field of view.
'Who is it?' The suspicious voice on the speaker sounded like that of the young woman in the surplus field jacket.
'Me. Take a look.'
'What the fuck d'you want?' Now she sounded outraged.
'Let me in and find out.' He could only hope they didn't realize the old man was up and running at full strength again.
A moment later, bolts and locks were being undone.
As soon as the door began to open Joe stepped in and called out in a loud voice words in Latin, words that he'd burned into his memory years ago.
Confronting him in the sparsely furnished living room, gaping at the way he'd yelled, were the young field- jacket woman and an overweight, hairy man, a breather too, who held an automatic weapon ready in both hands.
'What'd you say?' the man with the gun demanded sharply. 'Was that a name?'
'It was,' said the old man, coming out of thin air to stand some six or eight feet to Joe's right. He ignored the Uzi now suddenly leveled at him and in polite tones posed a couple of questions for the youth who aimed it. 'Where is Valentine Kaiser? What orders has he given you?'
The potbellied one stood playing with his weapon, a finger on the trigger. 'Up my ass. Ya wanna look?'
As far as Joe could tell, he himself was the first one in the room to start moving. He jumped before anyone else, as soon as the contemptuous vulgarity had registered. Because no one was going to get away with talking like that to the old man, not in this kind of a situation. It just wouldn't work. A photofinish camera would have caught Joe somewhere between a standing position and the floor, just at the moment when the old man, having taken time to think things over, started moving too. But still Joe's reaction, like those of the other breathers in the room, came much too late and in fact he needn't have bothered.
The Uzi, finger on the trigger or not, never fired. Instead it was wrenched out of its owner's hands with a force that might have harvested a finger or two with it and should have produced a yell of pain.
But the potential yell never had time to get started. The automatic weapon came right back to the man who'd lost it, the curved steel bar that formed the stock driving right into his face, thrust at him by the old man's one-handed grip on the barrel.
By now Joe, lying prone, had his own pistol out of the shoulder holster. But he saw no evidence that it was going to be needed.
Mr. Maule cast the Uzi aside disdainfully—when you needed a flyswatter you could always find something that would serve—and dusted the fingers of his right hand lightly against one another, demonstrating grace and distaste at the same time.
He smiled briefly in Joe's direction. Then, with an expression of sorrowful contempt, he turned to regard the young woman in a field jacket, who for the last ten seconds had not moved a muscle, but had turned quite pale.
'Valentine Kaiser?' Maule inquired gently. 'His present whereabouts? His most recent orders?'
'I don't know,' said the young woman, in equally polite tones. Then she collapsed to the floor in a dead faint.
By this time Joe was on his feet again. He put his gun away. Then he knelt beside the field-jacket lady and searched her for weapons.
The old man had started going through the place. Joe followed. He looked into the bathroom where Liz Wiswell had died, but her body had been removed. The tub and surrounding tile had been scrubbed clean. Only the bolts and fasteners driven into the walls above the tub remained to show that something strange had happened here.
He prowled on, cautiously, joining the old man in a bedroom, where Maule had just discovered some of Valentine Kaiser's—or someone's—home earth.
The old man was murmuring thoughtfully to himself, ripping open plastic bags with fingernails suddenly grown talonlike, running the dried earth through his fingers onto the floor. Then he dropped the stuff, dusted his fingers again, and faced the bedroom windows. 'This is on the north side of the building, like my own abode. Joseph, see if one of the windows opens.'
Joe went to confirm the fact that here, as in Uncle Matthew's own place, one of the windows had been modified so that it could be opened. No doubt untrammeled access to the night air was a handy thing for any vampire to have. He asked: 'How about getting rid of some of this dirt while we're here?'
'An excellent idea.'
When Joe turned from emptying the last plastic bag outside, he saw that Maule had left the room. He was back in a moment, carrying one-handed the body of the man who had once owned an Uzi. Hauling the inert figure to the window, Maule pushed it out through the narrow opening, still supporting it in his grip. Then he maneuvered his own arms and shoulders out.
Joe saw Maule's body twist, and heard him grunt with a burst of explosive effort. Then he was standing still. Joe, pushing back a drape and looking down, could see nothing but some moving lights of traffic.
'There,' Maule said. 'A neat landing, atop the new construction. Beside his fellow, who went down some time ago, from my own window. On this foggy evening, it appears that no one struggling with the traffic in the streets below, or on the building's lower floors, has yet noted anything amiss.'
Joe cleared his throat. 'I see,' he said.
Maule started briskly for the living room once more, this time with Joe right on his heels. They both checked out other rooms on the way. There was no one else in the apartment. When they reached the living room, Joe saw to his relief that the body of the young woman who had fainted was gone, and the front door was standing slightly open.
'I will not pursue her, Joseph.' Maule was looking at him with a mixture of sympathy and amusement. 'My mind is on bigger game.'
Chapter 17
Around the middle of August, in the year 1503, word reached me at the distance of a few days' ride from the Eternal City that on the twelfth of that month both Pope Alexander and Cesare had suddenly been stricken desperately ill. There was grave doubt of the father's survival, and the son was incapacitated, prognosis uncertain.
The message arrived near midnight. It was in fact my old friend and former lover Constantia, Cesare's sometime lover (and, I believe, quite possibly Alexander's too), who brought me this information, at a speed greater than that attainable by any breathing human of the time.
I was to tell no one, but proceed to Rome as rapidly as possible, dropping at once all other business on which I was engaged. This created some awkwardness, which I dealt with as best I could, leaving a note at midnight for my immediate subordinate and taking wing from the nearest window, in bat-form, very shortly thereafter.
The news of course perturbed me, but actually almost any interruption would have been welcome at the time. I was still brooding over the sour aftertaste of my revenge, such as it had been, on Bogdan and on his fellow traitors. Why had my efforts been so fundamentally unsuccessful?
But now, as Cesare's faithful agent, I had much more pressing matters to consider. On hearing that the Borgias had been simultaneously stricken, the first thought that leaped to my mind—and to the minds of a great many of my contemporaries—was poison. One of their damned plots had somehow backfired on them; or Madonna Lucrezia, driven mad by their continued ill-usage of her as a political pawn, had finally struck back at her father and brother, or some rival faction had suddenly acquired a skill equal to theirs in the formulation and use of deadly potions.
Constantia on bringing me the news let me know that she favored this last opinion. She also voiced her sadness that her young and powerful lover had been so stricken.
So concerned was she for her lover's life, she informed me, that before leaving on her courier's mission she
