Deafened, blinded and stunned, Myles quickly tried to look back to the factory and the Somali security guard. From where he had stopped on the car park, some ten metres away, it was too dark to peer inside. The lead dust had all burnt out instantly, leaving only smoke and a few flames where other things had caught fire.
Myles imagined the blast must have at least knocked his adversary unconscious. He had been near a window which blew out to release the force of the explosion, but the Somali was right in the middle of it, and would have had much worse.
It was no time to wonder. Helen would have contacted the police, and the whole neighbourhood would be calling the emergency services after the explosion: he had to get out quickly.
Myles sprinted towards the locked gates, where he stopped to check no one was watching. Then he climbed up and over, and walked away from the factory as calmly as he could.
Within seconds Myles could hear the scream of approaching police cars. He had to lose himself in suburbia.
He crossed over the road, towards the newsagents, then followed a small unlit path which led directly away from the factory. He wanted to rest, and briefly considered waiting there. But he knew the area would soon be full of policemen, then inquisitive local residents, then journalists. He had to get much further away.
Myles kept walking through the town’s streets, staying away from main roads wherever possible. He was careful to keep the factory behind him — he didn’t want to walk round in a loop and end up back where he had begun.
After more than a mile he came across a children’s playground which had been squeezed into the housing estate, accessible only through footpaths and hidden from the main roads. He looked around to confirm it was deserted. It was. Then he hopped over the small perimeter fence and went to sit on one of the benches. Here he could gather his breath and his thoughts.
Myles ran through what he had just witnessed: a German factory which added lead powder to their recipe for an American sauce. Thousands of people could have been poisoned — mainly Americans. Most of the people at the factory seemed to be innocent — he was sure of that now — although the night guard was clearly involved.
Myles guessed he hadn’t consumed enough of the lead to have been poisoned. He’d managed to spit most of it out. But he decided that, to be sure, he would have to make himself sick.
Checking again that he was alone, Myles locked his jaw open and put two fingers onto the back of his tongue. He wretched, vomiting onto the ground between his feet. Spitting until he had cleared out his mouth, Myles breathed deeply to try to settle his stomach.
He waited a few minutes, then put his fingers into his throat again. This time the reflex yielded much less. Myles found himself coughing. Stomach acid seared the route up to his mouth.
He looked around once more. Still alone. Could anybody have known he had visited the factory?
Whoever the Somali security guard had called would have known.
The CIA back in the States may have intercepted Myles’ call to Helen. But they wouldn’t trace him here. He looked down at the vomit he had left. That was perfectly anonymous: whoever saw it in the morning would imagine a teenager had broken into the playground and been drinking alcohol.
But he had left one big clue behind: his six volumes of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It was a clear link with Juma’s threat to bring down America. And if they doubted the books were his, they’d soon see the library sheets inside and realise they had been stolen from the Bodleian in Oxford. He might as well have left a signed note with his name on it.
Myles cursed himself — not just for leaving behind something so incriminating, but for having left the book itself. What lessons about Rome had Myles just lost?
A serious setback. More than ever, he needed to understand not just how the Empire collapsed, but how Placidia thought it had collapsed. Her words still haunted him: ‘Everything you need to know about Rome is in that book — and if you want to save America, you should look at it again…’
He checked his palm for fragments of glass from the light bulb, and eased out two thin slices stuck from the base of his thumb. Pulling them out drew blood. On inspection, he realised the cut was still bleeding. So he raised his hand into the air, where he held it for several minutes, until the bleeding stopped.
The clothes on the side of his torso where he had skidded and landed in the car park were frayed. He lifted them up. The skin underneath was bruised, but otherwise fine. Two shards of window glass had penetrated his flesh, near his ribcage. He drew them out. Fortunately, the incisions weren’t deep, and little blood seeped out where they had been. Myles rubbed his shoulder, which was sore, but there was no serious damage. He was probably safe. For now.
Myles desperately needed to reach Helen in Istanbul. If the plot to destroy America was about lead, then Myles had likely stopped it. But if it was about the plague, then Helen would be trying to stop it right now. And if she was only a little less lucky than Myles had been so far, she would definitely need help.
Stealing a car around midnight in the middle of Germany was easy. Myles simply walked along the road, putting his hand to door handles and pulling on them as subtly as he could. The fifth vehicle he tried — a medium-sized Skoda, parked on a driveway set back from the main road — was unlocked.
Quietly Myles climbed in, then spent more than ten minutes fiddling with the circuitry under the dashboard. He was trying to bypass the ignition switch, but it was hard because the manufacturers had clearly done something clever to stop it being ‘hotwired’. It wasn’t enough to change the way the different leads were connected.
A puzzle: he tried to break it. He could tell there was no computer involved — inserting a key and turning it must be enough to disable whatever anti-hotwiring device had been installed. He saw how the key turned from ‘off’ through two other positions before it reached the ignition setting. Then he saw each of those positions had a different cable associated with it. Eventually, by working out the order he needed to make the connections, Myles was able to make the car start. He twisted the wires to fix them in place, and moved into the driving seat. The tank was almost completely full, meaning Myles could travel far before he would need to refuel — or steal another car.
There were no roadblocks. If the authorities had decided to set them up, then they were nearer to the factory and Myles was already beyond their reach. He kept driving away from the factory site for more than twenty miles. There, driving onto the German autobahn, he turned south, then south-east.
He was heading for Istanbul.
Days VII–VIII
Forty-Three
Istanbul was some two-thousand miles away — impossible to drive in a single stretch, and Myles was already worn and tired. His stomach was painfully empty, and his concentration was fading. He had lost his purple bag in the factory — no more food and water. He decided he would travel only until he was out of Germany before he took a much-needed break.
By first light Myles had reached Pilsen in the Czech Republic, not far from Prague. Here he decided to drive his Skoda into a parking lot, where he climbed out and left it.
He walked for a few streets until he came to more vehicles and did the same as before. He was soon driving away in a Mercedes, which he guessed was at least twenty years old. This he drove some twenty miles, until he abandoned it too, near a farm, where he decided to sleep through the day.
Woken by deep hunger, Myles walked to a nearby village, hiding the side of his body and his torn clothes as much as he could. There he used his last euros to buy smoked meat, cheese and some bread. As he ate his impromptu picnic sitting by the roadside, Myles wondered about Helen, thinking she was probably making good progress with her investigation in Turkey. He understood Helen knew how to take care of herself, but it didn’t stop him from worrying that she might be in some kind of danger.