his eyes, made blue pinwheels whirl in his brain. He lay dazed, his balance and equilibrium destroyed, his eyes prickling with pain as if they, too, had been sliced.
“Oh, you almost got out, didn’t you?” Sandler’s voice came from about twelve feet behind and to the right. “Just wait for me, Baron. I’ll be there shortly.”
Michael’s eyes were full of blue fire. He crawled out of the middle of the corridor, and lay with his back pressed up against a blade-covered wall. Sandler was striding toward him; he could hear the man’s boots on the floorboards. He knew the hunter would expect to find him totally helpless, writhing in pain with his hands clawing at his eyes. He turned his body so his arms were unhindered, and he pulled his hands out of the shredded coat.
“Say something, Baron,” Sandler urged. “So I can find you and put you out of your misery.”
Michael remained silent, lying on his side. He listened to the noise of Sandler’s footsteps, getting closer. Come on, damn you! Michael seethed. Come on, I’m waiting!
“Baron? The hunt’s ended, I think.” Michael heard the bolt click back on Sandler’s rifle.
He smelled the man’s minty after-shave. And then he heard the squeak of polished leather, the soft groan of a floorboard, and he knew Sandler’s boots were within reach.
Michael grasped out with both hands, trusting his sense of hearing. His fingers found Sandler’s ankles, in the middle of the corridor, and locked tight. He shoved forward and up with all the strength of his back and shoulders.
Sandler had no time to cry out. He fell, his torso twisting. The rifle went off, the bullet thunking into the ceiling, and he crashed against one of the razor-studded walls.
Then the hunter screamed.
As Sandler hit the floor, thrashing in pain, Michael leaped upon him. His hands closed on the hunter’s throat and began to squeeze. Sandler choked-and then a wooden object slammed into the side of Michael’s jaw and the rifle’s butt knocked Michael’s grip loose. Michael held the hunter’s shirt. Sandler was trying to scramble away from him, and again the rifle butt struck Michael, this time across the collarbone. Michael fell backward, his vision still blinded by blue whorls, and he felt the wall’s razors bite into his shoulders. The rifle went off once more, the spark of fire leaping from its barrel but the bullet going wild. Michael flung himself onto Sandler again, and drove him against the razors. Again Sandler screamed in pain, and terror was mingled in the cry as well. Michael got hold of the rifle, hung on to it as Sandler fought wildly. Leather-gloved fingers jabbed for Michael’s eyes, grabbed his hair, and wrenched it. Michael struck his fist into the hunter’s body, and heard a whoosh as the air exploded from the man’s lungs.
They fought on their knees in the corridor, the car swaying and the razors at their backs. The rifle was between them, both men trying to use it as leverage to get to their feet. It was a silent struggle, with death awaiting the loser. Michael got one foot under him. He was about to haul himself up when Sandler’s fist struck him hard in the solar plexus and knocked him down again. Sandler got his knee up, and it cracked Michael under the chin. The rifle pressed down across Michael’s throat with all of Sandler’s weight behind it. Michael struggled but he couldn’t push the hunter off. He reached up, grasped Sandler’s head, and shoved the man’s face against the razored wall beside him. Sandler howled with agony, and the weight was gone from atop Michael.
Sandler scrambled to his feet, the rifle still in his grip. Michael reached out, snagged one of his ankles, and made him reel into the opposite wall. Sandler had had enough of his maze; he wrenched his foot out of Michael’s grasp and staggered along the corridor, stumbling against the walls and bellowing with pain as the razors slashed him. Michael heard him fumbling with a doorknob, trying to get it open with a blood-slick hand, and at once he was on his feet going after the hunter.
Sandler threw his shoulder against the door. It burst open, flooding the corridor with harsh sunlight. The razors-hundreds of them on either side-glinted in the glare, and some of them were smeared with crimson. Michael was blinded anew, but he could see well enough to make out Sandler’s silhouette framed in the doorway. He lunged forward and crashed into the hunter, the force of the blow taking them both through the doorway and onto the car’s open-air platform.
Sandler, his face slashed to bloody ribbons and his eyes blinded by the sun, screamed, “Kill him! Kill him!” to the soldier who’d been standing guard on the platform. The man was momentarily stunned by the sight of the two gore-splattered figures who’d exploded from the car, and his Luger was still holstered. His hand went to the holster flap and unsnapped it, then he gripped the gun and started to pull it out.
Squinting in the glare, Michael saw the soldier as a dark shape against a field of fire. He kicked the man in the groin before the Luger’s barrel could find him, and as the soldier bent over, Michael brought his knee up into the man’s face and knocked him backward over the platform’s iron railing. The Luger fired into the air as the soldier vanished.
“Help me!” Sandler was on his knees on the platform, screaming to anyone who could hear. But the noise of the wheels silenced his voice. Michael put his foot down on Sandler’s rifle, then visored his hand over his eyes to cut the glare: ahead of the platform was the coal tender and the locomotive, the stack spouting a plume of black smoke. Sandler was crouched over, blood dripping from his face, crimson splotches all over his khaki jacket. “Help me!” he shouted, but his voice was feeble. He shivered and moaned, rocking himself back and forth.
“I’m going to kill you,” Michael said, in English. Sandler’s rocking abruptly stopped. He kept his head lowered, drops of blood tapping to the metal. “I want you to think about a name: Margritta Phillipe. Do you remember her?”
Sandler didn’t reply. The train was moving through a green forest once more, outside the boundaries of Berlin. From where Michael and the hunter were, neither the train’s engineer nor the fire stoker could see them. Michael prodded Sandler’s side with the toe of his shoe. “The Countess Margritta. In Cairo.” He felt drained, all used up, and his knees were in jeopardy of buckling. “I hope to God you remember her, because you had her murdered.”
Sandler finally looked up, his face lacerated, his eyes swollen into slits. “Who are you?” he rasped, speaking English.
“I was Margritta’s friend. Stand up.”
“You’re… not German, are you?”
“Stand up,” Michael repeated. He kept his weight on the rifle, but he’d decided against using it. He was going to break Sandler’s neck with his bare hands and throw him off the train like a garbage sack. “On your feet. I want you looking at me when I kill you.”
“Please…” Sandler moaned. His nostrils drooled blood. “Please… don’t kill me. I’ve got money. I’ll pay you a lot of money.”
“That doesn’t interest me. Get up!”
“I can’t. Can’t stand up.” Sandler shivered again, his body crouched forward. “My legs… I think my legs are broken.”
Michael felt a hot flare of rage course through him. How many men-and women-had Harry Sandler broken for the twisted cause of Nazi Germany? Had their cries for mercy been listened to? Michael thought not. Sandler was anxious to pay a price; so he would. Michael reached down, grasped the back of the hunter’s khaki jacket, and started to haul him to his feet.
And in doing so, Michael put his hand into a final snare.
Because Sandler-shamming again, just as he’d shammed his drunkenness-suddenly uncoiled, his teeth gritted with fury, and the blade of the knife he’d drawn from inside his right boot glinted with yellow sunlight.
The knife came up in a vicious blur, its point aimed at the center of Michael Gallatin’s stomach.
Less than two inches from penetration, the blade was checked. A hand seized Sandler’s wrist, clamping tight. Sandler stared at that hand, his slitted eyes stunned.
The hand was not quite human, but neither was it fully an animal’s claw. It was streaked with black hair, the fingers beginning to contort and retract into talons. Sandler gasped, and looked up into the man’s face.
The baron’s facial bones were shifting, the nose and mouth extending into a dark-haired muzzle. The mouth strained open, making room for the fangs as they slid, dripping saliva from amid the human teeth. Sandler was struck senseless; the knife clattered to the platform. He smelled an animalish reek, the odors of sweat and wolf hair. He opened his mouth to scream.
Michael, his spine already bending, thrust his face forward and sank his fangs into the hunter’s throat. With a quick, savage twist of his head, he ripped out flesh and veins and crushed Sandler’s windpipe. He pulled his head back, leaving a gaping hole where Sandler’s throat had been. The man’s eyes blinked and his face twitched, the
