Inside the amusement park, he glanced around to get his bearings, then opted for the steps that led past a carousel ride with animals in all shapes and sizes. He had seen one just like it in Italy but had never been on it. In fact, he had never seen a place like this, he thought, as he crisscrossed the system of pathways amid children on the roller coaster and the pirate ship, and the shrieks of delight when parents arrived with ice-cream. Marco felt a lump rise in his throat. Never had he felt so abandoned as in this pandemonium of happy faces and gaiety.
He saw more police cars appearing in the surrounding streets, but was sure they’d never catch him here because he knew the way behind the Pantomime Theatre and the restaurants to his building-site hideaway, which lay next to that corner of Tivoli. From there, climbing the lattice of steel girders and concrete was no problem, when your name was Marco.
–
The site was almost deserted. A few workmen were pottering about below, but up here where he sat his only company was the wind and his view across the city.
He felt like a hawk hovering unnoticed above the fields, eyes latching on to the slightest movement.
Now he knew how close they were. Just below, sniffing around for the smallest clue that might tell them how he had given them the slip and where he’d disappeared to. The police cars had gone now, but it wasn’t the police he feared the most.
It was the black guy. Not because of his inscrutable eyes or his athletic body and sure movements. What frightened him was that he couldn’t understand what a man like him was doing here.
He recalled having seen two young Africans by the steps of the central station. But when he closed his eyes and concentrated, he saw a black woman, too, standing behind them, keeping an eye on everything. It was like these were the ones in charge, while the other men seemed less resolute.
What were they all doing here in Copenhagen? That was the question. Who had put them on to him?
As far as he could see, it could hardly be Zola. He remembered clearly the time two Afro-American men had wanted to join the clan, back when they lived in Italy, and how nasty the verbal exchanges had become. No, black folks were not welcome in Zola’s world.
But who, then?
Marco picked up his book. He had read it many times by now, the one he had stolen from the family on the very first morning of his life as a fugitive. The words soothed him and even the name of the main character, Nicky, made him feel better. She was a strong-willed woman who held her own against superior force, despite her lack of physical strength. A woman who didn’t really belong to the society in which she lived, and yet…
He put the book down again and frowned.
The sounds from below were almost inaudible, which was precisely what sent a rush of adrenaline through his body. Construction sites, normally such a cacophony of sounds, were meant to fall silent when the day was done. No one was supposed to be there.
But someone was.
He went over to the elevator shaft, where he stood and listened intently. The sounds were still there, a bit louder now. Not regular footsteps, more like the squeak of moist fingers drawn across plastic.
They were here. He was certain of it.
If it was the Africans, he knew they were unlike any people he had previously been up against.
The sounds grew more distinct and were coming from two directions. One directly underneath the elevator shaft, the other by the stairwell. So now his exits were blocked.
He heard them speak. Was it French?
Glancing around he saw no immediate escape route, just a couple of obvious hiding places where they were bound to look straight away.
Why had he come all the way up here to the fourth floor? He was too high up to jump.
They can kill me here as easy as anything, but I’ll put up a good fight, he told himself, his body heating up and his breathing growing deeper.
The iron bar he picked up from the floor was heavy enough that no one could survive a well-aimed blow. He gripped it tightly in both hands, pointing it at the stairs like a Jedi’s light saber
He simply refused to cry now. The last thing he wanted was for these men with their ruthless faces to see him break down as they closed in on him. He wouldn’t allow them to see the effect Zola had on people when they turned against him. At least that was one thing these guys wouldn’t be able report back about when they were finished with him.
The first man to appear at the top of the stairs was not the one who had been running after the bus. Though Marco could see only his silhouette, the yellow T-shirt was unmistakable: Lakers 24, it read.
“Hello, kiddie,” the man said in a husky voice, in English. “Come here to me!”
He remained at a distance, waving Marco toward him. But Marco backed away toward the side of the building facing Vesterbrogade. The closer they were to the edge, the greater the chance of taking the guy with him in the fall. It was a maneuver he had already tried once that day.
Marco looked up. Behind the black man, Tivoli’s Ferris wheel with its candy-striped gondolas was rotating to the delighted cries of children and grown-ups alike. Before the wheel came to a halt he would probably die, and no one in the world would know who he was or what he might have become.
For all his resolve, the sorrow of this sudden realization prompted tears to well in his eyes.
“Poor boy!” said the young African. He had yet to produce a weapon, but Marco knew it was only a matter of time.
If he was lucky, he might be able to surprise him by making a dash for the elevator shaft and leaping into the void. Marco knew the second man was on the floor below, but if he let himself plunge to the next level down, then maybe somehow he might be able to save his skin. Maybe, somehow.
He took a step to the side, but his adversary read his thoughts and blocked his path.
There was nothing Marco could do now but watch and wait.
Not until only a few paces separated them did Marco see his face clearly. Despite the lines etched in it, he wasn’t much more than five or six years older than Marco. There was a scar across his nose, white and sharply defined, and his left eye was half shut. He looked like a warrior, and yet there was nothing aggressive or angry about his countenance. In fact, he seemed more like a carpenter needing only to hammer in the last nail of the day. Placid and unwavering, cold as ice.
And then he produced the knife.
Marco took two swipes at him with the bar, though he knew any moment now the African would raise his weapon above his head and send it hurtling into his chest. It was that kind of knife: short-handled, with a finger grip and razor-sharp double-edged blade.
If the iron rod hadn’t been so heavy, he would have launched it at him or tried to bat the knife aside in midair with a baseball swing. But Marco hadn’t the strength, and so he stepped up close to the edge and waited.
In what he believed would be his final seconds, he heard a car sound its horn emphatically at the junction below. But the sound didn’t come directly from the street, it was more like a distorted fanfare coming from right next to the spot where he was standing.
He turned his head and saw the top of the rubble chute assembled from sections of heavy-duty plastic tubing through which the builders dumped their debris into ground-level Dumpsters. Marco clenched his jaw and lunged to the side as he flung the iron bar at his enemy. It ricocheted against the concrete floor and struck the African on the shin. Then he grabbed the sides of the chute and vaulted in, feetfirst.
He heard the man’s curses as he slid away.
The sections of the chute telescoped into each other and every join slowed his descent a little. The son of a bitch wouldn’t catch him now, Marco decided, he was too big and would get stuck.
And then he heard the rumble above.