The two other gunmen spun around now, too, but Gabriel was upon them, throwing a powerful right cross at the first man’s jaw and getting the second in the throat with his elbow on the backswing. Neither man was incapacitated by the blow and both brought their guns into play, one firing wildly and missing, his shots tearing up the wood of the reception desk and shattering a lamp as Gabriel ran ahead of them, the other swinging his gun like a metal extension to his fist and catching Gabriel on the side of the head with it. Gabriel reeled, fell back. He dropped into a crouch and pistoned outward with one fist, sinking it deep into the man’s gut. He could hear the forceful expulsion of breath, feel the spray of spittle from the man’s lips. Gabriel followed up with a second punch, and a third, and then the man fell before a fourth could land.
Gabriel made to stand up, but was driven forward as the second man jumped on his back. The extra weight hit his ankle just right, and he collapsed to one knee.
Before him, the other gunman lay prone, his arm outstretched on the floor. Gabriel grabbed the gun from his hand, reversed it in his own, and aimed it back over his shoulder. When he felt the barrel press against something soft that wasn’t part of his own body, he pulled the trigger with his thumb. The weight vanished from his shoulders and a low moaning began behind him.
Standing up, Gabriel limped over to the wounded man. He was leaking blood from a nasty wound in his upper chest. He still held his gun, loosely, in a trembling hand, and Gabriel bent to take it away from him. He broke it open: no bullets left. Every one of them spent on the desk and lamp. He tossed the useless gun into a corner of the room, held onto the other one.
“Who…who are these men?” the attendant said, his voice rising sirenlike as he surveyed the damage. “What did they want?”
“I don’t know,” Gabriel said. “They started following me a few blocks away.” He limped over to the bulletscarred desk, leaned his weight against it. On the stairs winding up to the second floor he saw a man creep cautiously into view, a corpulent ex-military type in a gray bathrobe. He had a white moustache, fittingly enough. “Go back to bed,” Gabriel told him. “It’s all over.”
The man cast a critical eye over the scene before him. “I hope so,” he said, his British accent icy. “I didn’t pay to be woken by gunfire and fisticuffs. If I’d wanted that I could have stayed in Brixton. Excuse me, miss.” As he climbed the stairs, hugging the wall, another figure passed him on the way down. It was Sheba, wearing an identical gray robe—they must have had them hanging in all the rooms. Who would have thought it, amenities in a place like this.
“Gabriel?” Sheba said. “You okay?”
“I’m still standing,” he said. “More or less.”
“DeGroet?”
“On his way,” Gabriel said. He took Lucy’s box out of his pocket, glanced at it. “Just a hundred fourteen miles off.”
“How do you know that…?” Sheba asked and then raised a hand, palm out. “Never mind. I’ll go get dressed. We’re in 304.” She vanished up the stairs.
Gabriel walked from one of the bodies to the next. The man he’d shot had stopped moaning; he seemed to have slipped into unconsciousness. He’d live, though. The same couldn’t be said for Molnar, who’d joined his brother at last. Gabriel stopped beside the third man, who was conscious but curled up on the floor, both hands pressed to his abdomen. Gabriel aimed the gun down at him. “What did DeGroet want you to do?”
“Bring you…” The man coughed, spat a bloody wad onto the tiles. “Bring you to him.”
“Just me?”
“The woman, too.”
“Not the old man?”
“What old man?”
Gabriel nodded. Maybe now that Chios had given up its secrets, DeGroet had decided he didn’t need Tigranes anymore. On the other hand, maybe he just hadn’t told this guy about him.
“Well, tell DeGroet,” Gabriel said, “that we’re leaving the country tonight. That we’re going back to Cairo. If he’s so eager to see us, he can find us there.” When the man didn’t respond, he thumbed back the gun’s hammer. “Got that?”
The man nodded violently. “To Cairo.” He didn’t sound as though he believed it, and Gabriel knew better than to think DeGroet would—but he had to try. Maybe DeGroet would at least divert some of his men to Cairo, evening up the sides a little.
“Now get up,” Gabriel said.
“I can’t…”
“Yes you can,” Gabriel said and nudged him forcefully with his foot. The man struggled to his knees, then to his feet. His face was ashen, clammy.
When he reached the door, the man turned back. “He’ll kill you,” he said, quietly. “You know that.”
“I know he’ll try,” Gabriel said. “Now, go.”
Up in Room 304, the gray robe was on the floor and Sheba was back in her khakis and tank top. Tigranes was asleep in one of the room’s two twin beds. Christos was standing at the window, looking out at the street below.
“You think it’s safe for us to stay here?” Christos said.
“I wouldn’t,” Gabriel said. “DeGroet’s got other things on his mind now, like the treasure and the two of us, but just to be safe—” He handed Christos a slip of paper with a phone number written on it. At least it wasn’t torn from a sandwich wrapper this time. “That’s my brother’s number. Explain what you need and he’ll take care of it. Stay any place you like.” He paused for a moment. “Just not the Four Seasons.”
“Of course not,” Christos said, “that would be much too expensive—”
“That’s not why,” Gabriel said. “Oh, and tell Michael, when you talk to him, that the man you’re rooming with has the Oedipodea committed to memory. My guess is you’ll get some professional recording apparatus in the mail the next day, and a job putting it to use if you want it.”
Christos looked over at the old man where he lay. “I don’t know how he’d feel about being recorded,” he said.
“Then I hope you’ve got a good memory,” Gabriel said, “because it’s got to be preserved somehow.”
Christos nodded uncertainly.
“Listen,” Gabriel said. “What’s in that man’s head is a priceless, priceless treasure. And he knows it. When you first brought me to Anavatos, he told me about having no son to pass the poem to. He doesn’t want it to die with him. If you explain to him that you’ll be keeping it alive, that you’ll teach it to your son someday…trust me, he’ll do it.” He turned to Sheba. “You could stay, too, you know. The Foundation could certainly use a linguist working on the project. The first translator of the Oedipodea—it could make your career.”
“That it could,” Sheba said, a hint of her long-buried Irish accent coming out in her fatigue. “And perhaps it will. But I’ll never feel safe unless I know this is over. And I can’t let you face it by yourself.”
“Don’t be silly,” Gabriel said, “I can—”
“You can, you can…do you ever listen to yourself?” She came over to him, put a hand on each of his shoulders. “You’re hurt, you’re tired. You’re not going to be alone, too. Besides,” she said, “I already got us on a plane leaving in—” she glanced over at the clock on the bedside table “—forty-seven minutes.”
“You got us on…” Gabriel said. “Who has a flight leaving Istanbul at three AM?”
“FedEx,” Sheba said.
“You got us on a FedEx plane?”
“The Hunt name really opens doors,” Sheba said. “You should try it sometime.”
He gathered her up in his arms, kissed the top of her head. So much for stewardesses and icepacks—but with a nonstop cargo flight they might be able to beat DeGroet to the island, even if he flew one of his own planes.