He got up from his desk and went to bed.
* * *
The shock brought him awake. He blinked to clear sleep out of his eyes and then focused them. Floorboards. He was lying on the floor. How did I get out of bed? Then someone grabbed the back of his nightshirt and hauled on it.
“What?” he yelled, and scrambled to get his legs under him. Pistol under the pillow, he thought. He made a dive for it, got a hand on the bed, and then pain exploded through the back of his head and he went out again.
* * *
Drowning! Buckley came to from a delirium vision of suffocating under water, to find himself soaked and cold. Something was over his face, clinging and wet, over his whole face; he couldn’t see. He couldn’t get his breath through it, not properly. He tried to rip it away, but his hands were tied to something, down by his lap. Only a nightmare, I can wake up at any time.
“Good, you are awake,” someone said. Murmured, rather, into his ear.
“Who?” It sounded blurred even to Buckley, as he gasped it out through what he could now identify as wet cloth.
“You don’t know me?” There was a trace of sly amusement in the voice. “Ah, but no one really knows me any more.”
The cloth was whipped away. There was no one there. Looking down, Joe saw that he’d been tied to a chair, wrists and ankles both.
Then the click of boot heels on floorboards, and a figure stepped between Buckley and his desk lamp. Even in silhouette, there was no mistaking that file-thin build.
“Michel?” Buckley asked. His guts sank as he realized what this was about. “Marcoli sent you, right? Look, I wasn’t going to publish, all right? I got the notes right there on the desk, you can read the piece I was gonna file. It was just about the Committee, I swear to God. I wasn’t gonna say anything about the rest of it. I want Galileo busted out as much as you guys—”
A slap across the mouth silenced him. Bare-handed, but a hand that somehow seemed clawlike, bony and callused. Callous, Buckley thought. Not a flicker had crossed Ducos’ face. Suddenly he was Ducos, not pleasant, friendly-if-a-bit-reserved good-old-Michel. The slap hadn’t hurt much, more insult than injury, but there was a huge, brimming reservoir of hatred behind the dam that was Ducos’ face. And Buckley realized he was starting to see cracks in the concrete. Ducos’ eyes, and Buckley could see them now as his eyes adjusted to the light, were boring into Buckley. Intense. Mad.
“Fool,” said Ducos, in English. “I have read your scribblings, reporter.”
“Then you know—”
“Everything. Marcoli doesn’t, of course.” A small smile twisted that narrow blade of a face. “Another dupe. A shame. He may be the one honest man in this city. Such a shame, that he should be an imbecile also.” Ducos shook his head, slowly and theatrically.
Buckley remained silent. Don’t provoke him. He wished he knew more about hostage situations than he’d been able to gather from the movies. Sure as hell nobody’s dialing 911 right now, he thought. He put his head down, to avoid catching Ducos’ eye.
“You made my own spy most upset, Monsieur Buckley. He wanted to know, did I not trust him to maintain a watch on the building for him? Did I think he was too stupid to keep a proper watch? I had to pay him extra because of you. Pfui. No matter.”
Ducos began to pace. “No, that is not the problem I must solve tonight, Monsieur Buckley.” He pointed to Joe’s article on the table. “No, the problem is that you know nothing about the plot to kill the pope. There is not a word in there about the matter.”
He soundly deeply aggrieved, but Joe could sense that it was a pose. Underneath the sorrowful tone was just that hint of maniacal humor.
“What am I to do?” Ducos mused, pacing back and forth. Again, he pointed to the table. “That article must be found, of course. Crucial evidence, pointing the finger in the proper direction. But nothing about the pope!”