JK: anya might be one of the bad guys. and she knows about the kill switch, the override code, everything. might have screengrabbed our last conversation too.
The pause that followed was unusually long for Sophie’s Formula 1 mind.
SW: that is doubleplusungood.
JK: i’m in her so-called uncle’s mansion right now, and they’re showing no inclination to let me out.
SW: where’s jesse?
JK: with her. he doesn’t know.
SW: let me think. if so, it’s bad but not yet calamitous, not quite. we still have options. one last hole card. but we have to move fast.
SW: just a sec, someone’s at the door.
I waited. And waited.
And then the little green dot which indicated that she was online went red.
I checked my Internet connection. It was fine. Sophie had abruptly ended our conversation. No: someone had abruptly ended our conversation. It wasn’t something she would have done, not without some kind of valediction.
I had an awful feeling that she wasn’t coming back.
Chapter 61
My frantic preparations took only a few minutes. I left the Fluevogs and wore Asics instead. The Armani jacket in the closet was just big enough. Outside the darkening afternoon was chilly and foggy, which I hoped was sufficient justification for that light coat.
The FSU thug was waiting in the hall when I emerged.
“Can I help you?” His accented voice as bland as before.
“I just wanted to go up to the greenhouse.” I tried to look and sound defeated. It wasn’t hard. “To sit and think.”
He considered a moment, decided it was within the remit of his instructions. “I will show you.”
I didn’t protest that I already knew; I followed meekly, held arms tight against my sides in the elevator. I must have looked squirrelly and uncomfortable, but then I had good reason. Naturally he didn’t take me seriously as a threat or a flight risk. Nobody ever took me seriously. Everybody knew I was just an ordinary guy way out of his depth. I worried he might actually follow me into the greenhouse, in which case my plan would have required drastic and violent revision; but he waited outside, at the base of the stairs that led to the greenhouse’s steel door.
I was sweating heavily even before I stepped into that thick warm air. The rich botanical smell that only a few hours ago had seemed so sweet now made me want to gag. I made my way towards the bench on which Anya, Jesse and I had sat – and stopped halfway, staring out the window towards the circular driveway below, and the limousine pulling into it.
It came to a halt, and Anya emerged, moving briskly. Jesse did not.
There was still no evidence. Maybe I had constructed a paranoid fantasy with no foundation. Maybe she was on our side, Jesse had just stopped for a beer on the way back, there really was a security threat from Moscow, Sophie had been distracted by important breaking news, and that Cyrillic-language factory in Dubai was mere coincidence.
But no. Something was wrong, terribly wrong, I could feel it in my bones. Anya was the enemy. Now that she had confirmed what I had told her, now that the last chink in their armour had been filled, the iron fist had finally emerged from her velvet glove. Jesse had been taken to some kind of prison, and I was next.
I ducked into a corner between two rose bushes, hoping they might shield me from electronic eyes. There I stripped off my jacket, unwound the two king-size sheets wrapped around my chest, and knotted them together, trying to work fast with fumbling hands, wishing I had done this back in the bedroom. I half-expected the thug to race into the greenhouse and knock me out with some Russian martial art before I could put my plan into action.
But he didn’t come. I was hidden from the cameras, or they weren’t watching, or Anya’s return had served as a distraction. Or maybe there were no cameras after all.
I hurried over to the wrought-iron bench, looked up at the four-foot triangular panes that made up the greenhouse wall, selected one. I thought of the raging Colombian river I had crossed with Lisa Reyes, and how she had told me to be confident, to visualize success. Then I crouched down, grabbed the bench, and heaved it all the way into the air.
It was much heavier than I expected, and something gave in my back, it felt like a string snapping beneath my skin, near my spine. I ignored the sudden pain and lumbered at my target, using the bench as a battering ram, half-expecting to either bounce right off or plunge right through.
Instead the brittle glass shattered with a gratifying smash!, and the recoil stopped me dead.
Hot air whooshed out into the foggy day, and cold air began to seep in. It felt like I had torn a hole in the fabric of the universe. Toothy fragments of glass clung to the pane’s triangular steel frame, making the newly created aperture look like a shark’s mouth. I dropped the bench, rushed back to the sheet, grabbed it. Bending over caused agony to race up my damaged back. I hustled back and knelt to tie my improvised rope to the bench.
A door flew open. The thug. The bench was far from that entrance, and the greenhouse’s gravel trails wound indirectly, but I figured I had ten or twenty seconds at most. Panic made my fingers slow and clumsy, like my brain had been transplanted into somebody else’s body and I hadn’t quite figured out yet how to work it. It took me two attempts to tie a simple reef knot. Then I grabbed the sheet, stepped to the edge of the building, and realized I didn’t know how to transition from standing vertically to rappelling horizontally.
I heard pounding footsteps, turned, and saw the thug charging towards me like an unleashed bulldog.
Necessity was the mother of revelation. I scrambled out of the window and suddenly found myself half-rappelling, half-sliding down the side of the building. Blood flowed freely from my left hand, gashed open by a shard of glass. No time to worry about that. It took all my strength to hang on to the knotted sheets as I stumbled backwards – downwards – as fast as I could.
The building’s stone walls were covered with ivy, which gave me good traction; but then I reached a big window. My feet slipped on that smooth glass and I fell, banging my elbow so hard against the window that I nearly let go. Blood dripped from my wounded hand as I gasped for air.
When I looked up,I saw two terrifying things: the FSU thug staring down at me, and the sheet visibly fraying where it sawed against a clinging shard of glass.
I tried to hand-over-hand downwards. A mistake. Without my legs to support me, the twisted sheet began to slip through my hands, and I couldn’t clench hard enough to hold it. I slid down at a pace moderated only by what friction I could impart with my palms. The sheet-burn was agonizing. Then suddenly there was no sheet left, and I was falling towards a large and bristling thorn bush.
It was almost as good as a haystack. Most of its thorns broke or bent or gave way, and it absorbed enough of my impact that I rolled onto the damp earth with nothing worse than a few dozen more nicks and bruises to add to my already-impressive collection. I was on my feet and running before the thug could summon backup.
The London fog was thick, and once on the street I could see no end to the mansions arrayed in either direction. The wrought-iron gate at the end of the road prevented vehicle traffic but allowed pedestrians. The man in the little security cubicle looked like he wanted to stop me, but I was gone before he could react, racing into a public London street where even a billionaire, I hoped, would have to fear the consequences of his actions.
Once the first hit of desperate adrenalin wore off, I slowed to my usual running pace. For a second I flashed back to my run through Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco on the day Lisa Reyes had come to our lab, the day all this madness had begun.