“Tears of a clown,” Shawn wailed. “As tears go by. Summer kisses, winter tears.”
The gun in the man’s hand wavered for a moment; then he lowered it. “We’ll take all three of them,” he said. “There might be some use to him.” He turned toward the back of the barn and called loudly. “Leonard! Chip! We’re going now.”
“Chip!” The name burst from Gus’ mouth before he could call it back. The only Chip he’d heard of in the past few days was the one who had been Kitteredge’s student. Chip Polidori. Which meant that everything the professor had told them was not a paranoid delusion, but was hideously, horribly true.
If Pinstripe noticed that Gus had spoken the name, he didn’t show any signs of it. He waited silently until a windowless van pulled up around the plane and the other two masked men got out.
“We’re taking all three of our guests back to London,” the leader said. “Load them in the van.”
The two men started to move into the stall, but Malko stepped into the stall entrance, blocking their way. “I allowed you to question them for free,” he said. “But if you’ve decided to complete the transaction, I’m going to need my payment now.”
“When we have the sword,” Pinstripe said.
“You don’t understand me,” Malko said. “I don’t work on consignment. I have betrayed not only my employer but a man who considers me a friend. For that, I expect to be paid exactly what I deserve. And to be paid in full. Now.”
Pinstripe seemed to think that over, then nodded slowly. “When you put it that way, I can’t disagree,” he said.
“Good,” Malko said.
Pinstripe raised his gun and fired three times. Three tightly grouped red spots appeared in the center of Malko’s chest. Then he crumpled to the ground.
The well-dressed man shoved his gun in his jacket pocket. “Let’s hurry this up,” he said. “We’ve wasted too much time already. Arthur’s sword is waiting for us.”
Chapter Forty
The trip in the windowless van was a smorgasbord of pain. First, one of the masked men had cut off Gus’ ropes, and the blood flowing back into this veins seemed to be made of Liquid Plumber. Then his arms and legs had been retrussed, and with no furniture to absorb some of the ropes’ pressure, he could feel his flesh being flayed from his body. The three were gagged and blindfolded and tossed onto the bare metal floor of the van, where they bounced around helplessly for what felt like hours. The only positive was that every once in a while Gus would be bounced across the van and roll against Shawn or Kitteredge, and both of them responded with grunts of pain. So at least all three of them were alive and conscious.
After a journey that felt longer than the plane flight, the van slowed and stopped. Gus could hear the front doors open and close, and then he felt a blast of cold, fresh air as the back was thrown open. Four hands grabbed him and pulled him out, then steadied him on the ground.
“If you try to escape, you’ll be dead before your second step,” an English-accented voice said in his ear. “Is that clear?”
Since he was gagged, Gus assumed the speaker didn’t need him to answer with anything but obedience, but he nodded anyway. He felt himself being led a few feet from the van and then through a door. After a few more feet, one of the men shoved him hard, and he fell backward. Fortunately there was a chair to catch him. He could feel his bonds being adjusted, and he knew he’d been tied to this chair, too. At least it was padded, which was a huge relief after the van’s floor.
After a minute, Gus heard scuffling footsteps, and then the sound of a body falling into a soft chair. Then he felt hands touching his face, and his blindfold fell away from his eyes, followed seconds later by his gag.
He looked around quickly to see that Shawn was on one side of him and Kitteredge on the other. To his huge relief, the professor didn’t seem to have been beaten too badly. There were bruises on his face and a small trickle of blood from his lower lip, but compared to what Gus had imagined he might have just come back from a spa.
“Are you all right?” Shawn whispered.
“I’m fine,” Gus whispered back. “Professor?”
“Nothing a couple of Band-Aids and some lidocaine won’t fix,” Kitteredge said. “Fortunately, Polidori’s men don’t seem to have studied much of the history of torture. If they had, they might have tried some of the more arcane techniques, such as the Black Lady of Monmouth or-”
Gus was vaguely aware that Kitteredge was still talking, but he’d stopped making sense of the actual words after the professor said the name “Polidori.” Even after all that had just happened, he couldn’t believe he was actually at the heart of a conspiracy that had existed for hundreds of years, if not longer.
If it was really true, the conspirators had certainly found the perfect spot for their headquarters. An enormous warehouse, it was crammed full of what must have been the fruit of centuries of looting. There were statues in marble and bronze, stacks of paintings in gold frames, and furniture from every period of history scattered around the floor. There were so many pieces, each one of unimaginable historical and financial value, that there was hardly a square foot of unoccupied floor space.
“Want to put money on this?” Shawn said quietly to Gus.
“On what?” Gus said, glancing over to see that Kitteredge was still lecturing on the history of torture.
“Who comes in to question us,” Shawn said.
“You already know,” Gus said. “It’s Polidori. The man you said was a hallucination.”
“Of course he’s going to call himself Polidori,” Shawn said, ignoring the fact he’d denied the man’s existence only hours before. “That’s got to be the code name. Like James Bond’s boss. You don’t really think they keep finding people who are named M to run the spy agency, do you?”
“What makes you think that isn’t his name?” Gus said.
“First of all, if you’re running a global conspiracy, you probably don’t want to put your own name on the letterhead,” Shawn said. “More importantly, it would violate the rule.”
Part of Gus wished a heavy statue would fall on Shawn before he could finish. But another part welcomed this discussion as one last bit of normalcy before they became the Cabal’s latest victims. “Which rule?”
“Think about it,” Shawn said. “Have we met anyone named Polidori throughout this whole case?”
“One of the masked guys was called Chip,” Gus said. “I assume he was Professor Kitteredge’s former student, Chip Polidori.”
“If they’re masked, they don’t count,” Shawn said. “But since you seem to be so unclear on the concept, the answer is no. No, we haven’t met anyone named Polidori. Which means that it’s a fake name used by someone we’ve encountered along the way. The most obvious choice would be Flaxman Low, but any idiot could have figured that out ages ago. It could be that Hugh Ralston guy from the museum. But what would be really cool is if it turned out to be Lassiter. No one would ever see that coming.”
“Because it wouldn’t make any sense,” Gus said. “Lassie is not the head of a secret, worldwide conspiracy.”
“Don’t be so quick to judge,” Shawn said. “Have you ever seen him and this Polidori in the same room together?”
“I’ve never seen Polidori at all,” Gus said. “And neither have you.”
“We’ll see about that,” Shawn said. “Very soon.”
Across the warehouse, a door opened and three figures stepped in. Gus tried to make out their faces as they came through the maze of furniture and artworks, but there was always something in the way.
“Last chance,” Shawn said. “Ten bucks says it’s Lassie.”
Gus ignored him as he tried to peer through the dusty air to see the faces that were approaching them. Even Kitteredge seemed to have realized that he was not in a classroom and had given up the lecture. For a moment the only sound in the warehouse was the shuffling of feet around furniture.
And then three men stepped from behind a Second Empire armoire. The two in back were clearly the subordinates. They were barely out of their twenties and looked comfortable in their workers’ coveralls.