Rogue Angel 55: Beneath Still Waters (29 page)

If Annja had been thinking clearly, she would have simply lunged forward and thrust her sword up to its hilt in his chest, but his strange behavior had her momentarily stymied and by the time she had her wits about her, he was on guard once more.

“First blood to you,” he said, and saluted her with his sword.

In the next instant the blade came down and his other hand rose.

Annja threw herself to the side.

The one-shot derringer hidden in the sleeve of his fencing jacket went off with a bang, the bullet slashing through the air quicker than any sword blade.

Fortunately for Annja, Paul’s treachery was nothing new, and she was on guard for the slightest move. Her instant decision to throw herself to the side saved her life, for the shot from the derringer lashed across the outside of her thigh rather than finding a home in her chest as had been intended.

She hit the ground, rolled and came back up again,
finding that the leg hurt like hell but would still bear her weight.

But for how long?

Paul hadn’t moved since he fired the shot, and as Annja regained her feet he smiled across the practice area at the blood running down her leg.

“Second blood to me.”

He tossed the derringer aside and rushed forward again, brandishing his sword.

Annja met him halfway.

Slash and parry. Cut and jab. Around and around they went, neither of them gaining any significant advantage, their blades ringing as though they had voices of their own as they came in contact with each other.

They broke apart, both of them breathing heavily now. Sweat mixed with blood on Paul’s face, giving his features an almost demonic cast. Annja was favoring her left leg, the blood flowing a little more freely from all the exertion.

The adversaries slowly circled each other, watching, waiting, looking for that perfect moment to strike.

This time Annja struck first, dropping into a very low back stance, her blade lashing out at Krugmann’s knees. He in turn leaped upward, jumping over her blade and bringing his own down in a dazzling slash that embedded the tip of the blade in the wood of the deck. If Annja had still been there, she would have been carved in two.

But she wasn’t, having spun away before her sword
had even finished its horizontal cut, knowing that she’d already missed.

They closed with each other again, blades ringing. Annja was concentrating so much on making sure his blade didn’t touch her skin that when they came in close, their blades locked together once more, she didn’t see his haymaker come swinging in past her defenses.

His fist smashed into the same spot where his boot had landed the previous day.

Pain exploded across Annja’s face, momentarily blinding her, and in that moment, as brief as it was, Paul struck.

His sword lashed out, point first, and only Garin’s scream of “Left” allowed Annja to know the strike was coming.

Trusting Garin implicitly, something she would deny vociferously if anyone ever suggested it in casual conversation, she twisted away as fast as she could.

Rather than skewer her lung, the blade carved a furrow across her rib cage but did not sink home.

Annja shook the pain and the tears out of her eyes, saw Paul coming in with another attack and threw herself out of the way of that one, too.

She rolled as she came out of it, twisting her shoulder in the midst of the somersault so that she came back up in a crouch. Facing her opponent, she parried his strikes before he could force her back again.

Annja was feeling the pain of her injuries now, was aware that she was starting to slow from the
blood loss and knew that she had to end the contest quickly or face the very real chance that she might not survive.

She exaggerated her weakness, dragging her leg behind her even more than she had been seconds before. When Paul came in again with another flashing dervish of strikes, Annja parried them all but let them look a little bit sloppy, a little slower than usual.

He grinned at her through their blades and took the bait, driving in hard again, obviously thinking that at last he could overwhelm her effective defenses.

Paul pushed her back beneath the tenacity of his onslaught, trying to beat her into submission. As he came in with a horizontal strike designed to cut her in two, Annja let go of her blade and tossed it straight up into the air, the sun glinting off the plain, unadorned hilt. As the blade went up, Annja went down, dropping below the slash of Paul’s sword, falling backward in a limbo-like maneuver to give room for the blade to pass by.

As Paul’s eye went up, watching her sword, the follow-up to his own strike forgotten in that instant, Annja caused the sword to vanish into the otherwhere.

In the space of the next heartbeat, she caused it to reappear in her hand, the hand that was already in midswing with a perfectly timed blow targeted at Paul’s midsection just below the rib cage.

He realized his mistake too late.

His gaze dropped in the split second before Annja’s sword found its target.

He tried to counter, tried to bring his blade down
to intercept her strike, tried to get his torso out of the way of the incoming blow, but it was too little too late.

Annja’s sword cut him open from one side to the other.

Paul died with a surprised expression on his face, as if he couldn’t believe that he’d been bested by the woman he’d duped so cleverly for so long.

Annja stood over him, breathing heavily.

Looking down, she muttered, “Good riddance.”

When their leader was cut down by her bladesword, Annja was relieved that the rest of the thugs aboard the yacht showed their true colors and surrendered like the cowards that they were. Only Colonel Schnell displayed a bit of fight, but he was just one man, and a ninety-five-year-old one at that, and he was quickly subdued and disarmed when he tried to use one of the guard’s guns before they surrendered.

The aircraft Annja and her team had lifted out of the lake was seized by the government in Berlin. Brandt’s and Adler’s remains were retrieved from the lake and also returned to Germany for appropriate burial.

The gold was identified as belonging to the Hungarian National Bank, as Annja had suspected. The bank, of course, laid claim to it as soon as word of its existence leaked, and was backed up by the court ruling that quickly followed. Annja did receive a five percent finder’s fee, which she promptly donated, not wanting to profit from something the Nazis had once stolen. In her subsequent conversations with
the media, she didn’t mention Wolf Island or the gold that she suspected was hidden there, and neither did Garin. Krugmann’s boat, with his body aboard, had been quietly scuttled in deep water off Wolf Island, so no explanations were needed on that score, either.

That was how Annja wanted it and this time Garin was inclined to go along with her.

Matahi and his people were free of outside influence for the first time in more than seventy years. Both Annja and Garin thought they deserved every chance to restore the way of life they’d known before the Nazis had turned up.

One day she might return, she thought, just to explore the base fully, but as far as she was concerned the gold—which might or might not be there—could stay lost.

There was too much blood on it already.

* * * * *

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First edition July 2015

ISBN-13: 9781460384695

Beneath Still Waters

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Joe Nassise for his contribution to this work.

Copyright © 2015 by Worldwide Library

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.

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