40
Thompson whirled round so quickly that the handle of the knife escaped Julie’s grasp. The steel blade remained buried in the back of the killer, who was hovering in the middle of the room on his one good foot. The girl stood stricken in the doorway, white with terror, lips open but teeth clenched. Fuentès for his part lay on his back giving no further sign of life. He was covered with blood.
Thompson grimaced oddly and tried to level his rifle, but he lost his balance and had to use his weapon like a crutch for support. He remained like this for a moment, doubled over, with the stock in his armpit and the handle of the carving knife quivering in his back.
Julie fled.
She ran as fast as she could down the corridor, her mouth open wide in a virtual cry.
“I’m going to kill you, you bitch!” declared Thompson, and then a string of obscenities in English poured from his mouth. He drew himself up. All the muscles of his face contracted and relaxed in chaotic fashion. He forgot his destroyed foot. Brandishing his rifle, now plugged up with earth, he set off, even walking on his stump, in pursuit of Julie.
The girl had gone racing up a staircase. Thompson glimpsed her heels just as they vanished. Julie came out into the open air on a roof garden. She gave an anguished cry when she saw that there was no way off. Then she saw Hartog pop up like a jack-in-the-box amid the flowers on another roof. She saw him raise his left hand, and the flash of a shot. She felt a violent impact-here goes, she thought, this time it’s the other arm-and then she twirled and fell back down the staircase. She went bouncing from one step to the next, and she cried out.
“Uncle Hartog!” exclaimed Peter, on the other roof garden.
Hartog turned and saw the kid ten meters from him. The redhead was shaking uncontrollably. Quickly, without first weighing the import of the death of people one kills oneself, he raised the Arminius once more.
Below, Thompson saw the girl who had given him such grief land at the foot of the stairs. He put his gun to his shoulder, aimed for the heart and fired. The muzzle of his rifle being plugged with dirt, the weapon exploded, and the explosion ripped off both hands of the killer as well as his jawbone. He fell flat on his face, dead.
“You bastard,” said Peter meanwhile, shooting an arrow into his uncle’s face.
The projectile, lacking feathers and poorly balanced, struck its target sideways, whipping across Hartog’s eyes. Taken by surprise, the redhead gave a nervous yelp and took a little jump back. The ground crumbled beneath his feet. The man toppled backwards and crashed headfirst onto the potter’s kiln three meters below. Under the impact, the vault, built of large stone blocks poorly bound by crumbling mortar, gave way. Hartog and the large blocks of stone toppled pell-mell onto the glazed pottery being fired below. The floor of the ware chamber gave way in its turn and the whole mass collapsed into the burning embers. Hartog’s red hair caught fire, as did his clothing. His bodily fluids bubbled and evaporated. For a few short moments the heap of rubble shifted slightly, like a molehill. Then all movement ceased.
41
Subsequently, Fuentès would undergo several operations and survive, and Julie would be detained for a week while her confused explanations were disentangled. Before that she’d had to muster enough strength to walk several kilometers before she ran into a shepherd who came to her aid. Later on she would spend more time in a sanitarium before vanishing into the great wide world. And she never saw either Peter or Fuentès again.
But, before any of this, the boy, from the roof of the labyrinth, contemplated the smoking mass that contained the incinerated body of his uncle. He did not clearly comprehend how his uncle had ended up on the side of the bad guys, but since he had always detested the redhead the question did not strike him as of any great import.
Leaving his vantage point, he made for the staircase down which Julie had disappeared. On the way, the boy performed pointless acrobatic tricks. But eventually he was at the bottom of the stairs, where he found Julie sobbing.
Julie looked at him and pulled him close to her, still weeping convulsively and incapable of uttering a word, terrified as she was by the idea that Hartog might reappear. Peter wriggled out of her embrace, which made him uncomfortable, proceeded down the hallway, and examined the hideous remains of Thompson with curiosity.
“You’re dead,” he declared.
To make sure of it, he prodded the corpse with the tip of his bow. Then he went on, searching for Fuentès, but he almost got lost and failed to find the gravely injured man. Eventually he came out into the open air on the side of the Moorish Tower opposite from the potter’s kiln. The air was pure. It was a super day. Peter was delighted by the delay that the shooting had caused to his departure. His ear hurt when he touched it, but he didn’t want alcohol put on it. He went off to play cowboys and Indians.