Hunt at World's End (14 page)

The cargo van rattled down a dark Turkish side street, carrying Edgar Grissom away from the Peninsula Hotel. He sat on the bare, corrugated metal floor in back while two of his men occupied the front seats. He coughed what he hoped was the last of the smoke out of his lungs and into his handkerchief. Any irritant only worsened his condition further. Back in the hotel room, he’d been immobilized for minutes, unable to do anything but cough and try to suck air into his lungs, air that wasn’t there. He’d been lucky that in the confusion he’d been able to drag himself to the door and out into the hallway. Another minute in that smoke…

Grissom looked at the specks of blood in his handkerchief, then folded it, stuffed it in his pocket, and finally allowed himself to look at the horror laid out across the van’s floor before him. Julian’s body still reeked of smoke. Portions of his clothing were charred. Ash dusted his pallid skin.

His dead skin.

The ivory handle of the dagger still protruded from just below Julian’s solar plexus. Grissom’s own weapon, modeled to his exact specifications after an ancient Chinese sacrificial dagger. They’d killed their own children, sacrificed them to the river gods, with daggers just like this one.

Julian.

He’d lost his wife to a disease that had cruelly taken her away from him little by little. And now he’d lost his son, his only child, the last of his family.

Lost him to Gabriel Hunt.

What Grissom felt wasn’t sadness. There was no mourning or regret. There was only a vast, cold emptiness inside him, surrounding a bright coal of burning heat. This was the vengeance he was preparing for Gabriel Hunt. He would nurse it, stoke it, keep the embers burning until the proper moment came—and then it would erupt into a proper conflagration. Erupt and sweep Hunt from the face of the earth.

The man in the passenger seat turned around. Grissom recognized his face: Wellington, an American mercenary he’d hired back in Southeast Asia. Wellington said something, indicating the walkie-talkie in his hand, but Grissom wasn’t listening. He was watching his son’s head roll limply on his neck with every turn the van took.

“Forgive me,” Grissom whispered to the corpse. “Forgive me.” He pulled the dagger from Julian’s torso, the three blades sliding out smeared with blood. The weapon that had taken his son’s life would take Hunt’s. He would make certain of that.

“Sir?” Wellington said.

Grissom stroked his son’s blond hair. “There,” he murmured. “That’s better, isn’t it?”

“Sir,” Wellington repeated, louder.

Grissom looked up, his hand tightening around the dagger. “What?”

Wellington indicated the walkie-talkie again. “The strike team’s reporting they’ve lost the targets.”

Grissom stood, hunched over beneath the van’s low ceiling, and strode to the front. “What?”

“They lost them on the rooftops, sir.”

Grissom’s lips pulled back from his teeth. He lashed out with the dagger, slitting Wellington’s throat with one fluid motion. Blood streaked across half the windshield. The man in the driver’s seat flinched but kept his eyes on the road. He didn’t dare say anything.

Grissom snatched the walkie-talkie out of the dead man’s hand. “Find them!” he roared into it. “Kill the others, but bring me Gabriel Hunt
alive!
”

Gabriel reached the bottom of the stairwell and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Sirens shrieked from the other side of the block, where dark smoke roiled into the sky from the fire. Flames now consumed the upper portions of two buildings and it looked like a third might go at any moment.

Joyce emerged from the stairwell next to him. Daniel came last. He was out of breath, limping from the drop to the roof, and his face was red and sweaty from exertion. The three of them hurried down the street, trying to stay out of the light from the streetlamps.

“What do you think, how long till they come after us again?” Joyce asked.

“Not long,” he said. “Grissom won’t give up.” Not with his son dead, Gabriel said to himself. “We have to get away from here. As far away as possible, as quickly as possible.”

Joyce put her arm around Daniel’s shoulders, helping him limp along the sidewalk. “We won’t get far like this,” she said. “His leg is getting worse.”

“I’m sorry,” Daniel said, sweat glistening on his forehead, grimacing with every step. “I’m slowing you down. You should just leave me and go.”

“That’s right, we should,” Gabriel said. “But your niece inexplicably still wants to help you, so we won’t.”

“I really am sorry, Gabriel—”

“Save it,” Gabriel said. “We can talk about what you did later. If there is a later.”

If they wanted to get away fast, they needed transportation. Cars were parked along the curb, but with the crowd around them and firemen and policemen in the street, breaking into one here would be too risky. Gabriel led them away from the hotel and onto a side street. There were no people here, the spectacle of the fire having drawn them all away. But there were cars, and one of them—a black, two-door sports car parked by the mouth of an alley—didn’t have an alarm light glowing on the dashboard. Perfect. Looking up the street to make sure no one was watching, he smashed the driver’s side window with the butt of his Colt.

He opened the door and tossed the backpack onto the rear seat. After brushing the shattered glass off the driver’s seat, he got in and ducked under the dashboard. He had the wires exposed a moment later, and the engine purring a few seconds after that. Joyce got into the backseat and let Daniel take the front, his injured leg requiring the extra space. Gabriel backed the car out of its parking spot and took off down the street.

He kept to side streets, passing dark apartment buildings and garages until they finally found their way onto the open road that led up into the hills. The apartment buildings turned into low one-and two-story houses, and eventually the houses thinned away until there was nothing but dark forest on either side. The headlights picked up signs marking the distance to Burdur and Isparta in kilometers.

“Where are we heading?” Joyce asked.

“Not sure yet,” Gabriel said. “I need to think.”

“My students!” Daniel exclaimed suddenly. “They’ll hear about the fire. Some of them know I was staying
there. I have to let them know I’m all right.” He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and opened it, the blue key lights illuminating the interior of the car.

Gabriel snatched the phone from Daniel’s hand and tossed it out the broken window. “You’re not calling anyone.”

“Gabriel!” Joyce exclaimed from the backseat.

Ignoring her, he turned to Daniel. “You don’t go anywhere near a phone, a computer, a pair of tom-toms, anything. If I even see you with a tin can and a piece of string in your hand, I’ll shoot you. Do you understand me?”

Daniel nodded, staring out the windshield.

“Gabriel,” Joyce said, “that was our only phone.”

“We’re better off without it,” Gabriel said. “Grissom knows Daniel’s number. He could have used the phone to trace our location.”

“All right, so we have no phone,” Joyce said. “We have a stolen car, a gun with how many bullets left? Two? Three? And three exhausted people, one of whom can barely walk—and no, we’re not leaving him behind. So: What’s your plan?”

“We need a place to regroup. Rest a little, tape up that leg—” Gabriel nodded toward Daniel “—and figure out where the third Eye is hidden. No way am I letting Grissom get to it first.”

“You know any place around here where we could do all that?”

“One,” Gabriel said. “But if she turns us away, I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

“She?”

“A woman I used to know in Anamur.”

Joyce was silent for a bit. Then she said, “You used to know her…how?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

“No,” Joyce said. “I guess I don’t.”

“Let’s just hope she’ll let bygones be bygones.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Joyce said. “How exactly did things end between you two?”

“Could’ve gone better,” Gabriel said. “The last time I saw her, she came at me with a meat cleaver.”

He followed the signs for Anamur, sticking to side streets, the darker and emptier the better. The detours made the trip longer than if he’d taken the highway, but he figured it was better not to risk being out in the open.

He didn’t know if Veda Sarafian still lived in her house by the sea, or how she’d feel about seeing him again after so many years, but he couldn’t think of anyone else he could call on—not in this part of Turkey, anyway. He drove all night, watching the stars fade and the sky gradually grow lighter. Joyce fell asleep in the back, her head tilted against the window, her hair hiding her face. In the passenger seat, Daniel’s head was turned away. Gabriel couldn’t tell if he was asleep or just unwilling to face him.

By the time the sun started to peek over the horizon, he had turned onto the winding coastal road that led to Veda’s house. The ground dropped off steeply to his right, and past the safety railing there he saw the dawn’s light glittering across the Mediterranean. In the distance he could make out the northern, Turkish half of Cyprus and, past it, a hazy sliver of Syria on the horizon.

He turned onto a narrow gravel drive, and there it was, the house, just as he remembered it. A low, two-story wooden home with dark shingles and white painted frames around the curtained windows.

“We’re here,” he said, setting the hand brake as the car slid to a stop. Joyce stirred in the back, and Daniel stretched, rubbing his neck. They exited the car and walked up the small flight of steps to the door. Gabriel could hear the gentle slosh of the surf from the other side of the house, where Veda had—or at least used to have—a low wooden dock that bobbed on the waves. He knocked.

A few moments later it opened, and a tall, slender woman with olive skin and deep brown eyes appeared. She didn’t look a day older than when he’d seen her last, or an iota less enraged. She brushed her black hair out of her eyes and regarded him with a look that could have ignited a fire in a rainstorm. “
Gabriel Hunt?
” She spoke with a smooth British accent, but that didn’t mask the emotion behind the words. “What the hell are
you
doing here?”

He raised both hands, palms out, placating. “I wouldn’t have come if it weren’t important, Veda. I need your help.”

“You need
what
?”

“A place to stay for a couple of hours,” Gabriel said. “A phone we can use. Some water. That’s all. I promise, it won’t happen again, but I do need your help now.”

One of her hands curled into a fist against the door. “And we both know what your promises are worth.”

“You know that’s not fair,” Gabriel said. “I thought you were dead, Veda. I saw the plane blow up—”

“Oh, and remind me, which ancient culture’s mourning rituals involve sleeping with the deceased’s sister?”

Joyce and Daniel both looked at him. Joyce especially.

“And who are you, sweetheart?” Veda said, turning to Joyce. “His latest?” She looked Joyce up and down,
like she was measuring her for a coffin. “Well, Gabriel, I guess you are maturing. At least this one’s not eighteen. Are you, honey?”

“Excuse me,” Joyce said, her eyes sparking every bit as much as Veda’s. “We just barely escaped being shot at and blown up and chased off a hotel roof, we climbed down thirty stories and stole a car, and all this is after we very nearly got buried alive
twice
—
and
I spent five days hanging in a goddamn cage—and we’re asking you for what, a lousy glass of water and a place to sit down? Lady, maybe he did screw your sister, but right this moment I honestly don’t give a damn!”

“Well, now,” Veda said. “Little spitfire, aren’t you? I’d watch out for this one, Gabriel. She might actually use the cleaver when the time comes.”

“The time won’t come,” Gabriel said. “I’m sorry it ever did with you. Honestly, Veda, I never meant to hurt you.”

Veda blew a raspberry. “No, you just meant to deflower my sister. You know the worst part? She still talks about you. Says she never had another man who could measure up to you.”

Daniel and Joyce looked at him again. Especially Joyce.

“Do you think, maybe,” Gabriel said, in a small voice, “we could have this conversation inside? And maybe also in private? No reason Joyce and Daniel need to hear this. They’re tired—”

“I’m not too tired,” Joyce said. “And I’m finding this fascinating.”

“Well, take notes, love, because with this one you can’t be too careful.”

“Veda,” Gabriel said, “you’ve got the wrong impression, we’re not involved—”

“Shush, you,” Veda said, and turned back to Joyce. “What’s your name, sweetheart?” Joyce told her. “And that’s your father?”

“My uncle,” Joyce said.

“Your uncle. I’m sure you have a good reason for carting him around while people shoot at you. Why don’t you come to the kitchen with me and tell me all about it…”

Veda took Joyce by the elbow and led her off, leaving the front door open. It was as much of an invitation as he was going to get, Gabriel thought. And maybe more than he deserved.

“You really slept with her sister?” Daniel whispered as they stepped inside.

“Daniel,” Gabriel said, “I’d think twice before lecturing anyone else on the subject of betrayal.”

Sitting on the couch, Joyce held the Star of Arnuwanda and read off the Nesili symbols along the outer rim:
spire
,
cattle
,
tilled field
,
ash
,
offering
,
manure
,
dune
,
killing
,
dread
,
tar pit
, and on and on, dozens of them, like some sort of glossary of the Hittite world. Daniel, sitting beside her and holding a bag of ice on his swollen knee, periodically corrected her translations.

Veda came into the living room. “So that’s the Star you were telling me about?”

“The Star of Arnuwanda, that’s right,” Joyce said. “It’ll tell us where the third Eye of Teshub is hidden—but only if we can figure out what the third element is.”

“You mean element like hydrogen and helium and uranium?”