City of Swords (5 page)

Chapter 9

“Annja!” Rembert’s face was pale. “What do they want? Money? I’ve got euros. Give them our money!”

Although Rembert didn’t know much French beyond asking where the nearest restaurant and bathroom were—and though he was oblivious to what the pair were really after—he recognized their intent. Annja saw his lower lip quiver. He had broken out in a sweat. He clumsily tried to reach into his pockets, maybe to pull out a wallet, but the Romanies snarled and poked him with their knives. Rembert stood still. Her photographer was not a physically weak man, but neither was he a stupid one.

“The sword, American archaeologist!” the taller of the two shouted. He pressed the knife harder against Rembert’s skin, which was white around the tip of the blade, with a splotch of red showing. “It was not in your hotel room. At either hotel. Where is it? Where is the old sword?”

“I don’t have a sword,” she snapped. Only the two of them, right? Not much of a threat… No threat at all, if Rembert wasn’t in the equation. “Do you see a sword?”

There could be more, hiding behind the embankment or up on the bridge, maybe behind her. She couldn’t hear any other people talking, no crunch of shoes over the gravel and glass at the edge of the river. She wasn’t going to risk a glance over her shoulder—not yet.

Her mind raced. They’d followed her from Paris…. Was it possible that night outside the old train station, when she’d been looking for a fight to ease her soul, they’d actually been looking for her? Her, specifically? That they were the ones doing the stalking? Had they known about her sword before the street fight?
Was
that possible?

Annja had always tried to be circumspect when she called the sword. She’d never been caught on tape wielding it. She would know if that had been the case; she had contacts all over the world who followed her interests on the internet and who would have notified her. If nothing else, Roux would have said something.

“The sword! Hand it over! Hurry!”

“I’ve got no sword here. No gun. No knife. You can see I have no weapon.” She paused. “But I have money. Euros. We were going to pay for an interview. We’ve got money for that. We can go back to the hotel, all of us, Gaston, and—”

He laughed. “A ruse to get you here. Dog-men.” He spat.

“Look, whoever you are—” She stopped when she heard the cry of some large bird passing low over the river, followed by the noise of a siren, which quickly receded. What sounded like a boat behind her on the river… She doubted anyone on board could see into the shadows under the bridge, but maybe she could do something to get their attention.

“We don’t want your money, American.” The tall one spat again, as if the notion of cash left a bad taste in his mouth, and drew the knife down Rembert’s throat. The pressure was enough to produce a line of blood, but not enough to cause the photographer serious harm.

“Annja!” Rembert howled. “Give them what they want.”

“I do not think you worry about your friend, American archaeologist. I do not think you consider us serious. I can promise you, we are serious. We will kill if we have to.”

His companion laughed and jabbed Rembert in the stomach, again enough to draw blood. “She should take us serious, eh, Dimitru?”

The tall one scowled.

So she had one piece of information, a name: Dimitru. Definitely Romany.

“Dimitru!” Annja had the thug’s complete attention. “You say you want a sword. I could—”

“No. Not
a
sword.
Your
sword. The one you flashed in Paris, that night so late. Before the police came and took my brothers.”

“I’ll have to go get it for you.” She extended her arms to her sides and opened her hands as wide as her fingers would stretch. “I’m not carrying a sword.” She turned slowly, taking a deep breath, glad for the opportunity to look behind her. She saw the ship, a barge. Not yet close enough. It didn’t look as if anyone was on deck. She hadn’t heard anyone come up behind her. Other than the threats of the Romanies, she’d heard only the sounds of traffic across the bridge and past the embankment. Finished her circle, she faced the Romany again. They’d pulled Rembert a little deeper into the shadows under the bridge. “It won’t take me long.”

“You think me simple,” the tall one hissed. “You have the sword, Annja Creed. You have it with you. Maybe it is invisible. Maybe it is a ghost thing. But I know you have it.”

“We are done talking to her, right, Dimitru?” The other guy poked Rembert again. “A boat is coming. Someone might see us.”

“They see nothing,” Dimitru said softly. “This rain.”

“Annja,” Rembert pleaded. “What do they want? We can give them money, can’t we? My camera…I dropped it there. They can have that. Annja, tell them they can—”

“We do not want your money,” Dimitru said in English. “We want the woman’s sword. I am done with this.”

“Stop!” Annja cried. “Leave him alone. Let Rembert out of here, let him leave, and you can have the sword. Let—”

“Rembert is our insurance, Annja Creed. Is the sword worth more than his life?”

“Of course not.” She nodded. “Let him go.”

“The ghostly sword for the photographer, then,” Dimitru said. “Now. Make it appear now. Like before.”

Annja felt the pommel touch her palm, and she wrapped her fingers around it.

“What the hell?” Rembert said.

“This what you want?” she asked.

“Drop it and back away,” Dimitru ordered her.

Annja set it gently at her feet in the scrubby weeds and the remains of someone’s fast-food dinner that had been tossed off the bridge. From the Romanies’ vantage point, they wouldn’t be able to see the sword. Annja stepped back and sent it into the otherwhere. Dimitru’s expression didn’t change.

“Let him go. Rembert is not a part of this,” she said. “There’s the sword. We had a bargain.”

Dimitru hurled Rembert behind him, and the shorter Romany kicked the photographer in the back of the legs, dropping him to the gravel. At the same time, Dimitru shot toward Annja, knife slashing to keep her at bay.

“Get back!” he hollered to her. “Get back and no one has to be hurt!”

A dozen steps and he was at the spot where she’d dropped the sword.

“Trick!” he screamed. “Where is it? Petre…she tricked us. Kill the man! Kill him—” The Romany’s voice caught in his throat.

Chapter 10

Instantly, the sword was in Annja’s hands again and she was bringing it around, aiming to strike him in the arm with the flat of the blade. She’d hadn’t meant her blow to be a killing one, but she’d put all her strength behind it, and Dimitru somehow turned into it and rushed her in a crouch. She tried to pull her swing in that last second, but he was too fast and caught himself across the throat. At the same time he managed to stab her in the thigh, but his knife didn’t sink deep.

The knife wound hurt, but worse was the sting of death she thought she could have avoided.
Dwell on that later,
Annja told herself. She kept hold of the sword with her left hand, and with her right tugged out the knife and dropped it next to the body.

Annja stepped around Dimitru and headed toward the other man. Petre. The wiry Romany emitted a high-pitched wail. He’d been bending over Rembert, one hand grasping the back of his head, the other readying to slice his throat. But at the sight of Annja advancing on him, he bolted, angling up the steep, slick embankment.

The photographer stayed down, wrapping his arms over his head.

Annja glanced at him as she charged after the Romany, dismissing the sword and pumping her fists to speed her feet. Rembert didn’t appear to be badly hurt.

And she desperately needed to find out why they wanted her sword. How they knew about it.

She followed the youth up the bank, sliding once and hitting a chunk of concrete that sent daggers of pain into her knees, almost as bad as the knife wound in her leg. She picked herself up, catching sight of him cresting the top and sprinting into traffic.

Horns blared, tires squealed and someone rolled down his window to spew a stream of curses. Annja dodged the cars, taking only a little more care than her quarry had, which cost her precious seconds.

The rain made the city a blend of blue-grays that caused the buildings and people to look almost surreal—a muted watercolor painting dripping all around her. The storm had increased in intensity in the minutes since she and Rembert had slipped down the bank for the ill-fated interview. Fat drops hammered the pavement and splashed back up like ricocheting bullets.

Her quarry was easy to make out from the other pedestrians braving the weather. None of them were running and pushing people out of their way, and nearly all of them had umbrellas or hats. She was about a block and a half behind him, gaining a little.

“Hé! Que faites-vous?”
a pedestrian shouted at her as she nearly tipped him over.

“Sorry,” Annja called over her shoulder.

“Qu’est-ce que tu fous là, toi?”
This from a young man not quite as polite as the first.

She tromped through a puddle, sending a spray of water at a stooped woman with a large blue umbrella.

“Appellez la police!”
the offended woman hollered.
“Appellez les flics! Elle m’a poussé, c’te vache!”

Annja grimaced. She hadn’t pushed the woman. No doubt the police would be arriving soon, anyway, especially if Rembert had called. Lord, what would he tell the cops? Would he mention her sword?

The buildings she thundered past were dirty from age and darkened by the storm. Everything seemed ancient compared to her neighborhood in Brooklyn. Signs on the sidewalk were a blur of colors; she was going too fast to read them.

She lost sight of him when he rounded a corner. When she skidded around it after him, the Palais des Papes loomed into view, the place where she and Rembert had first met “Jacques.” There! She snarled when she spotted him dash through the entrance. It was a beautiful building, holy in its original intent, and she disliked the notion of the Romany punk hurtling through it.

Petre, that was what the other man called him.

“Petre!” she shouted. “Stop, Petre!” The sirens were growing louder. If Rembert hadn’t summoned the police, someone on the sidewalk had. “Stop, Petre! I only want to talk!”

Annja raced through the entrance, barreling into a pair of women who were opening their umbrellas as they left. She knocked one woman flat. The other dropped her umbrella along with something she had purchased, and that broke with a resounding crack against the stone floor. Annja paused long enough to help the one up and spit out an apology. Then she was running again. She didn’t see her quarry, but there were signs to mark his passing—another visitor picking himself up, a man retrieving papers and other objects that had been scattered. Not to mention the trail of wet footprints.

The slapping of her shoes on the stone floor echoed.

“Where are you going?” an American tourist asked as she passed. All the other words shouted at her were in French. There were more people around now than when she and Rembert had been here minutes before. Perhaps a tour bus had dropped them off, or they had come in to escape the storm.

The wet trail led into one of the wings. Annja spotted her quarry just ahead, where a hand-holding couple stood looking at something in an alcove.

Petre grabbed the woman and flung her to the floor. Her companion hollered and bent to help her.

Annja leaped over them like a racer jumping hurdles on the track. Then the Romany gypsy was out a side door, and she followed.

The rain pounded her once more. Not an inch of her was dry, and now she was feeling chilled. The guy was back on the sidewalk, never pausing to look behind him, obviously knowing Annja was still on his tail. He pushed an old man waiting at a bus stop, then grabbed a woman getting off a bus and threw her behind him—obstacles to slow Annja down.

He skidded around a bench and vaulted a large cement pot filled with flowers, landing like a cat before cutting across the street. And then he disappeared behind another bus.

“No you don’t,” Annja growled. She wasn’t about to let him elude her. Not now. The bus pulled away from the curb just as she reached it. But a quick scan through the windows didn’t show any panic or jostling. The passengers looked calm. “So where?” She took in everything lightning-fast. “Where did you go, Petre?”

She studied the entrances to the old buildings, the shops with awnings sagging low from the rain, the people huddled beneath them.

Nothing.

He hadn’t come this way.

Wait. There was a gap between two buildings near where the bus had stopped, not wide enough to be an alley. Without thought, Annja plunged down it, the stone wall grazing her shoulder as she went.

As she hurried past a boarded-up recess, Petre jumped out at her, shoving her against the opposite wall. He had a knife in his hand, but not enough space to use it effectively. Annja grabbed his wrist and pressed it against the stone, squeezing until he dropped the blade and wedging herself against him. He struggled, but she held him hard and brought her face to his ear.

“Don’t move, don’t barely breathe. You know what I’m capable of.”

He stank of sweat and the grime of the city and of fouling himself.

“You’re going to talk to me now. Understand?”

He nodded.

“The sword. Why do you want my sword?”

His answer was halting. “Paid…to get it.”

“Who paid you?”

He shrugged. His eyes looked dead.

“Who?”

“A collector.”

She dug her fingers into his arms with enough force to make him wince. “Let’s try this again, Petre, right? Who paid you to steal my sword?”

“Dimitru knew a man. Did work for him in Paris. He paid Dimitru, and Dimitru asked me to help. In Paris and here. This collector—Dimitru said he was rich.”

Annja let out an exasperated sigh. Dimitru was gone, and so, apparently, were the answers she wanted.

“You didn’t know this man he did work for?”

“I told you no. Never saw him. But Dimitru said he collects swords.”

“And how did he know about mine?” Annja didn’t expect him to answer that.

“Old swords, that’s all I know. Special swords. Dimitru was to get yours and then another. Swords of history.”

It was a start, Annja thought. Maybe if she did a little digging, called some—

A commotion back on the sidewalk brought her out of her thoughts. Through the haze of rain she saw flashing blue lights.

“Through there!” she heard someone shout. “They went through there.”

Annja squeezed by Petre, putting distance between herself and the police.

Historical swords, the Romany youth had said.

She suddenly recalled something Roux had told her days ago. “Be careful, Annja, that a historical monster does not come chasing you.”