Chapter 13
Jenny, tensed and determined to do what she could to protect Bravo from the Knights' attack, saw the driver's head pop out of the side window.
'Get in!' he shouted.
Even while she was wondering what Anthony Rule was doing here, Bravo called out, 'Uncle Tony!'
Rule risked a quick glance at the cyclist and at once saw the raised gun. 'Get in, the two of you! Hurry!'
Jenny opened the SUV's door, placing her body as a shield between Bravo and the gunman. A shot rang out, piercing the window, shattering the glass. Jenny pushed Bravo's head down behind the metal as she bundled him into the backseat. The instant she jumped in, Rule took off. With a fierce blare of his horn he stopped two oncoming cars in their tracks and caused a minor fender bender as the vehicle behind them couldn't stop in time. He turned the wheel over, they jumped the low concrete divider between the road and the car park and, with more room to maneuver, he accelerated into the vast cobbled apron behind the line of tour buses. By this time they'd left the gunman far behind, a fact remarked on by Rule as he checked the rearview mirror.
'I'd have run over the bastard if I'd been alone,' he said. Then he chuckled low in his throat. 'But if I'd been alone he never would have been here, would he?'
'Speaking of which,' Jenny said tartly, 'what are you doing here?'
'Wait a minute,' Bravo said, 'you two know each other?'
'You're welcome,' Rule said to Jenny as if Bravo hadn't asked the question. Then, when he saw her frown, his eyes flicked to Bravo in the mirror. 'What was I thinking? She's the Ice Goddess, after all.'
'The Ice Goddess. That's what the other Guardians call me,' Jenny muttered darkly.
'You give them sufficient cause,' Rule said.
'Oh, yes,' she said, rising to the bait, 'it's always my fault, isn't it?'
'And here's a newsflash for you, kiddo, it isn't only the Guardians.'
'Why should I give a crap?'
Rule shrugged, as if to say that if she didn't want to take his advice, it was of no moment to him.
Bravo observed this dialog with a growing sense of astonishment. Not only did his father have a life kept secret from him, so did Uncle Tony.
'Shaken up, Bravo?' Rule said, as if reading his thoughts.
'Give me a minute.'
Rule drove them out of the rear of the car park and into the new city, turning this way and that as if he were in a video game, making sure their enemies couldn't follow them. Of course, it made perfect sense that Uncle Tony was a Gnostic Observatine. Bravo had always called him Uncle Tony not because he was related but because he was so close with Bravo's father.
'You still haven't told us what you're doing here,' Jenny pursued doggedly. 'It can't be coincidence.'
'Coincidence doesn't exist in the Voire Dei, does it, kiddo?' Rule shook his head. 'No, I was following the trail of the second key.'
'The second key?' Bravo said.
Uncle Tony nodded. 'There are two keys to the cache. Your father had one, Molko had the other. Molko was taken by the Knights, tortured and killed. We have to assume they have the second key.'
'So it has turned into a race,' Bravo said.
'In a sense,' Uncle Tony said. 'Except that the Knights don't yet know the location of the cache. Only your father knew it.'
'That's why I was being tailed all the way from New York to Washington,' Bravo said. He thought of Rossi making sure they wouldn't be shot when they fled Jenny's house, the rubber bullet with which Jenny had been shot at the cemetery. Now he had confirmation of his theory that the Knights hadn't been sent to kill them; they needed to find out the location of the cache. 'But Jenny and I took care of that before we came here.'
'What you need to understand,' Rule said, 'is that the Knights of St. Clement are like a hydra-lop off two heads and four more take their place.'
'They can't have a bug on Bravo,' Jenny said. 'He's got nothing on him he had in Washington, not even his clothes.'
Bravo leaned forward, his forearms across the back of the driver's seat. 'Except for the few things my father left me, and no one except me had any knowledge of where they were or their significance.'
Jenny nodded. 'They must be using another method to track you.'
'What do I do, then?' Bravo said.
'Keep to the plan. Trust your father. That's all you can do,' Uncle Tony said. 'Meanwhile, Jenny here has your back.'
He accelerated past two cars stuck behind a laboring truck. 'Sorry about your dad. He was one of a kind-a great man and the best friend I ever had.'
'Thanks,' Bravo said, 'that means a lot to me.'
'I know you were Dexter Shaw's oldest friend inside the Order,' Jenny said. 'Is that why you're here?'
'And you thought it was to check up on you,' Rule said with a not unkind snort. He was a tall, rangy man, with the rough and ruddy skin of an outdoorsman. His hair was going gray at the temples and was brushed forward in the style of a Roman senator. 'Well, I don't blame you. Kavanaugh took it into his head to light out after you.' A livid scar, slightly raised and ropy, ran down the left side of his jaw like an exclamation mark. 'I'd say 'poor Kavanaugh,' if only the bastard had deserved it.'
Jenny looked at him for a moment, then turned away to stare out the window.
Rule pursed his lips as if he had just tasted something rotten.
'Kavanaugh made a mistake, let's leave it at that,' Bravo said. He had grown increasingly uncomfortable with their occasional verbal slaps, and he meant to put a stop to it. 'Right now, what we need most is a lift to Paris. We've got a flight out of Charles de Gaulle at nine p.m. for Venice.'
Anthony Rule nodded. 'Only too happy to be of service.' Though he was in his late fifties, time had been kind to him. He had lost none of the casual good looks that had naturally attracted women all his life. 'Bravo, to be honest, Dex's death was a shock to me, but it was hardly a surprise. I think by now you must know what I mean. Dex knew he was marked for death, knew his murder was possible, perhaps even inevitable. That's the brutal nature of our war against the powers of evil and corruption. I wish it could be otherwise, but until the Knights of St. Clement are annihilated, it can't. It's as simple as that.'
'It seems to me that an enmity that has survived for centuries would be anything but simple,' Bravo said.
'Listen to the expert.' Rule shook his head. 'Instead of waxing philosophical, you should be concentrating that brilliant mind of yours on how the Knights have been able to keep tabs on you.'
'My father-and Jenny's-both believed there was a traitor inside the Haute Cour,' Bravo said. 'Do you?'
Rule shot a quick glance at Jenny in the rearview mirror. 'I see you've been doing your job in other ways as well, kiddo.'
Bravo noticed that Jenny had returned from her sullen contemplation of the road. At last, Uncle Tony had her full attention.
'Do you have any idea who the traitor is?' Jenny said.
'That was Dex's obsession,' Rule said darkly. 'As for me, my attentions are elsewhere. I have no opinion.'
They were on the motorway now, heading back to Charles de Gaulle Airport. Rule exited the motorway and, slowing considerably, joined the traffic on the secondary road. He took one of his periodic reads of the cars in the side mirror and made two quick turns. 'Okay, we're clean.'
They were now on a long, relatively straight stretch of road that was perfect for keeping an eye out for tails.
'They want our secrets, Bravo,' Rule continued. 'But they especially want one secret-the one your father was guarding with his life.'
'But I don't even know what that secret is.'
'Of course you don't. Jenny doesn't know what it is, and neither does the majority of the Order. But I do.'
