C. Palov - Templar's Quest

‘Count your blessings, Baldy.’

No time to gloat, Finn retraced his steps. He guesstimated that he had no more than fifteen seconds before the goon revived.

Reaching the entrance to the maze, he could see that the guichet was sixty metres away. Between Point A and Point B, there were scores of gawking sightseers, some bozo on rollerblades and one dipshit pulling a red wheeled suitcase.

The perfect props to create a diversion that would confuse the hell out of his attacker.

To that end, Finn charged through the plaza, grabbing purses, backpacks, camera bags, shopping totes – whatever he could snatch – flinging each, in turn, into the air. A mad man run amuck, whipping docile bystanders into a frenzied horde.

Sparing a quick glance over his shoulder, he saw that Cue Ball had revived. Face smeared with blood, the big brute stood at the entrance to the maze, staring at the melee.

Time to haul ass.

Arms pumping, Finn sprinted towards the roadway, leaping over the front-end of a baby stroller, in too big of a hurry to sidestep it.

Needing an escape vehicle, he scanned the southbound lane of traffic that had stopped at the red light. His gaze settled on a canary-yellow Yamaha motorcycle.

Just then, the light turned green.

Worried that he was going to miss his ride, Finn ran over to the dipshit with the wheeled luggage. Bending at the waist, he grabbed hold of the bright red suitcase and hurled it towards the southbound lane, the red suitcase bouncing off a sedan’s front bumper, creating a clamour that caused the moving traffic to come to a sudden halt.

Finn ran up to the yellow motorcycle that had slowed to a stop near the kerb. Not bothering to ask for a lift, he clambered on to the passenger seat. To make certain the biker cooperated, he shoved the truncheon into the driver’s ribs.

‘Make like the wind, asshole!’

40

Standing in the midst of the chaos, Dolf watched impotently as Finnegan McGuire escaped on the back of a motorcycle.

Unable to think straight, he staggered to a nearby bench and collapsed. Head clutched in his hands, he felt as though he’d just wandered into an asylum. So much was going on – people shouting and rushing about – the only thing that he could process was the fact that the motherfucker McGuire had stolen his grandfather’s truncheon. That and he’d bested Dolf in a fist fight.

I should have won that bout.

Just then a black Scottish terrier darted over to the bench. Curious, the dog sniffed at him. A few seconds later, it growled ferociously.

‘Get lost!’ Dolf hissed, ready to hurl the shaggy beast across the plaza if it came any closer.

The owner, a leash dangling from her hand, breathlessly rushed up to him. ‘I’m awfully sorry, but in all the madness, Sadie flew the coop and I – My God! There’s blood all over your face! Do you want me to call an ambulance?’

‘I want you to take your furry piece of shit out of my sight! I hate dogs!’ Dolf glared at the annoying American woman with the sing-songy accent. ‘In my country, we grill little dogs on a spit.’

Bending at the waist, the woman hurriedly scooped the squirming animal into her arms. ‘Aren’t you a miserable excuse for a human being!’

Tell me something that I don’t know, bitch.

Lacking the enthusiasm to hurl a parting insult, Dolf unzipped his jacket and, raising the hem of his cotton T-shirt, wiped the blood from his face. Like most former boxers, his nose had been broken so many times, he’d lost count.

Bewildered, events having transpired too rapidly, he wondered how he was going to explain the debacle to Herr Doktor.

Per usual, his life was a big fucking catastrophe, this just one in a long series of disasters. Every time he thought he’d done the right thing, he’d later discover he’d fucked everything up. Just once, he wished things would go his way. But they never did. Always things went left instead of right. Like what happened with that fucking Turkish fruit vendor.

Three months after his sister Annah had been raped, she’d slashed her wrists in the bathtub. In her suicide note, she claimed that Stefan, Dolf’s best friend in the Blut Brüder , had entered her bedroom one afternoon while she was getting dressed and sexually assaulted her. Dolf felt as though a sledge-hammer had been swung at his head. Why couldn’t Stefan have raped someone else’s sister? Why his? And why did Annah have to ruin his life with her tell-all suicide note? He’d already killed the Turk.

Having been the one to find his sister floating in a tub of bloody water, he tore up the piece of lined notepaper and threw the shreds into the incinerator.

Betrayed by Stefan, he left the Blut Brüder gang. That’s when he started to hang out at the boxing gym. Since he was on the dole, he offered to wipe down the ring, get equipment, hold the punching bag, whatever odd chore needed to be done. In exchange, he could work out at the gym free of charge. Eventually, Dolf was asked to be a sparring partner for some of the up-and-coming boxers. Excited, he saw this as his big chance to catch the eye of a boxing promoter. But it never happened. He’d lost his touch. Without his ‘vitamins’, he was just an average boxer with a strong punch, lacking the speed and agility of a prize fighter.

A big fucking catastrophe.

Reaching into his pocket, Dolf removed the GPS transmitter. According to the data on the small screen, the tracked target had yet to move from the hedgerow.

How could that be? With his own eyes, he’d seen McGuire leave the plaza.

Either McGuire had discovered the tracking device on the computer and left it by the hedgerow or his two companions now had the laptop.

Although he’d been ordered to kill McGuire and commandeer the medallion that he carried in his canvas bag, what if he killed the red-haired man and abducted the woman ? Herr Uhlemann could ransom her for the medallion.

Dolf stared at the transmitter. It was a good plan. Better to kill someone than no one. And when he returned to the foundation’s office suite with the bitch in tow, everyone would see that he was a valuable asset. Then, finally, he would get his due. Prove to all of the naysayers that he was more than a mere chauffeur.

He just needed to find his Mark 23 pistol, the motherfucker McGuire having kicked it into the bushes.

Fully prepared to crawl on all fours and dig through the dirt with his bare hands, Dolf lurched to his feet and ran back into the maze.

41

‘Do you think Finn’s all right?’ Kate worriedly asked, pandemonium raging on the other side of the Cour Napoléon.

‘Ours is not to reason why,’ Cædmon replied. Snatching hold of her elbow, he pulled her upright. ‘Your commando has created the necessary diversion so that we can escape undetected. I suggest that we do so immediately.’

‘I’m ready when you are.’

Stomach butterflies in a tumult, Kate ran faster than she would have thought possible, Cædmon pulling her through a cutaway in the hedgerow. She didn’t resist. She trusted him implicitly. They then sprinted along the line of shrubs, dodging a group of squatting backpackers sharing a joint.

A few moments later, they emerged from the hedgerow, the arched guichets no more than two hundred and fifty feet away. Closer at hand, approximately twenty metres from their position, a swarm of people hurriedly rushed towards them, led by two men attired in blue uniforms. The Paris police!

‘Do you think those gendarmes are looking for Finn?’

‘No need to worry. They’re simply directing the crowd to the northern end of the courtyard,’ Cædmon said, slowing to a more sedate speed.