Comes a Horseman (65 page)

He dropped to his knees, panning his palms across the floor.

Noises from other pursuers came to them. A flashlight beam skittered against the curve of the tunnel wall.

Brady's right hand hit metal, which danced away from him.

“Got it,” he said. “Come on.”

They reached the lighted tunnel where the man had first shot at them.

Alicia turned left, away from the cell they'd occupied, far in the other direction. She slowed before a lighted portal on her left. She peered in. Nothing. It was a passageway similar to the one they were in.

“Straight,” Brady said, and she did not hesitate.

Thirty seconds later, voices pranced ahead of the humans making them—Brady and Alicia were heading directly into another search party.

They spun in unison and jogged back to the lighted passage they had passed. They darted into it. The two groups of pursuers would meet in about twenty seconds and realize where their prey went.

“Take the next lighted tunnel,” he said.

They passed three black tunnels before reaching one with a string of stingy bulbs tacked to the ceiling. Stepping into it, they slowed to a walk, which allowed them to catch their breath and listen for pursuers.

“Sound gets distorted down here,” he told her. “It's really hard to pinpoint it.”

“I noticed.”

He looked at the pistol in his hand. Glock 21—same as the one he trained with and carried on the job, except this fired .45s. Its bullets were larger than the 9mm bullets he was accustomed to. He stopped and ejected the magazine. Empty. He pulled back on the slide: a bullet popped out. He slipped it back into the chamber.

“One bullet,” he reported.

“Make it count.”

A gunshot rang out, and a bulb above them exploded. They turned to see a woman with a rifle taking aim. She was at least a hundred yards away, past the tunnel from which they had emerged.

Brady and Alicia dropped to the ground. The rifle fired. The bullet gouged out a chunk of wall above Alicia's head.

The shooter walked toward them.

“Crawl as fast as you can,” Brady said. He scurried behind Alicia, moving backward to keep an eye on their pursuer.

The woman took aim. Brady watched her close one eye. He raised the Glock and sighted down its barrel, aligning her head between two iridescent dots.

Three people burst into the tunnel from a side passage, between the woman and him and Alicia. Four more joined them. They seemed confused about which way to turn. Two spotted the riflewoman and dropped into a crouch as their own weapons came up on her.

“Hey!” someone yelled, and Brady thought it was Rifle Lady, ticked that a group of morons spoiled her shot.

He spun, saw nothing but Alicia's backside and the bottoms of her shoes. He scampered after her.

A chorus of voices rang out behind him, representing a host of nations:
“Erhalten Sie sie!” “Tiro! Tiro!” “Déplacez-le des secousses!”

Someone fired a shot.

They rounded a corner and leaped to their feet. The voices bounced past them. The tunnel opened into a huge corridor or hall, at least three stories high and so long neither end was visible. Fluted columns lined both walls. Stone spandrels arced from the top of one column to the next in line, all the way down the hall. From as far as Brady could see in each direction, amber glass bowls, like giant contact lenses, hung from the ceiling by thick chains. Fire crackled in each bowl and cast the entire hall in a bright, flickering yellow glow.

Tall double doors were centered in the wall between each column. Alicia ran to one, tugged at it. It did not budge.

Brady tried a different door, same result.

They ran down the corridor, moving past each other, trying doors.

Voices reached them from behind and ahead.

“Look for another tun—,” Brady called as the door he tugged came toward him with the shriek of a dying bird.

“Alicia!” he said, turning to find her. She was at his side. Together, they pulled the doors open.

“Come in!” bellowed a familiar voice.

At the end of a long, carpeted aisle, Luco Scaramuzzi stood behind a stone altar, beckoning to them.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “we have guests!”

84

I
n the corridor, their pursuers found them. Coming from both directions, two groups of at least a dozen people each, every one armed with a knife or pistol or rifle, converged on Brady and Alicia. They had no choice but to accept Scaramuzzi's invitation. They moved quickly into the room. It was a cathedral, intricately carved from the bedrock under Jerusalem. Even the pews on each side of the aisle were stone. Two hundred faces were turned to Brady and Alicia. They stopped halfway to the altar. The armed militia crowded the threshold behind them. Their voices faded as voices do in churches.

Brady rotated around, catching sight of armed guards on balconies in the four corners of the cathedral. Without hesitation, he raised the pistol and took aim at Scaramuzzi.

Breaths pulled in, firearms cocked. Several men in nearby pews rose to their feet, ready to spring.

“Wait!” Scaramuzzi called. He raised his arms like a televangelist healing his broadcast audience. He was wearing a white robe. The sleeves hung down like angel's wings. This mockery of worship—its location, its “minister”—felt
wrong
to Brady. It called to mind Hieronymus Bosch's depiction of black mass, and the thought sickened him
.

“Who brings these persecutors?” he continued. “Is it my father? Is it Satan?”

Gasps and ripples of applause from the congregation.

“A challenge, perhaps? A test? Father, has my time of trial and triumph come?”

He glanced around the room. A smile creased his lips.

Brady risked his own glimpse of the crowd. They were transfixed, overwhelmed by the spectacle before them. Scaramuzzi was playing them perfectly. This was precisely the show they wanted. Regardless of the outcome, Scaramuzzi would spin it in his direction, and they would love him. The beast Ambrosi had described—with the malice of Hitler and the power of nations—was taking shape before their eyes.

An absurdity pushed its way into his mind:
Could Scaramuzzi have planned this all along?
Could he and Alicia have been prodded and herded to this place at this time, carried on a current of Scaramuzzi's design?

Keeping his arms high, Scaramuzzi stepped around the altar.

“You see, my beloved, these intruders
know
who I am. They recognize me!”

Brady called out, “Tell your guards to drop their weapons!”

Scaramuzzi nodded. “Of course.” He made a vertical gesture with his hands, as though fanning the congregation. After some hesitation, weapons all around them clattered against the floor. The men in the balconies leaned their rifles against the balustrades.

“You see?” Scaramuzzi said calmly. “See how I embrace my destiny?”

All Brady could see was Scaramuzzi's head lined up in the pistol's sights. He felt the trigger under his finger.

Pull the trigger,
he thought.
End it here.

The end of everything: Scaramuzzi . . . Alicia . . . himself. He knew that before the gunshot blast faded away, the mob would be on top of them. They would tear the two of them apart.

He did not want that for Alicia. He did not want that for himself. He truly wanted to see Zach again. And he wanted to know what Alicia felt like in his arms.

His finger eased off the trigger.

“We're leaving,” he announced and took a step back.

Scaramuzzi said nothing.

He wants us to leave.

He'd given his fans the drama they sought. He'd say his mercy spared his enemies . . . or his father, Satan, told him he had passed the test, that he had stood up to his enemies and survived . . . he'd tell them something that would solidify their faith in him and grant him more power.

Brady took another backward step. Alicia moved with him—close, her hand on his shoulder.

A latch clanked and a door off to Brady's right creaked open. Everyone's head turned, including Scaramuzzi's. Brady moved just his eyes and caught sight of three men standing in a doorway. The one in front was short and stocky, with bushy eyebrows and a full head of silver hair. He recognized him from Ambrosi's scrapbook—Niklas Hüber. The Asian man beside Hüber was . . .
Ah,
he could not remember the man's name, but his picture had been beside Hüber's. Behind them stood a tall black man. He had not been pictured in the scrapbook, but Ambrosi had said his information on the current Council of Watchers was incomplete. These newcomers quickly assessed the situation. Deep frowns etched into their faces as they focused their attention on Scaramuzzi.

“This test is mine!” Scaramuzzi's voice resonated in the big chamber. He gazed past the gun into Brady's eyes. “‘And I saw one of his heads as if it had been slain, and his fatal wound was healed. And the whole earth was amazed and followed after the beast!'”

Brady's stomach tightened. He was quoting from Revelation. It was the passage that many theologians say describes a fatal head wound Antichrist suffers, from which he miraculously recovers, sealing his ascension to world power.

Is he suggesting I . . . ?

Keeping his eyes locked on Brady's, Scaramuzzi bellowed, “Listen to me, all of you! These intruders are sent from the father to demonstrate my power, my identity! Let them shoot me—”

The congregation erupted with shouts of “No!” and “We won't!”

Scaramuzzi continued: “Let them shoot me, for it is written that they will. And it is written that I will rise again. And all will know me!”

The noes turned into cheers.

“If they shoot, let them go. If they don't . . . kill them.”

Silence.

“Agreed, my beloved?”

No one replied. He was asking more than many of them could promise. Shoot the savior and go free? Blasphemy!

“I will come back,” explained Scaramuzzi, “and take my revenge. They are mine.”

This the congregation understood. Applause and cheers welled to a deafening volume. Then it quelled, like a breaker rolling off the sand, back into the surf.

“So,” he said softly to Brady, “fulfill my destiny.”

Beside him, Alicia whispered, “Do it.”

In his mind, he saw himself pulling back on the trigger, putting a bullet in this lunatic's head.

His finger was paralyzed.

This was wrong. Scaramuzzi was unarmed. Killing him this way was murder.

Shoot!
he scolded himself.

Brady was not cut out for unprincipled action. He had been wrong to think he could do whatever it took, regardless of the law, regardless of morals. The end does
not
justify the means! Three days ago, when he had taken aim at Malik, he wasn't ready to recage the beast he felt stirring inside. Now he was.

The beheadings . . . Zach . . . the attack on Alicia . . .

He had every reason to shoot. Why couldn't he?

He had heard about soldiers who were well trained, both physically and psychologically, to kill, but found they could not—even as their enemies tried to kill
them
. What a time to find out.

“Brady?” Alicia whispered.

Brady saw Scaramuzzi's forehead glisten. A lock of hair was quivering. He was trying to play it cool, but his nerve was starting to crack.

“Do it,” Scaramuzzi said, almost inaudibly.

Brady's aim lowered slightly. Centered between the sights was Scaramuzzi's neck . . . then his chest . . .

Someone gripped his wrist. Alicia, reading his thoughts. Her right hand rose and took hold of the pistol. She tugged and then
wrenched
it from his hand.

She aimed it at Scaramuzzi.

He squinted at her, and for a moment, the cloud of insanity seemed to disperse away from him. Sheer terror flashed on his face.

She fired.

A hole appeared above his left eye. A red mist burst from behind his head. Filigrees of gore instantly appeared on the back wall. Scaramuzzi snapped backward, falling on the altar. A second later he was back up, standing as though only by habit. A trickle of blood leaked from the hole in his forehead, pooled in his brow, and dripped onto the white robe over his heart. He teetered and fell forward. His head struck the floor with the
crack
of a sledgehammer. A dark halo of blood fanned out under his head, slow as syrup.

No one spoke. No one twitched. It seemed to Brady that no one breathed. They all stared at the body, at the dark pool, awed, waiting.

Alicia tugged at his arm, and he let her pull him backward up the aisle. He could not take his eyes off the still body. Then as he turned he caught the three Council members, the three ephori, watching them leave. Their faces were impassive, resolved. His gaze flicked up to the balcony, where the Viking surveyed the scene. Their eyes met, and Olaf stepped back into the shadows.

Alicia pulled him through the knot of militia crowding in the threshold. No one moved to stop them. She released him, stooped down, and exchanged her empty weapon for one of the pistols on the floor. She checked the magazine and the chamber, appeared satisfied, and strode away.

Over her shoulder, she called, “Coming?”

85

W
e need someone to show us the way out,” he said. They were moving fast down the center of the huge corridor.

“Do you want to go back and ask one of those freaks?”

He glanced back. The group he thought of as the militia—but who were likely only guards or armed workers—had disappeared into the cathedral. What they might be doing, he did not want to know.

“This hall has to lead somewhere,” he said.

When they arrived at the end, however, there were only three passageways, none of which appeared any more promising than the miles and miles of tunnels they had previously traversed.

“Pick one,” Alicia said, impatiently bouncing the new pistol against her thigh.