The Pretender's Gambit. Alex Archer

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СКАЧАТЬ drawn to the diner, thinning out of the alley and the streets. The smart neighbors and passersby stayed in their homes and watched.

      “Where is the elephant?”

      Okay, so all of this is connected. Everybody has an elephant on their agenda. Annja took a breath and stepped off the curb, keeping pace with the man at her side. “I don’t know.”

      “Does the detective have it?”

      “No. The elephant wasn’t in Benyovszky’s apartment.”

      The man cursed in Portuguese. Annja understood enough of the man’s invective to understand he was mad and scared.

      “What is the elephant?” Annja asked.

      “None of your business. If you do not know, it is better that you do not learn.”

      Annja kept walking, but she was aware that the man was no longer as focused on her. He was looking for a way out now, a way through the police net that would be going up even as they were speaking.

      “Maybe I can help,” she suggested. “Just tell me why you’re looking for the elephant and maybe I’d be able to figure out where it is.”

      “No.” The man shook her again and kept walking, glancing at the street. “Who killed Benyovszky?”

      “I don’t know. You didn’t kill him?”

      “The old man was dead when we got there.” Realizing what he had just done, how he had admitted more than he’d intended, the man cursed in Portuguese again.

      “There.” The man carrying the machine pistol under his coat pointed to a sedan sailing swiftly down the street. He stepped toward the curb and started flagging the vehicle down.

      She didn’t want to get into the car with the men—escape would be harder there if not impossible. Annja lifted her right leg and drove her foot into the back of her abductor’s knee, tripping him and forcing him down at the same time. She caught his gun hand in her hands and twisted. The man released the pistol with a cry of pain just before his wrist bones shattered. He fell away, dropping to the sidewalk.

      The man with the machine pistol wheeled around and started bringing his weapon from under his coat.

      Knowing she wouldn’t reach the other man in time to prevent him from employing the machine pistol, Annja reached into the otherwhere and grabbed the handle of the sword that had once belonged to Joan of Arc. In less than an eyeblink, it was in this world with her, a piece of her just as surely as any of her limbs.

      The sword was crude and beautiful at the same time. Over three feet in length, with an unadorned cross-guard, the handle wrapped in leather, the sword was a weapon, not a showpiece. It had been forged for battle, and Annja was intimate with its abilities. She joined her two hands together as she stepped forward and swung.

      Catching the morning light, the blade sang through the air in a horizontal arc that sheared through the machine pistol a bare inch above the man’s hands. Gaping in disbelief, the man stared at the useless weapon he held as the pieces tumbled to the sidewalk.

      Before the man could react, Annja set herself and lashed out with a roundhouse kick that lifted the gunman from his feet and bounced him off the side of a nearby parked car. The vehicle’s anti-theft alarm screamed and echoed along the street.

      Annja released the sword, letting it go back into the otherwhere and disappear. The other man pushed himself up, but his injured wrist gave out on him and he crashed back down to his chest. Annja stomped on his hand as he reached for the dropped pistol, then picked up the weapon herself.

      Backing away, Annja pointed the pistol at the second man. “Roll over onto your stomach. Lock your fingers behind your head. I’m sure you’re familiar with the drill.”

      Without a word, the man did as he was ordered. The first man lay unconscious. Three uniformed police officers sprinted up the street toward Annja.

      Out on the street, the driver of the approaching car slowed, then saw that the odds had shifted. Ducking down, the man pulled toward an alley and drove away.

      The police officers pointed their weapons at Annja. One of them addressed her in a too-loud but calm voice. “Ma’am, put down the weapon.”

      Annja complied, then laid on her stomach the same way the man she’d captured was. Handcuffs closed around her wrists and she kept telling herself that Bart would get her cut loose as soon as he was able.

      Being handcuffed didn’t bother her so much, though. It was the thought of the elephant, lost out there, people chasing after it for some unknown reason, and she was getting behind in that pursuit.

Chapter 7

      “Are you sure you’re okay?”

      Shaking her head, Annja made an effort to stop rubbing her bruised wrists. Although the pain had subsided, they still throbbed from the constriction they’d suffered while she’d been brought down to the police station. The policeman who had put the handcuffs on had put them on tight and time had passed before Bart could get free of the paramedics and the investigators and arrive to release her. “I’m fine.”

      Bart squinted up at her as if taking her measure. “You don’t look so good.”

      “Me?” She frowned at Bart, who was sitting on the other side of his desk in the detectives’ bull pen. All around the station cops were fielding reports and filling out forms. Evidently Benyovszky’s murder and the shoot-out at the diner hadn’t been the only things going on tonight. The conversations and the constant noise distanced her from the memory of the old man lying dead in his apartment and the violence in the diner that had spilled out into the street. “You’re the one who got shot.”

      In the uncertain glare of the fluorescent lighting, Bart looked pale and haggard. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and breathed shallowly. His shirttails were out and his tie hung in a coat pocket. “The vest stopped the bullets.”

      “The vest doesn’t stop the impact. That’s still like getting hit in the chest with a sledgehammer.”

      Bart grinned at her ruefully. “How would you know something like that?”

      Actually, Annja had experienced that same injury on occasion, as well as getting shot. Things hadn’t been dull since the sword had come into her possession. She didn’t know if the increased danger was just her lifestyle or a byproduct of having the sword.

      “There was a special on the History Channel about body armor,” she replied. “You should go to the emergency room and get checked out. In addition to the bruising, the hydrostatic shock caused by the impacts could have cracked your ribs or torn muscles.”

      “I’ll be fine.” Bart opened a desk drawer, took out a bottle of pain relievers and shook a couple tablets out into his hand. He swallowed them down dry and grimaced, at the taste or the pain, Annja wasn’t sure which. He put the bottle back in the desk drawer. “There’s a line at the hospital. There always is. If this is still hurting in a few hours, I’ll go in.” He took a breath gingerly and winced. “In the meantime, I’ve got a case I’m working on that just blew up big-time, and I still have no idea why people are shooting up the neighborhood over an elephant СКАЧАТЬ