“You need me,” Chaya called after them as they headed for the turnstile barrier.
Nick ignored her and passed through, but Drake hesitated. “Why?”
“While you were locked up, I went back to my father’s house. I found a file hidden under a false bottom in his desk drawer.”
The train arrived below. Nick kept walking toward the stairs. “I don’t believe her. Come on. We have to catch this one. We need to make the switch at Cannon Street before they find those cops.”
Drake still lingered. “What was in the file?”
“Names, dates, formulas. Most of it made no sense to me. My flat isn’t far. I’ll drive.”
“Drake, let’s go.”
Chaya stood. “The name on the cover was Kattan, Masih Kattan.”
Nick stopped at the top of the stairs. Down at the tracks, the automated voice warned the nonexistent passengers to “please, mind the gap.” Then it advised them that the train doors were closing. He pounded the wall with his fist and let it go.
“I left the file at my flat,” said Chaya as Nick returned to the turnstiles. “You two could go through it with me.”
Drake met his teammate at the barrier. He lowered his voice. “Do we trust her?”
Nick shook his head. “We have to get this thumb drive to Scott. That’s our best lead.”
“But a hidden file with the name of one of our prime suspects is a good lead too. We have to cover all our bases.”
Nick knew Drake was right. But to cover those bases, they would have to split up. He winced. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I want you to take the pretty girl back to her apartment and get a look at her file.”
“Twist my arm.”
Before his teammate turned to go, Nick pushed Mercer’s Glock into his hands. “Be careful. If they have our biochemist, then chances are, they know where his daughter lives.”
CHAPTER 43
The call went out just before Nick reached Cannon Street Station. From the flurry of activity on his stolen radio, he gathered that McCormick — the bobby in Drake’s cell — had been discovered and that Detective Mercer could not be found. There was no mention of Gale.
Cannon Street was a major interchange, connecting multiple Tube lines with the National Railway lines above. One of those National Railway trains could take Nick straight to Greenwich, Scott, and the safety of the apartment, but with the bobbies now alerted and converging, it might as well be a hundred miles away. Just getting out of the Tube and up into the main rail station was going to be a trick. Getting through the platform turnstiles and onto the train itself — if not utterly impossible — would be like slapping the cuffs on his own wrists. The bobbies would pick him up at the next station down.
As the train pulled into the underground station, Nick spotted two bobbies on the platform between the east and west lines. They loitered near the stairwell to the street outside, blocking his quickest exit. Stepping off the train, he put his radio to his ear to cover his face and turned the other way, heading for the long escalator up to the main station.
Halfway up, Nick lowered the radio and turned to look back. He waited, expecting to see the two cops running up the rising stairs after him. They never came. That was a victory, but Nick was still a far cry from being out of the woods. He kept the radio in his hand, ready to use it for cover again at the exit turnstiles at the top of the escalator. Once again, though, his fear proved unfounded.
As the escalator reached the crest of its climb, Nick found himself completely alone. There were no cops, no other passengers, even the Lexan shack that usually housed the turnstile monitor was empty, its narrow door cracked open. Nick stepped through the barrier and snorted to himself. If this was the extent of the manhunt at the Cannon Street interchange, then maybe he still had a shot at getting out of the station.
Maybe not.
Nick walked down a short hallway and had just started up a small flight of stairs to the main station promenade when he heard an explosion of radio chatter — not on his own radio, but on at least a dozen radios near the top of the stairs. He hugged the left wall, crept to the top, and snuck a peek around the corner. His heart sank. A crowd of bobbies, most in yellow high-visibility jackets, huddled for a meeting near the main exit to the street. One of the attendees was the Tube monitor, which explained why her booth was empty. Another was the monitor for the train-station turnstiles. The two leading the assembly were SO15, easily distinguished because they were better dressed than all the others, with black ball caps, body armor, and G-36 submachine guns slung at their sides. Again, Nick’s path to freedom was blocked. He retreated back down the hallway to the Tube turnstiles.
All aluminum and steel and ticket machines, no subway station had ever seemed so barren to Nick, not until now, when he needed options. Then his eyes fell on a lone rack of free magazines, the kind no one ever seemed to pick up. His fingers tickled the bobby’s Taser on his stolen utility belt. It might work. It had to. There was no time to conjure up something better.
Nick dragged the whole rack — magazines and all — into the turnstile monitor’s Lexan booth. He needed the enclosed space to contain the smoke, at least until he was well clear. He started ripping up magazines, working feverishly, fearing that the monitor might return at any moment, or a civilian might rise up from the station below.
The magazine rack served as his frame. He stuffed the lower section with loosely crumpled pages and then spread apart the magazines lined up on the top section, making sure there would be room for oxygen to flow. Then, for good measure, he pushed the monitor’s rolling chair up against the loaded rack and set her mesh trash can on the seat.
That should do it.
Unwilling to push his luck any further, Nick stood sideways in the narrow doorway, aimed his Taser at the crumpled pages on the bottom of his pile, and fired, holding down the trigger to pump as much juice into the electric barbs as possible. The pages caught. He dropped the Taser and raced down the hallway.
Nick slowed as he topped the stairs, entering the promenade at an easy stroll. As anticipated, he did not make it far before one of the gathered bobbies spotted him.
“Oi! Mate! Over here!” It was one of the SO15 men. When Nick kept walking, the superbobby tried again, leaving the group and following after him. “Oi! Bob! I haven’t given you your search ord—”
The superbobby’s call was interrupted by an ear-splitting bell from the Tube station. Curls of thick smoke wafted up the stairs. The bobbies at the exit — as well as the superbobby who had started after Nick — turned their attention to this new excitement.
A few yellow jackets remained at their posts, still blocking the exit, but their attention was focused on the rest of the mob, rushing down the stairs to the Tube line. With both monitors equally occupied, no one was watching the long line of turnstiles in front of the train platforms. Nick reached the turnstiles, checked his six, and then vaulted over.
Seven tracks, each with their own platform, led straight out of the station beneath a wide arched roof and out across a bridge over the Thames. Nick hurried toward the bridge, keeping close to a long wall of restrooms and utility stations that separated the two central platforms. Fifty meters down, he crossed through a short passage to the platform on the other side, taking him completely out of view of anyone on the promenade.
Drake’s voice sounded in his earpiece. “You okay, boss? I’m hearing a lot of radio traffic. They say they’ve cornered one of us.”
“Just about,” huffed Nick, jogging beside a waiting train. “They had a big contingent at Cannon Street, and I had to improvise to get past them. You can add arson to our list of offenses now.”