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He ascended quickly, realizing only when he was near the top that the trapdoor had been lowered into place. He kept climbing until his shoulders were against the barrier, then levered his legs to lift it out of the way. Before he could raise it however, he felt the ladder tremble faintly; Irine had begun climbing beneath him. He groaned at her impatience and resumed pushing against the trapdoor. It was heavier than he expected, but when he tried again, it abruptly flew open. The solid planks slammed against the floor of the confessional with a bang that made him wince, but there was nothing he could do about it. He advanced another step up the ladder, poking his head out.

Halverson Grimes stood in front of the opening. Behind him, outside the confines of the confessional, were half a dozen men, uniformly dressed in black suits.

"Oh." Kismet didn't know what else to say. He looked down, his own body blocking his view of Irene. "Get off!" he hissed.

"What?" Oblivious to the threat above, she took another step up.

"Unless I'm mistaken," Grimes observed pontifically, "you must be Nick Kismet. A pleasure, sir. We need to talk." Two of Grimes' men pushed past their leader, assuming defensive postures on either side of the hole.

"Indeed, Mr. Kismet. There is great deal to discuss."

FOUR

Kismet leaned back a few inches and looked down. Irene's face was visible in the space between his legs. She was peering up at him, still unaware that their escape was in jeopardy. His brain went into overdrive. If they could not go out the way they had come in, what options remained? He contemplated using the captured revolver preemptively, but promptly dismissed that idea. Hanging from a ladder thirty feet up, shooting through a narrow hole in the floor was not his idea of a defensible position. Better, he decided, to get both feet on solid ground.

"Irene," he whispered again. "Get off the ladder."

"What?"

He knew that she had heard him. Her question was not a request to repeat himself, but to elucidate. Kismet growled in irritation. He didn't have time to stop and explain every move to her.

"Please come out of that hole, Mr. Kismet," urged Grimes. "I assure you, you have nothing to fear from me." Then, with a smile that was not as benign as he perhaps intended, he added: "If you cooperate."

"As much as I'd love to stay and chat…" Kismet replied disingenuously. He looked down one final time. With cautious, deliberate movements, he slipped his left foot off the rung, bracing the arch of his shoe against the outside of the ladder. Increasing the tenacity of his handhold, he then lifted his right foot and positioned it similarly. "Coming down," he whispered.

Understanding dawned in Irene's eyes. She quickly scampered toward the floor. Kismet returned his gaze to the menacing group of faces that was drawing ever closer, Halverson Grimes chief among them.

"As I was saying," he remarked, "I've already made plans for the evening. Perhaps we could get together for lunch sometime."

In the instant that Grimes registered a puzzled expression, Kismet released his hold, gripping the outside rails of the ladder loosely with both hands and feet.

Gravity seized hold of him and he plummeted. Immediately, he collided with something — Irene Kerns — and his carefully guided descent went askew as they both dropped to the floor in a painful tangle of limbs.

Grimes' voice was audible above them, ordering his cronies to go down and subdue the escapees. Kismet experienced a moment of déjà vu, flashing back to the sewers of Marrakech. The difference this time, aside from the lack of an unpleasant odor, was that the bad guys had a ladder to climb down. He scrambled to his feet determined to remove that liability.

The opening above grew dark as a descending body eclipsed the aperture. Kismet briefly considered shooting the man right there, but quickly realized the flaw in such a strategy; if the confrontation became a shooting match, Grimes' men and their ammunition would certainly hold out longer than he and his. Instead of dealing with the man, Kismet chose to deal with the ladder.

Dropping into a low stance, his shoulder leading, Kismet rammed the ladder like a charging football linebacker. His shoulder hit the sturdy wooden frame and he bounced back, spilling onto the floor. A flash of pain was followed by a numbed paralysis, but he judged the maneuver to be a partial success. The ladder shook violently with the blow, and the man who was climbing down, now clutched desperately to regain a secure handhold. Kismet got up, lowered his other shoulder to the ladder and charged again.

The right rail of the ladder split nearly in two as Kismet struck it. The descending man now gave up any thought of continuing, choosing instead to regain the safety and stability of the floor above.

Kismet did not charge a third time, but instead seized hold of the bottom rung and wrenched it from side to side. The damage he had already caused to the ladder was quickly aggravated and the rails broke apart near the top where they had been bolted into the underside of the floorboards. With a satisfied grin, Kismet stepped back as the elongated structure tilted sideways and fell over, splintering when it crashed on the stone floor.

The noise of an explosion, like a car backfiring, roared in his ears and reverberated in the confines of the underground room. A bullet kicked up a small puff of dust, just behind him and left a tiny pockmark in the stone floor.

"Damn," he exclaimed, darting away from the remains of the ladder. Irene was already up and moving, seeking cover from the gunfire, which was quickly becoming a hailstorm of bullets. Kismet reached her side and seized her hand, then guided her toward the place where she had earlier been held captive.

They quickly passed out of the broad, cone shaped area where they were in the most danger of being wounded, but Kismet knew that the seconds he had gained by destroying the ladder would be lost by any delay on their part. With his free hand he took out and opened his knife.

"How are we going to get out of here?" Irene asked frantically.

"Back door," muttered Kismet, releasing her hand and sprinting ahead. He was dimly aware that she had stopped running, but he did not slow down. Instead he aimed himself at the wall, focusing on the heart of the enormous tapestry mounted there. The center of the woven shield was like a bull's eye on a target and the blade in his hand was an arrow intent upon piercing it. As he got closer, he raised his arm and brought it down, slashing at the fabric of the great tapestry. The knife cut a long gash in the old cloth before entangling in the fibers. Kismet's momentum caused him to fall forward, into the middle of the ornamental weaving, where he hung momentarily like a fly in a web. As he moved to extricate himself, his weight broke apart the remaining threads, and the tapestry tore in two all the way to the floor, dropping him into the darkness beyond.

Irene approached and looked at him in stunned amazement. Kismet's gambit had revealed a secret passageway. "How did you know about that?"

He got up, wincing from pains old and new. "A guess. Earlier I saw that the fabric was moving, almost like it was being rustled by the wind. I assumed that the tapestry was put up to cover an opening."

"If you had been wrong, you would have run into a brick wall."

Kismet knelt and retrieved his Balisong from the twisted remnant of the tapestry and flicked it shut. "Good thing I wasn't."

"And this will lead us out of here?"

The sound of a shot rang suddenly in the underground chamber, impacting the wall that framed their escape route. The shot had been fired from ground level; Grimes' men had found a way down. Kismet didn't look back.