Gabriel Hunt - Hunt Through Napoleon's Web

Looking up, he saw the knife handle slowly tilt downward.

Seconds later, the blade pulled out of the wall.

He fell the last dozen feet to the bottom, landing in a painful crouch.

“What happened to ‘drop and roll’?” Lucy demanded, bending close to him and helping him stand.

He grabbed her hand.

“Run,” he said.

Chapter 15

Dawn was breaking, and the Djemaa el Fna was already awake.

The melodic, soulful morning prayers boomed over loudspeakers mounted high on poles throughout the square. It was standard procedure to broadcast them in nearly every major city in Morocco. Gabriel and Lucy ran past dozens of workers and tradesmen, shopkeepers and vendors and performers, all bowing close to the ground. A few looked up as they passed, more as the Alliance guards came running after them moments later.

There were no tourists in the square yet, and no workers at work. As soon as the prayers were completed it would be swarmed by people beginning their day, a crowd among which Gabriel and Lucy might lose themselves. But while the sacred ritual was taking place, they could be seen from blocks away.

“We need somewhere to hide,” he said, taking a corner and pulling Lucy after him. “We can’t stay out in the open.”

Lucy pointed to a side street where a number of carts, wagons, vans, and cars were parked. “Over there.”

They ran. But after his ordeal the previous day, Gabriel was finding himself short of breath and hurting, and he knew Lucy was probably feeling similar following her period of drugged captivity. Behind them, he heard running footsteps drawing near. He glanced back. Their pursuers weren’t in sight yet—but they weren’t going to be able to make it to the side street before they were.

Gabriel pulled Lucy into an alcove beside a shop whose window display showed bulging sacks of grain and cereal. Two Alliance men appeared an instant later, running at full speed. Gabriel and Lucy pressed themselves back against the stone wall. The men sprinted past without breaking stride.

Once they’d gone, Gabriel pulled the picks out of his belt and made quick work of the lock on the shop’s door. No alarm went off, thankfully, and he and Lucy entered, relocking the door behind them and walking quickly to the rear of the space. They crouched behind a tall stack of burlap bags. Gabriel held his finger to his lips. They heard the men returning, panting, talking to each other furiously in Arabic. He understood only every tenth word, but the general tenor of the conversation was easy enough to guess: Where did they go? They must be hiding!

They tried the door, rattling the knob. Then a muttered curse came from one of the men, followed by the sound of departing footsteps.

Gabriel waited a full two minutes before slowly raising his head over the grain sacks. He couldn’t see much from where they were, but the little he could see suggested that the men were at least not waiting for them directly outside. He motioned for Lucy to stay where she was and crept to the front of the store in a low crouch. He scanned the area from every angle the store’s front window permitted. Nothing. They seemed to be safe for the moment.

He returned to Lucy and dropped heavily to the floor beside her.

“They’re gone. For now.”

“So what do we do? You have a plan?”

“No,” he said.

Her brow wrinkled. “You’re joking, right?”

“I’ll think of something,” he said.

“At least we’re out of the Casa del Khufu,” she said. “I was getting pretty tired of that place.”

The loudspeakers went quiet. The morning prayers were over.

“There’ll be people all over the place in a few minutes,” Gabriel said. “We can stay in here till it’s crowded and then slip out and blend in.”

“Neither of us is exactly the blending type,” Lucy said.

Gabriel thought of Sammi, tucking her red hair under a headscarf at the bazaar in Cairo. “We’ll do the best we can.”

“We need to get out of the city,” Lucy said.

“And to a phone,” he said, scanning the area around the store’s front counter for one. There was none in sight. Apparently, like many people in this part of the world, the shopkeeper relied on his mobile. “If I can reach Michael, he can get us on a plane. I want to try Sammi again, too.”

“Sammi?” Lucy asked. “ My Sammi? What are you talking about?”

Too late, he realized he hadn’t told her that part of the story before. “She came with me to Cairo, from Nice.”

“What were you doing in Nice?”

“I went to your apartment. Wanted to see if I could find any sign of where they’d taken you.”

“And Sammi . . . ?”

“She was doing the same thing,” Gabriel said. “She insisted on coming along.”

“So . . . what happened?” Gabriel could hear the fear in her voice.

“I don’t know. We agreed she’d follow me from a distance when I went to meet the Alliance. But we lost contact in Cairo.” He didn’t tell her that Amun had said she’d been captured, maybe killed. Even if it was true, Lucy didn’t need to hear it right now. “She’s probably still in Cairo, wondering what the hell happened to me.”

“Why did you let her come with you?”

He held up his hands. “I tried to stop her. She’s a stubborn girl. Just like you.”

A thin smile appeared on Lucy’s face, but it didn’t stay there long. “I hope she’s okay.”

“Me, too,” Gabriel said. “I want you both somewhere safe while I take care of this business with the Alliance.”

“What ‘business’?”

“They found you in Nice—they won’t stop hunting just because you’ve gone somewhere else. Not now. They’ve got a score to settle now. Besides,” Gabriel said, “if that stone’s out there like they said, I can’t just let it fall into their hands.”

“Why? For god’s sake, Gabriel, what does it matter who’s got some old stone? Haven’t you got enough old stones already?”

“Not one like this,” Gabriel said. “Not if what they said about it is true.”

She shrugged, let her eyes slide shut. “All right. Do what you have to,” she said.

“What,” Gabriel said, “you’re not going to insist on coming with me?”

“Not a chance,” Lucy said. “I just want to get the hell out of here.”

It didn’t take long for people to start filling the square. Gabriel heard the first loud calls that indicated the water sellers had arrived. Sounds of shops opening and people greeting each other.

The door to the grain shop opened and, peeking up from behind the sacks, Gabriel saw the shopkeeper put down a bag and strap on an apron. The first customers entered directly behind him, a pair of women in Moroccan dress, followed by a gray-haired husband and wife with matching cameras around their necks. Gabriel and Lucy stood as the couple walked past and casually exited the store behind them.

The sun was bright now and the square was full. The same complement of acrobats, musicians, mendicants, and food sellers were in place and at work. A pair of early morning tour buses had parked nose-to-tail on the less populated side of the square and were disgorging passengers dressed in knee-length shorts and shirts with resort logos printed across the front. They fanned themselves with folded pamphlets, sweating already even though the real heat of the day was still hours away.

Lucy blinked in the glare and ran her fingers through her hair, which was standing up in spiky green clumps.

“You want me to blend in,” she muttered.

“Come on.”

They walked toward the group of tourists behind the nearer of the buses. A Moroccan guide was speaking to them through an electric megaphone.