Just before the assailant had leapt into the car, he had turned toward Proctor, and their eyes had met. There could be no mistaking the man’s features: his strange bichromatic eyes, the pale, chiseled face, the trim beard and ginger hair and look of cold cruelty… This was none other than Diogenes, Pendergast’s brother and implacable enemy, whom they had all believed dead — killed by Constance more than three years previous.
Now he had reappeared. And he had Constance.
The look in Diogenes’s eyes — the ferocity, the dark and perverse glitter of triumph — was so terrible that, for the briefest of moments, even the stoic Proctor was unmanned. But his paralysis lasted only a millisecond. Shaking off the dread and the sedative both, he took off after the car, running down the driveway and leaping over the trimmed border hedge with a single bound.
2
In his youth Proctor had been an exceptional runner — he’d set a record on the endurance course during his OSUT that still stood at Fort Benning, and he’d kept in peak condition ever since — and he pursued the Navigator at the top of his speed. It was now idling at a red light, a block and a half ahead. Proctor covered the distance in under fifteen seconds. Just as he neared the vehicle, the light turned green and the Navigator screeched ahead.
Planting his feet on the asphalt, Proctor aimed his Glock at the vehicle’s rear tires and fired twice, first at the left, then at the right. The shots hit home, the rubber of both tires shivering from the impact. But even as he watched, they stiffened again with an explosive hiss. Self-inflating. The Navigator, Diogenes at the wheel, gunned around the vehicle ahead of it and accelerated up Riverside, weaving through traffic.
Now Proctor turned and raced back toward the mansion, stuffing the gun back into his waistband and pulling out his cell phone. He had only limited knowledge of Pendergast’s contacts in the FBI and other federal agencies; besides, in this situation, calling the FBI would only slow things down. This was a matter for local police. He dialed 911.
“Nine-one-one emergency response,” a cool female voice answered.
Reaching the mansion, Proctor ducked through the front door and raced through the public rooms to the rear of the structure. For security and confidentiality, his cell phone was linked to a false name and address, and he knew this information would already be appearing on the operator’s screen. “This is Kenneth Lomax,” Proctor said, using the cover name, as he opened a false wall panel in the back corridor and snatched up a special bug-out bag he had prepared for precisely such an emergency. “I’ve just witnessed a violent abduction.”
“Location, please.”
Proctor gave the location as he stuffed the Glock in the bag, along with extra magazines of ammo. “I saw this man dragging a woman out of a house by her hair, and she was screaming for help at the top of her lungs. He threw her into a car and drove away.”
“Description?”
“Black Navigator with smoked windows, headed north on Riverside.” He gave her the license plate number as he grabbed the bag and ran through the kitchen toward the garage, where Pendergast’s ’59 Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith was housed.
“Please stay on the line, sir. I’m dispatching units to intercept.”
Firing up the engine, Proctor peeled out of the driveway and turned north onto Riverside Drive, laying ten feet of rubber across the asphalt as he accelerated, running first one, then a second red light. Traffic was thin and he could see ahead for about half a mile. Peering through the hazy light, he tried to make out the Navigator, and thought he could just see it ten blocks ahead.
Accelerating further, he dodged his way between taxis, then ran another light to the furious blatting of horns. He knew that, because it was a possible kidnapping, the 911 operator would notify the Detective Bureau after calling in the marked units. She would also want a lot more information from him. He tossed the cell phone into the passenger seat, line still open. Then he turned on the police radio installed under the dash.
He accelerated further still, blocks shooting past in a blur. He could no longer see the Navigator ahead, even at the straightaway just before Washington Heights. The man’s most logical escape route would be the West Side Highway — but there were no entrances along this stretch of Riverside Drive North. He began to hear sirens; the police had responded quickly.
Suddenly, in his rearview mirror, he saw the Navigator shoot out onto Riverside Drive from 147th Street, heading south. Diogenes, he realized, had ducked into the one-way street in the wrong direction and turned around.
Lips compressed, Proctor sized up the traffic around him. Then he yanked the steering wheel sharply to the left. At the same time, he used the hand brake to lock the wheels, spinning the car around in a power slide. Another shriek of protesting horns and screeching of brakes from the surrounding traffic greeted this maneuver. He followed through the sliding turn, releasing the handbrake when the car completed a 180-degree rotation as he gunned the engine. The big car leapt forward. In the distance now, he could see flashing lights accompanying the wail of sirens.
Five blocks ahead, he could see the Navigator swinging right onto West 145th. That made no sense: 145th quickly dead-ended in the parking lot of Riverbank State Park, the green space built — ironically — atop a sewage treatment plant sandwiched between the Hudson River and the West Side Highway. Did Diogenes have a fast boat waiting on the river?
It was the work of half a minute to dodge through traffic and turn the Rolls sharply onto West 145th. But it was vital he understood what Diogenes intended before proceeding. He brought the car to an abrupt stop and, plucking a small but powerful pair of binoculars from his bag, surveyed the landscape ahead: first the road, then the parking lot and its adjoining service access lanes. There was no sign of any black Navigator. Where the hell had he gone?
Proctor replaced the binoculars. As he did so, he saw out of his peripheral vision a disturbance in the brush to his right. The shoulder banked away sharply here, angling down toward the north — south ribbon of the West Side Highway. Foliage and saplings looked freshly cut; there was a thin, dissipating pall of dust — and fresh tire marks gouged into the dirt.
Proctor raised the binoculars again. There, in the distance, was the Navigator, on the highway, moving north at high speed. He cursed. This set of maneuvers had again given Diogenes at least half a mile’s lead.
Gunning the engine once more, he turned the Rolls off the road and made the lurching, precarious trip down the embankment and onto the highway, where he savagely merged into the oncoming traffic, then grabbed the cell phone off the passenger seat. “This is Kenneth Lomax. The suspect vehicle is now moving north on the West Side Highway, approaching the GWB.”
“Sir,” the operator asked, “how can you be sure?”
“Because I’m in pursuit.”
“Don’t follow it yourself, sir. Let the police handle the situation.”
Proctor rarely raised his voice, but he did so at this moment. “Then get some goddamned heat on that vehicle, and get it now.” He threw the phone back into the passenger seat, ignoring the responding chatter of the operator.
He raced up the West Side Highway as it banked around the Hudson River Greenway, rising and falling with the contour of the land. He pushed the Rolls to over a hundred miles an hour, but he knew that Diogenes would be doing the same. Ahead and above arched the long slender span of I-95 as it passed over the George Washington Bridge. The Navigator was no longer in sight. Had Diogenes taken the exit helix and headed for New Jersey, or Long Island, or Connecticut? Or had he stayed on the highway, over the last brief nubbin of Manhattan, and gone north into Westchester?