He could hear voices, muted by the distance. No one seemed to be guarding the base of the ladder, but Kismet felt a growing apprehension. After so many fruitless years of searching, had he finally happened upon the sanctuary of the mysterious group that had become the object of his own epic quest? Somehow, secret passages and hidden vaults seemed a little too cliché for the almost faceless enemy he had pursued for almost two decades. Still, there was only one way to find out. Gathering his courage, he lowered his feet onto the first step and began climbing down.
When he had descended to the point where his entire body was below the opening he paused to look around. The floor was further down than he expected. The room into which he was lowering himself was a vast hall, greater in dimension than the church auditorium above. From floor to ceiling there was easily thirty feet of space, the uppermost third given to a framework of exposed wooden rafters. Three long beams ran the length of the hall, a distance that Kismet had yet to determine, while crossbeams and braces spanned every ten or so feet of its width.
The floor was bare stone, devoid of any chairs or fixtures, but the rough wood and stone of the walls were adorned with tapestries and banners, many bearing heraldic crests from various European monarchies, most of which were no longer in existence.
"Well?" prompted Lyse, her voice a stage whisper.
Kismet looked up through the aperture. "I think there's another old church down here. Or maybe a meeting hall, probably for a Hibernian order."
"A who?"
Kismet shook off the inquiry. "Never mind. If you're coming down, try to keep quiet."
She nodded, then slipped out of her pumps and began her descent. Kismet took another step down; his feet were now level with the rafters. The nearest long beam, the one running down the center, was a little more than three feet away. He reached out to it with his foot, then released his grip on the ladder and transferred his weight onto the outstretched extremity.
The beam was wide enough to stand on, but he nearly lost his balance as he stepped across. Though both feet were planted, he had to flail his arms until regaining his balance. He remained there for a moment, arms outstretched like a tightrope walker.
"You've got to be kidding," whispered Lyse.
"It's not that hard," he lied, grinning. "I'll give you a hand."
"I'll give you a hand," she muttered, balling her right into a fist and shaking it at him. She nevertheless reached out and gripped the ladder with her left hand. With the mid-thigh length cocktail dress eased up just a little higher in order to facilitate movement, she extended her right foot toward the beam. Her short legs had more difficulty bridging the expanse, but she succeeded, only to find herself in a situation more precarious than she had first imagined. An instant later, Kismet's steadying hand wrapped around her wrist.
"Slowly," he admonished. "I'll help you over, but if you move too fast, we'll both fall off."
She nodded. "Here I come."
He began exerting a steady pull on her arm. Lyse eased forward, shifting her weight onto her extended right foot while lifting her left from the ladder step. Only his grip held her back from a thirty-foot drop. As Kismet drew her toward him, he turned on the beam, trying to compensate for the change in his center of gravity. Sensing that success was imminent, Lyse brought her feet together too quickly, causing him to teeter over empty space. Realizing her error, she tried to adjust, pulling him closer. For a moment, it was as if they were engaged in a ritualistic dance high above the ground. After what seemed an eternity of wobbling and flailing, their equilibrium stabilized. Lyse spied a crossbeam two steps away and released her grip on Kismet's hand. She hastened toward the upright post and desperately wrapped her arms around the angled braces which ran from the ceiling to the beam.
"That wasn't so bad, was it?"
She threw him a withering glare. "And just how in the hell are we supposed to get off this thing?"
Kismet ignored her question. "Come on."
He eased along the broad rail, exhibiting more confidence about his footing than he actually felt. The sound of the voices below grew louder. After traversing three of the crossbeams, he could make out the conversation at the distant end of the hall, and realized that he was the subject of the discussion.
"How did he react?"
Harcourt tittered obnoxiously. "I could have knocked him over with a feather."
"The question is, will he help us?" Kismet did not recognize the voice, but heard the unmistakable tone of authority it commanded. He was close enough to see the group, which meant he might be visible to them. Hunkering down behind a crosspiece, he eased out just far enough to spy on the discussion below.
There were eight people gathered at the back end of the hall. Four men, dressed and postured like bodyguards, flanked Harcourt and the man to whom he spoke. Three of them wore generic black suits, the conspicuous bulges of shoulder holsters visible beneath their arms. The fourth was too enormous to wear a jacket, but like the others sported a leather holster that wrapped around his shoulder blades. More than six and a half feet tall, with bulging muscles and the battered features of a veteran brawler, his wild eyes were nearly obscured by the mop of curly hair that fell down over his forehead.
The other two figures in the room were seated in a corner. Kismet could see only their feet, close to the legs of the chairs in which they sat. One was clearly female, with shapely calves extending from the folds of a simple wraparound skirt. From his obscured viewpoint, he could see nothing above the knees, but what he could see of the motionless figures was unsettling.
"I don't know," Harcourt answered. "He seemed very upset at the speculative nature of our mission. Perhaps you will succeed in persuading him, where I failed."
The other man sighed and paced around the area, affording Kismet a chance to glimpse him. He was a tall man, perhaps a hand's breadth taller than Kismet himself. A moat of hair encircled a shiny bald pate and continued down the man's cheeks in a bushy, but well-groomed beard. The fellow was on the portly side, but carried himself with a regal posture apropos of his authoritative voice. Kismet noted that his dark suit was of a style that had peaked in popularity near the beginning of the last decade, suggesting that the bald, bearded man had worn his girth proudly for many years.
"A wasted effort," the man declared. Kismet noted also the soft pronunciation of the consonant 'r', and placed the man in an aristocratic New England background. "I should have gone directly to him myself in the first place. But let us focus our attention elsewhere for the moment."
"I see that you have visitors," Harcourt observed.
"Yes. Allow me to introduce Peter Kerns, formerly Petr Chereneyev, a fugitive from Soviet Russia."
"And the girl?"
"His daughter." The man's answer was off-hand, as if the second prisoner was of little interest to him. He did not offer her name.
Harcourt was silent for a long moment. "Is it necessary for them to be tied up like that?"
"Sir Andrew, I don't think you appreciate the urgency of our situation. I require results, and quickly. I cannot invest my resources in the possibility that Mr. Kerns here will cooperate of his own accord. The measures I have taken will insure that he does."
"Nick," whispered Lyse at Kismet's shoulder. "You said that this guy Harcourt knew something he wasn't supposed to know, right?"
Kismet nodded.
"Was it some kind of government secret?"
Kismet's brow furrowed. "I guess you could say that. Why?"
"That guy down there, the fat one. His name is Halverson Grimes; used to be Admiral Halverson Grimes. He was an aviator during Viet Nam; a bona fide war hero."