Eric Lustbader - The Testament

It would already be night in New York, the blaze of man-made lights dimming the stars, the great energy of the city flowing unabated through the streets while the tops of high-rises disappeared into the clouds.

Emma answered on the first ring, as if she had been waiting for his call.

"Bravo, where are you?"

"In France," he said. "On my way to Brittany."

"What are you doing there?"

"I'm on an errand for Dad. He spoke to me about it just before the… just before the end." There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment. "How are you, Emma?"

"I'm fine. I'm singing again, my voice coach was just here."

"That's wonderful-and your eyes? Any change?"

"Not yet. Never mind, it's you I'm worried about."

"Me?"

"I can hear it in your voice," she said.

"Hear what?"

"Trouble. Whatever Dad wanted you to do, it's trouble, isn't it?"

"Why would you say-"

"Because I'm not an idiot, Bravo, and I resent you treating me like one. The president of the engineering firm I hired read the report to me. The gas line wasn't faulty; it was tampered with."

He looked around to see if the women had returned from the bathroom, but they weren't in view. "You seem to have taken the news in stride."

"Dad was in a dangerous business, Bravo. D'you think I hadn't guessed? And once I had, he confided in me."

"What?"

"In fact, from time to time I helped him. He knew-and so did I-that there was a high degree of risk in his business with the Gnostic Observatines."

There was a short pause, during which Bravo could hear her take a sip-of tea, perhaps. He was trying hard to adjust to this new reality.

"Now that you're launched on this mission," Emma continued, "I want you to know that I can be of use to you."

"Emma-"

"I suppose you think it's different now that I'm blind, but you're wrong. I'm quite capable of taking care of myself-and I can take care of you. I always have."

"I don't think I understand."

"Who d'you think kept tabs on you and reported back to Dad when you and he weren't talking? The estrangement certainly wasn't his idea."

"You mean you spied on me?"

"Come off it, Bravo. I did what was best for all of us-you included. Do you think even now that Dad had any evil designs on you? He was worried, and frankly I don't blame him. You acted like an adolescent, as if he were the enemy, when all he was trying to do-"

Bravo took the phone from his ear and severed the connection. He sat down heavily on the driver's seat. His mind seemed numb, the traffic on the All a distant buzz. A car pulled in and a couple of tourists with skittish teenagers tumbled out, loped through the drizzle into the low building. A large truck rumbled away from the gas station back onto the slick highway. His eyes registered these small comings and goings without comment from his mind, as if he were in a theater, watching a film.

His cell phone buzzed.

"Don't you dare treat me the way you treated Dad." Emma's voice sounded sharp in his ear. "And don't hang up on me again."

"Okay, okay, sorry." Bravo felt sheepish and a bit as if he were hung over. "But you rattled the hell out of me. I mean, here I was wondering how you were getting from room to room, and you tell me that you can provide me with help the way you did Dad."

"I suppose that was a lot to dump on you at once, but really, Bravo, sometimes you're so clueless. If you knew me at all you'd have realized that I've been struggling all my life to live up to you and Dad's expectations. I dealt with that, so I sure as hell can deal with this."

Bravo thought about how poorly Jenny had been treated by the Order. But when he considered this it didn't seem much different from how women were treated in corporate life or most anywhere else for that matter. "Listen, Emma, I… well, you know, when you told me, I thought, there it is again-everybody knew about Dad except me."

"There was a good reason for that, Bravo. You must know what it is by now. Dad was grooming you to take over for him. That's why he trained you, why he was always so hard on you. He wanted you prepared when the time came, but until that day he didn't want you involved in the Gnostic Observatines. It was vital that his enemies believed that you had nothing to do with the Order, that your life had been set on another path entirely. If the Knights of St. Clement had suspected for a moment what he had in mind for you, you would've been in terrible danger."

"There's a woman with me-Jenny-"

"Right, the Guardian. Dad was very high on her."

"I know. He sent me to her. She says Dad believed there's a traitor inside the Haute Cour. Do you have any idea who it might be?"

"No. I think in the final days Dad had narrowed it down to a couple of suspects, but he never got a chance to tell me who they were."

"Right." Bravo turned, saw Jenny and Camille exiting the building. "Maybe you could do some digging."

"Sure, no problem." The tension had drained out of her voice. "I'd love to get back to work."

"How will you… ?"

She laughed. "Oh, Bravo, before there was e-mail, there was the telephone. I have a facility with voices: if I hear a tape I can be whoever I want to be. Don't worry, I did this all the time for Dad. It worked quite well-people nowadays are paranoid about e-mails and electronic files."

Jenny had on the raincoat, and Camille was gripping her with one arm around her shoulders.

"Listen, Emma, about what happened before-"

"Forget it. Now that we understand one another-"

He never heard the end of her comment because at that moment he saw a black four-door Mercedes sedan with German plates heading for the two women. As it closed on them, Jenny pulled Camille out of the way. The Mercedes swerved to come between them and the building. At the last instant, it slowed. A blacked-out window slid down, the offside rear door opened, and he saw the dark glint of metal as a hand gripping a gun appeared.

Before Bravo could make a move, Jenny planted her left foot and with her right kicked the door closed. Then she lunged forward with her upper body, chopped down on the hand, wrested the gun away and fired three bullets into the interior of the Mercedes.

The car shuddered on its heavy shocks as if it had been shot, and it lurched forward. Jenny was whipped off her feet. Bravo could see that the hem of her raincoat had been caught in the closed door.

Emma was screaming through his cell phone as he threw it onto the seat, turned the ignition and put the Citroe"n in gear. He shouted to Camille, who was running after the Mercedes as it dragged Jenny along the rest area. The car was heading directly toward the gas pumps; it didn't seem as if anyone was driving it.

As Bravo momentarily tamped the Citroe"n's brakes, Camille, who was on his side of the car, pulled open the rear door. Even as she jumped into the Citroe"n's backseat he took off, the car slewing alarmingly on the wet blacktop.

"We'll never make it," she said breathlessly. "She's going to go up in a fireball with the assassins."

Bravo could see that Jenny was twisted up in the raincoat and, though she struggled to get free, couldn't extricate herself. Then the Mercedes ran over something and the bump swung Jenny around, slamming her head against the blacktop. Her eyes rolled up in her head and her body went limp, twisting grotesquely.

"The door's the only answer," Bravo said.

"You're insane! To get me close enough you'll risk running her over."

"She'll be dead if I don't try," he answered grimly. "Roll down your window and get ready."

Narrowly missing another car on his right, Bravo took up position just off the Mercedes's right flank. Now for the hard part. Focused solely on Jenny, he depressed the accelerator, creeping up on the other car. Fortunately, he had physics on his side; the force of the Mercedes's passage was pulling Jenny's body in toward its undercarriage, giving him slightly more room to maneuver. On the other hand, he was forced to push the Citroe"n to an unsafe speed; the gas pumps were only several hundred yards away. He forced himself not to think of the beating Jenny was taking. Instead, he concentrated on the outline of her body as if she were part of a puzzle he needed to solve. And yet he hesitated to bring the Citroe"n closer to her. "You'll risk running her over," Camille had said, and she was right. But he had very little time; he needed to act now. Desperately, he maneuvered the Citroe"n so that it was parallel, then matched the Mercedes's speed and trajectory. It was still heading straight for the pumps, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He risked glancing sideways, glimpsed the driver slumped over the wheel.