A Fatal Frame of Mind (26 page)

“Really?” Lassiter said. “I thought it was tremendously useful.”

“He had no information,” Henry said incredulously. “We didn’t learn a thing.”

“I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’ve learned a lot from this experience,” Lassiter said. “And now if you’ll excuse me, we need to take up this investigation some other time.”

“Some other time?” Henry sputtered. “What about right now?”

“I can’t right now,” Lassiter said. “I have an appointment with a kindergarten teacher. And I think I just learned how to tie my shoes.”

G
us pulled against the ropes that bound his hands behind his chair. He’d seen so many movies in which the hero was able to stretch them just enough to slip his wrists through. But all that was happening to Gus was that the rough cord was scraping the flesh off his bones.

“Keep it up,” Shawn whispered. “If you keep bleeding, maybe you’ll make the ropes slick enough you can slip them off.”

If Gus could have twisted his head around to shoot a killing look at Shawn, he would have. But Shawn was behind him in the stable, tied to his own chair. Gus had seen two more masked men, less well dressed in workers’ coveralls, tie him there while the suited man held the gun on him. Then it was his turn.

“We’ve got to save Professor Kitteredge,” Gus said, hoping that this was indeed still the case. After they’d been captured, they’d heard noises from another stall that sounded like unspeakable things being done to human flesh, accompanied by screams from the professor. In the past few minutes, though, the sounds had stopped.

“Save him from what?” Shawn said. “I thought you said all this conspiracy stuff was insane.”

“You said that,” Gus said, feeling an additional surge of outrage. “You essentially said I was an idiot for ever taking him seriously.”

There was a long silence from behind Gus.

“Oh, right,” Shawn said. “I knew it was one of us. But just because I said something, that doesn’t mean you’re supposed to listen to me.”

Gus knew that was as close to an apology as he was ever going to get from Shawn, so he chose to accept it.

“Besides,” Shawn said, “we have no idea who these guys are. Just because some thugs in black masks take us hostage when we step off the plane, that doesn’t mean they’re part of a centuries-old global conspiracy.”

“It seems like a pretty good sign to me,” Gus said.

“Think it through,” Shawn said. “This might not even have anything to do with the professor, or with the painting, or with us.”

“Mighty big coincidence if it doesn’t,” Gus said.

“Really?” Shawn said. “The plane belongs to the world’s biggest smugglers of looted artworks.”

“Now Low’s the world’s biggest?” Gus said. “Where do you get that from?”

“His henchman has a union contract,” Shawn said. “Do you have any idea how much that must cost over standard hunchback myrmidon pay scales? And that’s not even including benefits.”

Gus filed that away with a million other things he meant to argue about later. Right now there was something more important to discuss.

“Okay, fine, he’s the Donald Trump of smugglers,” Gus said. “So what?”

“So a guy like that is going to make a lot of enemies,” Shawn said. “And then there are his friends. I mean, how can he ever know if they really want to be his BFF because they like him, or because they’re waiting for him to accidentally mention the location of the barn in England where he ships all his best stuff out of? I think we’ve all had that kind of problem before.”

Despite the hopelessness of their situation, Gus began to feel a little better. Particularly about Professor Kitteredge. If these men were really after Low’s treasures, the awful noises he heard were much more likely to have come from Malko. Not that he wished the man any harm, but he was clearly a lot tougher and more accustomed to violence than Kitteredge. And as Low’s pilot he was undoubtedly involved in the smuggling scheme, which made him much less of an innocent victim than a soldier in a war between criminals.

“Do you really think it’s possible that these are just smugglers or crooks?”

“You have to ask yourself, which sounds more likely?” Shawn said. “And if you find yourself answering ‘an international conspiracy with tentacles reaching into every area of life led by some mysterious unseen figure with a name out of a Tintin book,’ you’re listening to too much talk radio.”

Gus did ask himself, and the answer made him feel much better. “So if these guys are just crooks, what do we do next?” he said.

“Criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot, so my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts,” Shawn said.

“What?” Gus said.

“Look around,” Shawn said. “Do you see anything that looks like a giant bat costume?”

If Gus had been able to find a giant bat, he would have hit Shawn over the head with it. “That’s not helping.”

“Ask the citizens of Gotham City,” Shawn said. “I think you’ll find they disagree.”

Gus was about to answer when there was a sound from across the barn. After a moment Malko appeared in the entrance to the stall, accompanied by the man in the pinstriped suit. Gus studied Malko closely but could see no signs that he’d been abused in any way. It was still possible that he’d been beaten in places that wouldn’t show bruises, but that didn’t seem likely. What did was that Shawn’s hopeful theory was completely wrong, and they were in the hands of the Cabal.

“What am I supposed to do with these two?” Pinstripe said.

“The one in back is some kind of psychic,” Malko said. “He helped figure out the clue in the painting. If Kitteredge won’t talk, he may be able to help you.”

Pinstripe man ignored him. “And the other one?”

“He might be even more useful,” Malko said. “He’s an old and dear friend of Kitteredge’s.”

There was a time when that description would have made Gus’ day. That was back when friendship meant getting together for lunch every now and then, not submitting to unspeakable torture as leverage to force the professor to talk. “More of an acquaintance, really,” Gus said. “Former student, dropped out after a couple of weeks.”

“Who was willing to risk his own life to save Kitteredge from the police,” Malko said. “It might be worth your while to see what the professor would be willing to give up to save him.”

“You don’t have to torture anybody,” Gus said. “We’ll tell you everything we know.”

“Which won’t take long, fortunately,” Shawn said. “Then we can all go on our separate ways.”

Pinstripe turned toward Shawn and raised his gun. “Perhaps we won’t be needing this one after all.”

Gus struggled frantically against his ropes. If he could get one hand free, he could bat the gun out of the masked man’s hands—if he could also free his feet so he could cross the space separating them. But if the rush of terror was sending a jolt of adrenaline through Gus’ body, it wasn’t enough to give him the kind of super-strength he needed.

Gus squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the gunshot that would end Shawn’s life, grateful at least that he wouldn’t be able to see it. But instead of a gunshot, he heard a strange moaning coming from behind him.

“The tears!” Shawn wailed. “Tears of rust. Flow my rusty tears.”

Another two seconds passed with no shots. Gus opened his eyes. Pinstripe still held his gun on Shawn, but he was staring at Malko. “Does he know what it means?”

“Maybe the spirits told him,” Malko said.

Shawn wailed again. “I see the tears,” Shawn cried. “Rusty tears. Red tears. Tears for fears. Tears in baseball—oh, wait, there aren’t any.”

“This is his process,” Gus said quickly. “He gets messages from the spirits, but they’re vague at first. Sometimes it takes a little while before he can understand the precise meaning.”

“Tears of a clown,” Shawn wailed. “As tears go by. Summer kisses, winter tears.”

The gun in the man’s hand wavered for a moment; then he lowered it. “We’ll take all three of them,” he said. “There might be some use to him.” He turned toward the back of the barn and called loudly. “Leonard! Chip! We’re going now.”

“Chip!” The name burst from Gus’ mouth before he could call it back. The only Chip he’d heard of in the past few days was the one who had been Kitteredge’s student. Chip Polidori. Which meant that everything the professor had told them was not a paranoid delusion, but was hideously, horribly true.

If Pinstripe noticed that Gus had spoken the name, he didn’t show any signs of it. He waited silently until a windowless van pulled up around the plane and the other two masked men got out.

“We’re taking all three of our guests back to London,” the leader said. “Load them in the van.”

The two men started to move into the stall, but Malko stepped into the stall entrance, blocking their way. “I allowed you to question them for free,” he said. “But if you’ve decided to complete the transaction, I’m going to need my payment now.”

“When we have the sword,” Pinstripe said.

“You don’t understand me,” Malko said. “I don’t work on consignment. I have betrayed not only my employer but a man who considers me a friend. For that, I expect to be paid exactly what I deserve. And to be paid in full. Now.”

Pinstripe seemed to think that over, then nodded slowly. “When you put it that way, I can’t disagree,” he said.

“Good,” Malko said.

Pinstripe raised his gun and fired three times. Three tightly grouped red spots appeared in the center of Malko’s chest. Then he crumpled to the ground.

The well-dressed man shoved his gun in his jacket pocket. “Let’s hurry this up,” he said. “We’ve wasted too much time already. Arthur’s sword is waiting for us.”

T
he trip in the windowless van was a smorgasbord of pain. First, one of the masked men had cut off Gus’ ropes, and the blood flowing back into this veins seemed to be made of Liquid Plumber. Then his arms and legs had been retrussed, and with no furniture to absorb some of the ropes’ pressure, he could feel his flesh being flayed from his body. The three were gagged and blindfolded and tossed onto the bare metal floor of the van, where they bounced around helplessly for what felt like hours. The only positive was that every once in a while Gus would be bounced across the van and roll against Shawn or Kitteredge, and both of them responded with grunts of pain. So at least all three of them were alive and conscious.

After a journey that felt longer than the plane flight, the van slowed and stopped. Gus could hear the front doors open and close, and then he felt a blast of cold, fresh air as the back was thrown open. Four hands grabbed him and pulled him out, then steadied him on the ground.

“If you try to escape, you’ll be dead before your second step,” an English-accented voice said in his ear. “Is that clear?”

Since he was gagged, Gus assumed the speaker didn’t need him to answer with anything but obedience, but he nodded anyway. He felt himself being led a few feet from the van and then through a door. After a few more feet, one of the men shoved him hard, and he fell backward. Fortunately there was a chair to catch him. He could feel his bonds being adjusted, and he knew he’d been tied to this chair, too. At least it was padded, which was a huge relief after the van’s floor.

After a minute, Gus heard scuffling footsteps, and then the sound of a body falling into a soft chair. Then he felt hands touching his face, and his blindfold fell away from his eyes, followed seconds later by his gag.

He looked around quickly to see that Shawn was on one side of him and Kitteredge on the other. To his huge relief, the professor didn’t seem to have been beaten too badly. There were bruises on his face and a small trickle of blood from his lower lip, but compared to what Gus had imagined he might have just come back from a spa.

“Are you all right?” Shawn whispered.

“I’m fine,” Gus whispered back. “Professor?”

“Nothing a couple of Band-Aids and some lidocaine won’t fix,” Kitteredge said. “Fortunately, Polidori’s men don’t seem to have studied much of the history of torture. If they had, they might have tried some of the more arcane techniques, such as the Black Lady of Monmouth or—”

Gus was vaguely aware that Kitteredge was still talking, but he’d stopped making sense of the actual words after the professor said the name “Polidori.” Even after all that had just happened, he couldn’t believe he was actually at the heart of a conspiracy that had existed for hundreds of years, if not longer.

If it was really true, the conspirators had certainly found the perfect spot for their headquarters. An enormous warehouse, it was crammed full of what must have been the fruit of centuries of looting. There were statues in marble and bronze, stacks of paintings in gold frames, and furniture from every period of history scattered around the floor. There were so many pieces, each one of unimaginable historical and financial value, that there was hardly a square foot of unoccupied floor space.

“Want to put money on this?” Shawn said quietly to Gus.

“On what?” Gus said, glancing over to see that Kitteredge was still lecturing on the history of torture.

“Who comes in to question us,” Shawn said.

“You already know,” Gus said. “It’s Polidori. The man you said was a hallucination.”

“Of course he’s going to call himself Polidori,” Shawn said, ignoring the fact he’d denied the man’s existence only hours before. “That’s got to be the code name. Like James Bond’s boss. You don’t really think they keep finding people who are named M to run the spy agency, do you?”

“What makes you think that isn’t his name?” Gus said.

“First of all, if you’re running a global conspiracy, you probably don’t want to put your own name on the letterhead,” Shawn said. “More importantly, it would violate the rule.”

Part of Gus wished a heavy statue would fall on Shawn before he could finish. But another part welcomed this discussion as one last bit of normalcy before they became the Cabal’s latest victims. “Which rule?”