Still holding Angela’s arm, he strode across to the table and picked up the scroll while the second man kept his pistol trained on Bronson.
“What’s so important about this scroll that both my friends had to die? You
The man in the suit inclined his head in acknowledgment. “I wasn’t personally responsible,” he said, “but my orders were being followed, yes.”
“But why is that old scroll so important?” Bronson asked again.
The man didn’t respond immediately, but instead pulled a dining chair away from the table and pushed Angela toward it.
“Sit down,” he snapped, and watched as she obeyed him.
He unrolled one end of the scroll, looked at the first few lines and nodded in satisfaction, then he slid it into the pocket of his jacket.
“I will answer your question, Bronson,” he said. “You see, I already know who you are. I’ll tell you exactly why this scroll is worth killing for. I think you know why I’m prepared to do that,” he added. “You understand the situation.”
Bronson nodded. He knew exactly why the Italian was happy to talk—the two intruders had no intention of leaving either him or Angela alive when they left the house.
“Who are these people, Chris?” Angela asked, and Bronson noted that her voice was steady but tinged with anger. She could have been inquiring about the identity of a couple of uninvited guests at a party. He felt a sudden rush of admiration for her.
Bronson focused on the big man. “Tell us,” he said shortly.
The Italian smiled, but without any humor in his eyes. “This scroll was written in A.D. sixty-seven, on the specific orders of the Emperor Nero by a man who routinely signed himself ‘SQVET.’ The people who employ us have been looking for it for the last fifteen hundred years.”
Bronson looked at Angela.
“What on earth do you mean?” she asked, looking shocked.
The Italian shook his head. “I’ve said enough. All I will tell you is that we believe the scroll holds a secret that the Church would far rather remain hidden. In fact, it suggests that the entire Christian religion was founded on a lie, so perhaps you can guess what’s going to happen to it?”
“You—or your employer, which I presume is the Vatican—will destroy it as soon as possible?” Bronson suggested.
“That won’t be my decision, obviously, but I imagine they’ll either do that or lock it away in the Apostolic Penitentiary for all eternity.”
Bronson had been watching the two Italians carefully. He’d tried to keep them talking, stalling for time while he figured out his next move.
The big Italian took a step back toward the door and glanced at his companion. “Kill them both,” he hissed in Italian. “Shoot Bronson first.”
And that was the moment Bronson had been waiting for. The second man half-turned his head toward the bigger man as he received his orders, nodded, and then began bringing his automatic up to aim at Bronson.
But Bronson was already moving. The Browning Hi-Power hadn’t been out of his immediate possession since he’d left his house in England. He reached under his jacket, grabbed the pistol from his waistband, clicked off the safety catch and leveled the weapon at the Italian.
“Lower your weapon,” he yelled, in fluent Italian. “If you move that pistol even one centimeter I’ll shoot.”
For several long seconds, nobody moved.
“Your choice,” Bronson shouted, his eyes never leaving the man’s weapon. “Take the damned scroll and get out of here, and nobody gets hurt. Try anything else, and at the very least one of you is going to die.”
II
But even as Bronson aimed his pistol at the armed man about fifteen feet in front of him, the big man in the gray suit moved, as quick and lithe as a cat. He grabbed Angela by the hair, dragged her out of the dining chair and held her in front of him as a shield.
“Chris!” Angela yelled, but there wasn’t a thing Bronson could do to stop him. If he’d fired, he’d probably have hit her.
In seconds, the big Italian had pulled Angela, struggling in his grasp, out through the door.
Bronson was left facing the second man. For a long couple of seconds they just stared at each other, then the Italian muttered something and moved his pistol. Bronson had absolutely no option. He adjusted his aim slightly and squeezed the trigger. The Browning kicked in his hand, the report of the shot shockingly loud in the confined space, the ejected cartridge case spinning away to his right in a blur of brass.
The Italian screamed and tumbled backward, his left shoulder suddenly blooming red. He clutched at the wound, his pistol falling to the floor.
Bronson ran forward and scooped up the weapon, which he recognized immediately as a nine-millimeter Beretta. But he didn’t even give the injured man a second glance. His whole attention was focused on Angela and whatever was happening behind the closed dining-room door.
His military training kicked in. Pulling open the door and stepping through it could be the last thing he ever did if the big man had a pistol, because he’d be a sitting duck, framed in the doorway. And that wouldn’t help Angela.
So he stepped forward cautiously, flattened himself against the stone wall beside the door, and turned the handle. Then he peered through the gap into the living room.
The big Italian wasn’t waiting for him. He was almost at the far door, the one that led into the hall, one beefy arm around Angela’s neck as he dragged her roughly across the floor.
Bronson wrenched open the door, stepped into the room, took rapid aim and fired a single shot into the stone wall beside the hall door. The Italian turned, his expression confused and almost frightened, and at that moment Angela acted.
As the big man paused, she lifted her right leg and scraped her shoe hard down the man’s left shin and then drove her heel as hard as she could into the top of his foot.
The Italian grunted in pain and staggered backward, releasing his hold on Angela’s neck as he did so. She dived to one side, getting out of Bronson’s line of fire, as the big man hobbled toward the door.
Bronson aimed the Browning straight at the Italian, but he immediately vanished into the hall, and seconds later Bronson heard the front door slam shut. He ran across to the window and looked out to see the man jogging away from the house, his limp now markedly less pronounced.
Bronson turned back to Angela. “Are you OK?” he demanded.
Her hair tousled and her face flushed with exertion, Angela nodded. “Thank God for aerobics and Manolos,” she said. “I always liked these shoes. What happened to the other one?”
“I winged him,” Bronson said. “He’s in the dining room, bleeding all over the floor.”
“They were going to kill us, weren’t they? That’s why you drew the gun.”
“Yes, and we’re not safe yet. We need to get out of here as quickly as we can, in case that big bastard decides to come back with reinforcements.”
“What about him?” Angela said, pointing toward the dining-room door, behind which moans and howls of pain could be heard. “We should take him to the hospital.”
“He was going to kill us, Angela. I really don’t care if he lives or dies.”
“You can’t just leave him. That’s inhuman. We’ve got to do something.”
Bronson looked again toward the dining room. “OK. Go upstairs and grab all your stuff. I’ll see what I can do.”
Angela stared at him. “Don’t kill him,” she instructed.
“I wasn’t going to.”
Bronson went into the downstairs lavatory, found a couple of towels and walked back into the dining room, the Browning Hi-Power held ready in front of him. But the pistol was unnecessary. The Italian was lying moaning in a pool of blood, his right hand trying to staunch the flow from the bullet wound in his shoulder.
