called back into the kitchen, and a harried woman, wiping her hands on an apron, popped out.
Escher repeated his question, and she said, “Oh yes, your friends were here, oh, maybe an hour or two ago. They had the rabbit stew-it’s very good tonight,” she added, cleaning a spot on the bar where she could serve him and setting up a wineglass with the other hand.
“Thank you,” he said, “but I need to catch up with them. They forgot something important. Do you have any idea where they were going from here?”
She shrugged, fast losing interest. “They had a map. Maybe the chateau, though God knows why.”
Escher had seen no signs for a chateau, nor any tour buses.
“Of course,” he said, nodding. “How would I get there?”
She was already halfway back to the kitchen. “Keep going. A few more kilometers. Pierre!” she hollered at someone inside. “What’s burning?”
Escher charged out to his car, sorry to hear that they had such a lead on him, but relieved to know that they had so little idea they were being tracked that they’d actually dawdled over bowls of stew. He steered his car around the monument and onto the road leading out of town, which he discovered was even worse here than it was coming in.
Night had fallen, and the moon was going in and out of the clouds racing in from the west. He followed the road, but wondered why there were no signs for the chateau that the innkeeper had mentioned. There were no signs for anything, in fact-just reflectors, popping up like red eyes in the darkness every so often. But at least there were no other turnoffs or intersecting roads they might have taken, and before long he spotted a gatehouse, where he stopped and got out of the car. There was no one in the house, no chateau as far as he could see, and a massive padlock on the gates. Getting back in the car, he continued on, hoping he might come across another entrance, but all he saw was a long stone wall that didn’t look easily breached. Just when he had decided to go back and take one more look at that gate-how hard would it be to shatter that padlock?-he noticed that the wall had given out, and in a space between two trees, a broken chain was lying on the ground. When he stopped and got out, he could see bits of a broken headlight, too. His own headlights didn’t penetrate very far into the woods, but he could see that there was some kind of old driveway here. Is that where they went?
But why?
He drove his car far enough into the trees to be unseen from the road, turned it around, and left the key in the ignition for a quick getaway if he needed one. Then he got out with a flashlight in one hand and his Glock 9mm in the other. It was easy enough to follow the worn old trail, but he was careful to make as little noise as possible and to keep his beam close to the damp leaves and soil. Eventually, he could hear the sound of the river, and he could see something gleaming in the intermittent moonlight.
And damned if it wasn’t a silver Maserati. He hadn’t lost his touch, after all.
Crouching low, he crept up on the car and peered inside. There was no one in it.
But when he looked down toward the river, he saw a platform of some kind, like an old loading dock, and a wooden pier-at the end of which someone was smoking a glowing cigarette.
As he moved closer, he could see that it was the girl, Olivia, huddled in her dark coat, her hair tucked up under a knitted cap. This was too good to be true. Looking all around, he saw that she was alone. A sitting duck. If he’d had a reason to eliminate her, he couldn’t have asked for a better chance. But he had no such reason-not yet, anyway-and something told him that she might wind up being a valuable bargaining chip before the night was over.
Stepping softly onto the dock, he called out, “Catch any fish?”
She whirled around, the cigarette flying from her fingers.
He raised the Glock just enough for her to see it, and said, “Keep your hands out of your pockets and walk toward me.”
She hesitated.
“Now.” He raised the gun higher.
With her arms held away from her body, she walked toward him, and when she got close enough, he said, “Where are your friends?”
“What friends?”
“Please don’t spoil things. We’ve been getting along so well.”
“They’re… gone.”
�
��And they left you here, alone, in the woods?”
He was considering his options, and they were all good. She was completely at his mercy, and if he played his cards right, he might even be driving back to Paris in a new Maserati.
“Come on,” he said, waving her on with the gun. “Back to the car.”
She moved slowly, her body tense. She was thinking, he could tell, of sprinting into the woods.
“Don’t even think about running,” he said. “I was the best marks-man in my class.”
When they reached the car, he told her to open the boot and stand back. When she did, he played his flashlight over the interior. But there weren’t any weapons there, nor did he see that damn valise David Franco had always been carrying. Of course, if it had fallen into his lap that easily, he might have thought a trap had been laid for him.
“Okay,” he said, closing the lid, “get in the car.”
He waited until she got in on the driver’s side, then slid into the passenger seat, with the gun still trained on her. “This could all have been avoided,” he said.
“If we’d let you steal the valise on the train?”
He gave her a cold smile. “Nice to know I’m remembered.” He opened the glove compartment and rummaged inside. “So, what time are David and your driver due back?” To encourage an honest answer, he touched the muzzle of the gun to her cheek.
“Get that thing out of my face,” she said with a snarl.
He had to give her that; she had guts to go along with her looks. “What time?” he repeated, glancing at the dashboard for the clock. There were so many goddamn dials and knobs and temperature controls that he couldn’t even locate it.
“Who are you, anyway?” she said. “Your accent sounds Swiss.”
“Swiss Guard,” he said, still proud of the credential, even if he had been dishonorably discharged.
Olivia scoffed. “You’re not working for the Pope tonight.”
The Medusa Amulet Page 36
