"Two of them," Lippitt barked. "Machine pistols. They've spotted us!"
I was still filled with the giddy, drunken feeling I'd been carrying with me since I'd left Kaznakov's charred, crackling corpse up on the third floor. I lunged up the stairs, leaped, twisted in the air, and pulled the trigger on my own gun. I fired blindly, both hands on the weapon. It must have been a red-letter day on my astrological chart, because I knew even before I landed hard on my back that I'd hit both of them. Tal suddenly appeared beside me. He finished the job with a gun he took from one of the guards, then motioned for the others to follow him. I saw that he was holding his left side.
"You all right?" I asked. Tal nodded. "Go!" I shouted as Foster paused beside me. "Get your wife out of here!"
It was Lippitt who stopped and yanked me to my feet. "Are you hit?"
"No," I gasped, sobbing for breath. "Just knocked the wind out of myself." With Lippitt dragging me by the sleeve, I struggled up the steps and through the pneumatic door above into a mass of milling, shouting bodies.
The wail of police and fire sirens was very loud now, almost drowning out everything else. The main entrance was perhaps sixty feet away, separated from us by a throng of Russians and firemen. The air was thick with smoke that was billowing down the elevator shafts and stairways.
Someone shouted in Russian, and two burly men who had been standing around as if awaiting orders craned their necks, saw us and drew their guns, started in our direction.
Tal and Lippitt stepped forward, and I joined them as Foster pushed through and a semicircle was formed around his wife. Foster had no gun, but he had his fists; he jabbed and feinted in the air as we inched forward.
I was staring up the barrel of a Russian gun as a red-faced fireman with an American flag sewn on his sleeve and a fire ax in his hands suddenly squeezed into the semicircle between Lippitt and me.
"Man, I don't know what you people are up to," the fireman said in a thick Brooklyn accent, "but anybody who's trying to get away from the Russkys has my help."
More firemen joined the circle, and our group began to move forward. The Russians, unwilling to shoot down New York firemen, backed away. In a few seconds we were at the main entrance. A human corridor of firemen's bodies was formed, and Elizabeth Foster went through it, followed by her husband, Tal, Lippitt, and me.
We were out of the consulate.
19
The street was filled with smoke, sparks, and heat. Flames had eaten through the outer walls of the second and third floors; their light cast a small circle of artificial dawn that vied with the real thing. We'd made a journey of thousands of miles merely by stepping through a doorway; it was a journey of the mind and spirit. The New York street was our homeland.
Lippitt cleared a path through the police lines with his credentials, and we walked quickly to the car. Tal slipped behind the wheel and Lippitt got in on the passenger's side next to him. I sat in the back with the Fosters. A fire chief cleared the way, and Tal pulled away from the curb, navigated the obstacle course of vehicles, then turned uptown. The mad energy that had been fueling me had evaporated. I felt weak and nauseated, and I was trembling slightly. I hurt all over; my entire body felt like a bruise, which it was.
At the U.N., Tal drove through a series of linked underground garages and security gates, then parked. Finally he led us into a locked private elevator, which took us to the top floors of the building.
Lippitt was looking more unhappy and distracted by the minute. I didn't trust him. More important, Elizabeth Foster didn't trust him, and I knew why: if Lippitt had his way, the Fosters probably would have been squirreled away someplace else, as incommunicado as if they'd stayed with the Russians. As far as Mike Foster's wife was concerned, Lippitt was but one of several enemies.
Elizabeth Foster was walking around under her own power now, but she never moved an inch from her husband. She was pressed against him, one arm wrapped tightly around his waist.
The elevator door sighed open and we stepped into an apartment that I assumed was Rolfe Thaag's. Sunlight was streaming in through a bank of windows that reached from floor to ceiling and offered a giddy, panoramic view of Manhattan. It was going to be a hot, cloudless day. Somewhere out in that day, the vast resources of many armies were being marshaled: We were into the end game.
A telephone rang. Tal disappeared for a few moments into an adjoining room. When he returned, his face was ashen. "Rolfe Thaag has had a heart attack," he said in a low voice as he came close to me.
"Jesus."
Tal shook his head. "He's being taken care of in a private clinic. He's expected to recover, but he can't be disturbed. I think it's best if we don't mention it to the others."
Across the room, Mike Foster blinked back tears. "I just want you to know… I just want to thank all of you."
"He's alive," Elizabeth Foster said distantly in a voice that could barely be heard.
The room was suddenly very still. I wasn't sure I'd heard her correctly. She turned to her husband and repeated it. "He's alive. Victor is alive, darling."
Lippitt wasn't facing the window, but his eyes were half-closed, as if to shut out some bright light only he could see. He suddenly shifted his gaze to me, and our eyes held.
"How do you know, Mrs. Foster?" Tal said gently.
"He called." She slowly looked around the room at all of us. Her eyes were wild, drugged with horror. "They told us he called."
"It's true," Foster said, stepping into the center of the room. "I don't think they were lying; they were too damn happy about the whole thing. They said Rafferty was going to turn himself in this morning." He paused, touched his forehead. "Christ, I hope he knows we're out of there."
"I'm betting he knows," I said directly to Lippitt.
Tal slowly shook his head. "It could be a phony. Something the Americans cooked up to buy a little time."
"No," Lippitt said. He looked pale and shaken. A single drop of perspiration had appeared in the center of his forehead. He made no move to wipe it away as it ran down into his eyebrow. "The Russians must have voiceprints."
"How?" Foster asked.
"From the last time. Radio, television. Rafferty was a celebrity, remember?"
"You insisted you'd killed him," I said to Lippitt.
The American agent looked through me as if I weren't there, then abruptly wiped away the streak of moisture on his forehead and walked to the window.
I turned to the woman. "Mrs. Foster, what did your husband know?"
"Know?" Her voice was faint, like a frightened child's. Her violet eyes, paler now in the daylight, slowly came into focus on my face. "What do you mean?"
Tal put his hand gently on Elizabeth Foster's elbow. "You and your husband should sleep now. Try to rest. You can talk to us when you wake up, if you want to."
Elizabeth Foster swallowed hard; her words came in a forced whisper. "It's starting all over again."
I pressed. "What, Mrs. Foster? What's starting all over again?"
Lippitt suddenly turned from the window. "Mrs. Foster, I am going to ask you not to say anything. This is a matter of national security. Does your husband know anything?"
"I don't know beans, pal," Foster said, clenching his fists. "And I don't like your tone of voice. I've got a funny feeling you're the son-of-a-bitch who started this whole thing."
"No, Mr. Foster," Lippitt said evenly. "Whoever hired Frederickson to investigate Rafferty is the person responsible for what's happened. Was that you?"
Foster blanched and looked away from his wife's startled gaze. "It was the museum," he said weakly. "I had … to find out what it was. I had to find out I love you so much, Beth."