‘No,’ Lourds protested automatically. ‘No, I didn’t! It was – urfff!’ Pain stole away his breath and he nearly dropped to his knees again. Kristine kept her grip on his hand and grabbed his collar as well.
He tried to struggle, but to no avail. The girl knew what she was doing.
‘Move, Professor Lourds,’ she ordered. ‘As amusing as it would be to watch you get arrested for this, I have plans for you.’
A million questions flooded Lourds’ mind, but he didn’t ask any of them. He kept moving, mostly in a straight line, out into the next street.
‘Can you see me?’ Kristine asked.
Lourds hesitated, remembered the orders not to speak, and looked back over his shoulder at his captor.
‘Can you see me?’ Kristine repeated.
‘No,’ Lourds answered. ‘No, not well. It’s an awkward angle.’
‘Shut up,’ Kristine said to him. ‘I wasn’t talking to you.’
Lourds shut up. He glanced back at the bear-shaped man and saw with relief that the man was starting to stir. He looked incredibly confused. Lourds knew exactly how he felt.
Behind the downed paramedic, three men were shoving their way through the crowd. They pointed at Kristine and Lourds and then reached inside their suits. That wasn’t, Lourds decided, a hopeful sign.
Kristine cursed and Lourds couldn’t help but think the young woman had quite the mouth on her. ‘I’ve got company,’ she said. ‘Three men.’
Then the men brandished weapons. The flesh and blood barrier separating them from Lourds and the young woman evaporated. Pedestrians and cab drivers screamed in terror. People dived for cover among the cars and kiosks.
Kristine yanked Lourds into motion, pushing him across the street at a run. A car swerved to avoid them, crashing into one of the parked cabs. Lourds’ boots crunched over shattered glass that sprayed across the street from the crash. He hoped none of it had managed to injure anybody – including him.
‘No,’ Kristine retorted angrily, though Lourds hadn’t said a word, ‘I don’t know who they are. Evidently your little surprise party has a leak somewhere. Where’s that car?’
She yanked Lourds to a halt, nearly choking him on his own shirt. He gagged reflexively. To his right, a silver SUV squealed round a corner, barrelling straight for them. Pedestrians tried to get out of the way, but one of them was too slow and the vehicle collided with him, knocking him to the side. He rolled, then staggered to his feet, clutching his arm.
Lourds cursed in three languages, remembered that he wasn’t supposed to talk, then realized he was probably going to get that broken arm, thanks to his lack of control. He braced himself for the excruciating pain. Instead, the SUV skidded to a halt in front of Lourds and Kristine. The passenger door swung open and a hulking man reached out and caught Lourds by his shirt front.
‘Get in,’ Kristine ordered, pushing him from behind.
The hulking man yanked Lourds into the SUV as if he were weightless. The professor banged his knees against the transom, but the pain was only an echo of what was being done to his wrist. Unable to keep his balance, Lourds tumbled into the vehicle and sprawled on the floor.
Twisting his head to see who his new captor was, Lourds looked at the big man just in time to see the top of his left ear explode in a crimson burst. Blood speckled the window behind his captor, a window that now had a thumb-sized hole punched through it.
‘They’re shooting at us!’ Lourdes screamed.
More bullets tore through other windows and the sound of bullets rang out against the SUV’s body. The big man pulled a machine pistol from under his suit jacket. He pushed Lourds’ head into the carpet with one hand while he aimed the machine pistol with the other.
‘Smart guy, isn’t he?’ the hulking man asked. He returned fire as blood streamed down the side of his face and neck.
‘He’s a university professor,’ Kristine said. ‘I don’t think he can help himself.’ She threw herself into the SUV, stepping on Lourds’ butt and spine in the process. She slapped the SUV’s driver on the back of the head. ‘Go!’
The SUV jerked into motion. Tyres squealed in protest and fought for traction. Lourds’ face banged against the floor as the vehicle bounded over an obstruction. He hoped it wasn’t another pedestrian. Another fusillade of bullets took out the SUV’s rear window. Chunks of safety glass sprayed over Lourds. For the first time in months, he regretted longing for some enterprise as exciting as his search for Atlantis.
Memories of all those near-death experiences that had accompanied the excitement flashed through his head. What the hell was I thinking?
Now he had kidnappings, bullets and people screaming again.
What the bloody blazes had gone wrong? This wasn’t supposed to be happening like this! Dammit, he was supposed to be having fun!
Central Intelligence Agency
Langley, Virginia
United States of America
15 March 2010
Special Agent in Charge James Dawson stood in front of an immense high-definition wallscreen and glared at the events unfolding at Ataturk International Airport. Wounded people flopped on the ground and blood streaked the concrete. And every one of them endangered the career he’d built up over the last seventeen years.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this, he growled to himself. It was supposed to be a cakewalk. Easy in, easy out. No muss, no fuss.
They’d replaced the limousine driver with one of their assets. The three men who’d chased the SUV on foot and shot up the airport couldn’t be linked to the Agency even if they got picked up by the police – whether they were still alive or merely corpses. They’d been hired through a blind. That at least gave him enough room for denial in case anything came home to roost. But he’d planned on the op being invisible, not deniable.
Several technicians hunkered over their computer workstations at the table behind him. Dawson felt them waiting expectantly for his commands, just as they had on previous operations.
‘Give me the best image you have of the woman with Lourds,’ Dawson ordered.
Immediately, a section of the wallscreen separated from the ongoing live action. A split second later, the image of the young woman filled the space. Due to the last-minute notice they’d had of the assignment, the team had barely managed to change the chauffeur and hack into the airport’s security camera systems. It would have been much easier to take Professor Thomas Lourds while he’d been in the United States. Exactly why his boss wanted to detain the professor, much less take him out overseas, remained a mystery to Dawson. He didn’t plan to ask for answers, though. Dawson’s advancement had relied on doing whatever his superior wanted without question.
In the wallscreen image, the woman appeared concerned but not totally surprised.
Had she been expecting interference? Dawson wondered. Or was she just that confident about her skills? He watched her navigating through the crowd, then shoving Lourds into the SUV.
‘If she’s that good,’ Dawson wondered, ‘why don’t we know who she is?’
‘We’re searching, sir,’ one of the female techs replied. ‘If we knew where to search first, we could get the name sooner.’
Onscreen, someone inside the SUV fired a machine pistol in controlled bursts. Two of the three pursuers went down, as well as a handful of innocent bystanders.
Dawson cursed again. Whoever had Lourds was as determined to get and keep the professor as Dawson was.
‘Keep looking,’ Dawson snapped. ‘She must have picked Lourds up somewhere on the way to Istanbul.’ Otherwise this other team would have spirited the professor away earlier. Knowing why everybody wanted the professor would have been useful. ‘If these people had had a team in place in Boston, this woman wouldn’t have been the only person picking Lourds up. Rerun the part where she takes control of Lourds – where she grabs his hand and forces him to follow her.’