“Alexsandra?” he said.
She drew away from him and, in the darkness, he could see her looking at him, hear the straining of her breath.
“What is it?” he pleaded.
“I can’t,” she said. “I just can’t do it.”
“Do what?”
“I can’t let this go on,” she said. “I have to—” She broke off as a faint illumination suddenly fell on the gondola and he saw her gaze move out past him. He began to turn. Alexsandra tried to stop him. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t look.”
But it was too late. He was staring at the wall of a building the gondola was passing. Crude words had been scrawled there so hurriedly that the white paint had dribbled downward toward the water.
4 steps to midnight.
3
Chris felt as though his body had been turned to stone. His gaze transfixed on the letters, the only sensation of life he felt was the heavy thudding of his heartbeat.
He jerked around as Alexsandra cried out, “No!”
He gazed at her. She’d fallen forward, a look of shock on her face.
Chris leaned down suddenly to see what had happened to her. There was a popping noise behind him and a buzzing past his ear as though a giant bee were zooming by. Twisting around with a gasp, he looked up at the oarsman. The man was pointing what looked like an air pistol at him. Chris stiffened, waiting to be hit.
Abruptly then, the man jolted with a faint cry of pain and started toppling forward. Chris gasped as he saw the handle of a knife protruding from his back. The oarsman collapsed to the bottom of the gondola and, glancing up in dread, Chris saw the dark figure of a man standing at the dead end of an alley behind them. The man whirled and disappeared.
Chris gasped again as Alexsandra’s hand clutched at his shirt. He looked at her dumbly. Her eyes were glazed, she drew in rasping breath through gritted teeth.
“Chris,” she muttered. “Run.”
He felt completely helpless, staring at her.
“Run!” she whispered. “Save yourself!”
“I can’t leave—”
He broke off, catching his breath in shock as she slumped back, her eyes falling shut.
“Oh, my God.” He rubbed a shaking hand across his cheek. It isn’t true, he thought. It can’t be true. He murmured her name as he tried to feel for her pulse beat in her neck. But his fingers were too numb and shaking. “Alexsandra,” he murmured.
He cried out in startled terror as someone leaped into the gondola and grabbed him. Yanking himself around, he had a fleeting impression of a dark-faced man glaring down at him, of fingers digging into his shoulders.
He moved without thinking; fear and rage combined to produce a violent twist and shove that flung the man away from him. He heard a sickening thud as the man’s head struck the canal wall. Suddenly, the man had slumped unconscious across the gunwale of the gondola.
Running footsteps. Chris looked up to see another man racing down an alley toward him. He looked around in desperation. There was an alley on the other side of the canal.
He moved without thinking, sure that Alexsandra had been killed. Stumbling across the gondola, he stepped up on the gunwale and leaped, slamming onto his knees on the cobblestone paving. He heard another popping noise behind him and a chunk of mortar on a nearby building wall exploded out. “Jesus Christ!” he muttered. Scrambling to his feet, he started running up the alley.
Another popping sound from behind. Chris cried out as a searing pain ripped through his right forearm. He clutched at the arm spasmodically. Then, as another bullet whined off the paving, ricocheting off a building wall just ahead, he ran faster, mouth open, gasping at the warm, heavy air.
He glanced back and saw the man clambering rapidly across the gondola and jumping to this side of the canal. Sucking in breath, teeth clenched, Chris tried to run faster. It felt as though his right forearm had been set on fire, the hot pain was so agonizing. A wave of dizziness swept over him and, for several moments, he was sure that he was going to fall. No! he thought.
He knew he couldn’t outrun the man. His mind raced frantically through his file of novel memories. Hero chased by killer, then: alley with side alley. It seemed as though the answer sprang into his mind. He knew it was his only chance.
Skidding around the corner of a building, he jarred to a halt, trying not to breathe so loud. He heard the running footsteps of the man approaching and braced himself. Now or never, Barton, said a faint voice in his mind.
The instant the man began to turn the corner, Chris charged sideways at him, ramming him as hard as he could with his left shoulder and knocking him back; the pain in his right forearm flared so sharply that he cried out uncontrollably. The man went floundering back and crashed against a building wall. He started to recover but Chris kicked out at him as violently as he could.
He’d never in his life even imagined actually kicking a man in the testicles: In books and movies, such a kick was somehow associated with humor. There was nothing humorous about it though. The man’s mouth opened wide in a wheezing cry, his expression suddenly one of total agony. Chris had to force himself to grab the man’s right arm and slam the hand against the brick wall of the building. The pistol clattered to the cobblestone paving and the man began to slump. Chris turned and started blindly running to escape.
The moment he did, he saw the two men coming at him.
Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe. The fiery pain in his arm began to shoot into his shoulder and neck. Darkness pressed at his eyes again. He tried to fight it but was unable to do so. Stumbling, he fell against a building to his right. The explosion of pain in his arm began to cloud his brain.
Then darkness swallowed him.
***
“There is no time left,” the voice whispered.
Chris stirred, a faint groan in his throat.
“You can run no longer,” the voice continued. “You are at the end of the road. Now is the time for you to discover all the answers. Now.”
As he jerked up with a startled gasp, Chris thought he heard running footsteps receding from him. His eyelids fluttered, then lifted and he stared ahead blankly. His right forearm was throbbing.
There was a wall of stone and mortar across from him, very old. Light filtered down from above like gray mist. He shivered. The air was chilled. He became aware that he was sitting on cold stone and struggled to his feet, hissing at the pain in his arm as he used his right hand to push up. His arm was bandaged, he saw.
He looked around dazedly. Where was he?
Then abruptly he looked down. He’d been holding a slip of paper in his left hand and, in standing, he’d let go of it so that it fluttered to the floor. He stared down at it, afraid to see what it was.
Then, after several moments, he braced himself and, bending over, picked up the scrap of paper. It was the size of a business card.
He closed his eyes for several moments, the flaring pain in his arm making him wince and hiss. Then he looked at the slip of paper.
There were words printed on it. Using his left hand, he raised the slip to the light, glancing upward to see that the gray illumination came from an overhead shaft; far above, he saw what looked to be the sky.
He peered closely at the slip of paper then.
Pontifica Commissions/Di archeologic Sacra was printed at the top with a symbol on each side of the words, a dove with a garland in its beak on the left, what looked like an anchor on the right.
Below that were words printed in darker, thicker letters.
Biglietto D’ingresso/alle Catacombe/Di S. Callisto.
Chris shuddered violently, his fingers twitching, dropping the slip again.
He was in a Roman catacomb, an underground cemetery.
The one Alexsandra had insisted that her foster parents take her to see.
It was completely back now, the sense of total unreality. The wager had been lost; he knew that. There was no way he could cope with this. He was ready to be put away at last
, his mind undone.
A movement at his left caught the corners of his eyes and he jerked around.
He stared in breathless silence at the figure at the far end of the tunnel-like corridor.
Standing in deep shadows was a woman in a pale white gown.
Her, he thought. Her ghost. She’d never been real.
He felt as though his mind was being slowly crushed in by a tightening clamp.
Her, he thought again. Alexsandra.
He had to know.
He started walking toward her, hearing the faint scuffing sound his shoes made on the stone floor of the tunnel. The figure didn’t move. It was her. He could see it clearly now. She was staring at him, waiting for him. Her figure wavered. Chris drew in choking breath.
He could see right through her.
He stopped and leaned against the stone wall, eyes closed, body wracked by shivers. The pain in his arm was a dull ache that pulsed like a heartbeat.
When he opened his eyes again, she was gone.
Chris swallowed dryly, staring at the place where she’d been standing. Why was she gone now? he wondered.
He spoke her name aloud, unnerved by the stricken sound of his voice.
There was no response and she did not appear again.
He pushed away from the wall and continued down the corridor. He held himself tightly, expecting, at any moment, her ghost to reappear.
When he reached the spot where she’d been standing, he looked to his left and saw an open crypt.
The same gray light filtered down from above.
A sarcophagus stood across from him, built against the back wall.
Chris moved inside the crypt, unable to hold back. It has to go all the way, he thought. The voice had been right. Now was the time for him to discover all the answers.
He stopped. There were faded words on the wall above the sarcophagus. Carved in stone innumerable centuries ago. He had studied Latin from a textbook once, and, slowly, he deciphered the meaning of the words.
While the Kingdom of Heaven carries off her chosen soul, this revered tomb encloses the mortal remains of the good lady—
“—Alexsandra,” he whispered.
He couldn’t hold himself back. It was as though a magnet drew him forward to the sarcophagus.
He stared down through the thick plate glass.
All that remained were brownish fragments of bone and gray dust. He leaned down closer, his heartbeat slow and heavy.
The ring was there, encircling what was left of her finger….
***
At first he thought that someone else was moaning in the tomb.
Then he realized that it was coming from his own throat as he backed off from the sarcophagus, whirled, and found himself confronted by two men in black.
He stood frozen for an instant, staring at them as they started for him. Then, something wild and dark erupted in his mind and with a savage cry, he leaped at them.
Grabbing one, he hurled him aside; the man staggered, off balance, against a wall. The second man threw his right arm around Chris’s neck and jerked it tight. Pain shot through Chris’s right arm as he elbowed the man in the side. The man’s arm loosened and he gasped in startlement.
Then something smashed on Chris’s head and blackness leaped up from the floor, enveloping his brain. He fought against it, blinking rapidly, swinging out blindly at the air. The dark fog thinned and he could see the second man about to hit him on the head again with the barrel of an automatic. Rearing back, he lost his balance and began to fall.
He landed on the elbow of his right arm, screaming at the burst of pain. Shadows poured across his brain again as he writhed in agony on the cold stone floor.
He gasped as the two men grabbed him beneath the arms and hauled him to his feet. He tried to resist but couldn’t. There was no strength left in him.
Drifting in and out of consciousness, he felt himself being half walked, half dragged from the tomb and along a corridor, up a curving staircase of stone and out into gloomy daylight.
He tried to struggle again but couldn’t, hissing as one of the men twisted back his right arm. Darkness pulsed across him once more. He tried to think, to be aware, but there was no way. He stared at a line of pines that seemed to stretch into infinity. The Pines of Rome, his mind thought dully.
Then he was being dragged toward a towering brick structure, through its open doorway and up a long, curving flight of wooden steps. “Who are you?” he muttered dazedly.
The men said nothing. He could hear their heavy breathing as they dragged him up the steps. The climb seemed to take hours.
Then he was being pulled into a darkened room with narrow lancet windows. The two men let go of his arms and he felt himself falling. He cried out as his knees hit the hard wood floor, then strained to keep from falling any farther, wavering in the dimly lit room, sucking fitfully at the air, which smelled of old dust.
“So this is our genius,” said a man’s voice, sounding icily amused.
Chris raised his head and blinked laboriously. As the cloudiness lifted from his sight, he saw a heavy man looming over him. He couldn’t make out the man’s features because it was too shadowy in the room. He could only see a bulky form, a dark suit and a white shirt, a fez on the man’s head.
“I’m glad to meet you finally,” the man told Chris. “You have been no end of trouble to me.”
Chris swallowed with effort, coughing weakly. “What d’you want?” he mumbled.
“Primarily your death,” the man replied. Chris shuddered at the casual sound in his voice.
“Why? What have I—?”
Chris broke off as the man gestured. He felt himself being abruptly grabbed beneath the arms again and roughly yanked up to his feet. He groaned at the pain in his right arm, his vision clouding again.
“That hurts, I suppose,” the man said. “Your own fault for resisting in Venice.”
“What d’you—?”
“Be still,” the man told him. “As I said, my primary desire where you’re concerned is to see you dead. If you are dead, you can no longer do your work. That’s clear to you, of course.”
Chris stared at the man. In the gray light from the windows, he could see the man’s face now.
It was broad and pockmarked, with heavy-lidded eyes, and lips as thin as knife blades; across the man’s forehead was a long white scar. It was the most inhuman face Chris had ever seen.
“My advisers tell me it would be more profitable, however, if I possessed the information locked up in that singular skull of yours.” The man smiled coldly. “Unless, of course, this strenuous activity has knocked it from your mind. Has it, Mr. Barton?”
He knows who I am was all Chris could think.
“Let us see what still remains,” the man said.
Chris saw him reach down and noticed that the man was holding a cassette recorder in his hand. There was a clicking sound on the recorder and a small red light blinked on.
“Now,” the man said, “I would like you to explain your project. Do not hesitate to enumerate mathematical details which none of us here—except you, of course—will understand. I have people working for me who will understand.”
Chris stared at the man in stricken silence. I’m going to die, he thought.
“Please. Don’t hesitate,” the man instructed him. “If I can get the information on this problem—what do you call it… turbulence?—I can sell that information for enormous sums of money. There are many buyers, many governments who would be happy to acquire such information. Please. Begin.”
Chris stared at the man dumbly, trying to think. Was there any way at all of getting out of this?
“I do not enjoy waiting,” the heavy man told him.
Chris swallowed. His throat felt completely dry. “I—” He cleared his throat. “My work is written down on papers. I hid them in my hotel room in Venice.”
He broke off with a cry of pain as the heavy man slapped him so violently across the
cheek that his head snapped sideways, a pain shooting up his neck like an electric shock.
“If you insist on lying, we will kill you straightaway,” the man informed him.
“I—”
“We know about your comprehensive memory.” The man cut him off. “You would leave nothing on paper, you are not that stupid. Now, begin to speak into this recorder. My last warning.”
“But it’s too complicated to just dictate—” Chris began.
His voice stopped and he drew in a long, gasping breath as the two men shoved him to one of the lancet windows and began to cram him through the opening.
“Wait!” he cried.
He felt the two men grab his legs and lift his feet from the floor.
“No!” Chris froze in their grip, his features distended by terror.
Then he was hanging head-down, staring in shock at the ground far below.
Chris drew in rasping breath, his heartbeat quickening.
“Is your heart beginning to beat quite rapidly?” the man’s voice drifted down to him. “That is called chamade, Mr. Barton—the drumbeat which signals the moment of surrender. Are you ready to surrender yet? Or would you prefer to plummet down and crack your skull like egg?”
“If I die, you have no formula!” Chris yelled at him, appalled to hear fury in his voice, knowing it was madness.
“And no one else has it either,” the man said; he actually sounded amused. “Least of all, your filthy government. And I shall have to find some other worthy formula to sell. Perhaps a finer nerve gas.”
God, Chris thought.
“One more opportunity,” he heard the man say. The calmness of his tone made Chris’s skin grow cold.
Suddenly, there was a muffled voice inside. He couldn’t hear what it said. He kept staring in horror at the long fall beneath him.
“Drop him,” the heavy man ordered.
The muffled voice spoke again as Chris closed his eyes abruptly, preparing to die.
“I said—!”
The heavy man’s voice was cut off by a crashing pistol shot. Chris tried to grip at the rough brick siding of the tower but couldn’t get hold of anything. He drew in a hissing breath, still convinced that he was going to die.
7 Steps to Midnight Page 28
