Gabriel found himself smiling. He saw his leather jacket lying ten feet away, a wet and crumpled heap on the stone. Somewhere in the heap was a pocket, and in the pocket Lucy’s box was silently sending out a signal. “Very clever.”
“I wish I could thank him properly,” Michael said. “But he refused to take any money. It’s strange, dealing with someone this way. I’ve never even met the man. I don’t even know what he looks like.”
“Oh, he’s…uh…”
“What?” Michael said.
“Big,” Gabriel said, and wiped a tear out of his eye with the back of one thumb. “A big, big man. My size. Mean-looking.” He took a deep breath. “Lots of tattoos. Not your kind of guy, Michael. I think it’s better if you don’t meet him in person.”
“Well…maybe you’re right,” Michael said. “But I’m still grateful to him.”
“Me, too,” Gabriel said, climbing into the cabin. “Me, too.”
The End
From the Desk of Gabriel Hunt
When I was in Istanbul, I met a pair of writers doing research in the Yerebatan Sarayi, the Sunken Palace. One of them, I learned, was an author of adventure fiction, and when the time came for me to pen the book you’re holding, I tracked him down and asked if he might give me a hand. (I would have done it myself, gladly, but I was unfortunately tied up with some matters in Brazil at the time. And I do mean tied up.)
Happily, Charles agreed to help. And I asked him if, when the novel was finished, he might consider writing an extra adventure story of his own for the book, as a sort of bonus for the reader. Happily, he agreed to this as well.
So I’m delighted to present you with a surprise treat, a novelette that’s never appeared anywhere before: “Nor Idolatry Blind The Eye” by Charles Ardai.
—G.H.
I
The heel of the bottle cracked against the bar on the first swing and then shattered on the second. The few conversations in the room died. In the silence Malcolm could hear glass crunching under his feet. He felt his legs shake and put out his other hand to steady himself.
There were three of them, and a broken bottle wouldn’t hold them off long enough for him to get to the door. Assuming he could even make it to the door without falling on his face. There was a time when he could have made it in a dead sprint, turning over tables as he went to slow them down, but then there was a time when he wouldn’t have had to run from a fight in the first place, not if it were a whole regiment facing him. A time when he’d been able to hold his liquor, too. But that was all part of the past—the dead past, buried three winters ago in a cold Glasnevin grave.
He shook his head, but it didn’t get any clearer. He remembered coming to the pub, he remembered taking his first few drinks, and he remembered the three men taking up positions around him, reaching over his shoulder to collect their pints from the barman. Was that how the argument had started? Or had one of them said something? That he couldn’t remember. He supposed it didn’t matter.
The one in the middle was younger than the other two—just a kid, really. He was wearing a navy peajacket, probably his brother’s or father’s since he looked too young to have served himself. The others were dressed in denim windbreakers and dungarees, like they’d just stepped off a construction site. Which maybe they had—there was still plenty of rebuilding going on. The one on the left had the crumpled features of a boxer who’d taken too many trips to the mat. The one on the right looked almost delicate, his thin nose and long chin giving him the appearance of a society lad slumming in a tough neighborhood. Malcolm knew which one he’d prefer to face in a fight. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like he’d get to choose.
All three had their hands up, palms out, but it was a gesture of mocking deference, not fear. Malcolm swung the bottle by the neck and they didn’t even bother to step back.
“Go on, old man,” the one in the middle said. “Just try it.”
“Leave me alone,” Malcolm said, or tried to—the words sounded strange to his ears, like he was talking through cotton. He forced himself to enunciate. “I don’t want to fight you.”
“Bugger that,” the society boy said. “You’re bloody well going to.”
Malcolm feinted toward the boy’s face with the jagged edge of the bottle, then dodged around him. The door was open and the way before him was clear, but he felt himself stagger as he ran, felt his head spin and the floor lurch up to meet him. He fought to catch his balance and then lost it again. He fell to one knee and the bottle spilled out of his hand.
The first kick caught him in the side as he was standing up, and it laid him out flat on the floor. After that, Malcolm couldn’t say who was kicking him or even what direction the blows came from. He covered his head with one arm and tried to back up against the bar.
One boot heel caught him in the chest. By some old reflex, he snaked an arm out and pinched the foot in the crook of his elbow. He twisted violently and its owner came crashing to the floor.
“That’s it,” one of them said. Malcolm felt a fist bunched in the fabric of his shirtfront, felt himself lifted bodily from the floor and pressed back against the bar. It was the boxer’s meaty fist at his throat, the boy in the peajacket looking on angrily over his shoulder. So the society lad must be the one laid out on the floor, groaning curses into the sawdust. Well, he had taken one down, anyway.
“You’re going to wish you hadn’t done that,” the boxer said.
Malcolm swung a fist at him, but it was hardly a punch at all, and the man holding him deflected it lightly with his forearm. In return, he threw a right cross that snapped Malcolm’s head violently to the side. Malcolm felt blood on his cheek where the man’s ring had scraped a ragged groove, and he tasted bile when he swallowed. He tried to raise a knee toward the man’s groin, but he couldn’t—they were standing too close together, and anyway his legs felt like lead. He groped behind him on the bar, hoping his fingers would find something—a glass, an ashtray, anything—but all they found was another hand that pinned his firmly against the wood.
“Teach him a lesson,” the boy in the peajacket said. He pressed down, grinding Malcolm’s knuckles into the wood. “Teach him good.”
He felt a thumb and forefinger at his chin, positioning his head, saw the man’s fist cock back, saw it snap forward. After that, he didn’t see anything, just felt the punches landing from the darkness.
One punch split his lip against his front teeth and he gagged from the taste of blood. He felt the night’s liquor coming up and he made no effort to stop it. Vomit poured out of him, a day’s worth of food and drink expelled in foul batches. The men holding him yanked their hands away and Malcolm slid to the floor.
“Goddamn narrowback lush—” Another kick dug deep into his belly. From somewhere off to one side, Malcolm heard the click of a switchblade opening.
“Cut the sorry bastard—”
He forced his eyes open, rolled out of the way as the blade descended. It was the boy in the peajacket holding it. He swung again, and Malcolm lifted an arm to block it. He felt the blade slice through the sleeve and streak across the flesh beneath it.
“Stop that!”
It was a woman’s voice. Malcolm hugged his bleeding arm to his chest and looked for the source of the voice. A pair of legs approached, clad in nylons, a tan skirt ending just below the knee. The shoes were brown leather and scuffed, with low heels, the sort a certain type of girl would call “sensible.” On either side, a pair of paint-smeared dungarees turned in her direction.