“The Tabula are very close,” Maya said. “We can’t stay here. You’re going to have to leave her.”
She touched Gabriel’s shoulder and watched as he gently lowered Sophia’s body onto the floor. A few seconds later, they hurried down the tunnel to a stairway landing where the others were waiting. Vicki gasped when she saw the blood on Gabriel’s jacket, and Alice looked as if she were about to run away. The child’s head moved back and forth. Maya sensed what Alice was thinking: Who will protect me now?
“What happened?” Vicki asked. “Where’s Sophia?”
“The Tabula killed her. They’re right behind us.”
Vicki put her hands to her mouth and Naz looked like he was about to run away. “That’s all,” he said. “I quit. I’m not part of this.”
“You don’t have a choice. As far as the Tabula are concerned, you’re just another target. Right now we’re directly under the train station. You’ve got to get us out of this area and back on the street.” She turned to the others. “This is going to be difficult, but we need to stay together. If we get separated, meet at Purest Children at seven o’clock tomorrow morning.”
Looking frightened, Naz led the group downstairs to a tunnel with electrical conduit on the ceiling. It felt as if the weight of the terminal were pushing them deeper into the earth. Another staircase appeared-a very narrow one-and Naz followed it. The air in this new tunnel was warm and moist. Two white pipes, each two feet in diameter, were fastened to the walls.
“Steam pipes,” Naz muttered. “Don’t touch.”
Following the pipes, they passed through a pair of steel safety doors and entered a maintenance room with a thirty-foot ceiling. Four large steam pipes from different parts of the underground were joined together in the room; the pressure was monitored with stainless-steel gauges and diverted with regulator valves. Stagnant water dribbled out of a crack in the ceiling and dripped downward. The room had the fetid, moldy smell of a hothouse for tropical plants.
Maya shut the safety door behind her and looked around. Her father would have called this a “box canyon”-a place with one way in and no way out. “Now what?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Naz said. “I’m just trying to get away.”
“That’s not true,” Maya said. “You led us here.”
She drew the push knife and held the T-shaped handle in her fist. Before Naz could react, she grabbed his jacket and slammed him against the wall. Maya held the tip of her knife against the slight indentation just above Naz’s breastbone.
“How much did they pay you?”
“Nothing! Nobody paid me nothing!”
“There aren’t any surveillance cameras in these tunnels. But they followed us anyway. And now you’ve led us into another trap.”
Gabriel stepped beside her. “Let go of him, Maya.”
“This was all planned. The Tabula didn’t want to attack a building in Chinatown. It was too public and there were too many police in the area. But down here, they can do whatever they want.”
A drop of water hit one of the steam pipes and there was a faint hissing sound. Gabriel leaned forward and watched Naz’s face with a focused intensity.
“Are you working for the Tabula, Naz?”
“No. Swear to God. I just wanted to make some money.”
“Maybe they tracked us in a different way,” Vicki said. “Remember back in Los Angeles? They put a tracer bead in one of my shoes.”
Tracer beads were small radio devices that broadcast the location of a target. Maya had been careful about any object taken into the loft during the last few months. She had inspected each piece of furniture and article of clothing like a suspicious customs agent. As she concentrated on the knife, a feeling of doubt and hesitation came to her; it felt like a ghost had entered her body. There was one object that she hadn’t examined, a golden apple thrown in her path so tempting, so irresistible, that the Tabula knew she would grab it.
Maya stepped away from Naz, slid the knife back into its sheath, and pulled the ceramic gun from her shoulder bag. The struggle with Aronov came back to her, and she analyzed each moment. Why hadn’t they killed her when she entered the taxi? Because it was planned, Maya thought. Because they knew she would lead them back to Gabriel.
No one spoke as she checked the ceramic handgun. The barrel and the frame weren’t thick enough to conceal a tracer bead, but the plastic pistol grip was perfect. Maya shoved the grip into the narrow gap between two pipes on the wall and then used the gun barrel as a lever. She forced the barrel down hard, and the grip cracked open with a loud snap. A pearl-gray tracer bead fell onto the floor. When she picked up the bead it felt warm, like a spark from a fire glowing in her hand.
“What the hell is that?” Naz asked. “What’s going on?”
“That’s how they tracked us in the tunnel,” Hollis said. “They’re following the radio transmitter.”
Maya set the tracer bead on a narrow concrete ledge and crushed it with her revolver. She felt as if her father were in the room, looking at her with contempt. He would have spoken to her in German, something cutting and harsh. When she was a little girl, he had tried to teach her the Harlequin way of looking at the world-always suspicious, always on your guard-but she had resisted. And now, because of her thoughtless impulse to take this weapon, she had destroyed Sophia and led Gabriel into a trap.
Maya looked around the room for an exit. The only possible way out was a maintenance ladder attached to the wall that ran parallel to a vertical steam pipe. The pipe went up through a hole in the ceiling, and the narrow gap might be wide enough to push through.
“Climb that ladder and get to the next floor,” she told the others. “We’ll find a way out through the train station.”
Naz hurried up the ladder and squeezed through the gap to the upper level. Gabriel was next, followed by Hollis and Vicki. Ever since they had left the loft in Chinatown, Alice Chen had been at the front of the group-trying to escape the Tabula. This time, she climbed up the ladder and hesitated. Maya watched as the child tried to figure out the best way to protect herself.
“Hurry up,” Maya told her. “You’ve got to follow them.”
Maya heard a thump as one of the steel doors in the tunnel was slammed shut. The men who had killed Sophia were in the tunnel, getting closer. Alice slid back down the ladder and disappeared beneath one of the steam pipes. Maya knew it was useless to go after the girl; she would stay hidden until the Tabula left the area.
Standing in the middle of the maintenance room, Maya analyzed her choices with the ruthless clarity of a Harlequin. The Tabula were moving quickly and probably weren’t expecting a counterattack. So far, she had failed to protect Gabriel, but there was a way to make up for her mistakes. Harlequins were damned by their actions, but redeemed by their sacrifice.
Maya removed her shoulder bag and tossed it on the floor. Using the pressure gauges and valves as handholds, she climbed onto a steam pipe and then lifted herself up onto the one above it. Now she was fifteen feet above the floor, directly opposite the entrance to the room. The air was warm and it was hard to breathe. A faint noise came from the tunnel. She drew the revolver from the holster and waited. Her legs trembled with the strain. Her face was covered with sweat.
The door slammed open and a big man with a beard crouched in the opening. The mercenary was holding a gun with a laser sight mounted below the barrel. He glanced quickly around the room and took a few steps forward. Maya dropped through the air and began firing. A bullet hit the mercenary at the base of his throat and he collapsed.
Maya fell on the floor, rolled forward, and jumped to her feet. She saw that the dead man’s body was keeping the door open. Red laser beams flashed from the dark hallway and she ran for cover. A bullet ricocheted off the walls and struck one of the gauges. Steam spurted into the air. She ducked down, wondering where to hide, and Alice’s hand emerged from beneath one of the pipes.