Ventris was ebullient after his talk with Robsham.
The professor was one of the few people who had kept in touch after Ventris went into a funk following his decipherment of Linear B.
The daunting task of decoding a language more than four thousand years old had taken its toll on him mentally and physically. He was proud of his accomplishment, but disappointed at the contents of the script he worked on. The text subjects were mundane and dealt mostly with commerce. They revealed little about the Minoan culture and why it had vanished.
Ventris would not have been comfortable being in the public eye, even if critics had not questioned his findings. When he produced evidence refuting their criticisms, they sniped at the unspectacular nature of the scripts.
He withdrew from the limelight and seldom appeared in public after that. As his energy gradually returned, he thought about delving into a study of Etruscan, another mysterious language used by a mysterious culture. The library collection had started off as a passive way to get back to his studies without having to throw himself into them.
The Spanish papers had changed all that.
He drove along, deep in thought, a dreamy expression on his handsome face. He hardly noticed that the brakes had an increasing squishy feeling when he stopped at a couple of traffic lights. He snapped to alertness at one stop. The pedal had gone almost half-way to the floorboards. He kept a light foot on the gas pedal and slowed the car to twenty miles per hour.
He was nearing home when the blinding reflection of headlights appeared in his car’s rearview mirror. He squinted against the glare and pulled over to the left to give the car room to pass.
The obnoxious vehicle on his tail drew back several car lengths, then sped up to come within inches of the rear bumper before falling back again.
Ventris tried to keep his speed a steady forty miles per hour, hoping this would encourage the other driver to go by him. Instead, the car fell back. When it closed on Ventris again, it tapped the rear bumper.
Crying out in surprise, he regained control of the wheel, only to be bumped again.
His foot instinctively hit the gas pedal. The car sped up to forty-five.
He left his pursuer behind for a moment, then the car closed on him and once more tapped the bumper. Harder this time.
Ventris responded with greater speed, and his car surged up to more than fifty miles per hour. He was on the Barnet By-Pass. He’d soon be home, and away from this lunatic.
The pursuer moved in again.
Ventris got his car up to fifty-five. This was as fast as he dared or wanted to go given the state of his brakes.
As the car moved in again his eyes automatically went to the mirror. He was temporarily blinded by the high beams and didn’t see the truck pull out of a side road until it turned directly in front of him.
He jammed his brake pedal. This time it went all the way to the floor. The car slammed into the rear of the truck.
The impact pushed the truck forward and the driver could barely keep control of the steering wheel, but he managed to bring his lorry to a halt. He grabbed an electric torch from its dashboard bracket, got out of the cab and staggered around to the rear of the truck.
The car looked like a large metal accordion. He flashed the torch at the body slumped behind the twisted steering wheel.
There was another car behind the wreck. Its headlights silhouetted a tall, slender figure moved toward the crushed car. At the side of the stranger was a huge four-legged creature.
The driver pointed the torch at the newcomers. The man was dressed entirely in a snug-fitting black once-piece suit that emphasized his barrel chest and narrow waist. He wore sunglasses and a short-brimmed hat that set low on his forehead. The driver realized he was shining the light in the man’s face and lowered the beam, which fell on the body of the animal.
“Good God!” he muttered.
This was a dog like no other he had ever seen. Its bony white face resembled a skull that was vaguely human. But it was satanic in form, long and narrow, with the chin pointed. Red eyes blazed in their sockets like hot coals. The creature opened its mouth to display long curved fangs.
“The light makes my pet nervous. Give me the torch.” The voice was quiet, like the rustling of a snake slithering over dry autumn leaves.
The stranger stepped forward and took the torch from the lorry driver’s trembling fingers, then went over to the wrecked car. He reached in and placed his hand on the man’s neck.
“Is he dead?” the lorry driver said.
“Very dead,” the man said.
“Slammed right into me. Poor bloke never had a chance,” the driver said. “We need help.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” the stranger said. He tossed the torch back, said something to the dog and opened the back door of his car for the creature to get in. Then he got behind the wheel and accelerated quickly, flying past the site of the wreck.
A police car arrived minutes later. The lorry driver was surprised to see it come from the direction opposite from the one the stranger had gone, but with two police officers walking his way, he had other things to think about.
The stranger drove back to Robsham’s house. He didn’t know whether the brief visit he’d witnessed earlier had concerned the discovery, but he could take no chances. He had flown to London as soon as the call came from the Seville informant. With the newfound data, he had followed Ventris that night and disabled his car brakes, allowing them to leak fluid.
The house on King’s Road was dark. Leaving the Daemon curled up in the back of his Jaguar, he broke in through a window.
Heading into the study, he ransacked the desk drawers and found nothing that even mentioned the ancient script. Receipts on the desktop identified the occupant of the house as a Professor Robsham. Next to the papers were annotated train and ship schedules, which he stuck into his pocket. The stranger explored the rest of the house, including the bedroom closet. A number of hangers stood empty.
Leaving the home, he got back into his car and drove to the airport where a private plane awaited his arrival. Boarding the plane with the canine-like creature, he gave the pilot new instructions. First he would fly to Seville to visit the university professor who’d sounded the alarm. The professor had served his purpose and had to be dealt with. When that task was accomplished, he’d fly to Greece. The added travel was unanticipated, but it was all part of his lifetime mission. He had sworn on the altar of the Horns of Consecration an oath that required him to carry out his sacred work. He must eliminate anybody who unlocked the sacred script and threatened the Way of the Axe.
CHAPTER THREE
Matt Hawkins pedaled his high-performance lightweight bicycle along the edge of Vineyard Sound, ignoring the twinge that reminded him, with each downward stroke, of the metal pins holding the bones of his left leg together. The lava black eyes behind the wrap-around sunglasses were tightly focused on the tarmac strip ahead of him. His muscular thighs pumped the pedals at a steady fifteen miles per hour pace. Sweat beaded a face that looked as if it had been carved from an oak tree.
Hawkins had rolled out of bed at dawn, downed a mug of black Jamaican coffee and grunted through a half hour of Navy SEAL exercises. After his workout, he had pulled on his biking shorts and jersey and grabbed his helmet. Before heading to the front door, he stopped in the kitchen and threw some dog munchies into a bowl for Quisset, the female golden retriever he had adopted from the animal rescue league. Her name meant Star of the Sea in the language of Cape Cod’s Wampanoag Indian tribe.
He plunked the helmet over his salt-and-pepper mane of hair and buckled the chin strap. “Be back in a while,” he said. Quisset barely lifted her nose from her dish. “Okay, be that way, doll. Good thing for you that I’ve got a weakness for blondes.”