7 Steps to Midnight (36 page)

“I wish to God we had nothing else on
our
minds but that,” he murmured.

“Oh…” She drew back, looking at him intently. As the gondola moved past a small café, he saw, in its dim light, a glistening of tears in her eyes.

“Oh…” He said it in the same way, pained, despairing.

Then their lips were pressing together, and he could taste the sweetness of her breath in his mouth.

“I love you, Chris. I love you so,” she whispered.

“I love you too,” he said. “It’s the one thing I’m holding on to right now.”

They kissed again. Again. Again. Dear God, how he wanted her, he thought.

Then, breathless, she was quietly holding on to him.

The silence was oppressive; Chris swallowed, broke it willfully. “Why are all the buildings dark?” he asked the oarsman, feeling idiotic even as he spoke, sure that the man had only one phrase in his vocabulary, the one he’d used to sell his services.

“People on vacation,” said the oarsman.

Chris drew in a deep, faltering breath. The smell was so awful, he thought. He’d take long vacations if he lived here.

Had Alexsandra fallen asleep? She was so quiet. The silence disturbed Chris again.

“How deep is the water?” he asked, saying the first thing that came to mind.

“Five, six feet,” the oarsman answered. “Deeper in winter. Piazza St. Marco sometimes knee-deep. Build wooden walks for people.”

Chris made a polite, impressed sound. That was more information than he’d thought to ask for.

Another gondola passed them now, a larger one with eight passengers in it. There was barely enough room for the two gondolas to pass each other. The oarsman was singing “La Paloma” and the passengers were chatting, laughing.

The other gondola moved away and the heavy silence fell again. The canal was dark and felt airless to him, humid. That terrible smell of rot in the air. Shadows of people walking in dark alleys. Chris clung to Alexsandra, the sense of unreality returning. He was riding through the darkness in a black gondola with a woman obsessed by ancient Rome; he felt at once frightened and enamored of her. How much longer could his mind cope with these dark contradictions?

The only sound now was the faint slapping of the water against the gondola. Chris had to hear her voice again; her silence was beginning to unnerve him.

“Alexsandra?” he said.

She drew away from him and, in the darkness, he could see her looking at him, hear the straining of her breath.

“What
is
it?” he pleaded.

“I can’t,” she said. “I just can’t do it.”

“Do
what
?”

“I can’t let this go on,” she said. “I have to—” She broke off as a faint illumination suddenly fell on the gondola and he saw her gaze move out past him. He began to turn. Alexsandra tried to stop him. “
Don’t
,” she said. “Don’t look.”

But it was too late. He was staring at the wall of a building the gondola was passing. Crude words had been scrawled there so hurriedly that the white paint had dribbled downward toward the water.

4 steps to midnight.

Chris felt as though his body had been turned to stone. His gaze transfixed on the letters, the only sensation of life he felt was the heavy thudding of his heartbeat.

He jerked around as Alexsandra cried out, “No!”

He gazed at her. She’d fallen forward, a look of shock on her face.

Chris leaned down suddenly to see what had happened to her. There was a popping noise behind him and a buzzing past his ear as though a giant bee were zooming by. Twisting around with a gasp, he looked up at the oarsman. The man was pointing what looked like an air pistol at him. Chris stiffened, waiting to be hit.

Abruptly then, the man jolted with a faint cry of pain and started toppling forward. Chris gasped as he saw the handle of a knife protruding from his back. The oarsman collapsed to the bottom of the gondola and, glancing up in dread, Chris saw the dark figure of a man standing at the dead end of an alley behind them. The man whirled and disappeared.

Chris gasped again as Alexsandra’s hand clutched at his shirt. He looked at her dumbly. Her eyes were glazed, she drew in rasping breath through gritted teeth.

“Chris,” she muttered. “Run.”

He felt completely helpless, staring at her.

“
Run!
” she whispered. “Save yourself!”

“I can’t leave—”

He broke off, catching his breath in shock as she slumped back, her eyes falling shut.

“Oh, my God.” He rubbed a shaking hand across his cheek. It isn’t true, he thought.
It can’t be true.
He murmured her name as he tried to feel for her pulse beat in her neck. But his fingers were too numb and shaking. “
Alexsandra
,” he murmured.

He cried out in startled terror as someone leaped into the gondola and grabbed him. Yanking himself around, he had a fleeting impression of a dark-faced man glaring down at him, of fingers digging into his shoulders.

He moved without thinking; fear and rage combined to produce a violent twist and shove that flung the man away from him. He heard a sickening thud as the man’s head struck the canal wall. Suddenly, the man had slumped unconscious across the gunwale of the gondola.

Running footsteps. Chris looked up to see another man racing down an alley toward him. He looked around in desperation. There was an alley on the other side of the canal.

He moved without thinking, sure that Alexsandra had been killed. Stumbling across the gondola, he stepped up on the gunwale and leaped, slamming onto his knees on the cobblestone paving. He heard another popping noise behind him and a chunk of mortar on a nearby building wall exploded out. “Jesus Christ!” he muttered. Scrambling to his feet, he started running up the alley.

Another popping sound from behind. Chris cried out as a searing pain ripped through his right forearm. He clutched at the arm spasmodically. Then, as another bullet whined off the paving, ricocheting off a building wall just ahead, he ran faster, mouth open, gasping at the warm, heavy air.

He glanced back and saw the man clambering rapidly across the gondola and jumping to this side of the canal. Sucking in breath, teeth clenched, Chris tried to run faster. It felt as though his right forearm had been set on fire, the hot pain was so agonizing. A wave of dizziness swept over him and, for several moments, he was sure that he was going to fall.
No!
he thought.

He knew he couldn’t outrun the man. His mind raced frantically through his file of novel memories. Hero chased by killer,
then: alley with side alley. It seemed as though the answer sprang into his mind. He knew it was his only chance.

Skidding around the corner of a building, he jarred to a halt, trying not to breathe so loud. He heard the running footsteps of the man approaching and braced himself.
Now or never, Barton
, said a faint voice in his mind.

The instant the man began to turn the corner, Chris charged sideways at him, ramming him as hard as he could with his left shoulder and knocking him back; the pain in his right forearm flared so sharply that he cried out uncontrollably. The man went floundering back and crashed against a building wall. He started to recover but Chris kicked out at him as violently as he could.

He’d never in his life even imagined actually kicking a man in the testicles: In books and movies, such a kick was somehow associated with humor. There was nothing humorous about it though. The man’s mouth opened wide in a wheezing cry, his expression suddenly one of total agony. Chris had to force himself to grab the man’s right arm and slam the hand against the brick wall of the building. The pistol clattered to the cobblestone paving and the man began to slump. Chris turned and started blindly running to escape.

The moment he did, he saw the two men coming at him.

Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe. The fiery pain in his arm began to shoot into his shoulder and neck. Darkness pressed at his eyes again. He tried to fight it but was unable to do so. Stumbling, he fell against a building to his right. The explosion of pain in his arm began to cloud his brain.

Then darkness swallowed him.

***

“
There is no time left
,” the voice whispered.

Chris stirred, a faint groan in his throat.

“You can run no longer,” the voice continued. “You are at the end of the road. Now is the time for you to discover all the answers.
Now.
”

As he jerked up with a startled gasp, Chris thought he heard
running footsteps receding from him. His eyelids fluttered, then lifted and he stared ahead blankly. His right forearm was throbbing.

There was a wall of stone and mortar across from him, very old. Light filtered down from above like gray mist. He shivered. The air was chilled. He became aware that he was sitting on cold stone and struggled to his feet, hissing at the pain in his arm as he used his right hand to push up. His arm was bandaged, he saw.

He looked around dazedly. Where
was
he?

Then abruptly he looked down. He’d been holding a slip of paper in his left hand and, in standing, he’d let go of it so that it fluttered to the floor. He stared down at it, afraid to see what it was.

Then, after several moments, he braced himself and, bending over, picked up the scrap of paper. It was the size of a business card.

He closed his eyes for several moments, the flaring pain in his arm making him wince and hiss. Then he looked at the slip of paper.

There were words printed on it. Using his left hand, he raised the slip to the light, glancing upward to see that the gray illumination came from an overhead shaft; far above, he saw what looked to be the sky.

He peered closely at the slip of paper then.

Pontifica Commissions/Di archeologic Sacra
was printed at the top with a symbol on each side of the words, a dove with a garland in its beak on the left, what looked like an anchor on the right.

Below that were words printed in darker, thicker letters.

Biglietto D’ingresso/alle Catacombe/Di S. Callisto.

Chris shuddered violently, his fingers twitching, dropping the slip again.

He was in a Roman catacomb, an underground cemetery.

The one Alexsandra had insisted that her foster parents take her to see.

It was completely back now, the sense of total unreality. The wager
had
been lost; he knew that. There was no way he could cope with this. He was ready to be put away at last, his mind undone.

A movement at his left caught the corners of his eyes and he jerked around.

He stared in breathless silence at the figure at the far end of the tunnel-like corridor.

Standing in deep shadows was a woman in a pale white gown.

Her, he thought. Her ghost. She’d never been real.

He felt as though his mind was being slowly crushed in by a tightening clamp.

Her
, he thought again.
Alexsandra.

He had to know.

He started walking toward her, hearing the faint scuffing sound his shoes made on the stone floor of the tunnel. The figure didn’t move. It
was
her. He could see it clearly now. She was staring at him, waiting for him. Her figure wavered. Chris drew in choking breath.

He could see right through her.

He stopped and leaned against the stone wall, eyes closed, body wracked by shivers. The pain in his arm was a dull ache that pulsed like a heartbeat.

When he opened his eyes again, she was gone.

Chris swallowed dryly, staring at the place where she’d been standing. Why was she gone now? he wondered.

He spoke her name aloud, unnerved by the stricken sound of his voice.

There was no response and she did not appear again.

He pushed away from the wall and continued down the corridor. He held himself tightly, expecting, at any moment, her ghost to reappear.

When he reached the spot where she’d been standing, he looked to his left and saw an open crypt.

The same gray light filtered down from above.

A sarcophagus stood across from him, built against the back wall.

Chris moved inside the crypt, unable to hold back. It has to go all the way, he thought. The voice had been right. Now
was
the time for him to discover all the answers.

He stopped. There were faded words on the wall above the
sarcophagus. Carved in stone innumerable centuries ago. He had studied Latin from a textbook once, and, slowly, he deciphered the meaning of the words.

While the Kingdom of Heaven carries off her chosen soul, this revered tomb encloses the mortal remains of the good lady—

“—
Alexsandra
,” he whispered.

He couldn’t hold himself back. It was as though a magnet drew him forward to the sarcophagus.

He stared down through the thick plate glass.

All that remained were brownish fragments of bone and gray dust. He leaned down closer, his heartbeat slow and heavy.

The ring was there, encircling what was left of her finger….

***

At first he thought that someone else was moaning in the tomb.

Then he realized that it was coming from his own throat as he backed off from the sarcophagus, whirled, and found himself confronted by two men in black.

He stood frozen for an instant, staring at them as they started for him. Then, something wild and dark erupted in his mind and with a savage cry, he leaped at them.

Grabbing one, he hurled him aside; the man staggered, off balance, against a wall. The second man threw his right arm around Chris’s neck and jerked it tight. Pain shot through Chris’s right arm as he elbowed the man in the side. The man’s arm loosened and he gasped in startlement.

Then something smashed on Chris’s head and blackness leaped up from the floor, enveloping his brain. He fought against it, blinking rapidly, swinging out blindly at the air. The dark fog thinned and he could see the second man about to hit him on the head again with the barrel of an automatic. Rearing back, he lost his balance and began to fall.

He landed on the elbow of his right arm, screaming at the burst of pain. Shadows poured across his brain again as he writhed in agony on the cold stone floor.