He reached the alley and turned down it, finding to his dismay that he was about to put civilians in danger. A little street market had been set up between the buildings, stalls selling vegetables and clothing and bootleg DVDs. Smoke wafted from a cart cooking potatoes.
‘Move, move!’ he shouted as he weaved between the startled shoppers. The sight of the gun caused most to jump away in alarm, but he still had to barge a couple of laggards aside.
German yells joined the Arabic. The Nazis had reached the alley. Even without their star sprinter, they were still catching up.
Eddie reached the food cart, seeing charcoal flames licking up from a grill. With a shout of ‘Fire!’ he swung the statue at it. Potatoes scattered — as did burning wood, which landed on a neighbouring stall. Cheap clothes instantly caught light. Eddie kicked the stall as he ran past. It collapsed, spilling its burning wares across the alley. People shrieked and ran in panic as the fire spread to other stands and awnings on the sides of buildings.
Eddie swerved through the throng, looking back to see that the blaze had forced the Nazis to stop. Rasche glared impotently after him over the burning cart. The Yorkshireman hurried on down the alley.
There was a small square at a crossroads ahead, more stalls clustered in it. If he took the right-hand alley and headed back in the general direction of the dig, he might be able to find the ASPS and get backup—
Walther and his men rounded the corner.
‘Buggeration!’ Eddie gasped as the huge Nazi pointed at him and bellowed an order. Guns came up — but didn’t shoot. Walther knew that the Englishman was caught in a pincer, and as soon as Rasche and the others got past the fire, they would close it…
A doorway led into one of the apartment blocks. Eddie ran at it, hoping it wasn’t locked—
The door burst open at his kick. He stumbled inside, finding himself in a stairwell. A door led deeper into the building, but a warning sign in Arabic with the stylised symbol of a key suggested that it was locked. Not wanting to waste precious seconds trying it, he charged up the steps instead.
He had reached the second floor when the outer door banged. A glance over the banister; Walther was glaring up at him. The German barked another command, and his men streamed past him in pursuit.
Eddie kept climbing, legs burning from the effort of carrying the statue. The doors to the internal hallways had the same warning sign as on the ground floor — but the fourth floor was different, a line of sunlight coming through a second, half-open door to one side. Keep going up, or out?
He chose the latter, barrelling through to find himself on a small terrace. Any hope of jumping to a neighbouring block faded as he saw that the nearest building presented only a blank wall, and a rooftop opposite was too far to reach. He peered over the edge. The floors fell away below, the sheer drop broken only by awnings over the windows.
The echoes of stamping feet grew louder. The Nazis were right behind him—
Eddie went to the terrace’s railing — and held the statue out over the edge.
The first of his pursuers burst through the door, then froze. ‘Get back!’ Eddie shouted as a logjam of black-clad men built up behind the new arrival. ‘Get the fuck back, or I’ll let it go.’
Some of the Nazis retreated. But they weren’t obeying Eddie; instead, they were responding to Walther’s orders and clearing a path as the hulking man reached the landing. He filled the doorway, aiming his gun at Eddie’s chest. ‘If you drop it, you will die,’ he said.
‘And you’ll never get your Fountain of Youth.’ Eddie looked down at the intersection again. People were still running from the fire, but it wouldn’t be long before Rasche’s group cleared the obstacle…
Red hair amongst the black and headscarves. Nina ran into the square. He yelled her name, seeing her stop to look for him — then caught movement in his peripheral vision. ‘Oi! Back off, Adolf,’ he snarled as the nearest Nazi crept towards him. The young man pulled away, but only by a couple of steps.
Walther emerged fully into the open, more of his men slipping on to the terrace behind him. ‘You have nowhere to go. Give us the statue, and we will let you live.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Eddie replied sarcastically. He checked below. Nina had seen him at last and was staring up at the balcony, unsure what to do.
‘You do not believe me?’
‘You’re an escaped Nazi war criminal, mate. You’ve got a bit of a credibility problem.’
‘It is your only hope of staying alive.’ Walther nodded at the two men nearest Eddie. They slowly advanced on the Yorkshireman.
‘You want this statue, then you’ll all fuck off back down the stairs,’ Eddie snapped, but he knew that his bargaining chip was becoming less effective by the moment. They were going to rush him…
‘Okay, okay,’ he said with a defeated sigh. One of the Nazis hesitated, but the other stepped closer, reaching out to take the statue from him.
Walther smiled. ‘Good. You are making the only possible—’
With another cry of ‘Nina!’ Eddie whirled and flung the statue off the roof.
It spun through the air, arcing down towards his wife. Walther and the others stared after it, frozen in shock—
Eddie grabbed the nearest man by the front of his dark overalls, yanked the Nazi towards him — and rolled backwards over the railing.
11
The Nazi screamed as he and Eddie plunged towards the ground—
They struck an awning, the black-clad man taking the brunt of the impact. But it barely slowed them, the pair wrenching the frame from the wall as they dropped.
Nina saw the statue whirling towards her and instinctively darted out of its path — before the rational part of her mind countermanded the reaction. If the statue hit the ground, it would be destroyed. She had to save it. But it weighed enough to seriously injure her…
A stall beside her sold rugs, heavy rolls of woven cloth stacked upon it. She snatched one up and held it across her chest, moving to intercept the falling treasure—
Even with the thick padding, the impact felt as if she had been kicked in the chest by a real horse. She fell on her back, the landing knocking the breath from her lungs.
But the statue had survived.
More awnings ripped away as Eddie and the Nazi kept falling, fabric flapping around them. Three, two, only one more left before they hit the ground—
The last sunscreen held.
For a moment — then its frame snapped. But it took the two men’s weight just long enough to slow them before tearing loose.
They dropped the final ten feet with the younger man underneath Eddie. There was a harsh snap as the Nazi’s ribs broke. The Englishman bounced off him and rolled, winded, against the wall.
Nina was also gasping for air. She opened her eyes, flinching in fright at an unfamiliar face glaring down at her. But it was an Egyptian man, not one of the Nazi raiders.
She thought he was going to help her up, but instead he frowned and said: ‘You have ruined my rug! You break it, you bought it. Four hundred pounds.’
‘How frickin’ much?’ she wheezed, before remembering firstly that he meant Egyptian pounds, not British, and secondly that she had much bigger problems than an irate street trader. She heard shouts — and down an alley saw Rasche and his men kicking a burning obstruction aside. ‘That guy’ll pay for it,’ she said, straining upright.
‘What guy?’
‘The one with the gun.’ She took hold of the statue, then got clumsily to her feet.
The trader grabbed her arm. ‘Hey, hey! Four hundred pou—’
A bullet smacked against the building behind his stall.
‘Consider it a gift!’ the Egyptian decided, diving for cover.
‘Shit!’ Nina shrieked, pain and breathlessness instantly vanishing in a surge of panic-fuelled adrenalin. She ran for a side alley, the heavy statue already weighing her down.