The three armed men vaulted over the platform’s low rail and splashed down into the cistern and over to Tom, dragging him to his feet. He seemed confused, his legs unable to support his own weight, as if he had hit his head on the way down.
Above them, Jennifer’s mind was racing. She had recognized the killer’s voice. It was Van Simson.
“Oh, and clean that hole out,” Van Simson shouted. “He might still be with that meddling FBI bitch.”
Jennifer was already on her way. She had to get out and follow them. They had Tom. They had the coins. She couldn’t lose them now.
Behind her, she heard a gentle metallic ping and then the unmistakable sound of metal striking stone, first once, then again, the echo bouncing and bobbling down the tunnel like large marbles. Grenades.
She scrabbled along as quickly as she could until she was fifty, sixty, eighty yards from the opening into the cistern. Silently she counted down the seconds. Five, four, three, two. Jennifer flattened herself to the floor, shut her eyes and covered her ears. One.
Nothing could have prepared her for the deafening explosion of sound and heat that rolled over her, an inhuman roar that pressed her to the ground, driving the air from her lungs. As she gasped for breath, a second explosion rocked through the tunnel, the force of it lifting her several inches off the ground before dumping her back down again like a sack of coal.
She struggled back to her feet, shaking the debris from her hair, her eyes streaming in the smoke and dust. She coughed hoarsely, her mouth dry with fear as blood seeped from a gash on her chin. She had to get out. Fast.
A few minutes later she jumped down into the hammam’s boiler room. A surprised, bare-chested Turk, his dark and hairy body glowing red and covered in an oily slick of sweat and grime, leaped backward in surprise before shouting machine-gun Turkish at her retreating back.
Out of the room, up the stairs, through the corridor, back into the square where they had parked the car in the forbidding shadow of the ancient Çemberlita¸s column, its metal hoops gleaming like manacles.
She slipped behind the wheel and fired up the engine just as two blue vans sped down the street in front of her. She knew she had to stop them, do something, before they got away.
She swung the car onto Divan Yolu, the tires squealing reluctantly over its polished cobblestones. It had long been closed to car traffic, given over instead to trams running in both directions down the middle of the road, a low curb separating the tram lines from the pavements on either side which were, as ever, full of people.
She mounted the curb, the car’s suspension groaning as it slammed down the other side onto the metal tramlines. Ahead of her, the two vans seemed to be trapped behind a tram, but as she accelerated up to them, they both managed to slip out from behind it and roar past. She accelerated up to the tram and then wrenched the wheel sideways to follow them, the left front wing dipping as gravity and aerodynamic pressures took over.
Her windshield was immediately swallowed by the looming headlights of an onrushing tram.
“Shit.”
She slammed on the brakes, the car weaving unsteadily as she tucked it back in, the oncoming tram flashing past in a blur of lights and bells, warm air flooding through the open window.
“Shit.”
As soon as it was safely past, she dropped the car into second gear, the engine screaming in protest as the rev counter flicked to the right, and overtook the tram.
The delay had cost her valuable time. The vans were already over at the far end of the Hippodrome to her right and she gunned the motor hard as she launched herself off the tramlines and after them. The rubber bit into the cracked tarmac.
Up to fourth, then fifth, she was doing nearly seventy miles an hour as Aya Sofya and then the Blue Mosque sped past, their massed walls dyed white in the floodlights, their minarets reaching into the sky like bony fingers. Her headlights flashing, she leaned on the horn, pedestrians scattering in her wake, the car jigging around the seemingly insomniac postcard sellers that littered the city.
“Get out the way!” she screamed over the whine of the engine, catching sight of her wild hair and dust-caked face in the rearview mirror. Long, dirty tearstains tumbled from the corner of her eyes, even though she couldn’t remember crying. The acrid smell of her burning clutch filled the car, making her cough.
At the end of the Hippodrome, the road banked sharply downhill and toward the left. Jennifer saw the turn late, but instinct took over. She dropped into second again and lifted the hand brake as she turned the wheel, sending the car into a screeching sideways skid, the suspension yawing violently.
Her foot instantly back on the accelerator, she massaged the engine speed, turning first into the skid and then — as she sensed some faint traction returning to the blistering tires — back the other way as she goosed the gas. The car flicked obediently out of the skid, rounded the corner, and plunged down the hill like a roller coaster jackknifing through a turn.
She could see the vans down below her now, heading down to the water’s edge, but a police car leaped out of a side street to her left, siren blaring and blue lights flashing. She yanked the wheel to the right to avoid clipping its front wing and then back to the left, the car carving across the cobbles like an ice-skater doing a figure eight. Above her, she caught a glimpse of the tiered foundations of the Hippodrome’s banked seating, the silent ghosts of the bloodthirsty crowds cheering her on.
She turned to follow the vans down a narrow side street but was immediately confronted by another police car speeding toward her, its lights on full beam. Blinded, she threw her arm up to her face. The front right tire hit the curb and snatched the wheel out of her hand. The car jumped sideways and ploughed into the side of an apartment block, the metal chewing into the crumbling stone in a blaze of sparks.
Panting, she gripped the wheel, her knuckles white. The police car’s passenger door flew open and a familiar figure emerged into the beam of her one remaining headlight. Jennifer tumbled out of the car.
“It’s Van Simson, sir. He’s got the coins. And he’s got Tom.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
The smell of chloroform hung about Tom’s clothes like cheap aftershave, its burning sweet taste clinging to his dry and cracked lips. He remembered falling, being dragged out of the cistern and then tossed roughly into the depths of a van. But then nothing.
He was alive, at least. Given the cold-blooded way that Van Simson had disposed of the auctioneer, that was something. Although it did raise the question, of course, as to what exactly Van Simpson was planning to do with him.
He tentatively rolled over onto his front and tried to stand up, his eyes still adjusting to the light. He collapsed almost immediately, vomiting noisily over the stone floor. Gasping, he rolled onto his back and fought back the waves of nausea, focusing on his breathing to try and calm his racing heart and pounding head.
Van Simson? Was he Cassius? It didn’t make sense to Tom. He couldn’t be — why would he have stolen coins from his own auction? But he could still have been behind the Fort Knox job and then had the misfortune of Steiner stealing them from Schiphol Airport. Maybe he’d murdered Harry and hit the off-site to take back what he deemed to be rightfully his.
Either way, Van Simson was deeply involved in the whole mess and Tom had fallen straight into his lap. Literally. And what about Jennifer? Had she been able to get away? How would she know where Tom was when he didn’t even know himself for sure?
The nausea subsiding, Tom allowed himself to study the room around him. It was twelve feet square, he guessed, lit by a single bulb housed under an industrial-looking glass dome. There were no windows and the only way in or out was through a single steel door. An untouched tray of gray rice and yellow chicken lay at Tom’s feet.