Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire (2 page)

Gabriel could see the white horse standing by the open doorway of a low stone building on the opposite side of the courtyard. Steep stone steps were visible through the doorway, leading sharply down into the darkness beyond, but Fiona and the rider who had grabbed her—the man with the tall fur hat—were nowhere in sight.

However there was no time to contemplate where Fiona might have been taken, because Gabriel was distracted by the infinitely more pressing issue of the hostile, rifle-wielding soldiers currently drawing down on him.

One of their number, a handsome, dark-haired older man with the insignia of a commanding officer, stepped forward and ordered Gabriel, in Russian, to surrender his gun. One of the younger soldiers helpfully clarified the command by tapping Gabriel’s shoulder holster with the barrel of his Kalashnikov and then jamming the muzzle into the soft spot under Gabriel’s ear.

Gabriel raised his hands and slowly removed the Colt from its holster. His eyes desperately scanned his surroundings for any hope of escape. There were stacks of stenciled wooden crates, several parked military vehicles
and a pair of noisy, foul-smelling generators powering the strings of weak yellow lightbulbs that illuminated the scene. The remaining riders had dismounted at the far end of the courtyard and were seeing to their horses with only the vaguest interest in Gabriel’s predicament. A group of grim-faced African men in suits were standing to his left, conversing quietly in French and giving him occasional stony glares while one of their number counted the crates, jotting figures on a clipboard. The surrounding walls were over twenty feet high. There was no visible way out.

Gabriel held his pistol out at arm’s length and tossed it to the ground. It slid across the mossy paving stones and came to rest against the commanding officer’s spit-shined shoe. The soldier pressing his rifle against Ga-briel’s neck backed off with a smug look. The smugness rapidly transformed to curiosity, then astonishment as the sound of an approaching vehicle became a deafening crash. Djordji’s jeep rammed the rusty portcullis, knocking it loose from its ancient moorings and driving into the courtyard with the gate drunkenly balanced across the hood, steam billowing from the damaged engine.

Gabriel leapt aside, narrowly avoiding being flattened as the jeep scattered men before it like bowling pins. He dove for his Colt, rolling away with the gun in hand and ending up behind a stack of wooden crates. Gabriel ducked down and listened to the multilingual chaos, trying to discern Djordji’s fate while his fingers moved on autopilot, emptying the Colt’s spent brass and reloading. He’d only had time to slide two fresh slugs into the cylinder when a wiry young soldier dropped down on him from the stack of crates above, slamming a fist into the back of his neck and causing
the remaining bullets in Gabriel’s palm to drop and scatter.

Gabriel swore, twisting and bringing the hand holding the pistol up toward his attacker, but the Russian grabbed Gabriel’s hand and pressed his thumb against the still open cylinder to keep it from snapping shut. Gabriel managed to wrench his hand free from the Russian’s grip, but not before the struggle caused the two bullets to slip from the chamber and roll away under one of the crates. He let the young Russian have it in the temple with the butt of the empty gun. The Russian dropped as if suddenly boneless. Stepping over his crumpled form, Gabriel angrily holstered the empty Colt and peered around the stack of crates.

The courtyard was full of soldiers, running and shouting. The jeep was upside down and on fire, but Djordji wasn’t in it. In fact, he was nowhere in sight. Several men were battling the smoky blaze with foam extinguishers while others, under the supervision of the grim Africans, formed lines to swiftly move crates of ammo and other dangerous explosives away from the fire. It was then that Gabriel realized what was going on here. Clearly he had stumbled into the middle of some kind of arms deal. But what did this have to do with Fiona and the
kindjal
?

Gabriel eyed the open door and the stone steps down which Fiona and her captor had disappeared. He thought he had a clear shot and was about to make a run for it when one of the Africans came around the far corner of the stack of crates. His eyes widened in surprise and then narrowed to a slit as he pulled out an HK .45, drawing a bead on Gabriel’s chest.

Gabriel raised his palms till they framed his face. In heavily accented French, the African told Gabriel to prepare
for death. Gabriel responded in the same tongue. “You might want to do a little preparation yourself,” he said.

“I? For what?” The man sneered. “I have the gun in my hand, and you have nothing.”

“Yes,” Gabriel said, “but my friend there, behind you, has a shovel.”

The man got the beginning of a contemptuous laugh out before the shovel in Djordji’s hands slammed into the back of his head with a loud crack. The man staggered and crumpled, clutching at the crates as he fell. One toppled onto him, breaking open when it struck the ground. A pair of smooth, spherical hand grenades spilled out.

Gabriel snatched one up. “Nobody move!” he shouted. He stepped out into view with his finger through the pin loop. “Drop your weapons.”

There was a moment of shocked silence and then a ripple of outraged Russian murmurs.

“You wouldn’t dare,” replied the dark-haired officer who’d first confronted Gabriel.

“Of course I would,” Gabriel replied in Russian. “Grenade or gun, I’m just as dead, but this way I get to take some of you with me.” The logic seemed to sink in, and the officer took a step back. Gabriel motioned for Djordji to join him as he moved sideways toward the open door.

Every pair of eyes in the courtyard was focused on Gabriel as weapons were lowered but not dropped. The look on the officer’s face was one of barely suppressed rage. Gabriel closed the last few feet between him and the door.

“Go,” he said to Djordji, gesturing for the Gypsy to start down the stone steps.

While the older man descended, Gabriel stood in the open doorway, his finger on the pin of the hand grenade. Once he could no longer hear Djordji’s steps, Gabriel called to the officer. “Here. Catch.” He made as if to throw the grenade at the man, who ducked away in fear—but at the last instant, Gabriel spun and slung the grenade sidelong toward the nearest stack of munitions.

The hot fist of the ensuing explosion shoved Gabriel backward into the stairway. Gabriel pulled the heavy wooden door closed, sliding a massive iron bar into place to seal it. He could hear the firecracker sound of explosions and gunshots, then a barrage of angry Russian as the soldiers beat their fists and gun butts against the door. Gabriel raced downward, following the path Djordji had taken—and Fiona before him—into the bowels of the ancient fortress.

He met up with Djordji halfway down. The Gypsy was leaning against the stone wall, the shovel still gripped in one fist. Djordji put the index finger of his other hand to his lips and gestured with his head below them, where the stone steps vanished into darkness. There were voices below, one male and one female, both furious.

“Where?”
the man’s voice thundered in heavily accented English.
“You tell, now!”

“I don’t know where it is,”
Fiona shouted back, unconvincingly.
“I swear I don’t.”

Gabriel took the lead and walked silently, cautiously, down the steps. As they crept around a turn, the darkness was replaced by a dim flickering light, the startlingly red glow a shade Gabriel remembered seeing only once before, in a Croatian monastery; when he’d asked what accounted for the unusual color of the
flame, they’d explained it was the admixture of the tallow with a portion of ground-up human bone. The calcium, they explained. Calcium burns brick red.

Gabriel still couldn’t see anything before him—there was another curve in the steps ahead—but he could make out a distinct and repetitive sound, a kind of sharp, resonant
thwack
, followed swiftly each time by a high-pitched feminine gasp.

He hastened ahead to the curve, Djordji just steps behind. When they came around it, the candlelit scene was revealed. Fiona stood in the center of a large, lowceilinged room, bound to one of several thick wooden pillars with her hands above her head. Her dress was torn nearly to her waist and her shapely legs were scratched and bruised, but she held her small, defiant chin high, eyes blazing. The pillar to which she had been tied was bristling with throwing knives, their wicked points buried in the ancient wood all around her bound and squirming form. The rider in the fur hat stood before her, now revealed as a tall, brutish man with long gray hair, a sharp forked beard and an expression of avid hunger that might have been lust or greed or religious zeal, or perhaps a combination of all three. The man held several knives in one large hand like a deadly bouquet, the same sort of knives that currently surrounded Fiona’s tense, quivering body. He transferred one to his empty hand, then smiled and licked his lips.

“I told you…” Fiona began to say.

The man in the fur hat raised his elbow to the ceiling and then brought his arm swiftly downward, letting the knife fly. It sank deep into the wood a bare millimeter from Fiona’s temple. She yelped as she tried to twist away and found her head trapped, a thick lock of her hair pinned to the wood by the blade.

Gabriel’s hand reflexively drew the now empty Colt. He looked to Djordji and motioned for the Gypsy to hand him the shovel. Should he charge the man with the shovel? Try to bluff with the gun? He needed to act fast, because the next strike of a blade could be fatal. Behind him, Djordji silently crossed himself. The man in the fur hat switched another knife to his empty hand. Gabriel looked from the shovel to the gun and back again.

“Ah, hell,” he muttered, then raised the Colt so its barrel was aimed directly at the knife thrower’s forehead. He called out: “Put the knives down and let her go.”

With stunning speed, the man spun and let the blade fly in Gabriel’s direction. Gabriel’s reflexes were barely quick enough for him to bring the head of the shovel up into the knife’s path. The blade rang loudly against the metal of the shovel, then ricocheted off, burying itself to the hilt in the dirt between two slabs of stone at the foot of the stairs.

Gabriel charged down the remaining steps as the man readied for another throw. Gabriel felt level ground beneath his feet and saw a second knife spinning toward him, end over end. He swung the shovel, deflecting it. He saw Djordji duck as the knife passed by him. The Gypsy flattened himself against the nearest wall, then darted away into the safety of the shadows.

The knife thrower stepped back to Fiona’s side, one of the remaining knives clutched in each hand. He held one up in throwing position and swung the other to a point directly below her chin. “You come,” he said, “I carve.”

Gabriel drew to a halt, gun raised. “You move, I shoot.”

“This close,” the man said softly, “blade is faster.” And to demonstrate he took a nick out of Fiona’s throat
with a minute twitch of his wrist. A drop of blood formed, then a trail, a line of red reaching down toward her collarbone. Fiona didn’t make a sound, but Gabriel could see the pain and fear in her eyes.

Was a blade faster than a bullet? It depended on circumstances and was a question tacticians could debate. But a real blade was definitely faster than a nonex is tent bullet.

Gabriel lowered his gun. “All right,” he said. “You win. I’ll tell you where the
kindjal
is.”

“You?” the man said, his eyes narrowing with disbelief.

“Me,” Gabriel said. “She passed it to me in the bar. I hid it in the alleyway.”

The man considered this for a moment, then shook his head. “You lie. You lie to save woman.” He leered. “Because you like, no?”

“No,” Gabriel said. “I don’t like. I did once, very much. But that was a long time ago.” He saw the change in Fiona’s expression. The look of pain in her eyes was due to more now than just the blade at her throat.

“Then why,” the man said, “do you try to save her?”

“Because,” Gabriel said, “that’s what I do.”

The knife thrower turned then, at a sound beside him, but not before Djordji, who had crept along the shadows of the wall and circled around behind him, was able to lunge forward and seize the man in a crushing bear hug. They grappled, the knife thrower straining mightily to free his arms, which Djordji held pinned to his sides. Gabriel ran forward, the shovel swinging in a wide arc. The rust-stained metal caught the knife thrower full in the face, sending the fur hat flying. The man went limp in Djordji’s grip. The Gypsy let him go, and he slid to the floor.

“Thank you,” Gabriel said. “That was—”

“Gabriel!” Fiona cried. “Look out!”

The bone-jarring roar of a high caliber gunshot made Gabriel leap backward. Djordji uttered a whispered Romany oath and, to Gabriel’s horror, collapsed first to his knees and then onto his side, a dark stain spreading across the shoulder of his bright red shirt.

Gabriel dropped to the ground beside him. Djordji was still conscious, but his breaths were suddenly rapid and shallow and his face was pale and wet with cold sweat. Blood pooled on the stone beneath him.

A reedy voice issued from the shadows at the far side of the room. “You…must be the famous Gabriel Hunt.”

Gabriel looked up. He saw a small, dapper man in an immaculate suit come forward. The man had an expressionless, oddly doll-like face and he was holding an enormous, showy chrome Desert Eagle, his finger tight on the trigger.

“Permit me to introduce myself,” the dapper man said. His accent sounded Ukrainian. “I am Vladislav Shevchenko. I, too, have an interest in…” He paused, as if searching for the right English word. “Antiquities. Do not get me wrong, it is not my primary trade. My primary trade is the one you saw upstairs, the trade in modern weapons. But there is no…elegance to a modern weapon. You press a button, a man dies, a car explodes—there is no grace there, no beauty. The money, however, it is good. This…lucrative trade in inelegant modern armaments allows me to collect rarer, dare I say unique, items such as the one we have both been searching for.”

He stepped forward, the gun not wavering by so much as an inch.

“Imagine my sense of betrayal and disappointment when I heard that Dr. Rush here was planning to sell the object of our common interest to one of my most
bitter rivals. I suspect it was not very different from your emotions when you discovered she had betrayed you.”

He took another step closer, flat black shark eyes absorbing the crimson firelight and reflecting nothing. “I hope we can understand each other, Mr. Hunt. Maybe you will be more reasonable than our mutual lady-friend. I daresay you owe me something in any event, given the…damage you’ve done to my other transaction.” He gestured toward the ceiling with his head. “I feel that it is the least you can do to make amends.”

“He doesn’t know where the
kindjal
is, you bastard,” Fiona said, twisting viciously against her bonds. “He was lying. I’m the only one who knows.”

“I like a brave woman,” Shevchenko said, stretching the edges of his mouth upward in an expression that had little in common with a smile. “Don’t you, Mr. Hunt?” He shot a look in Fiona’s direction. “I promise, my dear, you will have an opportunity to show your bravery soon enough, for what is braver than facing pain with—”

Gabriel didn’t give Shevchenko time to finish his sentence. He threw the shovel as hard as he could at the dapper Ukrainian and dove to the cold stone floor, rolling swiftly behind one of the wooden pillars. He heard the shovel connect with its target, followed by another throaty exclamation from the Desert Eagle. Sharp chips of stone flew upward from the ancient floor to pepper Gabriel’s shins.

“Really, Mr. Hunt,” Shevchenko said, “hiding like a child. You should face your fate like a man.” There was a pause, followed by a yelp of pain and a curse from Fiona. “But if you prefer to listen to the torture of Dr.
Rush first, please be my guest. You may come out whenever you are ready.”

From his vantage point behind the pillar, Gabriel swiftly scanned the room. The stone stairs. The other pillars. Bare floors. The sputtering flames from the bone-tallow candles in stone bowls, supplemented by a few torches clamped into rusted metal holders. Nothing within reach that would make an adequate weapon. Djordji was bleeding out, Fiona was about to be tortured, and there didn’t seem to be a damn thing Gabriel could do about it. Then he looked back at the stairs and spotted the first knife the man in the fur hat had thrown at him. It stuck out of the ground at a 45-degree angle. But it was too far away—if he went for it, he’d be shot before he made it halfway there.

“Please stop,” Fiona said, her voice ragged and out of breath. “Please. I’ll tell you anything.” Her voice fell to a whisper Gabriel could barely hear. “Anything. Just stop.”

“I will be glad to, Fiona,” Shevchenko said, “provided that you tell me what I want to know.”

She said something Gabriel couldn’t make out.

“Speak up,” Shevchenko said.

“I can’t,” Fiona said, a trace louder, but then her voice fell again. “I can’t. But come here, I’ll…I’ll tell you where it is. It’s in…”

There was a beat of silence and Gabriel risked a glance around the pillar just in time to see Shevchenko lean close to hear what she was saying. Fiona leaned in, caught Shevchenko’s earlobe in her teeth and bit deeply. The Ukrainian let out a furious, almost feminine scream.

Gabriel ran for the stairs. Halfway across, he launched himself through the air and, coming down, slid till he fetched up against the bottom step, like a runner stealing
third base. He grabbed the knife, wrenching it from the ground. He didn’t let himself think about how sweaty his hands were, or how close Shevchenko was to Fiona, or what would happen to her if he missed. He just let the knife fly.

The blade flashed across the room and buried itself in the back of Shevchenko’s neck. The Ukrainian spun to face Gabriel, his formerly expressionless face contorting into a horrible grimace. He tried to raise the heavy automatic in Gabriel’s direction, but it tumbled from his shaking hand and he swiftly followed his gun to the stone floor.

“Christ, Gabriel,” Fiona said as he got up and ran to her. “You couldn’t have cut it any closer, could you? I thought for sure…”

Gabriel snatched up one of the blades the knife thrower had dropped when he’d fallen. He used it to slice through the bonds at her wrists.

“From now on,” Gabriel said, slashing the ropes at her waist and ankles, “you don’t get to be snide about my charmingly anachronistic sense of right and wrong. It’s the only reason you’re alive right now.”

Freed from her bondage, Fiona collapsed into Gabriel’s arms.

“I’m so sorry, Gabriel,” she said, pressing her body against him, her lips inches from his. “Can you forgive me?”

Gabriel took her by the shoulders and pushed her back and away, his expression stern.

“I’ll forgive you once the
kindjal
has been safely delivered to the Royal Museum,” he said.

She wrapped her bruised arms protectively around her body. They both looked up suddenly as a loud, rhythmic pounding commenced overhead. Clearly the
soldiers were trying a new technique to break down the barred door at the top of the stairs. That door had been holding back angry soldiers for over five hundred years, Gabriel thought; it would probably last at least a few more minutes. But what would they do when it fell?

“Gabriel,” a hoarse voice said.

It was Djordji. Gabriel knelt beside him. The Gypsy gripped Gabriel’s shirt with a bloody hand.

“You must escape,” Djordji said, his voice weak. “There is secret tunnel. On right, trap door. It take you out to other side of hill. Go.”

“We’ll all go,” Gabriel said. “Come on, Djo, get up.”

“I cannot,” Djordji said. “You go now.”

The banging on the door above grew louder. Fiona grabbed at Gabriel’s arm.

“He’s right,” she said, her eyes dark and serious. “We have to go now.”

He turned back to Djordji. “Your wife would put some kind of curse on me if I left you here to die.” He grabbed the Gypsy’s good arm and hauled him up across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Djordji made a stifled airless sound of pain but did not protest.

“Now where’s this tunnel,” Gabriel said. “And Fiona—don’t even think of trying to give me the slip again.”

“No offense, Gabriel,” she said as she grabbed a torch off the wall, “but right now you’re not the one I’m most worried about.”

“Where’s this trap door, Djordji?” Gabriel said, looking around desperately.

“You’re standing on it,” Djordji whispered, and looking down Gabriel could just barely make out a rectangular outline in the dirt-covered stone and a well-concealed pull-ring at its center. If he hadn’t been
told about it, he could’ve searched for hours and never noticed it.

They drew the trap door shut behind them just as the soldiers finally broke through above and started barreling down the stairs.

Inside, the tunnel was dark, damp and claustrophobic. The guttering torch provided the only light. Gabriel had to walk in a crouch to prevent Djordji from banging repeatedly into the low ceiling as he lay, stoic and bleeding, across Gabriel’s shoulders. They passed broken bottles and small moldering piles of skin magazines; the flickering orange torchlight revealed a vast quantity of crude graffiti on the stone walls. There was a smell of urine and stale beer. The tunnel twisted and turned, seeming to go on forever.

“How did you know about this tunnel?” Gabriel asked, keeping his voice low.

Djordji answered in a whisper. “I played here as a boy. With other Roma—we hide from police, or just come at night to share a bottle, smoke cigarettes.”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you smoking is hazardous to your health?” Gabriel said, and he felt Djordji’s injured body wracked with silent laughter.

It was the better part of an hour before the air freshened and a faint gleam of moonlight became visible at the far end of the tunnel. A sudden gust of night wind killed the sputtering torch in Fiona’s hand, leaving them in near total blackness. Gabriel instinctively reached out in the dark to grab Fiona’s hand, to prevent her from making a run for it. He wound up with a soft handful of an entirely different body part.

“Why, Gabriel,” Fiona said. “I was sure you’d lost all interest by now.”

Gabriel shifted his grip to her upper arm.

“Come on,” he said, as he led her toward the crooked metal doors at the far end of the tunnel.

When they reached the doors, Gabriel found them chained closed, but luckily the lock had been smashed by the latest generation of Roma teenagers. At his direction, Fiona unwrapped the chain and shoved the doors open. Gabriel gently let Djordji down off his shoulders to rest against a pile of large smooth stones. The Gypsy sighed heavily. He seemed to be doing better now that the initial shock had passed, but he was still pale and wincing with pain.

“So,” Gabriel said, to Fiona. “Where is it?”

She pushed her tangled hair back off her forehead and winked, then began to unzip her dress.

“For crying out loud, what are you doing…”

She shucked off the dress. It pooled at her feet. Beneath it, between a filmy, transparent bra and tiny silk pan ties, she wore an ornate corset with gold stitching. She unfastened a compartment in the side of the thickly boned corset. To Gabriel’s astonishment, the golden
kindjal
slid out of the lining. She held it up in the moonlight.

“You had it on you the whole time?” Gabriel said.

“Unlike you, Gabriel, I don’t trust other people,” she said. “Or hiding places I can’t feel against my skin.” She handed him the dagger after a moment’s hesitation. Then she favored him with a slow, sultry smile. “No hard feelings, then?”

Gabriel had plenty of hard feelings at that moment, looking at her standing there with the moonlight on her pale skin, shivering slightly in the cool night breeze. He was having a tough time remembering how she’d betrayed and tried to kill him. Lucky for him, Djordji picked that moment to speak up.

“I would like hospital now, please,” he said.

“Well,” Fiona said, picking up her dress and wriggling back into it, “that’s that, then. You should be happy, Gabriel. I know how badly you hate to lose.”

She gestured for Gabriel to zip her up. When he had, she turned to face him, looking up into his eyes.

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” she said. “Next time I may just end up on top.” She was close enough to kiss him, but didn’t. She just spun on her heel and strode away.

Gabriel reached out a hand to help Djordji up. “Think you can walk?” Gabriel said.

With a groan, Djordji heaved himself to his feet. Gabriel steadied him. “I think so.”

Gabriel watched Fiona walk away across the moonlit steppe. He knew he ought to go after her, bring her in to the police of any of the three countries he’d chased her through—she’d broken no shortage of laws. But Djordji’s injury was more pressing, and even if it hadn’t been…somehow Gabriel just didn’t think he could have brought himself to do it. He looked down at the
kindjal
, which Djordji was staring at like he couldn’t quite believe it was real, then back up at Fiona’s retreating figure. Why had she done it, he wondered. Any of it—seducing him, betraying him, handing over the
kindjal
in the end. One thing he knew: No matter how far he traveled, or how much he learned, or how many extraordinary things he witnessed, he’d never be able to understand women.