Gabriel Hunt - Hunt Through Napoleon's Web

“That’s what everyone keeps telling me,” Gabriel said.

“What do you want? Your sister? Very well. You can have her.”

“I already have her,” Gabriel said. “I want the Stone.”

“That you cannot have,” Khufu said.

“Your men are dead,” Gabriel said. “Kemnebi, the guards. I don’t know where Arif is, or Amun, but if they were in the building I think they’d have shown by now. You’re on your own.”

Khufu whirled and leaped for the scepter, snatching it up just ahead of the bullet Gabriel had sent speeding toward it. Khufu dived behind the throne.

Gabriel raced forward, keeping the throne between him and Khufu—and between him and the deadly scepter. Behind him he heard the sound of crackling fire and smelled heavy, acrid smoke. The whole place was going up in flames.

“Come on out,” Gabriel called. “It’s over. Give up while you can.”

He expected some response—defiance, taunting, rage, an attack. But when he got no response at all, Gabriel ran around to the back of the throne. There was no sign of Khufu anywhere.

He spun in place, gun raised. Where could the man have gone?

He glanced back at the open doorway. The corridor beyond was completely engulfed now, the cast resin walls melting from the heat. Smoke was billowing into the room at an alarming pace.

He returned to the throne. He knew the man had been here; people didn’t just disappear. Khufu had to have gone somewhere . . .

He remembered what Sammi had said about cages. Maybe the same held true for thrones. He searched the elevated base of the throne carefully. Near the edge of one of the six shallow steps on which the throne rested, he spotted a very narrow tile that was raised slightly above the ones on either side. He depressed it with one finger and the steps opened on a hidden hinge.

Gabriel stuck his gun inside and pulled the trigger twice, then lowered himself to the floor and slipped into the opening.

He dropped for about ten feet, landing in a crouch on the floor of a small room lit with hanging electric lights. There was a wooden crate on casters here, its top open, its interior packed with shreds of newspaper, through the uppermost layer of which Gabriel could see one corner of the Second Stone sticking out.

And on the floor—

On the floor Khufu lay facedown, blood pooling beneath him, the scepter still clutched in one hand. One of Gabriel’s gunshots must have hit him, either directly or on a ricochet. Gabriel went over quickly and kicked the scepter out of his grasp.

“Hunt . . .” Khufu was trying to speak, but his voice was ragged and weak, muffled by the falcon mask he still wore and fading from the blood loss he’d sustained.

Gabriel squatted beside him and turned him over onto his back. The bullet had torn through his abdomen. The man was dying.

“Hunt . . .” he said again, and then something Gabriel couldn’t make out. Gabriel reached down and pulled off the mask.

Beneath it, contorted with pain, was Amun’s face.

“Mister Hunt . . .” Amun breathed heavily and with evident pain. “You have not won . . . as long as any true Egyptian breathes, men like you will . . . answer for their crimes . . .”

His voice dropped away, and his body went limp. Gabriel lifted one of Amun’s arms and let it fall. This was one true Egyptian whose breathing Gabriel didn’t have to worry about anymore.

Gabriel stood. Smoke was pouring into the room through the open panel in the steps of the throne, and the temperature was becoming very uncomfortable. Pretty soon it would be impossible to see, and soon after that to breathe. Gabriel looked around for an exit and spotted a door in the corner. He tried the knob and the door swung open. Gabriel went to the crate and wheeled it out.

The tunnel he found himself in looked similar to the one leading from Nizan’s to the Alliance’s building, and he wasn’t entirely surprised when, after angling upward steeply for about thirty yards toward the end, the tunnel let out (through a heavily barred wooden door) onto the rear loading platform of Nizan’s shop.

Gabriel pushed the crate onward until he found himself on the street. A few people were standing around, some in nightclothes and robes, some of them barefoot, each turning to the others in an attempt to learn what was going on. Sirens were converging on the building a block away, where Gabriel could see the orange glow of the fire in the sky over the rooftops. He made his way down the block, steering the crate behind a row of trucks and cars that had hastily been parked on the scene, disgorging police and firemen to combat the chaos. A larger crowd had gathered here, in front of the blazing building.

Sammi and Lucy were among them, their faces frozen in strained expressions of concern.

Gabriel approached them, pushing the crate before him. “Ladies.”

“Gabriel!”

“My god!”

They both rushed to him.

“We thought you were dead for sure,” Lucy said. Her voice sounded a little clearer, as if the combination of adrenaline and cool night air were combating the effects of the drug in her system.

“How did you get out?” Sammi asked.

“Gabriel,” Lucy exclaimed, looking at a seared patch on Gabriel’s sleeve he hadn’t even noticed himself, “you’re hurt!”

“Oh, she’s right—did you get burned?”

Gabriel held up a hand. “I’m all right. I’m all right . Really.” He looked at his sleeve and the reddened skin showing beneath. “It’s nothing a fifth of bourbon won’t cure.”

Sammi’s eyes dropped to the crate and to the corner of gray stone peeking out from the packing material. “The Stone! You got the Stone.”

Gabriel glanced at the emergency personnel, who were working hard to put out the fire. He held a finger to his lips.

“We can discuss it in the car,” he said.

And together they wheeled the crate away, into the night.

Chapter 27

The plane was fueled and ready for takeoff from the same private airstrip at the Marrakesh airport they had previously used. They hadn’t been able to fit the crate in the trunk of the car, so Gabriel had lifted the Stone out and left it with Sammi in the backseat. He lugged it up the stairs of the plane now, surprised not to see Charlie waiting for them at the top of the steps. “Could use a hand here,” he called—but the cockpit door was already shut and with the engines revving loudly it was clear that Charlie was gearing up to start taxiing, so Gabriel carried the heavy piece the length of the plane on his own, his arms aching from the strain. His entire body ached, in fact, and the options for good bourbon were few, though he thought there might be a bottle stashed somewhere on board.

The plane took off a few minutes later and they soared into a predawn sky that was just beginning to turn all sorts of shades of pink and orange at the horizon. Sammi sat with her face pressed to the window, watching. Lucy sat beside her, head back and eyes shut. She wasn’t asleep, since from time to time she would nod in response to something Sammi said to her in French, but she wasn’t entirely awake either.

“Hey, Gabriel,” Lucy mumbled.

“Yes?” he said.

“Did I say thank you yet?”

“You don’t have to thank me. I’m your brother. It’s my job.”

She smiled. “Well, thank you anyway. You’re a good brother.”

“Get some sleep,” Gabriel said.

They sat in silence as the Challenger tilted, turned, and then leveled at around 30,000 feet. Gabriel looked out the window and watched Marrakesh disappear from view. It would be a long while before he had any desire to revisit it. He sighed and then turned his attention to an English-language newspaper he had bought from a vending machine at the airport.