The whining of the device stops. The man lunges. Grace crashes, grabbing whatever is nearby and raising it between herself and her attacker. She feels the object drive into him, hears his raw cry.
The device clatters to the cobbles. The penlight rotates through the air like a spinning baton. In the strobe light, she catches the flashing image of the man; he’s clutching a pitchfork, its blade embedded in his left thigh.
As the light hits the stone, it goes dark. Grace has the presence of mind to retrieve her purse as she leaps past the staggering man. She collides with a stack. Another. Dust and cobwebs consume her. She spits and coughs and claws at nothing, running, falling forward, fighting against the sticky spider webs most of all. She hates spiders.
She’s struck in the back. Stabbed by a tine of the pitchfork, aimed at only the sounds she’s making in the dark. Her side clenches into a painful knot. She’s on the stone floor and crawling. Hears him dragging his leg as he comes up from behind her.
Somewhere ahead, the air glows a shade other than black. She’s drawn to that change. But he’s on foot and she’s on hands and knees and the accountant can work out the equation: he’s closing on her.
Grace reaches out blindly with both hands, searching. Backs herself into a narrow, angled space between the rough wood of the crates and lowers her head like she’s carrying out afternoon prayers.
The sound of his panting and the dragging of his leg draw closer. He has lost the sound of her, the sense of her, and he’s professional enough to turn that into caution. She smells him now — sour, slightly metallic from the bloody wound. Perhaps he smells her, too, for he stops.
There is no sound. It is a vacuum of space, without light, without so much as a hum or crackle. They are locked in a three-thousand-year-old vault playing a child’s game of who can hold his or her breath the longest.
Grace’s lungs burn. Her diaphragm convulses in sharp attacks, begging for air.
She feels it too late — a single bead of sweat runs down her jaw from her hairline to her chin. It settles, grows fat and falls as loudly as a cymbal crash.
49
Excuse me, sir?” Besim pleads with Knox, desperate to correct his impression of Knox’s request.
“Just so,” Knox says. He’s not going to argue strategy with a limousine driver.
“Please allow me to—”
“No.” Knox leaves it at that. “The Holiday Inn. Hurry, please.”
It’s true they won’t be watching the hospital for Victoria, but Knox is a marked man. With each assault, his enemy has escalated its effort to abduct him. With Mashe Okle’s “Get Out of Jail Free” business card hot in his pocket, Knox doubts they will be any less forgiving.
He pulls up his pant legs and scratches loose the scabs from the bruised welts on his shins, crying out regardless of his effort not to. Besim checks the mirror. Knox has to pull the scab from his right leg to get the wound open. Blood trickles down both shins.
Just right.
The car slows and pulls to the curb. Knox looks for the hotel.
Too soon, he thinks.
“Please, the address once more?” Besim is turned, looking back between the front seats.
“The Holiday Inn,” Knox says, unreservedly impatient and demanding. “It’s right there north of the hospital.”
Only as the driver’s left arm swings around does Knox rehash a laundry list of do’s and don’ts. Do thorough background checks on even the most inconsequential contacts. Don’t ever become complacent in the field.
A bright flashlight beam stings Knox’s eyes as a red laser dot finds his chest. The Taser hides well in Besim’s gloved hand. Knox feels the impact — two needles shot at ninety-five miles an hour, capable of piercing two inches of fabric.
But not a passport.
The windbreaker’s myriad pockets save him. It’s the sheriff with the Bible in his pocket; zipped into his jacket’s internal chest pocket, a space meant for his phone, is his passport. It has taken the hit from the Taser’s darts. Knox rolls against the stubborn door. Locked by Besim, it doesn’t open. Knox reaches for the knob as Besim ejects the Taser’s dart cartridge, converting the device into a stun gun. The man’s fluidity and speed tell Knox all he needs to know: this man is not a career limo driver.
The door comes open. Knox falls to the curb. Besim dives between the seats, lunging and leading with the Taser. He makes contact, but Knox feels nothing. The Taser has not had time to recharge.
Knox is up and on his feet. His right pant leg is hoisted, his shin bleeding badly. Pedestrians coming toward him jump out of his way, which is not what he wants; he could use the cover of a crowd.
Besim proves himself agile and fast as he claws his way across the backseat and out the open door. Knox’s legs are no match for such a man; he is certain to lose this race.
His gift is forethought, the ability to see around corners. The small Taser will be used to buy the owner thirty seconds to flee the scene — or search the victim. Besim is on the team that’s pursuing Mashe Okle’s dead drop in a humane manner, not the team aiming to put a bullet in the back of their subject’s skull. It’s all the information Knox needs.
He prepares himself for defeat, an anathema.
The three flags hanging off the building at a forty-five-degree angle signal the finish line. He will accept defeat only once he’s there.
He’s suddenly looking down the wrong end of the telescope — thirty meters becomes three hundred as an ill-advised glance back confirms Besim is up and shoving pedestrians aside like they’re Styrofoam. Knox has ten meters on the man and twenty to go. Eight and eighteen. Six and fifteen. The math doesn’t hold up; he won’t make it.
A dozen thoughts crowd his brain, none acceptable — holler for help; turn and fight; use a human shield to take the next attempt with the stun gun. Knox works the slalom to avoid giving the man an easy shot, but he stretches out the distance to the flags by doing so. He uses a mother and stroller effectively and is able to move for a few meters in a straight line. But he feels Besim closing, hears him yelling at pedestrians to get out of his way and shouting, “Police!” in a bid to promote himself as an authority.
The stun gun may be the least of it, Knox realizes.
Unable to get up any head of steam because of his injured shins, Knox is bracing himself for the inevitable when the gods of chance give him a gift. Traffic is at its standard-issue Istanbul standstill; a private car has seized upon an open space at the curb and is being loaded far from the three flags at the hotel entrance. The hotel bellman wears a narrow-waisted black collarless jacket with silver frog button loops and tuxedo pants with a satin stripe down the side. His narrow head hides itself in an oversized purple fez with a gold tassel that has lost most of its sheen, like the unkempt tail of a nag long since put to pasture. The placement of the car shortens Knox’s destination by ten meters or more. He eyes the man’s jacket again as he crashes into him, screaming that he needs a hospital. Clings to the bellman, panting, sweaty, his blood-covered leg echoing the alarm.
“Nightingale Hospital! Please! At once!”
Besim stops and is immediately shoulder-bumped by a pedestrian who didn’t anticipate the obstacle. The collision half spins him, leaving him scowling over his left shoulder at Knox as the two meet eyes. He radiates a predator’s determination, tries but fails to contain his seething frustration.
Knox allowed himself to trust the man. Chastises himself for that oversight. Wonders if there’s any way to catalogue the damage done by his planning sessions with both Grace and Victoria in the backseat. What pieces of the plan, if any, are out there? How much does Besim know?