The Alliance of the Pharaohs? No way for Gabriel to know; he spoke only a few words of Arabic, mostly gutter slang he’d picked up on streets around the world, and he couldn’t read the language.
Michael, on the other hand, could.
Gabriel whipped out his thirty-thousand-dollar cell phone, fumbled till he found the button to activate the camera, and snapped a close-up of the line of Arabic script. Instants later, the image was winging its way wirelessly back to New York. Modern technology had its uses, much as he hated to admit it.
Next Gabriel examined the clutter around the desk. A laptop computer was spread open on the floor, its spine bending the wrong way. It looked as if someone had stomped on it with a heavy boot.
Then he noticed the dark spot on the floor near the sofa. Gabriel moved closer and crouched.
Dried blood.
Was it Lucy’s? Or had she wounded one of her assailants?
After canvassing the rest of the living room and kitchen, Gabriel returned to the bedroom. The double bed was unmade. A pair of pillows was on the floor and the sheets were in a torn heap. Bending to peer under the bed again, Gabriel spotted something on the far side. He got up, went around the bed, pushed it away from the wall and carefully lifted the object up.
It was half of a broken glass hypodermic syringe. The piece with the needle. There was some residue within the shattered barrel.
It either meant the kidnappers had used this on her or that Lucy had started shooting up for fun. Hell of a day when “your sister’s a junkie” is the better of your two options.
A sound from the hallway outside the apartment caught his attention. Gabriel heard heavy footsteps ascending the stairs. He rushed back to the front door and stepped out. Looking over the staircase rail, he could see all the way down to the ground floor.
Policemen. French policemen. Heading his way.
Gabriel looked around—he was already on the top floor, so there was no way out except down the stairs. He hurried back into the apartment, shut the front door as best he could, ran into the bedroom, and shut that door as best he could. Two broken locks meant two doors that wouldn’t keep the flics out for long. He went to the window, unlocked it and raised it, just as the police thundered into the living room. Gabriel swung a leg over the sill and stepped out onto the fire escape landing. Steps led down to the landings on successive floors and a narrow ladder attached to the exterior wall led upward, to the roof. Gabriel saw that two police vehicles were parked directly beneath him. Down was not an option.
He took the ladder two rungs at a time toward the roof. Just as he reached the top, he heard a shout from Lucy’s window. The police.
Gabriel climbed over the short wall that surrounded the roof and ran across the building. He reached the other side just as a uniformed officer appeared at the top of the ladder behind him.
“Arrêt!”
There was roughly a six-foot gap between Gabriel and the adjacent building. He backed up, took a running start, and jumped, landing squarely on the next roof. As he continued to run, Gabriel glanced back to see that two other policemen had joined the first.
They must have felt daunted by the space between the buildings—the policemen halted at the edge of Lucy’s roof. They shouted for him to stop but Gabriel kept going. He heard a gunshot go zipping past. He lunged for the edge of the building, grabbed hold of the top of the fire escape ladder, and hurled himself over the rim, landing on the narrow metal platform a few feet below. Beside him, a clothesline had been strung outside an apartment window and a variety of underwear hung from it: a man’s undershirt with stains at the collar and sleeves, a frilly underwire bra, several pairs of shorts. Next to the clothesline a thick, rubber-jacketed coaxial cable ran from a hole next to the window, across a wide alley, over a wooden fence, and into a yard containing what looked and sounded like a generator of some kind.
Gabriel snatched the bra from the clothesline and slung it over the cable. Holding onto one strap with each hand, he pushed off the landing. The cable dropped precariously under his weight, but it was well anchored and didn’t pull out of the wall. He slid down swiftly, dropping when he was a few feet above the ground, just before he would have slammed into the generator.
He took just a moment to catch his breath. The policemen couldn’t have seen him; they’d guess he’d gone down the fire escape and would be looking for him on the other side of the fence. For the time being, the safest thing for him to do was probably stay right here.
He thought so, anyway, until he heard a low, guttural growl behind him.
He turned his head to see two Doberman pinschers.
Staring at him. Baring their teeth.
Gabriel liked dogs well enough. He’d gotten along with plenty in his day, including some that hadn’t liked anyone else. He smiled at these two, held his hand out, palm up.
The dogs continued to growl.
Then one of them barked. It must have been a signal, for both animals lunged at him. Gabriel leapt to his feet and ran, followed by the dogs’ ferocious barking. He reached a tall tree on the far side of the yard, jumped, grabbed an overhanging branch, and pulled himself up just as a steel-trap jaw snapped at his legs. Gabriel continued to climb higher. One branch looked thick enough to support his weight and was long enough that its far end extended over the fence. He straddled the branch and crawled along it as the dogs barked and howled beneath him. The tree limb dipped as he crept toward its end. He could hear it beginning to creak. Gabriel kept moving. The dogs’ jaws were snapping just a few feet away. The limb made a sickening cracking noise—and finally snapped when he was just short of the fence. Gabriel fell but managed to catch hold of the top of the fence. He heard the dogs’ paws scrabbling in the dirt as they raced toward him, and then the sound stopped and he knew it meant they’d launched themselves through the air at him. With an enormous heave, he pulled himself over the fence, tumbling to the ground on the far side. Behind him, he heard the two dogs collide with the fence. They bayed with disappointment.
Gabriel bent to inspect his calf, to make sure he really hadn’t been bitten. He hadn’t felt a bite, but with the adrenaline coursing through him he wasn’t sure he would have. But no—there were no bite marks, just a broad smear of dirt along one leg. The impact of the fall on his hands and arms was beginning to make itself felt, though, and it hurt like hell, all the worse for coming on top of the strain of his recent caving adventure.
On the other side of the fence, the animals continued making a racket. Gabriel thought it best to get out of there before the noise told the cops exactly where he was.
But where exactly was he?
An alley. One direction looked like a dead end, but the other looked like it emptied onto a fairly busy street some thirty yards away. Gabriel hurried toward the open end. As he neared it, a shiny red Peugeot 4007 screeched to a stop in front of him, blocking his escape.
The passenger door opened.
“Hurry. Get in.”
The driver was a redhead in a low-cut black blouse displaying plenty of cleavage under a black leather jacket. Her lips weren’t pouty at the moment, but there was no question who he was looking at. The woman from Lucy’s apartment.
From somewhere behind the car came the sound of shouts, of running feet. Someone blew a whistle and, turning, Gabriel saw a policeman pointing a gloved finger in his direction.
“In or out?” the driver said, her French accent thick. “I am not remaining here.”
He jumped in and slammed the door shut. The woman pushed the pedal to the floor. With a squeal of burning rubber, the Peugeot merged recklessly into traffic. More whistles sounded behind them. The car shot through a red light and turned, barely missing a bus.