John laughed, “Doc, now how the hell would you know that? You’ve never even been here before.”
“Well, Charlemagne
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
“Wait,” he said breathlessly, “just let me… ” He read the note urgently:
“Doc, for Christ’s sake—”
“John, John!” he said, his thoughts tumbling wildly. “It’s the book! The book!”
He grabbed it clumsily, 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.
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!”
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
