The tip-tapping of heels caused them both to turn to the door.

  “I would prefer you didn’t involve Herr Hertz in this matter, Mr. O’Neil.”

  Silhouetted in the light shining through the door was the figure of a woman that made O’Neil glad Tommy wasn’t around. The curves that traced from her shoulders to her waist and hips, then finally down her legs and emptied into shadows on the floor were more than enough to entice even himself, O’Neil thought, if he had time for such things and the kind of face that women would concern themselves with.

  The silhouette walked inside, and once out of direct light, her features came into view.

  Blonde.

  Blue eyes.

  At least 5’8’’ in her heels.

  And holding a pistol on them.

  Smiling.

  “In fact, I’d prefer that he not find out about this at all.”

  O’Neil remembered where he’d last seen her.

  She’d been dead on the warehouse floor, along with two Nazi soldiers.

  Chapter Six

  “You’re either the most beautiful corpse I’ve ever seen, or my friend and I have been bigger patsies than I thought.” O’Neil sat back-to-back with Lieutenant Rubiano Costa, their wrists laced tightly together with a coarse rope, then reinforced with leather strips.

  “I am sorry about your handsome friend, Mr. O’Neil. It will be an honor for him to die for the cause, but I am sorry he will not be able to know why he is sacrificing himself.”

  “I’m just glad he’ll get to die without learning what a no-good trick you played on him. At least he’ll still go down thinking you died and feeling rotten that it happened before he was able to romance you.”

  “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

  “So why not grab the map earlier, Fraulein Bridgette?”

  The woman brushed a stray wisp of blonde from her eyes. “When the shooting started, there was no time.”

  “And Tommy and me?”

  “I needed a murderer or two to take the blame, but as I had been ratted out by someone, I barely had time to kill the two SS and fake my own death.”

  “Nicely done, by the way.”

  “Thank you, Mr. O’Neil. It’s a serum from Haiti. The locals use it to create zombies, they say, but in the proper, smaller doses, it produces an effect that mimics death.”

  “You will not get away with this, woman,” Costa said. “And you,” he added, and O’Neil felt the words targeting him, “should not be complimenting the enemy.”

  “My friend has a lot to learn about women, I’m afraid, Ms. Drechsler. I apologize.”

  “From what I’ve heard about you, sir, I find it difficult to believe you qualified to teach such a course.”

  “Noted,” O’Neil said. “But I’m not so sure you’re the enemy here.”

  “She murdered Hertz’s men.” Costa pulled at the bonds, jerking O’Neil’s arms back.

  “She killed them, yes, but I’m not so sure it was murder.”

  “You read too many of your American private detective novels.” Costa continued tugging at the bonds, and O’Neil felt the straps tighten on his wrist.

  “I’d rather you not cut off the circulation of my one good wrist, please.”

  “Someone has to try to escape.”

  O’Neil turned to Bridgette and grinned. “Again, I apologize for my friend. He still thinks you are the enemy.”

  “Have you turned your back on your friend Mr. Huston already, O’Neil?” the woman purred.

  “Oh, no, but I’m sure we can come to a working arrangement that will keep us all happy…” He let the grin widen. “And alive.”

  The woman rose from her seat at the table and walked toward them. She crossed each delicate leg, one in front of the other, placing each footfall in the center of her approach, demonstrating to O’Neil that she had clearly been to some sort of finishing school and had a legacy of family title and the money that went with it. Her finely tailored suit only reinforced the notion.

  When she reached them, she knelt before him and rested her gloved hands on his knees for balance. “I’m listening,” she said.

  “Good.” O’Neil coughed and cleared his throat. “Way I see it, you may have the paper you are looking for, but you still can’t find what you’re really looking for. No doubt while you were convincing Tommy to talk me into helping you, he must have mentioned a little something about my ability to find my way through a jungle.”

  “Mr. Huston speaks very highly of you, yes.”

  “You’re gonna need a guide, and I’m gonna need to keep my friend alive.”

  “You are not proposing that we make a deal with this woman, Mr. O’Neil?”

  “Hush up, Costa. I’m not just doing this for my own skin.”

  “I would rather die than deal with a murderer of her own kind.”

  At that, Bridgette spat on the floor. “Bah. My own kind.” She spat again. “Never.”

  “So you don’t tow the party line?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then why do you want the map? That’s what confuses me.”

  She leaned in, almost resting her chin on his knees, her eyes gazing up at him, bright and blue. Genuine, it seemed to him, in spite of the situation. “Then I’m afraid you will have to be confused a little while longer.”

  She rose and crossed to the side of Costa. O’Neil couldn’t see the slap, but he heard it clearly enough, and the Italian-cursed yelp that followed the sharp smack.

  “Be grateful I do not put a bullet in you at this moment,” she said, biting down on the end of the words vigorously. “You owe Mr. O’Neil your life.”

  “I would rather—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know.” O’Neil twisted what passed for a wrist on his left arm, scraping the hook against the rope and repeating the motion. “Bear with him, Ms. Drechsler. He doesn’t mean it.”

  “Charm will only take you so far, O’Neil. And you have far less of it than your friend Mr. Huston. You will do well to remember that.”

  “It’s not my charm I’m offering. I learned not to deal in that commodity a long time ago.” He felt the rope loosen. But not the strap. “It’s the far more marketable skill of guide and tracker that I’m making available.”

  She laughed. “No, not as much as Tommy, but a charm all your own, nonetheless. You are a wise man, O’Neil.”

  “I take it you can translate the ancient German on the map?”

  Bridgette nodded and returned to him. “A benefit of a wealthy upbringing and a progressive father who valued an education more for a daughter than merely fancy dresses and learning how to wiggle her way into a strategic marriage.” She knelt before him again. “There is something oddly fascinating about you.”

  “Poor Tommy will be so surprised. He says there’s nothing interesting about me except my being a louse.”

  Costa grunted. “Still you jest?”

  O’Neil stopped sawing long enough to poke his temporary partner with the sharp edge of the hook, and the giant Italian swore loudly and pulled back his arms with a mighty jerk that broke the straps, freeing them both.

  Thankfully, O’Neil thought, Miss Drechsler was still low and balanced solely on the balls of her feet. He launched up, twisting as he did and pushing with his suddenly free hand to send the woman falling to her side on the ground.

  She reached for her pistol, but the Italian kicked it out of range.

  “I see your plan now,” Costa said, pressing his heavy boot on Bridgette’s throat to keep her still.

  “Don’t think you do, guard dog. Not yet anyway.”

  He reached down to help the woman to her feet, motioning to Costa.

  “Put that ham foot away, Costa. Save it for the walk back to the hotel.”

  Bridgette took his hand and he pulled her up to her feet. When she was up, she smoothed her skirt and glanced nervously toward Costa.

  “Oh, he’s harmless. Don’t worry.” O’Neil laughed. “So long as you stop pointing a gun at him or tying him up.”

  “I suppose you will turn me in to Hertz now,” she said, not inflecting the statement into a question, he noticed—and couldn’t help admiring her at least a little for the control and composure.

  “I’d rather have a drink and let’s all talk sensibly and politely at your place, since we can’t very well walk into town with a dead woman.”

  “What did you have in mind, Mr. O’Neil?”

  “Yes,” said Costa, “What do you have in mind?”

  O’Neil laughed. “For starters, a bottle of French cognac, not this god-awful Italian poison.” He slapped Costa on the back, though the giant barely registered even a tremor. “And after that, we’re going to find the fountain of youth!”

  Chapter Seven

  Bridgette’s “place” sprawled out like the Ritz, unfolding from a marble-floored foyer into a sitting room with Victorian furniture to a boudoir that, to O’Neil, smacked of belonging to one of the Rockefellers. After that was what he could only assume was the lady’s private bath—all the rage for those who chose to throw their money away on such frivolities—but he chose not to look inside the slightly open door and instead stopped at one of the green sofas decorated with carvings of family crests on the oak armrests.

  Costa, however, had no such qualms. He pushed the door open and walked inside, cased the bath, then did the same all the way back to the door. Then he locked it and returned to the sitting room and stood beside the wall.

  All he was missing, O’Neil thought, was a nervous twitch.

  O’Neil plopped down on the sofa. “I’m afraid I’ll bring down the property value just by being here,” he said.

  Bridgette didn’t laugh. Costa didn’t either.

  “Why are we here, O’Neil?” the woman asked.

  “Yes,” said the giant Italian. “Why are we here?”

  “I told you, we’re looking for the fountain of—”

  “Youth, yes, you said that already, but what are we really doing here? I have a mission, and you are tearing me away from it.” Bridgette spoke with a coldness, but her smile undermined the tone. She sat down opposite O’Neil and crossed her legs.

  “I’ll get to that,” he said. “But first, why do you really want the map? You’re clearly no occultist, nor do you strike me as a fool, so I can’t honestly believe you want to track down a mythical city.” He laughed. “Now Tommy, on the other hand, he’d have a story about the lost gold of the Thule or some nonsense like that for me to go searching after.”

  The woman didn’t respond.

  “But you… there’s something else behind your interest.”

  “Perhaps, Mr. O’Neil, you are looking for gold where there is none.”

  “As much as I appreciate you turning my own phrase around on me, I think you’re lying.”

  “An honest, straight-forward man,” she said.

  Costa huffed, reminding them both, O’Neil guessed, that he was still there.

  “Not always honest, but there’s not enough time nor care in this world to be fancy about saying things.” He leaned back on the sofa, felt the hard wooden frame press against his shoulders, didn’t like the feeling, then sat up again and rested his arms on his knees. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”

  “I hope you can live with that disappointment, Mr. O’Neil.”

  “Costa?”

  The Italian glanced his way. “What?”

  “Please take the map from Miss Drechsler.”

  Costa smiled for the first time since they had left the warehouse. He crossed the sitting room, leaned over the woman, and reached for her handbag. She jerked it away and grabbed the map from the bag, then shoved it inside her blouse. Then she sat back, grinning, giving them both the best “so there” expression O’Neil had ever seen.

  “Well?” said the hook-handed man.

  “She…” Costa started.

  “Don’t tell me they teach you Fascists good manners now.”

  “It’s unseemly for a gentleman.”

  “Thank you, Signore Costa,” she said.

  O’Neil stood and popped his knuckles. “Good thing I’m not a gentleman, I guess.”

  Bridgette crossed her arms over her chest. “You can’t.”

  O’Neil cocked his head to one side, then the other. “I assure you I’ve seen more than my share of what you’re protecting, Miss Drechsler. The little native women run around without so much as a slip where I’m used to tromping around. And I promise not to be offended by the lesser breasts of a cultured German aristocrat.”

  She all but leapt to her feet. “I forbid it.”

  O’Neil stood his ground less than a foot from her face. “Either you hand me that map, or I will take it from you.”

  “But my dignity.”

  “The hell with your dignity. My friend Tommy is going to be shot, and you think I give a jungle cat’s furry ass about your dignity?”

  She glared.

  He smiled and moved a half-step closer.

  “Very well,” she said, reaching into her blouse. “You are every inch the brute the stories claim.”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  She retrieved the map and handed it to him. He took it and returned to the sofa, careful not to lean back against the uncomfortable framework again. He studied it a few minutes in silence, then finally spoke.

  “There’s no ancient city there.”

  “What?!” Costa walked to him and looked down at the map, as though he could actually make sense of it.

  “I can’t make heads nor tails of the words, but the pictures and the symbols are like those I’ve seen before. And if I’m reading this correctly, this puts a so-called Thule right in the middle of a mountain range that’s smack dab in the middle of native trading routes. If there were the remains of a city there, it would have been picked clean and be on the lips of every ne’er-do-well between here and Egypt by now.”

  He folded the map once and threw it on the floor. Bridgette crawled from the sofa to the floor and grabbed it.

  “So what gives, sister? What are you hiding?”

  “I’m hiding nothing, Mr. O’Neil. I find that as surprising as you.”

  “Right. Okay, Costa, let’s give her to De Bono and Hertz. I’m tired of playing games.”

  She stood up, shoved the map into her purse, and looked through the boudoir to the veranda.

  “I can’t allow that. I’m sorry,” she said and she ran between him and Costa to the double doors leading to the veranda, swung them wide, and, using the railing for support, leapt the two-story drop to the street below.

  “Damn!” O’Neil said. He leaned over the railing and thought better of the drop, content to watch Bridgette as she stood in the street and waved to him.

  “Please tell Mr. Huston I’m sorry, and that perhaps had we met in any other time and place, I would have succumbed to his charm.”

  “Tell him yourself,” O’Neil said.

  “What?”

  “He’s coming up behind you, with Hertz and a group of SS.”

  She turned, and drop or not, he realized he didn’t have much of choice. The bluff had bought him scant seconds, and he still had to beat Costa downstairs.

  “There’s no one—” the woman started, but he cut her off mid-phrase as he landed beside her and his momentum sent them both rolling into the street.

  In a flash he had her on her belly, arms jerked roughly back behind her, his weight sitting heavily on the small of her slender back.

  “Costa will be here any second. Either I get the truth, or I let him take you to De Bono to face a firing squad.”

  “Please, Mr. O’Neil,” she said, sobbing now. “Please.”

  “The clock ain’t slowing down, sister.”

  “I’m on your side.”

  “I don’t have a side but my own.”

  “The British, then. I’m a double agent.”

  “Oh my luck,” he said, not letting go of her arms. “And I suppose you can prove this.”

  “If I could, I wouldn’t be much use as a double agent.” She tilted her head to glance at him with wet, dusty, streaked eyes. “So you have to let me go.”

  “I don’t think so.” The voice was Costa’s. It came to them over the sites of his Beretta pistol. “I’m sure Marshall De Bono and Herr Hertz will be pleased to know we discovered the traitor he has been searching for.”

  “Sorry, Miss Drechsler. It’s you or Tommy, and I’m the other who’d have to break the news to his mother.” O’Neil let go of her arms, but didn’t get up. “It’s nothing personal. And I’ll tell Tommy the full story so he can appreciate your sacrifice for his well-being.”

  Chapter Eight

  Armless O’Neil really wanted a drink. He’d been held at gunpoint, lied to, tied up, and made to take a fool’s leap his legs and knees were still complaining about. And to top it off, he still had to figure out how to get both Drechsler and Tommy out of Ethiopia alive.

  He eyeballed the row of bottles behind Marshal Emilio De Bono’s chair, and used every bit of his remaining willpower to avoid licking his lips and diving across the table for one of the vials of life-giving poison.

  “Would you like a drink, Mr. O’Neil?” De Bono asked without looking at him.

  “If you insist,” he answered calmly. “Sure. Why not?”

  “It’s the least I can do for the man who walks a dead woman into my office and tells me he has the murderer I need to kill so that all is well again in this Ethiopian paradise.”

  “Paradise, right.” O’Neil nodded toward the cognac. “A bit dusty for my tastes. I prefer vegetation and trees.”

  “You may return to your jungles quickly enough, Mr. O’Neil.”

  “Couldn’t come a moment too soon.”

  He took in the lay of the office. Hertz stood at the window farther from the desk, gazing out onto the long street heading through the heart of the city. Costa stood at attention at the door, keeping his eyes locked onto Miss Drechsler, who sat beside O’Neil, her arms woven through the back of the wooden chair and her wrists tied together with a rhin woven rope.

  “She is a lovely corpse, is she not?” De Bono asked.