“Nothing’s illegal for our national politicians,” grumbled Walker. “You should know that by now.”
Nick gritted his teeth and smashed the pane with his bare elbow.
“Did I hear glass breaking?”
“No.” Nick reached through and unlocked the door. “You can’t pull my team, sir. I’m the only one with a direct line to Kattan. We just need a little more time.”
“Your direct line has been cut, Baron. Or haven’t you noticed?”
“I don’t follow.”
“The stakeout at the café in DC paid off. CJ found Kattan’s phone. No henchman, just the phone. It was buried in the bushes outside the café, transmitting the moves on its own.”
Nick pulled the sweatshirt over his head. It was far too big — the owner must weigh four hundred pounds — but it was better than freezing. “You mean Kattan used it to retransmit the moves?”
“Negative. The receiver was disabled. There was no active connection to Kattan.” The colonel went on to explain that the phone had simply transmitted a list of moves at predetermined times. Kattan had laid out the game in advance, predicting every move Nick made.
“He’s not that good,” argued Nick. “No one is.”
“My evidence says different.”
“What you’re saying is impossible, sir. I’ve still got him on the line. Earlier today he put me in check with his queen. During the ride to Cannon Street, I took her out with my remaining knight. I’m waiting for his response.”
“You won’t get a response. CJ has the phone. There were no more moves in the hopper. That’s it. Game over.”
No. Nick suddenly felt an urgent need to pick up his pace. He grabbed the wool cap off the rack, pulling it down over his ears as he rushed out from behind the register. “Kattan had me in check, not checkmate. I escaped. I can still get to him.” He yanked open the door to the street.
“Nick, stop.”
At the colonel’s use of his first name, Nick froze. His hand fell away from the handle. The door swung closed again.
“This chase is over.” Walker’s voice carried a trace of unusual sympathy. “There are no more moves in the sequence. You were never meant to finish the game. Kattan presented you with a grand gambit, and you walked right in. We all did.”
Nick pinched the bridge of his nose in a long wince. His head was pounding, the pain that results from coming in out of the cold. “It can’t all have been for nothing.”
“Oh, it wasn’t for nothing.” Walker’s tone hardened again. “Kattan designed this whole charade to bury the Triple Seven Chase, to keep us out of the way for whatever he has planned next. And he succeeded. The president is putting us on the bench and giving the search for the bioweapon over to the big agencies.” Walker sighed into the comm link. “Come home, Nightmare One. Lighthouse out.”
CHAPTER 46
Nick pressed his hands into the pockets of his oversized sweatshirt and stepped out once more into the night and the freezing sleet. To the right of the pastry shop, a dark tunnel passed beneath the solid foundation of the railway bridge. To the left, the cobblestone street stretched away until it curved into shadow. Iron lamps hung at sparse intervals from looming three- and four-story Victorian houses on either side, their copper-brick faces pressed together to form a long, unbroken passage. Nick felt as if he had dropped onto one of the darker pages of Dickens.
“Nightmare Two,” he called, plodding forward through the puddles of orange lamplight.
Drake did not respond.
“Two, come in. I shook off the cops. I need you and Chaya to pick me up.”
“I can’t raise him either,” complained Scott, still listening on the link. “You sent him home with a beautiful woman. You do the math.”
“Fine. Come pick me up, and then we’ll get Casanova and head straight to the airport. Ditch what you can and pack up the weapons and electronics. Leave out only what you need to do a little software analysis on the plane.”
“Exactly what kind of analysis?”
“We took a thumb drive from Scotland Yard that may contain the Second Sign Virus. I want you to identify the creator or the source code and forward it to CJ. Our job now is to help the FBI.”
“Can’t do it,” said the engineer flatly.
“You can and you will,” growled Nick, starting to boil. “This is the only lead we have left.”
“I mean I can’t do it on the plane. You’re talking about a monster virus, the likes of which the world has never seen. You don’t just shove that into a SATCOM-capable laptop in the field. Things start going bad very quickly. I have to get the drive back to Romeo Seven if I’m going to exploit it.”
Nick relented. He knew the engineer was right. “Then we’ll have to fly fast.”
“Where do I meet you?”
“You have a map. You tell me.”
“Okay. Uh… there’s a ship — the Golden Hinde—two blocks east. A boat in a square, you can’t miss it.”
The whine of a motorcycle interrupted the conversation, echoing through the brickwork canyon. Nick tarried between islands of lamplight and listened.
“Did you copy, Nightmare One?”
“Yeah. Got it. The Golden Hinde.” The engine noise grew louder. The motorcycle was heading Nick’s way.
“I have to go off-line while I transfer SATCOM control to Romeo Seven and pack up,” continued the engineer.
Nick nodded slowly, as though Scott could see him, but his attention was fixed on the light from the motorcycle’s headlamp, growing around the bend. An icy chill swept through him, despite the protection of his stolen sweatshirt.
“Four?”
“Yes?”
“Hurry up.”
CHAPTER 47
A few seconds after Scott signed off, the motorcycle appeared, the rider dressed all in black. As he sped past, he turned his head and locked his gaze on Nick. Then he gunned the motor, continuing into the tunnel beneath the bridge.
Nick let out a long breath, but then he heard tires skidding to a stop. The engine idled on the other side of the tunnel for half a beat and then revved up again. Nick broke into a run.
The long brick canyon was a perfect kill zone, with few exits left or right. A side street broke off to the left thirty meters ahead, but Nick would never make it that far. The motorcycle was closing too fast.
Closer, only a few paces away, he saw a narrow archway blocked by an iron gate. He committed, twisting around to face the attacker and pressing his shoulder through the iron bars up to his chest. They had looked wide enough.
They were not.
The big sweatshirt caught and bunched up, making Nick too fat to squeeze through. He pushed with everything he had and the fabric started to give, but at an agonizingly slow rate. He looked up. The rider steadied his bike and took one hand off the handlebar to raise a suppressed submachine gun.
A fraction of a second later, Nick fell through the bars amid a ripple of clangs and a shower of sparks. He scrambled forward into the gloom, smacked into a brick wall, and turned. Then he smacked into another wall and turned again. He had stumbled into a maze of passages between the two-hundred-year-old buildings of London’s wharf prison district. New structures had been constructed over the top, roofing in the alleyways and leaving them in total darkness.
Another round of clangs sounded from the gate, followed by a heavy crash as the rider broke through. The throbbing buzz of the motorcycle bounced off the brick walls, and Nick could not tell which direction it was coming from. He pressed his back against a wall at a T-intersection and looked from side to side until he saw a faint white light grow and then fade in the alley straight ahead. Almost instantly it grew and faded again in an intersecting alley to the left, and then — though it seemed impossible — again on the opposite side. The third time it kept growing until the rider appeared at the corner. The black helmet turned. The visor was up. The assassin’s eyes fixed on Nick.