The Medusa Amulet (48 page)

But no sooner had he found it, loud and clear, than he felt as if a wintry wind had just blown through his very bones. Even in that
stifling room, he felt a glacial chill. Rather than being able to marshal his own thoughts, he found them scattering in all directions, like dead leaves drifting across a field of rubble.

Concentrate
, he told himself.
Concentrate
.

But it was like loitering on a battlefield, after the slaughter.

He gathered himself together, trying to erase the desolate scene, and tried again. With every ounce of energy that he could muster, he burrowed into the Führer’s brain.

And this time—this time—he saw Hitler’s head snap backwards. The palsied left hand—was the man diseased?—brushed the back of his hair again, in what was plainly a nervous tic.

He had found his point of entry, and now the marquis bored in deeper, harder. His own temples throbbed with the effort. The Führer’s shoulders seemed to droop, his knees to bend.

“Of course we haven’t even begun a proper interrogation,” Himmler was saying, as if Sant’Angelo weren’t there to hear it. “This so-called marquis cannot be as ignorant as he claims.”

Sant’Angelo was careful not to move a muscle, or call any undue attention to himself, as he continued about his work.

“But in my estimation, the entire chateau is a source of power,” the professor added. “I felt it the moment we passed the gatehouse. We must look under every stone.”

The blood drained from the Führer’s face, and he wavered on his feet. His hand shook more violently, and Himmler suddenly took note.

“Mein Führer,” he said, “are you all right?” He motioned for the desk chair—an ornately carved throne—and one of the soldiers carted it around the table as if it were made of toothpicks and slapped it down behind him. Himmler guided their shaken leader onto its velvet seat.

“Go get the doctor!” Mainz cried, and the soldier standing by the door bolted down the stairs.

Beads of sweat dotted Hitler’s brow.

The marquis concentrated even more. Like a mole, he was tunneling
into the deepest recesses of the monster’s brain, and there, once he was at the very core, he would brew a storm so great that the Führer’s eyes would go blind, his ears go deaf, and his blood would boil beneath his skin. To the Nazis in the room it would look like a stroke—a fatal stroke—the kind that might suddenly afflict anyone … even the master of the almighty Third Reich. And no one would be the wiser.

But then the jolt came. The counterattack.

Sant’Angelo had never felt such a powerful blast. It dwarfed Cagliostro’s powers.

The Führer, whose chin was nearly resting on his chest now, whose whole left arm was quivering, showed no emotion, but the shock wave came again, rocking the marquis so hard he nearly lost his balance. He was amazed that no one else had felt it.

Recovering himself, he leaned forward, his hands on the desk to brace himself, but now he saw Mainz, kneeling by the chair, glance up at him suspiciously.

“What are you doing?”

Sant’Angelo couldn’t reply—he needed to focus all his attention. Hitler slumped in his chair, as Himmler stood helpless by his side.

“Answer me!” Mainz stood up, fists clenched, the veins bulging in his neck. “What are you doing?”

Sant’Angelo summoned all his strength, whipping the storm inside the Führer’s head to an absolute fury, a raging tornado of pulsing blood and engorged vessels, of electrical discharges and chemical surges … dragging him toward the brink of a fatal seizure or stroke. He didn’t care which.

But Mainz had figured it out, and he was grabbing at the marquis, wrestling with him.

“Shoot him!” he shouted at the oafish guard. “Shoot him in his fucking head!”

As the two men fall to the floor, struggling, the marquis felt another shock of retaliation, as powerful as a hammer blow to his chest.
The Führer’s power was greater than anything he had ever encountered, as if he were channeling the devil himself.

The guard was trying to get a clear shot, but Sant’Angelo and the professor were so entangled that it wasn’t possible.

And that was when the marquis was able to reach under the table and snare the garland.

Mainz’s heavy hands were grappling at his throat, but Sant’Angelo banged a fist under the man’s chin, so hard that the back of his head smashed against the bottom of the table. While he was absorbing the shock of the blow, the marquis was able to crawl free … and settle the silver circlet around his brow.

He was crouching on the floor, framed between the open French doors, when the band took its effect. The marquis watched in the mirrored walls as his own image rippled, faded … and then disappeared. A bullet from the guard’s gun shattered the glass behind him, as Hitler’s head came up, his hooded, bleary eyes searching out his enemy. His face had the demonic glow of a furnace.

Himmler, who had spent his whole life in search of just such magic as the marquis had displayed, stood slack-jawed, while Mainz and the soldier, gun still raised, froze in place, not knowing what to do.

Before they could gather their wits, Sant’Angelo sprang to his feet and moved to one side.

“Shoot where he was!” Mainz screamed, and a second later the woodwork exploded in splinters.

“Block the door!” Himmler cried, and the remaining soldier jumped to block the stairs.

There was only one way to go, and even as Sant’Angelo realized it, so did Mainz.

The marquis ran out onto the balcony, and was about to climb over the railing and down the vines, when he felt the professor’s hands, groping wildly in the air, catch hold of his collar. Sant’Angelo squirmed out of his grip, but Mainz seemed to have a sixth sense about where he was, and snagged him again.

“I’ve got you now, you bastard!” Mainz crowed, his hair sopped in blood, his lips flecked with foam, as he pulled him back from the balustrade. “I’ve got you!” he spat at the night air.

And Sant’Angelo took hold of his loden coat and swung him around so violently that he tripped over his own feet, struggling all the while to hang on to his invisible prey.

“I’ve got you!” he rasped, as the marquis swung him around one more time, before suddenly letting him go. Mainz careened toward the balustrade, teetering there for just an instant, his arms spread wide, before the invisible marquis shoved both hands against his burly chest and sent him plummeting over the rail.

“Shoot everywhere!” Himmler shouted, and the soldier emptied his Luger in an arc, hitting nearly every spot on the balcony.

“Alive!” the Führer croaked. He had lurched up from his chair and was leaning hard against the doorframe, his left arm shaking uncontrollably. “I want him alive!”

A dozen soldiers charged up from the stairwell, rifles at the ready.

And that was when Sant’Angelo, perched like an acrobat on the balustrade, leapt into the embrace of the closest oak. Crashing down through the boughs, his legs twisting and breaking as he fell, he was finally, miraculously, suspended, as if by a celestial hand. High above the ground, in the blackness of the night, he was sheltered among the thick branches and leaves.

But the pain in his legs was nothing compared to the pain in his heart. In one fell swoop, he had lost his chance of assassinating the Führer … and he had lost
La Medusa
, too.

Chapter 34

When David woke up, he didn’t know which was more disorienting—finding himself in a canopied bed in the Marquis di Sant’Angelo’s house … or finding Olivia asleep in his arms.

Their clothing, dry and laundered, was neatly set out for them on a wooden rack, along with several new items—shoes and coats, most notably.

And someone was knocking, again, on the door.

David pulled the sheet up over Olivia’s shoulders, and said, “Come in.”

A maid, carrying a breakfast tray, entered and without even a glance in their direction, left it on a table by the window. Opening the curtains, she revealed a lovely view of the park … and its now-placid boating pond. “Monsieur Sant’Angelo,” she said, before closing the door on her way out, “will see you in the salon when you’re done.”

When the door closed, Olivia opened her eyes. “So this is real?”

David could hardly believe it himself. “I think so.” But Olivia’s naked body, her head nestled against his chest, was definitely real. The bed was big and soft, and their two bodies had made a deep, warm indentation in the mattress. He felt her slender fingers graze his shoulder, his arm … and much as he hated to interrupt, he knew that he had to.

“Can I take a rain check?” he said.

“What is that?”

“It means, hold that thought. I need to find a phone.”

Grabbing his robe off the back of a chair and a cup of coffee from the table, he went out into the hall—he had hardly seen anything of the upstairs the night before—and bumped into the maid again. “Is there a phone?” he asked, and she pointed him into a sitting room filled, as was much of the house, with antique statuary. David felt sure he recognized one bust as being that of Cosimo de’Medici, and another, judging from its skullcap and regalia, as a Renaissance pope.

His first call was to the Hotel Crillon, where Gary had indeed left a message. “Call me, anytime, as soon as you get this.” It was the middle of the night in Chicago now, but David wasn’t about to wait. He called Gary’s cell and Gary picked up on the second ring.

“Sorry if I woke you,” David said, “but your message at the hotel said to call.”

“You’re not checking your cell?”

“I lost it,” David said. “What’s going on?”

He could hear Gary stirring in his bed, gradually waking up. But David was already calculating. How bad could it be if Gary hadn’t said anything yet?

And then he did speak.

“David, you need to come home.”

His heart stopped in his chest. “Why? What’s happened? I thought Sarah was responding so well to that new therapy.”

“Not anymore,” Gary said, his words coming slowly, and with great deliberation. “She had a bad relapse, and they’ve stopped it altogether.”

David waited for word on what they were going to try next … but it didn’t come.

“Sarah’s been back at the hospital,” Gary said, “but she’s been moved.”

“Where?” David asked, dreading the answer.

“The hospice unit,” Gary said, as if he didn’t want to say it any more than David wanted to hear it. “But it’s really not a bad place.
They’re making her as comfortable as they can, and Emme was able to come by for a pretty decent visit. Sarah’s got her own room, with a view of a little rock garden with a pond, and the staff has been great.”

David was still waiting for it all to sink in.

“But I’m afraid that Dr. Ross doesn’t think that she’ll be there for very long.”

“How long does he say?” David asked.

They both knew what they were really talking about.

“A few days, at the outside. That’s why you need to get back home as fast as you can. Sarah said she would wait for you—and you know how it is when she makes up her mind to do something,” Gary said, starting to break down. “But this is just too much for her—she’s not going to be able to hold on much longer.”

When they hung up, David sat on the sofa, staring blankly at another bust, this one in the center of the mantel. It was a woman with a haughty expression, her face turned to one side and a mane of luxuriant curls falling onto her bare shoulders.

His immediate thought was to call the airport right away and book the first flight back to the States. With luck, he could be back in Chicago in eight or nine hours.

But to do what? Kiss his dying sister good-bye? To tell her that he had failed in his mission to save her—and right when the answer was nearly in his grasp? If the journey he had been on had taught him anything, it was that the world was a far stranger place than he had ever imagined. His eyes strayed again to the bust on the mantel, and for some reason, even now it captured his attention. He found himself rising from the sofa to inspect it more closely.

And that was when it struck him, just as it had when he’d come across the sketch of Athena in the pages of
The Key to Life Eternal
. There was a real-life model for this antique bust, and he had met her.

“I carved that myself,” came a voice from the doorway. It was Sant’Angelo, in a silk smoking jacket worn over a pair of dark slacks and a crisp white shirt with billowing sleeves. “Ascanio bought the
marble from Michelangelo himself.” He came into the room, studying David for his reaction. “Does she remind you of someone?”

“She does.”

“She should. I first met her at the court of the French king, and she was my muse from that day on. Her name was Caterina.” He touched the stone. “What does she call herself now?”

“Kathryn.” What was the use of concealment any longer?

Sant’Angelo, the tip of his cane grazing the floor, nodded. “It’s just like her to have kept her name like that all these years. She was always stubborn.”

“And you?” David said, hardly believing that he had entered into this conversation at all. Could he actually be speaking to his boyhood idol, the legendary Benvenuto Cellini? “Weren’t you famously hardheaded, too?”