Desperately, Gabriel rolled over as the gun beside him fired. The explosion was deafening. But it was his enemy’s head the bullet entered, not his own. The man’s hands fell away from his throat and Gabriel staggered to his feet. He kicked the gun out of the other man’s hand while Christos slugged him, hard, in the face.
“Enough!” came a nasal voice and it took Gabriel a moment to realize the word had been spoken in Hungarian, not Greek. He looked up, raising his Colt at the same time. Andras was standing near the edge of the cliff, one meaty arm around Tigranes’ throat, the other holding a pistol to the old man’s temple.
“Drop your gun, Hunt,” Andras said, “or the old man dies.”
“Lajos would skin you alive if you killed him,” Gabriel said. “He’s the only man on earth who knows about the sphinx.”
“What Mr. DeGroet does or doesn’t do is my problem,” Andras said, “not yours. Drop your gun.”
Behind him, Gabriel heard the sound of footsteps racing up to within a yard or two, then pattering to a halt. Five men, six men—who knew how many. Too many. One bullet just wasn’t enough, even if he’d been willing to risk Tigranes’ life. Which he wasn’t.
Gabriel reluctantly released the hammer of his Colt and let it slide from his hand to the ground.
He felt men take hold of each of his elbows roughly, felt his wrists drawn together behind his back, felt a length of rope binding them together. A few feet away, he saw another pair of men take hold of Christos.
Andras came forward, dragging Tigranes with him. He bent to pick up Gabriel’s gun.
“That’s a very nice weapon,” he said. “An antique, isn’t it? I think I’ll keep it.”
“You son of a—” Gabriel started, but Andras slapped him brutally across the face with the side of his Colt. He felt the slash on his cheek from DeGroet’s sword reopen and start bleeding again.
“Take them away,” Andras said, wiping Gabriel’s blood off the cylinder.
Chapter 14
They were being held in Anavatos’ tallest building, a three-story tower near the cliff’s edge that during the town’s heyday had been the site of an olive oil press, a church, and a school. Today it was an empty shell with a few unbroken benches the only reminder of its earlier functions.
From somewhere Andras’ men had found a pair of straight-backed wooden chairs, one with arms and one without, and Gabriel and Christos were tied to these, side by side. Tigranes was seated on the ground across the room, facing them, his hands free, his phorminx in his lap.
On a bench against one wall, Gabriel’s Colt lay, tantalizingly out of reach. Andras had placed it there deliberately, Gabriel figured. Just to make a point.
“Tell, old man,” Andras said, his Greek crude and heavily accented. He had a cell phone in his hand and, having dialed it a moment earlier, was holding it out in Tigranes’ direction. DeGroet was on the other end of the line, waiting silently.
When nothing happened, DeGroet’s voice spat from the speaker, thin but clear. “Kill one of them.”
“Which one?” Andras said.
“The Greek,” DeGroet said. “He wouldn’t care about Hunt.”
Andras nodded to the men standing behind Christos’ chair, and one of them drew a foot-long hunting knife from a scabbard at his waist. He held it to Christos’ throat.
“Don’t do it,” Gabriel said, in Greek, to the man. “He’s done nothing wrong. He’s one of you.”
“He chose his side,” the man muttered. His knife didn’t budge.
“Boy,” came DeGroet’s voice, “can you understand me?” His Greek was better than Andras’, though still accented.
“Yes,” Christos said.
“Tell the old man to begin reciting the poem about the sphinx or my men will cut your head off. Tell him that.”
“Tigranes,” Christos said. The old man looked over at him. “You heard what they want.” His voice trembled. “Don’t do it.”
“They will kill you,” Tigranes said.
“Lajos,” Gabriel called out, “you don’t need to do this. I know everything you want to know—I already got it out of him. Bring me to wherever you are and I’ll—”
“Oh, now you wish to cooperate. Imagine that. The great Gabriel Hunt, within an inch of losing his life at last, and now he wants to make a deal. Well, no. I think not. You had your chance—plenty of chances. No more deals. Andras?”
“Yes,” Andras said.
“Start a little at a time,” DeGroet said in Hungarian. “Cut off the boy’s hand. Then the other, then a foot. We’ll make the old man talk.”
Andras nodded again to the man with the knife and explained partly through gestures what DeGroet wanted. It wasn’t a difficult message to convey.
Gabriel, meanwhile, was straining against the ropes holding him to the chair. There was one around his wrists and another tying his ankles to the front legs, and both were taut and unyielding. With enough time and privacy he might be able to introduce some slack, work the knots apart, maybe even inch over to the wall and work the ropes against the rock till the fibers came apart—but time and privacy were two things he didn’t have.
One of the men untied Christos’ arms and then held them pinned to the wooden arms of the chair. The other, the one with the knife, said to Christos, “You right-handed or left? I’ll do the other first.”
“No,” Tigranes said. “No. I cannot sit by while this boy is maimed or killed. Not when all you wish is to hear my poems. I will play.” Angrily, he strummed his instrument, and the melody that arose sounded dark, martial.
“There,” DeGroet’s voice came from the cell phone. “You see?”
“Raise your voice in song, O goddess,” Tigranes intoned, “and tell of Peleus’ mighty son, Achilleus, who rained misery untold upon the brows of his fellow Achaeans. Many a hero among them was laid low and brought to Hades, their flesh made carrion for the beaks of vultures and the jaws of wild dogs upon the blood-drenched plains of Troy—”
DeGroet interrupted, his voice blasting from the tiny speaker in Andras’ hand: “Troy? Troy? I don’t want the Iliad, you old fool, I want the sphinx—”
“I am very sorry,” Tigranes said, his voice soft, his music stilled, “but I am, as you say, old. My memory is not what it was. I cannot enter the old tales anywhere I wish, or that you might wish—I can only remember them from the beginning.”
“You’re joking,” DeGroet said.
“From the beginning,” Tigranes repeated. “And that means I have to start on the plains of Troy. And if I am interrupted, I will have to return to the plains of Troy once more, and start over again. From the beginning.”
“I will have them kill the boy!” DeGroet shouted.
“You can kill whomever you wish,” Tigranes said. “Him, me, yourself. But it will not change the fact that I can only tell the stories in one way: from start to finish, in their proper order.”
DeGroet uttered an oath, a fevered Hungarian profanity. The language was rich with them.
“All right,” he said finally. “Do it in whatever order you have to, but for god’s sake, do it quickly.”
“For the gods’ sake,” Tigranes said, “I will do properly.”
“Just start already,” DeGroet said. “Andras—call me back when he gets to the sphinx.” And the connection was broken.
“You heard him,” Andras said, pocketing the phone. He looked around the room, the expression on his face making it clear that he’d have to be tied to a chair himself in order to sit through hours of Greek poetry being recited. “Start,” he said. “And you—” He pointed to the man with the knife. “Say me when he reaches the sphinx. I go up.” He strode out and they all heard his steps on the stairs.