nine, twelve, twenty-five. Another dash. Yeah?”
“Got it.”
“Then seven, eleven, nine and seventeen. That’s the lot.”
Sayid repeated the numbers, with all their spaces and the dashes.
Max could see something else but it was blurred. Whoever had etched these tiny inscriptions onto this stone must have spent hour after patient hour doing it-it was the work of a craftsman. Or a determined scientist.
Max eased the eyepiece slightly, refocusing it. Now the numbers became blurred but the rest of the drawing revealed itself.
He looked up at Sayid. “There’s a drawing etched on this thing. Get me something to write on, will you?”
Max put his face back down to the eyepiece as Sayid grabbed one of the old brown files from the shelf, tore it down its middle and gave it, and his pen, to him.
Sayid stopped. “I think I heard something,” he said quietly.
“Like what?”
Sayid shook his head. They listened. It was silent, except for the eerie moaning of the wind torturing the gargoyles.
“Stay at the door. You hear anything definite, tell me. I need more time.”
Sayid moved to the doorway as Max put his eye back to the telescope.
Max put the folder on his lap and drew what he saw using his other eye. It was a long-sided triangle in a circle. Very similar in shape to, if not the same as, the drawing he had found earlier. But there was a single letter at each point of this triangle-
Max had the next part of the secret. The vital element of the dying monk’s legacy. In less than a minute he had drawn a rough copy. He unscrewed the pendant from the eyepiece and folded the file’s cover in half, tucking it into his jacket pocket.
Time to go!
He pulled himself free of the sliding chair, closed the louvered window and walked quickly to Sayid.
“Sayid, I’ve got it. We’re getting out of here.”
Too late!
Max saw the ghostly image of a man walking up the stairs towards them. It was the German. And he was smiling. Max realized he was the one who had switched off the alarm system.
“That’s good, Max. We could not find it.”
Max realized with a sickening lurch that he and the woman must have known he would be at the chateau today. How? Who had told them? It didn’t matter right now. Max had played into their hands and they had waited in the darkness, giving him all the time he needed to try and work out Zabala’s secret.
The shock lasted no longer than the words spoken. Max got between the approaching German and Sayid, shoved Bobby’s mobile phone into Sayid’s hand and pushed him towards the chateau’s main bedroom. “Go, Sayid! Phone Bobby!”
Sayid didn’t argue and, like a stick insect in fear of its life, loped away on his crutches.
The man stopped, shook his head and lit a cigarette.
“Max, there’s nowhere to go.” He stopped midstairs, gazed upwards and shrugged, watching the smoke drift lazily into the moonlit stairwell. “I am not alone.”
Out of the darkness two figures bounded up the stairs past the nonchalant man. Bikers. One armed with a motorcycle chain, the other with some kind of short iron bar-a wheel brace. They were going to hurt Max and Sayid badly. There was no sign of Sharkface, but Max recognized the tough-looking teenagers as being part of his gang.
“Don’t kill him. Not yet. Go for the injured boy first,” the German called.
If they got to Sayid, they would inflict so much pain on his friend that Max would sell his soul to have them stop.
But he wasn’t ready to turn and run.
Grabbing an Ethiopian shield and a set of lethal-looking antelope horns off the wall, he attacked, jumping down the top three stairs and smashing into the dumbstruck bikers. The German turned and ran, one of the bikers tumbling head over heels after him, catching the back of the man’s legs, crashing the bodies down together. The German yelled in pain and anger.
The second biker regained his balance and swung the chain hard towards Max’s head. Max ducked, turned his shoulder, raised his arm, felt and heard the power of the blow clattering across the shield, and lunged. The boy’s eyes widened as Max went for his throat. The fear served Max well; it was exactly what he wanted. The boy faltered, took a step backwards, found himself trapped against the banister-as Max drove the attack home. The horns went to each side of the boy’s neck, pinning him next to one of the monster creatures carved into the main staircase. A flicker of shadow and light, its eyes gleamed, as if relishing the helplessness of the boy held so close to its jaws.
No sooner had the biker been pinned than a whisper of air came out of the darkness. Max spun, raised the leather shield-a knife thudded into it.
The German’s voice cried out a command from the pit of darkness below: “We need him alive!”
But the pounding of more feet told Max that kids don’t always do what they’re told by adults, no matter how much they’re being paid. The first figures moved into the light. He could see the knives in their hands now, the moonlight glinting on dull metal. Max was defenseless except for the shield. They would soon get through that. He turned to run, but a twang and a shuddering impact into the wall stopped him dead in his tracks. An arrow had pierced the half-light just in front of the attackers. Max looked up. Sayid stood awkwardly against the balustrade, a short African hunting bow in his hands-and let another arrow fly down the stairwell. It thudded into one of the silently screaming gargoyles’ heads. The bikers faltered, holding back, keeping themselves out of sight. Max seized his chance.
In a few strides he was at Sayid’s side. “That’s all the arrows there were,” Sayid said, trembling with the effort, fear and excitement.
Max was already bundling him back towards the chateau’s main bedroom. He had done enough to stop the savages for a few moments.
“You saved my neck there, Sayid.”
Sayid smiled. “I did?”
“Yeah. Though another couple of centimeters closer and it would have gone
“I’ve never fired a bow before,” Sayid said as Max shoved the door closed behind them.
“I’d never have guessed,” Max said through gritted teeth as he pushed a big piece of antique blackwood furniture across the door. It took all his strength to shift it, but the fear of who was coming up the stairs helped his efforts.
“There’s no reply from Bobby’s phone,” Sayid said.
“Then we’ll make it up as we go along,” Max said, but he wasn’t smiling. They were in real trouble now without any backup.
Satisfied the piece would keep anyone from forcing the door for a while, he took his bearings. Could they hide here? Heavy furniture, cabinets and tables supported by legs of twisted wood; a leopard skin on the polished floor. Latticed windows, a chaise longue, a boxed bed, the wooden sides almost touching the ground. There was nowhere they could conceal themselves and not be found in seconds. Heavy blue curtains draped the bed and windows; a door led to a dressing room. It was almost pitch-black in there.
Grunts and shouts came from the other side of the bedroom door. They were pushing hard. The furniture shifted a few centimeters.
Max gripped the lip of a big table and heaved it in place. That would buy precious minutes. All those curtains! They had to be of some help. Max snatched at the corded tiebacks, his eye catching the benevolent stare of Antoine d’Abbadie and his wife, Virginie, their gold-framed portraits gazing down above the black marble fireplace. Max felt a twinge of guilt for the ugly stench of brutality he had brought into the eccentric man’s home. The concerted effort of that brutality, banging and shouting behind the door, that was trying to reach Max and Sayid.
