Alex Van Helsing The Triumph of Death - By Jason Henderson Page 0,32
opening down below, the security guards finally producing their own key cards.
The man reached the top of the stairs, swiped his card at a door, and pushed, running. Alex went after him, this time barely catching the door as it started to close.
They were on the roof of the main hall of the Prado Museum. Chill morning air swept over the gravel as Alex picked up speed.
“What are you doing? Who are you?” Alex called again. I can run just as fast as you can. He didn’t have a go package with him or he would have seriously considered shooting the guy with a wooden bolt. But that didn’t seem right. Alex did have climbing gear in the tear-away lining of his jacket; maybe he could just grapple the guy. But no, that might injure the stranger’s neck or something, and murder was not on Alex’s list of ambitions. Vampires were dead already and didn’t count, but this man was definitely human.
They rounded a rooftop utility building, and Alex took in the breadth of Retiro Park beyond the building, a carpet of trees with a huge pond, just across the lawn of the museum.
And there was a flat, colorful object flapping next to the edge of the roof. It was hard to recognize until the guy stopped next to it and began to reach down. No way.
The custodian crouched for a moment, grabbed a long, curved aluminum tube, and lifted it. An entire hang glider, thirteen feet across, swept up around him.
“Oh, come on!” Alex shouted as he tried to close the distance.
The custodian looked back wordlessly and leapt. For a moment he began to fall, and then Alex watched from the edge of the building as the glider caught the air, taking the custodian out over the lawns, swooping up and disappearing behind the trees of Retiro Park.
Alex put his hands on his knees. You have got to be kidding. “It’s not that easy, Quiet Man.” He could run back down the stairs, but the doors were liable to give him trouble. Alex studied his surroundings, feeling each second of indecision tick away his chances of catching the stranger.
They were four stories up, and the wall was slick stone, leading down at intervals to french doors with small balconies. Perhaps he could climb down. But it would take too much time.
No, no. He looked out across the lawn and saw a light pole about thirty yards away. He reached into his Polidorium-issued jacket and pulled back a Velcro flap, producing a small hand-held grappling gun. It had a miniature hook and an air tube, but he wasn’t sure if it would reach far enough.
He brought up the grappling hook and aimed at one of the arms of the light pole.
“It won’t reach,” Sangster said, running up behind him. Alex heard the rest of them coming now, too. “That’s fifty feet at least and that thing won’t shoot past thirty—plus there’s gravity.”
Alex lowered his arm, consciously willing the surge of adrenaline to drain away. “Who the heck was that?”
“I don’t know,” Sangster said. “But he left a message.”
CHAPTER 11
“They will allow us one hour with the painting,” Sangster said as they stepped through a heavy metal door and into a vault of stone and steel. Alex found Astrid and Vienna standing next to glass cases displaying more jewels than he had ever seen. “This is the jewel collection of the Grand Dauphin Louis, son of Felipe V,” Sangster explained. “The vault is open to visitors during the day.”
A white rolling table on wheels sat in the center of the room with a heavy wooden cover over it. It looked like a gurney. “Is that the painting?” asked Alex.
“Yes.”
“What are we doing with it?”
“Scanning it.”
“Hasn’t it been scanned?” Alex said. “It’s in every art book we’ve looked at.”
“This is not your ordinary scanner,” Sangster replied.
Tomás the curator and Minister Cazorla conferred for a moment, and then Tomás turned to an electronic keypad on the wall at a second door in the back. A glass case of rubies, diamonds, and gold swung open slowly to reveal a circular metal door seven feet high. The curator tapped a long code into another keypad, and then Alex heard a series of heavy clicking sounds buried deep in metal.
With a pneumatic hiss the second door opened inward, swinging wide to reveal a vault. Sangster and Cazorla held either end of the gurney and lifted it over the lip of the door.