“Yes. . . .”
“The first few minutes,” Doniger said, “is the time when everybody is still standing around the machines, together, as a group. Right? So what reason do we have to think that Baretto got killed but nobody else?”
Kramer said nothing.
“What’s reasonable is that whoever killed Baretto probably killed them all. Killed the whole bunch.”
“Okay. . . .”
“That means they probably aren’t coming back. The Professor isn’t coming back. The whole group is gone. Now, it’s unfortunate, but we can handle a group of missing people: a tragic lab accident where all the bodies were incinerated, or a plane crash, nobody would really be the wiser. . . .”
There was a pause.
“Except there’s Stern,” Kramer said. “He knows the whole story.”
“That’s right.”
“So you want to send him back, too. Get rid of him as well. Clean sweep.”
“Not at all,” Doniger said promptly. “Hey, I’m opposed to it. But the guy’s volunteering. He wants to help his friends. It’d be wrong for me to stand in the way.”
“Bob,” she said, “there are times when you are a real asshole.”
Doniger suddenly started to laugh. He had a high-pitched, whooping, hysterical laugh, like a little kid. It was the way a lot of the scientists laughed, but it always reminded Kramer of a hyena.
“If you allow Stern to go back, I quit.”
This made Doniger laugh even harder. Sitting in his chair, he threw back his head. It made her angry.
“I mean it, Bob.”
He finally stopped giggling, wiped the tears from his eyes. “Diane, come on,” he said. “I’m kidding. Of course Stern can’t go back. Where’s your sense of humor?”
Kramer turned to go. “I’ll tell Stern that he can’t go back,” she said. “But you weren’t kidding.”
Doniger started laughing all over again. Hyena giggles filled the room. Kramer slammed the door angrily as she left.
* * *
27:27:22
For the last forty minutes, they had been scrambling up through the forest northeast of Castelgard. At last, they came to the top of the hill, the highest point in the area, and they could pause to catch their breath and look down.
“Oh my God,” Kate said, staring.
They looked down on the river, and the monastery on the opposite side. But their attention was drawn to the forbidding castle high above the monastery: the fortress of La Roque. It was enormous! In the deepening blue of evening, the castle glowed with light from a hundred windows and from torches along the battlements. But despite the glowing lights, the fortress was ominous. The outer walls were black above the still waters of the moat. Inside was another complete set of walls, with many round towers, and at the center of the complex, the actual castle, with its own great hall, and a dark rectangular tower, rising more than a hundred feet into the air.
Marek said to Kate, “Does it look like modern La Roque?”
“Not at all,” she said, shaking her head. “This thing is gigantic. The modern castle has only one outer wall. This one has two: an additional ring wall that is no longer there.”
“So far as I know,” Marek said, “nobody ever captured it by force.”
“You can see why,” Chris said. “Look how it’s sited.”
On the east and south side, the fortress was built atop a limestone cliff, a sheer drop of five hundred feet to the Dordogne below. On the west, where the cliff was less vertical, the stone houses of the town climbed up toward the castle, but anyone following the road through the town would end up facing a broad moat and several drawbridges. On the north, the land sloped more gently away, but all the trees on the north had been cut down, leaving an exposed plain without cover — a suicidal approach for any army.
Marek pointed. “Look there,” he said.
:
In the twilight, a party of soldiers approached the castle on a dirt road from the west. Two knights in the lead held torches, and by that light they could just barely discern Sir Oliver, Sir Guy, the Professor, and the rest of Oliver’s knights bringing up the rear, in two columns. The figures were so far away that they really recognized them by body shape and posture. But Chris, at least, had no doubt what he was seeing.
He sighed as he watched the riders cross a drawbridge over a moat and pass through a large gatehouse with half-round twin towers — a so-called double-D gate, because the towers looked like twin D’s when seen from above. Soldiers atop the towers watched the riders as they passed through.
Beyond the gatehouse, the riders entered another enclosed courtyard. Here, many long wooden buildings had been erected. “That’s where the troops are garrisoned,” Kate said.
The party rode across this inner courtyard, crossed a second moat over a second drawbridge, passing through a second gatehouse with even larger twin towers: thirty feet high, and glowing with light from dozens of arrow slits.
Only then did they dismount, in the innermost court of the castle. The Professor was led by Oliver toward the great hall; they disappeared inside.
:
Kate said, “The Professor said that if we were separated, we should go to the monastery and find Brother Marcel, who has the key. I assume he meant the key to the secret passage.”
Marek nodded. “And that’s what we’re going to do. It’ll be dark soon. Then we can go.”
Chris looked down the hill. In the gloom, he could see small bands of soldiers in the fields, all the way down to the river’s edge. They would have to make their way past all those soldiers. “You want to go to the monastery tonight?”
Marek nodded. “However dangerous it looks now,” he said, “tomorrow morning, it will be worse.”
* * *
26:12:01
There was no moon. The sky was black and filled with stars, with the occasional drifting cloud. Marek led them down the hill and past the burning town of Castelgard, into a dark landscape. Chris was surprised to find that once his eyes adjusted, he could actually see quite well by starlight. Probably because there was no air pollution, he thought. He remembered reading that in earlier centuries, people could see the planet Venus during the day as we can now see the moon. Of course, that had been impossible for hundreds of years.
He was also surprised by the utter silence of the night. The loudest sound they heard was their feet moving through the grass and past the scrubby bushes.
“We’ll go to the path,” Marek whispered. “Then down to the river.”
Their progress was slow. Frequently, Marek paused, crouching down to listen for two or three minutes before moving on. Almost an hour passed before they came within sight of the dirt path that ran from the town to the river. It was a pale streak against the darker grass and foliage that surrounded it.
Here Marek paused. The silence around them was complete. He heard only the faint sound of the wind. Chris felt impatient to get started. After a full minute of waiting, he started to get up.
Marek pushed him down.
He held his finger to his lips.
Chris listened. It was more than wind, he realized. There was also the sound of men whispering. He strained to hear. There was a quiet cough, somewhere ahead. Then another cough, closer, on their side of the road.
Marek pointed, left and right. Chris saw a faint silver glint — armor in starlight — among the bushes opposite the path.
And he heard rustling closer by.
It was an ambush, soldiers waiting on both sides of the path.
Marek pointed back the way they had come. Quietly, they moved away from the path.
:
“Where now?” Chris whispered.
“We’ll stay away from the path. Go east to the river. That way.” Marek pointed, and they set out.
Chris felt on edge now, straining to hear the slightest sound. Their own footsteps were so loud, they masked any other sound. He understood now why Marek had stopped so often. It was the only way to be sure.
They went back two hundred yards from the path, then headed down to the river, moving between the fields of cleared land. Even though it was nearly black, Chris felt exposed. The fields were walled in low stone, so they had a slight cover. But he was still uneasy, and he gave a sigh of relief when they moved back into uncleared shrub land, darker in the night.
:
This silent, black world was entirely alien to him, yet he quickly adjusted to it. Danger lay in the tiniest movements, in sounds that were almost inaudible. Chris moved in a crouch, tense, testing each footstep before applying full weight, his head constantly turning left and right, left and right.