The Broken Sword (9 page)

Hal.

She slammed her fist on the arm of the dusty secondhand sofa. Hal was gone. He was gone, and so was Arthur, and for three years Emily had been so lonely, so terribly lonely…

And so, when she'd run into Aubrey Katsuleris a couple of weeks later in Regent's Park on her way home from work, she had told him about Arthur. She hadn't mentioned the cup, only that her nephew had been kidnapped by a man named Saladin, and that she had been searching for him for years.

"Scotland Yard thinks he's dead," she confessed.

"But you don't believe he is." Aubrey was quiet, compassionate, intensely interested.

"No."

Aubrey swooped her up in his arms and spun her in a circle. "Darling Emily, you're wonderfully stubborn. And I love this mystery about your nephew. I think I shall help you find him."

"It's not a game," she said, unimpressed by his enthusiasm.

"Forgive me. That was callous. Nevertheless, I'd like to try. Begin some inquiries, that sort of thing. Would you object?"

"I wish it were that easy," she said.

He smiled. "It might be."

A
pparently it had been
that easy. Two weeks afterward, Aubrey rang her apartment bell at exactly five o'clock. A plane was waiting at the airport to take them to Tangier.

B
eatrice could barely contain
herself as she sauntered with her companions through the
Grand Socco
in Tangier. It was a feast for newborn eyes, from the magnificent carpets laid out on the ground to sacks of almonds and chickpeas piled into hills twice the height of a man. The air was thick with scent—saffron, cumin, pepper, ginger, verbena, cloves, orange flower, and more. She could identify each with her nose, but it thrilled her to actually see them, to examine each box filled with buds and roots and dried petals. Weaving among the stalls were peasant women wearing the red and white striped
foutas
peculiar to Tangier, their heads covered by broad hats sporting huge blue pom-poms. The large baskets they carried were filled with dates, olives, pots of henna, wool, flasks of rose and jasmine extract, mint, kohl, amber, or musk.

"Oh, look!" she squealed, pointing to a boy dressed in a bright red costume jangling with bells. Across his back was a pole with buckets at either end. "What's he doing?"

"He's a water carrier," Taliesin said as the boy ran past them. "The musicians are calling him over."

Not far away, a group of dignified-looking men squatted on the ground playing a variety of strange instruments while a belly dancer gyrated around them. Around the corner, a public scribe was writing a letter on a portable lap-desk for an unlettered customer while a storyteller entertained a group of wide-eyed children.

Hal looked at his watch. "It's almost seven. I think we ought to be heading for the hotel," he said.

They had left the Jeep on the outskirts of the city, then walked through the crowded market district in case the police spotted the vehicle. Hal was grateful for the walk. It gave him a chance to think.

He was not happy with his thoughts. They all revolved around the cup, and the danger it had brought them in the past.

He had told himself over and over that finding Emily's message in the old newspaper had been nothing more than a coincidence. If they hadn't had the cup, he might have accepted it as such.

But they did have the cup, and someone had already tried to kill Beatrice for it.

The Victoria Hotel was built on a cliff overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar. Behind its white domes the sun was setting, turning the sea to gold. Docked near the picturesque oceanside walkway bordered by palm and banana trees were cargo ships flying flags from all over the world. In the far distance, the shimmering hills of Andalusia rose out of the water.

Hal wanted to see Emily, ached for her. That, too, fueled his sense of unease. The fact that he
wanted
the ad to have been a coincidence—hell, he wanted her to be in the Victoria Hotel waiting for them, wanted it more than he had ever wanted anything in his life—made him suspicious of his own actions. Had he placed Arthur in danger by coming to Tangier because he himself had needed to make certain that Emily wasn't there?

"You okay, Hal?" Arthur asked.

Hal stopped in his tracks. "No," he said. "No, I'm not." He gathered Arthur and Beatrice to him. "Listen, guys, I don't like this."

"Why not?" Arthur asked.

"I don't know why, okay? Call it paranoia. All I know is that if this is some kind of setup and the four of us walk in that place together, it won't be good."

"Hal—"

"He's right, Arthur," Taliesin said. "The two of you should wait—"

"The
three
of you are going to wait. Over there by the docks." He pointed toward the ships. "I'll go in alone. If everything's all right, I'll come back for you."

Arthur scowled. "What if it's not all right?"

"It will be." Hal ruffled the boy's hair. "Who knows, Emily might still be there. I'll bring her out to see you, and then we'll all go have dinner, okay?"

Arthur only stared at him.

"Come along," Taliesin said gently.

Hal watched them walk over the embankment toward the docks as the sky melted from red to indigo. Just before they descended out of sight, Arthur turned to look at him again.

Hal ventured alone into the hotel.

"A
re you sure they're
coming?" Emily asked for the fourth time, peering through one of the tall windows in the Victoria's dining room.

"Don't worry about a thing," Aubrey answered automatically, although his sensitive hands had begun to perspire.

It was possible that they hadn't seen the ad in the newspaper. Still, they were definitely coming to Tangier. It was the only place where the road that passed through Ait Haddus led. Saladin's relatives were stationed all over the city. If the four travelers didn't come to the hotel tonight, the Arabs would find them by morning. Either way, none of them would leave Tangier alive.

"You're lovely," Aubrey said, thinking that Emily's dress must have been designed by a tentmaker. "Americans have such a unique style."

She smiled nervously, adjusting her neckline. It was the only garment she owned that might be termed dressy, although now she thought it would be more suitable for a funeral than a dinner date.

She was frumpy, she decided, no matter what Aubrey said. Actually, she had always been frumpy, except for the weeks she'd been with Hal.

Hal had made her feel beautiful. She would not have worn this dress with Hal. She would have dressed in pink silk with flowers. She would have painted her toenails and showed them. She would have run naked through a rainstorm.

Hal. She saw her arms trembling. Tonight she would see Hal again.

It's all right,
she told herself.
You're a grown woman. He left you, but that isn't the issue here. You're going to get Arthur back. Hal doesn't figure into it one way or the other. You'll be polite, and then take your nephew and be on your way. Thank you very much, Hal, and good-bye.

Yes.

She was trembling harder than ever.

"Are you cold?" Aubrey asked.

Emily shook her head. She glanced at her watch again. Seven-oh-four. Hal was late. "How do you know they'll be here?" she asked.

"Because they'll want to see you," he said, forcing a smile.

"I need to go to the ladies' room."

"Emily—"

"I'm sorry," she said, pushing her chair back with a squeak. It was just too much for her. In the washroom she applied her lipstick twice, straightened her slip, fixed her pantyhose, washed her hands.

Don't worry about a thing,
Aubrey had said. He had made all the contacts, through a friend who knew a friend, who knew someone else. She had read once that anyone in the world was only six links removed from anyone else. The problem was finding the six correct links.

But Aubrey had found them, and at the end of that chain of contacts were Arthur and Hal and another chance for Emily's life.

Please come,
she begged as she walked back, feeling her knees knocking together.
Please, please come
.

She was passing by a beefy waiter carrying an enormous tray on his shoulder when she spotted Hal. He was walking beside a railing, looking up at the tables on the mezzanine. He was alone.

"Hal!" she called, but she found her voice had left her. She signaled frantically, her elbow bumping into the waiter. The waiter stumbled over her, nearly dropping the tray.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said. The waiter gave her a withering look.

Hal had not noticed the scene, but Aubrey had. From the table he nodded almost imperceptibly to a busboy polishing silver in a corner of the restaurant. The busboy, whose eyes, Aubrey noticed, looked just like Saladin's, set down the handful of utensils he was holding and pulled a gun from beneath his apron.

A woman sitting near the bus table screamed. Instinctively Hal dived to the floor, catching sight of the busboy as he fired two shots at the spot where Hal had been standing. The bullets hit the waiter instead, in the back of the neck. As the gunman fled through the kitchen, he threw two small containers resembling balloons at the long draperies. They caught fire immediately, and the room burst into pandemonium.

The waiter fell, the heavy tray clattering to the floor as a fountain of blood gushed out of him, spurting onto the diners as they ran screaming toward the exit. They smashed into Emily, who craned backward, trying to see past the crush of people around her.

"Arthur!" she screamed. "Are you here? Hal?"

Someone knocked against her, hard. She lost her footing and slipped. The next moment she was on the floor, screaming helplessly as strangers ran over her, heedless, no longer concerned that she was a human being, sensing her body only as an impediment to their escape from the suffocating heat and smoke.

She felt a bone snap in her leg with agonizing clarity, and another in her hand as she tried to pull herself upright. She screamed until her throat was raw, but even she could not hear the sound she made amid the din of exploding windows and crackling flames.

The fire spread quickly. As it sped toward Emily, one of the frantic restaurant patrons inadvertently kicked her in the head, and she lost consciousness.

By the time she came to, she was engulfed in flames. She managed to roll, despite the shrieking pain from her broken bones, putting out the fire in her clothes, but her face was a different thing altogether. It was a molten mass, her blood inside it a river of torment. She screamed as she fought her way outside, where she heard the wail of an approaching ambulance.

Emily pulled herself up to a standing position against a vertical pillar and scanned the crowd, looking for Hal. Some of the guests were dressed in nightclothes; others carried hastily stuffed suitcases or towels filled with valuables. One elderly woman was wandering around in circles, her hands clutching strands of pearls and gold jewelry.

The police and fire engine sirens were coming closer. A cluster of English people standing near the marble column where Emily had propped herself chattered excitedly about a witness having seen the gunman take off in a German-made car toward the interior.

"Why do you suppose he shot the waiter?" a woman asked in hushed tones.

Hal, please be all right,
Emily thought, thumping her head against the pillar.

Within minutes an ambulance arrived, and she was carried gingerly inside.

She never saw Aubrey Katsuleris again. And though she tried for several years afterward to establish the six links that would bring her back to Hal Woczniak and Arthur Blessing, she was not able to accomplish that, either.

A
s soon as the
draperies caught fire, Hal knew what was going to happen. There were only two exits from the dining room, and the killer had gone out through one of them. Nearly everyone in the room would rush for the grand, although not particularly wide, double doors leading to the lobby.

Besides, he had no illusions about whom the shots were meant for. He hadn't recognized the gunman, but he doubted that the man was anything more than a hired shooter. When he'd missed his target, he had opted to run rather than try again—the mark of a professional who had blundered. If the so-called busboy had known about the cup, he would have taken Hal in the melee that followed.

And that, he was sure, was what whoever planned this setup was about to do.

While the diners were still rising from their seats, Hal swept a pink tablecloth out from under its burden of dishes and threw it over his head. Then he leaped toward one of the huge windows feet first and fell in a spray of broken glass into the garden below.

He shook the glass out of his hair. The fall had been a good one. Out of a dozen cuts and scrapes, not one was serious. He looked up at the broken window. No one was in it looking for him. Probably covering one of the exits, he thought, or both. Taking a final look around, he sprinted toward the docks.

Taliesin and the children were waiting on the dark side of a moonlit cargo ship.

"Where's Emily?" Arthur asked.

"It was a fake," Hal said. "Look, I think—"

"Someone's coming," Beatrice whispered.

Hal whirled around, but he was too late. Something kicked him in the small of the back, sending him tumbling down the pier. In another second, Aubrey stood behind Arthur, a gun with a web silencer to the boy's head.

"You know what I want," he said casually. "Let's not try any heroics."

"He's just a little boy," Taliesin whispered. Aubrey turned slightly and fired at the old man's shoulder. The fabric from his tweed jacket burst into a tuft of charred threads. With a groan, Taliesin slapped his hand over the wound. Blood flowed out from between his fingers.

Arthur tried to wrench himself away, but Aubrey grabbed the boy's hair and jerked his head back, the smoking silencer jammed into his cheek. "Will there be any more discussion?" he asked crisply.

"Give me the cup," Hal ordered.

Beatrice held it out. "He's going to kill us anyway," she said, breaking into sobs. "All of us. It won't matter."

Hal snatched it out of her hands, then extended his arm over the edge of the pier. "Okay, here it is," he said. "If you shoot any of them, I'll drop it. If you shoot me, I'll drop it. Either way, you aren't going to get this cup without a team of scuba divers and the permission of the Moroccan government."

"You'd better give it to me, Hal," Aubrey said patiently.

Hal spoke without taking his eyes off the other man. "Get out of here, Taliesin. Take the girl with you." When no one moved, he snapped, "Now! Get out of here!"

The old man put his good arm around Beatrice, who had covered her face with her hands.

"Now the kid," Hal said. "Let him go. When he's out of the way, you can have the cup. And you can have me.”

"No!" Arthur cried.

"Shut up. Is it a deal?"

Aubrey half smiled. "A deal," he said. He released Arthur.

He would kill the boy, of course, just as soon as he had the cup. Hal knew that from the man's easy manner. An amateur would not have released Arthur so easily. He would have argued, threatened, maybe even have taken a couple of wild shots.

But this was no amateur. He had shot the old man without blinking an eye. And he had aimed for Taliesin's shoulder. Enough to cause alarm without real panic. And now he was calmly watching Arthur trot down the long pier, where he would eventually find him and kill him, along with the others.