Steve Berry - The Alexandria Link

They came to the end of the gallery.

To their right, the inside wall of the next gallery stretched. No doors. At the far end was another unbroken wall. To his immediate left rose a set of glass doors, one swung open, inviting guests inside. A placard identified the room as the refectory. Perhaps there might be a way down inside?

He motioned and they entered.

Three thuds pounded the glass as bullets slammed against its exterior. None penetrated. More bulletproof material. Thank heaven for whoever selected the doors.

“Cotton, we’ve got a problem,” Pam said.

He stared into the refectory.

Through the darkness, broken only by the scattered rays seeping in from the windows, he saw a spacious rectangle topped by a ribbed ceiling, similar to that of the church. A low stone cornice encircled the room, below which ran a colorful tile mosaic. No doors led out. The windows were ten feet overhead with no way to get to them.

He spied only two openings.

One was at the far end, and he trotted the fifty-foot length and saw that it may have once been a fireplace but was now only a decorative niche.

Sealed.

The other opening was smaller, maybe four by five feet, recessed three feet into the outer wall. The refectory was once the abbey’s dining hall, so this may have been where food was prepared before serving.

Pam was right. They had a problem.

“Climb in there,” he told her.

She didn’t argue and wiggled her body up onto a stone shelf above an empty basin. “I must be out of my mind to be here.”

“A little late to be noticing that.”

He kept his eyes on the doors leading out to the upper gallery. A shadow grew in the dim light. He saw that Pam was safely inside and climbed in after her, atop the basin, pressing his spine against the shelf as far into the niche as possible.

“What are you going to do?” she asked in his ear.

“What I have to.”

SABRE HAD SEEN THE MEN DIVIDE. ONE CHASED AFTER MALONE; the other slipped into the archway that led back down to the church. He decided the high ground would be better, so he carefully inched his way to the same doorway, hoping it led to the upper choir, where Malone and his ex-wife had stood earlier.

He liked the hunt, especially when the prey offered a challenge. He wondered about the identity of these men. Were they Israelis, as Malone thought? Made sense. He knew from Jonah that an assassination squad had been dispatched to London, but George Haddad had already been handled. He’d heard that encounter on the tape, confirmed by Malone. So what were Israelis doing here? After him? Unlikely. But who else?

He found the doorway and slipped inside.

To his left dropped the stairway to the church. Through the blackness he heard footsteps below.

He entered the choir, stopping where the balustrade met the outer stone wall and carefully looking below. Windows high in the church’s south façade glowed with ambient light. The blackened figure of a man, gun in hand, crept down the aisle formed from the end of the pews to the church’s north wall, keeping to the shadows, trying to make his way to the lower choir.

He ticked off two shots.

The suppressed bangs popped through the cavernous nave. One found the mark and the man cried out, reeled, then staggered against a pew. He readjusted his aim, made only moderately difficult by the dimness, and with two more shots sank the man to the floor.

Not bad.

He released the gun’s magazine and replaced it with a fresh one from his pocket.

He turned to leave. Time to find Malone.

A gun appeared in his face.

“Drop the weapon,” the voice said in English.

He hesitated and tried to find a face to the voice, but the blackness revealed only a shadow. Then he realized the man wore a hood. The chilly prick of another gun barrel nipped his neck.

Two problems.

“One more time,” the first man said. “Drop the weapon.”

No choice. The gun clattered to the floor.

The pistol in his face lowered. Then something whirled through the air and slammed into the side of his skull. Before any semblance of pain registered in his brain, the world around him went silent.

MALONE GRIPPED THE AUTOMATIC AND WAITED. HE RISKED one glance around the niche where he and Pam were hiding.

The shadow continued to expand as the gunman drew closer.

He wondered if his attacker knew there was no exit. He assumed the man did not. Why else would he be advancing? Simply wait out in the gallery. But he’d learned long ago that many people who killed for a living were plagued with impatience. Do the job and get out. Waiting only increased the chances of failure.

Pam was breathing hard and he couldn’t blame her. He, too, was fighting a quick heart. He told himself to calm down. Think. Be ready.

The shadow now stretched across the refectory’s wall.

The man burst inside, gun pointed.

His initial view would be of a dark, empty chamber devoid of furnishings. The niche at the far end should immediately grab his attention, then the second break in the wall. But Malone did not wait for all that comprehension to register. He rolled out of his hiding place and fired.

The bullet whizzed past his target and ricocheted off the wall. The gunman seemed stunned for an instant, but quickly recovered and swung his gun toward Malone, then apparently realized that he was exposed.

This was going to be a duel.

Malone fired again and his bullet found the man’s thigh.

A cry of agony, but the attacker did not go down.

Malone planted a third bullet in the gunman’s chest. He teetered, then dropped spine-first to the floor.

“You’re a tough man to kill, Malone,” a male voice said from beyond the doorway.

He registered the voice. Adam, from Haddad’s apartment. Now he knew. Israelis. But how had they found him?

He heard footsteps. Running away.

He hesitated, then rushed to the doorway, intent on finishing what he’d started in London.

He stopped and peered out.

“Over here, Malone,” Adam called out.

He stared across the open cloister, diagonally to the far side where Adam stood beneath one of the arches. The face was unmistakable.

“You’re a good shot, but not this good. It’s just you and me now.”

He saw Adam disappear into the doorway that led down to the church.

“Pam, stay put,” he said. “Defy me this time and you can deal with the gunmen yourself.”

He bolted from the refectory and raced down the gallery. Where was McCollum? Two gunmen were definitely down. He’d seen only three earlier. Had Adam killed McCollum? Just you and me . That’s what the Israeli had said.

He decided that following Adam down into the church would be foolish. Do the unexpected. So he hopped onto one of the benches that lined the outer edge of the gallery and stared below. The ornamentation and tracery decorating the cloister were both impressive and substantial. He stuffed the gun in his belt and swung his body out, gripping the top of the stone bench and allowing his feet to find a projecting gargoyle disguising a drain. Balancing, he bent down, gripped the stone, and pivoted himself to a ledge that extended from one of the arch supports. From there it was six feet to the grass of the cloister garden.

Adam suddenly appeared from the church, in the far gallery, running down its length.

Malone gripped the gun and fired, the bullet missing but definitely attracting his quarry’s attention.

Adam disappeared downward, using for cover the same waist-high benches that Malone had.

The Israeli appeared and clicked off a shot.

Malone dove between two tracery supports into the lower gallery and hit the floor tiles hard. The breath left him. His forty-eight-year-old body could only take so much, regardless of what he’d once done on a daily basis. He scampered back to the bench and carefully stared across the cloister.