Hunt at The Well Of Eternity gh-1 Page 6

  “I’m afraid I may not have a choice,” Gabriel said.

  “No academic pursuit is worth your life.” She paused. “But then I forget who I am talking to. You discovered that cult of assassins in Nepal, didn’t you? And lived to publish those photographs in National Geographic. Perhaps you like risking your life.”

  Gabriel didn’t respond to that comment. Instead he took a shot in the dark and asked, “Do you know a woman named Mariella Montez?”

  “Mariella Montez…?” After a moment’s thought the doctor shook her head. “No, I’m afraid not. Although there’s something familiar about the name…” She looked at the printouts again. “That’s why, of course. The private collector who sold this flag to the museum, his name was Enrique Montez.”

  Gabriel felt a familiar thrill go through him, the thrill of knowing that he was on the trail of something important. The leads he’d managed to turn up, slender though they had been, were taking him in the right direction. His instincts had not betrayed him.

  Before he could say anything else, though, the sound of a heavy thump, like something falling to the floor, came through the open doorway. Dr. Almanzar heard it, too, and turned in that direction.

  “Carlos?” she called. “Are you all right?”

  There was no answer.

  Gabriel knew he might be overreacting, but he didn’t hesitate. Two long strides took him across the room, where he slapped the light switch off. He caught hold of Dr. Almanzar’s arm with his other hand as she crossed toward the doorway. Her bare arm was warm and firm in his grip. He said in an urgent whisper, “Wait.”

  “Señor Hunt! What are you—”

  “Let me take a look.”

  Gabriel pulled her behind him and eased forward into the doorway. A glance down the corridor showed him the front desk and the door beyond it. Carlos was slumped on the floor behind the desk, blood slowly pooling around his head. He was lying with his face toward Gabriel and even from this distance Gabriel could make out the neat hole in his forehead.

  Gabriel hadn’t heard a shot. That meant whoever had killed Carlos was using a silencer. Not a street thug, then. More professionals.

  He stepped back into the Special Collections room, looked around. There were no other doors or windows that he could see. If they got trapped in here, it would be a dead end, in more senses than one.

  “What’s happened?” Dr. Almanzar asked in a breathless voice, crowding up behind him.

  “I’m afraid your assistant has been killed,” Gabriel told her. “Someone shot him in the head.”

  It was a brutal way to break the news, but he wanted Dr. Almanzar to appreciate what they were up against. There were killers loose in the museum, and while Gabriel knew that he was their real target—either that or they were after the second flag—he also knew they wouldn’t shrink from gunning down anyone who got in their way.

  Dr. Almanzar had blanched at the news of Carlos’s murder. “What are we going to do?”

  “There’s no other way out of this room?”

  Mutely, she shook her head.

  “Do you have any sort of security system here?”

  “Not really,” Dr. Almanzar said. “The collections all have historical value, of course, but none of them are worth enough to tempt thieves. At least, not that we knew of.”

  “So if I broke some of these display cases, it wouldn’t set off an alarm?”

  “No. Only the front door. If someone broke the glass there, then an alarm would sound and the police would be alerted.”

  A grim smile tugged at Gabriel’s mouth. “Good enough,” he said.

  He knew they didn’t have much time. The men who had killed Carlos might be coming down the hallway even now. He was carrying the Colt in a shoulder holster tonight and reached under his coat to draw it. He didn’t want to get involved in another shootout if he could avoid it, not with Dr. Almanzar there, but it wasn’t always possible to avoid such things. Switching the gun to his left hand, he lifted a stone axe from a pair of hooks on the wall with his right.

  “What are you doing?” the doctor said. “You can’t—”

  “Get behind something solid,” Gabriel said.

  He saw Dr. Almanzar gape at him for a second, then abruptly decide to follow his advice. She scrambled behind a big open cabinet full of what looked like maps.

  Gabriel hefted the axe in his hand, judging its weight and balance. He could put a round from the Colt through the museum’s front door, but a bullet hole might not be enough to trigger the alarm. And anyway, he didn’t know how many adversaries he was facing—he might need all the bullets he had just to deal with them.

  He took a deep breath and then stepped through the doorway, raising the axe behind his head as he did so. His arm flashed forward and sent the axe spinning through the air, over the desk, and into the glass of the door. The glass shattered, splintering outward, and instantly an alarm began to blare.

  As he’d thrown the axe, Gabriel had seen three figures clad in black creeping along the walls of the corridor toward the room he was in. Even before his arm descended and the alarm went off, the silenced pistols the men held came up and began to spit death at him. He leaped back through the doorway, narrowly missed by a couple of shots as he did so. The sounds of ricochets echoed from the walls of the corridor.

  As he landed, he rolled behind a display case and came to a stop on his stomach. Thrusting the Colt’s barrel around the end of the case, he fired as one of the assassins tried to rush into the room. The man cried out as the bullet drove him backward. One of his companions grabbed him and dragged him out of the doorway.

  Now the fact that there was only one way in or out of this room played in Gabriel’s favor. If the other two men rushed him, he would be able to cut them down as they came through the door. They had to know that as well, and they would be worrying about the alarm, too. They had no way of knowing how soon the police might arrive.

  A hand holding a gun poked around the doorjamb. The gun erupted several times as the man emptied it, but he was just flinging lead blindly around the room. The shots shattered some displays but didn’t come close to him or Dr. Almanzar.

  Then the hand vanished and he heard the swift rataplan of running footsteps as the men fled.

  Dr. Almanzar heard it, too. “Are…are they gone?” she asked.

  “Stay where you are,” Gabriel said. “It could be a trick.”

  He didn’t want to wait too long, though, because he didn’t want to have to deal with the police, either. Any bureaucracy was bad enough; the Mexican legal system was worse than most. He could easily wind up being held in jail for days, maybe even longer.

  After a couple of minutes he got up and risked a look in the hallway. It was deserted. Gabriel held out a hand to Dr. Almanzar and said, “Come on.”

  She emerged from behind the cabinet, hesitated a second, then took his hand. “Where are we going?”

  “That’s up to you, as long as it’s away from here.”

  “But the police—”

  “—will be very upset that we left before they got here, I know. But I’ll live with the guilt.” He held one elbow out to her. “You say you’re expected at an event?”

  Chapter 8

  For a moment Gabriel thought that Dr. Almanzar was going to argue with him, maybe even fight to get away.

  Then she said, “This interest in General Fargo’s flag is not just a matter of academic research, is it?”

  Gabriel shook his head. “No.”

  “Then perhaps we should take it with us,” she said as she slipped her hand out of his, went to the display case, and unlocked it with a small key she took from a pocket in her dress.

  Gabriel grinned as Dr. Almanzar took the flag from the case and folded it carefully. “I can put it under my jacket,” he suggested.

  “Can I return to my office for my bag?” she asked as he stowed away the flag, nestling it next to the other flag, which he’d tucked into the waistband of his pants at the small
of his back before heading to the museum. Good thing they made flags of thin fabric back then, he thought. It was getting a bit tight as it was.

  “Okay,” he said. “But make it quick.” The alarm was still going off and it was only a matter of time before someone showed up.

  They hurried out of the Special Collections room, Gabriel going first just in case one of the black-clad assassins had remained behind and was waiting in ambush for them. No shots came their way, though, as they headed toward Dr. Almanzar’s office.

  “There’s a back door we can use,” she said once she had collected her purse.

  “Excellent,” Gabriel said. He’d noticed how the doctor avoided looking at Carlos’s corpse as they passed the security station, but other than that she seemed to be holding up well, considering.

  She led the way to a rear door and pushed it open. It was very dark back here in the shadow of the trees of Chapultepec Park, but Dr. Almanzar seemed to know her way around. A couple of vehicles were parked in the small lot she led him to, and she headed straight for one of them, a jeep with enclosed sides.

  “Looks like something you’d use for field work,” Gabriel commented as Dr. Almanzar unlocked the jeep’s doors.

  “It is. Get in.”

  “You’re driving?”

  She patted the jeep’s hood and smiled. “This is my niño. No offense, Señor Hunt, but if there’s a chance anyone is going to be coming after us, I’d rather be at the wheel.”

  Gabriel nodded and swung into the passenger seat. “Let’s go.” If this turned out to be an attempt to doublecross him, he would deal with that problem then.

  Dr. Almanzar knew all the roads through the park and sent the jeep twisting and turning along them, emerging a few minutes later at Paseo de la Reforma, the wide, busy boulevard that cut through the northern section of the park. As the doctor turned west on the boulevard, Gabriel heard whooping sirens and looked back to see flashing red and blue lights through the trees.

  The police had arrived at the museum. They would find the shattered door, Carlos’s body, and the damage in the Special Collections room.

  What they wouldn’t find was the man Gabriel had shot. Once again, the killers had taken their fallen comrade with them. That might almost have been an honorable gesture—if Gabriel hadn’t suspected that it was motivated purely by self-interest. The bastards were savvy enough to know better than to leave any evidence behind that might lead the authorities to them.

  Dr. Almanzar navigated through the heavy traffic on the boulevard like someone who was accustomed to it. As she drove, she said in a brisk voice, “Considering that you almost got me killed tonight, Señor Hunt, don’t you think you should tell me what this is all about?”

  Gabriel hesitated. He didn’t want to draw her any deeper into this affair than she already was.

  “You have an event to attend,” he said. “If you’ll drop me back at my hotel, you can go on to that and forget about everything that’s happened tonight.”

  “Until the police arrive to question me, you mean.”

  “Well, there’s that to consider,” Gabriel admitted. “You can always claim that you met with me, saw me out, and then left yourself, and that everything was fine when you did. The break-in and Carlos’s murder could have happened after you were gone.”

  “I suppose, but I won’t have an alibi. And neither will you. Did you rent a car?”

  “I did,” Gabriel said. “But I paid cash for it and used a phony driver’s license. The police won’t be able to trace it back to me.”

  She glanced over at him. “Do you always cover your trail like a criminal, Señor Hunt?”

  “Often. A lot of times in my work it’s better if I don’t get any meddling from the local authorities.”

  “So you believe it’s all right to flout the laws of another country, eh?”

  “Oh, I flout the laws of the United States, too,” Gabriel said. “When I have to.”

  She glanced at him again and then, after a moment, laughed. “You’re un hombre loco, aren’t you, Señor Hunt?”

  Gabriel sensed the tension between them easing. “Why don’t you call me Gabriel?”

  She said, “All right, Gabriel. Then I’m Cierra. I guess once you’ve been shot at together, there’s no more point in formality.”

  “My thinking exactly,” Gabriel said.

  “I still want to know what this is about. Why don’t you tell me on the way to the event?”

  “You’re still going? And you’re taking me?”

  “I’m sure the host would like to meet you,” she said.

  “As long as he’s not the chief of police,” Gabriel said.

  Gabriel wasn’t sure this was the best idea, but he supposed a magnificent villa in the exclusive Lomas de Chapultepec residential district west of the city was as good a place as any to wait and see if the police were going to connect him with what had happened at the museum.

  “The estate belongs to Vladimir Antonio de la Esparza,” Cierra Almanzar explained. “He’s one of the museum’s largest benefactors. He’s thinking about making another very generous donation. That is why I couldn’t say no when he asked me to come to this party tonight. I hope he’s not offended that I’ll be showing up an hour late.”

  “You could always tell him you were delayed by three assassins,” Gabriel suggested.

  She shot him an angry look. “I cannot take this as lightly as you, Señor Hunt. Carlos was my friend, and he leaves a wife and four children.”

  “I’m sorry,” Gabriel said without hesitation.

  She nodded.

  “In this traffic, it should take us at least half an hour to reach Señor Esparza’s villa,” Cierra said, her tone thawing. “Is that enough time for you to tell me why those men wanted you dead, and what your interest is in General Fargo’s battle flag?”

  “I think so,” Gabriel said. He launched into the tale, thinking as he did so about how many events, how much danger, had been packed into the past twenty-four hours. It had been a hurricane, and he was lucky to have survived it. And the storm wasn’t over yet.

  He had to give Cierra credit. She didn’t interrupt as he laid out the facts for her. When he finished, she drove silently for a full minute before saying, “You expect me to believe this?”

  “Every word of it is true,” Gabriel insisted. “You have my word on that.”

  “The word of a man who has admitted breaking laws, who has counseled me to lie—”

  “Only for the best reasons.”

  Cierra fell silent again, obviously trying to digest everything he had told her. After a few moments, during which she continued to weave in and out of traffic, she said, “It is an incredible story, Gabriel. But incredible things happen sometimes. You have no idea what’s behind these attempts on your life?”

  He shook his head. “Just that it must involve General Fargo’s legacy somehow. Maybe when he went to Mexico, he took part of the Confederate treasury with him?”

  “If he did, it was stolen from him within days. Even then, Chiapas was full of bandits.” Cierra turned from the boulevard onto a smaller road that led up into hills topped with expensive villas. Gabriel could see the lights of those estates, hanging over the city like stars. “This Mariella Montez…you say she is very beautiful?”

  Was that a tone of jealousy he heard in her voice, Gabriel wondered? If so, it came as something of a surprise.

  “She was…striking,” he said.

  “You mean beautiful.”

  “Well…yes.” Facts were facts.

  “She must be a descendant of Enrique Montez, the man who sold the flag to the museum a hundred years ago,” Cierra mused. “The family must have had both flags and hung on to the other one for some reason.”

  Gabriel nodded. “That’s the way I see it, too.” An idea occurred to him. “Maybe she wanted me to go to Chiapas and find the general’s trail.”

  “After a century and a half?”

  “I’ve found older things th
an that.”

  “True enough,” Cierra said. “But you said she was not seeking you, she was seeking your brother. What century-old trails has he ever followed?”

  For that, Gabriel didn’t have an answer.

  “I’ll tell you again, Gabriel, it would not be a good idea for you to go to Chiapas. It’s dangerous enough for the people who live there, let alone outsiders.”

  Something in her voice intrigued him. “You sound like you know quite a bit about the area.”

  “I ought to. I was born and raised there.”

  That surprised him, too. From looking at her, he’d have said Cierra had more Castilian blood than Indian, and he knew that Indians dominated the population of the Chiapas region.

  She must have sensed his reaction, because she explained, “My father was the manager of a coffee plantation.” Her voice hardened as she went on, “He and my mother were killed by bandits while I was studying at the university. I’ve never gone back. It wouldn’t have done me any good if I did. The bandits took over the plantation.”

  “I’m sorry,” Gabriel said.

  “So you see, I know what it’s like to lose one’s parents. Perhaps that is why I’m willing to help you if I can, Gabriel. We have a…kinship.”

  They had more than that, Gabriel thought as he sensed the attraction between them growing.

  The road they had been following wound around a steep hillside and finally emerged at the top of the slope, where a huge, sprawling, brightly lit Spanish-style villa sat in the midst of well-manicured lawns and gardens. A number of expensive cars were already parked there, and Cierra’s jeep looked a bit out of place as she slid it in among them.

  “You had better leave your gun in the jeep,” Cierra said as they got out.

  “I don’t care much for that idea.”

  “Señor Esparza is a very rich man. Because of that he and his family are likely targets for kidnapping. He has many bodyguards, and you won’t be allowed in the house if you’re armed.”