Robert Masello - The Medusa Amulet

Gate 23 was off on his left, but he could already see a flight attendant bundling up the tickets she’d collected, while the other was kicking loose the doorstop to the boarding ramp. He scooted past them-they both raised their heads at the errant breeze-and was halfway to the hatchway when he saw that that, too, was being closed.

“Hold it!” he shouted without thinking, and the steward stopped, looking all around to see where that voice might have come from, but it provided just enough of a delay for David to breeze onto the plane. The hatchway was pulled shut, and David breathed his first sigh of relief.

Looking into both cabins of the plane, however, he could see that the ticketing clerk had been right. Not a single seat was empty.

But then, how could he have sat in one, anyway, without somehow giving his presence away? All it took was someone hearing him breathe, or tripping over his invisible legs on the way to the bathroom. He couldn’t even hide out in one of the stalls without eventually drawing attention to the Occupe sign that never went out.

The plane taxied away from the gate, and then, to David’s anguish, lingered on the ground for what seemed an interminable time. He glanced at his watch, before remembering that he couldn’t see its face anymore. Several times, the pilot came on to apologize, and to explain that a storm front moving east had slowed down all traffic heading west. But David heard a lot of unhappy muttering among the passengers and crew before, having idled on the ground for at least an hour or two, the plane finally took off.

Once it had settled into its cruising altitude, he found as much of a sanctuary as he could-a corner of the little space between the front and back cabins, under the porthole window of an emergency exit. If he scrunched down with his knees drawn up tight, and his back against the vibrating wall, and stayed aware of any steward who occasionally came through to retrieve something from one of the storage bins, he just might be able to make it all the way unnoticed. He’d be stiff as a board when he arrived, but he’d get there.

The flight time, he knew, had been posted as nine hours. But he wondered, given the weather conditions, how much time it would really take.

There was no way he could call Sarah or Gary to see where things stood… but he knew that Sarah had said she would wait for him, and they had never let each other down yet. Wait for me, he muttered under his breath, wait for me.

When the Marquis di Sant’Angelo burst into the hospital room, trailed by a nurse pulling on his sleeve, Ascanio was just awakening from the anesthesia.

“You are all right?” the marquis said, leaning over his bedside. He had certainly seen him looking better, but he had also seen him looking worse.

“Monsieur,” the nurse was complaining, “these are not visiting hours, and the patient is still in recovery. You may come back when -”

But Sant’Angelo brushed her aside and clutched his dear friend’s hand. One leg was in a formidable cast, but all in all, Ascanio looked as if he would come through the ordeal intact.

“I’ll be fine,” Ascanio said, groggily, as he squeezed the marquis’s hand to reassure him. “But a fine pair we’ll make,” he added, gesturing at the marquis’s ebony walking stick. “A couple of gimps.”

“Not for long,” Sant’Angelo said. “The doctors tell me they got the bullet out fine, and you’ll be walking perfectly well in a few months.”

Ascanio nodded, and the nurse, after checking his blood pressure and offering him a sip of water through a straw, left the room, throwing one more murderous glance at the marquis.

Opening his fur-collared coat, Sant’Angelo drew a chair to the bedside, and said, “Tell me what happened.”

“David didn’t tell you already?”

“Franco? He told me nothing. He called, said you were here, and hung up before I could ask him a thing. I thought he would be here, in fact.” A look crossed Ascanio’s face that worried the marquis. “What did he not want me to know?” Sant’Angelo said.

Ascanio pointed a finger at the water, and the marquis held the straw to his lips again. And then, haltingly, Ascanio told the story of their assault on the chateau, of their final battle with Linz, and the ensuing fire and destruction. But when he was done, the marquis was still awaiting the one piece of information Ascanio had seemed to scrupulously elide. He only hoped it was an effect of the anesthesia.

“ La Medusa,” he prompted, his eyes actually flitting about the room. “Where is La Medusa?”

Ascanio looked away, and Sant’Angelo pulled his chair so close to the bed it was scraping the rail.

“Where is La Medusa?” he said, his voice taking on an edge of steel. “And where, for that matter, is David Franco?” He hardly needed a map anymore to put the two missing pieces together.

And that was when Ascanio told him that David had made off with it. “I was in no condition to chase after him,” Ascanio pleaded. “They dropped me at the hospital, and that girl drove them off like a bat out of Hell.”

Hell, Sant’Angelo thought, was where he’d send them, if he didn’t get back what belonged to him. Hadn’t he told this Franco everything he needed to know? Hadn’t he revealed to him secrets that he had told no other man? And this was how he was to be repaid?

“He’s on his way home,” Ascanio said. “To save that sister of his! I’m sure of it.”

Sant’Angelo was sure of it, too. He had foreseen something like this happening. It was why he’d had one of his minions trace the call David had made from his home, and cross-check the name of hospice patients in that immediate vicinity. David’s sister, he’d learned, was named Sarah Henderson, and she was in a place called Evanston, just outside Chicago. In spite of everything the marquis had done for him, it was clear to Sant’Angelo that David had more important priorities right now than returning his property to him. First, there was his sister. Not unexpected. And ultimately, there was his loyalty to the woman who had sent him on this mission to begin with.

Plainly, the librarian was not as innocent as he’d seemed. That, or he had had some iron injected into him by recent events. Either way, Sant’Angelo had to grudgingly admire the man’s nerve.

But the time had come for the marquis to put aside all subterfuge. At long last, he had done away with his nemesis at the chateau-that black stain on the soul of the world-and now it was time for him to reclaim what was due him- La Medusa, and his long-lost love in the bargain.

“Tomorrow,” Ascanio was saying. “I’ll be able to go after him tomorrow!” He actually tried to rise in the bed, as if he could throw off the traction wires holding the leg in place and the IV line connected to his arm.

The marquis put a hand on his shoulder and pressed him back against the pillows.

“Rest,” he said. “You’ve done well. I can take care of things now.” And then, jabbing his cane at the floor as if he were impaling an enemy with each strike, he stalked out of the room, nearly knocking over the nurse, who had returned to chase him out.

Not two hours later, he was on his own private plane, taking off, in the teeth of an oncoming storm, for the United States. His pilot had begged him to reconsider, but when the marquis offered the flight crew a ten-thousand-euro bonus, all complaints ceased and a new flight plan was entered that would take them over Halifax and around the worst of the weather.

The marquis sat back in his plush leather seat, staring out the port-hole window and wondering just how far behind this Franco he was. He understood why the man was in such a hurry, but the marquis had never intended for La Medusa to slip from his grasp again. Nor had he intended for it to be used, willy-nilly, by whoever found it. Only he, the marquis, and his faithful servant Ascanio, were to possess its powerful secret. Look whose vile hands it had fallen into for decades.