Overhead, they finished discussing their plans. They said good-by to one another and told one another to be careful and wished one another luck and hugged and kissed and said they would pray for one another and said that they really had to get on with it.
In the perfect darkness, without a flashlight or even a match to show them the way, out of sight around two or three bends in the long spiral staircase, Sam Edison and Paul Annendale started down the narrow, creaking steps.
Klinger’s own hurried descent was masked by the noise that the two men made above him.
He paused in the whispery, echo-filled nave of the church, where the walls and the altar and the pews were no more than adumbrated by the meager nocturnal storm light that shone through the arched windows. He wasn’t certain what he should do next.
Confront them here and now? Shoot them both as they came out of the stairwell?
No. The light was much too poor for gunplay. He couldn’t target them with any accuracy. Under these conditions he would never bring down both of them-and perhaps not either of them.
He thought of searching quickly for a light switch. He could flip it on as they entered the nave and open fire on them in the same instant. But if there was a switch nearby, he would never find it in time. And if he did find it in time, he would be every bit as surprised and blinded by the light as they would be.
Even if, by the grace of one of the saints depicted in these stained-glass windows, he did somehow kill both of them, then he would have alerted the woman in the tower. She might be armed; she almost certainly was. And if that was the case, the belfry would be virtually impregnable. With any sort of weapon at all-rifle or shotgun or handgun-and a supply of ammunition, she would be able to hold him off indefinitely.
He wished to God that he were properly equipped. He should have at least those few essentials of behind-the-lines combat: a pretty damned good machine pistol, preferably German-made or Belgian, and several fully loaded magazines for it; an automatic rifle with a bandolier of ammo; and a few grenades, three or four. Especially the grenades. After all, this was no ladies’ tea party. This was a classic commando operation, a classic clandestine raid, deep in hostile territory.
Behind him, Edison and Annendale were unsettlingly close, on the last twenty steps and coming fast.
He dashed along the side aisle to the fourth or fifth row of pews where he intended to hide between the high-backed seats. He tripped over a kneeler that some thoughtless member of the congregation had forgotten to put up after saying a prayer, and he fell with a loud crash. His heart hammering, he scrambled farther along the row toward the center aisle, then stretched out on the bench of the pew, flat on his back, the Webley at his side.
As they came into the dark church, Paul put one hand on Sam’s shoulder.
Sam stopped. “Yeah?” he said softly.
“Sssshhh,” Paul said.
They listened to the storm wind and to the distant thunder and to the settling sounds that the building made.
Finally Sam said, “Is something wrong?”
“Yeah. What was that?”
“What was what?”
“That noise.”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
Paul studied the darkness that seemed to pulse around them. He squinted as if that would help him penetrate the inky pools in the corners and the purple-black shadows elsewhere. The atmosphere was Lovecraftian, a dank seed bed of paranoia. He rubbed the back of his neck which was suddenly cold.
“How could you have heard anything with all that racket we were making on the stairs?” Sam asked.
“I heard it. Something. . .”
“Probably the wind.”
“No. It was too loud for that. Sharp. It sounded as if-as if someone knocked over a chair.”
They waited.
Half a minute. A minute.
Nothing.
“Come on,” Sam said. “Let’s go.”
“Give it another minute.”
As Paul spoke a particularly violent gust of wind battered the east side of the church; and one of the ten-foot-high windows fluttered noisily in its frame.