‘All clear,’ he called back inside. ‘Come on out.’
The car roof reflected the sky, the clouds and the buildings around, curving them into an Einsteinian space. Nyela unlocked the car, and the roof lifted like a hatch. The interior was surprisingly roomy, with a long bench right across it and extra folding seats.
‘Where to?’ she asked.
‘The Grand Hyatt.’
‘Got you.’ She swung herself inside, and Jericho slid in next to her. He saw that the Nissan’s steering column was adjustable. The whole thing could be swung across from the driver’s side to the passenger’s. The tinted glass filtered the harsher wavelengths out of the noonday light and created a cocoon-like atmosphere. The electric motor sprang to life, humming gently.
‘Nyela, I—’ Jericho massaged the bridge of his nose. ‘I have to ask you something.’
She looked at him, the life draining from her eyes.
‘What?’
‘Your husband was going to give me a dossier.’
‘A— My God!’ She pressed her hand to her mouth. ‘You don’t have it? He couldn’t even get the dossier to you?’
Jericho shook his head, silent.
‘We could have blown the bastards’ game for good and all!’
‘He had it with him?’
‘Not the one from the Crystal Brain, Kenny has that one, but—’
Of course he does, Jericho thought, tired.
‘But the duplicate—’
‘One moment!’ Jericho grabbed her arm. ‘There’s a duplicate?’
‘He wanted to give it to you.’ She looked at him, pleading. ‘Believe me, Jan had no choice, he had to sacrifice you and the girl! That wasn’t in his nature, he wouldn’t have double-crossed you. He always—’
‘Where is it, Nyela?’
‘I thought he’d have told you.’
‘Told me what?’ Jericho felt he was going mad. ‘Nyela, damn it all, where did he have—’
‘Have, have!’ She shook her head furiously, spread out her fingers. ‘You’re asking the wrong questions. He is the duplicate!’
Jericho stared at her.
‘What do you m—’
Her throat opened out in a red fan. Something warm sprayed out at him. He flung himself down onto Nyela’s lap. Above him, the Nissan’s cabin exploded, the foam seat stuffing splattered about his ears. Still bending down, he grabbed hold of the steering wheel, tugged it towards himself, revved up and sped away. A salvo stitched through the car’s carbon-fibre hull with a dry staccato. Jericho raised his head just far enough to see over the dashboard, then felt Nyela slump heavily against his shoulder, and he lost control. The car careened down the street, lurched into the opposite lane and climbed the pavement, leaving the squeal of brakes and blare of horns in its wake. Pedestrians scattered. At the last moment, he wrenched the wheel to the left to come back across to his side of the street, almost colliding with a van. As the van swerved aside and rammed several parked cars, he bumped up onto the kerb on his own side and steered for the Spree.
There, tall, white-haired, he saw the angel of death.
Xin fired as he ran, coming directly towards him. Jericho nudged the wheel again. The Nissan threatened to tip over, the cabin was too high up on its legs, the wheels too close together for manoeuvres like this. He scanned the dashboard desperately. Xin had stopped to take aim. With a loud crack, part of the wrecked roof broke away. The Nissan raced towards Xin, and Jericho braced himself for an impact.
Xin leapt aside.
The car sped past him like a giant runaway pram. Xin fired after it, heard brakes squealing, dodged out of the path of a limousine by a hair’s breadth and stumbled across to the other lane, forcing a motorcyclist to veer crazily. The bike skidded and slanted. Xin dodged away again, felt something brush against him, and he flew through the air; he slammed full length against the pavement, on his front. A compact car had struck him, and now the driver was roaring away. Other cars stopped, people climbed out. He rolled onto his back, moved his arms and legs, saw the motorcyclist running towards him and fumbled for his pistol.
‘Good God!’ The man leaned over him. ‘What happened?’ he asked in English. ‘Are you all right?’
Xin grabbed his gun and shoved it under the man’s nose.
‘Couldn’t be better,’ he said.
The motorcyclist turned pale and scuttled backwards. Xin leapt to his feet. A few steps took him to the bike, and he swung himself into the saddle and thrashed off towards the Spree, where he drew up, tyres squealing, and looked about in all directions.
There! The Nissan. It ran a red light, vanished southwards.
Jericho looked about and saw him coming.
He had gone the wrong way. The Audi was somewhere else entirely. He could have changed cars by now, got out of this wrecked Nissan and away from the dead woman. The corpse was flung about this way and that, and kept thumping against him. He looked all over the dashboard for the control that would let the legs down. Pretty nearly everything was controlled via the touchscreen, there must be some symbol somewhere there, but he couldn’t concentrate. He kept having to dodge, swerve, brake, accelerate.
Xin was catching up.
Jericho rumbled along the promenade by the river, across the cobblestones, cut up a lorry and emerged onto a majestic boulevard fringed with grand Prussian buildings. He tried to remember how to get to the hotel from here. Up on its stilts, the Nissan lurched from side to side, always threatening to tip over. All of a sudden he realised that he had no plan. Not a glimmer! He was racing through central Berlin in a wrecked compact car with a dead woman at his side, and Xin was after him, growing inexorably closer.
The traffic ground to a halt ahead. Jericho changed lanes. Another jam. Change again. A gap, a jam, a gap. Bumping from lane to lane like a pinball, he drove towards a huge equestrian statue which marked the beginning of a central island, planted with trees right down its length, a broad green lane dividing the traffic flows. He wrenched the wheel to the right, smashed into the kerb and climbed it. All of a sudden he was surrounded by pedestrians. He jammed the flat of his hand against the horn, veered about, frantically trying not to run anyone over, then the jam was past and he slalomed back down onto the road. He was going too fast, and the wheels had no grip on the road surface. The car skidded across the lanes towards the central reservation, lost contact with the tarmac. On two wheels, he was racing towards the line of trees, and he threw his weight to the side. Something slammed. The car shuddered, leapt violently, bark scraped, huge clouds of dust billowed up. The central island stretching away in front of him was almost empty of people, flanked by lime trees and by benches. To either side the traffic blurred behind the thick green foliage, an impressionist smear of cars, buses, bicycle rickshaws, colour, light, movement.
He glanced backwards.
Xin’s motorcycle was thrashing on under the low-hanging branches, hunting him like a beast of prey.
Jericho accelerated. More people suddenly. A café, shady, romantic, jutting out into the tree-lined walk. Yelled curses, shaken fists, scurrying backwards. A kiosk with tall tables standing around, people playing pétanque. He was racing towards a crossroads, saw the traffic lights changing through a gap in the leaves, yellow, red, and then he was cutting under the noses of dozens of cars ready to move, and was on the next stretch of the central strip. The chorus of blaring horns died away behind him. Glance back, no sign of Xin. Jericho yelled hoarsely. Lost him! He’d shaken Xin off, at least for the moment. He’d won some time, valuable seconds, every second worth an eternity.
Suddenly he also got his bearings back.