and lunged at Mauritania. At the same time, Zumaia yanked out his pistol, and Iturbi spun away to escape.
But Mauritania whipped his cane up with the speed of a striking snake, and a narrow blade shot out from the tip. It glinted in the dim light of the chapel and then disappeared as Elizondo impaled himself on its point with his frantic charge. Mauritania, his face red with anger, twisted the blade and ripped it up in an arc through the vital organs. Elizondo collapsed, holding his own entrails, staring in surprise at Mauritania. He pitched forward, dead.
At the same time, Zumaia had managed to half-turn, his pistol firing a single unaimed shot before Abu Auda's scimitar slashed through his throat. Blood spurted, and he sprawled forward.
Iturbi tried to run, but Abu Auda smoothly reversed his powerful wrist and thrust the blade backhanded so deep into the fleeing Basque's back that the point exited through his chest. With both hands, the giant Fulani lifted the sword a few inches and, with it, the dying Basque. Abu Auda's green-brown eyes flashed with anger as he watched Iturbi wriggle like a rabbit on a spit. When the man slumped dead on the blade, Abu Auda pulled the scimitar out.
Mauritania wiped his narrow sword on a white altar cloth and touched the button on the cane that retracted the blade. Abu Auda washed his sword in the font of holy water and dried it on his burnoose. His desert robes were now not only dirty but bloody.
Abu Auda sighed. "It's been a long time since I've washed in the blood of my enemies, Khalid. It feels good."
Mauritania nodded, understanding. "We mustn't linger. There's still much to do before we strike."
The two men stepped over the dead Basques and slipped through the Cathedral and out into the night.
An hour later, Jon, Randi, and Peter were on the highway, driving away from Toledo. First they had stopped in the city, where Jon had retrieved his laptop and bag from the trunk of his rented Renault. The car was untouched, containing only the cut ropes. With luck, Bixente had escaped back to his life as a shepherd. As Jon loaded his belongings into the touring car, Peter and Randi put the top on it, and they sped away, Peter driving. Now as the spires and towers of the fabled city of El Greco faded in the distance, Peter slowed to just beneath the national speed limit of 120 kilometers an hour. They did not need to attract police attention.
Randi settled into the rear of the classic touring car, where the old seat still gave off a scent of expensive leather. She listened as Jon and Peter discussed in the front seat which route to take to Madrid, where they would report in and regroup.
"Just don't go back the same way Jon drove, in case the Basques were tailing him." She repressed her irritation as Peter took her advice. Why was she so testy around Jon? At first she had blamed him for her fianceacute; Mike's death in Somalia, and later for Sophia's tragic murder, but she had since grown to respect him. She wanted to put the past behind her, but it nagged like an unfulfilled promise. The odd part was she felt he would like to forget about it, too. They were frozen by too much history between them.
"God knows what we'll find next," Peter said. "Let's hope it's the molecular computer." The "retired" SAS trooper and MI6 spy was muscular and lean, perhaps just a shade too lean under his priest's costume. His hands were curved brown claws on the steering wheel, and his face was narrow, the color and texture of leather dried out by years of wind and sun. It was so deeply lined that his eyes seemed embedded in canyons. But even in the night, those eyes remained sharp and guarded. Then they suddenly twinkled, amused. "Oh, and Jon, my friend, you seriously owe me for this little scratch. But I suppose I owe you for a bump on your noggin, too."
Peter reached up and lifted off his churchly black hat to reveal a bandage wrapped around the top of his head.
Jon stared at the bandage and shook his head as Peter adjusted the hat back onto his head. "I'll be damned. So you were the Algerian orderly at the Pompidou who caused all the trouble." He remembered a flitting sense of familiarity as the orderly had run backward down the