First Thrills - Lee Child [71]
But currently he was in a dark subterranean room, the doors closed behind his captors after they’d tied him up on the simple wooden chair. They were obviously going to work first on his feet, and to that end, they had removed his shoes. But they’d thrown them to the side and left them against the wall. He was far better trained than they were and he’d already loosened the ropes with which they’d bound his legs and arms, but he wanted the ropes still to appear tight when they came back in to question him, so when he was sure he’d sufficiently weakened the knots, he rested.
He didn’t have long to wait. The big man with the heavy accent opened the door and turned on the light, one glaring bulb in the center of the ceiling.
“Mr. Matosian,” the man said as he came to stand in front of his captive. “I am Viktor. My last name, unimportant.”
“But enough about you, Viktor. What have you done with her?” Matosian asked.
“She’s safe. We haven’t touched her. Yet.”
“You don’t have to hurt anyone,” Matosian said. “I’ll tell you whatever you want. What ever I know.”
“You care very much for this woman, no?”
“Very much, yes. But you know, these ropes, they are too loose. You should know I can slip out of them whenever I want.”
“Very funny, that is. I watched Vladimir tie you up myself, of which no one is better.”
“Still,” Matosian said, “maybe you’d better check again. If you’re going to be tickling my feet, you wouldn’t want me to come undone from laughing too hard.”
Chuckling without any humor, Viktor took a step closer, bringing him into Matosian’s range. In a series of lightning moves, the seated man struck twice with his fists, once in the neck and the second shot to the nose, crushing the cartilage there. Before the blows had completely straightened Viktor up, Matosian had stepped out of the ropes binding his legs as well and now kicked out, hitting his captor again in the chest. Viktor went down in a silent hump.
Quickly donning his shoes and socks, Matosian was out into a narrow, dimly lit corridor within five seconds. Chloe had still been with them when they’d turned into his room, so she must be farther down the hall the way they’d been walking. So, turning in that direction, he started jogging, stopping to check the doors.
She was behind the third one, bound as he’d been, hand and foot, though they’d left her shoes on, and had put duct tape over her mouth.
Where had her captors gone? Where were the rest of them?
There was no time to ask those questions, and Matosian wasted no movement wondering about it or getting her untied. When he gently removed the duct tape from her mouth, he paused for a half second to touch her lips with his own. Then, taking her by the hand, he pulled her from her chair, and they were off and running down the hallway, toward a stairway beyond which shimmered the glow of sunlight!
They came out into an all-but-deserted alley that led off Red Square, and a fortuitous one at that. At the end of the block, as they were just coming out into the crowded square and the view of the Kremlin again, Matosian suddenly stopped, looking up.
“What is it?” Chloe asked.
“Look.” He was pointing to an ornate iron streetlight right above their heads. Matosian had almost run into it. The light was off since it was daytime. But its spherical bulb was held up by an amazingly realistic sculpture of the Sphinx. “This is it,” Matosian cried.
“I don’t see it,” Chloe said.
“Sure you do,” Matosian answered gently. “It’s the face of a woman and the body of a lion. And what is a lion?” he asked.
“A cat!”
His face lit up into a huge smile. “Hurry,” he said urgently. “There’s still time.” And taking her hand again, he started to run.
The Louvre—Paris
“I didn’t even realize that there was a Sphinx here,” Chloe said.
“They’re all over the place,” Matosian answered. “Santorini and Thebes in Greece, Giza in Egypt, St. Petersburg in Russia, and many, many more.”
“But then, how did you . . . ?”
“As they knew I would, I recognized that the specific Sphinx on that streetlamp was based on the one here