The Fifth Profession (7 page)

Savage barely managed to open the passenger door and scramble inside before she stomped the accelerator. His head snapped back. He slammed the door shut an instant before it would have smashed against the garage exit's frame.

“You almost left me behind!”

“I knew you'd manage.”

“But what if I hadn't?”

Rachel spun the steering wheel to the left and skidded down the lane away from the garage. A brief glare from an arc light revealed her braised, swollen face. She pressed harder on the accelerator and spun the steering wheel again, this time to the right, toward the driveway that led away from the mansion.

Before he could put on his seat belt, Savage was jerked in the direction of her steering.

“What if you hadn't got into the car before I sped away?” Rachel asked. “I've got the feeling you're resourceful.”

“And I've got the feeling you're a bitch.”

“My husband calls me a bitch quite a lot.”

“I apologize.”

“Hey, don't get sentimental on me. I need a savior who kicks ass.”

“No, what you need right now”—Savage reached toward the controls and pressed a switch—“is to turn on your windshield wipers.”

“I told you, you're resourceful.”

Savage glanced all around, seeing guards try desperately to intercept the car. They carried weapons but didn't aim them.

Why?

It didn't make sense.

Then it did.

They'd be glad to blow my brains out, Savage thought. They'd get a bonus. But they don't dare shoot for fear of hitting Papadropolis's wife. In that case, the guards themselves would not be shot. Papadropolis would feed them to the sharks.

As Savage stared forward, lightning flashed, and in the stark illumination, he saw a man on the driveway ahead. The man held a rifle, and like the other guards, he refused to raise it and fire.

Unlike
the others, he held up a powerful flashlight, aiming its fierce beam toward the driver's side, hoping to blind Rachel and force her off the road.

Rachel jerked up a hand to shield her eyes and steered toward the man with the flashlight.

The guard jumped out of the way, his leap so smooth that Savage wondered if he'd had gymnastic training. Landing safely on Savage's side of the car, the guard continued to aim the glaring flashlight.

And that, too, didn't make sense. The guard couldn't hope to blind Rachel from the side.

Then the logic was obvious.

The guard directed the flashlight not toward Rachel but Savage.

To get a good look at me! So he can describe me to Papadropolis, and maybe someone can identify me!

Savage quickly covered his face with his hands. At the same time, he slumped, in case the guard decided to risk a shot at the passenger window.

The moment the car sped past the guard, Savage stared backward. Other guards ran down the road from the mansion. Every light was on in the house, silhouetting the guards in the night and the rain. The man who'd aimed the flashlight stood with his back to the house, scowling toward the Mercedes. The flashlight had prevented Savage from seeing his opponent's face, but now as the man shut the beam off, a further bolt of lightning revealed the guard's features.

The glimpse was imperfect. Because rain streaked down the back window. Because Savage's vision had not fully recovered from the glare of the powerful flashlight. Because the Mercedes was speeding away from the man.

But Savage saw enough. The guard was Oriental. His deft leap away from the car—had it been due to gymnastic training, as Savage had first suspected, or to expertise in martial arts?

Four seconds. That was all the time Savage had to study the man. The lightning died. The night concealed.

But four seconds had been enough. The man was in his midthirties: five feet ten inches tall, trim, and solid looking. He wore dark slacks, a matching windbreaker and turtleneck sweater. His brown face was rectangular, his rugged jaw and cheekbones framing his stern, handsome features.

Oriental, yes. But Savage could be more specific. The man was
Japanese.
Savage knew the man's nationality as certainly as his four seconds of shocked recognition had made him shudder at the eerie resemblance the man bore to …

Savage didn't want to think it.

Akira?

No! Impossible!

But as the Mercedes sped farther from the mansion, Savage analyzed his brief impression of the guard, and the major detail about the man wasn't his wiry frame or his stark rectangular features.

No, the major detail was the melancholy behind the intensity on the Japanese sentry's face.

Akira had been the saddest man Savage had ever met.

It couldn't be!

In shock, Savage pivoted toward Rachel. She supposedly was in his custody, but her hysteria controlled her. “You'll never get through the gate.”

“Just watch me.” She increased speed.

“But the gate's made of steel. It's reinforced.”

“So is this car. Armor-plated. Grab the dashboard. When we hit the gate, the Mercedes'll be a tank.”

Ahead, guards scrambled away. The chain link gate loomed quickly. With a jolting concussion, the sedan crashed through the barrier.

Savage swung to stare through the rain-drenched rear window, seeing headlights pursuing them.

He brooded.

With terrible certainty.

The man who drove the car would look impossibly like Akira.

“Did I scare you?” Rachel chuckled.

“Not at all.”

“Then why do you look so pale?”

“It could be I've just seen a ghost.”

14

Savage had planned several ways to get Rachel off the island. Under ideal circumstances, they'd have rushed to a motorcycle that a member of Savage's team had hidden among rocks on a slope a half-kilometer away. From there, they'd have had a choice of three widely separated coves, in each of which a small, powerful boat was waiting to speed them to a fishing trawler that circled the island.

One of the contingencies Savage had to worry about was the weather. While he'd invaded the estate, the storm had been to his advantage—the harder it rained, the better he'd been concealed. But he'd hoped that the storm would lessen during the evacuation, and instead it had strengthened. The wind would be too powerful, the sea too rough for a boat to take them to the fishing trawler, which itself would be in danger and need to seek shelter.

Of course, Savage never based a plan merely on the chance that the weather would improve, even if the forecasts were in his favor. One of his scouts had found a secluded cave in which they could hide till conditions permitted them to use a boat. Savage hadn't worried about dogs following their scent, for Papadropolis had a phobia about dogs and refused to have them on his property. But even if there
had
been dogs, the rain would have impaired their sense of smell.

Savage took into account that guards might find the boats in the coves, so he'd arranged for a helicopter to be waiting on the neighboring island of Delos. All he had to do was signal it with a radio transmitter in his pack, and the chopper would rush to pick them up at a prearranged rendezvous.

But suppose the weather stayed bad, and the chopper couldn't fly? Suppose Papadropolis's men were in the rendezvous area? Pursued, Savage had no opportunity to get Rachel to the cave. That left him with one final variation in his plan. The most desperate alternative.

“Ahead, the road soon forks. Turn left,” he said.

“But that'll take us northwest. Toward—”

“Mykonos.” Savage nodded.

“The village is a labyrinth! We'll be trapped before we can hide!”

“I don't plan to hide.” Savage stared back toward the headlights enlarging in rapid pursuit.

Akira? No! It couldn't be!

“What do you mean, you don't plan to hide? What will we—?”

“Here's the fork. Do what I tell you. Turn left.”

When they'd crashed through the gate, the concrete driveway had become a dirt road. The rain had softened the dirt. The heavy armor-plated Mercedes sank into muddy puddles. Tires spinning, rear end fishtailing, the car struggled forward. At least the pursuing car will have the same trouble we do, Savage thought. Then he noticed that farther back the headlights of other cars had joined the chase.

The mushy road had slowed the Mercedes to thirty kilometers an hour. Even then, Rachel had trouble controlling the steering wheel and keeping the car from sliding into a ditch as she obeyed instructions and took the left fork. “Satisfied?”

“For now. You drive well, by the way.”

“Trying to bolster my confidence?”

“It never hurts,” Savage said. “But I wasn't lying.”

“My husband lies to me all the time. How do I know—?”

“That
I'm
not? Because your safety depends on me, and if you couldn't control this car, I'd insist on trading places with you.”

“Compliment accepted.” Frowning with concentration, she managed to increase speed.

Savage stared again toward the headlights behind him. They weren't gaining. The trouble was, they weren't receding either.

“My husband hired fools. When they had the chance back there, they weren't smart enough to shoot at the tires.”

“It wouldn't have mattered.”

“I don't understand.”

“The tires on a car this heavy are reinforced. They can take a shotgun blast or a bullet from a forty-five and
still
support the car.” A gust of wind shook the car.

Rachel almost veered off the road. Voice trembling, she asked, “What happens when we get to Mykonos?”

“
If
we get to Mykonos. Pay attention to the moment.”

They reached the village of Ano Mera. At this late hour, the village was dark, asleep. The Mercedes gained speed on its rock-slabbed road. Too soon, with the village behind them, the route became muddy again and Rachel eased her foot off the accelerator.

Savage exhaled.

Rachel misinterpreted. “Am I doing something wrong?”

“No, I was worried that the guards would have phoned ahead to warn the men your husband pays to watch for strangers passing through the village toward his estate. We might have faced a roadblock.”

“You've done your homework.”

“I try, but there's always something, the risk of an unknown threat. Knowledge is power. Ignorance …”

“Finish. What do you mean?”

“Ignorance is death. I think the headlights are gaining on us.”

“I noticed in my rearview mirror. Talking helps me not to be afraid. If they catch us …”

“You won't be harmed.”

“Until my husband returns. To beat me again before he rapes me. But you'll …”

“Be killed.”

“Then why are you helping me? How much did my sister pay you?”

“It doesn't matter. Keep your eyes on the road,” Savage said. “If we get to Mykonos—it's only eight kilometers ahead—follow my instructions exactly.”

“Then you
do
have a plan.”

“I had several, but this is the one I'm forced to use. I repeat”— Savage glanced toward the pursuing, possibly gaining headlights—“your life depends on total obedience. Do everything I say.”

“When my husband gives me orders, I resent it. But when
you
give me orders, I'm ready to follow you to hell.”

“Let's hope you don't have to prove it.”

15

Their headlights gleamed off cube-shaped houses, brilliantly white even in the rain-swept darkness.

“Mykonos!” Rachel pressed her foot harder onto the accelerator.

“No!” Savage said.

Too late. The sudden increased speed caused the Mercedes to hydroplane on the mud. The car veered sideways, spun—
twice,
the steering wheel useless, Savage's stomach twisting—and crashed against a fence at the side of the road.

Rachel rammed the gearshift into reverse, tromping the accelerator again.

“Stop!” Savage said.

But the worst had been done. Instead of easing away from the fence toward the road, Rachel had made the car slip sideways onto a mound of earth that snagged the car's drive shaft, propping it up. The tires spun not on mud but air. The car was useless. Two people wouldn't be strong enough to push it off the mound.

The pursuing headlights loomed closer.

Rachel scrambled out of the car. Savage rushed to join her. His boots sank and slid in the mud. He almost lost his balance but managed not to fall as Rachel
did
lose her balance. He caught her, kept a tight grip on her arm, and urged her forward. The sensation was that of a nightmare, racing through mud and yet staying in place.

But they stubbornly gained momentum. Before them, the white cube-shaped houses enlarged as the headlights behind them magnified.

At once, the nightmare of running in place concluded. Rock slabs beneath Savage's boots made him feel as if a cable that restrained him had snapped. He and Rachel shot forward, the solid street providing traction.

The moment they entered the village, Savage realized that the Mercedes would have been useless anyhow. The street they ran along was narrow, winding. It forked, the angles so sharp and confining that the Mercedes could not have maneuvered with any speed. Hearing the engines of the pursuing cars, Savage chose the left tangent and hurried along it, suddenly confronted by two more tangents. Dismayed, he knew that no matter which direction he took, there'd soon be
other
tangents.

The maze of Mykonos, the streets arranged in a labyrinth, a means of confusing pirates in antiquity, of making it easy for villagers to trap marauders. Or for present-day hunters to trap their quarry.

Behind him, Savage heard slamming car doors, angry voices, urgent footsteps echoing along a street. He studied the tangents before him. The one to the left veered upward, the other down. His choice was inevitable. He had to keep moving toward the harbor. Guiding Rachel, he fled to the right, only to discover that the street soon angled upward.

It's taking us back to where we started!

Savage pivoted, forcing Rachel to retrace her steps. Except for the gusting rain and the angry voices of their hunters, the village was silent. Only the white of the houses, occasional lights in windows, and sporadic flashes of lightning helped Savage to see his way.