The Last Templar - Страница 24

Reilly felt all the eyes in the room boring into him. "Not exactly. It's just that given their history and their cult status, the Templars could conceivably be the inspiration for a bunch of religious fanatics who idolize them and who may be acting out some kind of revenge or revival fantasy."

De Angelis nodded to himself, pensively. He seemed rather disappointed as he stood up and gathered his papers. "Yes, well, that sounds very promising. I wish you continued luck with your investigation, Agent Reilly. Gentlemen, Agent Gaines," he said as he glanced at Jansson before leaving the room quietly, leaving Reilly with the uncomfortable feeling that the Templars' lunatic stigma didn't only apply to academics.

Chapter 30

M itch Adeson knew that if he had to stay holed up in this dump much longer, he would go stir-crazy. But it would be just as crazy to stay in his own place, and the streets there were likely to be more dangerous. At least here, in his dad's apartment in Queens, he was safe.

First Gus, then Branko. Mitch was smart, but even if he'd been as dumb as Gus Waldron, he would've figured out that someone had a list, and that it was a racing certainty that not only was he on it, he was next in line.

It was time to move on to safer pastures.

He looked across the room at his deaf and barely continent father who was doing what he always did: staring at the fuzzy picture on the TV, tuned as always to an endless succession of trashy talk shows at which he constantly spewed abuse.

Mitch would have liked to check up on the guy who'd hired him. He had wondered if that man was the one to look out for, then decided he couldn't be. He'd handled himself well enough on a horse, but he wasn't someone who could've killed Branko, and he sure as hell couldn't have laid a glove on the mountain that was Gus Waldron. It had to be someone higher up the food chain. And to get to whoever it was and beat him to the punch, Mitch knew he had to go through the guy who'd originally approached him, the one who'd first told him about this crazy scheme. The only problem was, he had no way of contacting him. He didn't even know the man's name.

He heard his father break wind. Christ, he thought, I can't just sit here. I need to do something.

Daylight or not, he had to make a move. He told his father that he would be back in a few hours.

The old man ignored him but then, as Mitch pulled on a coat and crossed to the door, he groaned out, "Beer and cigarettes."

It wasn't far short of being the longest sentence his father had spoken to him since the early hours of Sunday morning when he had gone there straight from Central Park, after they had stripped off the armor and gone their separate ways. It had been his job to stow the props in a panel truck that he had dropped off in a lock-up garage two blocks away from his own place. The rent was paid in advance for a year, and, until then, he wouldn't go near it.

He went out of the apartment and down the stairs where, after taking his time checking for anything suspicious, he stepped into the darkening street and headed for the subway.

***

It was raining by the time Mitch moved cautiously through the alley at the back of the grimy seven-story building in Astoria that housed his apartment. He had a paper bag with a Coors six-pack and a carton of Winstons for his old man under his arm, and he was soaked. He hadn't intended on going near his own place for a while yet, but he had decided to take the risk to get some of his gear if he was going to pull a disappearing act.

He stood motionless in the alley for a couple of minutes before reaching up and pulling down on the balanced girder of the fire escape. He always kept it oiled, just in case, and it was pleasingly silent as it slid down. He hurried upward, casting nervous glances at the alley below. Outside his bedroom window, he stood the paper bag on the ladder and raked with his fingers into the gap between the escape and the wall, easing out the steel strip he kept there. Moments later, he had jimmied the window latch and was climbing inside.

He didn't put on a light, feeling his way around the familiar room instead. He dragged an old duffel from the shelf of the closet, then felt his way around the back and pulled out four cartons of shells that he piled into the bag. He then went into the bathroom and fished out a nylon bag from the water tank. In it was a big oilskin-wrapped package, which he opened and from which he took out the Kimber .45 and the small Bersa 9mm. He checked them, loaded the Bersa, which he stowed in his belt, and put the Kimber in with the shells. He grabbed some clothes and a favorite pair of work boots. That would do.

He climbed out the bedroom window, closed it behind him, shifted the duffel onto his shoulder, and reached down for the paper bag.

It was gone.

For an instant, Mitch froze, then carefully eased out his gun. He stared down into the alley. He couldn't see any movement. In weather like this, not even the cats were on the prowl, and, from this height, the rats were invisible.

Who had taken the bag? Kids? Had to be. If someone was after him, they wouldn't dick around with a six-pack and a carton of smokes, but he wasn't in the mood for testing theories. He decided to go up onto the roof, where he could step across to another building and work his way down to street level a hundred yards away. He'd done it before, but not with die rooftops wet with rain.

He began to climb slowly and silently upward until he reached the roof. He was nipping around a ventilation shaft housing when his foot slid on one of the dozen or so lengths of tubular steel scaffolding left there by a careless maintenance crew. It sent him flying forward to land, facedown, in a pool of rainwater. Scrambling back to his feet, he raced for the thigh-high parapet. Reaching it, he swung one leg up, then felt a sharp pain as someone suddenly kicked him behind the knee on his other leg, which promptly gave way.

He dived for his gun but the man grabbed his arm and twisted it. The gun flew from his hand and he heard it clatter down the sloping roof. He jerked against the grip with all his strength, felt himself break away from the man, and experienced a moment of elation before he overbalanced and went over the far side of the parapet.

Fingers desperately grasping for anything within reach, he managed to latch on to the rough stone capping with both hands. Then his attacker clasped his arms, just above the wrists, holding on and preventing him from slipping away to certain death. Mitch stared upward, saw the man's face, and didn't recognize him.

Whatever the guy wanted, he decided, he could gladly have.

"Pull me up," he wheezed out. "Pull me up!"

The man slowly did what he asked, until Mitch was sprawled, facedown, half on and half off the capstone. He felt the man release one of his arms, then he saw something reflecting the light. For an instant, Mitch thought it was a knife, then he realized what it was: a hypodermic needle.

He didn't know what the hell this meant and tried to squirm free but, before he could move, he felt a sudden sharp pain in the taut muscles that stretched up from his shoulder toward his skull.

The man had just jabbed the needle into his neck.

Chapter 31

A s he stared at the vidcap print before him in the privacy of his room, De Angelis fingered the golden, diamond- and ruby-encrusted statuette of a rearing horse.

Privately, he thought the antique was quite vulgar. He knew it was a gift from the Russian Orthodox Church to the Holy Father on the occasion of a papal audience in the late nineteenth century, and he also knew that it was priceless. Vulgar and ugly, but nevertheless priceless.

He studied the image more closely. It was the one Reilly had given him at their first meeting, when the agent had inquired about the importance of the multigeared encoder. The sight was still one that made his heart race. Even this grainy print managed to reawaken in him the sheer exhilaration he felt when he first witnessed the moment on the surveillance footage he'd been shown at Federal Plaza.

Knights* in shining armor pillaging a Manhattan museum in the twenty-first century.

Such audacity, he thought. Truly remarkable.

The picture showed die rider, who De Angelis now knew to be the fourth horseman, holding up tiie encoder. He stared at die man's helmet, trying to burrow through the ink and the paper and into die horseman's

thoughts. The image was a three-quarter view, taken from the rear left side. Smashed display cabinets lay all around die knight. And in the top left corner on the shot, peeking out from behind a cabinet, was a woman's face.

A female archaeologist who overheard the fourth horseman say something in Latin, De Angelis thought. She had to be close enough to hear him, and, staring at the picture, he knew it had to be her.

He focused on her face: taut witii fear, frozen. Absolutely terrified.

It had to be her.

He set the picture and the jeweled horse down on his bed next to the pendant, which he now picked up. It was made of rubies and set in silver, a gift from the Nizam of Hyderabad. Worth a prince's ransom, which is what it once had been. As he twirled it, he scowled at the dead end he had reached.

His quarry had covered his tracks well; he would have expected no less from a man of such daring.

The gang leader's minions, the desperate lowlifes that De Angelis had found, questioned, and dispatched with such ease, had proven useless.

The man himself still eluded him.

He needed a fresh tack. A divine intervention of sorts.