But when she did distinguish a blur of movement—a scarved, robed Arab scurrying down the slope, over boulders, across a ridge, and down the continuation of the slope—she became confused again. Because the Arab took cover and aimed a rifle, but not toward her. Instead he aimed toward the ravine at the bottom of this slope. The ravine into which Drew had tumbled.
Swinging her gaze in that direction, she saw the second sniper: another Arab, his scarf flapping behind him as he ran down the opposite slope, converging on the ravine.
A welter of possibilities occurred to her. Perhaps the snipers had not been convinced that Drew was as weak as he appeared. Or else these Arabs felt so superior to women that even an obviously weakened man seemed more of a threat to them than an able armed woman.
But yet another possibility insisted, its implications so disturbing it had to be considered before the others. Now that she thought about it, it was the most obvious explanation but so outrageous that she must have subconsciously rejected it.
She wasn’t the target. Drew was!
11
Drew flinched from a bullet that grazed the right edge of the ravine, continued its downward trajectory, and walloped shale below him to his left. Dizzy, he lunged toward an indentation in the wall to his right, the direction from which the bullet had come.
But in that instant, a bullet from the left cracked against that indentation. Avoiding the cross fire, he toppled backward. Through a swirl of weakness, he fought to reason out his dilemma. He’d been convinced that Arlene was the primary target, that one of the gunmen would grudgingly take the time to kill him, then join his partner to assault Arlene. But both were now attacking him! It didn’t make sense!
He rubbed his aching jaw where his teeth had smacked together from the force of his fall. Hearing rifle shots from his right and left, he shielded his eyes from shale flying off both rims of the ravine. He heard another shot, this one less powerful, from a handgun, not a rifle. Arlene.
But another sound, subtle, like a breeze or a deflating tire, was more obtrusive. Down here in the muffled ravine, it had paradoxically deafening force.
An angry cobra rose to strike at him.
12
Arlene ignored the risk of breaking an ankle and continued to charge down the rocky slope. She cursed herself for letting her judgment be clouded by sexual arrogance. Admit you took for granted that the biological accident of your being female makes you an irresistible target for lust. You were so self-absorbed you didn’t understand what was going on. You helped them without knowing it.
Scrambling lower, she shifted her gaze from one Arab to the other as they flanked the ravine below her. Her handgun wasn’t accurate at this range. They shot again into the ravine. She stopped and fired, hoping that the bullet would at least distract them.
It didn’t.
The Arab on the left dropped into the ravine. The Arab on the right moved parallel to it, glancing warily toward her, making sure she wasn’t close enough to be a threat, then darting his eyes toward the depression his partner had entered.
“Look out, Drew!”
The echo of her scream merged with another scream.
The Arab who’d entered the ravine staggered halfway up its steep slope, his face in agony. Raising his eyes toward the sky as if in prayer, he shuddered and fell back out of sight.
The second Arab froze in astonishment. His paralysis lasted just long enough for Drew to crawl to the top of the ravine, aim a rifle, and shoot him in the face.
The rifle’s echo subsided. Drew collapsed back into the ravine.
By now, the sun was high enough to scorch her. Despite the brutal strain on her body, she ran even harder. Scrambling into the ravine, she found him.
His voice was guttural. “Be careful. There’s a cobra down here.”
She whirled.
The snake lay coiled on the sand fifteen feet away from her. Unblinking, it assessed her.
“It’s going to strike!” She aimed her pistol.
“Wait,” Drew said.
“But … !”
“Give it a chance to live.”
The cobra poised itself. Just as Arlene decided she couldn’t afford to delay, the snake sank its head to the ground again, flicked its tongue, and slithered away. It seemed contemptuous, dismissive.
“I froze when I saw it,” Drew said. “The gunman jumped down here. The sudden motion diverted the snake’s attention.”
“And it bit the gunman instead of you?”
“With a little help.”
She shook her head, not understanding.
“The snake was only an arm’s length away from me. When it turned toward the gunman, I grabbed it behind the head and threw it. It flopped across his shoulder.”
Arlene felt sick.
“It bit his stomach. When he screamed and dropped the rifle to shove the thing off him, I yanked the gun off the ground. He tried to crawl to the top of the ravine. The snake bit him again. By then, I was over here, out of its reach.”
“And while the gunman’s partner was distracted by the screaming, you shot him.” She studied him with admiration.
“I was lucky.”
“No, you made your luck. As weak as you are, when you had to, you thought and moved fast. Instinct. Reflex.”
“I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”
He stood with effort. She steadied him and helped him from the ravine. After its shadow, the sun stabbed her eyes.
“The snake reminded me of the lizard,” he said. “I hated it. Now I love it.”
“As long as we don’t have to eat it. There’s a sure test to learn if you’re a mystic. Can you bring yourself to love the men who tried to kill you?”
“No.” Drew stared at the body of the Arab he’d shot in the face. “God help me, I can’t.”
They searched the corpse. Inside a packet attached to the gunman’s waist, they found dates and figs.
“That solves our food problem.”
“Extra bullets for the rifle. No papers. No identification.” Drew turned to her. “It’s clear they were after me, not you. Why?”
Arlene shook her head in puzzlement. “I do know this. In case they’re from the nearest village, we’d better avoid it.”
“Sure. But they weren’t from the village.”
She followed his gaze toward the gunman’s mouth and tingled when she realized what he meant.
The bullet’s impact had parted the gunman’s jaws, exposing his teeth. Even those in back were clearly visible. They glinted from the rays of the sun, amazingly perfect, stunningly white.
“No fillings,” Drew said.
“But everybody has fillings.”
“In America maybe, if you’ve got the money to go to a dentist. Out here, though?”
“There might not be fillings. But there’d be cavities.”
“If you still had teeth. But this guy doesn’t just have teeth. He’s got perfect teeth. It’s been a while since I went to a dentist, so I don’t know what the going rate is. But my guess is … since when do Arabs from outlying villages have a mouthful of three-hundred-dollar crowns?”
She nodded in outrage. “Professionals.”
BOOK TWO
COMPULSION
BETWEEN AN ANTEATER AND A DOG
1
I cicle: that was how Pendleton now thought of himself. Angry, determined, identifying with his lost father, he drove his rented car along the narrow blacktop road that fronted his destination. He saw the gravel lane that led up through trees toward a sloping lawn and a mansion on a bluff above the river. Instead of turning up the lane, however, he continued along the blacktop, rounded a bend, crossed a metal bridge above the river, and five kilometers later turned left at the next intersection. Fields of knee-high corn surrounded him. Turning left twice more, completing a square, he came back to the road along which he’d first driven. This time he stopped two kilometers away from his destination, hid the car on a weed-grown lane among trees off the blacktop, a
nd hiked overland, through woods, toward the mansion on the hill.
He wore brown outdoor clothes and woodsman’s boots purchased in a town called Milton that was along Highway 401 halfway between Toronto’s airport and this lush farming area near Kitchener. He hadn’t risked bringing a handgun through Canadian customs, nor had he attempted to buy even a rifle at a sporting goods store—Canada’s laws controlling the sale of every type of firearm were extremely strict. If this had been a country in Europe, Africa, or South America, he could have easily retrieved a weapon from one of his many hiding places or have purchased one from a black-market contact. But he’d worked in southern Ontario only once, seven years ago, within a rigid time limit that had prevented him from establishing caches and contacts.
Still, to find his father, Icicle had to take this present risk. He shifted with greater resolution through the forest. Thick leaves shut out the sun; the pungent loamy ground absorbed his weight, making his cautious footsteps soundless. He reached the edge of the trees and stooped, concealing himself among dense bushes. Ahead, he saw a waist-high wire fence. Beyond, a well-maintained lawn led up to a tennis court and a swimming pool next to the mansion on top of the hill.
The sun was behind the mansion, descending toward the opposite side of the hill. Dusk would thicken in just a few hours. He scanned the top of the hill but saw no one. Earlier, though, when he’d driven past the entrance to the estate, he’d noticed two cars in front of the mansion, so he had to conclude that the house was not deserted. He’d also noticed that the estate was not equipped with an obvious security system. There weren’t any closed-circuit television cameras in the trees near the lane, for example, or guards, or roaming attack dogs. For that matter, there wasn’t even a decent, high, solid fence around the property, only a flimsy wire one, and the front gate had been left open.
But despite the apparent innocence of the place, Icicle had no doubt he’d found his target. Before leaving Australia, he’d gone to the safe-deposit box he and his father kept for emergencies. He’d hoped that his father, on the run perhaps, had reached the box not long before him and left a message, explaining his sudden disappearance. He’d found the weapons, money, and documents he and his father had stored there, but heart-sinkingly, there hadn’t been a message. Nonetheless, as he’d sorted through the documents, he had found the sheet of directions his father had been sent for what they’d assumed was a wake, but what was actually an emergency meeting, here in Canada. The directions had been specific, complete with the name of the exit ramp from 401, the number of a side road, and a note about the silhouette of a greyhound on the mailbox outside the estate. Icicle nodded. This was the place, all right, but as he studied the grounds, he became more puzzled by the lack of obvious security.
He stared at the waist-high wire fence ahead of him. There were no glass insulators on the posts. The wires were rusty. If the fence was electrified, how could the current be conducted? Whatever security there might be, it didn’t depend on the fence.
Were there pressure-detecting grids beneath the grass beyond the fence? he wondered. He focused on the grass. Faint depressions from tires were evident. Tracks from a power mower, a big one, the kind a groundskeeper rode. But that kind of mower weighed more than a human would. Every time the lawn was trimmed, the alarm would have to be shut off, and that made the system worthless. All an intruder would have to do would be to enter the grounds while the caretaker was on duty. No, he decided, the only place to bury pressure-detecting wires was in a forest, and the forest would have to be within the fence, where hikers and large roaming animals wouldn’t press down on the soil with a weight sufficient to activate the system. But there wasn’t even a small band of woods within the fence. If there were sophisticated detectors, they hadn’t been placed down here but instead on top of the hill, around the mansion.
He would soon find out. The sun had now descended behind the hill. Dusk would deepen to night, and the night was his friend.
2
Lights glowed inside the house. Two spotlights came on, at the front and side of the house. Again Icicle felt puzzled. If the house had an adequate security system, there ought to be more outside lights. On the other hand, perhaps the few outside lights were intended to deceive, to make it seem as if the mansion were unprotected.
Six of one, half a dozen of the other. He stood, emerged from the bushes, and prepared to climb the fence. But he froze when headlights blazed on the hill. A car engine droned. The headlights veered down the gravel lane toward the blacktop in front of the estate, disappearing into the night. The noise of the engine dwindled until the only sound was the screech of crickets.
But there’d been two cars parked at the top of the hill. He couldn’t afford to assume that the estate was now unoccupied. He climbed the fence, dropped onto the lawn, and knelt, not moving, straining to detect a threat.
He waited five minutes before creeping upward, periodically interrupting his cautious ascent to study the night. A hundred yards and thirty minutes later, he reached the edge of a tennis court on top of the hill. Wary of triggering alarms, he snuck toward a swimming pool, its placid water reflecting light from the mansion. A small structure next to the pool seemed to be a changing room. He ducked behind it, peering past a corner toward the five-stalled garage to his right, its doors all closed. He shifted his position and stared left toward the car, a dark Cadillac, in front of the mansion. Then he studied the mansion itself.
It was peaked, with chimneys and gables. On this side, a flagstone patio led to closed French doors; beyond the windows, lamps glowed in a room lined with paintings and books. He tensed as a man walked past the windows. The brief glimpse showed the man was well-built and middle-aged, dressed in a blue exercise suit—he seemed to be alone.
Icicle studied the windows in the other rooms. Most were dark. The few with lights didn’t seem occupied. Not seeing any guards, he sprinted from behind the small building near the pool, crossed the driveway, and dove below the cover of a concrete balustrade that flanked the patio, then studied the area before him. At once he realized that the patio, which went all along this side of the mansion and presumably along the other sides as well, held the only alarm system the mansion needed. An intruder couldn’t get inside unless he crossed the flagstones, but they weren’t joined by concrete. The light from the room beyond the French doors made clear that each flagstone was rimmed by sand. The sand was sloppy, grains of it speckling the patio. But why would the owner of a million-dollar property cut costs on so minor a detail? Why this inconsistency in an otherwise carefully maintained estate? The answer was obvious. Because each stone, independent, rested upon a pressure detector. The moment an intruder stepped upon any stone in the patio, an alarm would sound.
He glanced to the right and left, hoping for a tree whose branches would allow him to climb through an upper window. Seeing none, he decided to look for an equipment shed where a ladder might have been stored. By setting one end of the ladder on top of the patio’s balustrade and easing the other end of the ladder onto the sill of a window in a darkened room farther along, he’d have what amounted to a bridge he could use to crawl across above the flagstones.
He began to creep backward.
“So you guessed,” a voice said.
Icicle spun.
“About the patio.” The voice was flat, thin, emotionless. It came from his left, from an open window of the Cadillac parked in front of the mansion. “I’d hoped you would. I wouldn’t want your reputation to exceed your ability.”
Icicle braced himself to run.
“I’m not your enemy.” The Cadillac’s passenger door came open. A tall gangly man stepped out. “You see. I willingly show myself. I mean you no harm.” The man stepped into the full blaze of the spotlight in front of the mansion. He held his arms out, away from his gray suit. His face was narrow, his nose and lips thin, his eyebrows so sparse they were almost nonexistent. His red hair contrasted with his pallid skin.
The patio doors burst ope
n. “Is he here? Pendleton, is that you?” The man in the exercise suit reached toward the inner wall and flicked what seemed to be a switch, deactivating an alarm, before he stepped out onto the patio. “Pendleton? Icicle?”
For an instant, Icicle almost lunged toward the darkness beyond the swimming pool. Already he imagined his rush down the slope toward the fence and the trees and …
Instead he straightened. “No. Not Icicle. I’m his son.”
“Yes, his son!” the man on the patio said. “And this man”—pointing toward the Cadillac—“is Seth, or rather Seth’s son! And I’m known as Halloway, but I’m the Painter’s son!”
The cryptonym “Painter” had force, but “Seth” made Icicle wince as if he’d been shot. He stared at the lanky, pale, impassive man beside the Cadillac. Seth’s gray suit matched his eyes, which even in the spotlit night were vividly unexpressive, bleak.
But Seth didn’t matter, nor did Halloway. Only one thing had importance.
Icicle swung toward Halloway on the patio. “Where’s my father?”
“Not just your father,” Halloway said. “Where’s mine?”
“And mine,” Seth said.
“That’s why we’ve been waiting for you.”
“What?”
“For you to come here—to help us find all our fathers,” Halloway said. “We’d almost despaired that you’d ever show up.” He gestured toward the mansion. “Come in. We’ve a great deal to talk about.”
3
When they entered the study, Halloway closed the patio doors, pulled the draperies shut, and activated the alarm switch on the wall. Next to the switch, Icicle noticed a landscape painting.