The History Thief: Ten Days Lost (The Sterling Novels) (73 page)

Nine.

They stopped.

Gerald had used three bullets in the tower and nine more chasing him. Michael knew that the weapon had been emptied. Gerald was either reloading it, or the playing field had been equalized.

Michael hoped for the latter.

Darting left and down one of the rows, Michael stopped at its end and placed the black plastic of the zip-tie on the metal end of the shelf. He feverishly rubbed it up and down on the metal until the plastic was weak enough that he could yank his hands apart.

He was freed.

For a moment he stood perfectly still, listening for anything that didn’t belong. But Gerald was too well trained. As a Green Beret, he would know full well the need to be invisible, to be silent.

It was the hunter and the hunted.

Michael didn’t know which one he was.

But he did know where the man would go.

With extreme care, Michael stealthily made his way toward the acclimatized rooms that housed under special conditions the rarest and most valuable of papal documents.

The minutes ticked by as Michael made his way; soon he could see the rows of armored doors behind which he was sure he would find what the Order so badly wanted.

Michael studied them: there were a half-dozen three-pronged, black handles. Each handle was about a foot in length. They looked no different than the handles used on the doors leading into a bank’s vault.

There was also a biometric scanner.
Shit,
thought Michael,
this is going to be a bit harder than I had hoped.

Instinctively, Michael grabbed onto one of the large handles and spun it counter-clockwise. He was surprised that they moved easily. He was even more surprised that when he moved one handle, all of the handles turned in a synchronous fashion with his.

Michael had to leverage his body weight to pull the thick and heavy steel door open. It didn’t budge. Not that it mattered; it was precisely the opportunity that the stalking ex-Green Beret had needed.

Gerald sprang at Michael at the perfect moment, when he had been most off balance. A crushing forearm smashed down from above and across Michael’s arms.

He had gotten there first; he had been waiting.

Gerald let out a curdling scream as he landed a second blow into Michael’s body followed by a kick to his ankles. Michael hit the floor hard. The man had been both quick and flawless in his attack. Michael was able to mount very little of a counter.

The ex-Green Beret was strong—very strong—and was soon on top of Michael.

Michael couldn’t move; a flash of silver swept across his face from right to left.

Gerald had him pinned and was desperately pushing a long-bladed knife toward Michael’s heart. It was all that Michael could do to keep the knife from plunging through his ribcage.

“Time to die, Sterling!” growled Gerald.

Michael had no strength to match that of his attacker’s. Gerald mashed his teeth firmly together as he pushed the knife with more force toward Michael’s chest.

The knife inched closer.

Michael gritted his teeth.

He was just too strong for Michael; there would be no last-minute heroics to counter the man’s strength. The outcome was simply a matter of physics: a stronger force prevails, and Michael had no leverage to use that would balance the unfair match-up.

Over the past forty-eight hours both his efforts and the injuries expended and received had left Michael too spent and too hurt to fight back effectively. Gerald was easily overpowering him.

Michael’s arms were failing as his fatigued muscles fought desperately against the closing blade and started to shake from the effort; Michael tried in vain to stop his own death. The knife was going in, no matter how hard he resisted and no matter the amount of adrenaline he could muster.

Michael’s hands began to slip down from Gerald’s wrists as the growing layer of sweat made a difficult predicament downright impossible.

Michael tried in vain to tap into some last well of strength, but he was on empty.

There was only one option, and brawn wouldn’t be it. Michael bit down, knowing that when the knife pierced his body, it would bring a searing pain. He did the only thing that was left to do. Michael relaxed his arms and let the knife plunge into him.

He gave in.

In the knife went, slicing through tendon and muscle; Michael could even hear it rub against the bone. He wanted to scream, but all of his air rushed from his lungs as if a sledgehammer had been swung into his chest.

Michael gasped for air, but the muscles that controlled the movements needed for breathing didn’t reply to his commands.

The knife was hilt-deep in his body. Hot blood poured profusely from the wound; the metal of the blade was firmly lodged inside him, but not in his heart. Michael had done the only thing left to do; he had contorted his body so that the blade entered into the crease where his shoulder met his torso. The fight was over, but Michael was not dead.

Gerald had lost, for a moment, his position of control; his balance was slightly off, and Michael sensed this. With no need to use his strength to resist the knife, Michael placed his knee deeply into his attacker’s kidney. It was enough to throw Gerald from atop his body.

Michael clumsily jumped to his feet but immediately fell. Up again, he awkwardly ran. At the same time, he pulled the knife from his shoulder, but this time, he did scream as its serrated edge chewed on his flesh as he pulled it out.

A growing blackness wanted to swallow him as the light that should have been there began to fade quickly. Little white stars snapped in the ink of the unconsciousness that was overcoming him, but the pain from the extricated knife had been excruciating, fortunately for Michael—a new course of adrenaline forced his mind to clear instantly, and the overwhelming blackness suddenly began to brighten.

Time slowed down; Michael took in every aspect of his surroundings as he ran. He could see and calculate everything and every possibility. His special operations training was now firmly in control of every one of his actions. Behind him, he knew that Gerald would soon find his feet and be in pursuit.

Prophetically, a large, long, and very baritone growl spilled out from Gerald’s mouth, echoing through the archives’ narrow halls. He was angered and on his feet as he gave chase. Michael ran through the archives, looking for anything that he could use as a weapon. A sliver of purple caught the corner of his eye; without losing a step, Michael yanked the decorative silk from where it hung on the wall.

The archives curved to the left, and Michael leaned forward as he increased his speed. The knife was in his teeth, and Michael could taste the salt of his own blood. While running at a full sprint, he tied one end of the sash to the knife; he wrapped the other end of the sash around his hand.

Gerald was gaining on him; Michael could hear his footsteps bearing down on him as the slap of his thick-soled boots grew louder and faster over the floor. Ahead was a wall and a dead end, but Michael didn’t slow down. Instead, he sped up as fast as he could and leapt at the wall feet-first; using his momentum, he sprang backward from the wall and directly at Gerald.

Gerald was moving too fast to avoid Michael’s attack. His mouth barely had enough time to open in shock. Michael was airborne and had arched his back while twisting mid-air.

Gerald saw a flash of purple and the white glint of metal. Michael had swung the knife outward while in the air. Tethered to the sash, the knife cut across Gerald’s cheek, and Michael quickly reeled it in and was ready for another strike before Gerald could feel the warmth of his own blood spill down his cheek and the burning from the long and wide gash across his face.

Michael spun the knife on the sash in a circular fashion—like a cowboy with his lasso. At the right moment, and without the courtesy of any warning, he released it.

The knife split the air as its business-end headed directly at Gerald. This time the blade found the soft part of Gerald’s abdomen and was embedded deeply. Gerald clawed at the knife, but instead he felt the sensation of falling; the tips of his fingers grasped in vain, unable to find the knife in his stomach.

Before Gerald’s knees met the cold stone of the archives, Michael yanked the knife out of his stomach, reeling it quickly in once more; he readied for one more strike, but first shouted, “The Primitus, who is he? What’s the endgame?”

Gerald spat through bloodstained lips with surprising strength, “Fuck you, Sterling!”

Michael spun the knife again and lashed out. He didn’t feel like asking the same question twice. The blade deeply sliced the man’s left ear.

Gerald fell to his side, screaming. One hand was on his ear, and the other worked to hold in the blood pouring through the wound in his gut.

Yelling out with a voice of promise, Michael warned, “The next one finds your other ear, and the one after that goes across your other cheek! I can play this game all night! Now who is the goddamned Primitus?! What’s the Order’s mission? Tell me, and end this now!”

Gerald painfully and with much difficulty pushed himself to his knees. Once there, he sat slumped and took two long and deep breaths. Each exhalation had an interesting crackling sound.

He knew what this meant.

Michael did too.

Gerald was bleeding internally. Blood filled his lungs. The knife had nicked his lower lobe.

Without the proper medical attention, his lung would slowly fill with blood; he would die.

He looked at Michael with as much difficulty as it had taken to get to his knees. His voice was hoarse; his words were difficult to form.

He was no longer the same man.

As Gerald spoke, each word faded more than the next. “You are wasting your time. The Primitus is beyond your reach—he is untouchable.”

Michael spun the knife wildly and released it; this time Gerald was ready. The knife was heading toward his other ear, but Gerald snatched it from the air.

Michael’s eyes went wide with surprise as the sash went taut. Gerald shouted a loud, gurgled scream and offered Michael no warning to what would come next.

His eyes went wild with lunacy as he shoved the knife into his own neck.

His body fell and convulsed erratically.

Michael stood breathless and then dropped the sash. To the dead man he went; he didn’t want to take any risks. He felt for a pulse.

None was to be found.

Rummaging through his pockets, Michael pulled out a cell phone and then looked for a wallet. He didn’t carry one; Michael had expected as much.

There was no time to waste. Michael thought of the Antonov, which carried the necessary parts and blueprint to build a nuclear weapon.

It was on its way to Afghanistan.

He needed to find that plane.

He needed to find the man behind all of this.

The inside of his sleeve was wet and sticky. A thin stream of blood slowly dripped from his fingertips. Gingerly, Michael took off his coat and bloodstained shirt. The place the knife had entered had left a neat one-inch gash, through which blood pulsated with each beat of his heart.

Michael grabbed his shirt and ripped a long strip from it. Looping it a few times around his shoulder and under his arm, he tied it tightly using his free hand and teeth.

He slipped his jacket back on; it had been much easier taking it off.

Ignoring the pain, back to the acclimatized vaults he ran. There he was met with the same problem. The doors were equipped with a single biometric scanner. One would need to present a fingerprint in order to gain access.

Michael studied the scanner; he looked for a way around it. There was none to be found. Furrowing his brow, he took a step back.
Think, Michael, think! There’s always more than one way to solve a problem!

But this problem didn’t seem solvable.

Michael sighed heavily and looked at his watch. Its surface was smudged, and he started to wipe it clean with the remaining sleeve of his shirt, but stopped just short of doing so.

He looked at the smudge again, this time a bit more closely.

He smiled.

The old conservator had said,
I trust that you know full well it isn’t time that’s on your side.

The smudge wasn’t just some dirty streak: it was the conservator’s fingerprint. The old man was right. In fact, he had been rather honest with Michael. Certainly, Michael was running out of time, and as the man had said, it wasn’t time that was on his side.

It was the fingerprint.

Michael took off his watch and held it in front of the scanner.

Nothing.

Michael frowned and repeated the process, only this time he put the watch as close as he could to the biometric scanner.

Still nothing.

He looked at the face of the watch and scrutinized the fingerprint. It seemed intact. With a slow, heavy breath, Michael fogged the fingerprint for a better look. For a moment, the print was more pronounced and looked as clear as could be.