The Testament

Her head dipped and the strands of hair came free again, fiery in the lamplight, curled against the ripe duskiness of her cheek. She took his hand to transmit to him, he assumed, her utter stillness. But instead he felt a vibration of intensity so extreme it quickened his blood; he became aware of her intent, as if, like the young woman in the portrait in her house, she was an arrow in a tautly drawn bow, about to be released.

"There is much to do and I doubt that we have much time." As if to underscore her words, there came a hollow sound, ugly and thoroughly unmusical, as a small, matte-black canister hit the stone floor and began rolling toward them. Then the door to the mausoleum slammed shut.

Bravo ran to the door, but it was shut tight; they were trapped. A soft hiss made him turn, and he saw the tear gas foaming out of the canister, a venomous wave that surged toward them.

Chapter 5

Donatella and Rossi, their faces made bestial by black and silver snouts, burst through the bronze mausoleum door. They had waited for precisely three minutes before they had do

The atmosphere was that of a building after a fire. The gas, having dispersed, now hung in gauzy tiers like industrial smog, obscuring the ceiling. Nevertheless, there was no doubt that they were the only two living people occupying the mausoleum. They glanced at each other. Even through the lenses of the eye pieces, they could read the consternation and anger in each other's eyes.

"They're here," Rossi said, his voice slightly muffled.

Donatella walked along the western wall, eyeing the plaster with its constellations of faux striations. "The Order is fond of secret escape routes." Her head swung around. "You know what to do now."

Rossi, near the doorway, stood in the last of the afternoon's ruddy light. "Now that the time has come, I find I don't want to leave you."

She lifted the gun into his line of vision, deliberately tapped the butt against the rear wall. "You're wasting time."

He grunted and disappeared through the open doorway.

"Now," Donatella said softly, as she returned to the problem at hand, "where are you, my little cockroaches?"

When the canister hit the floor, Je

The bronze door had opened, revealing not the mahogany side of a coffin but a swath of mysterious darkness. Already an ache had begun deep in his lungs as his body called out for oxygen. He did not think that they could hold their breath much longer. Apparently, Je

They started as the sharp report came to them from the other side of the casket door. Bravo felt sweat break out on his skin, but his mouth was abnormally dry. He remembered his father telling him of the terror-filled moments just before the desperate retreat from the Nairobi embassy. "I was sweating all over, but curiously, my mouth was dry. Fear does that to you, Bravo. And I was relieved, which you might find even more curious, but the truth is, those who aren't afraid wind up dead."

At close range Donatella examined the two casket doors, tapping here and there, softly, softly in a rhythmic pattern, her head cocked all the while, her ear close enough to evaluate the sounds returning from her gentle probing.

All at once her eyes widened and she drew out of her pocket a length of a puttylike material. Without haste, she worked the pliable material into the hinges of the lower casket door. She flipped open a lighter and held the flame against one end of the material until with a bright flash it began to burn with a devastating heat. She smiled and, with grim satisfaction, said, "Yes, indeed, I have you now."

Another noise came to them, an evil sound as of the hollow rattle of a poisonous serpent, and then a blast of heat like the livid flame of a blowtorch was transmitted by the metal.

He heard her voice, soft but filled with urgency, "They're melting the hinges off the door. Quickly, now! Go!"

In the brief flare of the penlight he saw her point across his chest to his right, and in an awkward sort of wriggle he began to move, but to where? he wondered.

As if divining his question, she used the narrow beam of her penlight in lieu of words. Turning his head, he saw a passageway that sloped steeply downward, presumably below the mausoleum's foundation. As he wriggled his way toward it he marveled at the ingenuity, for the escape route must have been devised at the time of the mausoleum's construction.

Bravo crawled through the darkness, hemmed in on every side, with the unseen but very much heard enemy howling at his heels. The mineral scent of wet limestone mingled with the odors of decomposition that conjured up images of freshly turned earth, leaf mold, corkscrewed worms and ash. With Je

"What is it?" Je

Bravo said nothing. At the same time, he felt incapable of moving.

The heat seemed to follow them, growing in intensity. And with it he thought he could discern the first crack of light as the hinges on the casket door gave out.

Sensing his paralysis, Je

"Bravo!"

Light now, definitely, a sliver like the blade of a knife. And then, startlingly, a female voice-undoubtedly Donatella's-sang in a lilting alto, "Come out, come out wherever you are…"

Je

She took his hand in hers, squeezed it briefly. "It gets wider from here."

Belatedly, he understood. She was ahead of him, in a position to lead them on and, hopefully, out.