“I think I saw one in the Smithsonian,” Ellis said. Speers chuckled before realizing that his younger subordinate hadn’t been joking.
Ellis opened the closet and found a large trail-grade backpack. She put the contents of the three boxes into it.
Glass exploded somewhere in the apartment. Stunned for only a moment, Ellis motioned for Speers to stay quiet.
She drew her Beretta and spun out into the hallway. The manager was in the living room about 20 feet in front of her, bending to inspect whatever had just been thrown through the living room window. Ellis didn’t need to get any closer to know it was bad news.
“Run!” she shouted at the manager before ducking back into the study. There was no time to try to save her. “Cover up,” she told Speers. They had only just gotten their hands over their ears when a blast rocked the entire floor.
If the size of the explosion hadn’t made it obvious, the amount of plaster whizzing past the study confirmed that the office manager was toast.
Waves of regret coursed through Ellis. Not just for failing to instruct the office manager to leave the premises, but also for involving Julian. She should have come alone. Now both their lives were in danger.
In Iraq, Ellis had learned that explosions were sometimes just a prelude to armed entry. Ellis was willing to bet that at least two invaders would be inside as soon as the dust and smoke cleared. She stood and then pulled Speers to his feet. The paunchy intelligence director was unarmed, and would be of little value in a firefight. They had no choice but to try to escape.
“Take a deep breath and hold it,” Ellis instructed. She shouldered the heavy backpack containing the manuscript and stepped out into the hallway, leading Speers by the hand. The air was filled with particles that made her eyes burn.
They went into the room opposite the study, heading straight for the window. She looked outside, hoping for a cable they could slide down, a rooftop close enough to jump to, or a fire escape. All she saw was a brick wall, with only enough clearance for a set of flowerpots.
She led Speers back into the hallway. Someone was shouting now. It could be anyone, she reminded herself. But as she looked back toward what had been Drucker’s living room, the sight of three red laser dots squelched any hope of heading out the front entrance. Drucker’s killers were already here.
She led Speers to the back bedroom and shut the door behind them. Next to the door was a tall maple wood wardrobe. With Speers’ help, she toppled it so that it was blocking the door sideways. She didn’t want to make a stand here, but at least it might stop someone from kicking down the door for a while.
Two windows looked out over a dimly lit courtyard. Once again, there were no tree branches or wires within reaching distance from the window, nor was there a fire escape. That, she realized, would have been outside the living room, which the invaders had no doubt utilized to their advantage.
“Look,” Speers said, opening the window on the other side of the bedroom.
Three floors down was a community swimming pool, illuminated by a pair of lights at the bottom. There was nobody there at this time of night. Even from her angle at the other window, the water was clearly too far to jump.
“No,” Speers said, pointing straight down. “Down there!”
Ellis’ view was blocked. Before she could stop him, Speers already had one leg out the window. She lunged, grabbing for his other leg just as he let go. They both screamed as he jumped.
Several gunshots ripped through the top portion of the door, above the substantial protection that the heavy wardrobe offered. Rays of light emanated from each hole in the door.
She pulled off the backpack, knowing that it would inhibit her ability to break her fall, and tossed it out the window without looking. Ellis turned, firing three rounds through the door just before she leapt. There was no hope of killing three assassins equipped for night operations.
She crossed herself. Then she jumped.
Eurostar Express Train
The Eurostar running from Verona to Rome sped past a vast field of grapevines that were heavy with fruit and ready for harvest. On the right, a hill town came into view. A citadel-like village surrounded by ancient stone walls and topped with medieval architecture. Completely unblemished by billboards, high rises or neon signs, it had hardly been the first jaw-dropping scene they had passed so far. But unlike his fellow passengers, Nico was oblivious to the bucolic scenery. He was about to boot up a beautiful new machine.
He savored the feel of the round power button on the sleek computer Carver had purchased for him. He grazed his finger over the button several times before finally depressing it, savoring the satisfying whirr of the processor flickering to life.
During the 13 months spent hiding on South Africa’s Eastern Cape, he had kept his vow to Madge. No computers in the house. No web-accessible phones. No temptations. Except for the occasional trip down to the hotel, where the night manager had obliged his indulgences.
It had been for his own good, he knew. After all, it had been his inability to control his urges that had put him in lockup in the first place. But in a world where bills were paid online, customers paid for access to entertainment rather than owning it, and paper maps were relics of the 20th century, going web-free had been a difficult promise to keep.
He had managed the inevitable inner conflict mostly by immersing himself in the Xhosa and Afrikaans languages. Becoming fluent in both languages, as well as taking on the challenge of teaching himself how to fish the Transkei riverways, had proven to be surprisingly rewarding. In recent months, the old impulses had nearly died off.
He had lapsed just once, after finding a discarded phone in a Transkei garbage dump. Rooting the phone to steal free web access had been more than the Internet-starved hacker could resist. For three nights in a row, he had pretended to fall asleep, only to get up in the dead of night to explore the ever-changing universe of net security on the phone’s tiny screen. With Nico increasingly ragged and temperamental from his all-nighters, Madge finally recognized the warning signs and demanded that he hand over the contraband device.
Now the familiar rush of adrenalin returned to him as he logged onto the hotspot provided by Carver’s satphone. The encryption key was impossibly long, which only intensified the pleasure when the first site appeared before his eyes. But once he got started, the download speed was blazingly fast. Incomprehensible compared to anything he had ever experienced before.
Carver placed a Limonata and a pastry on the tray before him. With the train worker strike apparently still on, Carver had bought ahead, making sure they wouldn’t be hungry or thirsty on the trip to Rome. Nico set the food and drink aside and continued his bonding session with the new machine.
Before boarding in Verona, Carver had explained his immediate objective. Going on the presumption that a hidden relationship between Senator Rand Preston and Sir Nils Gish existed, he was to use any means necessary to expose any possible connections. For now, they would leave the mysterious case of Mary Borst’s disappearance aside, although he could tell that whether he liked it or not, that some portion of Carver’s brain was still working on it.
He would start by analyzing the two politicians’ itineraries, both private and public, looking for any overlap in destinations or meeting places. He would then pull a full social graph for the two men, working up a full profile on any first and 2nd second-degree contacts that the two men had in common.
Virtually any tactic was fair game. They had already received Preston’s personal email data from the FBI, and Carver was working on getting Gish’s. That was about all the risk-free help they were going to get. They could not reach out directly to private companies for account access, for fear of exposing the investigation.