CHAPTER 51
Nick flipped on a standing lamp next to Rami’s antique couch, and found the professor standing by the end table a few feet away, a fat, snub-nosed Colt revolver hanging loose from his fingers.
The assassin had crumpled into a bleeding heap below the window. This one wore a black balaclava over his face, but his leathers matched those of the riders Nick had encountered earlier. He guessed that the Hashashin’s motorcycle was somewhere in the woods near the gate.
“I ran,” said Rami quietly. “There was nothing I could do.”
Nick crossed in front of the couch, took the .357 from the professor’s hand and laid it on the table. “No, Rami. You didn’t run. You turned and fought and you saved my life.”
Rami looked over at Nick. Tears welled up in his eyes, betraying the sorrow behind the steady calm of his voice. “Not you. Her. Myra. The life saved does not redeem the one lost.”
He lowered himself onto the couch. “I never heard him come in. I never heard a thing. I told her to go to bed, call it a night, but she insisted on making me a sandwich. He was standing over her body when I came out of the study. He saw me. I ran.”
“Who was she?” asked Nick, returning to the stairs and inspecting the open panel in the wall. It concealed a priest hole — a hidden room used to hide priests during England’s anti-Catholic period. Rami had never shown it to him.
“I have to tell her mother.”
Nick closed the panel and knelt next to the dead assassin. He pulled the sleeve up the left forearm. This one bore the double crescent-moon tattoo, the same as the sniper from Istanbul — a Hashashin bishop. “Rami, who was she?” he repeated, adding some command to his voice.
“A no one. A Copt, like me.” Rami put his head into his hands. “One less in the world for the Islamists to hunt. Her mother is a friend. Myra lived here and worked as my aide. In exchange I paid her tuition.”
The assassin’s pockets offered Nick no more clues than the others. He carried only a knife and a burner phone with no records of calls made or received. Nick had to assume they checked in periodically. More Hashashin might already be on their way. Not to mention the cops. He tossed the phone on the dead man’s lap and stood up. “Someone will have heard that shot. We have to get out of here.”
“What about Myra?” asked Rami, lifting his head.
“The police will take care of her.” Nick dragged the professor up from the couch by the arm. “Come on. We have to leave.”
Rami pulled his arm away and headed into the study. “Wait. There’s a book we must bring with us.”
Nick and Rami left Cambridge in the professor’s ’65 MGB hardtop. The little green MG coupe had some pickup with a V8 under the hood, but there was no shoulder room. The claustrophobia Nick experienced in the team’s rented Peugeot was nothing compared to this. “How do you drive this thing?” he asked, breaking a long silence. “I keep banging my knee with the gearshift.”
“Jokes are not going to help.”
“I’m sorry about Myra. I’m sorry I brought you into this.”
Rami stared out his window at the empty fields passing by. “You did not slit her throat. She was killed by an extremist deceived by a false religion, and she will not be the last.” The professor was quiet for another long stretch. Then he straightened in his seat and folded his arms. He smiled wanly. “I know the MG is small, but I like how she corners. Besides, not many cars will fit in my garage.”
Drake was in and out of contact throughout the drive. Partly because he was keeping quiet as he evaded the police, and partly because he was moving in and out of the dead zone caused by Chaya’s still active jammer. The good news was that the jammer also affected police communications in the area.
By the time they arrived in West Central London, Nick had not heard from his teammate for a good twenty minutes. At his last communication, he was near Warwick Square, a tiny park west of the flat, just beyond the police boundary. Nick planned to drive right in and grab him.
That proved easier said than done.
When he finally rolled to a stop next to the park, after a number of backtracks and reroutes thanks to the heightened police presence, he saw no sign of his teammate. Across the street, a single bobby walked along a line of three-story row houses, heading away from them, shining his flashlight on doorsteps and down into window wells. Ahead and slightly left, blue and yellow lights flashed through the park’s trees. They could not wait here long.
“Stay here,” said Nick, watching the bobby round the corner at the end of the block. “If anyone questions you, tell them you were my hostage.”
“That hardly seems plausible.” Rami pulled the front of his jacket aside, exposing the revolver tucked into his waistband.
Nick frowned. “Shove that in the glove box… if it will fit.”
At that moment a pair of large hands slapped the passenger window, and the startled professor jerked the revolver out of his waistband. Nick grabbed Rami’s wrist to steady him as Drake’s face appeared outside the glass.
“We need to go,” said the big operative, crawling awkwardly into the back, his effort to squeeze into the tiny car pressing the professor up against the dash. As soon as he was in, Rami dropped his seat heavily back into position and slammed the door. “I almost shot you, young man.”
Drake ignored him. “We need to go, now!”
Even as he spoke, a pair of high beams flashed on behind them.
CHAPTER 52
Nick cranked the engine and shoved the gearshift into first, his tires squealing as the MG lurched forward. Ahead, a police Saab raced backward into view with its lights flashing and screeched to a halt in the intersection, blocking their path. Nick kept his foot on the gas and tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
“You might want to fasten your seat belt, Professor,” said Drake, though he could not do the same. He had to sit sideways in the tiny backseat.
Nick accelerated for another fraction of a second and then muscled the wheel hard over, counting on the MG’s low center of gravity and the slick road to keep him from tipping over. His foot never came fully off the gas.
The little car reversed course nicely, and as soon as the tires found their grip again, Nick accelerated straight past the vehicle that had crept up behind them. “This is your town, Professor,” he shouted over the blare of the sirens behind them. “What’s the best way out of it?”
“Take Kings Road.”
Nick squinted through the windshield, searching for street signs that were not there. “And that would be…”
“West! Head west as soon as you can!”
A cross street was coming up, but a pair of police motorcycles approached from the west, blocking Nick’s intended path. He turned the other way.
“East it is,” exclaimed Drake, gripping the seats as Nick fishtailed through the ninety-degree turn.
Nick’s route was chosen for him at every turn as more police vehicles appeared at each intersection. He jinked right and left to avoid a pair of oncoming bikes, turned onto a straightaway, and ended up staring into the headlamps of a civilian Fiat. The driver beeped a puny horn and slammed on his brakes.
Rami pressed himself back into his seat rest. “Left side! We drive on the left side in this country!”
“Dumb rule,” grunted Nick, swerving around the hatchback and pressing the accelerator to the floor. “Makes no sense at all.”
“Nightmare One, this is Lighthouse,” said Molly, coming up on the SATCOM. “I thought you might like to know the police intentionally steered you onto that straightaway. They laid down a spike strip.”
A faint strip of black stretched across the road ahead. Without Molly’s warning, Nick would have never seen it.