At Sword's Point (24 page)

"Call back?" the voice asked.

Quickly the Saab driver read back the number on the phone he was calling from.

The line went dead.

The agent replaced the phone on the cradle and waited patiently for his control to call back with further instructions. A few minutes passed; then the phone rang. He let it ring four times, then picked up the receiver and once again tapped in his personal code. There was a slight hiss on the line, then a woman's voice came through the receiver.

"Cancel both flights, then return home," was all she said before the line went dead.

Returning to his Saab, the Mossad agent settled back behind the wheel to wait for Drummond and Eberle to come out of the restaurant, considering his options. So far as he could determine, there were three. He could shoot them in the restaurant, shoot them in front of the hotel, or shoot them in their rooms. By far the least risky, he decided, was to shoot them in their rooms. He had settled on a plan by the time he saw the two men leave the restaurant and head back toward the hotel.

But they did not go inside. Stopping by the red Corvette, the stockier of the two men unlocked the car and took out a small suitcase from behind the seats. Locking the car, he followed the other man over to a black Range Rover, parked several cars away, and stashed the case inside. Before the Mossad agent could get out of his car, both men had climbed into the Range Rover.

"Shit!" the agent hissed between clenched teeth.

Pulling a 9mm automatic out from under the seat, he bailed out of the car and ran toward Drummond's Range Rover. If they got away, he might never get another chance at them. Leveling his pistol, he was about to fire as Drummond pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto Rue de Strasbourg, but a passing bus momentarily blocked his target. When the bus had passed, Drummond was gone.

Swearing in Hebrew, the Mossad agent ran back to his car and followed Drummond out into the night.

Once clear of Luxembourg City, Drummond switched on his high beams and headed north at a fairly sedate pace. A half mile behind, the dark blue Saab followed along, its angry driver waiting for the first good opportunity to kill Drummond and Eberle.

"So," Eberle said, "now that we're out of earshot of the prying public, perhaps you'll tell me where we're headed?"

"Sure," Drummond said. "The castle of the Order of the Sword."

"Where the vampires live, right?" Eberle quipped.

"Yup. And when we get there, they're going to ask you where Kluge and his men are holed up." Drummond turned on his wipers as a light rain began to fall. "So I hope you know where he is."

"Kluge is a clever man," Eberle grinned, "but not clever enough by half." He took a small notebook from his pocket. "Could you switch on the map light?"

Drummond pressed a button on the dash and a small light came on over Eberle's shoulder.

"I pulled Kluge's records down at the Wiesenthal Center and noticed that he grew up in Ulm," Eberle said, consulting his notebook. "I then had my sister at the bank run a credit check on Euro Plasma Technik and came up with a list of assets, including several subsidiary companies and rather a lot of property." He flipped to another page. "I checked them out and discovered that, among the properties that one might expect of a company involved in the blood products industry—clinics and even a few hospitals—they own Marienkampf Castle near Ulm."

"Marienkampf," Drummond repeated, considering the name. "And you think Kluge is there?"

"I do."

"Why there, as opposed to anywhere else?"

"I was just coming to that. I did a record search on Marienkampf Castle, and found that in 1908 Jorg von Lanz bought the castle for some splinter group in the Thule Society." Eberle shot a grin at Drummond. "As you may or may not know, most of the early Nazis had ties to the Thule Society, including the Big Cheese himself. Anyhow, in 1936 a chicken fanner named Heinrich Himmler put a deposit on the property, but that same year it was purchased by Otto Emil Kluge, who just happens to have been our SS officer's father."

"Markus, you are one smart sonofabitch." Drummond gave Eberle a big smile as he slowed the car. "I think my vampire friends are going to like you just fine."

* * * *

As the driver in the Saab watched Drummond's Range Rover slowing down ahead of him, he reached under his seat and pulled out a 7.65mm Uzi, which he rested in his lap. Pressing a button on the console between the seats, he lowered the window on the passenger side and then accelerated up to where Drummond appeared to be pulling to the side of the road.

Just as the Saab swung around the Range Rover, Drummond slowed to a near stop and abruptly turned the car into the woods. The driver of the Saab fired a short burst from the Uzi that streaked past the Range Rover, missing its flanks by scant inches.

"Did you hear something?" Eberle asked, as the muffled sound of the Uzi just barely penetrated inside the Range Rover.

"Probably ran over something," Drummond replied. "Did you see the jerk that just passed us? Had to be doing close to a hundred. I thought for a minute that he was going to hit us."

"Probably some junior industrialist headed to Liege," Eberle said, as they bounced along the narrow track that led to the castle.

* * * *

A quarter mile further along the highway, the dark blue Saab skidded to a halt. Cursing, the driver slammed the car into reverse and spun the steering wheel around, swinging the car across the center line and pointing it back in the direction of Luxembourg City. Slapping a fresh magazine into the Uzi with one hand, he raced back to where Drummond and Eberle had turned into the heavy woods.

The car came to a complete stop in the middle of the road, the driver straining to see where the Range Rover had gone. Very near some odd surveyors' marks on the pavement, he could see tire tracks where the car flattened the roadside grasses and headed into a narrow woodland track. Straining to see through the dense trees beyond, he caught just a glimpse of headlights moving through the woods. Tight-lipped, he turned the Saab off the road and began easing along the forest track, driving on his parking lights, watching for further gleams of the headlights he was following.

* * * *

Baron von Liebenfalz had waited for Drummond to return for nearly an hour before he felt the first drops of rain spatter on his face. Looking at the dark clouds roiling up in the darkening sky, he buttoned the collar of his jacket around his neck and trudged back to his car. There he opened the boot of the gray Audi and took out a loden hunting cape, which he threw around his shoulders. Rummaging in an old-fashioned leather case produced a sandwich tin and a small silver flask. He washed down the cold roast venison with a swig of armagnac to keep out the chill of the evening, then took a shooting stick out of the back of the car, closed the boot lid, and went back to his post on the edge of the woods.

It was very quiet. Planting the shooting stick in the soft ground in front of a tree, von Liebenfalz spread the handle into a small seat and settled down to wait for Drummond's return. Wrapped in his cape, with the brim of his hat turned down, he studied the outline of the castle as it slowly vanished into the shadows of night, occasionally raising a compact pair of field glasses to scan the line of the battlements. He had seen no sign of life as yet.

Growing somewhat impatient, von Liebenfalz glanced at his watch and tried to make out the time, silently cursing the elegant Vascheron timepiece for not having luminous hands. Sitting in the dark, in the intermittent light rain that had been falling since just before sunset, he soon lost all track of the time. He was just about to reach for his flask when he thought he saw something move in the shadow of the castle.

Straining to make out a shape, von Liebenfalz concentrated on a dark patch of ground midway between the castle and the woods. A large cloud scudded away from the moon, and he was certain that he saw something move. The clouds covered the moon again for just a few seconds, and when the pale light of the night returned, the shadowy figure of the man von Liebenfalz had seen was gone.

Instinctively von Liebenfalz knew that the shadow figure he had seen was dangerous—more dangerous, perhaps, than anything he had faced in his life. Far from being frightened, a calm came over him, and he quickly resolved to remain where he was until morning, rather than seek the comparative safety of his car in the darkness of the woods. His hand went into his pocket and closed around the grip of his pistol. Drawing it, he rested his hand on his knee, the gun concealed beneath his heavy cape.

* * * *

At the edge of the wood, the vampire who once had been known as Alfredo de Cuneo paused to listen, straining to determine whether the alarm had yet been sounded at the castle. He had fed, and fed well, on one of his brother knights foolish enough to venture out of the castle alone, and now, gorged with the man's blood, he again felt the slightly giddy sensation he had experienced after he first had fed on human blood. Was it this that the order had eschewed for seven hundred years, by settling for animal blood, when such bliss attended the taking of more satisfying prey?

His whole body tingled as the potency of his victim's life force raced through his veins, revitalizing every cell and sinew. He felt a tensing in his muscles, as if his strength were increasing with each beat of his heart. Looking into the darkness of the forest, he found that his vision penetrated the blackest corners of the woods. An exhilaration washed over him in waves, goading him to seek out another victim, to somehow make up for the years lost.

Standing in the darker shadows of an ancient, gnarled oak tree, gazing across a rough clearing toward the edge of the meadow that surrounded the castle, he could see the condensation of someone breathing in the damp evening darkness—an old man in a dark cape and an odd hat, oddly propped on a strange, one-legged stool. With a quiet smile, the vampire began to circle the clearing.

* * * *

As he sat watching the castle, von Liebenfalz saw the darkened courtyard come alive with flickering points of light. Lifting up his binoculars, he could see white-mantled men with torches and drawn swords slowly advancing over the drawbridge, cautiously peering out at the darkness of the woods beyond the meadow. He was about to sweep the woods with his glasses, hoping to catch a glimpse of the shadow he knew they were hunting, when he heard the sound of a vehicle crawling its way toward the meadow.

* * * *

"Looks like the reception committee from a Frankenstein movie," Eberle said to Drummond, as their black Range Rover bumped over the root of a tree and headed across the meadow in front of the castle. "Do they usually turn out to welcome guests like this?"

"No, they don't," Drummond replied. "Something must be wrong."

He drove the car over to the drawbridge, where de Beq and William of Etton were organizing their men into two armed bands. All of them were clad in the red surcoats and white mantles of the order, chain mail gleaming at wrists and throats, helmets on their heads, swords in their hands.

"Wait here," Drummond said to Eberle, and got out of the car.

"With all the doors locked," Eberle muttered to himself, as he watched Drummond walk over to the cluster of knights at the foot of the drawbridge.

Back in the woods, the vampire had paused in shadow as Drummond and Eberle drove past him. Moving forward again, he had covered only a few yards when he stopped again, this time to watch as a dark blue Saab glided to a halt beneath a large oak tree. Standing quietly in the shadows, he was invisible to the driver of the car, who got out and trotted in the direction taken by Drummond's Range Rover, an Uzi held casually at his side.

Flitting along in the shadows, the vampire paced his new quarry, drawing almost even with the Mossad agent but staying just out of his peripheral vision. As they moved through the dense tangle of the woods, the vampire reached down and scooped up several small stones with one hand, then tossed them at his intended victim.

The Mossad agent let out a muffled cry and dropped to the ground as the rocks pattered against his back. Uzi up and at the ready, he scanned the darkness, unable to spot his unseen adversary. He inched his way backwards, belly down, until he came to a tree large enough to shield him. Then he wormed his way around the thick trunk and rose into a half-crouch position.

Sweat ran down the Mossad agent's face, and with a dirty hand he smeared it from his eyes, still looking around him warily. Another stone bounced painfully off the side of his head, cutting his ear and causing him to whirl about in a frantic attempt to see his tormentor. A thin, black trickle of blood glistened in the moonlight as it ran down the side of his face and dripped onto the cold steel receiver of the Uzi.

Watching from the shadows, the vampire smiled to himself as he imagined the fear gnawing at his victim's guts. The smell of the fear was almost as tantalizing as the smell of blood. Picking up a stick, he tossed it into the brush near his victim.

The crashing sound sent the Mossad agent diving for the cover of another tree. He rolled and came to a sitting position with his back against it. Panting, he spread his legs wide and, digging his heels into the ground, pushed himself up until he could get his feet under him. The Uzi held in the ready position next to his face, he strained to pierce the darkness that hid his tormentor.

The darkness hid nothing from what was stalking him. Smiling grimly, the vampire bent down and picked up a jagged rock the size of a head. Holding the heavy chunk of flint lightly in his hand, hefting it with no more effort than a mere human might expend to heft an apple, he thrilled for a moment at his superhuman strength, then took careful aim and threw it with all his might at the Mossad agent.

A white hot flash of pain exploded in the agent's groin and upward into his brain as the rough flint smashed into his crotch, crushing his testicles. In a convulsive reflex, he squeezed the trigger of the Uzi, drowning his own agonized scream in a burst of gunfire. Clutching himself, all other concerns obliterated by the pain, he curled into a ball, rocking back and forth in agony.

Seeing his quarry helpless on the floor of the forest, the vampire merely walked over and grabbed him by the hair, jerking him roughly to his feet. Pinning him against the tree trunk with one hand, easily overcoming his weak struggles, he pulled an ancient hunting dagger from his belt and drew it sharply across the Mossad agent's throat. The burning bite of the blade felt like an insect sting compared to the pain in the Mossad agent's crotch, and before he could comprehend what was happening to him, the vampire had his mouth over the wound, drinking in the hot, frothy blood.

* * * *

Von Liebenfalz lowered his binoculars and slowly backed away from the scene he had just witnessed. Turning around, he picked up his shooting stick and began walking briskly toward the clearing and Drummond's Range Rover.

"Did you hear that?" Drummond asked, as he got back into the car.

"If you mean the shots, yes," Eberle replied. "What the hell's going on?"

"One of the knights has been murdered," Drummond said. "It happened about twenty minutes before we got here. The others were just going out to look for the killer when we heard the shots."

"So the killer is armed?" Eberle asked.

"Yes, but not with a gun," Drummond replied. "Which means that someone else fired those shots—not one of ours." Popping the car into reverse, he slewed it around and headed back toward the forest.

"What do you think you are doing?" Eberle asked, as the car bumped across the meadow toward the woods.

"Heading over to where those shots came from, that's what," Drummond said.

"What about those other guys?" Eberle jerked his thumb in the direction of the knights.

"They're going to fan out through the woods and see if they can't drive the killer towards us," Drummond said, peering ahead into the gloom of the trees.