Matt Drake 14 - The Treasures of Saint Germain (19 page)

A blank expression said it all.

“Answer’s
no
,”
Alicia translated. “But we do need to talk.”

For a few more seconds Amari studied them, considering, perhaps dissecting their intentions. Drake was aware of the six other men climbing out of the pool, all empty handed but none less threatening.

Nobody moved, nor spoke. Drake found himself in the middle of yet one more perplexing situation. No threats had been made, no peril was obvious. This could still be a mistake. What was the answer?

Alicia found it in just two words.

“Saint Germain.”

It electrified the entire area so much Drake thought a lightning bolt might have struck. Amari went rigid, blue eyes blazing and the six onlookers gasped as if in chorus.

“You are not my guests!” Amari cried, looking inexperienced, raw and strangely shocked to the core.

“What the hell are you people?” Hayden drawled. “You don’t come across like . . . terrorists.”

Amari’s mouth fell open. “We protect. We preserve. We defend.”

“And, mate, I’d love to hear the one about the rich Arab who fell in love with the long-dead Transylvanian count.” Drake grinned.

Amari surprised him with a bit of venom. “The Ascended Master is
not
dead. And one day, he will reward us.”

The Arab spun and ran, bare feet slapping the mosaic tiles. Drake went one way around the pool as Beau went the other. They reached the point where the top pool stepped down to the next amid a little waterfall. Amari bent down to rustle among shrubbery.

Warning bells grew to claxon quality in Drake’s mind. This may be the oddest leader of the oddest terror cult he’d ever come across, but one bad guy was just the same as another. As Amari turned with the handgun in his hand, Drake was already leaping aside and shouting out a warning.

Beau flipped out of sight, clearing the top of the pool and landing amid sun-loungers. Hayden, Alicia and Mai fell away, scrambling for cover. Drake found the bushes as Amari’s trembling arm swayed from left to right.

“Stay away,” he cried. “We are not fighters, but we can fight. We
will
fight. To protect the Master.”

Drake now guessed these people handed down attack orders through a phone connection, insulated and oblivious to the terror they caused; uncaring, happy in their bright fantasy world. Fanatical in one way, utterly green in the other.

“Put the gun down,” he called. “We can talk about all this.”

“No, no! You will hurt the Master. You are questing the world for his treasures just like that other American! You have no idea, not even the faintest inkling, of the supreme power you are up against.” The next phrase came out as four separate words. “He. Is. A. God.”

A living man become a god?
Drake thought. Where did these freaks come from?

Without further idiosyncrasies, Amari pounced down the steps. His six acolytes flowed with him, saying nothing, but seemingly attracted to the magnet that was their leader. Alicia’s head popped up from behind a low wall, and then Mai’s.

All seemed surprised there had been no gunshots.

“We’re dealing with a different kind of animal,” Drake said. “But no less dangerous.”

The team sprang in pursuit. Around the top pool and down to the lower one, then circumventing its kidney shape. A straight dash toward the steps that led to the beach and a glance in the direction that Amari was running.

Brushed sand led all the way to the sea, a sparkle and a shimmer dancing atop the playful waves that ran between the mind-warping fronds. A small dock had been built into the water, where half a dozen small speedboats were moored. Amari raced toward the furthest.

“Crap,” Alicia moaned. “I can see where this is going. If I get seasick—” she yelled at the escaping men “—one of you is gonna be shark bait!”

Drake leapt down the steps and hit the sand running. Amari and his acolytes were already in the first speedboat, two of them unwrapping the thick rope that held it in place. Amari sat behind the wheel, looking straight ahead.

Refusing to believe he was being forced to run?
Unable
to believe it? Pampered. Veiled with untold luxuries. Pretending that he was just nipping to the shops for a pint of milk, millionaire-style?

The engine roared to life. Drake and the team arrived on the dock a few seconds later but the craft was already moving. Of the seven men sitting or standing aboard the speedboat, not a single one glanced back.

Drake shook his head. “Fucking loony toons town, that’s what this is.” He climbed carefully aboard a light blue speedboat, expecting and finding the keys to be in the ignition. “Press start,” he said and the engine roared to life.

Trainers hit the deck at his back and then Mai shouted, “Go,” and Drake pushed hard on the throttle. Water churned from the rear and the prow lifted a little. Bright skies glared down in warning but Drake was safe beneath his shades. Safe, but leaking sweat from every pore. He spun the boat and curved an arc in the water, blasting toward the center of the sea passage and the end of the frond. Was Amari heading out to sea? He hoped not.

“No signs of pursuit.” Hayden had been scanning the whole area. “Or cops, for that matter. Does anyone know what the hell is going on?”

“I could hazard a few guesses,” Mai said, holding on tight as Drake accelerated. “Wealthy parents, bored kid. Somehow develops a fixation. Has the resources to carry it all the way through to its unwise end.”

“Well, he’s clearly not under duress,” Drake shouted as spray flicked at his face. “Or any kind of stress. Hold on!”

The speedboat skipped a small wave, left the water and came crashing down with a bump. Drake hung onto the wheel as he flexed his knees to absorb the impact, and followed the getaway boat as it sped into the distance. At this speed they could clearly see the shape of the fronds to either side as they arced gracefully through the sea, artificial wonders and tributes to the ingenuity of man. Every rear garden led down to a private beach and a small jetty; every jetty held several types of craft.

Amari aimed straight for the center of the passage at first, then began to drift to the north as the frond’s outer edges appeared. Drake whistled as an enormous plot came into view, a mansion half built at the very end of the frond and surrounded by high walls and pre-grown palm trees.

“Now there’s a pad,” he said. “Whaddya say, Alicia? Wanna go halves?”

“Too bloody big. We’d never find each other.”

Mai coughed. “Not to mention . . . elegant.”

Drake rammed the throttle wide open, ignoring the knife-edge banter and concentrating on closing the gap to Amari. The lead boat hit a bit of chop, slowing it down whilst Drake luckily skimmed across a mirror-flat surface. Still, nobody turned around, all preferring to ignore the fact that they were being pursued. Amari started to pull his craft closer to the coast.

“Is he beaching it?” Beau asked.

Drake kept arrow straight, using every ounce of the speedboat’s power to get closer. The boats were evenly matched. It was Amari’s errant driving that allowed Drake to come to within twenty meters. After that though, the Arab gave the boat all of his attention, staying just out of the shallows and flicking the boat at a fast clip around the end of the frond.

Waves slapped Drake’s hull as he completed the same maneuver, not far enough out to sea for a proper swell, but the deep brine choppy enough to send Alicia both green and white.

On the boats raced, passing across the channel of the next frond and seeing another enormous space being cleared at its end. A three-story structure was already going up here, with the aspect of a hotel.

Amari threw his boat down the next channel. Drake breathed a sigh of relief because he’d already noticed it was the last. Beyond it sat the crescent breakwater and then empty, open sea all the way to Iran.

Now a hard left turn, the boat heeling, the passengers holding on with white knuckles, spray coating them from head to toe. Amari cleared the turn perfectly, much to Drake’s annoyance, but then the man had probably done it a thousand times. He followed the boat as it drifted toward the beach around the final frond and noticed a bridge up ahead; a concrete structure carrying a monorail that spanned the entire waterway.

“Maybe he’ll hit it,” the Yorkshireman said despondently.

“Don’t worry.” Alicia patted him on the shoulder. “He has to stop sometime.”

“Oh, that really helps.”

Gradually, a new structure began to take shape on the right.

“Oh bollocks,” Drake said. “I think I see his intentions.”

They all did, and anxiety set in. Until now, this chase had seemed destined to have only one ending. Amari couldn’t outrun them. But now . . .

The sprawling Atlantis Hotel rose high and multi-colored, encompassing most of the last frond by itself: thousands of rooms, restaurants, shops and a waterpark. Thousands of people. A million places to hide. If Amari got a head start on them in there, he and his people would be gone.

Drake gave it his all, choosing the slackest water and the widest arch through the bridge. He inched closer. Their quarry was only twenty meters away, still ignoring them. Drake blasted through the bridge just as a monorail passed above; he saw the faces of people staring down through the glass. To all intents and purposes this was a boys’ race—nothing more.

He twisted the wheel hard as he cleared the bridge, skimming the bottom of the craft across a flat surface and closing the gap to under twenty meters. Beau rose to his feet and approached the edge of the boat as if preparing to jump.

Alicia laughed. “Are you serious?”

“No. But I am ready.”

Drake saw they were angling hard toward shore now. Another jetty stuck out just ahead, but Amari ignored it and rammed the speeding boat up the sandy beach. The men inside must have been talking at some point, because they all hung on for dear life and then rose as momentum decreased. Drake went all out, hitting the beach at full speed, taking the jolts and trying to stand even as they plowed practically sideways.

“She’s gonna roll!” Hayden cried.

Luckily, she didn’t. Even so, Beau leapt gracefully from the tipping, sliding craft, landed like a cat, and took off after Amari’s men.

“Hate to say it.” Drake struggled down to the beach. “But that French bastard has skills.”

The way ahead was at best dubious, masked by hundreds of planted trees, meandering walkways and doors leading to different wings of the hotel. A huge pool dominated the center, sun-loungers and tourists arrayed ten deep all around it. Bars, rental huts and coffee shops added to the SPEAR team’s misery, all adding to the potpourri of distractions.

Drake spied Beau disappearing around a bend up ahead. He reached the place just in time to see the Frenchman run into a totally unexpected tree branch to the face. One of the acolytes must have stayed behind to take Beau out. Brave, ballsy, and incredibly naïve.

The Frenchman did stagger, even covered his eyes, but it was the slippery paving—wet from a recent watering—that sent him to the ground. The acolyte ran off. Beau nursed a bruised nose and a twisted ankle.

The team kept up the pace. Knots of tourists slowed them down. Sunlight bounced off the high hotel walls. The team were shocked when they turned a blind corner and ended up facing Amari and his six pals who were waiting just outside a small side entrance to the hotel, every man holding a small handgun.

“You will back off. Leave us alone,” Amari said.

“Amari is right,” another piped up, voice almost failing. “We haven’t hurt you.”

Drake pulled up, knowing he shouldn’t be surprised but taken aback all the same. “Haven’t hurt . . . how insulated are you people? Do your parents know you’re not in your rooms?”

“We answer only to the Master. Other than that, we do the same as everyone else. We party, drink lots of water, socialize and sunbathe.”

Drake wanted to plug his ears. The sheer ignorance of it staggered him. But he plucked on a likely thread. “The Master talks to you often?”

Utter disbelief and scorn poured out at him. “The Master talks to
no one.
His legacy will remain intact. At. All. Costs.” More one-word sentences.

Drake couldn’t fathom the depth of idiocy—or rather the extent of fanaticism—he was seeing. But the guns—they were certainly real and required addressing.

He backed off. “No problems here.”

Amari already had his hand on the door. “Do not follow us into this hotel. We do not want to hurt you.”

Drake allowed them to leave, still astonished at the turn of events and the lack of attendant mercenaries. The cult clearly preferred to work from afar, directing operations with a wave of a sheaf of thousand-dollar bills and reluctant to shake hands with their unwashed employees. When the last man disappeared into the darkened interior, he followed.

Hayden held him back. “They’re desperate men, deep down.”

“All the more reason to corner them,” he said. “And I don’t see a man among them.”

The team filed through the same door, into the hotel. A welcome blast of air conditioning struck their exposed skin, almost as good as the relief from the constant blue glare of the skies.

Amari and his acolytes stood dead ahead of them, staring down an inner hallway with guns drawn. Hotel guests milled between them.

“I warned you!” Amari screeched.

“No—” Drake managed to cry.

The sound of gunshots drowned him out.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Torsten Dahl found himself, unexpectedly, in a coffee shop in Zurich. Sabrina Balboni had been allowed her freedom to help catch Webb, and had been directed to head for the Swiss city. Now, the rest of the team had traveled after, knowing that where Balboni was so too would be Tyler Webb.

And the mercenaries. Let’s not forget about those.

Dahl believed he’d had his fill of these so-called soldiers of fortune lately. From Arizona to New York they’d plagued his every waking hour, and then even during a much-needed vacation in sunny Barbados they had attempted the unthinkable—to hurt his family. Dahl didn’t think any hired killers survived that day,