Hannibal ground the gas pedal into the floorboard and pulled out into traffic the instant Ivanovich was back inside, letting his forward momentum slam the doors shut. His jaw was clenched tight as he spurred the car forward.
“You have them again?” Ivanovich asked.
“Black Beemer ahead. Silver Civic behind. They’re a lot ballsier than I thought. Gunfire in broad daylight in front of the Federal Reserve Building? A couple blocks from the Lincoln Monument? What’s the matter with these morons? And why the hell shoot Krada?”
“He was with us,” Ivanovich said. “Guilt by association. And I’m sure he never saw it coming. Will you call the police now?”
Hannibal grinned. “They’d hang you up by your thumbs, buddy. I’m pretty sure you don’t have licenses for those two handguns you just discharged in the middle of the city. Besides, we got to keep on the move. If these guys find us waiting for the cops, they won’t hesitate, they’ll just shoot. So by the time the cops found us, it would all be over anyway. Unless…”
“Yes?”
“Unless we find a safe place to sit for a while.”
Hannibal hit the ramp to I-66 with everything the Black Beauty could give him. As he reached the top of the curve he was staring at a bank of dark, forbidding clouds. Hannibal rarely prayed, but he did at that moment. He prayed that they would not be hit with another cold rain that afternoon. He expected to be outdoors for quite a while.
Traffic was only moderate, so on the downhill run he was able to slide into the farthest left of the three lanes as they hit the Roosevelt Bridge.
Behind him he heard Krada coughing and Viktoriya sniffling. In his rearview mirror he saw her stroke Krada’s head in an affectionate way. Then she slammed her fist down onto his right shoulder and shouted, “You bastard!”
“Hang onto something,” Hannibal said. The bridge was less than a half-mile long and the first exit was coming up on the far end. The BMW was not far in front of him, the Civic only one car behind. Traffic was moving at a smooth seventy miles per hour, despite the fact that they were driving directly into the setting sun.
“Come on, baby,” Hannibal said under his breath. Then he slapped the shifter down into second gear, popped the clutch, and yanked the wheel to the right. He could almost hear the other drivers cursing him as he shot across two lanes of traffic onto the off ramp. In the past, in New York or even in Germany, his maneuver would have raised a chorus of horns, but for some reason Washington drivers rarely honked at idiots.
Hannibal’s tires squealed only a little as he pulled into the parking area and rolled to the far end. When he cut the engine he noticed that Ivanovich was staring out the back window.
“I think that worked,” the assassin said. “Between your speed and driving into the sun, neither of them could get to the ramp in time to follow us.”
“They’ll be back,” Hannibal said. “Uspensky doesn’t pay these boys to quit. Come on.”
He got out of the car and opened the back door to help Viktoriya out.
“Where is this?” she asked, looking around at the parkland surrounding the parking area and the welcome center at the far end.
“Welcome to Roosevelt Island,” Hannibal said. “Ninety acres of woods and marshes and swampland. By the time those clowns figure out how to turn around and get back here, we’ll be well hidden in those woods and waiting for help to come.”
“We might not be moving too quickly,” Ivanovich said. He had Krada out of the car, but the Algerian was leaking life into a little pool. Lucky for him, he had passed out. Lucky for him, but real bad news for Hannibal.
“How bad?” he asked, walking around the car.
“Two inches high and to the left of the heart,” Ivanovich said. “Without care real soon, he will never be able to confess to anything.”
“Shit!” Hannibal’s eyes darted around. The parking lot was empty but for the cars he assumed belonged to the employees. Roosevelt’s memorial was not very popular during the week, especially after summer ended. The island officially closed at dark anyway, which wasn’t all that far off. Taking Krada with them seemed pointless. Leaving him to die seemed inhumane. The Russian mobsters had stolen his neat, tidy ending and Hannibal wanted to hate someone for that. He chose Krada.
“Sit his ass next to that Land Rover,” he said, pointing at a nearby vehicle. “If he’s still alive when the owner comes out, maybe he’ll get medical care. If not, he gets the sentence you’d have given him anyway.”
Ivanovich was quick to comply, wiping his hands on the dead man’s jacket afterward.
“And now?”
“Now we head for the trails,” Hannibal said, moving off at a slow jog. “There must be a couple miles of trails wandering all over this place. It will take your pals hours to find us in here.”
The trails were mostly wooden boardwalks over the wet earth, about four feet wide. Tall, narrow trees overhung the paths, almost shutting out the waning sunlight, despite the fact that most of the leaves had deserted their posts. The group walked at a brisk pace while Hannibal opened his cell phone.
“Rissik.”
“Hey, Chief, it’s Hannibal. I got a long, fascinating story to tell you, but it will have to wait. Right now, I need some help and I’m pretty sure I’m on your side of the Potomac.”
“What kind of help?” Rissik asked. “You sound kind of out of breath.”
“That’s because I’m out here hiking with a couple of friends, including Viktoriya Petrova.”
“The girl you said you were protecting.”
“That’s right,” Hannibal said, “but it’s turning out to be more challenging than I thought. Right now a couple of cars full of Russian mob muscle is chasing us and I could really use a little police assistance here.”
Hannibal heard Rissik’s chair squeak as he stood. “Moving now, buddy. Where are you?”
“We’re trying to lose them on Roosevelt Island. Make lots of noise when you get here, okay?”
As Hannibal ended the call he heard Viktoriya say, “I’m cold,” to no one in particular. He turned long enough to see Ivanovich, bringing up the rear, holster his weapons long enough to pull off his sport coat and hand it to the girl. Then he drew his Browning Hi-power from the holster under his right arm, and pulled a smaller Colt Commander from a holster in the back of his waistband.
“Hannibal, I wonder if you realize the irony.”
Right then all Hannibal could think of was turning at random points in the trail so there would be no pattern for their pursuers to guess. “Something here strikes you funny?”
“Not funny, my friend, ironic,” Ivanovich said. “We Russians, we are very sensitive to irony.”
“Oh yeah,” Hannibal said, his breathing getting deeper as they hiked into the gathering darkness. “Dostoyevsky and Chekov and all those guys were into it. But we’re not being chased by wolves we think are friends coming to save us.”
“No, but consider this,” Ivanovich said. “Jamal Krada murdered three people. “Two of his victims died slowly of gunshot wounds that would not have been fatal if they’d gotten immediate medical attention. And he didn’t hate these people; they were just in his way.”
“I see. He got his comeuppance in a similar way. I suppose that’s ironic. Or maybe it’s just fitting, in a karmic kind of way. Like my dad used to say, what goes around comes around.”
They lost the hollow sound of their feet on wooden planks as they moved onto a branch of the path that put them back on hardpacked earth. A bench invited them to stop and rest for a while. Hannibal declined.
“All right then, consider this,” Ivanovich said. “We have come to Roosevelt Island to find peace and avoid war.”
“Going to have to explain that one to me,” Hannibal said.
“You Americans are so ignorant of history,” Ivanovich said. Hannibal could hear a smile in his voice. He was enjoying this. “Just after the turn of the century, my country was at war with Japan,” Ivanovich went on. “Your President Roosevelt offered his good offices as mediator between Russia and Japan to negotiate the conditions of peace. With his help, they worked out a peace settlement in a couple of months.”