Rules of the Hunt (38 page)
May 29
The
salle d'armes
had been
established in the late sixteenth century — about the time that dueling with a
thin blade had become a serious pastime in
well-patronized, with only a few brief interruptions, since that time.
During the revolution, since skill with a sword was considered to be an
aristocratic attribute, the building had temporarily become a brothel.
During the Nazi occupation, it had been an
officers' club.
Those interludes apart,
the
salle
had operated continuously
for roughly four hundred years as a place where one human being learned to kill
or defeat another human being with a long piece of pointed steel.
Christian de Guevain considered the
salle
a fine monument to the human condition.
The building was in the fashionable 16
th
Arrondissement,
conveniently situated near the Bosi de Vincennes military barracks, and was no
more than a few minutes from his bank, his mistress, his home, and his favorite
restaurant, de Guevain could work, fence, sport, eat well, and be back in time
to put the kids to bed and watch TV with his wife, if he was so inclined,
without straining himself excessively.
He had, he considered, a most civilized existence.
He had taken Fitzduane's cautionary words to heart, though without
enthusiasm.
His black Citroën was
armored and was driven by an armed bodyguard.
A second bodyguard sat in the front passenger seat.
The windows were tinted to hinder
recognition.
He switched cars and routes
regularly.
He no longer fenced at a time
when the
salle
was relatively
open.
Now he fenced outside normal hours
with only one or two chosen opponents, and arrangements were made in advance
under conditions of some secrecy.
Nonetheless, there were patterns in his life.
Three or four times a week — although there
was some variation as to day and time — de Guevain could be found in the
salle
.
He was determined to hone his skill so that he could defeat
Fitzduane.
de
Guevain had mastered the longbow and was already way superior to the
Irishman.
Now he was determined to do
the same with the sword.
He was fiercely
competitive by nature.
And besides, he
enjoyed the sheer speed and elegance of the sport, and the exhilaration of the
exercise.
The black Citroën entered the Rue Jarnac and stopped outside the fray
cut-stone façade of the salle.
The
passenger bodyguard got out and punched a code into the digital lock.
The double doors opened and the Citroën
entered the courtyard inside.
Behind
them, the heavy doors locked shut.
de
Guevain felt a sense of reassurance.
He was secure in familiar territory.
Followed by his bodyguards, he bounded up the
worn stone stairs to the
salle
at the
top.
The long room had a wood block
floor and arched ceiling.
The walls were
lined with historic weapons and old engravings.
The names of the masters were inscribed in a frieze that ran around the
top of the paneling.
To de Guevain, the
room was the essence of his
a sense of purpose, élan, glory, the strength
of tradition, the reassurance of history, the continuity of privilege, a
manifestation of power.
The huge room was empty.
"Make yourself at home, boys," said de Guevain.
"I'm going to change."
He headed for the locker room where Chappuy
would be suiting up.
Pierre, one of the
bodyguards, moved to check the locker room, but de Guevain waved him aside
impatiently.
Vincent, his partner,
smiled and took a seat.
He was less
intrusive.
Sometimes this security business could get out of hand, thought de
Guevain.
He was of two minds whether to
continue it at all.
He did not particularly
enjoy conducting all his affairs under close scrutiny.
God alone knew what would turn up in some
glossy magazine in the years ahead.
"The Private Life of a Paris Banker — by his bodyguard."
He shuddered.
that kind of thing.
The locker room, a bright white-painted space divided into three aisles
by rows of tall wooden lockers dating from an earlier century, had a tiled
floor and a high beamed ceiling.
He
could hear the sound of dripping as he entered.
Someone had obviously not turned a shower off.
And yet the sound seemed closer.
He could smell something.
His skin
prickled.
He would never forget that
odor.
He had first encountered it as a
young man a quarter of a century earlier.
It brought him back to
to the paratroops, to the broken bodies of the freshly dead.
It reminded him of the slaughter on
Fitzduane's island.
Blood.
Death
,
Recent
death.
Help was at hand, but his mouth was suddenly completely dry.
Something caught his eye.
He looked up.
A thin braided climber's rope hung down from one of the beams.
It was taut, as if something was suspended
from it.
He could not see what it was,
because the rope terminated in the next aisle.
de
Guevain licked his lips as best he
could.
As if compelled, he walked slowly
down his aisle of lockers and turned into the aisle where the rope hung.
He could hear a coughing sound from the
salle
, but his mind was focused on what
he was about to see.
A huge irregular pool of blood stained the tiles and leached under the
lockers.
A bloody pile of human matter
was at its center and snaked upward.
de Guevain's
eye followed it.
The naked corpse of his fencing partner,
Chappuy, was suspended upside down from the rope.
The flesh was completely white, virtually
drained of blood.
The body had been cut
open with one blow from the groin to the throat.
Entrails hung to the ground.
de
Guevain was momentarily numb with shock and
fear.
He gave a cry of desperation and
horror, more animal than human, and ran from the locker room into the
salle
.
The action was futile.
His
bodyguards, Pierre and Vincent, the marks of bullet perforations from automatic-weapons
fire clearly visible, lay sprawled in bloody heaps.
He was facing a semicircle of five people.
Four held silenced submachine guns.
At the apex was a woman, a very beautiful
Japanese woman.
She held a sword.
*
*
*
*
*
Fitzduane's
May 29
Kathleen was in Boots's room in the Keep when she heard the faint cry,
but at first did not know what to make of it and then dismissed it.
It was not repeated, and the mind sometimes played tricks in an old house
when you were tired.
A storm was raging
outside and the wind off the sea whistled around the old stonework, and with
such a backdrop, sometimes the cry of an owl or some other night creature
sounded eerily human.
It was after midnight and all the guests had retired, so now she was
going about the final business of the house, checking Boots.
She enjoyed Boots and they had become very
close.
Asleep, he looked adorable.
His bed was dry.
He was well-covered.
All was in order.
There was an unusual draft on the stairs, and the hangings over the
double-glazed arrow slits blew in the breeze and the air was cold and
chill.
Methodically, she checked each of
the slim windows, but all were closed.
She had already checked the external doors, but she verified it again by
looking at the security alarm repeater.
That left only the door to the fighting platform on the roof.
As she passed Fitzduane's room, she noticed his door was open and his
room empty.
A coil of fax papers lay on
the floor by the doorway.
She picked it
up to put it somewhere where it would not be trodden
on,
and glanced at it as she did so.
And her
blood ran cold.
She read on.
There was a
handwritten note from Kilmara and it had clearly been sent immediately following
a telephone conversation between the two men.
It was a translation of a French police report, and photographs had been
faxed with the text.
The photographs had
been transmitted at high resolution, and though they were in black and white
and the quality was far from perfect, the essential details were all too
apparent.
Nausea swept over her and she
felt bile rise in her throat.
The papers
fell from her hand, and she collapsed against the ancient oak doorway and
retched.
Suddenly, the significance of that earlier cry hit home, and, near panic,
she turned and ran up the worn stone stairs.
Thick heavy ice-cold rain driven by wind gusting over sixty miles an hour
hit her as she emerged onto the fighting platform.
Instantly, she was soaked and chilled to the
bone, and temporarily blinded as her hair was driven across her eyes.
She had a sense of complete disorientation as the horror of what she had
read combined with her fatigue and the violence of the storm.
She reeled backwards, confused and in shock, and then felt a violent blow
against her lower back as she smashed into the battlements.
A gust or rain-sodden wind hit her again and
she scrabbled desperately for a handhold, suddenly conscious of where she was
and the danger of being swept through the battlement crenellations to fall onto
the rocks and heaving sea below.
The granite fortifications were ice cold and slippery to her hands, but
she gained enough purchase to pull herself upright and regain her balance.
She swept her hair out of her eyes.
She tried to shout for Fitzduane, but her cry was lost in the fury of
the storm.
Wind, sea, thunder, and rain
combined in a terrifying cacophony.
The darkness was near absolute.
Only a dim shaft of light from the stairway provided any illumination,
and that was obscured by the rain and lost in the blackness of the night.
Fitzduane was there.
He must
be.
This was where he liked to come to
think, she knew, even in weather as vile as this.
This is where he came to watch the sunrise
and the sunsets and just to feel the force of the elements.
Duncleeve and this wild land were deep in his
blood.
She had asked him about it and he had tried to explain, but it was clear
that words alone only hinted at what he felt.
"It's impossible to describe," he had said, with a slight
smile.
"I like the sheer aggression
of the wind, violent and exhilarating at the same time, and the sting of the
spray and smell of iodine from the sea, and the sense of being as one with all
this incredible beautiful energy.
And it's
part of my childhood and part of what I am.
And that is really all I can say."
He was an impossible man, with the spirit of an adventurer and the soul
of a poet.
And that was a terrifying
combination in a world that was reckless with life.
But she loved him.
Foolish and
impossible though it was, she loved him.
And that carried a burden.
It was
almost certainly futile, but she was responsible for this man.
For the time she had, she would do what she
could.
Everything she could.
This is where he would come if he was deeply troubled, hurt, grieving,
desperate... as he would be, because Christian de Guevain was dead and he was a
friend and his death was horrible.
Truly, a thing of horror.
And yet there was nothing.
The wind gusted again, this time from a different direction, and there
was a crash as the door was blown shut.
