Aaron Elkins - Gideon Oliver 01 - Fellowship Of Fear Page 21

  He smiled sheepishly and sat down. "I guess I do. I’m not sure why you put up with me." He turned over The Skull of Sinanthropus Pekinensis. The back cover was partially torn off. "They nearly knocked it overboard, and my arm with it. Bruce will have a fit."

  "Well, for all the reading you’ve done in it, you could have left it with him this morning."

  "I know. I really did mean to read it, though."

  "Go ahead; it won’t bother me. I should go mingle for a while, anyway. I’ll bring you back some wine later on."

  After she had left, he realized that the boat was on its return trip; he had slept longer than he thought. When she returned with the wine half an hour later, the book lay on his lap, still open to page three. With a sigh, he closed it and willingly gave himself up to the Rhine, the wine, and Janet.

  GIDEON poured another glass of the superb 1971 Johannisberger Auslese from the little gray ceramic pitcher in front of him. Then he sat back, absently fingering the raised crest on the pitcher while he gazed at the famous vineyards that ran from the edge of the terrace down almost to the Rhine far below. He was utterly content. Russian spies and military secrets and threats of war and umbrella-guns were parts of another world.

  At the table with him, John, Marti, and Janet looked equally relaxed with their own glasses and pitchers. In the middle of the table, two plates held some creamy white smears and a few dark specks, all that was left of a huge order of weisskase and black bread.

  They were on the Rheinterras at Schloss Johannisberg, a few miles south of Rudesheim, refreshing themselves before continuing back to Heidelberg. The university had reserved five tables at the famous castle, home of the Metternichs since the early 1800s and prime source of one of the world’s great wines. As he did every year, according to Janet, Dr. Rufus was paying for it out of his own pocket. There had been several toasts to the chancellor, and he had returned them copiously. He was, in fact, well into his fourth pitcher of wine, and more red-faced, amiable, and bearlike than ever, moving from table to table, backslapping, guffawing, and mopping his beaming face.

  "It’s a good thing he’s going to be riding home in the bus," John said, smiling, as they watched him roar delightedly over something a pretty history instructor had whispered in his ear.

  "Yes," Gideon said. "It’s nice to see him have a good time, though."

  Marti spoke suddenly, directly to Gideon: "Hey, who invented wine?"

  "Well, let’s see," he said. "I’m not really sure. The Romans and Greeks had it—"

  "Same kind of wine as this?" she said, holding up her glass.

  "I wouldn’t be surprised. I think Riesling goes back to the Romans, or to Charlemagne, at least. I know he planted vines right on these hillsides about 800 a.d."

  John laughed, "Doc, now how the hell would you know that? You’ve never even been here before."

  "Well, Charlemagne did plant vineyards in the Rheingau hills—everybody knows that—and the Rheingau isn’t very big, and these are the only hills that are—"

  He stopped suddenly as he was waving an arm over the scene. Two bulky men were walking onto the Rheinterras, looking casually about them. Gideon stared hard at them. Then he looked away. Janet had been wrong; he was sure of it now. The man who had bumped into him in Rudesheim and the yellow-hatted tourist who had nearly knocked him from his deck chair had been the same. And here he was again, once more with the fat bald man who had pinned his arms on the Drosselgasse.

  "What’s the matter, Doc? What is it?" John spoke urgently, his eyes sweeping the terrace.

  Gideon didn’t reply. Out of the corner of his eye, he had seen them notice him and gesture inconspicuously at the wine glass near his hand. But why the wine glass? He looked down at the table; wine glass, pitcher, book…The book!

  He suddenly remembered the envelope he’d been carrying in the inside pocket of his jacket all day. Fingers trembling with excitement, he pulled it out and tore it open.

  "Gideon," Janet said, "what is it? What’s wrong?"

  "Wait," he said breathlessly, "just let me…" He read the note urgently: Do not let book, Skull of Sinanthropus Pekinensis out of your sight… " Good God!

  "Doc, for Christ’s sake—"

  "John, John!" he said, his thoughts tumbling wildly. "It’s the book! The book!"

  He grabbed awkwardly at the book, almost dropping it, and riffled the pages. At once, near the back he found the half sheet of memo paper with writing in pencil on it. He read it aloud in a stunned whisper: " ‘Deployment of tactical air forces. 1. Northern sector: Fighter-bombers, missile-equipped, 220 aircraft …’ God!" It finally clicked in his mind. He spun out of his chair to face the two men, and shouted to the others at the table. "Janet, watch out! John—"

  He was too late. They were both running for him, scattering people and knocking over the light metal tables.

  Glasses and pitchers shattered on the ground. Dr. Rufus, directly in the men’s path, stood up and reached out a hand to stop them. Without breaking stride, the blond one knocked him to the stone floor with a brutal forearm blow to the face.

  "He has a gun! Watch out!" Dr. Rufus shouted from the ground through blood-smeared lips, his voice shocked and weak.

  John had risen from the chair and was reaching into his jacket when they got there. The bald one rammed his gun against Marti’s throat, making her cry out. John dropped back into the chair at once, his face gray. The blond one, flat-faced and powerful, shoved Gideon into his chair and snatched the book, with the paper inside, from the table. Then, from behind, he caught Janet’s throat roughly in the crook of the same arm and forced her to rise, gasping. He jammed the gun hard into the small of her back; she winced and made a soft, frightened sound.

  Gideon’s mind was raging with anger and panic. If they hurt her… He tried to speak but choked on the words. Let her alone, he thought, take the damn paper, but let her alone, let her live…

  Marti was also pulled to her feet, and both women were dragged to the railing with guns pressed into their backs. The terrace was suffused with a weird, panting silence. Gideon’s heart pounded terrifically. Let her live, let her live . .

  The blond climbed awkwardly over the railing, keeping his hold on Janet’s throat. Breathing hoarsely, he began to pull her over the railing with him. Gideon gathered himself to leap, but John pushed him back down. The man looked quickly over his shoulder at the drop of three or four feet to the vineyard below. Janet, her face stony with terror, struggled suddenly, throwing him off balance. The gun gleamed evilly as he waved one arm to regain his equilibrium. The other arm shifted to get a more secure grip on Janet’s throat.

  And Gideon launched himself. It seemed to him that he flew the entire ten feet without once touching the ground. Certainly he was in the air when he struck, so that the full weight of his body was behind the rigid arm and outstretched hand that caught the man full in the face. His long, powerful fingers twisted, squeezed, and shoved at the same time. The man’s arm flew from Janet’s neck as he was flung backwards off the terrace to land jarringly on his feet in the dirt below.

  Gideon swept Janet from the railing and onto the terrace floor with a backward swipe of his arm, and then fell on top of her and rolled on his side to shield her from the gunman. But the gunman wasn’t shooting. He stood stunned for a second, then picked up the book, which had fallen to the ground, and began to run clumsily down the hill through the rows of grapevines.

  The bald man, in the meantime, had managed to pull Marti over the railing, while keeping his gun pointed at John’s head. When he dropped with her to the vineyard below, one of her heels caught in the soft, plowed earth, tearing off her shoe and twisting her sideways toward the ground. The man had her by one arm, trying to pull her to her feet, when he looked up to see John vaulting over the railing in a great, arching leap. He stumbled back out of the way, firing one jerky shot at the big airborne body coming down on him, but missed wildly. John landed awkwardly on one foot and one hand, and staggered off balance
toward Marti, who lay face-down and still. The bald man fired and missed again, then began to run down the hill after the blond man. John fell as he reached Marti, but managed to take her in his arms. She hugged him fiercely. He buried his face in her shoulder for a moment, then stood up quickly.

  Gideon began to get to his feet, and to help Janet up. As he did so, he saw three figures moving diagonally across the vineyard a few hundred feet below, running in a path that would cut off the two men floundering down the slope.

  John pulled his pistol from a shoulder holster and shouted at the escaping men. "Stop! Halt! Police! Polizei!"

  They kept running. He fired once in the air, then took quick aim and shot at them.

  "Oh, dear God," Janet said. Gideon pulled her to him and hid her face against his chest.

  John fired again. Both men dropped into crouches behind a row of vines and returned several shots in a rapid spatter of gunfire.

  The Rheinterras, which had been so strangely hushed, erupted with noise and action. Bullets ricocheted and clattered, tables overturned, people screamed and ducked. Gideon dropped to the floor again, with Janet still in his arms. On the ground just below the terrace, he could see John, seemingly unhurt, bent over low and trying to peer through the rows of grapevines. One of his hands was on Marti’s shoulder, keeping her near the ground.

  Gideon heard a far-off shout, unmistakably a command. He looked in the direction of the sound. Farther down the hill, behind a low stone fence near the road, were the three men he had seen cutting across the vineyard. They were pointing squat, ugly handguns at the crouching men. The three were in identical postures. Each was on one knee, calmly sighting along the gun held in his extended right hand while the left hand cupped the right wrist.

  They were a different breed, those three. Gideon could see that from two hundred feet away. Not like the tense, crouching men with the book; not like John, excitable and gallant; certainly not like Gideon himself, who could move from violent, courageous fury to hesitant timidity and back again, all within a few seconds. These three were professionals, emotionless, just doing their savage job, and terribly sure of themselves. Gideon knew the two crouching men would die. A cold droplet of sweat ran down the middle of his back.

  The crouching men turned toward the shouted command, craning their necks to see through the vines. John held his fire and watched. The terrace was silent and breathless once again. The sound of a heavy truck shifting gears was somehow carried up from the Rheingoldstrasse along the Rhine, faint and strangely mundane. People on the terrace began to sit up or get tentatively to their knees. Janet pulled her face away from Gideon’s body and started to rise. He put his hand on her arm to check her, and they both watched, leaning on their elbows.

  The crouching men finally saw the ones at the stone fence and fired, once each, before the men began firing back. The sounds were flat and unimpressive on the open hillside, like the tiny explosions of penny firecrackers. But Gideon could see how the powerful repercussions jerked the hands of the men at the stone fence as if they were puppets with strings around their wrists. Only their hands moved. They didn’t duck or flinch or shift their positions. They remained, each on one knee, straight-backed and impassive, firing slowing and steadily.

  The blond, beefy man with the book was hit first. He stood up suddenly, almost angrily, his back slightly arched, and flung the book over his shoulder. Then he seemed to leap backwards off his feet, landing flatly on his back. He twitched and began to rise, getting as far as his knees and waving his gun drunkenly, but facing the wrong direction. He put a hand on a vine support to steady himself, then twitched wildly one more time and fell forward into the row of vines. There he lay still, his upper body supported and shaded by the trellis, his knees and feet on the ground. Gideon saw the gun slide gently from his fingers and knew he was dead.

  The bald man, who had seemed momentarily benumbed by the sight of his partner dangling from the vines, now shook himself, snatched up the book, and began to sidle rapidly between two planted rows, scrambling along in the dirt on his hands and knees, his fat thighs pumping. The vines gave him little protection, Gideon saw; when he came to the end of the row, he’d be completely in the open. Gideon wished he would surrender. His naked skull looked vulnerable and pink; it would stand up to bullets about as well as a soft-boiled egg.

  The three men at the stone fence did not encourage him to give up. They had given him his chance; the choice was his. Dispassionately, they swung their weapons slowly to the right, following him. At the end of the row of vines, the bald man gathered himself. His intention was obvious. He would fire a few quick shots to cover himself, then dash across the ten feet of open space to the start of the next row. But what then? Give up, Gideon urged silently. Throw the gun down. The man propped himself up like a racer, ready to make his run.

  "Give up! Surrender!" Gideon was startled by his own hoarse shout, and strangely embarrassed, as if he had made some ill-bred noise. On the terrace, faces turned reproachfully toward him. Bruce Danzig, huddling under a table a few feet away, threw him a disgusted glance. He half-expected to be hushed by the others.

  Angrily he shouted again: "Surrender, damn you! They’ll kill you!"

  The bald man paid no attention. He scrambled across the open space, firing a nervous shot as he ran. The men at the fence swiveled in calm unison, and their guns jerked at the same time, ending with little flourishes, as if they were a formal firing squad.

  Nevertheless, the bald man made it across the open ground to the cover of the vines. He ran a few feet into the rows, then sat down with his back against a support post. Gideon saw him take a deep breath and let his chin sink to his chest as if he were quietly weeping.

  Thank God, he thought, he’s had enough. He relaxed his tense shoulders and heaved a sigh of relief. At the same time, he was uncomfortably aware of a small dark part of him that was disappointed, that would have liked to see the thing carried out to its bloody end.

  As he shook his head to clear the thought away, he saw the men at the fence rise and walk confidently forward, their guns held loosely. Puzzled, Gideon looked at the fat bald man. He had not moved, was not moving, was not looking at them. He still sat slumped against the post, his head drooping dispiritedly. The book lay open on his lap as if he were reading it.

  And in the middle of his chest, just below his chin, a red flower of blood bloomed rapidly over his sky-blue shirt.

  TWENTY-ONE

  EVEN less coherent than usual, Dr. Rufus was the picture of consternation. And yet there was something about the agitated features, the contorted expression, that didn’t quite fit, something that bothered Gideon, worried him. But he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. He leaned forward and watched intently as the chancellor dabbed at his neck with a sodden handkerchief and babbled on.

  He had already been babbling for some time. As soon as the shooting had stopped, one of the NSD agents had run up to the terrace—he was surprisingly young, seen up close—and brusquely herded the USOC group into the interior of the wine restaurant, there seating them at several long tables. In a strong Scottish accent, he had flung terse, excited questions at them: Had anyone recognized the two men? Were they already on the terrace when the group arrived? Who saw them first? What were they doing? Did they talk to anyone?

  The responses had been listless and uninformative, and the agent, still flushed and edgy from the killings, quickly became hostile. Dr. Rufus, as protector of his brood, had sprung up and begun to prattle. But what was it about him…?

  "…and when I saw that he had a gun," he was saying, "or rather that they had guns…why, I…I was so startled I couldn’t believe my eyes…in a place like this…I still can’t believe it, just can’t believe it…."

  "I want to know exactly how he got his hands on the book," the agent said, looking at the floor.

  "The book, yes, the book!" Dr. Rufus said. "Why ever would he steal a book? Why, he just ran right up to the table and…and…"


  It came to Gideon at last, with a shock that made him blink. He stared at Dr. Rufus for another few seconds, then leaped suddenly to his feet. The chancellor stopped in mid-exclamation; his eyes riveted on Gideon’s face. The others looked up to see what had cut off the reassuring, familiar river of words.

  Gideon pointed a shaky finger at Dr. Rufus and spoke, his voice choked.

  "It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the one."

  Every sound in the room stopped. There was a strained hush, an electric stupefaction. It seemed to Gideon they were all caught in a flash photograph; the only movement was the trembling of his finger, the only noise the pounding in his ears.

  "The spy, the mole, whatever they call you," he said. "The USOC spy. The traitor."

  Outraged noises burst from half the throats in the room. Eric Bozzini jumped up angrily, Janet turned an appalled face toward Gideon. John looked as if someone had hit him on the head with a mallet.

  Gideon’s confidence wavered. He shouldn’t have been so impulsive; he should have waited, checked out his ideas, talked to John. His finger was still leveled dramatically at Dr. Rufus’s nose. A little shamefacedly, he dropped his hand to his side.

  Dr. Rufus finally found his voice. "Gideon…my dear boy, I know you don’t really mean…I hardly know what to say…" His palms were lifted, his eyebrows raised in astonishment.

  Gideon looked at him a little longer. "No, it’s you all right," he said.

  Another hostile roar came from the faculty. Bruce Danzig bobbed up from his chair and rapped his fist delicately on the table. "Damn you, Gideon!" he shouted, every vowel and consonant meticulously wrought.

  The agent strode to the center of the room. "That’s enough now," he said. "Everyone sit down." The authority of sudden death still cloaked him. Everybody sat.

  The agent looked at Gideon with dull eyes. "Now," he said. "Just you."

  Gideon spoke directly to the agent, working hard to keep his voice steady. "It’s Dr. Rufus who’s working for the KGB, who had that information put in my book, who arranged those two—"