Chapter 12
Scott knew he’d traveled about a half mile underground when he saw the roughhewn stairs and the arched portal. He was growing concerned and wanted to double back for Edie, but then plain as day he saw Alexis. She was standing at the top of the stairs, both hands working to pull open a heavy steel-wrapped door pitted with rust and decay.
Their eyes locked for an instant. He didn’t know whether she heard his approach or just sensed his presence. What he did know, however, was that he had so many questions for her. Then she was bolting away even before he got a chance to get off a clean shot.
With that, Scott dashed along the tunnel and up the stairs after her. While her lithe form was able to slip through without fully opening the door, he found himself having to squeeze through as he tried to force the door to open wider. The delay cost him, but as he spilled through he found himself suddenly in what was clearly a manmade structure. The subbasement of a very old building, if he had to guess.
The fusty space, lined with dust-covered barrels, casks and decaying furniture, forced him to zigzag to make his way. The floor was uneven. The lighting, poor, and filtering down to him from an unseen source, perhaps from cracks in the ancient ceiling itself. Catching a glimpse of Alexis, he fired, the shot missing and sending up a plume of dust and debris.
He was running hard, the beam of his flashlight dancing along in front of him with each stride, his eyes never leaving Alexis. She was no more than twenty yards ahead, racing toward an alcove at the far side of the subbasement. He squeezed off another round as soon as she was locked in his sights, but by that time, she was already slipping through a previously unseen door and into the chamber beyond.
The moment he crossed the threshold, she spun around and fired at him. Two quick shots missed his head by millimeters as they struck the metal-wrapped door and ricocheted away in a splash of sparks and splinters. He saw in her eyes a naked rage, but something else too. A vulnerability perhaps, or perhaps a hint of desperation.
“Alexis!” he shouted, returning fire.
But she was gone, swallowed by darkness.
Scott dove into the darkness after her, crashing into a stack of wooden casks and crated bottles, sending them flying against the hard stones where they cracked open and revealed the pungent earthy aroma of their liquid contents. “Whiskey and wine,” he thought to himself as he sloshed and crunched his way through.
The corridor ended abruptly. The door he found was closed and unyielding, forcing him to fire rounds at its locking mechanism. After he forced his way past the door, he found a long spiral staircase leading up and up. He could see Alexis well ahead of him, taking the stairs two at a time as she raced along.
Scott leveled his gun on her, using his other arm to brace himself and set his sights. For a moment he wondered why she was doing what she was doing. Was it retribution for the pain he saw? Payback to those who caused her such depths of hurt?
He planted a round in the rail, another in the steps at her feet, before rushing after her. Though he couldn’t see her now, he knew she was working to open the door at the top of the stairs because he could hear her hands clawing desperately at its frame. He considered what she had done and what she was trying to do and tried to fathom what kind of punishment awaited her if he caught her.
He wondered if the door was impassible. If it was, he would finally get the break he needed to end this. It was only as he reached the top of the landing that he realized this could also be an opportunity for her and it was this split-second hesitation that helped prepare him for the one-two punch of the pair of bullets that struck him clean in the chest.
A wrenching feeling gripped him. He went down gasping, groping for the rail and the wall. “Air, breathe,” Scott told himself, but air wouldn’t fill his lungs. Still tumbling backward, he slammed into the wall and then he careened down the stairs.
Coming to a sudden, painful stop, he ran his hands frantically over his chest, expecting to find blood and mess — his own end. He continued gasping at air he couldn’t find. Then as if someone had uncorked a bottle, air rushed into his lungs and he gulped and panted.
As Scott pushed himself to his feet, he remembered he was wearing ballistics gear. The bullets had not pierced the protective panels, but they had knocked the wind out of his sails. He’d have nasty bruises where they struck, and likely from his fall as well, but he’d live.
He pressed on, reaching the door quickly. Here, he paused and stooped low before continuing, his gun at the ready. As he darted into darkness, Scott knew why he wanted so desperately to catch Alexis alive. He wanted answers — answers he would only get if she was breathing — and knew this desire was perhaps guiding his hand.
What Scott found on the other side of the door was a surprise: an anti-chamber and a hidden door in the wall revealed by light leaking through from the unseen space beyond. Beyond that was a gilded chapel, the walls of which were carved with garlands of flowers — a symbol of the prosperity of the Order of Saint John that had also adorned chapel walls in Saint John’s Cathedral.
Leaving the chapel, he found marble floors, almond-colored walls and a crowded, chandelier-lined hall. As he entered, he felt as if he’d stumbled into a new world from the one he’d just left and there ahead of him no more than ten yards away was Alexis Gosling. She’d come up hard against the crowd and was having to force her way through. Cupped in her hand, he saw an olive-hued canister. Small enough to be discrete but big enough to be the delivery system for the virus.
Scott holstered his gun and plunged into the sea of humanity. As he bumped and pushed, he grabbed onto a passing waiter. “Dove sono?” he said. Where am I?
“Chiedo scusa?” The waiter replied, clearly puzzled by the question.
Scott pulled himself around the waiter and pressed on. Alexis was directly in front of him, headed for a large public room, a meeting hall or ballroom perhaps where he thought he saw the wife of the British Prime Minister talking to the President of Singapore.
Suddenly, hands were grabbing his arms. “Venire con noi,” the well-dressed men said. Come with us.
“Captain Parker, Edie, Edie, Edie,” he said quickly, keying the microphone on his nearly forgotten headset. Then to the men, he said, “Agent Scott Evers.”
“Credentials? Papers?” one of the men said in English.
Before they could draw their guns, Scott twisted around and put his knee into the groin of one while he brought the butt end of his gun around to the side of the other’s head. “So sorry for this,” he said as brought both elbows down onto the first man’s back and then planted a booted foot into the other’s chest.
Cries of surprise went up from the crowd. Heads turned and eyes locked on him. He saw a bodyguard step protectively in front of another man. The Prime Minister of Malaysia perhaps, he thought.
Still little more than ten yards away, Alexis too stole a glance in his direction, looking alarmed to see him still breathing. As she turned again, facing front, she stumbled and fell. Tumbling into the person in front of her, her head thrust into the man’s shoulder, both went down. Her right hand shot out, searching for anything to break her fall. She found only the edge of a serving table, which her fingers grasped at desperately, pulling it over on top of her and sending an avalanche of glasses and bottles cascading across the floor.
Earlier cries of surprise were turning to screams of alarm and panic. Within five strides, Scott was standing in the place where she had fallen. He looked down at the floor but saw only the man still struggling to get up and broken glass. No Alexis.