North was sprinting so hard he almost missed the grey door with the ‘Storage’ sign painted across it. He screeched to a halt, grabbing hold of the doorjamb to slow himself before pressing down on the handle. He pushed open the door and a motion-activated light flickered into life. Glancing behind him, he slipped into the room, pressing shut the door.
They had to be running out of time. If he was right, the Thinkers would make their exit this way. And he’d be waiting for them.
The noise of an elderly fan rattled high up in the wall as he crossed the floor. Scaffolding poles lay piled alongside empty packing crates, while statues of strange stone figures with missing noses and limbs closed ranks alongside battered suits of armour. An enormous bust of some false-bearded pharaoh he recognized without being able to name stood atop a plinth, while fragments of pots and jars of brushes filled a trestle table. Roman, he guessed, or Etruscan, or Greek? Broken fragments – all that was left of previous lives.
Above the clatter of the fan, he heard footsteps running parallel to the wall. He breathed in for four seconds, let it go for four seconds. All good. Bring it on. As if it was an extension of his arm, he raised the MP5 he’d taken off Einstein, settling it into his shoulder as he pointed it towards the door. Focusing. The curved mag usually stacked thirty 9mm rounds in a double column. He remembered the Thinker firing bursts into the crowd. He switched to single shot – wouldn’t do to attract undue attention – and imagined the Aquinas mask. The tonsured monk. The halo and the machete. He took a breath.
The footsteps stopped and the door nudged open. As it did, he fired. A nick flew out of a jackal-headed Anubis holding a spear, as the interloper dived for cover and the sound of the shot took the place of oxygen in the room, making his ears ring.
In North’s experience, sometimes fear made desperate people more dangerous rather than less. More liable to take a risk and try to use their own weapon on someone – someone like him. He had no intention of dying at the hands of a fake monk with a very real machete. He kept the gun level.
The crimson fingertips appeared first, then the whole hands. She didn’t scream. Which surprised North in the circumstances. The circumstances being that he’d been about to save whoever was trying to kill her a whole heap of trouble by shooting Esme Sullivan Hawke through the left ventricle of her beating heart.
‘I’d say I’m pleased to see you,’ Esme said, emerging from behind a crate with the words ‘Fakes and Forgeries Exhibition’ stamped across rough wood, the clinging red dress splattered with dark blood and covered in cobwebs. ‘But apparently it’s not mutual.’
‘Are you hurt?’ he said, motioning to the dress. He’d only ever seen her in red, he realized.
With the tips of her fingers and thumbs, she lifted the bloody dress away from her skin as if she couldn’t bear the feel of it. From across the room, it looked as if she was fighting the urge to weep. ‘I tried to help someone, but he was too far gone, all I could do was stay with him till it was over.’ She bit her lip as she let the material fall back into place – there was nothing to be done about it. Her eyes met his and there was all sorts of grief there. ‘North, they must be here for Syd. Who are they?’
North had no idea, but he figured they were going to get the chance to ask one of them any second. He pulled her behind him as Aquinas burst in through the open door.