City of Swords (12 page)

Chapter 22

“The police have a lot of questions,” Roux said. He sat next to her in the hospital room. Her flannel shorts and ripped T-shirt had been replaced by a hospital gown. “I have a lot of questions, too.” He stared at her for a moment. “They have an officer outside your room, to question you when you’re up to it.”

Annja blinked, bringing the old man into focus. She tried to say something, but only a croak came out. Her mouth felt full of cotton, her tongue swollen. He held a cup with a straw in it for her.

“You were in surgery for a while.”

Her eyebrows rose.

“You were cut badly, Annja. The doctors thought you might lose your leg.”

The wound had been that severe?

“My leg?” The words came out a hoarse whisper. She took another sip of water and tried to prop herself up. Roux held her down.

“You didn’t,” he said. “It’s still there under all the bandages.” He set the cup on the stand. “No doubt your indefatigable constitution saved it.”

Annja looked up at an eggshell-white ceiling. Sun streamed in through a window to brighten the already yellow walls. She smelled flowers—a small bouquet on the stand, probably from Roux—and the stringent scent of antiseptic. She had a clamp on her finger, taking her pulse, and a machine next to the bed with a blood-pressure cuff hooked to it and a panel that showed her heart rate.

“How long?”

“Were you in surgery? I didn’t ask that. All I know is they brought you in yesterday morning. Someone told me it was before six, so the night-shift doctors stayed on longer to work on you. I didn’t get here until last night.” He leaned back in the chair and let out a long breath. “You heal remarkably fast, Annja, but you could have died.”

“I know.” A dull ache permeated her body, despite whatever painkiller they’d given her. “He was good, Roux. Maybe the best I ever fought.”

“Who?”

She pictured his face, seeing the face of both of them: Gaetan, whom she had pushed to his death. “I don’t know. But his brother—”

“Ah, that would be the man they found on the Dumpster in the alley?”

She nodded. “His name was Gaetan.”

“I suppose if I buy a newspaper today, I might find the report and the obituary.”

“They were swordsmen, Roux. Good. And the one—”

“Who got away?”

So the other twin had managed to leap to another building and elude the police. But he was wounded; he’d have to get medical help somewhere.

“He was better than me.”

Roux shook his head. “I don’t know about that, Annja.”

“I do.” She drank the rest of the cup of water and told him about being rousted out of bed by the two men, forced to climb up to the roof. “I know that he was better than me.”

Neither said anything for a while. The sounds of the hospital crept through the gap under the closed door.

“So I know some of it,” Roux said. “Indulge an old man and tell him the rest.”

She did, about Archard Gihon and Dr. Lawton, about the auction and Tizona, the sword of El Cid, about Honjo Masamune, which was wielded against her, and before that the theft of Durendal from Rocamadour and the Wallace Sword from near Stirling.

“And there might be more,” she said. “I’d only started, really, to dig into it.”

He scowled. “I warned you, Annja.”

Be careful that history’s monsters don’t come chasing you.
“But I have to see what it’s all about. This guy is more than just an obsessed collector. He knows something about Joan’s sword, too. I need to find out what it is.”

Roux stood and worked a kink out of his neck. “And even if you didn’t want to pursue it, I fear it would pursue you.”

“That man I fought…he’ll be back.”

“And what about this Dr. Lawton from the auction?”

She propped herself up. This time Roux didn’t stop her. “I’m going to get out of here.”

“Not today, Annja. You do heal fast, but not that fast. You’re impressive, but you’re not immortal.”

“Like you?”

“You really were close to death.”

“I’m going—”

“You’re going to stay here at least until tomorrow.” His expression was stern. “Promise me. Any other soul who suffered that cut probably would have lost a leg. You had other cuts, too. And any other soul would be laid up a week…or more. You can give it until tomorrow.”

She shook her head.

“Promise me.”

“Fine.”

“Get better. Rest. I’ve got a feeling we’ll have to be at our best.”

We?

He stooped and picked something up off the floor. Her laptop. He set it on the nightstand. “I checked you out of your hotel. Your suitcase is over there.” He pointed to the small closet. “When you feel better, start pursuing your quarry through the mystical space of the web. Information is strength, Annja. Knowledge indeed is power.”

There is also power in names.
She’d get the name of Gaetan’s twin brother, for starters. That shouldn’t be a difficult search by going through reports on Olympic fencing matches. And she had two more: Archard Gihon and Charles Lawton.

“I’ll be back to check on you tonight. Then you can tell me where we’re headed.”

The uncharacteristic “we” again. Annja was at the same time pleased with and dreading the notion that Roux was involving himself in this. She watched him leave, and then opened the laptop and started typing. She didn’t start with Gaetan or Archard or Charles
Lawton—the men’s names would come later. She pulled up the Google search engine and typed in
named swords.

Chapter 23

Sarah couldn’t pronounce the name of the place she’d slipped into twenty minutes ago. The Kunsthistorisches Museum. It was the biggest building she’d ever set foot in. Enormous and old, looking like a castle and some grand government building at the same time, it stretched across several blocks of Vienna. The sight of it this afternoon had taken her breath away.

“It’s too much,” she told Ulrich. “The place is simply too huge. I’ll get lost inside.”

“Your faith will keep you safe,” he’d said.

But her faith, and her belief in Dr. Lawton’s plan, wasn’t keeping her nerves in check. The voices in her head weren’t helping; they were only adding to her doubts, questioning if she was up for this. Maybe if someone was with her, if she wasn’t prowling the halls and stairwells alone, she wouldn’t feel so skittish. Sarah looked at her watch. She had forty minutes left.

One hour. That was all the German was giving her. He was elsewhere in the building, had used his expertise to finesse the security system and reroute monitors and replay loops so guards wouldn’t notice her. But he wasn’t going to stay long. Ulrich said one hour; longer than that was too risky. He had a car a block away, parked in an alley outside a service entrance. She had to be there in an hour—forty minutes now—or he would leave without her. There was another man with them. He called himself Crescendo, though Sarah knew that wasn’t his real name. Pierre DePaul was a thirtysomething graduate student assigned to Dr. Lawton. She didn’t know why he called himself Crescendo, and wasn’t going to ask; she just went along with it, like everyone else. One of the professor’s paladins, Crescendo’s specialty was restoration and maintenance. The sword she was tasked with retrieving tonight would be passed along to him for sprucing up.

And then it would be hers.

Dr. Lawton had officially named her one of his paladins before he left for Spain, and said as such it was time to claim her weapon. He’d presented her with a few choices. At the time, she’d thought this would be the easiest to obtain. She didn’t tell him that, though. She’d said the history of it entranced her, and she thought her inner spirit most fit that of the man who’d once wielded it.

“I agree,” Dr. Lawton had said. “This blade would suit you.”

If she could find it.

Thirty-five minutes left.

“Damn, Archard.” As much as she railed against his company and his insistence that he run things, she wished he was here. He would have made her case the museum during the day, exploring the exhibits, reading up on the history, playing the tourist. It’s what he’d ordered in Rocamadour and Stirling, and both thefts went off without a hitch. But he was in Spain with Dr. Lawton, getting a sword the legal way, and she’d told them she could handle this mission. The voices in her head told her she should be in charge.

After all, she’d done such a good job on the initial cleansing foray in Rouen, leaving no solid clues for the police with the slain Buddhists and Scientologists. She’d gotten herself and the twins in and out, and then she’d returned to Paris with a triumphant accounting of their bloody activities.

Sarah hadn’t wanted to spend the time scouting the place out in person. The voices in her head always chided her for pretending to be a tourist. Besides, she’d looked it up on the internet. Unfortunately, the website didn’t reveal just how humongous this place was. She’d seen a picture of the sword and noted which room it was in. She’d borrowed the glass-cutting kit from Ulrich and had a piece of cloth in her pack to wrap the sword in. She’d dressed in tight-fitting black-and-gray clothes so she’d look like a shadow as she skulked through this place, and her shoes were ballet slippers…soundless.

Thirty minutes and she’d looked through every nook and cranny of the room the sword was supposed to be in. She found the case where it had been. Empty.

“Damn. Damn. Damn.”

There was a card in the case, and she’d pulled out a small flashlight to read it. God, it was dark in this museum. To conserve electricity, there were lights only in the halls, and they were dim. She started to read the card, and then she heard the sound of footfalls.

“Damn. Damn. Damn.” The voices in her head chanted far worse profanity.

The security guard. Noting the curtains in this room, heavy fabric, brocade or velvet, she hid behind one. Sarah was small and knew she wouldn’t disturb the folds enough to draw attention. A light came on and the footsteps grew louder. She heard the sound pant legs make when they rub together, and imagined the security guard being on the portly side to cause the material to rub like that. She listened as he made a circuit of the large room. The light flicked off, and she waited a few breaths before looking out. Gone.

She glanced at her watch. Twenty-five minutes left.

Sarah didn’t want to run from this empty-handed. If she didn’t get this sword, maybe Dr. Lawton would de-paladinize her. Maybe it would be months before she could regain his favor. She skittered to the empty case and flicked on her flashlight.

Removed for restoration.

No!

She took a few deep breaths. Fought the icy feeling that had seeped into her arms and legs. If Archard had been here, if they’d visited this museum as tourists, she would have known the sword was gone. Dr. Lawton was going to be seriously pissed.

She slunk from the room and started toward the back staircase, passing through an incredible space with a high, octagonal dome ceiling. The lighting was sparse and the decor dark, but Sarah swore she’d never been in a place so beautiful. Gold leaf and stucco ornamentation were everywhere. She’d like to kick herself for not following Archard’s lead and scoping the place out during operating hours. To see everything well lit would be amazing. But to leave without her prize…

Wait a minute. The sword was being restored. Was it being restored here? When she’d been on the museum website, she’d read about their labs in the basement.

The Kunsthistorisches was a fine-arts museum, with staff to do restoration on its paintings. That’s what the place was known for—the work of the masters that hung on the seemingly never-ending walls. Paintings had been displayed here for more than a hundred years, the building commissioned originally so the Hapsburgs’ art collection could be seen by the public.

Sarah looked at her watch when she hit the lower landing. Fifteen minutes to go. If she left right this minute, she’d have a little time to spare to make it to the alley and the rental car. But the prize… The restoration lab was only one floor down, if she correctly recalled what she’d read on the website. Damn, if only she’d paid more attention, hadn’t been so cocky.

She hurried down the rest of the steps and emerged into a corridor almost as dark as a cave. The only light came from right above her head and the far end, both sporting two words, one in German, the other in English:
Ausfahrt/Exit.
She pressed herself against the wall and listened. Not a single footfall. She’d noted the presence of only three guards since she’d come in here. Sarah had expected more…and maybe there were. It was a big, big place, after all. But maybe they’d grown a little lax with security. It had been a decade since Cellini’s
Salt Cellar
had been stolen, recovered a couple years later. At the time it had been the greatest theft of an art treasure in Austria.

If Sarah found the sword, would her theft surpass it?

How many minutes did she have left? She glanced toward her watch and then stopped herself.

“Just do it,” she growled.

She inched down the hall, pausing at doors and shining her flashlight in through the windows. On the third stop she found a workroom filled with tables. She almost kept going, but then spotted a shield on one of them.

“Bingo.” The door was locked, but there looked to be nothing modern or high-tech about it. She reached into her pack and pulled out a set of picks the German had given her. She knew how to use them. That had been one of the first skills she’d picked up after joining Dr. Lawton’s group. She made the sign of the cross over her chest, not that she was Catholic—Methodist born and raised—but the gesture gave her a small measure of confidence. “Dear God, please let Ulrich have knocked out any surveillance down here.” A moment later, the tumblers clicked and she was inside.

Hurry,
she admonished herself, flashing the light over each table. Spears and more shields, a chunk of breastplate…what were those doing in an art museum, anyway? And one sword.

She drew in a deep breath, discovering that the air was overly cool down here. Maybe important in restoration work. “Be it,” she whispered. “Dear God, be it.”

Sarah practically floated toward the table. The sword lay on a piece of feltlike material. A study lamp of some sort stretched over it. She flipped the switch.

“Ah, this is mine.” She tried to swallow the words, which she’d spoken too loudly. Immediately, she glanced over her shoulder to the door, which she’d forgot to close behind her. Whew, no one there to hear her.

First it had been Attila’s, and now it was hers. Her fingers touched the blade.

Attila the Hun had thought he was destined to rule the world. His reputation had earned him the title the Scourge of God. His sword, the Sword of God.

Sarah wrapped her right hand around the pommel and marveled at the decorative gold work. A disc at the handle’s base was worn but looked almost globelike, perhaps reflecting the warlord’s plan to conquer the world. The delicate designs were worn in places, especially along the guard that curved upward and inward like the sweeping horns of a bull. Was that what they were restoring? Some of the fine details? She would have to ask Crescendo.

Sarah hoped whatever it was that needed restoring was basically finished. She didn’t want Crescendo to have this weapon any longer than absolutely necessary.

Her sword.

Hers to help in the cleansing. She couldn’t wait to show this to the twins and to gloat over it. Especially as Gaetan didn’t have his “named” sword yet.

This one? Sarah’s very special sword. The Sword of God, it was called, and Tiew. Attila had named it Tiew after his ancestors’ war god.

“Tiew,” she said, trying out the sound of it. “Sarah and Tiew.”

Attila had ruled the Huns for almost two decades. His empire was vast, from the Urals to the Rhine, from the Baltic Sea to the Danube. He’d plundered the Balkans, invaded Italy, but couldn’t capture Rome.

Could she help Dr. Lawton capture Rouen with this?

It felt good in her hand.

Her hand.
She turned her arm so she could see her watch.

Time was up.

More than up.

She dashed out of the room, holding Tiew close and knocking one of the shields off a table in her rush. It made a harsh clanging sound that echoed off the walls and followed her out into the hall. For a moment she couldn’t recall which way she’d come, with two exit lights offering her ways out. She picked the closest and ran.

Out the door and up the stairs, feet pounding on the steps. Sarah didn’t try to be quiet; the possibility of a quiet exit had been dashed with the clanging shield. Lights were coming on upstairs, and she heard the crackle of something. Maybe an alarm or walkie-talkie; maybe some intercom buzzing a warning. Her heart pounded in her throat.

Would Ulrich have left without her? It had been quite a few minutes more than an hour. But he wouldn’t have abandoned her, would he? She was one of Dr. Lawton’s chosen paladins. He couldn’t leave her!

Up another flight of stairs and down a hall she’d been through before… The smug faces painted centuries ago stared down their noses at her, the landscapes a blur of watercolors and oils as her feet slammed across the marble.

Someone shouted,
“Stopp. Halt!”

Obviously they were shouting at her. Two voices. And obviously she wasn’t going to stop. If she did, she’d be arrested, jailed until she was Archard’s age.

Sarah ran faster, falling when she rounded a corner, dropping Tiew. She popped up right away, grabbed the sword again and raced for the back exit she’d come in. Her side was on fire, she was running so fast, and it felt as if her kneecap was busted. But she couldn’t be running like this if it was broken.

Dear God,
she prayed,
don’t let the sword be broken, either.
Had she ruined it when it hit the marble? She couldn’t have damaged her sword, her instrument to help Dr. Lawton cleanse his chosen city.

“Faster!” she screamed, as if that word could somehow make her legs pump harder.

Then she was behind the building and across a parking lot, flying into the Vienna night. It wasn’t especially chilly, but she was freezing, her teeth chattering. Her clothes were soaked with sweat, her skin dotted with it.

Sarah sprang into a small park and hid behind a tree, taking in great swallows of air as she listened to the sirens. How many? Checking for a number gave her an excuse to stand there and catch her breath. One, two, definitely three. Lights came on outside the museum, and the flashing lights of police cars joined in. The station must not have been far.

She ran again, having gotten her bearings. The alley where the rental car had been parked was less than a block away. Sarah cut toward it, darting from tree to tree and then dashing across an intersection, away from the museum. Lights played across the palatial structure, revealing people milling on the steps. She clung to the buildings on this side of the street, slipping under awnings and pausing in crevices to watch the scene. The sirens had stopped, but there were even more lights, a police van. There were gawkers out on the street, too. Where had they come from? Apartments? Bars? Didn’t matter; she had to get out of here before they looked down this block.

In the alley, she felt a little better. It wasn’t as dark as when they’d parked here. The lights from the museum stretched to the ends of the alley. Sarah tried to calm down…but failed. She tried to at least breathe slower, and managed that. She stumbled toward the spot where Ulrich had left the car.

It was gone.

Sarah held the sword even tighter against her and wedged herself into a narrow space between buildings. Could a paladin cry?