The Diaries - 01 (19 page)

Gage stared at the
three of them.
 
He had moved behind the work
table.
 
Monika stood silently in the
shadows by the back door.

The smaller man
shoved Michel, muttering something in French Gage couldn’t make out.
 
Michel wiped his forehead, his mouth
twitching as if he was on the edge of tears.
 
He addressed Gage.
 
“They had a
gun pointed at me through the glass.
 
They’re here for the diary.”

Gage willed his
face to remain impassive.
 
He didn’t
waste any time looking at Michel.
 
Instead, his eyes darted between the two men.
 
He couldn’t yet see the firearm Michel had mentioned.
 
As he stared at the larger man with the heavy
shadow of stubble, he spoke in German.
 
“How could they know of such a diary?”

The small man
obviously understood what Gage had said, giving a barely visible shove to
Michel’s back, prompting him to speak.
 
It told Gage all he needed to know.
 
Michel was somehow complicit with their being here, whether or not he
knew it.
 

“I owe them
money.
 
I…I told them we had something of
great value.
 
That’s why I wanted to go
to Paris tomorrow.”
 
Michel dipped his
head and began to cry.

From where the two
thugs stood, Gage’s left hand wasn’t visible.
 
He edged it into his jacket pocket.
 
These guys probably pegged him for an ordinary citizen, something
Colonel Hunter had always preached about.
 
“Any person—man, woman, or child—can
kill you at any time.
 
Don’t ever underestimate
a soul.”
 
This time, however, instead
of being the one having to remember the rule, Gage realized he was “any person.”

He gripped the
cold steel of the spring-loaded blackjack.
 
It was the only weapon he had with him.
 
The smaller man elbowed his way in front of Michel, pulling a gleaming
chrome Colt .45 from his back and aiming it, two-handed, steadily at Gage’s
head.
 
Gage had to give the man credit
for owning a nice piece, although he didn’t really care for the pearl
grips.
 
And judging by his aim and the
way he held the pistol, the little man knew how to shoot.
 
He spoke in broken German.

“Give me the book,
kraut!”

Gage lifted his
hands, concealing the blackjack in his left sleeve, using his thumb to hold
onto it.
 
He was about to speak when the
short man hitched his head at the large one, telling him to get the girl.
 
As the big man moved to the rear, and with
the short one’s attention momentarily diverted, Gage sprung into action.

“Run, Monika!” he
yelled, simultaneously using his right arm to pull himself laterally around the
table.
 
The move surprised the smaller
man and, as he rotated the pistol to Gage’s approaching form, his right forearm
snapped like a twig as the blackjack’s spring-loaded tip broke his ulna.
 
He screamed in agony, falling to the floor
and dropping the Colt.
 
Michel flinched
at the sound of the bone cracking.
 
He flung
himself into the corner by the door, his head in his hands.

As Gage was busy striking
the shorter Frenchman, Monika bolted out the back door with the big brute on
her heels.
 
Gage hit the short man one
more time before sprinting out the rear door and up the alley.
 
He stopped on the cobblestone pedestrian street,
looking each way, finally seeing the giant thug running several hundred meters
down the hill, in the traffic area near the river.
 
Gage raced down the hill and was surprised to
see him slowing, so he slid into an alcove and watched as the large man doubled
over, heavily winded.
 
The man turned,
coughing violently and spitting before lumbering back up the hill, mumbling
filthy curses.
 
Gage hid in the shadows
as the man trudged by, removing a phone from his pocket.
 
Gage listened to the man’s conversation,
watching as he thumbed the phone off before making another call.
 
He spoke only a few words and flicked the
phone shut a second time.
 
After he
passed, Gage stepped from the alcove, moving behind a sheltered bus stop and
watching through the glass.
 
The man was again
up in the pedestrian area, almost back to Michel’s shop, and it was then that
Gage heard a distant sound that chilled him to the bone.

A gunshot.
 

The building muffled
it well, but the sound was unmistakable to Gage: the cannon-like signature of
the large caliber Colt.

The large
Frenchman glanced around before walking into the alley.
 
Gage was nearly sure the man with the broken
wrist had killed Michel, and that he should simply go find Monika and
disappear.
 
But his concern was for
Michel—foolhardy as he was—in the event he might still be alive.
 
Even though his conscious brain wouldn’t
admit it, his base psyche—the one untouched by the business in Crete—wanted
desperately to unleash more violence against the two French hoods.
 
He stealthily made his way up the hill and to
the alley, peering in to make sure it was empty.
 
Seeing no one, Gage crept to the rear entry
of the rare book shop.

 
***

“How in the hell
did you lose her?” Leon screamed, gripping his right forearm, perspiring
profusely.

Bruno’s chest still
heaved from the pursuit.
 
He dipped his
head in shame.
 
“She had a big head start
and when we got to the river I couldn’t tell which way she had gone.”

“What did Marcel
say?” Leon grunted.
 
He lifted his sleeve
and grimaced as he peered at his throbbing forearm before turning his attention
to the growing mess on the concrete floor, emanating from Michel’s lifeless body.
 
The blood was still pooling around the corpse
from the large hole in the rear of the slight man’s head.

Bruno
frowned.
 
“He wasn’t happy.”

“To hell with
him!” Leon screamed as he tried to flex his hand, whimpering after several
centimeters of movement.
 
“And who the
hell was that German?
 
He moved like a
damned commando.”

Bruno studied
Michel’s fresh corpse like a normal person might view road kill.
 
“Marcel said to clean the mess up and call him
as soon as we get out of here.”

Leon spat on
Michel, wincing from pain and frustration. “Nicky’s going to shit.
 
He’s going to absolutely shit when he hears
this.
 
But the hell he brings down on me
will be nothing compared to what I’m going to do to that German and his little twat
when I find them.”

“Look!”
 
Bruno leaned forward, pulling back the coverlet
and removing the diary—the only book on any of the work tables.
 

Leon stepped over
Michel, careful not to step into the pool of crimson that had begun to
coagulate on the concrete floor.
 
With
his left arm, he accepted the diary.
 
“Well, I’ll be damned.
 
Dumb kraut
bastard left it here.”
 
He opened it,
struggling with his rough German to decipher the first page.

Bruno hitched his
thumb to the front.
 
“Shouldn’t we take
everything else while we’re at it?”

“Books?
 
Are you kidding?
 
See if there’s some cash, but I have no use
for musty fucking books.”
 
Leon flipped
the page, unable to discern why this boring journal held any value.

Just as Leon was
about to give up on the slow-moving personal account, the back door opened with
such force that he stumbled backward, tumbling over a stack of books, breaking
his wrist further—it took on a grotesque z-shape—as he instinctively tried to
break his fall.

Gage had the
blackjack out, cracking Bruno twice as the two went over a table, clattering
into a storage shelf.
 
Cleaning supplies
rained down as Gage determined that the larger man was quite unconscious.
 
He glanced left, looking under the two large
work tables, seeing Michel’s dead body.

The smaller man
was scrambling frantically, his efforts impeded by his kinked right arm.
 
He was trying with his left to spirit the
pistol from his waist.
 
Gage clawed
underneath the table, striking the smaller man in the clavicle with the
blackjack.
 
He pulled himself over the
howling man, grabbing his left arm as the Frenchman tried to wheel the Colt
around.
 
Using his right arm to control
the man’s left, Gage realized he had dropped the blackjack.
 
With just his fist, he punched downward at
the man’s face, striking him twice with nuisance, hammer-fist blows.

The Frenchman was undersized
but resilient, grunting and swinging upward with his bad arm as his left tried
to hang onto the Colt.

Gage absorbed the
weakened strikes, using both hands to finally wrench the Colt free.
 
He pressed it into the man’s heart and told
him twice to halt, still using his German out of sheer habit.
 
The smaller man, chest heaving, obeyed.
 
He laid his arms at his side, sounding as if
he might vomit as he struggled for air.

“Do not move,”
Gage commanded, stepping off of him carefully, the pistol trained steadily on
the defeated criminal.

Gage’s eyes went
briefly to the diary, lying open and on the floor, and then he turned to view
the larger man.
 
He was still out cold,
his breathing ragged.
 
Two lines of blood
trickled down his head.
 
Gage turned back
to the smaller man, switching to broken French.

“If you wanted to
simply rob us that’s one thing.
 
But why
did you have to kill him?” he yelled, gesturing at Michel’s body.

The smaller man’s
eyes burned fiery hatred.
 
He didn’t say
a word, breathing snotty breaths in and out of his pointy nose.

The larger man
stirred.
 
Gage turned his eyes
momentarily to look at him, immediately catching movement from the corner of
his left eye.
 
He whirled back, seeing
the smaller man jerking what looked like a small revolver from an ankle holster.

Through pure
instinct, Gage unleashed one round from the big Colt, seeing it impact the
man’s left cheek as the entire back of his head blew across the floor and onto
the side of Michel’s dead body.
 

The smaller
Frenchman was no longer a threat.
 
One
left.

Gage whipped the
pistol back to the left.
 
The large man’s
eyes were open but he hadn’t yet moved.
 
Gage skirted the work table and stepped over him, seeing the unique fear
enter the man’s eyes that meant certain death was near.
 
Feeling that old feeling in his gut—a feeling
he’d despised over the recent years—Gage aimed the pistol at the man’s
head.
 
Bile entered Gage’s throat; he
hesitated.
 
He chanced a quick look back
at the two dead Frenchmen, then turned to the live one that lay beneath him.

The smell of
death, stark and unyielding, wafted through the book store, making the air
heavy and thick.
 
Gage sucked air in
through his nostrils, adjusting his hand on the chunky pistol.
 
His index finger tightened on the trigger.
 
One pound of force.
 
Two.
 
Three.
 
Kill him Gage. Kill him dead cold, here and now.
 
Leave no trail and run like the wind.
Gage’s
inner voice, the one he had tamped down through years of misery, roared back to
life, assaulting his brain’s cerebrum with never before seen vigor.

Gage licked his
lips, knowing his instincts were good.
 
But pain and sorrow are powerful emotions, and they too spoke to
him.
 
Snippets of the incident at Crete
played in Gage’s mind as he stared at the petrified thug underneath him.
 
The other one had killed Michel—in icy cold
blood—and had tried to retrieve his ankle pistol to then kill Gage.
 
Gage’s reprisal was more than justified.
 
He struggled with what to do, his Crete panic
attack still fresh in his mind.

The two men’s eyes
were locked.
 
One full of fear, the other
brimming with doubt.

Gage’s inner voice
rose an octave.
 
If you don’t eliminate him, you’re
guaranteeing yourself trouble!

He ignored his
instinct, using his thumb to release the semi-automatic pistol’s hammer slowly
against the strike-plate.
 
He flicked the
lever safety to prevent an accidental discharge.
 
With no more emotion than an old farmer
beheading a chicken, Gage raised the two and a half-pound Colt into the air and
smashed it into the fresh cut on the man’s oversized forehead.
 
The Frenchman’s large body went limp and Gage
stood for nearly a minute making certain the man’s breathing continued.
 
It did.