Free The Broken Sword by Molly Cochran Page A

and the old woman with her to their hotel where, to his eternal shame, he had failed both to secure the cup and to kill the girl. The very memory made him writhe with embarrassment.
    Nevertheless, some good had come of the encounter. He knew where the cup was. He had found Arthur Blessing and his protector. And by a stroke of luck, the Arabs had just informed him that morning that the whole carload of runaways had spent the night in Ait Haddus, where a nine-month-old newspaper containing a personals ad for "Arthur B" had been used to wrap a pound of dates.
    Things were looking better, after all.
    Aubrey uncoiled himself from his chair and dialed two numbers. The first was to the nearest of the Arab relatives, to whom he dictated a letter. The second was to a woman in London, a woman whose friendship Aubrey had been cultivating for the past month in anticipation of this day.
    Her name was Emily Blessing.
    He would wear silk tonight, he decided, doodling idly while he waited for the clicks and pauses in the telephone connection to end.
    "Hello?" Emily answered, sounding, as she always did, like a scared mouse.
    "Emily," he purred. "This is Aubrey Katsuleris."
    He heard her soft intake of air. Then a deferential "Yes?"
    What a bloodless woman, Aubrey thought. American, intellectual, and thoroughly dull. "I've found your nephew," he said.
    "Oh, my God," she whispered. "Is he with you?"
    "No, he's in Tangier. We'll meet him tonight."
    "Tangier!"
    "I'll pick you up."
    "I... I don't know how to thank you, Mr. Katsuleris."
    "Aubrey, please. I told you I'd find him, didn't I?"
    "Yes, but I never imagined—"
    "I'll come for you at five o'clock. We'll have dinner at the Victoria Hotel." He hung up.
    He would take her to Tangier, and make love to her beneath the Arabian moon. Then, after she got the cup to him, he would kill her.

Chapter Eight
    A rthur!
    Emily sat down and clasped her trembling hands together. Was it possible? Had the search finally come to an end?
    She tried not to hope. Yes, Aubrey Katsuleris was a rich and influential man with contacts all around the world, but how could he have found Arthur within a month when she herself, in three years of constant effort, had not?
    It's got to be the wrong boy, she told herself. All she had given Mr. Katsuleris was one photograph taken when Arthur was ten years old. He would be thirteen now. He had probably changed a great deal....
    If he's still alive.
    Emily shut her eyes, trying not to hope too much.
    Arthur had left a note for her presupposing his and Hal's death. The note said that if the man named Saladin who had been pursuing them for Arthur's cup managed to kill them, then Emily's own life would still be in danger. The secret of the cup was too great to trust to even one other human being. Saladin would make sure that everyone who knew about it did not survive. And Saladin had had a great number of men at his disposal.
    Arthur, meticulously brilliant as always, gave detailed instructions on how she could lose herself in any large city. "After a year," he finished, "you'll be free to go back to work and try to have some kind of normal life. I know now that will never be possible for me. I'm sorry that I've put you through so much grief. Love, Arthur."
    They had drugged her before they left, so that when she first read the note, she could not fully grasp its content. But she did not sleep. Through that night she sat awake at the window of the inn where she and Arthur and Hal had stayed, staring at the bed where Hal had made love to her once, only once…
    At dawn the next day she had read the note again, and howled with grief.
    "Arthur," she sobbed, hating herself for her belated concern. Where had she been during all the years he'd needed her? Where had her love for the boy been then?
    He had known that she resented his presence. When Emily's sister jumped off a bridge five days after giving birth to Arthur, the burden of raising the child had gone to Emily. She had