He didn’t hesitate. Didn’t stop to think. He took a grenade from his weapons satchel, pulled the pin, and tossed it through into the bedroom a fraction of a second before he used the heavy ceramic cistern lid to smash open the fixed window of the bathroom. It sounded like all six of the squad members had come for him, but others were with them too.
Skarov. He recognized the devil’s voice as it called his name.
“Ivanov! Give up. We have you.”
But they didn’t. He ripped the plastic shower curtain from its moorings, looped it around a tap at the washbasin, which was directly below the broken window, and dived through, holding one end in each hand. The improvised rope allowed him to drop a few feet, and playing out the curtain by raising his right hand lowered him farther.
Hobnail boots crashed on a wooden door somewhere above him. He heard it burst inward and smash against the wall like the crack of a rifle shot a second before the grenade exploded. The entire building shook as he dropped through clear air, trailed by the screams of dying men. He seemed to fall forever, yet hit the ground immediately, allowing his legs to fold up underneath him, breathing out and dropping into a judo roll as glass and burning splinters rained down around him. The impact slammed up through his ankles and knees like an electric shock. He rolled to his feet and ran, not sure exactly where he was or in which direction he was heading.
He ran-surprised that he could, that a shinbone was not protruding from his lower leg like a broken spear. A single shot rang out and sparked off the cobblestone beside him, but he threw himself to the left and around the corner, out of the line of fire.
Skarov would be coming for him. The NKVD colonel-general would not have led the way into the hotel room, knowing of the danger within. Ivanov cursed himself-his foolishness, his obsession-then he put it all aside and ran, stripping off the heavy trench coat as he dived into a barely lit, narrow passageway.
More shots, but muted by distance and the buildings that now stood between him and his pursuers. They were firing at shadows, at nothing. He had maybe a minute or two’s advantage, a head start before Skarov threw hundreds of men onto the streets of North Rome to find him.
Another left turn, then a right, however, and Ivanov suddenly found that his precious advantage was gone.
He had run blindly into a dead end. Darkened tenements rose three and four stories above him; behind him, he could hear shouts and the barking of dogs. At the very edge of perception, he was aware of being observed. Not by the men who were now hunting him but by the city itself. By hundreds of eyes in these darkened tenements. By blank walls, empty windows, and shadows.
He checked his satchel. Two Makarovs, the MP5, and night-vision goggles; in his pockets, three clips of ammunition for the pistols. His pursuers were drawing close. Ivanov could hear the engines of motorbikes and a truck, and the deep industrial growl of a troop carrier. He could not risk doubling back out of this cul-de-sac. But he seemed to have no options here, no external fire escapes or trellises he might scale, no open doors through which he could dive.
He was just fitting the NVGs, planning to scan for an entrance to the drains, when he heard her voice.
“Come with me, Russian. Quickly.”
He jumped. She had emerged from the pitch-black shadows.
“Who are …?” And then he recognized her. “Carlo’s little girl.” It was as much a question as a statement.
“You come now,” she said, urging him into a building entrance he had not noticed until just now. The heavy steel door stood slightly ajar.
Ivanov moved toward her, but cautiously. “The last Russian who followed you is dead,” he said.
“Yes,” she replied. As if that ended it. “Come.”
He could hear the deep bass thud of inbound choppers. The gunships that had been loitering over the Wall, he was certain. That closed off any debate he might have had with himself.
Ivanov dived into the darkness, following the girl into the building and dragging the heavy door closed behind him. He didn’t have a chance to power up the goggles before she’d struck a match and lit a single candle, which looked as though it had come from a church. The lower half of the bright red crucifix design stood out on the half-burned remnants. The girl shielded the flame with her hand as she led him up a flight of stairs.
“What is your name, girl?” he asked. “I know you only as Franco’s cousin.”
“You can call me Eva,” she said. “Franco is cousin to my papa, but he is very old so I call him uncle. Come now, Russian.”
He could hear more vehicles outside, and the shouts of Red Army noncoms and barking dogs. But the dogs were too numerous to all be trackers, surely. It seemed every flea-bitten cur for a mile around had spilled onto the streets.
“Do not worry about the dogs,” Eva told him. “They cannot track you.”
“What?” Ivanov was momentarily confused but continued to climb the stairs behind her all the same.
The building seemed to be empty, but he knew that was not true. It was big enough, and generally, he had learned, the Romans were crowded into their apartments in such great numbers, that up to three hundred people might well have been resident here. But he could see no one, other than Eva. She rounded the banister on the very top landing and hurried toward a knotted rope hanging from an attic opening.
“The Stalinists sometimes use dogs to track us,” she explained as she blew out the candle and flew up the rope with no more difficulty than she’d had ascending the stairs. “But we have trained our own dogs. They will fall on the handlers and their beasts before they even pick up your scent.”
Eva did not relight the candle and Ivanov wasted no time in hauling himself up after her. He was about to fit the goggles again when she reached out and touched his arm, stopping him. It was a curiously adult gesture.
“You will not need them,” she said. “And it is better that you do not have them on if the helicopters come with searchlights.”
Ivanov did not need that explained to him, but he did need to know where she had come from, and why. “I am in debt to you for your assistance, young lady,” he began. “But how is it you came to offer your assistance? It has been many hours since I separated from Franco, and I did not tell him I was returning to the hotel.”
Eva was crouched in the attic space, her small face illuminated by a shaft of moonlight pouring in through a hole in the roof. Where she had seemed strangely grown-up just a few seconds ago, she now rolled her eyes like a young girl beset by the stupidity of the adult world.
“You are our responsibility, Russian. We have been watching you since you set foot here. We lost you once or twice, but as soon as you returned this way, we picked you up again. Uncle Franco and Father Marius warned me you might come back to the Albergo and that it would be my job to guide you away from whatever foolishness and trouble you caused. So come now, Russian, we must go.”
For just a moment he was struck dumb and immobile. Ivanov had the unpleasant sensation of perceiving a much greater truth, of snatching a glimpse for a mere second of how he fitted into the machinations of others as a flimsy, disposable cog. And then he heard dogs barking and fighting and the crackle of gunfire nearby, and he put it all aside to follow the girl, who was already on the move.
The wide attic space was cramped, forcing him to move along beneath the centerline of the pitched roof while crouched over. His eyes had readjusted to the darkness, which was split here and there by shafts of silvery light piercing through gaps and holes in the terra-cotta tiles above them. Much of the space here was taken up with boxes and sacks of supplies. He could smell garlic, as always, but even more strongly, the ubiquitous dried fruit, preserved meat, and cheeses. Two rifles, German Mausers from the previous decade’s war, were propped up in one corner, visible in a shaft of moonlight.