ROSS WAITED SEVERAL MOMENTS, then said, “Angela, you all right?”
In a whisper, from behind him: “Yes.”
“Good. Stay there. I’m going to get the emerald.”
He crawled out from beneath the fountain and grinned. “Not bad for a guy who never fired a gun before, eh?”
He started for the emerald, lying near the body of the count He reached for it, picked it up.
Then the gun opened up.
He acted instinctively, falling to the ground, then rolling back toward the fountain. All around him, tufts of dirt were kicked up into the air. From the fountain, he ran, zigzagging toward the shadows where he thought Angela would be.
He hesitated, panting, in the darkness.
“Pete? Is that you?”
He moved toward the voice. “Yes.”
“Who’s shooting?”
“It must be Joaquim.”
“I thought he was dead.”
“So did I.” A thought occurred to him. “Those shots, just now. Were they from a machine gun?”
“No,” she said.
“Perhaps it’s jammed.”
“Or he’s wounded. They are hard to fire with one hand.”
There was a pause.
“Now what?” he said.
“Now, I kill you,” rasped a voice from across the courtyard.
“Good luck,” Ross said, flinging the answer back.
“Shhh,” Angela said. “He wants you to talk so he can locate the voices.”
Ross cursed his own stupidity. An innocent to the last, he thought.
He looked out at the court, at the bodies of the falcon and the count.
“You have the stone?”
“Yes. What time is it?”
“Almost four.”
“When’s sunrise?”
“Here on the mountain, around five.”
“Well, when it’s light, the police will come. Perhaps they’ve already been attracted by the gunshots.”
“No. Joaquim will not wait. He will try to kill us before that. He is desperate.”
“So am I,” Ross said, gripping the emerald tightly in his hand.
“How many bullets are left?”
He opened his clip and felt the shells in the darkness. “Two.”
“That’s bad,” she said.
They waited for a moment in silence.
Across the court, Joaquim gave a low, harsh laugh. It floated across the stillness toward them, the laugh of a monster.
“He’s terribly strong,” she said.
“What are you trying to do, encourage me?”
“Let’s leave,” she said.
Ross thought. “No,” he said.
“But we must. With only two bullets …”
“I’m leaving here,” he said, “alone.”
“No. You can’t.”
“If you come, you’ll get killed.”
“I will go wherever you go.”
“No,” he said. “I know where I can get another weapon, but I can only make it alone. All right?”
“Another weapon? A gun?”
“Yes. Now sit tight.”
Another unearthly laugh drifted over toward them, and then a thick cough.
“He’s not in good shape. He may be dying already,” Ross said.
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“I know,” he said, “but it’s our only chance.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Now listen. Stay here, quietly, and wait. I’ll be back in a few minutes. But promise me you’ll stay.”
“I promise.”
“Whatever happens, don’t make a sound.”
She sighed. “All right.”
Ross stood up, holding the emerald in the hand which was bandaged by the doctor. In his other hand he held the gun. He took a deep breath and called loudly, “Joaquim!”
A harsh laugh came back.
“Listen to me. The game is up. I’ve got the emerald, and I’m leaving. The police will be here within five minutes. If you try to follow me, I’ll kill you. Understand?”
Four shots whistled around him.
He began to run.
Apparently, Joaquim followed the sound of his footsteps. Succeeding shots were very close; once, a chip of plaster struck Ross in the face, stinging and cutting. He did not break stride but ran for the doorway and out. There he paused, getting his bearings, and ran south, through gardens. The sky was beginning to lighten now, and the gardens were no longer so comfortably dark.
Behind him, he heard Joaquim. Three bullets snapped through the trees.
He ran as fast as he could, hoping he was going in the right direction. One shot passed so close to his elbow that he felt the heated air of its passage.
A good man, Joaquim. The faithful servant, even to the end.
Two more shots. One plucked at his trousers. It was too close: Ross abruptly turned off to one side, scrambling through the bushes, up along a small garden courtyard.
Joaquim heard the sound and fired into the foliage, but he was nowhere near.
Ross moved back, retracing his steps, until he could look down over the brick path along which Joaquim must come. Ross gripped the emerald in his bandaged, aching hand and held the gun straight ahead.
For a long time, there was no sound, no movement. Joaquim was waiting somewhere in the gardens. Ross held his breath. A few yards away, a small bird fluttered down onto a branch. Joaquim fired, cracking the wood of the tree.
Ross waited.
It seemed an eternity, with nothing but a gentle early morning breeze. But he knew that Joaquim must act soon; with every passing minute, the sky became lighter. Soon the guards would arrive, and the maintenance men, and then the tourists.
Ross checked his watch.
It occurred to him that Joaquim had gone back for Angela; he considered it, and pushed the thought from his mind. Joaquim would not bother, because he knew Ross had the emerald.
Or did he know?
In his mind, he saw Joaquim returning to the Court of Lions and finding Angela huddled there. It would be a brief meeting, no hesitation, no regrets, a single bullet in the head …
At that moment, he heard a sound. The sound of a shoe scraping on stone.
Ross raised his gun.
Joaquim appeared, moving out from the bushes, no more than ten yards from where Ross lay hidden. With a shock, Ross saw that he was uninjured; the big man moved slowly, strongly, looking around him.
Ross took aim and fired.
He knew as he fired that Joaquim was hit; he watched as he spun away with the force of the bullet and fell to his stomach on the ground. He fell very hard and did not move.
Ross waited. He watched the body carefully for any sign of movement. There was none. He tried to see where he had hit Joaquim, but could not. However, after a moment, a thin trickle of blood seeped across the stone from beneath the body.
Still, it might be a superficial wound. Ross hesitated, then fired again, aiming for the head or chest. He struck the leg and watched it kick away.
The rest of the body did not move. There was no sound.
Only a dead man, he thought, could take a bullet in the leg that way.
Ross moved out of the bushes, holding his empty gun loosely in his hand. He approached the body, and suddenly, Joaquim spun and raised his own gun.
“Hold it,” Ross said.
Joaquim did not move, but watched Ross closely.
“Don’t move a muscle,” Ross said. He held the gun in front of him, acutely aware that it was empty, that it was a monstrous bluff. But he could see the uncertainty and the fear in Joaquim’s eyes.
Ross stopped and backed off two steps. “I don’t want to kill you,” Ross said. “Don’t make me.”
His words sounded ridiculous to him. His voice was trembling and unconvincing.
“You know,” Joaquim said, “I don’t believe you have bullets left.”
“There is one way to find out,” Ross said, taking another step back.
“Yes,” Joaquim said.
In a swift movement, he raised his own gun and fired. Ross turned and ran, dodging back into the bushes and then away toward the courtyard near the fortress. He heard Joaquim grunt in pain as he raised himself to his feet.
Two more shots.
And then it happened. A bullet struck his hand, shattering the emerald, crumbling it to powder. The force of the shell lifted his arm high, swinging it up. Ross closed his fist on a handful of splinters and dust.
Joaquim was still after him.
Ross ran. He scrambled down the steps to the courtyard, moving to the interior court. He knew without looking back that Joaquim was following. Up ahead, he saw the gaping hole from the construction. His hand stung fiercely; there were jagged splinters in the bandages.
On the ground he saw the tank and the gas masks. He scooped them up and jumped down the hole without looking. He landed in a cloud of thick choking dust. It was very dark; only the faintest light filtered down through the hole.
He pulled one of the masks over his face and ran deep into one of the passages. He threw the second mask away but lugged the tank with him. It clanged against the rocks as he ran. He finally set it down, crawled behind a wall, and waited.
Around him, in the darkness, he could hear the squeaking and rustling of rats. For a long time, there was nothing else, and then a single, quiet thud: Joaquim had jumped down.
From behind the wall, Ross could look down the passage toward the hole. There was enough light to see Joaquim, huge and lumbering, standing in a cloud of gray dust Joaquim still held his gun; he looked around in a slow, almost lazy way.
“Doctor?” The rasping voice was amused, toying. If Joaquim was in pain, he gave no sign.
Ross said nothing.
“You will never escape alive, Doctor.”
Ross bit his lip, smelled the rubber of the gas mask.
“I will kill you. I have vowed it.”
Slowly, Ross stretched the nozzle forward from the tank and turned on the gas. It hissed out softly.
He waited. Joaquim started off in another direction.
“Over here, Joaquim.”
His voice echoed through the underground chambers, but Joaquim had fixed the direction well: four bullets spanged off the rocks around him. A light was flicked on, and it played around the room.
Ross ducked back, cursing the way he had wasted his last bullets. The light swung past his hiding place.
“I am presenting an excellent target, Doctor,” Joaquim said. “Do you wish to try your luck?”
Ross did not move.
“Or is it that you have no more ammunition?”
He laughed. The harsh voice echoed through the chambers.
“Come and get me,” Ross said.
The light came back on. The beam swung in a slow arc, stopping occasionally. Ross heard the sound of Joaquim’s footsteps coming closer. He heard the hiss of the gas. Peering around the corner, he saw the light of the torch and, vaguely, the outlines of the huge body.
Joaquim stepped closer and closer. He was now only ten feet away. The gas was hissing out, but it had no effect.
It wasn’t going to work.
Ross realized that he had turned the nozzle too low; the gas concentration was insufficient. Joaquim was practically standing on the tank, and coming closer with each step. And yet nothing was happening.
One chance.
One in a thousand.
Ross waited until the light moved away, then bent over and picked up the heavy cylinder. He threw it off to one side of Joaquim.
“Here, Joaquim!”
The big man fired instinctively.
The tank was punctured, and clouds of milky vapor spurted upward. Ross had a glimpse of him as he clutched his face and his throat, gasping, making ghastly raw sounds. Then he toppled and fell into the clouds of gas and was hidden.
Ross pressed his mask tight against his face and climbed out of the hole.