“Thanks.”
He hit the brakes and skidded onto the only side street available, a narrow road next to a red-brick cathedral. The closest of the three police Saabs on his tail shot by and hit the spikes. It slipped sideways out of control and crashed into a parked SUV. The other two made the turn, along with a pair of motorcycles.
At the other end of the church, the road took a sharp turn to the right, but Nick saw an opportunity. He cut left instead, taking advantage of the MG’s sixty-inch width to squeeze between a set of barrier pylons and onto a small plaza, dotted with iron lampposts. The two Saabs skidded to a stop at the barriers, unable to squeeze through, but the motorcycles kept coming. They followed nimbly as Nick zigzagged through the pools of light beneath the lampposts and then shot through another set of pylons back onto the road.
The new street gently curved to the west. More flashing lights approached dead ahead, once again blocking Nick’s intended path. As they drew closer, he saw that the new arrivals were BMW armed-response vehicles. That meant guns. He jerked the MG into another 180-degree turn, forcing one of the bikes off the road, and turned north up the first street he came to. The BMWs followed and closed the distance, outmatching the older car for speed and acceleration.
This new street opened ahead into a large square with a huge fountain at the center. White marble angels surrounded a pillar topped with two more angels of gleaming gold. Nick had to crank the wheel left to avoid crashing into it. At the moment of his abrupt turn, one of the armed pursuers opened fire. A marble wing cracked and slid off one of the angels, splashing into the fountain below.
“He’s going to regret that,” said Drake.
“Why does this look so familiar?” asked Nick, putting the MG into a drift around the fountain.
Drake tapped the left window. “Nine o’clock, moving to six.”
Still fighting to maintain control, Nick shot a glance at the mirror and saw the massive stone edifice of Buckingham Palace looming behind them. “Oh. Right.”
Undaunted by his previous destruction of history, the cop in the lead BMW fired again. Bullets plinked off the MG’s bumper.
“Gotta get those beamers off our six, boss,” said Drake, ducking below the leather.
“On it.” On the other side of the fountain, Nick fishtailed out of his drift and took a low ramp up onto a pedestrian sidewalk into St. James Park. Again, the wider cars couldn’t follow through the barriers—only the motorcycles, and those had trouble maneuvering around their skidding comrades.
Nick followed the sidewalk around the western end of the park’s narrow lake and onto a long stretch through the trees along its southern shore. The speedometer topped 120. Rami dug his fingers into the two-tone leather seat, but the old Egyptian was smiling. “I knew these cars raced at Monte Carlo. I never thought I’d experience it firsthand.”
The motorcycles appeared to their right, tracking across a long grassy field on the other side of the trees. Nick ignored them. Thanks to the Brits’ restrictive firearms policies, even for their police forces, the riders could do nothing but try and keep pace.
Halfway through the park, the sidewalk broadened into a wide pedestrian thoroughfare. Nick recognized his surroundings from a previous trip to London. “I know this area. This route leads straight out of the park onto King Charles. We can take Westminster Bridge south out of town. We can still make it.”
“Don’t count on it,” said Molly through the SATCOM. “The Brits are blocking off the park exits right now. These guys are not idiots.”
“Suggestions?”
“I have none. I can’t see a way out.”
As soon as the exit to King Charles came into view, Nick saw that Molly was right. The Brits had walled it off with water-filled Rhino barriers. Floodlights kicked on. A cop with a megaphone shouted for him to stop. He ignored the command, if only because of the pretentious accent.
Nick pulled left, cut through the grass, and overran a decorative wire fence to get onto the main walkway that surrounded the park. More blue and yellow lights appeared a hundred yards in front of them, more BMWs with armed bobbies.
Ahead and to the right was the sandy parade ground of London’s famous horse guards, blocked off from the park by tightly spaced two-foot pylons. Bleachers were set up to the north and south for their Christmas demonstrations.
A spray of rounds plinked the hardtop right above Nick’s head. Instinctively, he jerked the wheel right—too far to stay on the path. The MG broke through a freestanding aluminum fence and thundered up the wooden wheelchair ramp of the southern bleachers. It bounced over a bumper stop at the top and flew another fifteen meters before crashing down onto the sandy parade ground. All three men in the car let out a stunned oof as they bounced in their seats. To Nick’s surprise, the MG kept going. He put it into a wide arcing drift, kicking up dust and searching for a way out. “I take back what I said, Rami. I love this car.”
Rami was ghost white. “It’s yours!”
Behind them, a motorcycle tried to follow. The rider held it together through the jump, but he was thrown from the bike as soon as it smacked down in the sand.
As Nick started his second loop, the cops on the thoroughfare spilled out of their BMWs and rested machine guns on the roofs.
“Incoming fire!” warned Drake.
The bobbies shot indiscriminately into the cloud surrounding the vehicle. Bullets slammed into the MG’s hood and ricocheted off the top.
Through the rising dust, Nick scanned the castlelike stables on the other side of the grounds. They blocked the entire eastern side, from one set of bleachers to the other.
Drake lifted his head and peered out the window at the same problem. “No exit,” he shouted.
“Then we’ll have to make one.”
Nick came out of his drift heading straight for the arch that bisected the stables, a passage forbidden to any vehicles but those bearing the monarch of Britain. A heavy iron gate blocked the exit to the street on the far side. He had no choice but to give it a shot.
He hit the gate square and centered, gritting his teeth through the jarring impact. The iron bars smashed the headlamps and fractured the windshield into a hundred spidery cracks, but the lock gave way and the MG made it through.
On the other side, Nick punched the gas, jumping the median and heading downhill toward the street that paralleled the Thames. Beyond a short stone barrier, the neon blue reflection of the huge Millennium Wheel stretched across the calm black surface of the river. “They didn’t see that coming,” said Nick, chuckling. “The bridge is two blocks south. We’re—”
He stopped in midsentence. His foot was on the brake, trying to slow for the ninety-degree turn at the riverbank. With each pump, the pedal went straight to the floor.
“Look out!” shouted Rami, but there was nothing Nick could do.
The MG jumped the curb, smashed through the stone fence, and pitched down into the muddy Thames.
PART THREE
ENDGAME
CHAPTER 53
Nick!”
Katy called to him.
Her voice was muddled, distant. He saw her atop a shining limestone wall, spotted with tufts of green rock plant and studded with tiny prayer scrolls.
Jerusalem.
Katy was in Jerusalem. That was right, wasn’t it? Nick had sent her there with his father. To keep her safe.
Suddenly Masih Kattan appeared next to her, holding Luke in his arms and smiling triumphantly. Katy’s face twisted with fear as a wall of flame rose up before them. Nick’s face burned from the heat. She screamed his name from beyond the fire.
“Nick!”
Nick awoke, staring at streams of water pouring in through cracks in the MG’s windshield. His chest ached, a consequence of having it slammed into the seat belt when they hit the water. Gravity pulled him forward. The MG was vertical, heading for t
he bottom of the river. To his right, Rami was struggling with his seat belt.
Strong hands shook Nick by the shoulders. “Nick! Wake up!”
“I’m awake. Help Rami,” he said to Drake, his voice weak at first, but gaining strength.
While Nick fought with his own seat belt, he felt the jarring impact of the MG hitting the bottom of the Thames—twenty, maybe twenty-five feet down. The winter current carried the tail of the car sideways and it hung at a steep angle, dragging its crushed nose slowly through the silt.
Thanks to gravity, the murky brown water filled the front of the car first. It had already reached Nick’s chest. “Rami, I need your revolver,” said Nick.
“No, you don’t,” countered Drake. He held up the bobby’s baton. “Whenever you’re ready, boss.”
Nick’s seat belt finally came free. “Go,” he ordered. “I’ve got the professor.”
Drake smashed the butt of the baton into the window and the river took care of the rest, caving the whole thing into the backseat and gushing into the car. As the water passed his neck, Nick fished out the Hashashin knife. He pushed Rami’s hands away from the belt and cut him free. “Come on!”
“One moment!” countered the Egyptian, his face up against the roof. To Nick’s astonishment, the professor ducked down beneath the seat, hunting for something on the floorboards. He came up hugging a thick text, blinking in the murky water. The car was completely full.
Drake was already gone, and Nick pushed Rami out next. The professor’s tenured academic midsection barely fit through, but he made it. Once outside the car, Nick could see blue and yellow police lights flashing above, their colors muted by the green-brown water. He held on to Rami’s jacket from below, keeping the professor from surfacing, letting the current carry them away from the police. When the professor batted desperately at his hand, indicating that he couldn’t hold his breath any longer, Nick counted another ten seconds and then let him go.
They surfaced near a small dock on the southeast side of the river, a good bit south of the flashing lights on the opposite shore. Nick tried to grab Rami under the arms and pull him toward the dock, but the Egyptian pushed him away. “I am not an invalid, Nicholas,” he sputtered. “I can manage.”
They found Drake lying on the dock in a prone position, his arms over the side ready to catch them. He pulled the professor up onto the composite planks first and then helped Nick. All the while, Rami held on to his prize. Dripping, he lay on his back, hugging the book to his chest.
“Must be a really good story,” said Drake.
“You will be glad I brought it. For now though, we need shelter and warmth. And I know just the place.” The Egyptian struggled to his feet and ran to the end of the dock, crouching like a professional operator.
Nick and Drake exchanged a look. Nick shrugged. “I guess we follow him.”
Rami led them several blocks away from the river until they came to a nondescript glass-and-aluminum door in a row of joined office buildings—distinguished from the other doors in the row only by the small bronze plaque beside it. One-inch block lettering read COPTIC CHURCH OF SOUTH LONDON.
Rami reached out with a shivering hand and pressed a white button below the plaque. “Our resident priest Youssef is a heavy sleeper. I hope he hears the bell.”
—
A half hour later, Nick peeled back a yellowed shower curtain in the church bathroom and found a stack of clothes on the counter next to his towel—worn khaki slacks, a blue button-down shirt, boxers and socks, even a pair of Adidas. When he finished dressing, he stepped out into a narrow hallway lit with the warm wash of yellow incandescent fixtures. Drake was seated on a folding chair outside the door, wearing a blue and white Hawaiian shirt and tweed slacks.
“The church has a clothing-and-food mission for the poor,” he said. “Rami and Youssef raided the shelves to find clothes for us.” He kicked his feet out from under the chair, displaying a pair of shiny, patent leather shoes.
“Those are nice,” said Nick.
“They had a little trouble finding something in my size.”
“We can’t stay here. We have to get home. If CJ is taking over this chase, she’s going to need our help behind the scenes.”
“And where will you go at one o’clock in the morning?” asked Rami, stepping out from a doorframe a short distance down the hall. “The police are at every corner, and they will be for the rest of the night.” He handed each of them a steaming bowl of soup. It looked like porridge, but it smelled divine.
“Eat. Sleep. Regroup. You have chased the Hashashin nonstop for three days, and they are always two steps ahead. Perhaps you need to slow down in order to get out in front.”
Nick was too exhausted to argue with his old professor. He could play along now and get moving again once he checked in with Romeo Seven.
The two operatives followed Rami to a room with several cots and sat down to eat their soup while the Egyptian disappeared to talk to Youssef. The soup tasted as good as it smelled—lentil bean with rosemary and thyme, and something sweet Nick could not identify.
While they ate, they let thoughts of Kattan and the bioweapon rest. They caught each other up on the events of the night, recalling the better parts of their fights and chases as if they were already faded memories.
By the time his bowl was empty, Nick no longer had the desire to race back out into the cold. He wanted sleep and nothing else. He laid out a pad on his cot, and the moment his head hit the vinyl cushion, the room faded into darkness.
CHAPTER 54
When Nick awoke, he found Rami and Drake in the room next door, poring over the professor’s old book, still wet from its dunk in the river. He leaned against the doorframe and yawned. “How long have I been out?”
“Five hours,” said Drake, glancing at the screen of his smartphone. “It’s seven A.M.”
Nick’s eyes widened. He had intended to sleep for an hour, ninety minutes at the most.
Rami removed his spectacles and gave him a knowing smile. “How do you feel? Rested?”
“Woozy. What did you put in that soup besides beans?”
The professor waved his glasses in the air. “Oh, this and that. A few spices, some poppy-seed oil.”
“Poppy seed. You drugged us?”
“I helped you get the rest you needed. I gave you the same soup I eat to help with my insomnia. Poppy-seed oil is a common ingredient in Egyptian culinary arts.”
“Opium?” Drake looked from Nick to the professor and back again. He pointed at his teammate. “If Walker has us do a urine test in the next two weeks, remind me to borrow a bottle of Molly’s.”
Nick closed his eyes and shook his head. “What are you two doing with that old book?”
The professor put his glasses back on and folded his hands together, tilting his knuckles toward his former student. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Nicholas, but you have approached your entire mission the wrong way.”
“Oh, here we go,” said Nick, stepping deeper into the room. “Always grading my work. You and my father.”
Rami shrugged. “What good is a teacher who doesn’t teach or a father who doesn’t parent?” He opened his hands and smiled. “You are dealing with the Hashashin, not al-Qaeda. The two organizations have overlapping ideology, but they are separated by nearly a millennium.”
“So?”
“So you are an expert at combating modern terrorists. You depend on a decade of experience and success, but in reality you have never faced, much less defeated, a threat like the Hashashin.” Rami patted the soggy pages of the text in front of him. “I propose that you consult the one man who has.”
“Hulegu.”
“You remember!” The professor clapped his hands together. “That is why you were always my favorite.”
Nick shook his head. “Hulegu employed overwhelming force. He stormed
the Hashashin stronghold at Alamut with a hundred thousand Mongol warriors.” He gestured at Drake with an open hand, tracking down from the worn Hawaiian shirt to the patent leather shoes. “All I have is him, and even if we could send in the Marines, we don’t know where to send them.”
“Ah.” Rami raised a finger. “You are forgetting that Hulegu foiled multiple assassination attempts before he destroyed the Hashashin at Alamut. No one, not even the Sultan of Rum had stopped their assassinations before.”
The professor motioned Nick closer, his movements quick, energized by academic discovery. “Look here. It is difficult to find amid the rabid self-glorification, but I believe Hulegu gives us the true key to his success.” Rami placed a finger on the page and read in the voice of a pompous Mongol khan.
Having inherited the divine foresight of the eagles, I sent my informants into their houses of worship. For I had discerned by the wisdom granted to me by heaven that the Mohammedans do not separate their worship from their war. Rather they worship through war, by what they call jihad. Within the domed shrines frequented by the Ismailis, my informants discovered a network of Hashashin outposts with tunnels, secret rooms, and armories. There they learned of the plots against my brother the Great Khan Möngke and my adviser Kitbuka. Thus I laid in wait for my enemies and by my own hand met them with divine retribution for their sins.
“The mosques?” offered Drake.
“Yes. Yes!” said Rami, slapping him on the back. “Unlike the crusaders, Hulegu understood the value of infiltrating the mosques rather than burning them, at least in the early stages. And unlike today’s intelligence agencies, he did not concern himself with the political consequences of having a spy discovered in a mosque.”
Nick nodded, staring down at the page. “Eight centuries ago Hulegu discovered the heart of Islamic insurgency. ‘The Mohammedans do not separate their worship from their war,’” he read. “‘Rather, they worship through war.’ Nothing has changed. Today’s generals are just too politically correct to say it.” He tapped the illustration of the mosque. “This should have been my starting point. Instead, I let Kattan lead me around by the nose.”
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