She was behind the third one, bound as he’d been, hand and foot, though they’d left her shoes on, and had put duct tape over her mouth.
Where had her captors gone? Where were the rest of them?
There was no time to ask those questions, and Matosian wasted no movement wondering about it or getting her untied. When he gently removed the duct tape from her mouth, he paused for a half second to touch her lips with his own. Then, taking her by the hand, he pulled her from her chair, and they were off and running down the hallway, toward a stairway beyond which shimmered the glow of sunlight!
They came out into an all-but-deserted alley that led off Red Square, and a fortuitous one at that. At the end of the block, as they were just coming out into the crowded square and the view of the Kremlin again, Matosian suddenly stopped, looking up.
“What is it?” Chloe asked.
“Look.” He was pointing to an ornate iron streetlight right above their heads. Matosian had almost run into it. The light was off since it was daytime. But its spherical bulb was held up by an amazingly realistic sculpture of the Sphinx. “This is it,” Matosian cried.
“I don’t see it,” Chloe said.
“Sure you do,” Matosian answered gently. “It’s the face of a woman and the body of a lion. And what is a lion?” he asked.
“A cat!”
His face lit up into a huge smile. “Hurry,” he said urgently. “There’s still time.” And taking her hand again, he started to run.
“I didn’t even realize that there was a Sphinx here,” Chloe said.
“They’re all over the place,” Matosian answered. “Santorini and Thebes in Greece, Giza in Egypt, St. Petersburg in Russia, and many, many more.”
“But then, how did you…?”
“As they knew I would, I recognized that the specific Sphinx on that streetlamp was based on the one here at the Louvre.” He stared for a moment at the enormous stone carving. “I really do think we’re getting close now,” he said.
“But who are ‘they’?”
“Yes,” he said. “Who are ‘they’?” He sat on a stone bench across from the ancient sculpture, patting the space next to him in invitation.
Chloe lowered herself down next to him, close enough so that their thighs touched. She took his hand and after a moment, he turned to her. “When I thought they were going to hurt you,” he began, and then could not go on. She reached up then and touched his lips with her free hand, and then that hand went back around his neck and brought his face down to where their lips could again meet-this time not as a ruse to fool Matosian’s pursuers as their first kiss had been in London, nor out of relief as the kiss they’d shared under the Kremlin. This time, their bodies lingered, their mouths locked in a transporting kiss of passion and connection.
When at last they broke it off, it had grown dark in the museum.
Matosian savored the first bite of his foie gras, the first sip of their twenty-five-year-old Chateau d’Yquem as he looked across the room at the beautiful woman who was returning from the ladies’ room, walking toward him 125 meters above Paris. “I don’t know how we’ve gotten to here,” he said when she got to the table and sat down, “but I’m so glad that we have. I never thought that this-a feeling like this-would happen to me. Here’s to you.”
She raised her own glass. “And to you. And us.” She tasted her foie gras, quickly seared and served with candied figs and a balsamic gastriche, and seemed to nearly swoon at the flavors. But then, abruptly, her face clouded over. “But where exactly are we?”
He knew, of course, that she wasn’t speaking literally, and he came forward and lowered his voice, his food for the moment forgotten. “All my senses tell me that we’re where we’re supposed to be.”
“But where do we go next? And to look for what?”
“Whoever’s running this hasn’t let us down yet,” Matosian said. “We’re here because they drew us here. I think that even though it goes against my every instinct, the best move now is simply to wait until they contact us. Otherwise, the trail simply ends here, and that I can’t accept. Not after all we’re been through.”
As though on cue, the tuxedoed waiter appeared at the table. “Mr. Matosian?” he queried.
Matosian looked up expectantly. “Guilty.”
“There’s a phone call for you at the reception kiosk.”
Flashing a quick and knowing glance at Chloe, Matosian stood and turned to accompany the waiter back to the small podium near the restaurant’s entrance. There he picked up the headset of the old-fashioned telephone and said hello.
“Gato,” came the cryptic reply in an electronically scrambled male voice.
“Gato yourself,” Matosian snapped, “and the horse it rode in on. Tell me what this is all about right now or I’m out of it. We’re both out of it.”
“How do you know you can trust the woman?”
“You killed her sister, damn you. That’s how I know. She wouldn’t be in this at all if it weren’t for that.”
“Her sister was collateral damage,” the voice said. “It couldn’t be helped. And unless you’re very careful, the same fate may befall her, too. And in the very near term. Do you hear what I’m saying?”
Matosian, suddenly now as close to panic as he’d ever been, raised his eyes and found Chloe still seated at their table, finishing her foie gras, relaxed and beautiful. “I hear you,” he managed to get out. “What are my instructions?”
The voice didn’t hesitate. “The best thing you can do is get to your hotel as soon as you can.”
“Who are you?”
“Call me Honest Abe, but don’t waste any time thinking about me. Time is of the essence now. Now! This second.” The voice repeated with metallic urgency. And then, with a click, the connection went dead.
Matosian hung up and walked as quickly as he could without calling attention to himself back to his table. Chloe looked up at him questioningly as he took out his wallet. He was just dropping a thousand-euro bill on the table when the waiter reappeared with an amuse-bouche, some sort of superlight looking spoon-sized quenelle in a saffron broth, which he placed in front of Chloe.
Matosian leaned over her and rasped out, “Don’t touch that. Don’t take another bite.”
“But monsieur…” the waiter demurred.
Matosian straightened to his full height. “Non, monsieur. Pourquoi pas vous même le mangez?”-“Why don’t you eat it yourself?”
The waiter went white.
“Je suis sérieux,” Matosian said. “I’m serious. Just take that little bite.” Then, suddenly, the tension and danger of the past few days took over and Matosian took the little proffered spoon and in one fluid and lightning motion forced the waiter’s hand up to his mouth, where he stuffed the little ball of dough and held the man’s jaw shut for another couple of seconds.
As soon as he let go, the waiter spit the dough out and grabbed for one of the glasses of water on the table. At the same instant, Matosian grabbed Chloe’s hand and forcibly lifted her out of her seat. “We’re out of time here,” he told her.
Behind her, the waiter had taken one step back toward the kitchen before his knees seem to give out from under him and he fell headlong into the spirits tray.
“Now! Now! Now!” Matosian pulled Chloe along behind him as the crowd in the restaurant rose almost as a single unit to see what had caused the disturbance. They were both walking double-time, holding hands, past the standing, sometimes screaming, panicking patrons and toward the exit and the long elevator ride down. But then Matosian, thinking better of using the elevator, led her back even farther to the little-used stairway with its three hundred or so steps to the ground.