The Pegasus Secret

by Gregg Loomis

  Instead, he made sure the hall was empty before taking the rifle out from under the robe and checking the clip. Full with all thirty-six rounds. Too bad the guard hadn’t had an extra magazine. Ammunition, Lang mused, was like cash on a vacation: no matter how much you brought, it was never enough.

  He risked taking off the cassock long enough to sling the AK-47 muzzle down under his right arm so that, if need be, he could bring it up, firing through the cloth. He wasn’t going to get any points for marksmanship that way, but the Russian-designed weapon was intended more for rapid fire at relatively close range than for competition shooting.

  Keeping close to the wall, Lang sauntered down the hall as though he knew where he was going. At the intersection, both directions looked the same: dimly lit, with curving walls and regularly spaced doors that, absent the outside latch, were identical to the one he had just locked.

  Right or left?

  Lang chose left so the rifle was on the outside. If he had to use it, he preferred not to have to fire across his body. Shortly, he came to an arch framing a staircase beneath an arched window, the glass black with night. The steps only went down. Lang was on the top floor.

  The stairs were marble. Like the tower of Blanchefort, there was a depression worn in the middle where centuries of feet had passed that way. Also like the old castle, the risers were short, made for short legs. The steps radiated from a center column in a spiral tight enough to make him slow his descent to ease a faint sense of vertigo.

  There were landings on each of the two floors he passed, each similar to the others, each with a window. He saw the color of night and an occasional streak of light shimmering through the waves of the hand-blown glass.

  A sound floated up the tight circular stairway, so faint Lang was surprised that he had been unconsciously listening for some time. The further down he went, the more distinct it became until he recognized it as a Gregorian chant, Latin sung without tune, but still pleasingly melodic.

  Still too distant to make out the words, Lang came to yet another landing. The stairs continued down, but through the window he could see trees, their branches limned against a streetlight. He thought he could make out a wall, too. He stopped. This place—this weird, round building—probably had at least one basement, no doubt complete with dungeons. If Lang was seeing what he thought he saw outside the window, this must be the ground floor.

  He stepped into another circular hallway, this one with a ceiling vaulted twenty feet. The cold gray of stone walls was abated by tapestries, their figures life size and mostly gory. In silent agony, martyrs bristled with arrows, sizzled over fires and were devoured by lions. Between the gruesome pictures, suits of chain mail held swords, empty helmet slits squinting into the dim light.

  The main floor.

  Like the men in the lifeboat in the lawyer joke, he knew where he was but not where that was.

  Steps echoed from the stone floor. Lang grasped the rifle under the robe with one hand and tugged the hood down further over his face with the other. There was no need. Like a ghost in his white habit, a figure floated past on the other side of the hallway. His hands clutched rosary beads and he was mumbling what Lang supposed was a prayer.

  Once the Templar was out of sight, Lang felt like saying one of his own.

  The chanting grew louder until Lang was at its source. To the right, a huge circular room was filled with men in white robes or chain mail armor. In the center of the circle, another man in robes stood before a carved marble altar faced by the standing congregation.

  Just as Pietro had described the chapel at Blanchefort.

  Past the chapel was what Lang guessed was the door to the outside. To call it massive hardly did it justice. Reaching almost to the ceiling, two single panels were held closed by an iron bar as thick as Lang’s thighs. The hinges, shiny brass, were three or four feet in height.

  Lang considered making a dash for it but quickly discarded the idea. Two men, one on each side of the door, stood guard, their AK-47’s anachronisms against the white surcoats with the red crosses.

  They did not appear to be purely decorative.

  Both watched with little interest as Lang approached.

  Their reply to his motioning for them to open the door was a question in the same Slavic tongue he had heard before. Lang gave an exaggerated shrug to say that he didn’t understand. With the international character of Pegasus, surely not everyone spoke the same language, at least not this language.

  The man on the left pantomimed reading something and held out his hand, a clear signal that he expected a document or writing of some sort. Apparently the good brothers had to get a hall pass to leave.

  The man on the right was staring at Lang’s feet. The Mephistos. After throwing the one, Lang had put the pair back on. Everyone here wore the armored solleret or Jesus shoes.

  The Templar guard was quick to unsling his rifle but not nearly as quick as Lang in raising the one under the robe. The sound of the shot inside stone walls was deafening. A neat red hole was centered on the cross on the Templar’s robe, blood smudging the sterile white.

  The remaining guard was as eager as his brothers to die for the cause, scrambling to bring his weapon to bear. Lang again squeezed off a single shot from the hip, aware that he had been forced to kill yet again.

  Even before the sound waves reverberating from the domed ceiling stopped echoing in Lang’s ears, the chanting stopped. He let the rifle’s sling slip from his shoulder to use both hands on the huge latch on the door. He pushed from his mind the possibility this led into another part of the building or a closed courtyard.

  Worse than up that well-known creek.

  The latch weighed nearly a hundred pounds and Lang had to lift it a good three feet or so to clear the hasp. The exertion sent daggers across the shoulder that had been twisted as well as a lightening bolt to his scrotum that burned away any remorse he might have felt at leaving two more dead Templars. In fact, the pain was so great that he had an instant fantasy of sticking around to kill every one of them.

  A sound behind told him he might have that opportunity. He turned to face the entire congregation from the chapel. Gritting teeth against the pain so hard that he could hear molars grinding, he gave the latch a final shove, pushing the door with his foot. The great hinges moved with what seemed glacial speed and there was a three- or four-foot gap between the doors. Through it Lang could see the gray of dawn and feel a slight breeze.

  He was almost outside.

  A quick glance over his shoulder saw a distinctly unhappy crowd moving toward him. Although unarmed, the intent was clearly hostile. Stooping, Lang retrieved one of the AK-47’s from the floor and thumbed it onto automatic. As he slid between the giant doors, he sent a burst into the ceiling. The noise and the shower of plaster had the desired effect of making everyone duck.

  Then Lang was running down steps and onto what looked like a driveway.

  He had no idea where he was, so he followed the pavement. Semitropical plants, palm trees, Spanish bayonet, succulent cactus and, beyond, a high wall filled his vision. He hadn’t thought about the wall, particularly one far too high to jump and topped with razor wire. A closer look revealed electrical wiring, too. Whether these people meant to keep people in or out, they were serious about it.

  If there was a driveway, there had to be an exit. Keeping in the dark, Lang paralleled the pavement until he came to the gate. Iron and every bit as tall as the doors he had just come through, it was the only way out of the compound he could see and it was guarded by two men who weren’t dressed in costume. But they did carry automatic weapons and one of them held a cell phone to his ear. Lang was willing to bet he wasn’t calling out for a pizza.

  Squatting behind a bush, Lang surveyed the situation. The warm breeze was heavy with moisture, the smell of salt air and jasmine. Somewhere near the ocean, but what ocean?

  The guard with the cell phone snapped it shut and put it in a pocket, speaking to his comrade. They took
their rifles in both hands and began to scan the grounds. Lang considered two quick shots. At this distance, a miss was unlikely. No good. The sound would draw everyone and Lang wasn’t sure he could get those gates to open. Steel arms on each side indicated there was some sort of mechanism that controlled the movement. If a combination was required or he couldn’t find the switch, Lang would be no better off than he was now.

  Make that worse off. He could hear the barking of dogs approaching.

  Not a lot of time. In the east, the day was brightening. It would be fully light soon.

  7

  Lisbon, Portela Airport

  0624 hours

  The twin DeHavilland turned off the runway of Lisbon’s Portela Airport to taxi towards a small ramp where a number of vehicles waited. Within minutes, a parade of black Lancias was streaming along the Avenida Maréchal through a city not yet quite awake.

  From a tinted window, Inspector Fitzwilliam watched the night reluctantly depart Lisbon. The guidebook he had scanned on the plane told him that somewhere out there in the dark was the old city. Briefly, he let himself fantasize: he and Shandon on holiday, seated at a small restaurant with a view of the Tagus, Lisbon’s magnificent harbor, castles brooding on the surrounding hills. Magnificent from the pictures.

  Unfortunately, romantic trips were hardly the purpose at hand. He watched as the cavalcade flashed through Campo Grande, white-belted polícia holding back the light traffic of delivery trucks from the country and homeward-bound late-night celebrants. Moments later, he was on the divided IC19. A cloverleaf and the suburb of Queluz whizzed by. Even the pink glow of dawn could not improve the monotony of white flats stacked boxlike on barren slopes.

  Damnably accommodating of these chaps, the inspector thought. The Froggies would have died rather than invite him along to observe the arrest. The Dons and Krauts would have smothered him with an endless stream of paperwork. Too bad all the sodding EU didn’t cooperate as easily as Portugal. And to sweeten the matter, no one needed to suffer the bother of getting a warrant, according to Carlas, his contact here. Just knock on the door and search for Mr. Langford Bloody Reilly all you bloody like.

  He settled back in the seat. This was going to be a pleasure. Maybe Carlas could even get the extradition papers in order while he shopped for a gift for Shandon, bring Reilly back the same day.

  Now that was day dreaming, he told himself.

  If only this affair hadn’t leaked to the local constabulary in time for them to warn whoever it was that had Reilly. The Sintra police, he understood, viewed their duty as protecting the local gentry. Even against, or particularly against, the national authorities.

  8

  Sintra

  0647 hours

  “You sure that you can cut that without getting electrocuted?”

  The sniper held up a piece of uninsulated wire for an answer, quickly clipping it to a small black box that resembled a pocket tape recorder. “And with this, never will they detect the circuit has been interrupted. At least, not for two hours.”

  The pair had cut a gap in the wire and were sitting astride a section of the wall hidden from the main building by a clump of trees. The missing steel ringlets had been tossed onto the ground on the outside of the wall as soon as they had been clipped. Below the pair was a small gate almost obscured by flowering vines. Beside them was the grappling hook they had used to secure a rope to the top of the wall, a sound the guards had not heard because they had been investigating another noise, one made by pebbles tossed onto the pavement of the driveway.

  “What if he doesn’t get out of the house in two hours?” the other wanted to know. “We just calmly walk up to the door and ask to see him?”

  The sniper was about to answer but instead held up a hand and pointed to the two guards at the gate, their features rapidly becoming visible in the increasing light. The slump of people bored by the inherent tedium of such duty was gone from the way they stood, peering into the shadows shrinking from the morning. It was obvious they had become suddenly alert, one holding a phone to his head. If either person on the wall doubted something was happening, that doubt evaporated with the sound of dogs barking.

  9

  Sintra

  0648 hours

  Lang didn’t have many choices. With any luck at all, he thought, he should have two or three minutes before the dogs picked up the scent and either led his pursuers right to him or, more likely, attacked. Any reservations he had had about shooting the two guys at the gate were more than outweighed by the thought of becoming Kibbles and Bits. He’d have to get both men with one burst before either could return fire, though. Flipping the switch back to automatic, he took a deep breath and centered the AK’s front sight on the chest of the nearest man, exhaled and squeezed.

  Nothing.

  When his fingers touched the cocking mechanism, a chill of dread went all the way to his feet. The action was open, ready for a full clip. He had picked up the weapon of one of the men inside and hadn’t had time to check the magazine. The rifle was empty, useless.

  Well, maybe not entirely useless. Maybe he could at least use the butt as a club. Flitting from shadow to dark spot, he made a quick but indirect run for the gate. Behind, it sounded as if the hounds of hell were on his trail. More likely the Dobermans of doom.

  Lang was crouching, ready to make a final sprint across fifty feet or so of open space, when he heard something to his rear besides the dogs. As he spun around, he saw a dark object, felt a sharp blow to his head and everything went dark.

  10

  Sintra

  0649 hours

  Six cars squealed to a stop outside a ten-foot iron gate.

  Before Inspector Fitzwilliam could climb out of the backseat, two men were pounding the butts of what looked like Yank-made M16 rifles against the steel. He saw Carlas speak into a grille beside the gate, and the iron slowly began to swing open.

  11

  Sintra

  0700 hours

  Though stunned by the blow, Lang could feel the throbbing pain as though the back of his head might have a meat cleaver in it. He was being dragged to his feet by two men carrying rifles.

  Excited voices were shouting. He was being hauled towards the back of what looked like a medieval castle. The sound of engines made him twist in his captors’ grasp. Five or six long black cars were gliding up the driveway. Either Lang was witnessing a Mafia state funeral, a pimp’s convention was in town, or somebody really important had arrived. His head hurt too much for him to care which.

  Then he saw two guys in khaki, either militia or police. Sometimes in Europe it was hard to tell the difference. Even with the pain fogging his thought process, it hit him: Somehow the cops had found him. This time, the cavalry had come to Little Big Horn in time.

  His relief didn’t last long enough to enjoy. He was being taken away from his rescuers. One of his escorts pressed a rifle against Lang’s throbbing head. The unspoken message was clear: if he made any sound that attracted attention, it would be his last. Despair replaced elation. The building in front of them was big enough to hide Lang easily. The cops would never find him.

  “Lang! Here!”

  Lang recognized the voice calling to him from somewhere along the wall. Was he hallucinating?

  If so, the guys on either side of him were, too. They both whirled to their right, rifles pointing away from Lang. He took what seemed to be the only chance he had and made a headlong lunge.

  They spun back around, weapons coming to bear. Lang could see the dark hole of the muzzles, was expecting to see a flash, likely the last thing he would see on this earth.

  Instead one, then both, of the men pitched forward as though struck with an invisible hammer. At the same time, the whipcrack of the rifle that had killed them bounced from wall to wall.

  Stooping, he intended to grab both their weapons, but the same voice urged him on. “Run for it, Lang!”

  Ahead, he could see a rope dangling tantalizingly over the wall. H
e would later come to believe that with proper encouragement a man can equal or break any track record in the books. He knew he did in reaching that rope. Winding hands around it, he used his feet against the wall to climb faster than Tarzan ever had. He didn’t even notice the pain in his twisted shoulder.

  Painfully aware that he made an inviting target, a dark body against the white wall, he expected the sound of shots any minute. Then he almost sighed his relief. There would be no gunfire. The Templars wouldn’t dare shoot unless they wanted a war with the whole Portuguese police force.

  There was growling below and something struck at his feet as he pulled himself up. He could only hope the dogs weren’t particularly good jumpers.

  Someone was pulling on the rope, reeling it up, by the time Lang reached the top of the wall.

  He wasn’t surprised to see Gurt, her cheek pressed against the rifle stock in the standard sitting position for competition shooting. He had recognized not only her voice but also her marksmanship. He was, however, astonished to see Jacob beside her.

  “You’re too old for this,” Lang blurted.

  “I appreciate your bloody gratitude,” the Israeli said, calmly dropping the rope down the other side of the wall, “but you can express it fully when we get down from here.” He wrinkled his nose. “And are those your mates down there?”

  Below them was a milling, barking, growling mass of fur and teeth.

  Gurt held her sniper’s rifle in one hand and reached for the rope with the other. “You two may here sit and all day talk. For me, I am getting gone.”

  She disappeared feet first as she rappelled down the outside of the wall. Lang followed, this time fully aware of the needles of pain jabbing into his shoulder. Supporting even part of his weight tensed his crotch muscles, sending jolts of burning agony from scrotum to stomach.

  The three stood in a wooded area beside the wall as Jacob twitched the rope until the hook disengaged. Gurt disassembled her weapon and stowed the parts in an attaché case.

  “Shouldn’t we hurry?” Lang asked. “I mean, I don’t want you guys to do anything that’s uncool like running, but shouldn’t we be getting the hell out of here?”