Brimstone

"He's coming on the right!" he shouted.

At the last minute, Pendergast jerked the car to the left again, correctly anticipating a feint; there was a screech of tires behind them as the motorcyclist dumped his rear brake and the bike rose in a reverse wheelie. The rider straightened, recovered. D'Agosta saw him reach into his jacket.

"He's got a gun!"

D'Agosta planted himself against the passenger door and waited, his own weapon at the ready. He doubted that a man on a motorcycle, going eighty miles an hour on a winding mountain road, could fire with any accuracy-but he wasn't going to take any chances.

With a burst of speed, the motorcycle closed again, the gun leveling, steadying. D'Agosta aimed his weapon.

"Wait until he fires," Pendergast murmured.

There was a bang and a blue puff, instantly whisked away; a simultaneous thump; and the back window went abruptly opaque, a web of cracks ru

D'Agosta unbuckled the seat belt, jumped into the backseat, kicked away the sagging rear window, steadied his gun, and fired. The cyclist swerved and dropped back behind a curve, kicking his way down through the gears.

"The bastard-!"

The car slid into the next corner, fishtailing on loose gravel and sliding perilously close to the cliff edge. D'Agosta knelt in the rear seat, hardly daring to breathe, aiming through the ruined window, ready to fire as soon as the motorcycle reappeared. As they ripped around another hillside, he saw the Ducati flash into view about a hundred yards back.

Pendergast downshifted, the engine screaming with the effort, the rpm needle redlining. The car went into another long, sickening turn.

As they accelerated out of the curve, the road emerged onto a shoulder of a mountain, heading straight through a long, dark forest of pine trees, tu

. ....And there came the Ducati, swinging around the curve. D'Agosta aimed but it was an impossible shot, two hundred yards back from a moving car. He sat, awaiting his chance.

With a piercing whine, the motorcycle came surging forward, screaming into fifth, then sixth gear, approaching at ever-increasing speed. The man had put away his gun, and both his gloved hands were on the handlebars, his head lowered.

"He's going to try another run past us."

"No doubt." Pendergast stayed in the center of the road, accelerator floored.

But the car was no match for the Ducati. It came straight up behind them, accelerating all the way. The thing must top out at a hundred and eighty , D'Agosta thought. He knew it would try to turn and dart past them at the last moment, and there would be no way for Pendergast to guess if the rider would veer to the right or the left. He steadied his gun. He had vastly improved his shooting from many sessions at the 27th Precinct range, but with the vibration, the motion of the car, the motion of the bike-it was going to be tough. The bike was going at least twice their speed now, coming up on them fast . ...

D'Agosta squeezed off a shot, aiming low at the machine, and missed.

The car made a violent motion to the right as the bike came blasting past on the left-dual silencers flashing, rider leaning so far forward he seemed draped over the front fork-and was gone around the next curve.

"I lost that coin toss," Pendergast said dryly.

They were now approaching the curve themselves, their speed beyond any possibility of controlling the turn. Pendergast braked hard while simultaneously jamming on the gas pedal and twisting the wheel left. The car spun violently around, twice, perhaps three times-D'Agosta was too shaken to be sure-before coming to rest on the very edge of the cliff.

They paused just a moment, the acrid smell of burned brake pads wafting over the car.

"Fiat, for all its troubles, still knows how to make a decent vehicle," said Pendergast.

"Eurocar isn't going to like this," D'Agosta replied.

Pendergast jammed on the gas, and the car screeched back onto the road, accelerating into the next turn.

They tore through the fir forest once again before mounting another series of steep switchbacks, worse than the last. D'Agosta felt his stomach begin to rise uncomfortably. He allowed himself a single glance out over the edge. Far below-very, very far below-he could see the Casentino Valley, dotted with fields and villages. He looked quickly away.

Turn after turn they mounted, Pendergast driving in grim silence. D'Agosta reloaded and checked his gun: it beat looking out the window. Suddenly houses flashed past, and they whipped through the town of Chiusi della Verna, Pendergast leaning on the horn, pedestrians jumping into the doorway of a shop in terror as the car blasted by, clipping the side-view mirror from a parked van and sending it bouncing and rolling down the street. Just past town was another faded sign: Santuario della Verna 6km.

The road climbed steadily through a steep forest, one brutally sharp turn after another. And then suddenly they emerged from the trees into a meadow, and there-directly ahead but still a thousand feet above them-stood the monastery of La Verna: a great tangle of ancient stone, perched on a crag that seemed to hang over open space. It was windowless, so old and vast and scarred by time it looked a part of the cliff face itself. Despite everything, D'Agosta felt a chill go down his spine; he knew from Sunday school that this was perhaps the holiest Christian monastery in the world, built in 1224 by St. Francis himself.

The car blasted back into the forest and the monastery disappeared from view. "Have we got a chance?" D'Agosta asked.

"It depends on how quickly our man finds Father Zenobi. The monastery is a big place. If only they had a phone!"

The car careened around another turn. D'Agosta could hear a bell ringing, the faint sound of chanting floating toward him over the noise of the engine.

"I think the monks are at prayer," he said. He glanced at his watch. It would be the service of Sext: sixth hour of the Opus Dei.

"Yes. Most unfortunate." Pendergast pushed the car around the final bend, wheels slipping on ancient, mossy cobbles instead of asphalt.

The cobbled road-clearly never built to be driven upon-led up behind the monastery. There, at the stone archway leading through the outer wall of the monastery into a massive cloister, D'Agosta saw the Ducati lying on its tubular frame, fat rear wheel still spi

Pendergast slewed to a stop and was out, gun drawn, even before the car was completely at rest. D'Agosta followed hard on his heels. They ran past the bike, across a stone bridge, and into the cloisters. A large chapel stood to the right, its doors wide, the vigorous sounds of plainchant rising and falling on the cool breeze. As they ran, the chanting seemed to hesitate, then die away in a ragged confusion.

They rushed into the church just in time to see the figure in red leather-his arm extended, rigid-fire point-blank into an old monk, who was kneeling, his hands raised in surprise or prayer. The report of the gun was shockingly loud in the confined space, reverberating even as the notes of the plainsong died away. D'Agosta shouted out in dismay, rage, and horror as the priest fell and the shooter raised his gun, execution style, taking careful aim for a second shot.