Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear (17 page)

“We can
get
you food,” Gabriel said. “I can arrange for supplies to be flow in, I can—”

“And face men each day? No. No.” It stepped back, toward the shadow. “You have given me all I need. You have shown me my mother’s face again.”

“Please, let me do something to help—”

“Gabriel,” Sheba said.

He turned to her. “What?”

“Look,” she said, and pointed.

Turning back, he saw the gray of the sphinx’s fur deepening, darkening; then he saw the skin of its face turning stiff, blank, saw the liquid surface of its eyes
harden. The change crept across its body gradually, but rapidly. In seconds it was over.

Gabriel stepped forward, touched its shoulder. The stone was still slightly warm. But as he felt it, it cooled beneath his hand.

He took the two coins, stacked them, and gently slid them into the statue’s open mouth, beneath its tongue.

They found a stairway, carved into the rock, that led up to the top. The climb was torment—by the end, Gabriel’s legs were burning with pain and Sheba could barely walk.

They came out into a clear night sky. The storm had passed. The stone surface glistened wetly, but the air was warm and dry.

At the far end of the rock, near where DeGroet’s body lay, a familiar helicopter stood, its door open. The pilot was by the door, talking into a microphone, and when he spotted them walking toward him, he shouted.

“Hold on—yes, hold on! I found them!”

They staggered forward.

“How did you…?” Gabriel began, but for the moment he couldn’t get any more words out.

“Talk to your brother,” the pilot said, and handed over the microphone, then stepped around Gabriel to help Sheba up into the cabin.

“Gabriel? Are you okay?” It was Michael’s voice.

“I’ve been better,” Gabriel said.

“I want you back here
now.
”

“Not half as much as I do,” Gabriel said. “How did you find me?”

“We tracked your signal,” Michael said.

“What…what signal? I don’t have a cell phone, I don’t have…”

“That guy, Cipher,” Michael said. “He sent me an e-mail
saying he’d given you a device to track someone else, right? Well, he had the good sense to slip in a transmitter going the other way so we could track you, too. Clever, right? And we didn’t even ask him to do it, he just thought of it on his own.”

Gabriel found himself smiling. He saw his leather jacket lying ten feet away, a wet and crumpled heap on the stone. Somewhere in the heap was a pocket, and in the pocket Lucy’s box was silently sending out a signal. “Very clever.”

“I wish I could thank him properly,” Michael said. “But he refused to take any money. It’s strange, dealing with someone this way. I’ve never even met the man. I don’t even know what he looks like.”

“Oh, he’s…uh…”

“What?” Michael said.

“Big,” Gabriel said, and wiped a tear out of his eye with the back of one thumb. “A big, big man. My size. Mean-looking.” He took a deep breath. “Lots of tattoos. Not your kind of guy, Michael. I think it’s better if you don’t meet him in person.”

“Well…maybe you’re right,” Michael said. “But I’m still grateful to him.”

“Me, too,” Gabriel said, climbing into the cabin. “Me, too.”

The End

When I was in Istanbul, I met a pair of writers doing research in the
Yerebatan Sarayi,
the Sunken Palace. One of them, I learned, was an author of adventure fiction, and when the time came for me to pen the book you’re holding, I tracked him down and asked if he might give me a hand. (I would have done it myself, gladly, but I was unfortunately tied up with some matters in Brazil at the time. And I do mean tied up.)

Happily, Charles agreed to help. And I asked him if, when the novel was finished, he might consider writing an extra adventure story of his own for the book, as a sort of bonus for the reader. Happily, he agreed to this as well.

So I’m delighted to present you with a surprise treat, a novelette that’s never appeared anywhere before: “Nor Idolatry Blind The Eye” by Charles Ardai.

—G.H.

The heel of the bottle cracked against the bar on the first swing and then shattered on the second. The few conversations in the room died. In the silence Malcolm could hear glass crunching under his feet. He felt his legs shake and put out his other hand to steady himself.

There were three of them, and a broken bottle wouldn’t hold them off long enough for him to get to the door. Assuming he could even make it to the door without falling on his face. There was a time when he could have made it in a dead sprint, turning over tables as he went to slow them down, but then there was a time when he wouldn’t have had to run from a fight in the first place, not if it were a whole regiment facing him. A time when he’d been able to hold his liquor, too. But that was all part of the past—the dead past, buried three winters ago in a cold Glasnevin grave.

He shook his head, but it didn’t get any clearer. He remembered coming to the pub, he remembered taking his first few drinks, and he remembered the three men taking up positions around him, reaching over his shoulder to collect their pints from the barman. Was that how the argument had started? Or had one of them said something? That he couldn’t remember. He supposed it didn’t matter.

The one in the middle was younger than the other two—just a kid, really. He was wearing a navy peajacket,
probably his brother’s or father’s since he looked too young to have served himself. The others were dressed in denim windbreakers and dungarees, like they’d just stepped off a construction site. Which maybe they had—there was still plenty of rebuilding going on. The one on the left had the crumpled features of a boxer who’d taken too many trips to the mat. The one on the right looked almost delicate, his thin nose and long chin giving him the appearance of a society lad slumming in a tough neighborhood. Malcolm knew which one he’d prefer to face in a fight. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like he’d get to choose.

All three had their hands up, palms out, but it was a gesture of mocking deference, not fear. Malcolm swung the bottle by the neck and they didn’t even bother to step back.

“Go on, old man,” the one in the middle said. “Just try it.”

“Leave me alone,” Malcolm said, or tried to—the words sounded strange to his ears, like he was talking through cotton. He forced himself to enunciate. “I don’t want to fight you.”

“Bugger that,” the society boy said. “You’re bloody well going to.”

Malcolm feinted toward the boy’s face with the jagged edge of the bottle, then dodged around him. The door was open and the way before him was clear, but he felt himself stagger as he ran, felt his head spin and the floor lurch up to meet him. He fought to catch his balance and then lost it again. He fell to one knee and the bottle spilled out of his hand.

The first kick caught him in the side as he was standing up, and it laid him out flat on the floor. After that, Malcolm couldn’t say who was kicking him or even what direction the blows came from. He covered his head with one arm and tried to back up against the bar.

One boot heel caught him in the chest. By some old reflex, he snaked an arm out and pinched the foot in the crook of his elbow. He twisted violently and its owner came crashing to the floor.

“That’s it,” one of them said. Malcolm felt a fist bunched in the fabric of his shirtfront, felt himself lifted bodily from the floor and pressed back against the bar. It was the boxer’s meaty fist at his throat, the boy in the peajacket looking on angrily over his shoulder. So the society lad must be the one laid out on the floor, groaning curses into the sawdust. Well, he had taken one down, anyway.

“You’re going to wish you hadn’t done that,” the boxer said.

Malcolm swung a fist at him, but it was hardly a punch at all, and the man holding him deflected it lightly with his forearm. In return, he threw a right cross that snapped Malcolm’s head violently to the side. Malcolm felt blood on his cheek where the man’s ring had scraped a ragged groove, and he tasted bile when he swallowed. He tried to raise a knee toward the man’s groin, but he couldn’t—they were standing too close together, and anyway his legs felt like lead. He groped behind him on the bar, hoping his fingers would find something—a glass, an ashtray, anything—but all they found was another hand that pinned his firmly against the wood.

“Teach him a lesson,” the boy in the peajacket said. He pressed down, grinding Malcolm’s knuckles into the wood. “Teach him good.”

He felt a thumb and forefinger at his chin, positioning his head, saw the man’s fist cock back, saw it snap forward. After that, he didn’t see anything, just felt the punches landing from the darkness.

One punch split his lip against his front teeth and he gagged from the taste of blood. He felt the night’s liquor coming up and he made no effort to stop it. Vomit
poured out of him, a day’s worth of food and drink expelled in foul batches. The men holding him yanked their hands away and Malcolm slid to the floor.

“Goddamn narrowback lush
—” Another kick dug deep into his belly. From somewhere off to one side, Malcolm heard the click of a switchblade opening.

“Cut the sorry bastard—”

He forced his eyes open, rolled out of the way as the blade descended. It was the boy in the peajacket holding it. He swung again, and Malcolm lifted an arm to block it. He felt the blade slice through the sleeve and streak across the flesh beneath it.

“Stop that!”

It was a woman’s voice. Malcolm hugged his bleeding arm to his chest and looked for the source of the voice. A pair of legs approached, clad in nylons, a tan skirt ending just below the knee. The shoes were brown leather and scuffed, with low heels, the sort a certain type of girl would call “sensible.” On either side, a pair of paint-smeared dungarees turned in her direction.

“Leave him alone, or I’ll bring the police.”

“Stay out of this, love. It’s not your fight.”

“Oh, yes? And what do you call it when my husband is getting himself mauled by the likes of you?”

“You’re married to…this?”

“He may not be much,” she said, “but I’d just as soon not have him skewered over some tiff in a pub. Now would you be kind enough to help him up so I can bring him home?”

A tense moment passed, the blade still shining under the room’s lights. Then a pair of rough hands folded the switchblade shut. It disappeared into the long slash pocket of the peajacket. “He’s your problem, love. Help him yourself.”

“Jaysus,” one of the others said, “bird like you and an old harp like him. No bleeding justice, is there?”

“Bastard.” One of them got in a final kick, wiped the sole of his work boot on Malcolm’s shirt. Then the men’s legs went away. The woman’s stayed.

Malcolm wanted to raise his eyes, to look at the woman’s face, but his arm had started to throb and he found himself slipping in and out of consciousness.

The stockings took two steps forward, skirting the smear of filth beside him. The woman lowered herself to a crouch. The light was behind her and Malcolm could only faintly make out her features. She had a sharp widow’s peak and fair skin, and the largest, saddest eyes he could remember seeing.

“You’re Malcolm Stewart?” she said.

He nodded. She looked as though she’d been hoping he’d say no.

“Look at you,” she said. “I can’t take you to him like this.”

“To whom?” he said. He felt dizzy. “Do I know you?”

“My employer. He asked me to bring you to him. He has—” She paused to look him over again, and the disappointment in her voice was undisguised when she spoke. “He has an assignment for you, Mr. Stewart.”

“…an assignment?”

“I told him it wasn’t a good idea. I told him the reports he had were years old. But Mr. Burke’s not one to be put off.” She took him by his undamaged arm, pulled him not too gently to his knees. “Come along, Mr. Stewart. Let’s get you bandaged up and bathed, what do you say?”

“I say,” he mumbled, trying to think of the words. “I say ‘thank you’?”

“Well,” she said, “it’s a start.”

The iodine stung and the bandage smarted. He’d burned his tongue on the coffee she’d given him, and his chest was erupting with colorful bruises. His head was still
ringing. But he’d showered (carefully, leaning against the wall) and he could feel sobriety returning to him, timidly, like a husband tiptoeing back into the house after an evening’s debauch.

“Have you got a name?” he said. “Or would you rather I just thought of you as an anonymous benefactor?”

She was watching him from one of the bedroom chairs, legs crossed primly at the ankles, hands laced in her lap. She had an admirable figure and a face just this side of beautiful. And she was young, too—still in her early twenties, Malcolm guessed, which would make her less than half his age. He could understand why the lads in the bar might have had a hard time picturing them as man and wife.

“My name is Margaret Stiles. But that’s not important. Only Mr. Burke is, and what he wants to talk to you about.”

“And what is that?”

“He’ll want to tell you himself.”

“I see.”

“Please choose a shirt and get dressed,” she said. “We shouldn’t keep Mr. Burke waiting.”

There were three shirts laid out on the bed. Malcolm selected the softest of them, a red flannel, and drew it on over his bandaged arm. He winced as he buttoned it.

He was still wearing his own pants—they hadn’t been spattered as badly. And the boots were his as well. A quick dunk under the tap had restored them to whatever prior vitality they might have claimed. His shirt had been ruined. He imagined it was now being incinerated in some hidden chamber of this house.

“Your Mr. Burke knows I’m here?”

“I spoke to him while you were in the shower.”

“And he wants to see me now?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Why ‘in a manner of speaking’?”

“Come on,” she said, standing up. “We’ve lost enough time.”

“I want to know what you meant. He doesn’t want to see me?”

“I imagine,” she said, “that he would like to see you more than anything. But that’s hardly an option.”

“Any why is that?”

“His eyes, Mr. Stewart. He was blinded in North Africa.”

North Africa. The words brought a rush of painful memories. The press toward Libya, the desert winds in his throat, the baking heat, and in the middle of it all, between spells of tortured boredom, the moments of utter chaos: the mortar rounds tearing great gouts out of the sand, and out of the men who sped across it. So Burke had been an 8
^th
Army man? And had paid for it dearly, though not so dearly as some.

“I’m sorry,” Malcolm said. “I was in that campaign myself.”

“I know you were,” she said. “It’s one of the reasons he selected you, though perhaps he’ll think better of it once he meets you.”

“That’s rather harsh, my dear.”

“Harsh? Look at you. And what he’ll ask of you, Mr. Stewart…it’s ever so much worse than dealing with those three in the pub.”

“I’ve dealt with worse.”

“Yes, but recently?” She waited, but he had no answer for her. “Now will you please follow me?”

He stepped out into the hall. She led him down to the main floor on a staircase wide enough to hold four men abreast. The building was deceptive: From the front as they’d come in it hadn’t looked nearly as big as it turned out to be once you were inside. There was money behind this Burke, generations of it. It didn’t show in ostentatious ways—no chandeliers dripping with crystal
or gold leaf on the picture frames. But the pictures themselves looked like they’d fetch a pretty sum at auction, and the carpeting was the sort that costs as much as most people spend to furnish their entire homes.

They passed from the entry hall into a library, and on through a short connecting corridor into the kitchen, where a woman in a cook’s smock stood cutting potatoes into a copper kettle. She looked up as they passed. He thought he spied a look of pity in her eyes.

“Another, Miss Stiles?”

Margaret moved them along without slowing.

Malcolm looked back over his shoulder. The woman was still watching, knife at the ready, supper temporarily forgotten.

Malcolm didn’t say anything till they were out of earshot. “What did she mean, ‘another’?”

“Never mind her.” Margaret stopped at a closed door. She tugged on a brass pull set into the doorframe at eye level. He could hear a bell ring within and, moments later, a man’s voice called out. “Miss Stiles?”

“Yes.”

“Have you got Mr. Stewart with you?”

“Yes.”

“Bring him in.” It was a deep voice, muffled by the door, but strong, Malcolm thought, and self-confident. He was put in mind of his commanding officers from the army—it was the sort of voice you were trained to use when marshalling troops for a charge across a noman’s zone. Some men didn’t need to be trained, of course. They’d learned it in the nursery or had it bred into them from birth.

Margaret swung the door open. He was surprised to see no light behind it. She made no move to turn one on.

“Come in, Mr. Stewart,” the voice intoned. “Don’t let the darkness bother you. Miss Stiles will show you to a chair.” She took him by the arm and steered him through
the room, navigating obstacles he could see only dimly. It was oddly damp in the room, as though a window had been left open, but the only windows he could make out appeared to be shut and heavily curtained.