“Molly. Good. I need a phone patch.” Nick swerved around a pedestrian pylon, nearly losing control on the slick pavement and sending his helmet askew. He growled as he straightened the bike and then jerked the helmet back into position. He had discarded the helmet liner in the alley because it was sticky with the Hashashin’s blood and brains. Without it, the helmet didn’t sit right.
“Nightmare One, we lost the GPS feeds in the transfer. Please state your position and the nature of the change.”
“Who are you? OnStar? Just give me that phone patch.” Nick settled out heading north on the London Bridge and punched the gas, weaving through the late-night traffic.
“Fine. What’s the number?”
It only took Molly a few seconds to run the patch, but the line went straight to voice mail. “Rami, get out of the house,” said Nick, hoping the scream of his engine wouldn’t drown out the message. “The Hashashin are coming for you. Get somewhere safe. I’m on my way.”
“You can’t be on your way to Professor Fuad’s,” said Molly as soon as she cut the patch. “No delays. The Brits are preparing to shut down noncommercial departures from the airports. You have forty-five minutes before the Gulfstream is grounded. The pilots have been instructed to take off, with or without you.”
“Then leave me behind. Tell the others to get out of here.”
“No good.” Drake’s voice came up on the link, almost a whisper. Nick could hardly hear him over the whine of his engine. “I’m on the other side of the city, surrounded by cops. Four will never get to me in time to make the plane. If you’re staying, so am I.”
A plan started to form in Nick’s mind. As he slowed to pass a blue-and-yellow police car, he reached down to check that the thumb drive was still safe in his pocket. He started looking for an appropriate spot to stash it. “That leaves Four only one pickup to make before he leaves. Molly, get him up on comms. Drake, stand by.”
A short distance off the road, Nick saw what he was searching for. With the cop safely out of view behind him, he hopped a curb and slid to a stop in a small open square. After dismounting and checking the area, he bent down and feigned tying his boot, using the move to shove the plastic evidence bag into a crevice underneath a wooden crate. Then he jumped back on the bike and returned to his northeast course. “Nightmare Four, you up?”
“I’m here. Currently at the Golden Hinde and following the situation. Looks like I’m going home alone.”
“Correct, but first you need to grab the thumb drive. Come north over the London Bridge to Brushfield Street. I left the package for you under the goat.”
“Did you say you left it under the goat?”
“Yes.”
Silence. Then, “What if the goat moves?”
Nick grinned despite the circumstance. “We’re talking about a statue, a goat on top of some crates. Somehow it’s art. Whatever. The drive is in a plastic bag underneath the crates.”
“A goat.”
“A statue of a goat.”
“Lighthouse copies the plan,” said Molly impatiently. “Goat and all. The colonel isn’t going to like this. You two have no way out of the country.”
“We’ll figure something out,” grunted Nick, fighting to keep control as he took a half right onto the A1208. He straightened out and gunned the engine, accelerating toward Cambridge. “We always do.”
CHAPTER 50
The sleet stopped near the end of the ride. That was something. But it left a freezing remnant hanging in the air that chilled Nick to the core. He fought back shivers as he hung his helmet on the handlebars and then crawled over the low stone wall next to Latham Road, on the southern end of the university grounds.
Nick had stayed with Rami before, and he knew the property well. The professor’s two-story cottage stood well back from the road, surrounded by an ancient circle of elms and chestnuts. A long gravel drive led straight from the road to the front door, but Nick stayed away from it, moving in a wide arc and keeping to the edge of the trees. His black gear kept him well hidden in the shadows.
He approached the house from behind Rami’s one-car garage — little more than a brick shed at the edge of the drive — and when he reached the heavy oak front door, he found it cracked slightly open. He saw a wet glint on the frame, catching the faint light reflecting off the overcast above. He looked closer. Blood.
Nick raised the Vector to his shoulder and pushed the door inward with the suppressor. It creaked and then thumped against something soft on the floor.
A young woman — eighteen, maybe twenty — lay in Rami’s entry, her blood spreading in a wide pool beneath her, seeping into the herringbone pattern of the old brick floor. Nick winced and gently shunted her aside with the door until he had enough room to slip through. He did not bend down to check the girl’s pulse. No need. Her throat was slashed, her eyes open and lifeless, staring at the thick beams above.
There were no sounds in the house. No sounds at all. If Nick remembered correctly, the kitchen and the dining room were to the right, the study and the sitting room with its spiral staircase to the left. At this hour, the professor — a notorious insomniac — should be in his study, poring over the plans of a pyramid or the writings of Champollion.
Nick tried to block out the mental image of Rami, facedown and bleeding all over an ancient text, as he crept toward the study entry at the back of the hall. The sliding wood door was wide open. He cleared the corner, slicing the pie with the Vector still up and ready.
Empty. No dead professor.
Nick let out a short breath.
A heavy book lay open on the desk, next to an eggshell teacup and saucer. Rami’s beautiful lapis lazuli globe was on the floor, broken in three pieces. Nick removed a glove and dipped a finger into the cup. The tea was warm.
A floorboard creaked above. Nick set the glove next to the saucer and moved toward the open portal that led to the sitting room. He placed each step with a slight roll of his foot, silent. Then, as he crossed into the room beneath the spiral staircase, a shadow appeared at the bottom step.
“Hands up, now!” ordered Nick, uncertain if the figure was friend or foe. The shadow gave no hint of surrender. It turned to face him and raised a matching Vector.
Nick fired a burst on full auto and the intruder quivered with the impacts, staggering back into the front window, a black silhouette against the luminescent curtain. But the Hashashin did not fall. He was wearing armor like the others. And like the others, he had an uncanny ability to absorb pain.
Suddenly a panel in the oak wall to Nick’s right opened. Rami darted out of a hidden space beneath the stairs and raced across the room between Nick and the intruder.
The Hashashin took full advantage of the distraction and sprayed rounds at Nick’s head, forcing him to dive back into the study. Bullets dug into the woodwork and thudded against the books on the shelves.
Lying prone on the floor, Nick rolled back into the open and emptied his clip at the shadow’s head.
The curtain fluttered. Glass shattered. But if Nick so much as grazed the Hashashin, his enemy didn’t show it, and now he had no more bullets, and nowhere to go.
The assassin dropped his smoking silencer ten degrees, adjusting for the lower target.
Before he could squeeze the trigger, a deafening report obliterated the quiet of the covert battle. The intruder’s head exploded, spraying deep red across the glowing white curtain behind. The silhouette slowly sank to the foot of the window and melted into the inky black beneath the frame.