The speeding Porsche ate up the distance to the Victory Column in well under a minute. Eddie made a last jink around a bus before flinging the car into a power slide through the roundabout. Other vehicles skidded in panic around him, but he was already clear and racing up the next avenue.
A few more lunges around slower-moving cars and he saw the bridge ahead. He braked hard, bringing the Porsche down to an almost legal speed as he reached the crossing. Railings ran along its sides, giving him a view of the river below—
Movement on the water to his right. Both boats came into sight, still holding course along the centre of the channel. He had beaten them here, but now what? ‘How far to this sluice canal?’ he asked.
‘Still two or three miles,’ Rothschild replied.
Eddie swore under his breath. He remembered the roads ahead from his journey into the city, and knew he wouldn’t be able to go nearly as quickly as through the park. He needed a new plan, fast.
The boats would pass under the bridge in about twenty seconds. He stopped the car, staring at them, judging their courses… ‘Get out! Now!’
The elderly woman opened her mouth to protest, but Eddie’s expression warned her that it was in her best interests to obey. She clambered out. He waited until she was clear, then slotted the 911 into reverse and pulled hard on the wheel as he depressed the accelerator.
The Porsche swung backwards through ninety degrees to block the oncoming lane, a couple of cars skidding to a standstill. Eddie ignored the blare of horns, his eyes fixed on the approaching boats. The second, carrying two men and the angel, was still lagging behind the leader, off to one side to stay clear of its wake.
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, bracing himself — then put the car into gear and stamped on the accelerator.
The 911 leapt forward, all four wheels clawing for grip on the wet road. Rothschild clapped her hands to her face in shock as it sprang over the kerb, hit the railing—
And smashed through, arcing down towards the water as the first boat raced by.
Eddie was hurled forward in his seat as the car’s nose hit the water — only to be brought to an equally abrupt halt as the airbag fired. The 911 floated almost vertically for the briefest moment, then the weight of the engine slammed its tail down into the river.
The airbag had already deflated. Eddie dizzily opened his eyes as water gushed into the cabin — to see the second boat racing straight at him, its shocked driver unable to change course in time—
The speedboat’s keel hit the Porsche’s bonnet, flinging it upwards over the windscreen and roof as if jumping a ramp. It left the water, lancing at the bridge…
And slammed into the arched girders beneath the crossing.
The men aboard were thrown headlong against the unyielding steel, blood raining down over the churning waters below. The boat’s mangled remains dropped back into the Spree, its prow crushed like an eggshell.
The Porsche had fared little better. Its windscreen had shattered as the craft ran over it, an explosive wave rushing in. Eddie choked and gasped, pinned in his seat by the weight of water.
The torrent finally eased as the cabin was completely filled, but now the Yorkshireman faced a new threat as cold hit him like a train. The temperature of the Spree on this miserable night was barely above freezing. He fought through the initial shock and clawed for the broken windscreen’s frame. The Porsche was dropping backwards into the dark depths; he kicked free of the jellyfish mass of the expended airbag and squirmed upwards through the opening. A dull boom from below told him that the car had hit bottom, bubbles surging past him. He followed them to the surface.
He breached the waves, gasping as cold air hit his wet skin, and looked around. The wrecked boat was floating beneath the bridge. Pieces of bodies bobbed around it. Someone on the bridge shouted in German. He tipped his head back painfully to see people staring down over the railings.
Eddie started swimming — not for the shore, but the boat. An echoing engine note warned that the first speedboat was slowing and coming around. A crushed and bloodied face sprang at him from the lapping waves; he shoved the corpse aside, searching in the low light for the destroyed vessel’s cargo.
A case floated nearby — the one containing the angel. He grabbed it, then swam for the river’s north bank, seeing a flight of concrete steps leading up from the water.
The engine noise grew louder, angrier. The first boat was racing back towards him. Onlookers above urged him on, but he ignored them, expecting gunfire at any moment.
He reached the steps and scrambled up them, cold water streaming from his clothes. Running footsteps; he turned to see a Berliner hurrying along the footpath — and on the river, the boat arriving, Trant standing up—
‘Down, get down!’ he yelled, diving flat. The man on the footpath hesitated, needing a moment to translate the warning.
The tiny delay cost him his life. A sub-machine gun roared from beneath the bridge, Trant having removed the suppressor before spraying the bank with bullets. The running man took several to his chest and tumbled to the ground.
Screams came from the bridge, the onlookers fleeing. Still clutching the case, Eddie rolled clear of the river’s edge, then jumped up and ran. Another burst of fire slashed through the air behind him.
He hared up a second set of steps to street level, finding himself at an intersection on the bridge’s northern side. Concrete apartment blocks lined the waterfront, no shelter in sight amongst the tightly packed buildings. Instead he cut diagonally across the main road from the bridge, spotting an alley between more drab, graffiti-spattered towers.
The gunfire had cleared the streets with shocking speed, cars peeling away. A loud thump came from the river as the second speedboat bashed against the bank. More shouts, these in English. ‘Get after him!’
Muscles aching from exertion and exposure, Eddie reached the alley, glancing back to see Trant and his two companions pounding up the second flight of steps. The leader saw him and whipped up his MP7, but the Englishman ran between the buildings before he could fire.
At the alley’s end was a square within a complex of apartment blocks, trees standing over a little park. Bushes and hedges dotted the lawns, a brick and concrete spiral at the centre some sort of children’s play area.
The nearest way out was diagonally opposite where he had entered — too far for him to reach before his pursuers entered the square. They would have a clear shot at his back. The only visible entrance to any of the buildings was just as distant.
‘Shit,’ he gasped, searching desperately for a hiding place — and finding none.
16
Trant led his two remaining men, Overton and Whelan, at a sprint down the alley. They reached the end of the passage, guns raised — but there was no sign of their target, just rain drenching a dimly lit garden area. The only apparent exits were a door into one of the apartment buildings and a gap between two blocks to the north. Trant knew his quarry couldn’t have reached either in the short time he had been out of sight. That meant…
‘He’s still here,’ he warned his companions. ‘Find him.’
‘Careful,’ said Simeon through his headset. ‘This guy’s a pro.’
Sirens wailed in the distance. ‘Cops coming,’ said Overton.
‘We’ve got a minute or two,’ Trant replied. ‘Move fast.’ He directed Overton to the left and Whelan into the centre of the small park, then angled right towards the gap.
A line of hedges, reaching to his thighs, ran along a lawn’s edge. Trant readied his gun, then hurdled it.