The next storeroom was empty. They crossed it, walked down a short flight of ancient steps into the basement of the monastery itself.

"Looks as if this monastery's been disused for some while," Lanyon commented to Patricia. "The local farmers probably work the land and store their grain here."

They reached heavy wooden doors at the end of the corridor. Lanyon turned the circular hasp in the lock and peered through into total darkness. Taking out his flashlight, he flashed it on, then whistled sharply.

"Wait a minute, Pat. I think I'm wrong."

They were looking into a large storeroom about 30 yards long, floor and far wall cut into the cliff itself, roof carried by massive buttresses. Stacked in lines down the full length of the room were hundreds of huge crates and cartons, their contents glinting in the torch beam.

"The monks must have stored everything away here before they left," Lanyon muttered. They moved forward down one of the aisles. He brushed against a square waist-high object that gonged metallically, then shone the torch on a large white washing machine.

He tapped it to attract Patricia's attention. "Up to date, aren't they?" Moving the torch, he then saw that there were half a dozen other machines next to it, all of them taped with the manufacturer's protective wrappers.

Pausing, he started to examine the stacks of cases more carefully.

"These haven't even been used," Patricia commented.

Lanyon nodded. "I know. Something curious about all this. Look at those." He swung the flashlight against the wall, where the blank eyes of 20 or 30 TV receivers stared back at them, like a display in a darkened shop window. Next to the TV sets were two big red-and-yellow plastic-fronted jukeboxes, and beyond these a pile of radios, vacuum cleaners and electric stoves, heaped with smaller cartons containing irons, hair driers and other domestic appliances.

Flashing the torch, Lanyon walked slowly down the aisle. On the left, down the center of the storeroom, was a solid wall of what appeared to be machine tools-lathes, circular saws, jig-cutting equipment-the steel bearings and drives pasted over with brown tape.

"One of the stores must be using this place as its warehouse," Patricia remarked. "Strange selection of items, though."

Lanyon nodded. "How did they get all this stuff up here?" They bad reached the far end of the room, and he turned the handle of the double oak doors. "Looks to me-"

As he opened the door, lights moved at the far end of the corridor beyond, and he had a brief impression of four or five men shifting some bulky object on a small trolley. He pushed the door to and snapped off the torch, just as a shout of recognition went up.

"Steve, they've seen us!" Lanyon held Patricia's arm.

"Listen, Pat, I'm not sure who these people are. They look like looters to me. We'd better get out of here."

He switched on the torch again and they ran quickly down the aisle past the stacks of radios and washing machines. As they reached the doorway Lanyon saw a large black-garbed figure moving silently below the vaulted arches of the adjacent storeroom. The man noticed the beam of Lanyon's torch and immediately slid back into the darkness behind one of the pillars.

Lanyon pulled Patricia back into an alcove between the door and the stack of TV sets. He slipped his.45 automatic out of its holster, eased up the safety catch.

"Wait here, Pat," he whispered. "Try not to move. Someone came in after us through the grain store. I'll see if I can get behind him." He felt her hand hold his tightly, her face tense. He dived through the doorway and crouched down behind one of the pillars, just as the doors on the far side of the storeroom swung back and torches flared across the piles of merchandise.

Lanyon began to edge forward to a central pillar that fanned out in the middle of the chamber. Ahead of him he could hear someone moving along the stonework.

He was halfway across when lights flooded on in the storeroom behind him, a string of bulbs around the walls filling the chamber with hard white light. Voices shouted out again, feet hammered across the stone floor.

Spinning around, he ran back to the storeroom, reached the door just as Patricia, hiding in the alcove a few feet from him, screamed.

Dazzled for a moment by the light, Lanyon's eyes raced around the room. He caught a fleeting glimpse of two swarthy-faced men in black trousers and windbreakers swarming between the crates, then saw a third moving nimbly halfway down the aisle, a heavy Mauser in one hand, the long barrel pointed at Patricia.

The shot roared out into the confined air, slamming against the tiers of metal cabinets, the flame flashing off the TV screens. One next to Patricia shattered in a burst of glass. The man with the Mauser stopped, feet placed wide apart, then raised the gun again.

Dropping to one knee, Lanyon straightened his arm, steadied his elbow with his left hand, then fired quickly. The power of the.45 stunned the air for a moment, and the two men on the far side of the room ducked down. The gunman with the Mauser had been kicked back onto the floor by the heavy bullet passing through his chest, and lay inertly on his face, blood leaking slowly across the cobbles.

Lanyon knelt down to see if Patricia was all right, but out of the side of his eye was aware of someone bending over him. He managed to duck just as the blow caught his ear, rode onto thefloor with it. As he started to get up the man kicked him viciously in the chest and Lanyon staggered back, ribs tearing with pain, trying to level his automatic.

Then the other two men were on him, wrestling him down onto the floor again, their fists slamming at his face. A heavy boot stamped onto his hand, knocking the gun away, and then he was pulled back on his feet and propped up against one of the packing cases. He had a confused image of Patricia down on her knees; then a big man with a red vicious face clubbed him savagely across the forehead with the barrel of the.45. Lanyon sagged over and smashed on the floor. The big man snapped the gun butt into his hand and leveled it at Lanyon, his eyes narrowing like an insane pig's.

The two other men stood waiting expectantly, one of them with his knee in the small of Patricia's back, holding her down on the floor. Lanyon rolled wearily against the case, trying to clear his eyes of the blood running from the wound across his temple, barely aware of the gun barrel a few inches from his head.

Suddenly the big man paused, lowered the gun, then stepped forward and ripped open Lanyon's windbreaker, grabbing the lapels of his drill jacket, fingering the gold USN tabs. He stuffed the automatic into his belt and cuffed Lanyon's head back, running his strong thick fingers over Lanyon's bruised cheeks.

He tapped Lanyon's face softly, and a grim smile broke across his huge features. He took Lanyon by the shoulders, shook him twice in his strong arms.

"Eh, Capitano!" he called out. "You O.K., boy?"

When Lanyon steadied himself and looked at him, he stepped back and gestured to his men to help Patricia to her feet. Then he grinned at Lanyon, pulled one of the men over to him by the shoulder, and spoke to him rapidly in Italian, jerking his thumb at Lanyon.

The man nodded, then spoke to Lanyon.

"You help Luigi at Viamillia," he told Lanyon matter-of-factly. "He ask how you feeling?"

Lanyon looked across at Luigi, massaging his painful neck with one hand. Dimly he remembered the huge distraught Italian in the damaged church, hurling the debris off the pews like a maddened bull.

Patricia stumbled across to him and he put his arm around her, pressed her head into his shoulder.

"Steve, are you all right?" she gasped. "Who are they? What are they going to do with us?"

Lanyon pulled himself together, managed to smile back at Luigi. He spoke to the interpreter, a small thin-faced man with a striped shirt.