Speed alone, however, would not suffice to save them. Another backward glance showed the sedan charging forward, angling to pull alongside them. Kismet reacted immediately by swerving the carriage toward the center of the road. Traffic flowing the opposite direction was starting to back up, but as soon as Kismet saw a break in the stack, he cut the carriage across the lane. Leeds’ driver did not hesitate to follow but the sedan was not quite as agile as the carriage and in the time it took him to force his way through the gap, the carriage picked up some momentum and stretched their lead by more than a hundred yards.
Still not enough, Kismet thought.
A tunnel loomed ahead. Although the crest of the hill through which it passed was shrouded in trees, Kismet recognized it as the East Drive crossing, part of the great park loop that was inaccessible from the Transverse Road. Or rather, inaccessible to automobiles.
Kismet hauled on the left rein, steering the horse onto the grassy embankment. The gentle slope passed through a scattering of trees, and then opened onto a sidewalk that ran parallel to the road. Behind him, Leeds’ driver did not hesitate to follow. As the carriage completed its ascent, the sedan jumped the curb and started up the hill behind them.
Kismet got a brief glimpse of the sedan sloughing back and forth across the embankment as its tires tore up turf in an effort to find purchase, but then he turned his full attention to driving the carriage. He steered right, pulling into the bike lane on the right hand side of the road, and headed south.
Leeds’ car crested the rise less than a minute later, a minute in which Kismet was able to coax the horse to a fast trot and put almost three hundred yards between them and their pursuer. But the horse was not bred or trained for speed and the bike lane was not exactly carriage friendly. Cyclists and skaters had to be shouted out of the way and most did not go without protest. Although the carriage was probably little more than a speck in the distance to Leeds and his men, the disruption left little question about which way Kismet and the others had gone.
“Bugger!” Higgins stuck his head through the opening. “There’s two of ‘em now. Looks like Leeds got himself an army.”
Although he didn’t doubt the former Gurkha’s word, Kismet looked back to verify that a second sedan had climbed the embankment and joined the chase. Vehicle traffic on East Drive was one-way in the opposite direction, but that didn’t seem to bother the drivers. Both cars pulled onto the bike lane and charged after the fleeing carriage.
“We’ve got to get off the road!” Kismet wasn’t sure if he was shouting to inform his passengers, or to help him decide what to do next, but it was sound advice. Traffic and laws notwithstanding, Leeds’ cars would be able to close in on them in a matter of seconds. The only way to outdistance their pursuers was to find an escape route where the cars could not follow. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. Dense stands of trees lined either side of the road, denying passage not only to automobiles but also to the carriage, and Leeds’ men were too close for them to abandon the horse-drawn vehicle and make a run for it.
The road ahead curved gently to the left and then in a few hundred feet arched back to the right. Just past that vertex of the curve, on the far side of the road, Kismet spied a break in the trees. “That might work,” he muttered.
He cautiously steered the horse into oncoming traffic. Because the speed limit for cars on East Drive was only 25 mph, there was little risk of a collision, but the carriage nevertheless cut a swath of chaos across the road, with cars skidding to a halt, turning sideways or veering into the bike lane. Then, just that quickly, they were through.
Kismet slowed the horse to a walk and guided it toward the gap in the tree line, and then the forest enfolded them, falling like a curtain on the mayhem behind them.
The carriage emerged from the stand of trees at a point directly opposite the famed Alice in Wonderland statues on the edge of the Conservatory Water. Kismet turned the horse onto the footpath that ran along the edge of the reservoir, once again heading south. He glanced over his shoulder again, half-expecting to see one of the sedans emerge from the trees, and gave a relieved sigh when that did not happen.
Higgins clambered around the frame of the damaged canopy to join him. “I think we lost them. Now what?”
“No pun intended, but I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet. Leeds might just have the resources to watch every exit from the park. I’ll breath easier when we’re out of the park…hell, when we’re out of the city.”
Higgins nodded but said nothing more. Kismet followed to the trail south until it curved toward an intersection with a paved road — Terrace Drive, which exited the park and turned into East 72nd street. Kismet approached the road cautiously, but there was no sign of Leeds’ sedans. He continued east to the junction with Fifth Avenue, and then halted just inside the park’s boundaries. They left the carriage there, the gelding tethered to the wrought iron fence and in plain view, and trekked out to the main thoroughfare. Kismet allowed a few taxis to pass by before hailing one at random. As they got in, he told the driver their destination.
“Rockefeller Center.”
The driver cocked his head sideways, probably wondering who would hire a cab to reach a destination that was within easy walking distance, but then dropped the flag and waited for his chance to pull into traffic. Higgins could just make out the distant shriek of sirens as police cars from all over the surrounding area closed in on the park.
“It’s only a few blocks away,” Kismet explained. “But it’s always busy. We can get lost in the crowd until we figure out what to do next.”
As expected, the ride was short. After Kismet paid the driver, he led his companions through the crowd of tourists milling in the artificial canyon between the glass and concrete towers where the corporate and media empires shaped the future of the world. They drew to a halt on the balcony overlooking an ice skating rink, but Higgins’ gaze was drawn to an enormous statue — a gilded bronze figure in repose.
He hadn’t exactly received a classical education in the Regiment, but Alexander Higgins recognized this image.
Kismet sank wearily onto a vacant bench. “Okay,” he said finally. “Spill it. What in the hell happened back there?”
“They were waiting for us,” Annie said quickly, almost too quickly.
“Yeah, I kind of figured that part out. It’s the ‘how’ that’s still a bit murky. They just abducted you off a crowded New York City sidewalk?”
Higgins felt his daughter’s stare burning into him, but couldn’t seem to tear his own gaze away from the statue. Prometheus, bringing fire to mankind. Coincidence? Not bloody likely.
“He said he just wanted to talk,” she said, after a long pause. “He wanted us to work with him to find…well, you know. It all sounds a bit daft, really.”
“Except he seems to think it’s worth killing for.” Kismet glanced at the still silent Higgins for a moment. “It’s pretty obvious what Leeds is up to: divide and conquer. He must think I’ve told you something. The joke’s on him, since right now, he knows just as much as I do.”
Higgins nodded slowly, but Leeds’ words echoed in his head. How else would you explain your miraculous escape…? He finally met Kismet’s stare. “Right. We told him to bugger off. Of course, I hope you do know a bit more, or otherwise we might as well all just go home now.”
A wry smile curled the corners of Kismet’s mouth. “It’s not so much what I know as what I think I know. Joseph King said that Fontaneda — Fortune, rather—‘took the secret with him to the grave.’ He used those specific words. I think that’s a clue, and I think I know what it means.” He briefly outlined what he had discovered in his Internet search for Joseph King. “Unfortunately, if Leeds is half as clever as I think he is, he’ll pick up on this, too.”