“He’s looking away,” said Harold. “Definitely seems fishy.”
Sarah placed her heel back in her shoe and stood up. She led Harold down Kensington Road with a quickened step.
“What should we do?” Harold finally asked.
Sarah raised her hand and stepped from the curb onto the street. “Get out of here,” she said.
A cab came quickly, and the two shuffled inside. It was only after they had shut the taxi’s door behind them and the driver had turned his head around to inquire about their destination that they both realized they weren’t sure what to say.
“Umm… not the hotel?” asked Harold.
“He might know where we’re staying already, but just in case, let’s not tell him.” Sarah raised her voice as she spoke to the driver. “Do you mind just heading straight for a minute while we figure out where we’re going?”
By way of response, the driver-a South Asian man with dark hair and a prodigious mustache-shrugged. He switched the car into Drive.
Harold and Sarah both swiveled in their seats and looked out the taxi’s rear window. The man in the leather coat was on his cell phone.
As they watched him recede into the distance, however, they saw a quickly moving black car come to a sudden stop in front of him. The man lowered his cell phone. He pulled open the car’s door and swung his wide frame inside the car in one continuous motion; it appeared surprisingly graceful for a man of his size. The car sped forward, growing larger in the taxi’s rear window. It was headed straight toward them.
Harold turned back to the driver. “Do you mind going a bit faster?” he said.
“Faster?” replied the driver. “Faster to where?”
“Wherever,” said Sarah. “Up that way. And faster.”
The driver shrugged again, and gave a knowing shake of his head. Americans!
Behind them the black car weaved between lanes, aggressively making up the distance between it and the taxi. The side windows of the black car were darkened, so Harold couldn’t make out who else might be inside. His view into the car’s front window was obstructed by one intermediate car, and then another, until finally he managed to get a second’s clear view of the black car’s driver: a balding young man in a gray sweater, who sported an awful goatee.
Harold inhaled sharply.
“Holy shit,” was all he managed to say.
Sarah saw the Goateed Man at the same time as Harold did. She turned instantly toward the driver.
“Hi,” she began, “would you please make a right turn up at that light? Yes, right here.”
“Missus,” the driver replied, “what is going on?”
“Please turn right here, now!” barked Sarah.
The driver switched lanes and took the turn.
“I do not want to be part of any trouble,” he said as they headed south past Imperial College.
“Neither do we. So let’s try to avoid trouble as much as we can, all right, by making a sharp left up ahead.”
“I will drop you off at this corner here.”
“No!” interjected Harold. “We’re being followed.”
“Come on, now,” said the driver. “Time to get out.”
“Sir, I’m being completely serious. Look at the black car behind us. They’ve been following us since we got into your cab.”
The driver looked up into his rearview mirror. There were more than a few black cars.
“Why would someone follow you? What, you are a famous actor or something?”
“Actually,” said Harold as he thought the matter over, “that’s a good question. I’m not sure why they’re following us As far as I can tell, they’re the ones who have something we want.”
“So maybe I pull over here and you can go to figure out who is chasing who.”
“That’s not a bad plan,” said Harold.
Sarah looked at him strangely. “What?” she asked hesitantly, as if she were afraid of the answer.
“I have an idea,” said Harold. He reached into his wallet and removed a tight clump of bills. Without checking to see how much money he was handing over, he folded the clump and handed it to the driver. The cabbie looked pleased as he thumbed through the money.
“I need you to do one more favor for us,” Harold continued. “Speed up. A lot. Then pull a quick left up ahead, at”-he squinted to make out the street sign-”Fulham. Then stop abruptly, as soon as you can.”
The driver glanced down at his new wad of bills, then shrugged. Whatever you say, spoke his gesture.
As the cab accelerated, Harold could feel his back press into the cushioned seat. He looked down to find his hands, of their own accord, gripping the seat below.
The cabbie swung the wheel to the left, diving into a gap between the oncoming cars, and Harold’s body was thrown to the right, against Sarah. He could feel her limbs tensing as the cab pulled the turn. When the car straightened itself, he tried to scoot himself politely away from her but ended up pushing with a hand against her upper thigh. She seemed not to notice.
The driver swerved the car to the curb and slapped the brakes with gusto. Without seat belts, Harold and Sarah were jerked forward against the divider. The car came to a stop.
“Wait here for a second,” said Harold as he exited the car. He stood outside the open door for a moment, waiting for the black car to pull the same turn and appear in front of him.
He didn’t have to wait long. After a few seconds, the car came hurtling through the intersection. But, unlike the cab, it had no plans to stop. It accelerated further as it straightened out on Fulham Street.
Harold, twitchy with adrenaline, stepped out into the street immediately in front of the oncoming car. He could see the confusion on the Goateed Man’s face, at the wheel, when he realized what had happened. For a long moment, as the car raced toward Harold, he began to reconsider his plan. If the Goateed Man wanted to kill him, he now had the perfect opportunity. All he had to do was keep his foot on the gas and Harold would be slammed against the front of his car. He could chalk the death up to a simple traffic accident, and no one would ever know the truth. Harold was playing a classic poker move against the oncoming car-he was paying for information, taking a calculated risk not for the purpose of winning but in order to learn something about his opponent. If he lived, it would be because the Goateed Man did not want to kill him. And that was important information. If he died, however… Well, Harold figured, if the Goateed Man really wanted to kill him, then he would have been killed already. Like Alex.
Harold could make out the Goateed Man’s grimace as he pressed on the brakes and yanked the car to the left, onto the curb. The metal screech of the wheels pierced through the midday traffic noise. The car turned to its side, front sticking out into the first lane of the street as it slid across the pavement. It finally stopped a few feet in front of Harold.
He looked directly into the face of the Goateed Man in the driver’s seat. The man scowled. Harold smiled. The Goateed Man wasn’t trying to kill him-in fact, he was going out of his way not to. Harold walked calmly up to the black car and knocked delicately on the passenger-side window.
There was a long, silent pause. The inhabitants of the car seemed not to know what to do. They had signed up for a car chase, not a polite tête-à-tête, and the change of activities was throwing them off their normal role.
Finally the passenger-side window slid down, revealing the man in the leather jacket inside.
“Yes?” said the man, his face glacially serene.
“You don’t have the diary, do you?” said Harold, coming to this realization only after he’d spoken it out loud.
The man said nothing while he considered the situation. This pause worried Harold; perhaps this guy was smarter than he’d hoped.