On the Fifth Day (29 page)

"Did you see that?" War demanded into his phone.

"Yes," said Pestilence. "Famine is on the scene and clos

ing. He's in the basilica."

"Get there. Cover the exit. If the target emerges, shoot him down. Worry about witnesses later."

"If I can get away, no one will identify me," she said with a grim smile. "All they'll see is the habit."

Famine scanned the interior of the great church. There were a handful of tourists, a few solitary worshippers, but no services, 212

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no crowds. He kept to the shadows on the edge of the nave, moving deftly, keeping the hood of his coat up so that no one noticed him at all. He liked that. He liked the idea of cornering Knight somewhere and getting good and close before showing himself. He'd be paralyzed with fear. He might even scream. Famine felt a rush of pleasure expand from his loins. He had almost completed a circuit of the nave. There was no sign of Knight, but somehow Famine felt his presence like a scent in the cool, still air of the ancient church where the dust turned in the colored light from the high windows. He began his descent into the crypt.

"Tomba del santo,"
he read silently to himself. Indeed.

CHAPTER 58

It had been a gamble, but one Thomas had thought worth tak

ing. He had left the basilica to call Claudio at the Vittoria Parc, and then shut the phone off again. If they were tracking him through it, they'd come here, thinking he was inside. In fact he was hastily moving through the narrow streets, wend

ing his way back to the road where Claudio was to collect him. But he had to kill fifteen minutes, and the castle across the road seemed the most secure place to do that. He rounded a corner at speed. At the end of the street ahead he could see the sky and the edge of the castle wall. He could also see Brad Iverson coming toward him. As Thomas skittered to a halt, Iverson's surprise evaporated and he dropped to one knee, the oversized pistol sliding from under his jacket, extending and firing in a single, smooth movement. Thomas flung himself down and rolled as shot after shot cannoned toward him. A planter under someone's window ex

ploded in a shower of dirt. Smoke kicked up from the cobbles 213

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as another bullet ricocheted whining away. Then Thomas was scrambling back and Iverson got purposefully to his feet and came forward.

Thomas ran blind, ducking down an alley, barely keeping his feet as he broke into a sprint, hurling himself through a laundry line of tablecloths, all conscious thought shut down. He saw a half-open door, considered it for the briefest of mo

ments, and then ran on, taking care to slam it hard as he passed.

War was in pursuit. Up ahead he heard the clang of a door and, when he turned the corner, was just in time to see it jud

dering on its hinges.

"Clever," he thought, running past it.

Thomas knew he couldn't outrun Iverson. He'd seen him up close and the guy was clearly an athlete who worked hard to stay in shape. Thomas had only guile and the peculiarities of the town on his side.

Here come the Saracens,
he thought, weaving right and taking the first intersection to the left. He had no idea where he was now, no idea how close Iverson was behind him. Two more intersections. He was slowing. A third. Then he was out, back in the main street, and finding a surge of speed to take him across the bridge to the castle.

"He's in there," shouted War.

Famine had joined him, his eyes burning with anger at the way Knight had slipped away from him in the church.

"What happened to the signal?" said Pestilence, over the phone.

"It's the streets and the buildings," said War. "There's too much interference."

"Either that or he knows."

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"No," said Famine suddenly, brandishing his own phone as if it were a knife. "It's back."

"Okay," said War, gazing over to the castle. "You go in first. I'll back you up. Pestilence, monitor the signal and re

spond to its movements. It's going to cut in and out in there, but when it's clear I want you close and tracking. Move."

Another gamble. Thomas had bolted into the castle, shut the phone off, and taken a moment to get a sense of the place. The gatehouse was at the western corner of the perimeter wall. In

side was a keep with two carved entrances and cars parked along the front-facing wall. The keep was hollow, containing a flagged courtyard, its walls the inner side of rooms, offices, and exhibit halls. It was completely self-contained. Standing in the middle of the courtyard beneath four palm trees, Thomas flicked the phone on for one more moment.

It rang.

He hesitated, then answered.

"You can't hope to get out of this alive," said a familiar voice.

"Sister Roberta," he answered. "Calling about my spiritual welfare?"

"You should have killed me when you had the chance," she said.

"That was probably a mistake, yes," said Thomas, thinking fast. He knew they were coming, trying to pinpoint his loca

tion. For all he knew, they had a sniper somewhere . . . He moved to the nearest ground-level door and stepped inside a dim hall, its walls hung with vivid and outlandish masks: the local craft show. "Hello?" he said. "I'm afraid I'm losing your signal . . ."

There was a crackle, a descending series of electronic notes, and then silence. He hung up, and ran back to the court

yard and out, back the way he had come. Beside the gatehouse was a stone arch and a flight of stairs with a sign prohibiting entrance. He brushed past it and climbed up onto an open roof 215

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with access to the castle walls. He was on the corner tower overlooking the bridge.

He flung himself down. He was on a roof rather than in a turret, and the rim of stone was only a couple of feet high. He crawled to the wall and looked down. Running across the bridge toward him was Brad Iverson. Twenty yards behind him was a Fransiscan nun.

So where's . . . ?

He rolled onto his back as the ghoul sprang from the stair

case, knife in hand.

CHAPTER 59

Thomas wasn't truly conscious of it, had not processed the awareness fully, but he had heard the ghoul's trademark snarl a fraction before he rolled. He had heard it in the same instant he had wondered where the ghoul was, and as he rolled over he raised one knee to protect himself from the attack. Thomas saw the ghoul's dive, saw the blade flash white in the sun, saw the smug hatred in his eyes falter as Thomas's raised knee caught him hard in the chest. The knife went wide as the other collapsed on top of him, and for a moment the two men looked into each other's eyes, their faces almost touching. The ghoul bared his filed teeth, extended his long, pink tongue. Revolted, Thomas reacted as he had when he had felt the bat in his hair in the Herculaneum tunnel, flinching away. He tore one hand free and jabbed hard at his attacker's face with the heel of his palm. The ghoul writhed with unnatural speed, shaking off the thrust and snapping at it with those awful teeth. Thomas snatched his hand away and then, knowing he might have only seconds to live, and seeing as through a red haze Pietro's dying face, kicked hard upward, extending his bent knee so that his attacker was thrown backward. 216

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The ghoul flailed on the ground, but with a rush of power from his sinewy arms he sprang to his feet, before Thomas could even sit up. He bounded over to where Thomas still lay, arms spread wide like a crucifix, steadied himself with one foot on the lip of the wall, and reversed his grip on the knife. He raised it for one exhilarating and ceremonial plunge into Thomas's heart.

Hissing with the satisfaction of total victory, the ghoul brought the knife scything down. In the same instant, Thomas snapped his left arm down to his side, sweeping the ghoul's foot from under him.

For a second the bald man seemed nothing more than that. As the surprise and panic coalesced in his pale eyes, he fought to regain his balance, the drop over the low wall yawning sud

denly toward him. He swung a hand out, almost in supplica

tion, but there was nothing anyone could have done to stop him.

It all seemed so slow, a movie effect or a memory, the way the ghoul wavered, hung there in space for a second, and then fell heavily over the turret wall to the rock below. For a long, slow beat, Thomas lay there and breathed, and then hunched into a crouch and looked down.

The ghoul lay bleeding on the stone bridge, his body twisted and still. And there was Brad, reaching back into his jacket for his pistol, looking up at him.

But then he heard shouting. Some of it came from Roberta, who was calling to Brad, warning, it seemed, telling him to get away from the body. Some of it, however, came from someone else, a man, yelling in Italian. Then there were more voices, and as Brad moved hastily back across the bridge to

ward the old city, Thomas saw policemen in uniform coming out of the gatehouse below and gathering around the body.

"It police house now,"
Claudio had said of the castle. Thomas jerked back out of sight. The police had momen

tarily scared Brad and Roberta off, but he still had to get out of here. He checked his watch. Claudio would be parking 217

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across the street in less than five minutes. If Thomas was to leave the castle now, Brad would shoot him down, police or no police. There was, after all, only one way out of the castle. Thomas was fairly sure that the police had not seen he was up here, but sooner or later one of them would come up to see if they could tell why the ghoul fell. He had to move. If he went back down the stairs he would walk right into them and would not be able to avoid interrogation and, prob

ably, arrest. The frontal wall extended all the way to the far turret, which was covered in scaffolding, the ramparts them

selves blocked with more makeshift barricades and orange tape. Keeping as low as he could, Thomas began edging along the crumbling wall. As he did so, he turned the phone back on and dialed.

CHAPTER 60

"Sit down," said Pestilence, still watching the castle gate. They were at the streetfront cafe across the road.

"I nearly had him," said War.

"He can't stay there all day. We'll get him as soon as he moves. He's still outside and the signal is strong."

"Unless the cops pick him up," said War, darkly.

"He doesn't want that any more than we do, especially now. If the police spot Knight up there they'll take him in for questioning, and in no time he'll be a suspect in all three deaths."

"He had better
not
get caught," said War. "This is bad enough as it is."

Pestilence said nothing. Neither of them wanted to discuss how the Seal-breaker would respond to the loss of Famine, psychopathic loose cannon though he obviously had been. 218

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They watched as an ambulance arrived, picked up the body, and left briskly, lights and siren on.

"What is Knight doing?" said War, checking his GPS. "He's moved all the way to the other end of the wall, where that con

struction work is."

"You sure there's no other way out?" asked Pestilence.

"Sure."

"Is that the same kind of certain knowledge that didn't fig

ure the castle would be a police station?"

"Shut up," said War.

For a moment, she did. Then she got to her feet.

"He's coming down, moving back toward the gate," she said. "He's going to make a run for it."

"No," said War. "He's not. Get the car."

He was staring up the road out of town. She followed his gaze and saw the navy-blue minivan with the name of the Vit

toria Parc stenciled onto the side as it turned onto the bridge and up to the castle.

"Get the car!" he repeated. "Quick!"

She moved fast, snatching the spare key from inside her pouched sleeve and hurrying the twenty-five yards to where they had parked. She got in, started the engine, and turned the car around in a squeal of tires, knocking over a bicycle that had been propped by the curb.

War was watching the GPS, motionless.

"He's moving," he said, as Pestilence pulled the rented Alfa Romeo to the cafe and pushed the passenger door open. He clambered in, barely taking his gaze from the phone's dis

play, looking up to confirm what it was telling him. "Yes," he said. "Perfect."

The blue van emerged from the gatehouse, crossed the bridge, and pulled out into traffic.

"Stay a couple of cars back," said War. "He's heading for the railway station. This time, he's ours."

CHAPTER 61

Thomas sat in the castle gatehouse and checked his watch. One of the policemen who had been loitering since the ghoul's body had been taken away seemed to be watching him. It was time to go. If Brad and Roberta--

the absurdity of those names! They sounded like they
should be hosting a subdivision barbecue

--hadn't taken the bait by now, they never would. He left the gatehouse and crossed the bridge back into the old town. There was no sign of his pursuers or the white Alfa Romeo they had been driving. There was, on the other hand, Claudio, pulling over the hotel's second minivan.

"You know you have to pay for both shuttles," he said, rolling the window down.

"Cheap at twice the price," said Thomas getting in.

"The other driver call me," said Claudio, watching him war

ily, as if his passenger had turned out to be a little crazy. "You okay?"

"Yes."

"And you want me to go . . . ?"

"Airport," said Thomas. "At last."

"I'll do it," said Pestilence.

They had followed the blue van to the railway station, where it had just pulled over.

"Here?" said War.

"I'll do it before he gets out. Kill the driver too. If I'm fast, no one will see, and if anyone remembers me later . . ." She gestured toward the habit. Then she stretched out her hand and War, nodding, slapped his automatic into it. "Besides," she added with a hard smile, "I deserve this."