The History Thief: Ten Days Lost (The Sterling Novels) (35 page)

M
ichael was afraid.

Throughout his career he had defied death on a number of occasions. Each time death approached, he felt fear, but he was always collected: the side effect of being a well-trained special operations soldier and an officer with the Clandestine Services.

Not this time.

The cab was gone.

His world was spinning.

Time didn’t slow down.

Time ran faster.

He felt his breathing worsen; he struggled for air. Stumbling forward, he did what he had been trained to do; it was the only thing that he could think to do: he moved.

The hotel—the safe house—had an emergency epinephrine kit; it was the one thing that he knew could save him.

The graduate student had been sloppy in his attack, but he had made up for his untrained ways with brute strength. Just enough of the embutramide had made its way into Michael’s system—enough to tempt death. Not enough to kill immediately, but enough to attack his system; it was enough to kill him slowly.

Frantic but still in control, Michael scanned from left to right as he moved. Seeing a trashcan, he ran awkwardly to it. Reaching in, he rummaged around until his fingertips grazed along the side of a paper bag. He snatched it from the can and instantly put it to his mouth and breathed in it.

The hyperventilation, Michael knew, was causing him to expel large amounts of carbon dioxide, and its excessive loss was causing his blood to become alkaline. It wouldn’t counter the effects of the drug, but it would slow down one of its side effects. The safe house was just over five kilometers away, and he would need every extra second to get there; seconds that would need every spare molecule of oxygen he could get.

The irony was that he was yards from a major medical center, but he could not risk going into its emergency room. He only had one hope, and he knew he couldn’t reach it by foot.

His stride was choppy as he moved; Michael focused on the near horizon to maintain his balance. The sweat across the top of his brow had worsened and grown colder. The pain in his chest compressed inward, making him feel as if he were being crushed between two walls.

Onward he struggled.

In front of him was Av. das Forças Armadas. The traffic was heavy.

He wasted no time nor cared in his manner.

He fell into the busy street. The driver of a small Peugeot slammed on his breaks; espresso from the small porcelain cup in his hand spilled onto his lap, burning him where he would have least wanted to be.

The cursing driver jumped out of the car, slapping at his groin, and moved to where Michael lay.

He saw the American curled into a ball just in front of his bumper.

He leaned down instinctively and shook Michael’s shoulder.

That would be the last thing he remembered until after he would be revived with an ammonia ampoule by the soon-to-arrive paramedics.

Michael felt the Portuguese man’s hand on his shoulder and with lightning speed he grabbed his wrist, twisting it awkwardly. The man fell to the ground and screamed out in pain. Michael rolled the man’s body atop his own and put him into a headlock designed to cut off all circulation to the brain.

The move could certainly kill, but that was not Michael’s intention.

He just needed the man’s car and for the man to be unable to identify him.

The Portuguese driver of the Peugeot had only wanted to meet his friends at the café, but he had been unfortunate to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

He gurgled as his eyes rolled into the back of his head. Michael felt him go limp. Just before death would have approached, Michael let go.

He pushed the man off and rolled onto his knees. It was difficult to rise; energy spent on the driver of the car nearly tapped him of the rest of his strength.

Getting up, he used the car’s body as a crutch and climbed into—fell into, really—the front seat of the car. Wasting little time, Michael slammed the accelerator and sped away down the avenue.

His driving was as erratic as his breathing. Staying in the lanes was difficult. Horns blared as he sped past, weaving from left to right.

In a few moments, he saw the Norte-Sul roundabout, but ignored it. He didn’t want to slow down, and driving around the cloverleaf would just waste time. Instead he jerked the wheel of the small car forcibly to the left, sending the car into a fishtail. He cut in front of oncoming traffic and headed south on Av. dos Combatantes. The car just barely missed connecting with the back end of one of the oncoming vehicles, but he wasn’t able to avoid the light pole that stood just to the right.

The fishtailing car slid just enough for the right side of the car to meet the base of the pole. With a horribly loud, metallic screech, the pole grated across the side of the car and then snapped at its base.

He hit the gas pedal harder.

In his rearview mirror, as he sped away, Michael saw the pole topple over and was thankful that it had hit no one on its way to the pavement.

For the next few minutes, Michael gripped the steering wheel with an intensity and focus he had learned in Ranger school, with the discipline honed by training at the Farm for the Clandestine Services.

His thought was singular.

He ignored red lights.

He cared little about other drivers.

Speed limits were of no concern.

His life was ending.

Solar do Castelo was approaching; in it was his safe house; in it was the only thing that could save his life.

Michael was aware enough to know that the once-bright sunlight was now darkening. Not because the sun was going down, but from the passing of his life. He squinted and focused harder. He worked to keep his breathing under control and his heart rate in check.

But he was scared, really scared. He thought of Sonia. He struggled to remember her smile. The hypoxic effect from his increasingly labored breathing was making his ability to think efficiently difficult.

He saw a castle.

He loved castles. He could spend hours in them, admiring the masonry, contemplating the history; losing himself within the confines of the walls.

He saw the castle, but thought of none of these things.

Castelo de São Jorge was directly in front of him. In 1569, a young King Sebastian ordered it rebuilt; the young king wanted it to be his home, but, instead, it would go unfinished after his disappearance, becoming a prison. Its history and architecture meant absolutely nothing at the moment. It might as well have been a backwoods trailer in North Carolina.

All Michael cared about was his safe house.

The castle was in the way.

He would have to drive completely around it and its grounds: ten times farther than the actual distance he was away from it at the moment.

Going around it would waste precious moments—moments that might be the difference between living and dying.

As they say: the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

Michael hit the accelerator until the pedal smashed into the floorboard; he drove over the curb, digging the wheels deeply into the expansive green lawn of the castle. The grounds that separated his current location from the safe house were meticulously kept and covered with people.

His right hand steered the car; his left hand held down the horn. Clumps of mud and grass sprayed from the spinning tires, bathing a number of the unlucky. Some leapt from the path of the oncoming, horn-blaring Peugeot, while others not in its path shouted curses and warnings.

In moments, he saw the hotel, but he didn’t see the tree. The impact sent a deafening noise throughout the park. Michael’s face slammed into the steering wheel. It was the most fortunate part of the trip. The impact sent a wave of adrenaline into his veins, and he shot up with one last purpose.

He fell out of the car and jumped to his feet just as one of the men in the park approached. He was shouting angry Portuguese words at Michael—words he couldn’t understand—but Michael shoved him as hard as he could, sending the man, and nearly himself, to the ground.

Scrambling on his feet, awkwardly he ran through the rows of trees.

He moved as best he could under the circumstances.

He hoped no one would follow.

In the hotel, he secreted into the stairwell and climbed the first flight. His heart no longer pounded forcibly. A telltale sign: Michael knew that narcosis was setting in; a stupor-like effect that was reversible, but only with the right treatment. Upward he heaved himself, using every bit of strength. His hands slid as he grasped the railing; his legs were getting heavier each time he raised one to the next stair.

The door leading to the second floor was close enough to touch.

He reached out for the handle.

He fell.

His knees crashed to the floor, but he couldn’t feel the pain that should be there. His body had gone numb from the lack of oxygen. The ceiling above spun viciously. He closed his eyes, hoping for some control.

With a grunt, he threw himself onto his side and then pushed himself off of the floor with as much strength as he could muster.

He half-crawled, half-walked to the door of the safe house.

It was nondescript and no different than any other room in the hotel, but it was his. It was an agreement with hotel’s owner—a permanent thank-you for having saved the man’s life.

At the door of his room, he fumbled for the card key. It dropped to the floor. He dared not attempt to pick it up, knowing that, had he tried, his fast-fleeing strength wouldn’t have allowed him to stand once more. Instead, he shoved a heavy shoulder into the door where it met the frame and fell painfully into the room in a shatter of splinters.

He tried to stand, but fell.

Reverting to childhood, he crawled.

Across the room, he dragged himself until he was in front of a sink cabinet.

He opened it and rummaged through its contents, not caring about the mess he was making.

The kit was there. He tried to open it, but his hands felt heavy and thick; he fumbled and dropped the kit. Trying once more, he put the kit on his lap and held it firmly with an elbow. He was able to open it. In it was a thick syringe of epinephrine. Putting the plastic-covered needle into his mouth, he yanked off the covering that protected the needle.

Its gauge was heavy, and its length was long. Needle was not the right word; it was really a long, sharp hose.

Its size and length were necessary for its destination. The needle must be plunged through muscle, fat, and cartilage, directly into the heart.

Michael’s central nervous system was shutting down; he knew it. Time was not his ally. The needle in his hand was his only hope for survival. It was a fight-or-flight hormone that had helped him so many times in the past, but never in this manner.

He couldn’t waste another moment; he raised the hypodermic with his last ounce of strength. An intracardiac injection is a difficult technique for a physician to administer, much less a patient to himself.

It was the only way.

Michael braced his back against the wall and raised the needle. He squeezed the syringe as hard as he could in his hand. His aim had to be true; violently he slammed the thick-gauged needle into his chest and just to the left of his breastplate.

The shock of the long, razor-sharp syringe being buried into his heart forced his head to slam backward into the wall and his jaw to clench tightly shut. His arms dropped to his side. He was unable to move them.

First, he gurgled awkwardly, then his breathing slowed.

Rolling his eyes downward, Michael cast a glance at the end of the syringe: the plunger was fully out of the body of the syringe.

He hadn’t been able to depress the plunger. No epinephrine had been injected into his heart.

Trying to raise his arms, Michael was only met with fear. He couldn’t move them. The signal sent from his brain to his arms to move was either not sent or could not be received. The best he could do was to wiggle slightly the tips of one hand’s fingers.

His breathing had slowed even more. Narcosis was here, and death was only moments behind.

He thought of Sonia.

He thought of the day they had met.

He thought of her laughing.

He thought of their child not yet conceived.

He smiled, albeit his body at death only allowed it to be an uneven one; then a resolute sadness overcame him.

She was missing.

He would never see her again; never touch her.

It was over.

He was over.

The room of the safe house faded black around him. As his vision failed, he watched as the darkness began to move from the edges of his field of view until it collapsed into the center. He wanted to close his eyes, but didn’t have the strength to do it.

In the moments before death, he was blind.

In the center of the black, a bright, white light appeared and painfully defenestrated through a small hole in its center. Michael wanted to squint, but his body’s strength was gone, even for the slightest of needs.