The Templar Salvation (2010) by Raymond Khoury Read Free Book Online

were chasing after them—the Swiss Guard from below had recovered, and he wasn’t alone anymore—while up ahead, at the far end of the third chamber, four carabinieri were charging their way with raised handguns.
    Not going according to plan , Reilly chided himself as he skidded to a stop and cut left, flicking a glance back at Sharafi to make sure he was still behind him. The archivist had woken up too soon. Reilly knew it could happen. The dose of incapacitant that he’d given Bescondi was intentionally on the mild side. He couldn’t risk killing the man or putting him in a coma, and had had to play it safe. Too safe, evidently. And right now, Reilly had to figure out another way out of the holy city, as there was no way they were going to make it back to the driver who was waiting for them by the Apostolic Palace—and even if they did, they weren’t about to be chauffeured out of there, not with a posse of Vatican cops chasing after them.
    “This way,” he yelled to the Iranian professor as they flew through another opulent room and into the contemporary halls of the new wing of the Chiaramonti Museum. There were many more visitors around, turning the vast space into an obstacle course of people of all sizes that Reilly and his accomplice had to slalom through, leaving a trail of startled screams and indignant outbursts behind them, knowing that any collision would be disastrous. Behind, their pursuers had merged into one frantic pack and were cutting through the crowd, hot on their heels.
    Reilly saw a main entrance looming on the right and veered toward it—only to stumble to a halt when three other cops stormed in through its big glass doors. He glanced left—there was another exit on the other side of the hall, directly opposite it. He scrambled toward it, with the Iranian tucked in right behind him, and blew out of its doors and onto an open-air terrace-like landing that was at the top of a pair of ceremonial, mirror-image flights of stairs.
    The summer heat hit him like the exhaust of a transit bus. Sucking in big gulps of air, Reilly turned to Sharafi, hands beckoning. “Give me the book, it’s slowing you down.”
    The Iranian was disconcertingly composed as he shook his head and clenched the book tight. “I’m fine with it. Which way?”
    “No idea, but we can’t stay here,” Reilly answered before bounding down the stairs, his feet landing hard on every third step.
    He heard the squawk of a two-way radio, and glancing over the marble balustrade, he glimpsed the caps of a couple more carabinieri who were surging up the lower flight of steps, aiming to box them in. In a second or so, they’d be face-to-face with the Italian cops on the landing—not ideal.
    Screw that .
    He steeled himself and banked off and hurdled the handrail, clearing it and landing heavily on top of the cops, knocking them down while clearing a path for the professor.
    “Keep going,” he yelled to Sharafi as the downed carabinieri flailed around him, lashing out and grabbing at his arms and legs—but he managed to free himself from their grip and was soon hurtling down after the professor.
    They were side by side as they sprinted across the manicured lawn of the central courtyard before ducking into a barrel-vaulted passageway that cut through the building and led back out onto the open ground of the Stradone del Giardini and the long row of parked cars on either side of it. Reilly paused, allowing a handful of precious seconds to flit by, scrutinizing the vicinity, searching for someone getting in or out of a car, a motorcycle, anything, just willing an opportunity to present itself, a chance to jack something with wheels to get them the hell out of there. But they were out of luck—there was no movement anywhere, no chirps of a remote control deactivating a car alarm, no obvious target for him—and then another clutch of carabinieri appeared, charging at them from the far end of the road, maybe a hundred yards