Elizabeth Peters - Trojan Gold

“‘…the bravest by far in the ranks of the Shah,’” murmured a faint voice from behind the bloody hand.

“It would serve you right if he did shoot you,” I snarled. “Dieter, what have you done to Schmidt?”

Dieter relaxed visibly. “A few sleeping pills. It is easy to drug that fat gourmand; he will eat anything and he eats constantly.” He added in self-congratulatory tones, “It is his gun. He took it from the drawer when he felt himself succumbing to the Valium, but he was so sleepy I think he would have shot himself in the stomach if I had not taken it from him.”

I felt my throat closing up. Poor brave little Schmidt. Damn the courageous old galoot anyway. The fact that he hadn’t tried to steal the Colt back should have warned me that he had another gun.

“I was going to take him as a hostage.” Dieter gave Schmidt’s rotund and recumbent form a resentful look. “But he is too heavy to carry. So I decided to wait here for you. I knew you would come sooner or later.”

“It’s later,” I said, as John continued to watch Dieter through his first and second fingers. “We’ve already been to the police. They’ll be looking for you.”

“Not soon,” Dieter said coolly. “It is Weihnacht , and the storm has made for some confusion. But you will come with me, Vicky, and then if anyone tries to interfere with me, I will kill you.”

“Take him,” I said, indicating John.

“Right,” John said. “Take me….” And then the idiot spread both arms wide and sang, “Please do take me—’m all yours if you—”

Dieter was too smart to risk it a second time. He had caught John off guard with the first blow, but he must have seen the flexed hands, poised and ready. He stepped back.

“Over by the bed. Lie down on the floor. Hands under you.”

The barrel of the gun shifted toward me and John said, “Calm down, old chap. You don’t want to shoot anyone.”

“No, I don’t. I would rather not attract attention. But if I am forced to shoot, it will be all of you. This gun is a very nice gun.”

It was, too. Nothing but the best for Schmidt—an automatic pistol—a Beretta, as I later discovered—the kind that fires the whole clip so long as the finger remains on the trigger.

John obeyed. “Face down,” Dieter ordered.

With an expressive look at me, John rolled over. He must have known what was coming. I didn’t. I suppose I expected Dieter would bend over and bang him on the back of the head with the gun. Instead, Dieter swung his foot. He didn’t hold back, as John had done with him; his toe connected with a sickening soggy crunch that spilled John over onto his back, his head and shoulders under the high antique bed. This time he wasn’t faking. His twisted body and outflung hands were as limp as dead fish.

I rocked to a halt as Dieter wriggled the gun admonishingly. He glanced longingly at John’s body, but decided not to risk another kick, much as he obviously wanted to. “Come,” he said. “We will go now.”

Lovingly entwined, we went down the stairs and through the lobby. Dieter’s left arm was around my shoulders, his fingers caressing my throat, his thumb nudging the nerve ending behind the ear. His right hand was inside his jacket, Napoleonstyle. I could feel the muzzle of the gun through both our jackets.

We had emerged from the hotel before I got my voice under control. “You’ll never make it up there, Dieter. The road is too icy.”

“I think of everything,” Dieter said. His thumb jabbed deep, and pain lanced through my head. Reflexively my head turned, away from the pressure. He forced my face down toward his and kissed me on the mouth.

“You son of a bitch,” I said, licking blood off my lower lip.

“But a romantic son of a bitch,” said Dieter, grinning and nodding at an elderly couple who had paused to smile at the young lovers. He pushed me toward a sleigh strung with bells and bright ribbons. “See what I have hired to take my sweetheart for a drive. I think there will be time for more romance while we wait for the ground to soften. How would you like that, eh?” He went on to enumerate all the “romantic” things he was going to do to me. The lad had quite a vocabulary.

I gritted my teeth and yearned for the moment when he would help me into the sleigh. He’d have to take the gun out of my ribs for a second, and that was all I would need. Boots, fists, teeth…

I should have learned by then not to underestimate him. The moment my foot touched the high step, he gave me a shove that sent me sprawling forward across the seat, my breath stifled by a fuzzy fur wrap. With a hearty chuckle at my clumsiness, he hauled me upright, folded me in a fond embrace, and hit me on the chin.

I don’t know what happened after that, but I’ll bet we made a charming picture as we drove out of town—bells chiming, horses trotting, and me wrapped cozily in the fur rug with my head on Dieter’s shoulder and his arm around me.

He must have hit me again or I wouldn’t have stayed unconscious so long. I didn’t wake up until we had reached our destination and Dieter had had his way with me. No, not that; but I found myself flat on my back with my wrists and ankles tied to stakes, all ready and waiting as soon as Dieter found time to attend to me. My jaw hurt and my back was so cold it felt as if it were stuck to the frozen ground, and the arch of bright blue sky, which was all I could see at first, made my eyes ache.

After a while it occurred to me that I could turn my head.

The fire had gone out. Dieter was at work, scraping off the top layer of softened dirt and ash. He had even brought tools, the clever boy. Not shovels and pickaxes; no archeologist in his right senses would use anything so destructive, and this was an archaeological excavation of sorts. One careless thrust of a sharp instrument might penetrate the container and reduce the gold of Troy to a heap of golden scraps.

God bless Hoffman, he had buried it deep. The fire had softened only the top few inches of soil. Before long, Dieter had removed it, along with a handful of pitiful bare bulbs that would never be flowers. Reaching for an armful of kindling, he arranged it with a horrible travesty of Boy Scout tidiness and lit a match. When the wood had caught and was burning brightly, he rose to his feet and looked at me.

It would have made a great scene in my book—the heroine spread-eagled and helpless, awaiting a fate worse than death. (I was beginning to wonder how I could have found that phrase funny.) I was wearing more clothes than Rosanna would have worn, but I had a feeling Dieter would get around to that before much longer. There was only one positive aspect to the situation. He’d have done better to tie my wrists and ankles together. The stakes had not been driven deeply into the hard ground. I had already managed to start one wriggling.

“I need more wood,” Dieter explained. “Can’t use these wet branches; they make too much smoke. I’ll be back in a minute.”

John would have said, “Take your time,” or “Don’t hurry back,” or something even wittier. I resisted the temptation. The workings of Dieter’s mind were fascinating. He wasn’t your usual mad murderer, no such thing. He was perfectly sane. The treasure was his main objective, and he really wasn’t sadist enough to risk that or his precious skin for the fun of torturing me.

Cheerful thought. As soon as Dieter was out of my field of vision, I threw all my strength into the muscles of my right arm. The stake popped out with such unexpected ease my arm flew up into the air. I replaced it even more hastily than it had arisen and twisted it around so I could look over my shoulder. Smart of me. He was back sooner than I would have expected, his arms full of wood.