The Mazovia Legacy (33 page)

“It's fantastic,” Natalia said. “I should have remembered we would find something else. Stanislaw's letters said he had taken something else to hide. Something religious.” She turned this Grail around in her hands. “I knew we would find something like this,” she said. “I dreamed it.”

She looked up at him, flushed now.

“Bring it with you,” Delaney said. “But we have to get out of here. We'll have to come back for the rest after we get organized. We should get out of here.”

They threw the tarpaulin over the gold again and squeezed out of the coal room into the main part of the cellar.They were chilled and put their coats back on immediately. For a few anxious moments it seemed that the armoire would refuse to budge back into its original position. But after they pushed and strained for several minutes it groaned back into place. Delaney reached inside and rubbed off what remained of the “Mazovia” inscription. He slid the wine rack back into place.

“We really will have to come back here right away,” he said. “I don't know how long it will be before someone gets to Father Lessard or to our friend Carpentier upstairs. We'll have to come back as soon as we can.”

“Tomorrow,” Natalia said. “No later. We can get a truck somewhere near here.”

They were both grimy from the coal room. Natalia's face was streaked with dust. She carried the chalice and the rolled-up Mazovia pennant under her arm.

“Let's see if we can leave without saying any good-byes to young Carpentier, shall we?” Delaney said. “Leave him guessing, in case someone else comes?”

“I'm not sure that's a good idea,” Natalia said. “What if he thinks the stuff is gone and sends people down here too? We should tell him to keep all of this to himself.”

As they climbed the stairs back up to the church Delaney still wasn't sure how to deal with the priest. But when he opened the door and saw the two burly strangers in suits talking to Father Carpentier at the front near the altar he knew that he would not have to decide. He quietly closed the door and pushed Natalia back down the stairs.

“What is it? What's wrong?” Natalia said.

“There's a couple of guys out there with Carpentier. God knows who they are. But we'll have to go out another way.”

They raced across the uneven stone floor of the cellar to the back once again and Delaney tugged at the oak beam that braced the exit door there. It opened onto a narrow flight of stairs that appeared to head up to an outside door.

“If that door up there is not locked from the outside, we're clear,” he said. “The car,” Natalia said.

She was clutching her precious Grail case as if to never let it go. The pennant she had now pushed into a pocket of her overcoat. “We'll get to it,” he said.

The door at the top of the stairs was braced from the inside with a wooden beam, but this came away easily. The sudden grey light from the overcast sky blinded them for a moment after the door opened. It had stopped snowing.

“Natalia, we have to watch our step now, OK?” Delaney said. “I have no idea who those guys are talking to the priest but we've got to assume the very worst on this now. We'll go to the car, fast, and just leave. We can figure out later when to come back. But we have to be quick.”

They had to pick their way through the deep snow that had gathered throughout the winter under the eaves of the church. When they turned the corner at the front, Delaney saw the other car. “Fuck,” he said. “They've parked us in.” A large white Ford had been parked hard against the back of the Mercedes. They would not be able to back up and drive out.

“We'll leave the car,” he said. “We'll go into the village and wait it out there somewhere.”

“Without the car?” Natalia said.

“We have no choice. Let me get something out of the back first.”

“Francis, no. Let's just go.”

“No. Just give me a second. Then we'll cut across the lake to the village.”

He darted out into the small parking lot while Natalia waited under the eaves at the side of the church. There was nothing about the Ford that told him anything about who the men were inside. Probably a rental car. It did not look at all like an unmarked police vehicle. The engine still ticked steadily as it cooled down: it had not been there for long. He opened the trunk of the Mercedes and got out the shotgun. He put some extra shells in his parka, and then quietly closed the trunk again.

It was hard-going through the heavy snow to the lakeshore, but the ice on the small lake itself had been swept reasonably clear by the winds. Only a thin layer of new snow from the afternoon's light fall lay on it. The walking would be easier there. They set out in silence, single file, for the dense grove of maple and birch and pines on the other side. The village was some distance beyond that.

Close to the shore near the church someone had cleared space for a small skating rink The skate blades of local children had left complex designs on the ice inside the rink's snowbank boundaries. No one was skating today, however. Delaney watched Natalia walking purposefully in front of him. In the failing light he felt a strong intuition building that at some point in all of this he had made a grave and fundamental error in judgment. The shotgun he carried gave him no comfort.

T
hey were almost at the opposite shore of the lake when Delaney looked back and saw in the distance the small figure of a man standing at the back door of the church. He was clearly straining to see who was walking across the ice. Delaney did not feel any fear — just the certainty that now things would move very quickly. Or simply end. From across the ice he heard a brief shout and saw the man disappear back inside the church. Natalia heard the shout too, and looked back.

“They've seen us,” Delaney said. “One of them anyway.”

“Who is it, do you think?”

“Not police, Natalia,” he said.

They ran now, and then had to scramble over a high snowbank to get off the ice. It was deeply silent in the woods. It gave them the illusion of safety. They quickly made their plan.

It had taken them about five minutes to get into the cover of the trees from the time their unknown foe had seen them in the distance. Delaney knew their biggest threat would come if the men in the church decided to take their car around the lake toward the village, to be there as he and Natalia came out of the woods. He very much doubted they would set out across the lake. Surely, Delaney reasoned, such men would not risk exposing themselves on the open lake, or to ambush in the trees, or to getting lost or bogged in snow.

But for him and Natalia to now risk going back out in the open on the lake themselves and head toward the church on the assumption that the men, both of them, had driven away in their car was a gamble he knew they could not take.The only thing to do was carry on through the woods to the village and hope that the possibility of witnesses there would stop their pursuers from any overt aggression.

Natalia was breathless from their run. Her face was flushed from the exertion and the cold. Delaney very much wanted to simply get her out of all this and into some place warm and secure. She did not say anything as she stood trying to catch her breath. Delaney's heart began to ache with the intense connection he felt to this young woman standing with him amongst the snow-laden trees. He supposed some would call that feeling love. He saw no need to name it.

“We'll just have to make it to the village, that's all,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I think so,” she said.

“Let's go.”

Delaney pulled at the action on O'Keefe's shotgun and pumped a shell into the chamber. The hard mechanical sound was wrong for the peaceful setting. It intruded, warned.

They found a path of sorts, with the snow packed by locals cruising the woods on snowmobiles. The walking was difficult but not impossible and Delaney knew such a path would eventually have to come out on a road or in the village itself. They walked for a while in silence. There was nothing they could say.

It was hard, slow going. Natalia was behind him now. Delaney watched the path ahead of him intently, listened intently for any sound not muffled by the snow.

When they suddenly saw the man they did not know was named Ferramo coming around a turn in the path ahead, all three of them stopped for a millisecond in their tracks. In that millisecond before the man fired, Delaney was able to push Natalia roughly off the path and down into the deep snow beside it. She fell heavily, and cried out as she was hit. Delaney fell too, but managed to flounder around in the snow to a sitting position and clumsily fire off a blast from the shotgun. He pulled the action and fired again, and then again, at the firing figure approaching.

The noise was deafening. Delaney's ears rang and his shoulder ached from where the gunstock had slammed into it. Melting snow streamed from his face. His three shots were gone. The gunman, if he was still alive, would have a clear run now. But there was silence.

Delaney got up on his knees and saw the man lying on his back in a circle of crimson snow. He looked over to where Natalia lay wounded. She was not dead. She was simply lying prone, as an animal does when hopelessly cornered. A small circle of red also stained the snow near her. “Natalia,” he called out.

“I'm all right,” she said, but still not moving. Her face was in the snow as if she was unwilling to leave this chill blanket. “He's hurt my side.”

Delaney moved to where Natalia lay. She was limp and didn't seem aware that she was lying in deep snow instead of on a bed. Her eyes stared at him, dark and wide.

“Natalia, are you OK?” he asked.

“Yes, Francis. I think so.”

“Where did it get you?”

“In my hip I think. Near there. A little above maybe. It's sore all around there.”

He rolled her over and looked. She cried out in pain as she moved. There was a sticky stain in the padded cloth of her coat on the left side just at the waist. Delaney was grateful that if she had to be hit it would be somewhere like that. But he knew there would be bad pain if it were a bone wound, and blood lost.

“Poor dear Natalia,” he said softly.

He tried to pull up her coat to have a better look but she cried out again. Perhaps best not to try to pull down her jeans in the cold to examine the wound, he thought. It looked like she had been hit somewhere in the hip or the pelvis, or in the fleshy place below the lowest rib. The bleeding had increased as he moved her.

He felt a wave of panic and regret, like he had when things got dangerous for her in Europe. “We've got to get you out of here,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

“Come. Let's get you up,” he said.

Delaney tried to get her to a standing position. She cried out again and again as she moved. Once she was up she tried to hobble along with him holding her, but then she fell to her knees, sweating and moaning.

“I think I might faint, Francis,” she said. She had gone very pale. “It hurts badly. I think I might have to be sick.”

Delaney tried to stay calm. He tried to heave her onto his shoulders but his feet sank farther into the snow with the weight. He stopped when she cried out again.

“Please, Francis. It hurts too much,” she said. “I feel like I'm going to faint.”

Tears streamed down her cheeks from the pain and the fear. Delaney knew he could not walk far in the snow with her on his shoulders in any case.

He put her back onto the deeper snow at the side of the path where she had first fallen. There was a lot more blood coming through her coat now. With a bullet wound, it was obviously best to leave her lying comfortably on this snowy bed. Natalia seemed content with this as well. Snow gathered on her eyelashes and exaggerated the movement of her eyelids as she blinked at him.

“I've never been shot before,” she said quietly. “It's starting to feel very stiff and strange down there now.”

“He may have broken a bone,” Delaney said, trying not to let her hear any alarm in his voice. He knew he had to get help right away. The thought of having to leave here alone, even for a few minutes, made his heart sink. But he could not simply sit here with her either. There was too much blood coming and she was likely to go into shock at any time.

Delaney did not tell her the immediate danger was that the other man could come along the path to follow the sound of firing and try to find his partner. He suspected the man would eventually decide to trace his partner's steps along the pathway from the village. So another encounter was possible on that path if Delaney walked toward the village for help. If the second man had not stayed behind at the church.

Delaney quickly reloaded the shotgun.

“I feel quite faint now, Francis,” Natalia said quietly. “I'm dizzy.”

She was very pale now, looking a little bit as she had after her ordeal in the apartment in Rome. Delaney pulled off his parka and put it over her.Two layers of down; she would not freeze. He arranged her scarf under her head as a pillow. His mind raced for solutions, safe solutions, but he could think of nothing except going for help. Best, he said to himself again and again, if he quickly brought help here rather than try to carry her or drag her, if that were possible at all, and have her lose even more blood.

He elevated her left leg slightly with broken branches and this seemed to make her more comfortable. The wound was still bleeding through the coat, but he was confident that if he got someone in to see to it soon she would be all right.

“I'm going to get the police,” he said. “You can't come with me like that. You've got to lie still so you don't lose too much blood.”

“You're going to go?” she said.

“I don't want to go, Natalia,” he said softly. “But there's no other way.”

Delaney sounded much more confident than he actually felt, but he thought that this was the wisest course.

“You're going to get the police in this now?” she said.

“There's no other way.”

“Will there be any in a town like that?”

“I don't know. I'll get someone. I won't be long at all. You'll be all right. I promise.”

“Don't let them take the chalice,” she said.

“I won't.”

He pushed with his foot at the leather case where it had fallen in the deep snow, and he submerged it farther.

“It'll be fine there,” he said. He knelt beside her.

“Look, Natalia,” he said, “I've got to hurry up now and get someone in here with a snowmobile. It's not far. Will you be all right?”

“Yes, Francis. Will you?”

“Yes.”

“Will you be cold like that?” she asked.

“No.”

“Where's the other man, do you think?” she asked.

“I think he waited back at the church, in case we went back that way,” Delaney said.

That sounded much more convincing than it should. It was impossible to say just where the other man might be. Back at the church? Waiting on the village side of the woods with the car? Delaney felt quite strongly that if the man were to come he would come from the village side, because he would be unlikely to now set out across the open lake alone and risk being fired upon. If he had stayed at the church at all.

Delaney did not allow himself to dwell on the possibility that he could be wrong on any of this. Now, more than any other time, he needed to make a choice, to take action. Someone else needed him to do that. There was no longer the luxury of journalistic observation. There had not been that luxury for him for a long time in this thing, he thought.

“I've got to get someone in here,” Delaney said again. “We've got no choice. You're bleeding badly.”

“All right, Francis,” Natalia said. “Try not to be very long.”

“I won't be long,” he said. “The village didn't seem all that far from the church. I can be there and back in fifteen minutes or so, I'd say. Maybe twenty.

That's not long.”

His heart ached terribly in his chest.

“I'm leaving you the small gun,” he said. “If someone comes, you'll have to shoot him. You know that, don't you?”

“Yes,” Natalia said.

“Have you ever fired a pistol before?”

“No,” she said.

Delaney placed the Browning on some pine branches near her right hand. He put her hand on it so she would know it was there.

“No one will come,” Delaney said. “I'm sure the other guy is waiting back at the church with the priest.They wouldn't have wanted to leave the priest alone.”

He kissed Natalia's wet cheek quickly and got up. He suspected she would sleep.

“I've got to go,” he said. “I'll be right back. Try not to move.”

“I'll be OK,” she said. “It's very restful here.” They looked silently at each other for a moment — she, lying on her snow bed, and he, standing beside her with a shotgun.

“I've got to go,” Delaney said.

“I know,” she said. “You go.”

“I love you, Natalia,” he said suddenly. The words sounded wonderful in the silent woods. He felt no fear about what the words meant, no unease at the implications, no dread of entanglement.

“I love you too, Francis,” Natalia said. That sounded wonderful in the silent woods as well.

“I'll be back in a few minutes,” Delaney said.

There was no more time to lose. Delaney began trying to control his breathing and his racing heart, to concentrate on the matter at hand.

He went back out onto the path and stopped beside the body of the man he had killed. The wounds from the heavy-gauge shotgun were horrific. There was a great deal of blood. Delaney reached inside the dead man's overcoat for a clue as to who he might have been.

A quick look inside the wallet that he found showed him various things Italian, not Polish: passport, driver's licence, credit cards. He put the wallet into his own pocket, to examine carefully later.Then he threw the dead man's very large and very modern pistol far off into the woods. He took a last look at Natalia lying quietly, bundled up in coats, and he left her, walking fast.

*