When Ryder continued, his voice was brusque. “Blake is going to a hotel for the night. Whether I do anything more with her depends on what I find out next.”
“With luck you can send her home,” Tucker decided. “She did a good job, but I don’t like employing amateurs.”
Ryder wanted to see her again, but Tucker was right. It would be better for her if he did not. He had a lousy track record for keeping those he cared about alive. As he thought about it, he checked the other bug his reader was tracking-it was moving, too, but not toward Chelsea. It was headed north… toward him?
16
DRESSED IN their black trench coats, Robin and Charles took the elevator down to the hotel’s garage. From there they walked up a driveway and out into a shadowy cobblestone alley. Pulling their big roll-aboard suitcase, Robin glanced at Charles, who was looking handsome and intense. He wore the backpack in which The Book of Spies was secured, his hands gripping the pack’s straps possessively.
They emerged onto the boulevard, away from the vast hotel and its bright lights. Side by side they continued on, at last stopping where Preston had told them to wait.
“I’d hoped Preston would be here by now.” Charles stared at the traffic. “Maybe it’s taken him longer to find Peggy than he thought.”
“Are you all right?”
He took her hand and kissed it. “I’m fine. How are you?”
“Oddly, I’m fine, too.” And she meant it.
A sense of inevitability had settled inside her. It was not simply that Preston had taken on the job of getting rid of Eva, or that she had high hopes Preston would not tell the director, but that some old resource-courage, perhaps, touched with foolhardiness-had risen to return her confidence. Whatever happened, she would figure out a way to handle it.
Charles focused on her. “Does Preston strike you as an abnormis sapiens crassaque Minerva?” An unorthodox sage of rough genius.
“He does. But then he’s also a helluo librorum.” A bookworm, a devourer of books. “Do you think we can trust him?”
“We don’t have a choice.”
They straightened like Roman tribunes, alert for Preston’s Renault. Horns honked. Vehicles rumbled along the boulevard. A few people strode on the sidewalk, swinging closed umbrellas under the cloudy night sky.
For a few moments the sidewalk was empty. When a taxi stopped down the block, Robin only glanced at the red-haired woman who stepped out and leaned over to pay the driver.
“Merda.” Charles tensed as the woman turned toward them.
“What is it? What’s happened?”
“That’s Eva. Take care of The Book of Spies.” He slung off the backpack and laid it at her feet. He slid out his Glock.
“Are you insane? You already tried to kill her once and failed. Someone could see your gun.” As she spoke, she watched Eva stare at Charles. “She sees you.”
Charles’s face was flushed. He nodded and hid the weapon again. “I’ll follow her and call Preston. Hail a taxi and take The Book of Spies to the jet.”
As Charles finished talking, his wife turned on her heel and rushed away, toward Piccadilly Circus. He hurried after her.
AS CHARLES moved past other pedestrians, he put on his headset and called Preston, telling him about Eva.
“I’ll be there in twenty-five minutes,” the security chief said. “How did she know to be at the hotel?”
“I have no idea. Unless… but it doesn’t seem possible. Our scanner found a tracking bug on the cover of the book.”
“Jesus Christ. What did you do with the bug?”
“I flushed it. But it makes no sense that Eva would’ve planted it.”
“Don’t lose her, dammit. Keep the line open.”
He saw Eva had joined a crowd at the corner with Piccadilly Circus, waiting for the light to change. But before he could reach her, she crossed with them to the plaza and merged with the crowd there.
He craned and ran. Where was she?
17
THE NOISE and chaos of Piccadilly Circus reverberated inside Eva’s head as she sped onward, her cell phone dug into her ear, talking to Judd Ryder.
“It’s Charles. He’s following me. I’m in Piccadilly Circus, heading toward the Criterion. Are you close? He’s got a gun.”
“I’m already moving. Leave your cell on.”
Five streets flowed into the speeding roundabout encircling the busy plaza. Gaudy neon and LED lights advertising Coca-Cola, Sanyo, and McDonald’s cast the area in manic red and yellow light. She watched for a bobby. Now that Charles was near, she wanted a policeman.
“I’m passing Lillywhites,” she reported to Ryder. When she saw her reflected face in the glass of the sporting goods store, the strain on it, she looked away. Six of the tourists with whom she had crossed the street peeled off toward the Shaftesbury Fountain and statue. She went with them, peering around their shoulders. “Charles is still behind me. He’s wearing a phone headset, and he’s talking to someone on it.”
“So now we know he’s got a friend. Is there anyone with him?”
She checked. “Not that I can see. My group is climbing the steps to the fountain, and I’m going with them. I’ll move to the other side. The fountain will be good cover to block me from him.”
“I’m at the crosswalk with Piccadilly Street. Can you circle back to meet me?”
“He’ll spot me.”
“Okay. Go to the Trocadero Center. I’ll be there.”
The bronze Shaftesbury Fountain shone nickle gray in the night’s lights. A scattering of people sat on the steps. At the top, Eva rushed around to the far side and looked down on the plaza, congested and rimmed by a waist-high iron fence interrupted by the crosswalk she needed. There was no sign of Charles or a policeman. But across the teeming traffic stood the London Trocadero Center, a huge building where people thronged for food, alcohol, theater, and video games. That was where she would meet Ryder.
She joined a young couple as they sauntered down the fountain’s steps, holding hands. At the base, they headed right, and she moved straight ahead.
Suddenly something hard and sharp pressed into her left side. “That’s a gun you feel, Eva.” Charles’s voice. “You’re caught, old darling. It was logical you’d come this way. Sic eunt fata hominum.” Thus goes the destiny of man.
“Bad grammar, Charles. Homina. The feminine in my case, you bastard.” As they continued along the street, she looked down and saw his trench coat pocket bulged with his hand aiming his weapon.
In her ear, Ryder ordered, “Hide your cell. Leave it on.”
But as she slid the cell phone inside her jacket, the gun’s muzzle jammed her side again.
“No,” Charles snapped. “Give it to me.”
She froze, then looked back at him, saw the frosty expression, the hard black eyes. The anger and frustration that had been building in her burst out in a torrent. “I loved you. I thought you loved me. I want to be glad you’re alive, but you’re making it really hard. What in hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Keep walking, and lower your voice. Hand over the phone. Now.” A few people were glancing at them. “If you think I won’t shoot, you’re going to find yourself dead on the pavement.”
Her heart was pounding, and a cold sweat bathed her. She handed him the cell. “Don’t call me old darling again. I never liked that, you son of a bitch.”
He turned off her cell and spoke triumphantly into his headset. “I’ve got her, Preston. I’ll hold her so you can take care of her. Where do you want to pick us up?”
18
AS CHARLES walked beside her, the gun held against her side, Eva repressed a shiver. She tried to mute the outrage and hurt in her voice: “Why did you fake your death and disappear? I thought we were happy. But because of you I spent two years in prison-and now you want to kill me. After all those years together, don’t I mean anything to you?”