For an instant, Mitch froze, then carefully eased out his gun. He stared down into the alley. He couldn't see any movement. In weather like this, not even the cats were on the prowl, and, from this height, the rats were invisible.
Who had taken the bag? Kids? Had to be. If someone was after him, they wouldn't dick around with a six- pack and a carton of smokes, but he wasn't in the mood for testing theories. He decided to go up onto the roof, where he could step across to another building and work his way down to street level a hundred yards away. He'd done it before, but not with die rooftops wet with rain.
He began to climb slowly and silently upward until he reached the roof. He was nipping around a ventilation shaft housing when his foot slid on one of the dozen or so lengths of tubular steel scaffolding left there by a careless maintenance crew. It sent him flying forward to land, facedown, in a pool of rainwater. Scrambling back to his feet, he raced for the thigh-high parapet. Reaching it, he swung one leg up, then felt a sharp pain as someone suddenly kicked him behind the knee on his other leg, which promptly gave way.
He dived for his gun but the man grabbed his arm and twisted it. The gun flew from his hand and he heard it clatter down the sloping roof. He jerked against the grip with all his strength, felt himself break away from the man, and experienced a moment of elation before he overbalanced and went over the far side of the parapet.
Fingers desperately grasping for anything within reach, he managed to latch on to the rough stone capping with both hands. Then his attacker clasped his arms, just above the wrists, holding on and preventing him from slipping away to certain death. Mitch stared upward, saw the man's face, and didn't recognize him.
Whatever the guy wanted, he decided, he could gladly have.
'Pull me up,' he wheezed out. 'Pull me up!'
The man slowly did what he asked, until Mitch was sprawled, facedown, half on and half off the capstone. He felt the man release one of his arms, then he saw something reflecting the light. For an instant, Mitch thought it was a knife, then he realized what it was: a hypodermic needle.
He didn't know what the hell this meant and tried to squirm free but, before he could move, he felt a sudden sharp pain in the taut muscles that stretched up from his shoulder toward his skull.
The man had just jabbed the needle into his neck.
Chapter 31
A s he stared at the vidcap print before him in the privacy of his room, De Angelis fingered the golden, diamond- and ruby-encrusted statuette of a rearing horse.
Privately, he thought the antique was quite vulgar. He knew it was a gift from the Russian Orthodox Church to the Holy Father on the occasion of a papal audience in the late nineteenth century, and he also knew that it was priceless. Vulgar and ugly, but nevertheless priceless.
He studied the image more closely. It was the one Reilly had given him at their first meeting, when the agent had inquired about the importance of the multigeared encoder. The sight was still one that made his heart race. Even this grainy print managed to reawaken in him the sheer exhilaration he felt when he first witnessed the moment on the surveillance footage he'd been shown at Federal Plaza.
Knights* in shining armor pillaging a Manhattan museum in the twenty-first century.
Such audacity, he thought. Truly remarkable.
The picture showed die rider, who De Angelis now knew to be the fourth horseman, holding up tiie encoder. He stared at die man's helmet, trying to burrow through the ink and the paper and into die horseman's
thoughts. The image was a three-quarter view, taken from the rear left side. Smashed display cabinets lay all around die knight. And in the top left corner on the shot, peeking out from behind a cabinet, was a woman's face.
A female archaeologist who overheard the fourth horseman say something in Latin, De Angelis thought. She had to be close enough to hear him, and, staring at the picture, he knew it had to be her.
He focused on her face: taut witii fear, frozen. Absolutely terrified.
It had to be her.
He set the picture and the jeweled horse down on his bed next to the pendant, which he now picked up. It was made of rubies and set in silver, a gift from the Nizam of Hyderabad. Worth a prince's ransom, which is what it once had been. As he twirled it, he scowled at the dead end he had reached.
His quarry had covered his tracks well; he would have expected no less from a man of such daring.
The gang leader's minions, the desperate lowlifes that De Angelis had found, questioned, and dispatched with such ease, had proven useless.
The man himself still eluded him.
He needed a fresh tack. A divine intervention of sorts.
And now this. An annoyance.
A distraction.
He looked at her face again. He picked up his cell phone and hit a speed-dial key. Two short rings later, a gravelly, hoarse voice answered.
'Who's this?'
'Just how many people have you given this number to, exactly?' The monsignor fired back tersely.
The man exhaled audibly. 'Good to hear from you, sir.'
De Angelis knew the man would now be putting out a cigarette butt, while instinctively reaching for a fresh replacement. He had always found die habit repugnant, but the man's other talents more than made up for it.
'I need your help on something.' As he said it, he frowned. He had hoped he wouldn't need to involve anyone else. He stared at Tess's face again. 'I need you to access the FBI's database on METRAID,' then added, 'discreetly.'
The man's answer came quickly.
'Not a problem. It's one of the perks of die war on terror. We're all in a caring, sharing mode. Just tell me what you need.'
Chapter 32
Veering away from one of the many winding roads of the cemetery, Tess was now walking along a gravel path.
It was just past eight in the morning. The spring bulbs were in bloom all around the headstones, and the nearly clipped grass around her was wet from last night's rain. The small rise in air temperature had generated a coiling mist that shrouded the tombstones and trees.
Overhead, a lone monk parakeet flew by, breaking die serene setting with a haunting call. Despite the temperature rise and the cover of her coat, Tess shivered a little as she went deeper into the cemetery. Walking through a burial ground was uncomfortable at the best of times, and being here today made her think of her father and of how long it had been since she had visited his grave.
She stopped and checked the map she had printed out in the kiosk at the huge, gothic entrance. She thought she was headed in the right direction, but now she wasn't that sure anymore. The cemetery was spread out over more than four hundred acres. It was easy to get lost, especially as she wasn't driving. She had taken the R from midtown to die Twenty-fifth Street station in Brooklyn, walked a block east, and entered die cemetery from its main gate.
She looked around, trying to get her bearings, and wondered if coming here had been such a good idea after all. It was practically a lose-lose situation. If Vance was here, she'd be barging in on a hugely private moment. And if he wasn't here, then her trip would have been a waste of time.
She pushed her doubts to the back of her mind and kept on walking. She was now in what was obviously an older part of the cemetery. As she passed an elaborate tomb topped by a reclining granite angel, she heard a sound off to one side. Startled, she peered into the mist. She could see nothing except the dark, shifting shapes of the trees. Uneasy now, she walked at a slightly brisker pace, realizing that she was plunging even deeper into the recesses of the cemetery.
Checking the map quickly, she saw that she must now be close. Convinced of her current location, she decided to take a shortcut across a small knoll and hurried over the slippery grass. She stumbled on a moldy stone
