Lee Child - First Thrills

“So what are we looking for here? This venue-Red Square-is a lot bigger than the pump house back in London. What ever it is could be anywhere.”

“You’re right.” Again, Matosian shook his head. “All we know is that somebody wanted me here and believed I would find and recognize what ever it was.” Now his face grew somber. “I feel like I’m letting my people down, that they might have picked the wrong man, that I wasn’t up to the job.”

“But no one’s told you what the job is!”

“That,” Matosian said, “comes with the territory.”

Suddenly a large black car pulled up and six men in heavy trench-coats appeared from its doors almost simultaneously in front of them. Matosian took Chloe’s arm and started to turn when he realized that one of the men had already gotten around directly behind him. He smiled in a relatively pleasant fashion and said in heavily accented English, “I have a gun and I will use it. You are both please to come with us.”

Matosian had been tortured before-in Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, and Colombia. He liked to think of himself as somewhat of an aficionado of torture. He knew that he would probably survive what ever they had in mind, but he wasn’t sure he could say the same thing about Chloe. And, now that she was in his care, he couldn’t live with that scenario.

He was going to have to break out and find her.

But currently he was in a dark subterranean room, the doors closed behind his captors after they’d tied him up on the simple wooden chair. They were obviously going to work first on his feet, and to that end, they had removed his shoes. But they’d thrown them to the side and left them against the wall. He was far better trained than they were and he’d already loosened the ropes with which they’d bound his legs and arms, but he wanted the ropes still to appear tight when they came back in to question him, so when he was sure he’d sufficiently weakened the knots, he rested.

He didn’t have long to wait. The big man with the heavy accent opened the door and turned on the light, one glaring bulb in the center of the ceiling.

“Mr. Matosian,” the man said as he came to stand in front of his captive. “I am Viktor. My last name, unimportant.”

“But enough about you, Viktor. What have you done with her?” Matosian asked.

“She’s safe. We haven’t touched her. Yet.”

“You don’t have to hurt anyone,” Matosian said. “I’ll tell you whatever you want. What ever I know.”

“You care very much for this woman, no?”

“Very much, yes. But you know, these ropes, they are too loose. You should know I can slip out of them whenever I want.”

“Very funny, that is. I watched Vladimir tie you up myself, of which no one is better.”

“Still,” Matosian said, “maybe you’d better check again. If you’re going to be tickling my feet, you wouldn’t want me to come undone from laughing too hard.”

Chuckling without any humor, Viktor took a step closer, bringing him into Matosian’s range. In a series of lightning moves, the seated man struck twice with his fists, once in the neck and the second shot to the nose, crushing the cartilage there. Before the blows had completely straightened Viktor up, Matosian had stepped out of the ropes binding his legs as well and now kicked out, hitting his captor again in the chest. Viktor went down in a silent hump.

Quickly donning his shoes and socks, Matosian was out into a narrow, dimly lit corridor within five seconds. Chloe had still been with them when they’d turned into his room, so she must be farther down the hall the way they’d been walking. So, turning in that direction, he started jogging, stopping to check the doors.

She was behind the third one, bound as he’d been, hand and foot, though they’d left her shoes on, and had put duct tape over her mouth.

Where had her captors gone? Where were the rest of them?

There was no time to ask those questions, and Matosian wasted no movement wondering about it or getting her untied. When he gently removed the duct tape from her mouth, he paused for a half second to touch her lips with his own. Then, taking her by the hand, he pulled her from her chair, and they were off and running down the hallway, toward a stairway beyond which shimmered the glow of sunlight!

They came out into an all-but-deserted alley that led off Red Square, and a fortuitous one at that. At the end of the block, as they were just coming out into the crowded square and the view of the Kremlin again, Matosian suddenly stopped, looking up.

“What is it?” Chloe asked.

“Look.” He was pointing to an ornate iron streetlight right above their heads. Matosian had almost run into it. The light was off since it was daytime. But its spherical bulb was held up by an amazingly realistic sculpture of the Sphinx. “This is it,” Matosian cried.

“I don’t see it,” Chloe said.

“Sure you do,” Matosian answered gently. “It’s the face of a woman and the body of a lion. And what is a lion?” he asked.

“A cat!”

His face lit up into a huge smile. “Hurry,” he said urgently. “There’s still time.” And taking her hand again, he started to run.

“I didn’t even realize that there was a Sphinx here,” Chloe said.

“They’re all over the place,” Matosian answered. “Santorini and Thebes in Greece, Giza in Egypt, St. Petersburg in Russia, and many, many more.”

“But then, how did you…?”

“As they knew I would, I recognized that the specific Sphinx on that streetlamp was based on the one here at the Louvre.” He stared for a moment at the enormous stone carving. “I really do think we’re getting close now,” he said.

“But who are ‘they’?”

“Yes,” he said. “Who are ‘they’?” He sat on a stone bench across from the ancient sculpture, patting the space next to him in invitation.

Chloe lowered herself down next to him, close enough so that their thighs touched. She took his hand and after a moment, he turned to her. “When I thought they were going to hurt you,” he began, and then could not go on. She reached up then and touched his lips with her free hand, and then that hand went back around his neck and brought his face down to where their lips could again meet-this time not as a ruse to fool Matosian’s pursuers as their first kiss had been in London, nor out of relief as the kiss they’d shared under the Kremlin. This time, their bodies lingered, their mouths locked in a transporting kiss of passion and connection.

When at last they broke it off, it had grown dark in the museum.

Matosian savored the first bite of his foie gras, the first sip of their twenty-five-year-old Chateau d’Yquem as he looked across the room at the beautiful woman who was returning from the ladies’ room, walking toward him 125 meters above Paris. “I don’t know how we’ve gotten to here,” he said when she got to the table and sat down, “but I’m so glad that we have. I never thought that this-a feeling like this-would happen to me. Here’s to you.”

She raised her own glass. “And to you. And us.” She tasted her foie gras, quickly seared and served with candied figs and a balsamic gastriche, and seemed to nearly swoon at the flavors. But then, abruptly, her face clouded over. “But where exactly are we?”

He knew, of course, that she wasn’t speaking literally, and he came forward and lowered his voice, his food for the moment forgotten. “All my senses tell me that we’re where we’re supposed to be.”

“But where do we go next? And to look for what?”