Victor O'Reilly - Rules of The Hunt

The group consoled themselves with the prospect of a good French meal. Unfortunately, they arrived at that hour in the evening when every Parisian simultaneously decides to eat and will brook no interference from amateurs like foreigners. All the restaurants they tried were full. After the eighth indifferent shrug of rejection, they dined on Big Macs, fries, and chocolate milk shakes at McDonald's.

The food reminded them of Tokyo.

Paris, France

May 29

The salle d'armes had been established in the late sixteenth century – about the time that dueling with a thin blade had become a serious pastime in France – and had continued to be well-patronized, with only a few brief interruptions, since that time.

During the revolution, since skill with a sword was considered to be an aristocratic attribute, the building had temporarily become a brothel. During the Nazi occupation, it had been an officers' club. Those interludes apart, the salle had operated continuously for roughly four hundred years as a place where one human being learned to kill or defeat another human being with a long piece of pointed steel.

Christian de Guevain considered the salle a fine monument to the human condition.

The building was in the fashionable 16 ^ th Arrondissement, conveniently situated near the Bosi de Vincennes military barracks, and was no more than a few minutes from his bank, his mistress, his home, and his favorite restaurant, de Guevain could work, fence, sport, eat well, and be back in time to put the kids to bed and watch TV with his wife, if he was so inclined, without straining himself excessively. He had, he considered, a most civilized existence.

He had taken Fitzduane's cautionary words to heart, though without enthusiasm. His black Citroen was armored and was driven by an armed bodyguard. A second bodyguard sat in the front passenger seat. The windows were tinted to hinder recognition. He switched cars and routes regularly. He no longer fenced at a time when the salle was relatively open. Now he fenced outside normal hours with only one or two chosen opponents, and arrangements were made in advance under conditions of some secrecy.

Nonetheless, there were patterns in his life. Three or four times a week – although there was some variation as to day and time – de Guevain could be found in the salle. He was determined to hone his skill so that he could defeat Fitzduane. de Guevain had mastered the longbow and was already way superior to the Irishman. Now he was determined to do the same with the sword. He was fiercely competitive by nature. And besides, he enjoyed the sheer speed and elegance of the sport, and the exhilaration of the exercise.

The black Citroen entered the Rue Jarnac and stopped outside the fray cut-stone facade of the salle. The passenger bodyguard got out and punched a code into the digital lock. The double doors opened and the Citroen entered the courtyard inside. Behind them, the heavy doors locked shut. de Guevain felt a sense of reassurance. He was secure in familiar territory. Followed by his bodyguards, he bounded up the worn stone stairs to the salle at the top. The long room had a wood block floor and arched ceiling. The walls were lined with historic weapons and old engravings. The names of the masters were inscribed in a frieze that ran around the top of the paneling. To de Guevain, the room was the essence of his France: a sense of purpose, elan, glory, the strength of tradition, the reassurance of history, the continuity of privilege, a manifestation of power.

The huge room was empty. "Make yourself at home, boys," said de Guevain. "I'm going to change." He headed for the locker room where Chappuy would be suiting up. Pierre, one of the bodyguards, moved to check the locker room, but de Guevain waved him aside impatiently. Vincent, his partner, smiled and took a seat. He was less intrusive.

Sometimes this security business could get out of hand, thought de Guevain. He was of two minds whether to continue it at all. He did not particularly enjoy conducting all his affairs under close scrutiny. God alone knew what would turn up in some glossy magazine in the years ahead. "The Private Life of a Paris Banker – by his bodyguard." He shuddered. France had privacy laws, but the rest of the continent was full of media that loved that kind of thing.

The locker room, a bright white-painted space divided into three aisles by rows of tall wooden lockers dating from an earlier century, had a tiled floor and a high beamed ceiling. He could hear the sound of dripping as he entered. Someone had obviously not turned a shower off. And yet the sound seemed closer.

He could smell something. His skin prickled. He would never forget that odor. He had first encountered it as a young man a quarter of a century earlier. It brought him back to Algeria, to the paratroops, to the broken bodies of the freshly dead. It reminded him of the slaughter on Fitzduane's island.

Blood. Death, Recent death.

Help was at hand, but his mouth was suddenly completely dry. Something caught his eye. He looked up. A thin braided climber's rope hung down from one of the beams. It was taut, as if something was suspended from it. He could not see what it was, because the rope terminated in the next aisle. de Guevain licked his lips as best he could. As if compelled, he walked slowly down his aisle of lockers and turned into the aisle where the rope hung. He could hear a coughing sound from the salle, but his mind was focused on what he was about to see.

A huge irregular pool of blood stained the tiles and leached under the lockers. A bloody pile of human matter was at its center and snaked upward. de Guevain's eye followed it. The naked corpse of his fencing partner, Chappuy, was suspended upside down from the rope. The flesh was completely white, virtually drained of blood. The body had been cut open with one blow from the groin to the throat. Entrails hung to the ground. de Guevain was momentarily numb with shock and fear. He gave a cry of desperation and horror, more animal than human, and ran from the locker room into the salle.

The action was futile. His bodyguards, Pierre and Vincent, the marks of bullet perforations from automatic-weapons fire clearly visible, lay sprawled in bloody heaps.

He was facing a semicircle of five people. Four held silenced submachine guns. At the apex was a woman, a very beautiful Japanese woman.

She held a sword.

Fitzduane's Island, Ireland

May 29

Kathleen was in Boots's room in the Keep when she heard the faint cry, but at first did not know what to make of it and then dismissed it.

It was not repeated, and the mind sometimes played tricks in an old house when you were tired. A storm was raging outside and the wind off the sea whistled around the old stonework, and with such a backdrop, sometimes the cry of an owl or some other night creature sounded eerily human.

It was after midnight and all the guests had retired, so now she was going about the final business of the house, checking Boots. She enjoyed Boots and they had become very close. Asleep, he looked adorable. His bed was dry. He was well-covered. All was in order.

There was an unusual draft on the stairs, and the hangings over the double-glazed arrow slits blew in the breeze and the air was cold and chill. Methodically, she checked each of the slim windows, but all were closed. She had already checked the external doors, but she verified it again by looking at the security alarm repeater.

That left only the door to the fighting platform on the roof.

As she passed Fitzduane's room, she noticed his door was open and his room empty. A coil of fax papers lay on the floor by the doorway. She picked it up to put it somewhere where it would not be trodden on, and glanced at it as she did so. And her blood ran cold.