Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire Read Online Free PDF Page A

stern.
    “I’ll forgive you once the kindjal has been safely delivered to the Royal Museum,” he said.
    She wrapped her bruised arms protectively around her body. They both looked up suddenly as a loud, rhythmic pounding commenced overhead. Clearly thesoldiers were trying a new technique to break down the barred door at the top of the stairs. That door had been holding back angry soldiers for over five hundred years, Gabriel thought; it would probably last at least a few more minutes. But what would they do when it fell?
    “Gabriel,” a hoarse voice said.
    It was Djordji. Gabriel knelt beside him. The Gypsy gripped Gabriel’s shirt with a bloody hand.
    “You must escape,” Djordji said, his voice weak. “There is secret tunnel. On right, trap door. It take you out to other side of hill. Go.”
    “We’ll all go,” Gabriel said. “Come on, Djo, get up.”
    “I cannot,” Djordji said. “You go now.”
    The banging on the door above grew louder. Fiona grabbed at Gabriel’s arm.
    “He’s right,” she said, her eyes dark and serious. “We have to go now.”
    He turned back to Djordji. “Your wife would put some kind of curse on me if I left you here to die.” He grabbed the Gypsy’s good arm and hauled him up across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Djordji made a stifled airless sound of pain but did not protest.
    “Now where’s this tunnel,” Gabriel said. “And Fiona—don’t even think of trying to give me the slip again.”
    “No offense, Gabriel,” she said as she grabbed a torch off the wall, “but right now you’re not the one I’m most worried about.”
    “Where’s this trap door, Djordji?” Gabriel said, looking around desperately.
    “You’re standing on it,” Djordji whispered, and looking down Gabriel could just barely make out a rectangular outline in the dirt-covered stone and a well-concealed pull-ring at its center. If he hadn’t beentold about it, he could’ve searched for hours and never noticed it.
    They drew the trap door shut behind them just as the soldiers finally broke through above and started barreling down the stairs.
    Inside, the tunnel was dark, damp and claustrophobic. The guttering torch provided the only light. Gabriel had to walk in a crouch to prevent Djordji from banging repeatedly into the low ceiling as he lay, stoic and bleeding, across Gabriel’s shoulders. They passed broken bottles and small moldering piles of skin magazines; the flickering orange torchlight revealed a vast quantity of crude graffiti on the stone walls. There was a smell of urine and stale beer. The tunnel twisted and turned, seeming to go on forever.
    “How did you know about this tunnel?” Gabriel asked, keeping his voice low.
    Djordji answered in a whisper. “I played here as a boy. With other Roma—we hide from police, or just come at night to share a bottle, smoke cigarettes.”
    “Didn’t anyone ever tell you smoking is hazardous to your health?” Gabriel said, and he felt Djordji’s injured body wracked with silent laughter.
    It was the better part of an hour before the air freshened and a faint gleam of moonlight became visible at the far end of the tunnel. A sudden gust of night wind killed the sputtering torch in Fiona’s hand, leaving them in near total blackness. Gabriel instinctively reached out in the dark to grab Fiona’s hand, to prevent her from making a run for it. He wound up with a soft handful of an entirely different body part.
    “Why, Gabriel,” Fiona said. “I was sure you’d lost all interest by now.”
    Gabriel shifted his grip to her upper arm.
    “Come on,” he said, as he led her toward the crooked metal doors at the far end of the tunnel.
    When they reached the doors, Gabriel found them chained closed, but luckily the lock had been smashed by the latest generation of Roma teenagers. At his direction, Fiona unwrapped the chain and shoved the doors open. Gabriel gently let Djordji down off his shoulders to rest against a pile of large