The savage blade skinned his knuckles and, blood pouring from the wound, North let go of the MP5. The weapon clattered to the floor and, with a primal grunt of satisfaction, Aquinas kicked it into the furthest corner of the storage room. North felt Esme move out from behind him, but she was too far away for him to protect her. He willed her to make for the door.
The monk brought the blade back up through the air so fast that North felt the breeze, even as the tip scraped against the bone of his forehead. Not a machete, but a lethal-looking kukri with an inwardly curved blade. A former Gurkha had once talked him through its virtues – a tip for stabbing, a midsection for chopping and a narrow section near the handle for whittling and carving. To be used as both a tool and a weapon. He took a step back, blinking away the blood that was flowing from the wound into his eye as Aquinas pulled out a smaller knife. He slashed wildly with the kukri and North veered to one side, realizing too late that the feint was designed to move him closer to the smaller blade. He felt it slice through the skin over his bicep. An inch further and it would have disabled his arm. And that would be game over.
The monk pushed forward, a blade in each hand, moving North backwards until the backs of his thighs hit the table of pottery behind him. Reaching out, his fingers gripped the pot shards, and he threw them one after the other after the other, but they bounced off the mask, and Aquinas kept coming.
North grabbed hold of Aquinas’s wrists, using every ounce of strength to keep them away from his own body. He felt the tip of the longer blade press into the flesh of his right forearm as his opponent shifted his grip on the weapon to reach him. A trickle of blood, hot and wet, ran the length of his outer forearm.
‘Stop, or I’ll fire,’ Esme ordered. She’d gone for the MP5 instead of the door, he realized.
‘Not now, sweetheart,’ the monk said without turning.
Aquinas pressed even closer to North and the blade bit deeper. Did she realize that if she fired at Aquinas, the bullets would pass through his internal organs and straight into North’s? But at least that way Aquinas would die too, and Esme would have a hope in hell of surviving.
‘Shoot the bastard, Esme!’ North was panting with the effort of keeping Aquinas at bay. He’d rather be shot by Esme than kebabbed by a mad monk.
Across the room there was a clatter of metal.
‘Get him away from you, North.’ Esme’s voice was close to panic.
North cursed – it wasn’t that easy – and behind the mask Aquinas laughed.
‘Now,’ she said.
With one final surge of effort, he let go of Aquinas’s wrists and pushed him backwards into the room. In the split second before the monk righted himself again, he disappeared under a colossal Egyptian bust of Ramesses II. A cloud of stone dust rose into the air.
Esme was standing behind the plinth with a scaffolding pole. She’d used the pole as a lever and the plinth as a fulcrum. He admired a woman with practical skills, especially when she used them to save him from otherwise certain death.
‘I pushed him off. Why didn’t you shoot him?’
‘Because there’s enough people dead up there and the chances are I’d have hit you too,’ Esme said, forlorn, gazing at the statue, which now he looked at it appeared to have a crack running up and down its length. Under it something stirred, and, as if in response, the statue broke clean apart. Blood spread from beneath the two halves as the twitching fingers of what was left of Aquinas stopped moving. North grabbed Esme’s hand and she let go of the pole with a ringing clatter. ‘I don’t recognize myself,’ she said, staring at the dead man under the broken statue.
‘If you’re worried about history – it was a replica. There wouldn’t have been a pole long enough for the real thing,’ North said.
Esme turned on her heel and headed for the door. ‘I’m going back.’
He pulled her towards him, her slim wrist warm in his hand. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘You don’t understand.’ She pulled against him, struggling to break away and make for the door, but he held her tight.
‘Esme, Tobias either got out or he’s already dead. Or he’s better at hide-and-seek than we are. Either way, the only thing he would want me to do right this second is get you out of here.’