HIS HAND WAS CLAMPED SO FIRMLY ON HER MOUTH THAT SHE WAS, FOR A moment, laboring for breath. Such a speed. Lucy was unused to moving this quickly now, always trying to pace her exercise for the sake of her heart. Her arms were constricted, crushed tightly in his other free arm, but she caught her right hand against her chest and tried to steady herself. She thought that if she had ever had a guardian angel of any description, this would be a good time to meet her. Or him, indeed.
He smelled of limes. The strange truth was that the scent was not unpleasant to her; but the circumstances of smelling it were abhorrent. She forced her mind to try not to collapse, and worked even harder to place it at some remove from the pain she felt stinging her body. It was not her heart but her legs, arms, shoulders rebelling from his pincer grip. He seemed to make the angry wounds and scars from her surgery burn again in her flesh. Kicking was useless, she realized, since she was in certain respects still physically under par. Any odd contortion of her body bit into her deeply. She was trying to think but the pain prevented her.
They came to the mouth of an underground garage, and she was snatched almost off her feet. He started running with her, and she found herself winding down the many levels into a plummeting spiral. Down and down they went, and she felt her legs go, her head faint, her stomach churning with a nausea that reminded her at once of her Chagas’. Back into the underworld, she thought, literally. Another man was propped against a car in semidarkness, and she thought briefly of crying for help until she realized cruelly he was there waiting for them both. She was bundled a little awkwardly into the backseat of a smart, dark blue car, with beautiful tan leather upholstery. Her assailant slid in beside her and shoved her head down on the backseat. The other man hastened them away. Two of them! She felt sick, weak, and frightened. Her mind raced at the sordid possibilities. She realized absurdly how lucky she’d been never to have experienced any serious sexual threat before—considering how often she’d had to travel alone to strange places. To survive any kind of sexual attack, you ought to stay as calm and collected as possible, she conjectured. Use your brain, Lucy: you’ve always been told you have a good one. How you behave might dictate whether you live or die. The chilling thought suddenly possessed her mind that the labyrinth might well prove her omega, if she got things wrong now. So she went limp and breathed slowly, making a prayer of the sound of Alex’s voice. She hung on to the ecstasy she’d felt in the labyrinth, the oneness with him, the senses in her heart.
“SIÂN, I’M IN TROUBLE. CAN YOU HELP?” HIS VOICE HAD AN URGENCY AT odds with the man she knew.
“Just say how, Alex.”
At an express pace he explained about Lucy in Chartres: he’d called the French authorities, reported her last moves, and warned them she’d had transplant surgery.
They’d moved quickly enough to locate her cell phone near the cathedral and called him straight back to inform him. Someone had rifled through her things in the hotel room, they said. He was frantic, not knowing her whereabouts, and if possible even more alarmed about her missing her medication and her health generally. Taking her immunosuppressants on time wasn’t negotiable. He must get a flight now. Could she stay with Max?
“I’d be happy to, Alex.”
“Is it a terrible time to ask?”
“Not at all. We were on our way out to dinner. Unimportant after what you’ve just told me. Give me twenty minutes and I’ll be with you.”
“Siân.” Alex hesitated. “It’s a liberty to ask this when you’re dropping everything to help; but, would you come alone—without Calvin? It’s just…Max…” Alex looked at his son who had come to stand right beside him, offering all the tacit support he could give even without an adult understanding of the situation. Alex was perfectly sincere about not wanting his son to deal with Will’s successor yet; but something also repelled him about the idea of this strange cousin of a matter of months being in his flat, privy to his personal life.
“Not a problem, Alex. I understand. Give me time to get a few things in a bag. If I need more tomorrow I’ll bring Max here.”
She rang off, and was at his door before he’d finished his call to Anna to explain what was happening. He reassured her that everything concerning Max was under control. Anna knew her former husband to be a calm man who would refuse any provocation to panic; she saw this must be unusually important to him and that he was clearly very worried. Max trusted Siân, and Anna approved—though she’d get back when she could.
Alex was pocketing his passport and a few other things as he let Siân in, only to find Calvin with her after all. He looked at her uncomprehending while she greeted Max with an affectionate hug.
“Calvin’s not staying, Alex; he’s just dropped me off. But he has something important to say that I think you need to know.” She swung around and challenged her boyfriend with intensity.
Alex was wary. “I’m a little pressed for time, Calvin. Is it relevant?”
“Very. Let me drive you to the airport, Alex. We’ll talk on the way.” His voice tonight was not his usual mix of ingratiating charm and confidence, but had tones of apology and hesitancy. “And you ought to bring these papers that relate to Dee—which I know you’ve found…”
Alex wanted to laugh: but the situation was painfully serious, and he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. This was a family treasure hunt, wasn’t it? A personal family mystery, or at most, an intriguing set of riddles for future generations to tease themselves on. But Calvin’s words implied that the stakes were actually much higher—that this mystery may even have a sinister edge. Now, when Alex spoke, his voice was lethally quiet, and Siân realized she had never heard it sound quite like this before.
“What,” he asked, emphasizing each syllable with weight, so that even his son looked up at him with concern, “does this have to do with you?”
“Possibly I spoke too freely in the wrong quarters; perhaps I just have some associates with a questionable set of priorities; but certainly someone is now very keen to get their hands on a particular inheritance of yours.”
“Calvin, anything you know, I want to know. Everything you can tell me, you will tell me. Never in my life have I wanted to hurt a man. If anything happens to Lucy, that will change.” Alex met Calvin’s gaze with such justified anger that the latter was forced to look away. Alex now glanced at the floor where Max had been sitting a little earlier, and saw for the first time that his son had made a kind of jigsaw out of the reverse sides of some of the leftover sheets he himself had not been engaged with. He’d never paid much attention to this pattern on them. He smiled, then winked at his son—who seemed relieved to have his more familiar father back with him again. Alex then scooped together the bundle of parchments, put them in their protective dossier bag again, and as quickly into a briefcase, grabbed his medical kit, and put his overcoat on one-handed.
“Be very good for Siân. I love you.” He kissed the boy and hugged him vigorously. “You’re a very clever boy.” He turned with almost as much feeling to Siân and embraced her. “Thank you.” He mouthed the words. Then the two men were gone.
AMONG SOME SILHOUETTED TREES IN THE MOST INAPPROPRIATELY beautiful space in the hills above the Chartres plain, the car stopped. Lucy was pulled roughly from the vehicle by the driver—feeling nauseous, though not actually hurt, she admitted to herself, determined to hang on to the positives. But she was numb with cold. She’d dragged on her light spring trench coat as she’d left the cathedral, but it was no match for the chill evening air; the temperature was dropping while the weak March sun disappeared. She noticed a building in the last light; quite beautiful. It was a partially ruined farmhouse, she could see, but she wasn’t interested in the architectural features. Strange how you could experience such terror in the midst of beauty. She was bundled through the door by both men, and found herself in a damp room with a wan fire, where yet another man was sitting reading at a table some distance from it. He seemed, she thought, almost unconcerned with the intrusion.
Oh God, what is happening? she wondered, incredulous, and her spirits sank completely. This didn’t seem like an attack on a single woman now. Fear gripped her firmly; she had no notion at all how to approach this—or what in fact she was approaching.
“I trust you haven’t been hurt, Miss King?” The sole custodian of the old farmhouse looked up from his book. “Heart surgery is a serious matter. It changes you.”
That threw her into disarray: who could know such things? Lucy looked over at an almost attractive man, perhaps forty years of age and a little overweight, with graying curly hair, who appeared to be of about medium stature. He was seated at a plain farmhouse table with a partly played chess game in front of him. She wouldn’t—or couldn’t—speak, and forced herself into a mood of apparent calm, electing to leave questions about her arrival at this forlorn location unasked. Her eyes darted around the room, and returned to his face. He was amused, perhaps—or even quietly impressed—by her controlled silence. He soon broke the stalemate.
“Thank you, gentlemen. Mephistopheles, if you could step outside and make a call to our senior colleague, I think he’d like to hear from us. And now”—he half spoke to Lucy—“we wait.” He sounded completely uninterested and picked up his book again, while the physical bulk of the unattractively named man who’d stolen her in Chartres disappeared through the front door. She thought grimly, and without humor, that she was indeed in some kind of hellish place.
After an hour Lucy still hadn’t opened her mouth, but she began to feel she might not be in immediate danger. She moved her head about to search for a meaning in the murkiness. She was feeling more chilled, the fire inadequate in the drafty area; but she let them know nothing about her. The driver—a tall man with gray eyes—was now addressed by the seated man in fluent French; he moved into a very unrenovated kitchen area, out of Lucy’s clear line of sight, and then came over to her with some water. She resisted a fatuous show of scorn and took it, still without a word, but wouldn’t drink.
A cell phone rang. The man at the table picked up without haste.
“Um-hm?” He listened for a very long time before he spoke again. “Put him on the phone.”
Lucy noticed now for the first time that he was an American with a mild Southern accent—but not at all warm, like Dr. Angelica’s.
“We have the girl.” His tone was light and playful, and he reminded Lucy of a cat toying with an injured bird it has a distaste of actually eating. “I believe we have the means to the lock.” He gestured at the man who had taken Lucy from the porch of the cathedral, who moved silently from a chair in the darkest part of the room. He came toward her and pulled at a chain around her neck—the slim gold chain Alex had given her for her birthday a few weeks earlier. The little key came free with it, and her skin felt pinched and bruised. She felt defiled, and stared at the yellow eyes of the well-named devil before her.
“Yes, we certainly do.” The cat’s charming Southern voice continued. “Now then, good Doctor, I believe I have something you want. And you have something I want. There is no need for anyone else to be concerned in this—and no one else shall be as long as you follow instructions to the letter. But please believe me, if I find the gendarmerie curious at my door, or sense the slightest duplicity on your part, I’m apt to be irritable. The rather desirable exchange I am contemplating will be off. I hope that’s quite clear?” Lucy observed that every word was succinct, and that he pronounced “gendarmerie” with an excellent French accent.
He got out of his chair and walked slowly across the room toward the fire, and as he did so Lucy caught the quiet drift of Alex’s voice from the earpiece. This gave her heart: it sounded just as steady as usual. “…understand these papers which seem to excite your interest have very little fascination for me. I marvel at grown men becoming so enthralled by them. Do you really think…”
Her host turned away again to deny her the security of knowing what was happening. She watched his face, finding him somehow pathetic in his attempts to do verbal battle with Alex. He picked up a chess piece that had fallen over and played with it. He finally returned to her and sat close enough for her to hear Alex’s voice clearly again. She realized he wanted her emotional reaction to it.
“…is recovering from surgery and requires very gentle handling. I will move heaven and earth to make sure that some very uncomfortable questions are put to you. And although Mr. Petersen advises me that you’re a man to whom nothing sticks, I promise you’ll find me unrelenting. So let’s drop the verbal chess games, make our arrangements, and adhere to them. My flight for De Gaulle leaves in fifteen minutes and gets down at eleven p.m. How do you suggest…?”
Lucy turned her own head away. She understood they wanted Alex to bring them the papers he’d dug up, but she had no idea how they knew, or why they were so important, or what on earth “Mr. Petersen” had to do with it. She refused to look again at the man who kept her hostage, and tried indeed to block out the last words he spoke on the phone:
“It is such a pleasure negotiating with an intelligent human being. It saves so much wasted time and pain. And I’ve missed the opera tonight for this; although in fact, some very high-caliber people will assure you that I am there, even now collecting my glass of champagne in the interval. Don’t you love the opera, Dr. Stafford? Lucia di Lammermoor?”
ALEX BALKED AT THE FINAL COMMAND CONCERNING THE COLLECTION OF Lucy, but he knew he’d played it out almost to his last card and would have to accept this stipulation. He flipped his cell phone shut and fell in behind the last passenger boarding his flight. He was weighing up the quiet menace of the unspoken threat he’d just heard so very clearly.
Adrenalin had kept him focused for the last grueling hour, but he clicked his seat belt home and allowed himself the privacy to evaluate in his mind what had been rushed upon him. After volunteering unsuccessfully to accompany him to France, Calvin had done his best during the car journey to acquaint Alex with these three men: not merely their obsessive interest in the papers of Dr. John Dee but, more alarmingly in the light of Lucy’s abduction, he had hinted at the nature of the company they kept, the connections they had right at the top in government in three continents. The one Alex had just spoken to was the man Calvin called Guy—“the American in Paris”; he chose to live mostly in France because of some ancestral pride about being descended from a Templar, and he had all kinds of men in his pocket. The way Calvin pronounced his name, Alex could only think of clarified butter—which helped, for some reason. Slippery perhaps, he thought, but not solid.
In volley after volley of shocks that broke on Alex, Calvin had spoken of other men connected with his college who seemed unduly fascinated with their ancestor and his supposed role as confidant to the angels. Alex noticed that they all had epithets instead of real names, and their chain of influence extended, according to Calvin, into lofty political offices. They never had to do their own dirty work, his cousin had told him, and Alex felt sure Calvin’s tone had disclosed real anxiety about them. His summation had been precise: they were impossible to cross, and they didn’t want treasure. He assured Alex that it was propaganda they wanted, and it would be put to a powerful political use. They would be heavily protected by many men of stature who were interested in their findings; but, he believed, they would almost certainly stop short of serious harm as long as they got exactly what they wanted. For the moment at least, it would be best to try to do things their way.
Alex’s emotions about Calvin were in turmoil, vacillating between fury, incredulity, and even pity. Listening to him speak at length, he’d once or twice wondered just how honestly Calvin was leveling with him, and whether he might have some altogether different agenda; but he’d sat and listened, to what he’d said, what he didn’t say, and how he’d said it—preferring to venture fewer questions and expose less of his own mind. He wanted the liberty to reflect on all of this, and to look into it under his own aegis. But the one thing he knew was that he’d heard more than enough from Calvin in thirty-five minutes to make him ill. A truth was brought home to Alex that he’d considered many times, but never in so personal a way: there were people in the world who had just enough religion to hate, but not enough religion to love. In something very near despair, he realized he would do well to recover Lucy in one piece at any cost, and then to get out.