Hunt Through Napoleon's Web

Chapter 26

Two guards met them on the second-floor landing. One of them held a lit oil lamp, the other a long-barreled pistol. Both men attacked Gabriel as he pushed Lucy out of the way. Gabriel focused on the man with the gun. He feinted at the man’s face, then grabbed his forearm and used it as a lever to throw the man over his shoulder. The man fired his gun as he flew through the air and through the smashed stair railing, plummeting to join his colleague on the floor below. His bullet thunked solidly into the wooden wall.

By then, the second guard was swinging the oil lamp at Gabriel.

Gabriel ducked and slammed into the guard’s middle. The guard collapsed and the oil lamp went flying. It crashed onto the carpeted floor, spilling its contents and immediately igniting the area in flames.

Gabriel heard Sammi shouting from the first floor. A few seconds later, she appeared on the staircase, trying to see through the curtain of flame that had erupted.

“Cifer!” she called.

Lucy’s head jerked up. “Sammi?”

Sammi ran to her and wrapped Lucy in her arms. She helped her to her feet.

“You were supposed to stay downstairs,” Gabriel said.

“You sounded like you could use some help.” She looked at the smashed railing and the guard lying prone and moaning on the landing. “Guess not.”

“Just get her to safety,” Gabriel said. “You, too.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Sammi said, and led Lucy swiftly through the flames.

Gabriel took a moment to reload his gun, then ran down to the first floor himself. As he passed the pantry, he saw that the trap door was now closed. Good. He ran in the other direction, toward the corridor leading to Khufu’s temple.

One more guard stood in the corridor. As Gabriel ran toward him, the man raised his pistol to fire, but Gabriel beat him to the draw, and the man went over backward with a bullet in his chest.

Gabriel leaped over the guard’s body and rushed to the fake stone slab that served as a door. It swung open when he grabbed the hidden handholds and pushed.

As he stepped into the temple, Khufu’s back was to him. He was still in the ancient Egyptian garb, and he was placing items of value—statuettes and jewel-encrusted treasures—into a large steamer trunk. His scepter was leaning against the throne.

Gabriel aimed the Colt at the center of Khufu’s back and thumbed back the hammer. Khufu stiffened and slowly straightened, extending one arm toward the side.

“Reach for that scepter and you’re dead,” Gabriel said.

Khufu stopped moving. With his arm halfway extended and his back still turned, he spoke. “You are a very foolish man, Mister Hunt. You should never have returned here.”

“That’s what everyone keeps telling me,” Gabriel said.

“What do you want? Your sister? Very well. You can have her.”

“I already have her,” Gabriel said. “I want the Stone.”

“That you cannot have,” Khufu said.

“Your men are dead,” Gabriel said. “Kemnebi, the guards. I don’t know where Arif is, or Amun, but if they were in the building I think they’d have shown by now. You’re on your own.”

Khufu whirled and leaped for the scepter, snatching it up just ahead of the bullet Gabriel had sent speeding toward it. Khufu dived behind the throne.

Gabriel raced forward, keeping the throne between him and Khufu—and between him and the deadly scepter. Behind him he heard the sound of crackling fire and smelled heavy, acrid smoke. The whole place was going up in flames.

“Come on out,” Gabriel called. “It’s over. Give up while you can.”

He expected some response—defiance, taunting, rage, an attack. But when he got no response at all, Gabriel ran around to the back of the throne. There was no sign of Khufu anywhere.

He spun in place, gun raised. Where could the man have gone?

He glanced back at the open doorway. The corridor beyond was completely engulfed now, the cast resin walls melting from the heat. Smoke was billowing into the room at an alarming pace.

He returned to the throne. He knew the man had been here; people didn’t just disappear. Khufu had to have gone somewhere . . .

He remembered what Sammi had said about cages. Maybe the same held true for thrones. He searched the elevated base of the throne carefully. Near the edge of one of the six shallow steps on which the throne rested, he spotted a very narrow tile that was raised slightly above the ones on either side. He depressed it with one finger and the steps opened on a hidden hinge.

Gabriel stuck his gun inside and pulled the trigger twice, then lowered himself to the floor and slipped into the opening.

He dropped for about ten feet, landing in a crouch on the floor of a small room lit with hanging electric lights. There was a wooden crate on casters here, its top open, its interior packed with shreds of newspaper, through the uppermost layer of which Gabriel could see one corner of the Second Stone sticking out.

And on the floor—

On the floor Khufu lay facedown, blood pooling beneath him, the scepter still clutched in one hand. One of Gabriel’s gunshots must have hit him, either directly or on a ricochet. Gabriel went over quickly and kicked the scepter out of his grasp.

“Hunt . . .” Khufu was trying to speak, but his voice was ragged and weak, muffled by the falcon mask he still wore and fading from the blood loss he’d sustained.

Gabriel squatted beside him and turned him over onto his back. The bullet had torn through his abdomen. The man was dying.

“Hunt . . .” he said again, and then something Gabriel couldn’t make out. Gabriel reached down and pulled off the mask.

Beneath it, contorted with pain, was Amun’s face.

“Mister Hunt . . .” Amun breathed heavily and with evident pain. “You have not won . . . as long as any true Egyptian breathes, men like you will . . . answer for their crimes . . .”

His voice dropped away, and his body went limp. Gabriel lifted one of Amun’s arms and let it fall. This was one true Egyptian whose breathing Gabriel didn’t have to worry about anymore.

Gabriel stood. Smoke was pouring into the room through the open panel in the steps of the throne, and the temperature was becoming very uncomfortable. Pretty soon it would be impossible to see, and soon after that to breathe. Gabriel looked around for an exit and spotted a door in the corner. He tried the knob and the door swung open. Gabriel went to the crate and wheeled it out.

The tunnel he found himself in looked similar to the one leading from Nizan’s to the Alliance’s building, and he wasn’t entirely surprised when, after angling upward steeply for about thirty yards toward the end, the tunnel let out (through a heavily barred wooden door) onto the rear loading platform of Nizan’s shop.

Gabriel pushed the crate onward until he found himself on the street. A few people were standing around, some in nightclothes and robes, some of them barefoot, each turning to the others in an attempt to learn what was going on. Sirens were converging on the building a block away, where Gabriel could see the orange glow of the fire in the sky over the rooftops. He made his way down the block, steering the crate behind a row of trucks and cars that had hastily been parked on the scene, disgorging police and firemen to combat the chaos. A larger crowd had gathered here, in front of the blazing building.

Sammi and Lucy were among them, their faces frozen in strained expressions of concern.

Gabriel approached them, pushing the crate before him. “Ladies.”

“Gabriel!”

“My god!”

They both rushed to him.

“We thought you were dead for sure,” Lucy said. Her voice sounded a little clearer, as if the combination of adrenaline and cool night air were combating the effects of the drug in her system.

“How did you get out?” Sammi asked.

“Gabriel,” Lucy exclaimed, looking at a seared patch on Gabriel’s sleeve he hadn’t even noticed himself, “you’re hurt!”

“Oh, she’s right—did you get burned?”

Gabriel held up a hand. “I’m all right. I’m all right. Really.” He looked at his sleeve and the reddened skin showing beneath. “It’s nothing a fifth of bourbon won’t cure.”

Sammi’s eyes dropped to the crate and to the corner of gray stone peeking out from the packing material. “The Stone! You got the Stone.”

Gabriel glanced at the emergency personnel, who were working hard to put out the fire. He held a finger to his lips.

“We can discuss it in the car,” he said.

And together they wheeled the crate away, into the night.